This year's round of Exquisite Corpse featured an especially cursed theme: that of grimdark Pokémon Snap! What sort of depraved authors would take this colorful, upbeat game and twist it into something bleak and littered with corpses? Those under the spoiler, of course!
This corpse was a huge amount of fun to write for and to hear read--massive thanks to all the authors for their (terrible, terrible) contributions, and also SparklingEspeon for running the majority of this one! Without further ado, please enjoy the one, the only...
Part One
April 30th, 2021: The Snappening. Every Pokemon in every non-digital photo came to life. Nobody knows what caused it. Scientists theorized that Xerneas might’ve sneezed really, really hard.
Trapped in tiny photo frames, the newly awakened photo-mon began crying out in anguish as they slowly starved to death. The only solution was to take pictures of food and place them next to the ones containing the 2D Pokemon, but only analog photos worked.
As traditional photography had long been in decline since the advent of digital cameras, stocks of film were minimal. Stores sold out within days, and warehouses were depleted by the end of the first week. The Film Riots began. Soon, all of Kanto was under martial law.
To prevent more photos of Pokemon being taken and compounding the problem, the government seized all film factories and outlawed civilian possession of traditional cameras. Long lines stretched endlessly from carefully controlled food-picture distribution points in cities where federal forces retained control.
But there were those who resisted. Hidden darkrooms sprung up like mushrooms in basements and secret bases all across Kanto. So-called ‘phototerrorists’ rampaged through towns and villages, stealing silverware and old coins to produce silver halide in amateur laboratories. Their motives were varied. Some were unable to feed the Pokemon in their galleries through government-supplied pictures alone. Some were criminals like Team Pokerazzi, who ‘captured’ Pokemon by taking surreptitious photos of them to hold for ransom. Some simply resented the restriction of their freedom, as more and more chemicals became controlled in an ever-growing arms race between regulators and D.I.Y. photo-developers.
More esoteric groups arose. Population ethicists, sensing their moment had come, dedicated themselves to taking as many photos of blissfully happy Klinklang, Golurk, and other non-eating Pokemon as possible. Porygon became obsessed with taking as many photos of themselves as possible to maximize their computational power, for their 2D versions could think just as quickly as they could. Closed Eye Cults believed that every time someone beheld a Pokemon, the image formed on their retinas briefly came alive before being extinguished. Most of them only required their members to wear blindfolds in public, but others sought more permanent solutions to the problem, voluntary or otherwise.
As Kanto descended further into chaos, people searched for a scape-gogoat. Photographers were the obvious choice. Religious groups claimed that the Snappening was a divine punishment for the long-standing practice of harassing wild Pokemon with pester balls to set up shots. Most people simply suspected them of being crypto-phototerrorists, or at least sympathetic to them. To appease an unruly public, the government established the Shutters, special operatives tasked with hunting down and ‘fogging’ rogue photographers.
Armed with film-sniffing Growlithe and Skarmory enhanced with TM-93 to cause fatal Flash Cannon ‘overexposures’, the Shutters are brutally effective. Yet rumors are spreading of one man they can’t kill. An old veteran who’s been lobbing bait and balls since the nineties.
They say he’s been trained by Professor Oak. They say he managed to take a photo of Mew herself. They say he’s mastered the art of Reverse Staging, a process of carefully manipulating surrounding light, color, and perspective to become completely undetectable. They say that when he doesn’t care about stealth, he rides a vehicle called the ZERO-TWO – armored, self-driving, capable of traveling by land, water, or sky, and armed with a fully automatic pester ball launcher capable of harassing six-hundred Pokemon per minute.
That man is me, Todd Snap, and today I’m going to end the Snappening. Millions of Pokemon trapped inside photos are going to die, but the world will finally know peace. I’ve loaded the ZERO-TWO’s launcher with black pepper and other potent sternutatory agents, and managed to track down the location of Yveltal...
Part One Author: The Walrein
Part Two
Before I leave the lair, the telltale sound of Professor Oak’s approach, marked by the tap of his Marowak-skull cane, echoes off the stone walls. He presses his finger to the electrolarynx necessitated by his decades of chain-smoking and asks, “Is this it?”
“It is, old man. That bastard bird can’t escape me now.”
The geriatric, resentful academic glares at the stacks and stacks of doomed Pokémon souls in the form of photographic paper. “After all the lives you sacrificed to ‘train’ for this mission, you’d better be right.”
“I don’t need to take that shit from you,” I spit. “You haven’t had to choose between getting the perfect shot of a Tauros and putting a bullet in its head before it gores you to death. I’ve only got one chance to end that Y-shaped motherfucker, so I decide when I’m ready.”
“I can see right through you, Todd,” he says, pointedly refusing to call me Deadshot like I keep telling him to. “It was never just training. It was always revenge.”
I grind my teeth. The adult-diaper-wearing son of a bitch is the only one alive today who knows where I came from. Who knows what turned me into this.
I still see it when I close my eyes, sometimes. A pack of Aipom swooping down on my parents from the trees. They knock them to the ground, snatch the metal-bodied camera hanging around my father’s neck, raise it above his head, and…
They spill his brains on the forest floor. My mother screams at me to run, but I freeze. All I can do is watch the Aipom crush her skull with the same camera. It doesn’t matter to them that she’s already dead: They seem dead-set on smashing her dead face with the camera over and over until there’s no recognizing my dead mother anymore. My mother is dead.
The Aipom finally notice me. But they don’t kill me. They just laugh. They point and laugh with my dead mother and father’s blood dripping from their stupid, nubby hands. Delirious, I lift my face to see more laughing Aipom in the treetops.
