No Pokeballs Allowed

Chapter 11: Sinking Ships and Burning Bridges

The difference between mass and weight isn’t usually something one considers on a day-to-day basis. This is presumably because in general, most people don’t need to worry about mass. But as people have pointed out in the past, there is a significant difference between the two.

Mass represents the amount of something that exists. This is a constant thing - it never changes, no matter where the object in question is. Even something that seems to have no presence at all is still in fact present as long as it has any mass. As a matter of fact, some things that cannot be perceived at all still have mass. In the summer, we do not see the breath coming out of our mouths. And yet, even though we have not seen it in a long time, we know it is there. We can feel it.

Weight, however, is different. Weight matters entirely on the gravity of the situation and is situational depending on how much mass one object has when it pulls others towards it. Denser matters tend to make everything on them feel heavy. If you were to wear a shirt while standing on a neutron star, your entire body would collapse under its own weight.

thespookycampix Halloween Special: Shuppet’s Story

A lot of people are scared of the world ending.

I woke up one day and the world had already ended.

Can you imagine sleeping through the apocalypse?

thespookycampix Halloween Special: Campix’s Story

The following story deals with mature subject matter some may find disturbing. Viewer discretion is advised.

I've always been scared of the dark. It's not something I really felt I had to admit before now, but since it's Halloween in two days, I figured that I should just come out with it now. In Blank Space, it's never dark. There's no night or day here. We don't sleep. Or, we can, it's just...I don't sleep.

I don't want to.

I used to sleep so much. Time went by so slowly and so quickly at the same time here. There's no sun, or anything, and I didn't even know whether the clocks were right. Even now, the ones that I made just...they don't seem to apply, ever. So naturally, the easiest thing to do to pass time was sleep.

Soon enough it gets easier for you to sleep when it's so bright. If you're talking philosophically, the brightness doesn't even mean that it's bright at all. I'd use the word 'bleak'.

But I used to sleep a lot. Then I found tumblr.

And now I don't sleep. Ever.

I need to see everything. I need to look at my askbox over and over and over, I need to immerse myself in this little window of the real world, tinted through a lens I can't even see anymore. I was scared of this site five years ago. And now it's all I care about. The fact that I am showing up in the real world at all is thanks to tumblr.

But there's no one here. You're all words. All of you. Every single one of you is just a collection of ones and zeroes. None of you are real to me. The only people I have is two alternate versions of myself, an old woman, and a kid I nearly doomed. And this is all I'm ever going to be living like.

Thoughts like that can really do a number on someone's psyche.

Sometimes things go black. I don't know whether I'm blinking or not. I'm chained down, screaming out for anyone to hear me, recognize me, know I exist, and all I'm seeing are hearts. Hearts like eyes showing that there are people watching, people seeing me, but they don't say a word. Hiding behind a window. I'm screaming at them, trying to talk, connect, do anything, but I just see more hearts. More eyes. More silence.

I want to go home.

I can't go home.

There's an imposter living my life, typing these words, pressing the 'post' button. There's an imposter who I talk to each and every day. I call him my best friend. And he is. But he's taken my life as much as I've taken his, and I'm speaking through him. I have no voice. I have no autonomy.

You're all ones and zeroes, I'm all neurons firing in someone's brain. You're reduced to digital code, I'm reduced to electrical signals.

Or is it the other way around?

I haven't slept. I need to see the hearts. The eyes. I need to come to terms with having nothing and everything but it just won't happen. I feel a sense of death creeping up upon me but there is nothing. Everyone here is me. Everyone, in a single colour, outlines on a white backdrop, they're all figments of Multi's imagination.

I want to make some sort of sound. I want to yell. I want to let out cry after cry after cry for help but nobody comes because I do not have a voice. I have no paws to run, I have no eyes to see, I have no ears to listen.

I have no mouth and I must scream.

thespookycampix Halloween Special: Phari’s Story

She had been told the other day the sun would not rise again.

It had arisen so casually in conversation that she didn't seem to recognize its significance.

And yet, as she sat there, on the deck of her rural cabin, nestled on the peak of a cliff in the woods, she lifted her finger and traced the horizon, laced with an ocean of deciduous trees. A sigh escaped her lips as the last of the sun faded from view, revealing only a fire burning beneath the mountainous hills.

Part of her was haunted by the finality of the event. It seemed like the sun was going to rise again. Why wouldn't it? Sunsets like this happened all the time. Nothing was different about it.

She had turned sixteen yesterday.

