– Pokemon Mafia AU / crime noir thriller pt 1– series content: extreme violence, foul language, sexual content, smoking, alcohol, adult situations, criminal behavior
Pallet Town, 1922
By the time Ash Ketchum was 18 years old he’d been working at the canning factory for three years. It was a rank, stinking business that left him covered in magikarp and goldeen guts day in and day out, painted up to his elbows in ichor and with small scales stuck painfully in the edges of his fingernails.
That night he came off shift out of the dank factory building into the buzzing electric lights under a black, moonless sky which hung low and sullen with heavy threatening clouds. He leaned against a lamp post, watching his fellow workers shuffle dead eyed out into the street, metal lunch pails in hand toward their homes.
Ash fished his battered pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and the heavy, tarnished lighter along with him. He lit up, and took a long pull of tingling nicotine, blowing it out through his nose. The filter of his cigarette tasted like the slick of residues that clung to his fingers.
In each of his fellow workers he saw the ghost of his future self. Thick and pallid with weathered, lined faces and dull, dead eyes. Men who had been going through the motions for most of the decades of their lives.
Some men died in the factory. It didn’t happen every day, but it had happened often enough in the three years that Ash had been working there for him to become numb to it. Men died to feed the great machine of civilization the same way as magikarp and goldeen. It was just the processing afterward that was different.
He left the glowing cherry of his finished cigarette butt hot on the cement as he walked home.
It would probably be put out by the rain.
Maybe it would burn the whole place down.
–
His mother was still up when he got home, scrubbing at a stubborn stain on one of Ash’s shirt collars. There was a plate of bacon and a cup of formerly hot tea on the table waiting for him. He sat down in his shirt sleeves and suspenders, and dug into his meal without bothering to wash his hands.
“The Professor came by today, Ash,” his mother said. She turned around, his wet shirt collar in her hands as she leaned against the sink. There were bags under her eyes, and her hands were cracked and calloused.
“No kidding?” Ash looked up, tin mug in hand. There were dark streaks on it from his fingers.
“He asked me if you could come by the lab in the morning.”
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