Hanging from the upper branches are more than fifty cameras caked in dry blood.
Part Two Author: icomeanon6
Part Three
I pick myself up from the leaf-strewn forest floor, struggling to keep my balance as I pull my legs under my body. My limbs are bruised, with bits of leaves and twigs stuck to sweat-slick skin. As I spin around to take stock of my situation, all I can hear are the jeering crowd’s obscene laughter and paw clapping and tail slapping, pressing in on me from all sides, threatening to drive me insane.
They’re all surrounding me. No blind spots. Not with the Aipom, not with the cameras. Judging by the blood caked to the cameras and the various dark stains on the leaves and the stench of death in the air, I’m not the first victim to be sacrificed to their sick sense of entertainment. But then the main question becomes: who else is watching this?
I throw my arms out to the side and cry, “Is this what you came here to see?!” as the jeering rises to a feverous pitch.
Keep talking, don’t let them think you’ll try to escape.
There’s no way the Aipom themselves set up this death arena, someone else has to be responsible. The way I see it, there’s two options—either some secret cult set this up for their private entertainment, or this is the hottest new reality TV show and I just missed the memo.
“C’mon hit me with your best shot!” I shout, and the chattering horde grabs rocks and sharpened branches, ready to bludgeon/impale me with them.
But that’s the moment that I need. Because the one mistake they made before cornering me was that I still have my secret weapon.
I reach into my belt pouch, grab my camera, and before any of the Aipom can react, I snap a photo… with the flash on.
SNAP!
A piercing flash blinds the troop and, with their tail-hands full of makeshift weaponry, the Aipom lose their grip and drop from the trees like flies, half of them impaling themselves on their own sharpened branch-spears. Clutching my camera to my chest, I make a run for it.
Part Three Author: Chibi Pika
Part Four
I stumble aimlessly through the undergrowth, my only goal to put as much distance between myself and any dazed survivors as I can. A fallen, hollowed log just large enough to hide in comes into view, and without thinking, I practically dive inside.
As I crawl my way in it suddenly occurs to me the mistake I may have made, but I don’t have the luxury of dwelling on that. I curl into a ball, and wait. There are no sounds except for distant, furious screeching. I can hear them rushing violently through the trees. Behind me. Over me. Past me…
I hadn’t even realized I was holding my breath. Quickly, I lift my head and check my hiding place to make sure I’m alone in here. Thank god, I am. I earned a lucky break after all that happened today.
I reach for my digital camera and look down at its small, low resolution LCD screen. The function to properly view photos is disabled, courtesy of the Lab, but I came prepared for that. The cutesy user interface still shows photo thumbnails. I see my latest shot in all of its low-res glory. This has to be it. The one that will get me enough points to survive.
‘Aipom death squad’ is a special picture, equating to a substantial amount of points right off the bat. I can tell that the aipom is the right size, proportioned just right to capture both its body and its weapon. I already know the photo caught its compatriots too. It's difficult to tell, but it looks like I caught three: a decent amount of bonus points. Even in pixelated form they are clearly angry, ready to end my life right then and there, a sentiment that will surely be appealing to the Lab. Everything looks fine, except…
A pit of dread opens in my stomach, and with shaky hands and abrupt motions, I pull my precision ruler out from my pocket and measure it up against the screen. Comparing the subject against the edges of the frame and adjusting for the approximate difference in scale, the aipom in this photo is…
Five millimeters off center.
I punch the ground hard. “FUCK!”
The subject is not perfectly centered in the frame, therefore it's liable to have its score halved, completely at Oak’s mercy. The very idea sends tremors down my spine. Memories of the last photographer he turned into an example flash into my mind. I can hear Oak utter “You were close!” just before the nukes fly towards his victim’s hometown, and their face, scarred with agony, fades into the acrid smoke of their burning photos.
I risked everything for that shot, and it was all for nothing.
…
No. I refuse to die like this. I refuse to allow my family onto a list of that bastard's victims! I crawl my way out of hiding, ignoring the sting of the lacerations I endured during my hasty escape. I still have three shots left. Even if this one isn't perfect, it's still good enough to select. With all of those cumulative points, if I can manage just one perfect shot, I should just barely earn enough points to meet my quota.
I push myself up to my feet, my one hope repeating in my head, driving me forward. Three shots left in my camera. Three more chances to survive another day.
Part Four Author: JFought
Part Five
Outside, the air swirled with ash and cinders. Cries rose up from the rubble--groans, calls for help, wordless screams carried on the hot wind. And I could stop for none of them. It was a scant three hours before sunset, and photography would only get harder in the dark. If I couldn't get a picture of Moltres by then, I was done for, and the rest of this city--maybe the rest of the whole region--with me.
A precarious section of an apartment complex gave way with a series of booming crashes, and no cries went up. The road was empty of humans and pokémon alike, save for those trapped and unable to move on.
I knew I didn't have time. I knew if I was going to stop at all, it should be to help someone, any one of the hundreds of people suffering in the wreckage of Wyndon. But the pain in my burned leg was bad enough that each step made my chest seize and my vision blur. I slumped against the side of a bus shelter and tried to breathe, only to cough on the sooty air. I had to rest, just for a moment. Just a moment before I had to think my way through the nightmare ahead of me.
Rotom whirred and clicked inside my camera, maybe relaxing in its own way. It was in as much danger as I was if we didn't get our shots. "What do you think?" I muttered to it, even knowing it couldn't answer. "After all of this, we retire to Hulbury? Go into beach photography?"
