The Hacker [Pokemon Fanfiction]

The Hacker: Chapter 25

The sound of rain smashing and clattering against the earth was like a rabid audience clapping for a world act music performance. Water flooding in with a tormented roar from the distance as the wind screamed against our hurricane shelter.

I sat in solitude, wedged between the meeting walls corner, with my knees pressed into my chest in a huddled manor. I jumped slightly as another house was torn apart, metal roofing flying about and erupting like thunder. I couldn't see it, but ears can do much. The wafting musty scent mingled with the hot sweat that dripped from the people who had no cots to sleep on. If they were lucky, they brought a blanket from home to curl up on as bedding. Disorganized isles tried to form between the globs of humans and pokemon alike.

I was immobilized by everything that had happened. Finding Mew. How I had glitched. How Red saved me. What was going to happen next? Trying to take my mind off of these pressing matters, my eyes scanning the room rapidly for a certain little imitator, coming up with nothing. My lungs deflated, my shoulder slouched over as I ghostly observed the people who passed with exhaustion.

Before I knew it, my mind fazed between a darkness and the dusk around me. Whether it was a tiredness begging me to sleep or the weight that tugged at my heart that begged to shut down, I refused to sleep. Just drift as the town huddled around me lulled themselves to an unsettled but regular sleep. The occasional murmurs catching my ears, counting each breath taken starting to give me a headache.

"How much longer, mumma?"

"Just seven more hours baby."

"I'm scared."

"Just fall asleep, when you wake up it will be nice again. Just like all the others."

It was within the hour that a stillness possessed the people, singing them to a silence that suffocated me. Only a whisper here and there. It was to the point I thought that I was the only one awake, listening to the devastating storm.

Once the feeling of being alone in a crowd that would never hear me, I let a low exasperation carry out my words, "I'm scared," my clotted strands of hair slinked between my eyes and I didn't even try to pull them away.

"Of what?"

My skin crawled up the back of my neck, my heart clenching as I turned to lock gazes with Red. Calming, I twitched a smile to the boy, letting my arms droop, "Everything. The Glitch. Myself. The storm," I answered honestly. "The sounds reminds me of the numerous war videos and documentaries I watched as a kid. Then watched again in AP World History."

Red's head tilted carefully, confused about what I just said.

"Ah, yeah. In, um, where I'm from," I avoided mentioning being the player in a crowd full of people plagued by my doings, "we stay in school for a long time. AP is Advance Placement, basically college courses taken at high school. College is the highest form of education, most go into that schooling after they turn 18. High school are the four years precede that."

"What about wars? We only had one," he continued to press like a child looking for answers. "The great war. A worldwide struggle."

I tugged a smirk at him, "Our world, has had too many wars. In my country, we were seen as people trying to take over the world for the longest time. And I won't say that wasn't too far from the truth... And our world has had two. Two great wars that ravaged so, so, much."

Red still looked to me with curiosity.

So I told him, the scars that humanity left. Explaining to him the major powers of our world. How our weapons took so many lives of people "just following orders". How by the end of world war one, the country Germany was left in war debt and could barely survive. Then, it lead to world war two.