Her phone laid by her bedside table, dormant. It had been for a long time. She used to lie on her bed, pointed chin crested by her carefully manicured hands, waiting for the sonorous ring to start. He'd promised, after all, and she was holding him to it. He'd get an earful if he didn't call, she'd tell him what for!

She had been told the sun would not rise again.

It seems so dusty. She had been meaning to clean it, but lately it hadn't been seeing much use. The sunset was nice, though. Maybe tonight would be a good time to dust it off before going to bed. She never knew when the lines would be cut. It could be very very soon, for all she knew. She should make some use out of it tonight. But she felt her attention continued to be pulled to the strokes of yellow, orange, red, and purple that streaked through the sky like an irregular, fire-lit rainbow.

She had turned thirty yesterday.

It hurt a little. Nine months seemed like a long time, and it hurt a little, but it was worth it. She looked up at his eyes, feeling his strong hands settled upon her shoulders. It was over. It was done, the new chapter was beginning. She took in a deep harried breath, filled with tremors, and let it out in one smooth motion. And she began to laugh. She had never laughed like this before – it was tired, filled with the cry for the sandman to come and give her rest, but it was such a joyous laughter that she felt that she could skip and dance for days on end. It was a strange duality she wasn't used to.

She had been told the sun would not rise again.

It had arisen so casually in conversation that she didn't seem to recognize its significance. The conversation itself had ended before she truly realized what it meant.

She had turned sixty yesterday.

It was a big move, from the city to the country. The rush of life had been catching up to her, and she had pulled ahead of it, in a distant first place from anyone else around her. Some people had tripped and fell. She could have stopped to help them up, but by the time she had thought about it they were already out of the race. Being lonely alone seemed to her better than being lonely around other people. She kept the phone. Plugged it into her bedside table, watching it like she used to, with her pointed chin crested by her old and fragile hands, waiting for the sonorous rings to start. It didn't get much attention these days.

She had been told the sun would not rise again.

She wasn't sure who was saying it anymore. It had been said quite a few times, in quite a few different voices.

This time it almost seemed to be hers.

Her birthday was yesterday.

She had been told the sun would not rise again.

She knows. She knows that all too well.

thespookycampix Halloween Special: Multi’s Story

WARNING: This story contains graphic material such as blood and gore. Do not read if this is not for you!

I grew up in pretty much isolation. My town was really small, and my street was pretty much on the outskirts of it. I didn't really have a lot of friends growing up, which didn't really bother me that much – it was what I was used to. I was homeschooled until high school. Grade 10 was a bit of a shock, but I slowly got enough social skills to actually get some skills that allowed me to meet people socially.

Fast forward to university. Staying in a dorm is a really weird experience compared to how I grew up. There's basically no privacy; everyone knows everyone, and there's a lot of obligations and hazing and social events you're pretty much required to attend. And hey, that's fine. It's different, sure, but I could get used to it.

The dorm I was staying in during my second year was a little more private, which was something I welcomed with open arms. We no longer had roommates. Instead, we basically had a small room all to ourselves. We were still a dorm – the entire floor was still technically a dorm – but you could lock your doors, and customize your room how you wanted it to. Despite the privacy though, I got to learning about my neighbours pretty quick. Damien, Espen, Ben, Jule...I was pretty good friends with most of them, and I knew Damien and Espen from the previous year. We had been in Drama together.

So halfway through the first semester, this new person showed up, and moved in two doors down from me. Now, I don't really know if I'm the most sociable-looking person, but this guy came straight for me.

"Hi! My name's Jack! I'm the guy two doors down. It's nice to meet you!"

I sort of humoured him a little, but if I was going to be honest I was a little unnerved by him. I mean, I usually was when I was meeting someone new, so that wasn't surprising. Still, I hadn't really seen him move in. I didn't really ask anyone else, though.

Jack said that he was a Philosophy major, he moved in to Canada from the States, that sort of thing. His voice was sonorous, kind of low, but it vibrated strangely when he asked me questions about myself. He never broke eye contact, and sometimes it felt like he didn't blink. That might have been my bias about being nervous with new interaction, though, so whatever. I said that I had to go get dinner, and made an exit. He called his 'goodbyes' after me, and I went to dinner.

The next day was a Friday, which was awesome. I made it so that I only had one class on a Friday, so that I could relax most of the weekend. It was a Psych class, too, so that was pretty cool. But when I sat down at the desk, two seats down from me, I noticed Jack.

I frowned a little and turned my head forwards to the front of class. Where was Espen? He usually sat two seats from me, but...

He was probably late, or maybe sick. I turned to Jack and waved a little. "Hey again," I said.