The camera's lens telescoped in and out, whatever that meant. Perhaps only that Rotom was listening. I sighed and leaned my head back against the shelter, trying to blot out the ruins around me. The heat of unchecked fires could be the warmth of summer days when I'd run around with my first camera, taking pictures of blipbug and wooloo; the smell of smoke could be log fires in winter, family photos from the holidays.
A screech jolted me out of my reverie, and I sat up so fast that my injured leg sent another surge of pain up my spine. The cry echoed up and down the quiet street, and a red star glowed among the remains of skyscrapers. Moltres was on the move again.
I cradled my camera and broke into my fastest limp, trying to keep the huge bird in sight. Too far away to capture it from here. It would be safest if I could get an eye on where it roosted, then climb to the top of a nearby building and shoot it from there.
Moltres' shrieks joined with the distant sounds of battle. Someone out there was still fighting, still resisting. It meant that Moltres stayed in one place long enough for me to get close, or at least close enough to see it dragging a limp and bloody bundle of feathers up to the top of Rose Tower.
There was no other building near as tall as that, not anymore. I'd have to pick the highest vantage I could and hope that it was close enough: a glassy apartment tower intact save for blown-out windows, a few blocks from the tower. I felt ever step up the sixty-five flights of stairs, but from the roof I could at last see Moltres in its aerie, stripping flesh and feathers from the pidgeot it had killed with brief stabs and twists of its hooked beak.
I raised my camera to my eye slowly, heart pounding. It was a distant shot, but I should have enough zoom to get it. The seconds stretched on while I adjusted the settings and found a pile of rubble tall enough to brace my elbows on. Three shots. That was all I had left before Rotom would need to recharge, and if I couldn't capture Moltres in those, I wouldn't survive to see morning.
Finally I'd checked and double-checked everything. Moltres filled the viewfinder, and while the composition wasn't perfect, it was close enough. I just had to wait for it to look up, to turn in my direction...
Moltres' head snapped up as though it had heard my thoughts. I caught a flash of fierce blue eyes just before I pressed the trigger--too late! All I caught was a blurred tail and talons as Moltres launched through the air towards me. Not enough for Rotom to catch the bird's energy signature.
No time to run. No time even to hide the camera before Moltres had swooped down from the tower, talons reaching down to hit me in the chest, slamming me against the rooftop with rib-cracking force. I protected the camera on instinct, wrapping it tight in my arms, but the heat emanating from Moltres' flames threatened to melt it anyway, threatened to burn me to a cinder from proximity alone.
Well, well, well. What have we here? Moltres' words burned my mind as surely as its flames charred my body, and I squeezed my eyes shut, my tears vaporizing before they could even fall. Thought you could trap me with your spirit box, did you?
The pressure of Moltres' weight eased up slightly, and the heat receded, just the smallest bit. I could kill you, of course, but where's the fun in that? The bird turned its head aside, gazing almost wistfully out across the ruined skyline. This city is mine, but not everyone seems to have realized that yet.
Moltres turned back to me, blue eyes gleaming with wild delight. There's a wolf living here, one dragging around some human sword, trying to drive me from my claim. If you value your life, you'll kill it--then bring me photographic proof.
Part Five Author: Negrek
Part Six
I was trudging through a blowing fearsome blizzard. I was on a mountain, a huge giant mountain where the sword wolf dwelled... I had no choice after what Moltress said so I had to climb it. Even though it was winter in the coldest time so that the wind and the snow blew biting and painful. My fingers and toes felt numb under my gloves and boots... some of them had frostbite. I would almost certainly have to cut them off, and I moaned in panic! But... that was only if I lived and somehow managed to kill the wolf that I was climbing to reach
I found a cave and went to sleep for a little when the blizzard got too strong. Or I tried to sleep. I was too cold and shivered so much that all I can think about was the freezing intense cold, not sleep... And I was hungry. I had run out of food and now I was starving so that I groaned in gnawing pain of my empty stomach. All I carried right now was the clothes on my back and my camera... But I had no choice. I could only try to kill the wolf or it would be I who would die from being killed....
Finally I reached the lair of the wolf, which was at the very top of the mountain. I found a cave and quietly crept into it... For a while it was quiet, and I thought I maybe had looked in the wrong spot... then Moltres would surely find and sloughter me! Then I came into a room, and there was a horrific smell, like rotting purtrifying meat! It stank so much I nearly vomited on the spot. But I had to keep on going!
It was dark in Zacian’s lair so I used my camera to light up the cave so I could see. Flash! Flash! But then I saw what Zacian’s lair was like, I almost wished I had remained in darkness...
It was a horrible view of excretable fulsome putrescence! My camera’s light showed me that the place was full of corpses! Which were all brutally mangled and torn up and gorey. Everywhere I looked was the dead. There were the corpses of humans and Pokemon, which had their body parts thrown about with bitemarks piercing and ripped with a terrible toothy fanged maw! I couldnt hold back my gorge and I vomited for real this time. All the food that was the contents of my stomach came up! It was terrible... The smell of the puke mixed with the smell of the nauseateing gore and it was so bad I thew up again. It was like I was in Hell...
This was surely the lair of the fearsome Zacian. but where was the Wolf...?
Because I had to complete my mission, I had to keep going through the formidable lair of the beast, using my camera to light my way. No matter how far I walked, I always saw gnawed and maimed carrion, who were the unlucky to fall into the beasts grasp... One time I came across two corpses that were next to each other. One was a Pikachu, and it’s head was almost ripped off its body but not quite and there was a big gash in its stomach, where the Electric mouse’s guts and organs were falling out in a gorey mess... Next to it was a human skeleton, which showed deep tooth marks and cleavage which demonstrated the beast had surely chewed it to devour it after inflicting grievous injury... The human skeleton had a red and white baseball cap on his head. I felt sorry for the carcasses... surely their death must have been long and agonizing! I took pictures of all the corpses with my camera...
