Fate (Being edited//Don't read yet!!!)

Chapter 13: Mt.Moon part 2

((Still being rechecked and edited, but this is pretty much done otherwise.))

As we passed the staircase and followed the cables through an intersection, we stepped forward cautiously as a familiar smell wafted to us.
It reminded me of the bloody pork Damian had me help him prepare for mom's birthday once. To me the raw pork had smelled rotten and raw and really gross. Damian had told me it was normal though, and later on when I smelt raw beef and chicken for the first time I realized it was just my nose being slightly off. All of the raw bloody meat had smelled just as bad. Pokémon always smelled much of the same too during a hunting trip too, so I was used to it, but the smell now was overwhelming and much thicker, in comparison, and was mixed with an unfamiliar tang that kind of reminded me of vomit.

I pretty much always relied on Laxus's nose to tell me if the meat we were hunting was actually spoiled or not.
This meat was beyond spoiled.

This smell also reminded me of the corpse Misty and I had come across before, only the stench was five times as powerful. Probably from the small and more enclosed space.

The closer we came to the body, the more I wished I had some kind of mask or covering to stop the smell. I was covering my face the best I could and trying to prevent myself from gagging and throwing up the water I've been drinking.

We stopped in front of the source, lying just at the base of the intersection, was the culprit.
A man in a black uniform and cap, lying facedown with his body viciously torn and shredded in some areas. The main cause of the smell was from a thick grey and black flecked substance, from a Pokemon previously feasting on the flesh and organs. It was a kind of bile, probably from a scavenger spitting it up to lure away the competition.
The grey substance I knew caused a chemical reaction to blood, and made flesh rot incredibly fast.

Any Pokemon could spit this bile up, the bacteria being produced in their salivary glands and gut. It was the one thing about each species that let them be able to learn the move Toxic through a TM if their species wasn't naturally poisonous or venomous. Even us humans had a minor form of the bacteria in our saliva already, something which I learned about from my mom. It didn't cause accelerated rot though, not like a Pokémon's could.

On the dead man's back were four deep gouge marks crisscrossing each other in different places, and atop some of those deep wounds were small spiky glasslike yellow shards, remnants from the move I recognized as Swift.

The four large gouges were straight and deep, and all looked to be made from—

"—claws. This is definitely a Fury Cutter, or some kind of claw using attack. The straight and deeper center makes me think of the Sandshrew species that live here...they mark rocks like that to warn other Pokémon away from their territory. The bile—it could be just about anything, but my guess would be a Raticate, by the puncture marks there on his arm." Raza grunted at the name of the species, making a positive motion and nodding at us, pointing to his nose to show he could smell the rat still.

"Alright. You kids stand back, Raza and I'll set this poor sap up to be taken in." The Ranger said, standing up from where he was kneeling.

"How can you tell the difference between the wounds?" I asked him as I stepped out of his Marowak's way. It was digging through a bag the man had set beside him where he examined the body.

The man side glanced at me, then continued what he was doing—putting on gloves and setting up what looked to be an old camera.
"Ah, experience mostly. In one of my college courses, my class had to study the different marks every Kanto species in our area are able to leave physically behind. Teeth, claws, spikes or quills, scales—every species has a distinct pattern that is left behind during an attack. We had molds made of different material of the marks left behind that we had to assign a species and their body part to, and  later on we had to identify different markings left behind in nature for our tracking and survival class too."
"Huh. That actually sounds like fun. A scavenger hunt, almost."