Jack flashed me a wide smile. "Oh, hi again! Fancy meeting you here!"

He kept talking to me through most of class, which was okay, but he was kind of distracting me from taking my notes. And this kind of sucked because I'm not really the best at taking notes in the first place. But each time he said something I felt like I had to respond. Each time his mouth moved I felt like I was basically required to pay attention to him. And hey, he was good at conversations, so if I missed a few notes it was no big deal.

He invited himself over to my room for dinner. Which was cool, he was fine, and I was making a lot anyway – I usuallly make enough for leftovers, so sharing them with a nice dude would be fine. It was around this point that I was starting to get a sort of bad headache – I just figured that I was going to go into my bathroom and take a couple Asprin and start making dinner. But when I opened the door to my room from the hallway, Jack stepped inside with me. When I walked towards my bathroom, Jack went with me. When I reached for the medicine cabinet, Jack smashed his head against the mirror, shattering the glass with his skull. Red streaked the wooden surface behind it, the cracking of glass filling the bathroom as he bashed his head against it again. I heard a sickening crunch as a large piece embedded itself into his forehead. His hands, too, began to seep blood from between the fingertips as the death grip he held on the broken mirror began to take its toll. The pulsing beat of his head against the mirror grew steadily slower as blood began to drip into the sink below. Jack slid towards the ground, and a buzzing sound wormed its way into my head as I saw him lying crumpled on my bathroom floor. My heart began to speed up, and I bent down to stare at him. His eyes were lifeless, glazed over. His nose and forehead were both smashed in, large shards of glass wedged into his skin.

His mouth didn't fit.

His mouth was curled up into a soft serene smile.

The buzzing came back into my head. Loudly. I slowly stood up on shaky legs, and took a deep breath in to try and drown it out. It wouldn't go away.

It wouldn't go away.

I took slow measured steps towards my front door. Something felt different. The windows? The sound my shoes made on the floor?

I opened the door to the hallway, and turned left. Slowly, methodically, I almost waltzed down the hallway, without any sort of thought behind it.

Knock knock knock

The door opens.

"Hi! My name's Jack! I'm the guy two doors down. It's nice to meet you!"

thespookycampix Halloween Special: Coran’s Story

Once there was a subway beneath the big city. It was a very scary subway because 500 years ago alot of people died building the subway. So it was a haunted subway where people riding the trains would here screaming and moans.but alot of people thought the screaming and moans were just the wheels on the track. So they didn't care about them they just thought 'oh it's just the wheels on the track ok nothing to worry about'

but one day a girl came down to the subway to catch a train to her school. It was a long way away so she couldn't walk, it was too far. She was with her two friends jill and jack. Jill was tall with blond hair and jeans and a purple shirt and jack was a guy. The main characters name was emily.

Emily went down the stares with jill and jack to the subway,a nd looked around. No body was there.

"Were is everybody?" Emily asked as she looked around.

"I don't know" Jack answered as he stepped onto the platform. "train is coming trough, right?"

"I don't see one." Emily said. Jill noded and looked down the tunnel. "There, i see a light. That is the train!"

but it was not the train. Oh no.

"it isn't moving or whatever" jack said moodily, brooding. "why isn't it moving that's stupid!!"

"Maybe we should check it out!" Emily said, smiling. "they could need our help!"

"OK!" Jack said and jumped down onto the tracks. Jil and Emily followed and talked about girl stuff. Jack rolled his eyes thinking he was super tough for baby girl stuff.

As they got closer to the light they began hearing a voice in the tunnel.

"TURN BAAAAAAAAAAAACK!!!" the voice whispered.

"No." said Emily.

"OKAAAAAAAYYY" the voice replied. "YOU HAVE BEEN WAAARNED"

"Whatever" Jack said toughly. "What was that?" Jill asked.

"Maybe it was a ghost! It is halloween after all." Emily said. "Wait where did the light go?

Like emily said the light was off and they were in pitchblack. Luckily, Emily had her flashlight, and she turned it on!

"AAAAAAAAAAAA"!!! Jull screamed as the light felled on a floating skeleton in the tunnel!!

"WHAT THE!??!??!" Jack yelled, throwing a can at it. The can clattered against the skeleton and fell to the ground and the skeleton began to laughing.

"you will never see the light of day againnnnn" the skeleton moaned, and began to grow right in front of they're eyes!

Immediately they all began to run as a giant skeleton chased them down the tunnel into the darkness! Emilys flashlight dropped,a nd the skeleton killed it under its foot with a CRUNCH!!