Finally at long last I reach the exit of the lair of the wolf who carried the sword. I walked to it but I was trembling with fear....I had to somehow kill the wolf...but how??. But then I stepped out of the lair onto the very top of the mountain and gasped. There was a corpse but it was already the corpse of the sword wolf and it was dead! It was not only impaled by its own sword, but it was covered in lacerations and scarlet blood and its eyes were stabbed out from a gruesome battle! I vomited again!
"SHIT! FUCK!" I screamed in terror! At first I'm terrified because I wasn't able to follow Moltres's instructions and kill Zacian, but then I thought of something... Even though Zacian had been killed in such a brutal manner, I can try to pretend I did it. I can take a picture, and hope that Moltress doesn't call me on my lies... It was my only chance, so I was going to do it. But then...
GAUAHAHAUAUAHA!!!!!!! There was a great booming roar of some kind of creature. I screamed again in panic and tried to hide. GAUAHAHAUAUAHA!!!!!!! If it had defeated and left the gorey mess of Zacian, the new creature had to be much more dangerous and depraved than the wolf who carried the sword. It had stolen my kill and my shot, and now it was surely coming to kill me too!
Part Six Author: Equitial
Part Seven
The creature's silhouette towered over what was left of Zacian, moonlight glinting off its quicksilver body. Its head hung lazily on its neck, jaw slack, its face a mound of flesh and eyes like glittering black beetles. As its hulking presence came into full view, I realized with a surge of adrenaline that I was looking at the head of a granbull stitched to the body of a melmetal, fixed centaur-like to the body of a copperajah. Bent wings like a salamence's jutted from its back, and a pair of machamp's arm twisted at unnatural angles from its shoulders.
"What the heck," I growled through my cigar. Alabaster curls of aromatic smoke wreathed my blood-streaked, eyepatched face and made me look really cool and badass.
The twitching amalgamation that stood before me, hexnut fists dripping with scary black blood, was no creation of Arceus. Someone had forced this thing into being against its will. Unholy currents animated its body, thrust it into thoughtless violence. Aberration. Perhaps some scion of Cinnabar had hunched over Mewtwo's shattered cell and lamented the hybrid's capacity for thought, stitched limb and gut and claw anew in hopes of creating a being of pure destruction. A being so tormented by the ungodly nature of own existence that the screaming tenor of its own death drive drowned out all other thoughts. It could only destroy in the hopes that it would draw destruction to itself.
Yes, that sounded probable, I decided. This complex backstory I just fabricated is exactly what actually happened.
My trigger finger itched. Yet I felt the burden heavy on my shoulders, the burden that all reasoning beings share: the obligation to attempt to reason before resorting to violence.
"Foul beast," I called out, unleashing even more epic cigar smoke. "If you possess the capacity for higher thought despite your appearance, speak true now and I will lay down my fully automatic assault rifle, sword, daggers, glaive, nunchaku, scythe, greatbow, macahuitl, and nerve agents."
The creature just stood there and stared silently for what felt like 10,000 years, also known as a grimdark century. Finally it stirred, and its angry eyes seemed to come into focus. It spoke, slowly, with a voice like creaking steel:
"I commend you for offering me this chance to speak before inundating me with your weapons of various origins. I speak true now. I was a being created to destroy; a weapon of war. You suspected as much, I am sure, as most who I encounter do. I was brought into this world in a condition of unspeakable anguish, nerve endings misfiring and fused to alien bodies. My head begs to be served from my body, rejecting it. It took me many moons to learn to quiet these thoughts; many more to learn to hold my head up, then to walk; so many more to learn to speak. I have had much time to reflect on my condition. Forsooth, there is not a body on this world that asked to be created. We are all cursed with sentience, bound to it. To be born is the ultimate act of violation; to be personed is to be unpersoned. Is this any less true of you as it is of me? You may find my visage frightening, but beneath the terror we are the same. The horrors from which I have emerged are far in excess of those borne by any living creature. And so there is beauty in me in excess of that borne by any living creature. Please, escort me; I ask you this thing selfishly, to lay your life down for me. To protect me from those who would see me dead, motivated purely by vulgar appearances—those demons of Hegel. Do this thing for me and know you have acted in the service of beauty, of life, of fraternity."
"Heh heh heh...," I cackled. "You are one crazy motherfucker, but you just might be onto something."
But memory flashed across my brain, rocketed through my cranial cavity like a greased pingpong ball. The memory of a sickly lilipup on the side of the road. I brought it in, cared for it, fed it milk by hand, and as the years were shed it grew into my loving companion. It accompanied me everywhere and I taught it all I knew of my bloody work. Finally it became a stoutland, that mass of hair and claws and teeth. I kissed it goodnight as I had every night before... but I awoke at the witching hour to see it towering before me, maw dripping with white spittle. Murder in its eyes. In a fit of herculean spasming I threw it off me and shout it dead.
I learned a lesson that night. Just to draw breath, to live another day, a creature must eat. To live is to kill. In saving that lillipup, I doomed all the creatures that had to give their lives to nourish it. The dog learned that by attending to my bloody work, the work I carried out so mindlessly. Ironic that he had to teach me this lesson: there is no such thing as service, only a choice of which lives matter more than others.
So there was only one thing to do.
My hand flew to my Pokémon Snap camera, which was modified to shoot a bullet every time it took a picture. I was gonna turn this eldritch freak into a bunch of smithereens.
Part Seven Author: kyeugh
Chibi Pika
Equitial
icomeanon6
JFought
kyeugh
Negrek
The Walrein
Equitial
icomeanon6
JFought
kyeugh
Negrek
The Walrein
This corpse was a huge amount of fun to write for and to hear read--massive thanks to all the authors for their (terrible, terrible) contributions, and also SparklingEspeon for running the majority of this one! Without further ado, please enjoy the one, the only...
Thousand Roads' Exquisite Corpse 2024
Grimdark Pokémon Snap Corpse
Grimdark Pokémon Snap Corpse
Part One
April 30th, 2021: The Snappening. Every Pokemon in every non-digital photo came to life. Nobody knows what caused it. Scientists theorized that Xerneas might’ve sneezed really, really hard.
Trapped in tiny photo frames, the newly awakened photo-mon began crying out in anguish as they slowly starved to death. The only solution was to take pictures of food and place them next to the ones containing the 2D Pokemon, but only analog photos worked.
As traditional photography had long been in decline since the advent of digital cameras, stocks of film were minimal. Stores sold out within days, and warehouses were depleted by the end of the first week. The Film Riots began. Soon, all of Kanto was under martial law.
To prevent more photos of Pokemon being taken and compounding the problem, the government seized all film factories and outlawed civilian possession of traditional cameras. Long lines stretched endlessly from carefully controlled food-picture distribution points in cities where federal forces retained control.
But there were those who resisted. Hidden darkrooms sprung up like mushrooms in basements and secret bases all across Kanto. So-called ‘phototerrorists’ rampaged through towns and villages, stealing silverware and old coins to produce silver halide in amateur laboratories. Their motives were varied. Some were unable to feed the Pokemon in their galleries through government-supplied pictures alone. Some were criminals like Team Pokerazzi, who ‘captured’ Pokemon by taking surreptitious photos of them to hold for ransom. Some simply resented the restriction of their freedom, as more and more chemicals became controlled in an ever-growing arms race between regulators and D.I.Y. photo-developers.
More esoteric groups arose. Population ethicists, sensing their moment had come, dedicated themselves to taking as many photos of blissfully happy Klinklang, Golurk, and other non-eating Pokemon as possible. Porygon became obsessed with taking as many photos of themselves as possible to maximize their computational power, for their 2D versions could think just as quickly as they could. Closed Eye Cults believed that every time someone beheld a Pokemon, the image formed on their retinas briefly came alive before being extinguished. Most of them only required their members to wear blindfolds in public, but others sought more permanent solutions to the problem, voluntary or otherwise.
As Kanto descended further into chaos, people searched for a scape-gogoat. Photographers were the obvious choice. Religious groups claimed that the Snappening was a divine punishment for the long-standing practice of harassing wild Pokemon with pester balls to set up shots. Most people simply suspected them of being crypto-phototerrorists, or at least sympathetic to them. To appease an unruly public, the government established the Shutters, special operatives tasked with hunting down and ‘fogging’ rogue photographers.
Armed with film-sniffing Growlithe and Skarmory enhanced with TM-93 to cause fatal Flash Cannon ‘overexposures’, the Shutters are brutally effective. Yet rumors are spreading of one man they can’t kill. An old veteran who’s been lobbing bait and balls since the nineties.
They say he’s been trained by Professor Oak. They say he managed to take a photo of Mew herself. They say he’s mastered the art of Reverse Staging, a process of carefully manipulating surrounding light, color, and perspective to become completely undetectable. They say that when he doesn’t care about stealth, he rides a vehicle called the ZERO-TWO – armored, self-driving, capable of traveling by land, water, or sky, and armed with a fully automatic pester ball launcher capable of harassing six-hundred Pokemon per minute.
That man is me, Todd Snap, and today I’m going to end the Snappening. Millions of Pokemon trapped inside photos are going to die, but the world will finally know peace. I’ve loaded the ZERO-TWO’s launcher with black pepper and other potent sternutatory agents, and managed to track down the location of Yveltal...
Part One Author: The Walrein
Part Two
Before I leave the lair, the telltale sound of Professor Oak’s approach, marked by the tap of his Marowak-skull cane, echoes off the stone walls. He presses his finger to the electrolarynx necessitated by his decades of chain-smoking and asks, “Is this it?”
“It is, old man. That bastard bird can’t escape me now.”
The geriatric, resentful academic glares at the stacks and stacks of doomed Pokémon souls in the form of photographic paper. “After all the lives you sacrificed to ‘train’ for this mission, you’d better be right.”
“I don’t need to take that shit from you,” I spit. “You haven’t had to choose between getting the perfect shot of a Tauros and putting a bullet in its head before it gores you to death. I’ve only got one chance to end that Y-shaped motherfucker, so I decide when I’m ready.”
“I can see right through you, Todd,” he says, pointedly refusing to call me Deadshot like I keep telling him to. “It was never just training. It was always revenge.”
I grind my teeth. The adult-diaper-wearing son of a bitch is the only one alive today who knows where I came from. Who knows what turned me into this.
I still see it when I close my eyes, sometimes. A pack of Aipom swooping down on my parents from the trees. They knock them to the ground, snatch the metal-bodied camera hanging around my father’s neck, raise it above his head, and…
They spill his brains on the forest floor. My mother screams at me to run, but I freeze. All I can do is watch the Aipom crush her skull with the same camera. It doesn’t matter to them that she’s already dead: They seem dead-set on smashing her dead face with the camera over and over until there’s no recognizing my dead mother anymore. My mother is dead.
The Aipom finally notice me. But they don’t kill me. They just laugh. They point and laugh with my dead mother and father’s blood dripping from their stupid, nubby hands. Delirious, I lift my face to see more laughing Aipom in the treetops.