Jack looked back over his shoulder at the skeleton and said "**** YOU SKELTON!" He stopped running and bgan to run striaght towards the skeleton!

"JACK NO!!!!" Jill yelled as jack rammed into the chest of the skeleton and it fell over him crushing himb eneath the bones

"jack is gone" Emily gasped. "oh no"

Jill scremed and began to run away down the tunnel back to the subway platform and emily followed.

And they never saw jakc or the skeleton again...

THE END

No Pokeballs Allowed

Chapter 10: The Cost of Heroism

“Hi, welcome,” Squirtle said, looking up at their guest as she floated in the doorway. “Unfortunately, we’re closed at the moment - it’s after hours. If you have a request, you can pin it to the bulletin board outside.”

“Wouldn’t the paper sort of melt in the rain?” Coran thought out loud. Squirtle gave him a glare, before the person in the doorway spoke up.

“Oh, no, it’s...not about that. Can I come in? This could take a while.”

Squirtle recieved a sudden wave of nausea at the serious tone in the guest’s voice. She was already dealing with a four thousand two hundred Poké deficit from Coran’s little shopping trip to figure out, and now there was someone that just radiated ‘serious business’. Great. Probably someone about...mortgage or whatever that word was that suddenly began popping up.

No Pokeballs Allowed

Chapter 9: Golden Opportunity

“What’s wrong with my title?” Monty huffed, looking down at Squirtle with a hint of disdain. “I think it’s a fine title.”

“It’s inaccurate, distracting, and overall superfluous,” Squirtle responded.

“Inaccurate!” Monty huffed. “Excuse me!”

No Pokeballs Allowed

Chapter 8: Evil Ways

Something was wrong here. Not including the fact that her coworker was basically converted into a macabre living ice sculpture by this ghost, something felt wrong. Squirtle felt as if there should be some fanfare echoing through the cave. Some horrific stab effect of realisation. She’d even accept a gasp or a scream or something.

No Pokeballs Allowed

Chapter 7: Enter: Monty

Coran wasn’t sure if he was awake or not. He wasn’t sure if he was conscious. All he was sure about was that he was very cold. Everything was very cold.

“Th-this is the end…” he whispered to himself. “C-close your eyes, a-and count to ten…”

So so very cold.

Squirtle woke with a start, gasping in shock. She had been greeted with a freezing prick to the side of her coat. Her fur was absolutely soaked by the snow her body heat had melted and it sucked any sort of warmth out of her with the swiftness of a coursing river of icy water. She shivered and tried to smooth out her coat and coax the freezing water out. It was when she turned around that she noticed some things were definitely missing.

Her bag was missing. It was usually draped over her like a saddle bag, but it had completely disappeared. Her map was also gone. She spun around, trying to see if it had fallen somewhere in the snow. What had she done to pass out, anyways? Her memory was fuzzy-

Coran was missing too.

No Pokeballs Allowed

Chapter 6: When Hell Freezes Over

“...Did you hear…?”

“No, what?”

“...Drasil...ilting…”

Squirtle’s ears pricked. Was that...mumbling? Outside? She sat up. Her business was set up outside of Nuzlocke. There was no reason for simple gossipers to be loitering outside unless they had some business with her.

She began to creep towards the front door, being careful not to wake Coran. Whatever they were talking about out there, they’d mentioned the Drasil so it had to be important. And she wasn’t ready to explain the Drasil to an amnesiac yet.

She emerged from the front, and saw the grumpy Breloom she and Coran had encountered a week or two ago speaking with a Servine. She looked up a bit. Had it really been that long since Coran had first come? He was well through his basic training course, and understood the basics of dungeon crawling...but had it really been two weeks? It felt so much shorter.

“Well, what can we do about it?” the Servine asked earnestly. “You cannot tell me something like this and expect me to do nothing, Marvin!”

"I don't know. It's not my problem," Marvin shrugged.

“Well, it’s going to be your problem quite soon, don’t you think?” the Servine said with an unimpressed expression, putting his hands on his hips. “Once the roots here wilt, we’ll be in quite the same position as Faren Heights!”

No Pokeballs Allowed

Chapter 5: Phari and Cappy

“Coran? Are you awake?”

Squirtle’s voice came from the other side of the curtain, rousing Coran from his deep slumber. He groaned a bit to show that he had heard what was being said, and sat up on the mattress. “...Barely. Why?”

“We need to talk.”

Coran’s heart gained about forty-seven pounds in weight just from this one sentence. Somehow, he knew well the terrible possibilities this sentence could hold. He sat up straight on the mattress. “Uh...okay. C-come in. Or...should I go out there, or…?”

“Meet me in my office.” With that, the shape of the Eevee on the other side of the curtain was gone.

Her office. She wants me to meet her in her office. Coran broke a cold sweat. This is bad.

Laboriously, Coran got up from his bed, rubbing the sleep from his eyes in the meantime. Shuffling to his feet, he brought his arms above his head and stretched, before pulling the curtain aside and taking the long walk to Squirtle’s office.

No Pokeballs Allowed

BONUS CHAPTER: The Sanity Test

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Squirtle’s ears pricked as she heard that sound coming from the other room. Despite herself, she smiled a little. It was pretty hard to get a mattress based off of what he had said, and even harder to get it done before he noticed what she was doing, or when he’d need to use it. But she’d done it, and Squirtle felt the inward glow that she always got from a gift well given.

Focusing back on her work, she continued writing down the monthly review of income. She frowned slightly. Her profit from the past few months was down, and that meant cutting corners. Or it would if she actually had corners to cut.

Though, she noted wryly, that mattress was a bit of a frivolous purchase…

She shook her head and made a mental note to figure out that problem later. She shuffled the papers away and got to work on the next item on her list.

No Pokeballs Allowed

Chapter 4: Pretty Shy, Pretty, Shiny

Coran let out a quiet groan, holding his head to try and still the throbbing pain that was invading his head. It took him a while to remind himself where he was - the Sorrowing Meadows. Right. He was here because he was going to fetch a pendant for somebody...but then he got separated from Squirtle, got lost, and then...he passed out. Looking around, he noticed a few black figures rush into the further bushes past his sight. A shiver coursed through his spine like an electric shock. But they were running away from him, right? So they weren’t going to hurt him if they were walking away. So he picked up the pendant that he remembered had been caught against his paw and-

His heart nearly stopped. “Where’s the pendant?” Coran dropped to his knees and felt around on the grass blindly, hoping against hope to stumble into the jewellery by pure chance. “Where’s the pendant?!”

No Pokeballs Allowed

Chapter 3: Graveyard Shift

Town pride is a commonplace thing in any world. People and Pokémon alike seem to have a need to protect what they believe is theirs, even though in reality, it is just a big plot of land with a variety of rectangles and triangles built on top of it. Why humans had developed these enamoured attachments and why Pokémon decided it was a good idea to follow, we will never know. Some may argue that the concept of a home is a comforting prospect for people to come home to. But it is not the question of having a home, but simply having an attraction to the land itself, rather than the sense of security it brings. Most people would usually think this does not make sense, developing an emotional or even romantic attachment to a large square-ish chunk of dirt and rocks, but many do it anyways. This is not a good idea, because like many things that people love, there are other people that exist only to take that beloved thing, knock it off its cone into the sand and drive over it with their fancy Diesel-chugging ATV. And all the hours those people had spent figuratively making out with the local bar will be put into perspective as all the things they loved become roadkill.

Nuzlocke was a beautiful town. It was incredibly obvious by looking at the town that it was a labour of love that had lasted decades, perhaps centuries to make. Nuzlocke was thriving. An item shop, jewellery, outdoor mall, a town square, Technical Machine and Relic shop, daycare; the town seemed to have everything. This statement wasn’t entirely true.

No Pokeballs Allowed

Chapter 2: Testing, Testing

"Alright, Coran," Squirtle slowly walked out of her office, trying to keep her eyes open and away from the deathly grip of sleep. She'd somehow forced down a breakfast of berries and oats without being lucid enough to remember if she'd peeled away the plastic lid. She really hoped she peeled away the plastic lid. "...Let's get to work, Coran," she called, shaking her head to successfully bring herself to full consciousness to start on this business venture.

Coran, however, wasn't.

"...Coran? You awake?"

No Pokeballs Allowed

Chapter 1: In the Beginning

Why do I feel so sad?

These words were the first thoughts that Coran had as his consciousness stirred to a state sufficient enough for him to figure out where he was. 

Apparently some sort of field, or plains. The second thought, although not quite related to the first thought, was more related to the situation at hand.

Where am I?

As pressing a matter as this was, the third thought that ran through Coran’s head had nothing to do with the first two thoughts, and more followed the pattern of someone who had just woken up. Incidentally, this thought was the thought that Coran felt it was most prudent to follow up on answering.

Would it be okay to just sleep another five minutes?

Yes, he decided. Yes, it would be.

Unfortunately, the field did not share his opinion on the matter.