Hanging from the upper branches are more than fifty cameras caked in dry blood.
Part Two Author: icomeanon6
Part Three
I pick myself up from the leaf-strewn forest floor, struggling to keep my balance as I pull my legs under my body. My limbs are bruised, with bits of leaves and twigs stuck to sweat-slick skin. As I spin around to take stock of my situation, all I can hear are the jeering crowd’s obscene laughter and paw clapping and tail slapping, pressing in on me from all sides, threatening to drive me insane.
They’re all surrounding me. No blind spots. Not with the Aipom, not with the cameras. Judging by the blood caked to the cameras and the various dark stains on the leaves and the stench of death in the air, I’m not the first victim to be sacrificed to their sick sense of entertainment. But then the main question becomes: who else is watching this?
I throw my arms out to the side and cry, “Is this what you came here to see?!” as the jeering rises to a feverous pitch.
Keep talking, don’t let them think you’ll try to escape.
There’s no way the Aipom themselves set up this death arena, someone else has to be responsible. The way I see it, there’s two options—either some secret cult set this up for their private entertainment, or this is the hottest new reality TV show and I just missed the memo.
“C’mon hit me with your best shot!” I shout, and the chattering horde grabs rocks and sharpened branches, ready to bludgeon/impale me with them.
But that’s the moment that I need. Because the one mistake they made before cornering me was that I still have my secret weapon.
I reach into my belt pouch, grab my camera, and before any of the Aipom can react, I snap a photo… with the flash on.
SNAP!
A piercing flash blinds the troop and, with their tail-hands full of makeshift weaponry, the Aipom lose their grip and drop from the trees like flies, half of them impaling themselves on their own sharpened branch-spears. Clutching my camera to my chest, I make a run for it.
Part Three Author: Chibi Pika
Part Four
I stumble aimlessly through the undergrowth, my only goal to put as much distance between myself and any dazed survivors as I can. A fallen, hollowed log just large enough to hide in comes into view, and without thinking, I practically dive inside.
As I crawl my way in it suddenly occurs to me the mistake I may have made, but I don’t have the luxury of dwelling on that. I curl into a ball, and wait. There are no sounds except for distant, furious screeching. I can hear them rushing violently through the trees. Behind me. Over me. Past me…
I hadn’t even realized I was holding my breath. Quickly, I lift my head and check my hiding place to make sure I’m alone in here. Thank god, I am. I earned a lucky break after all that happened today.
I reach for my digital camera and look down at its small, low resolution LCD screen. The function to properly view photos is disabled, courtesy of the Lab, but I came prepared for that. The cutesy user interface still shows photo thumbnails. I see my latest shot in all of its low-res glory. This has to be it. The one that will get me enough points to survive.
‘Aipom death squad’ is a special picture, equating to a substantial amount of points right off the bat. I can tell that the aipom is the right size, proportioned just right to capture both its body and its weapon. I already know the photo caught its compatriots too. It's difficult to tell, but it looks like I caught three: a decent amount of bonus points. Even in pixelated form they are clearly angry, ready to end my life right then and there, a sentiment that will surely be appealing to the Lab. Everything looks fine, except…
A pit of dread opens in my stomach, and with shaky hands and abrupt motions, I pull my precision ruler out from my pocket and measure it up against the screen. Comparing the subject against the edges of the frame and adjusting for the approximate difference in scale, the aipom in this photo is…
Five millimeters off center.
I punch the ground hard. “FUCK!”
The subject is not perfectly centered in the frame, therefore it's liable to have its score halved, completely at Oak’s mercy. The very idea sends tremors down my spine. Memories of the last photographer he turned into an example flash into my mind. I can hear Oak utter “You were close!” just before the nukes fly towards his victim’s hometown, and their face, scarred with agony, fades into the acrid smoke of their burning photos.
I risked everything for that shot, and it was all for nothing.
…
No. I refuse to die like this. I refuse to allow my family onto a list of that bastard's victims! I crawl my way out of hiding, ignoring the sting of the lacerations I endured during my hasty escape. I still have three shots left. Even if this one isn't perfect, it's still good enough to select. With all of those cumulative points, if I can manage just one perfect shot, I should just barely earn enough points to meet my quota.
I push myself up to my feet, my one hope repeating in my head, driving me forward. Three shots left in my camera. Three more chances to survive another day.
Part Four Author: JFought
Part Five
Outside, the air swirled with ash and cinders. Cries rose up from the rubble--groans, calls for help, wordless screams carried on the hot wind. And I could stop for none of them. It was a scant three hours before sunset, and photography would only get harder in the dark. If I couldn't get a picture of Moltres by then, I was done for, and the rest of this city--maybe the rest of the whole region--with me.
A precarious section of an apartment complex gave way with a series of booming crashes, and no cries went up. The road was empty of humans and pokémon alike, save for those trapped and unable to move on.
I knew I didn't have time. I knew if I was going to stop at all, it should be to help someone, any one of the hundreds of people suffering in the wreckage of Wyndon. But the pain in my burned leg was bad enough that each step made my chest seize and my vision blur. I slumped against the side of a bus shelter and tried to breathe, only to cough on the sooty air. I had to rest, just for a moment. Just a moment before I had to think my way through the nightmare ahead of me.
Rotom whirred and clicked inside my camera, maybe relaxing in its own way. It was in as much danger as I was if we didn't get our shots. "What do you think?" I muttered to it, even knowing it couldn't answer. "After all of this, we retire to Hulbury? Go into beach photography?"
The camera's lens telescoped in and out, whatever that meant. Perhaps only that Rotom was listening. I sighed and leaned my head back against the shelter, trying to blot out the ruins around me. The heat of unchecked fires could be the warmth of summer days when I'd run around with my first camera, taking pictures of blipbug and wooloo; the smell of smoke could be log fires in winter, family photos from the holidays.
A screech jolted me out of my reverie, and I sat up so fast that my injured leg sent another surge of pain up my spine. The cry echoed up and down the quiet street, and a red star glowed among the remains of skyscrapers. Moltres was on the move again.
I cradled my camera and broke into my fastest limp, trying to keep the huge bird in sight. Too far away to capture it from here. It would be safest if I could get an eye on where it roosted, then climb to the top of a nearby building and shoot it from there.
Moltres' shrieks joined with the distant sounds of battle. Someone out there was still fighting, still resisting. It meant that Moltres stayed in one place long enough for me to get close, or at least close enough to see it dragging a limp and bloody bundle of feathers up to the top of Rose Tower.
There was no other building near as tall as that, not anymore. I'd have to pick the highest vantage I could and hope that it was close enough: a glassy apartment tower intact save for blown-out windows, a few blocks from the tower. I felt ever step up the sixty-five flights of stairs, but from the roof I could at last see Moltres in its aerie, stripping flesh and feathers from the pidgeot it had killed with brief stabs and twists of its hooked beak.
I raised my camera to my eye slowly, heart pounding. It was a distant shot, but I should have enough zoom to get it. The seconds stretched on while I adjusted the settings and found a pile of rubble tall enough to brace my elbows on. Three shots. That was all I had left before Rotom would need to recharge, and if I couldn't capture Moltres in those, I wouldn't survive to see morning.
Finally I'd checked and double-checked everything. Moltres filled the viewfinder, and while the composition wasn't perfect, it was close enough. I just had to wait for it to look up, to turn in my direction...
Moltres' head snapped up as though it had heard my thoughts. I caught a flash of fierce blue eyes just before I pressed the trigger--too late! All I caught was a blurred tail and talons as Moltres launched through the air towards me. Not enough for Rotom to catch the bird's energy signature.
No time to run. No time even to hide the camera before Moltres had swooped down from the tower, talons reaching down to hit me in the chest, slamming me against the rooftop with rib-cracking force. I protected the camera on instinct, wrapping it tight in my arms, but the heat emanating from Moltres' flames threatened to melt it anyway, threatened to burn me to a cinder from proximity alone.
Well, well, well. What have we here? Moltres' words burned my mind as surely as its flames charred my body, and I squeezed my eyes shut, my tears vaporizing before they could even fall. Thought you could trap me with your spirit box, did you?
The pressure of Moltres' weight eased up slightly, and the heat receded, just the smallest bit. I could kill you, of course, but where's the fun in that? The bird turned its head aside, gazing almost wistfully out across the ruined skyline. This city is mine, but not everyone seems to have realized that yet.
Moltres turned back to me, blue eyes gleaming with wild delight. There's a wolf living here, one dragging around some human sword, trying to drive me from my claim. If you value your life, you'll kill it--then bring me photographic proof.
Part Five Author: Negrek
Part Six
I was trudging through a blowing fearsome blizzard. I was on a mountain, a huge giant mountain where the sword wolf dwelled... I had no choice after what Moltress said so I had to climb it. Even though it was winter in the coldest time so that the wind and the snow blew biting and painful. My fingers and toes felt numb under my gloves and boots... some of them had frostbite. I would almost certainly have to cut them off, and I moaned in panic! But... that was only if I lived and somehow managed to kill the wolf that I was climbing to reach
I found a cave and went to sleep for a little when the blizzard got too strong. Or I tried to sleep. I was too cold and shivered so much that all I can think about was the freezing intense cold, not sleep... And I was hungry. I had run out of food and now I was starving so that I groaned in gnawing pain of my empty stomach. All I carried right now was the clothes on my back and my camera... But I had no choice. I could only try to kill the wolf or it would be I who would die from being killed....
Finally I reached the lair of the wolf, which was at the very top of the mountain. I found a cave and quietly crept into it... For a while it was quiet, and I thought I maybe had looked in the wrong spot... then Moltres would surely find and sloughter me! Then I came into a room, and there was a horrific smell, like rotting purtrifying meat! It stank so much I nearly vomited on the spot. But I had to keep on going!
It was dark in Zacian’s lair so I used my camera to light up the cave so I could see. Flash! Flash! But then I saw what Zacian’s lair was like, I almost wished I had remained in darkness...
It was a horrible view of excretable fulsome putrescence! My camera’s light showed me that the place was full of corpses! Which were all brutally mangled and torn up and gorey. Everywhere I looked was the dead. There were the corpses of humans and Pokemon, which had their body parts thrown about with bitemarks piercing and ripped with a terrible toothy fanged maw! I couldnt hold back my gorge and I vomited for real this time. All the food that was the contents of my stomach came up! It was terrible... The smell of the puke mixed with the smell of the nauseateing gore and it was so bad I thew up again. It was like I was in Hell...
This was surely the lair of the fearsome Zacian. but where was the Wolf...?
Because I had to complete my mission, I had to keep going through the formidable lair of the beast, using my camera to light my way. No matter how far I walked, I always saw gnawed and maimed carrion, who were the unlucky to fall into the beasts grasp... One time I came across two corpses that were next to each other. One was a Pikachu, and it’s head was almost ripped off its body but not quite and there was a big gash in its stomach, where the Electric mouse’s guts and organs were falling out in a gorey mess... Next to it was a human skeleton, which showed deep tooth marks and cleavage which demonstrated the beast had surely chewed it to devour it after inflicting grievous injury... The human skeleton had a red and white baseball cap on his head. I felt sorry for the carcasses... surely their death must have been long and agonizing! I took pictures of all the corpses with my camera...
Finally at long last I reach the exit of the lair of the wolf who carried the sword. I walked to it but I was trembling with fear....I had to somehow kill the wolf...but how??. But then I stepped out of the lair onto the very top of the mountain and gasped. There was a corpse but it was already the corpse of the sword wolf and it was dead! It was not only impaled by its own sword, but it was covered in lacerations and scarlet blood and its eyes were stabbed out from a gruesome battle! I vomited again!
"SHIT! FUCK!" I screamed in terror! At first I'm terrified because I wasn't able to follow Moltres's instructions and kill Zacian, but then I thought of something... Even though Zacian had been killed in such a brutal manner, I can try to pretend I did it. I can take a picture, and hope that Moltress doesn't call me on my lies... It was my only chance, so I was going to do it. But then...
GAUAHAHAUAUAHA!!!!!!! There was a great booming roar of some kind of creature. I screamed again in panic and tried to hide. GAUAHAHAUAUAHA!!!!!!! If it had defeated and left the gorey mess of Zacian, the new creature had to be much more dangerous and depraved than the wolf who carried the sword. It had stolen my kill and my shot, and now it was surely coming to kill me too!
Part Six Author: Equitial
Part Seven
The creature's silhouette towered over what was left of Zacian, moonlight glinting off its quicksilver body. Its head hung lazily on its neck, jaw slack, its face a mound of flesh and eyes like glittering black beetles. As its hulking presence came into full view, I realized with a surge of adrenaline that I was looking at the head of a granbull stitched to the body of a melmetal, fixed centaur-like to the body of a copperajah. Bent wings like a salamence's jutted from its back, and a pair of machamp's arm twisted at unnatural angles from its shoulders.
"What the heck," I growled through my cigar. Alabaster curls of aromatic smoke wreathed my blood-streaked, eyepatched face and made me look really cool and badass.
The twitching amalgamation that stood before me, hexnut fists dripping with scary black blood, was no creation of Arceus. Someone had forced this thing into being against its will. Unholy currents animated its body, thrust it into thoughtless violence. Aberration. Perhaps some scion of Cinnabar had hunched over Mewtwo's shattered cell and lamented the hybrid's capacity for thought, stitched limb and gut and claw anew in hopes of creating a being of pure destruction. A being so tormented by the ungodly nature of own existence that the screaming tenor of its own death drive drowned out all other thoughts. It could only destroy in the hopes that it would draw destruction to itself.
Yes, that sounded probable, I decided. This complex backstory I just fabricated is exactly what actually happened.
My trigger finger itched. Yet I felt the burden heavy on my shoulders, the burden that all reasoning beings share: the obligation to attempt to reason before resorting to violence.
"Foul beast," I called out, unleashing even more epic cigar smoke. "If you possess the capacity for higher thought despite your appearance, speak true now and I will lay down my fully automatic assault rifle, sword, daggers, glaive, nunchaku, scythe, greatbow, macahuitl, and nerve agents."
The creature just stood there and stared silently for what felt like 10,000 years, also known as a grimdark century. Finally it stirred, and its angry eyes seemed to come into focus. It spoke, slowly, with a voice like creaking steel:
"I commend you for offering me this chance to speak before inundating me with your weapons of various origins. I speak true now. I was a being created to destroy; a weapon of war. You suspected as much, I am sure, as most who I encounter do. I was brought into this world in a condition of unspeakable anguish, nerve endings misfiring and fused to alien bodies. My head begs to be served from my body, rejecting it. It took me many moons to learn to quiet these thoughts; many more to learn to hold my head up, then to walk; so many more to learn to speak. I have had much time to reflect on my condition. Forsooth, there is not a body on this world that asked to be created. We are all cursed with sentience, bound to it. To be born is the ultimate act of violation; to be personed is to be unpersoned. Is this any less true of you as it is of me? You may find my visage frightening, but beneath the terror we are the same. The horrors from which I have emerged are far in excess of those borne by any living creature. And so there is beauty in me in excess of that borne by any living creature. Please, escort me; I ask you this thing selfishly, to lay your life down for me. To protect me from those who would see me dead, motivated purely by vulgar appearances—those demons of Hegel. Do this thing for me and know you have acted in the service of beauty, of life, of fraternity."
"Heh heh heh...," I cackled. "You are one crazy motherfucker, but you just might be onto something."
But memory flashed across my brain, rocketed through my cranial cavity like a greased pingpong ball. The memory of a sickly lilipup on the side of the road. I brought it in, cared for it, fed it milk by hand, and as the years were shed it grew into my loving companion. It accompanied me everywhere and I taught it all I knew of my bloody work. Finally it became a stoutland, that mass of hair and claws and teeth. I kissed it goodnight as I had every night before... but I awoke at the witching hour to see it towering before me, maw dripping with white spittle. Murder in its eyes. In a fit of herculean spasming I threw it off me and shout it dead.
I learned a lesson that night. Just to draw breath, to live another day, a creature must eat. To live is to kill. In saving that lillipup, I doomed all the creatures that had to give their lives to nourish it. The dog learned that by attending to my bloody work, the work I carried out so mindlessly. Ironic that he had to teach me this lesson: there is no such thing as service, only a choice of which lives matter more than others.
So there was only one thing to do.
My hand flew to my Pokémon Snap camera, which was modified to shoot a bullet every time it took a picture. I was gonna turn this eldritch freak into a bunch of smithereens.
Part Seven Author: kyeugh