Author's Note:

A Black 2 Nuzlocke
Unwittingly a ghost/steel/psychic-locke by sheer circumstance
Loosely based on the Great Depression period
I make no promises
Newly edited for a MATURE disclaimer because the second chapter is getting gritty

Rules:

1) Catch new route pokemon

2) Nickname 'em

3) I randomized the hidden grottos/static pokemon

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"Yo listen up, here's the story

About a little guy that lives in a blue world

And all day and all night and everything he sees is just blue

Like him, inside and outside"

I'm Blue _ Eiffel 65

This story begins with a bit of trivia: what do YOU think the worst job in the pokemon world is?

I can think of a few. A garbage man? Garbage sucks, no matter what. How about a shit scooper? Maybe construction workers, pulling all nighters to repair gyms. That would suck, but at least construction workers get amenities and overtime to make up for it. Or a roadkill collector. That's a job everyone wants. I hope you don't have a pachirisu as a pet, because you're gonna be picking up their flat pancakes all the time.

But no. Certainly, all of these jobs suck. The worst job in the world?

Well. Pokemon battling is pretty barbaric, in my humble opinion. After all, someone's gotta clean up all your mauled, disemboweled pokemon when you muck it up at a gym battle.

The job in question is a cremator. A mortician. An undertaker, if you will. My name is Josephine Ebele, and I get to cremate dead pokemon bodies for shit pay.

I flip through my paperwork with a huff. Four more to the furnace today. Unfortunately, all these young trainers battling Cheren decided that even though they'd had their purrloins and lillipups for barely a few days that they were attached enough to request to keep the remains. And a special middle bird for the kid with an Onix who STILL managed to let it die. Because of you, kid, I have to fire up the big furnace, and I didn't need that pain in the ass to top off my day.

Yet, here I am. I punch the keys and pull the levers, and the giant metal cradle roars to life with an ear-splitting shriek. I wince and curse the old pipes under my breath as the coils below begin to heat. Even though it's been so long since the last time I turned on the furnace, it is still hot. The entire room is always sweltering like a melting vanillish on a hot summer's day. And me? I am that vanillish, sweating bullets and gleaming like some smelly, sticky Greek god.

I turn on the small furnace again, and the metal stings my hand. Still hot from yesterday. Then, I reach for my fire proximity suit. I'm supposed to wear it before even operating the furnaces, but by the time I wrangle myself into this space suit, the smaller furnace will be ready to operate. I stick my legs into the thick fabric pants, tug them up, zip and button. I shove my feet into bloated boots, tie them tight and latch them to the pants. I reach for the coat, zip and button again, grab the belt and lash it around my waist. Then, I grab the hood with the massive neck shroud, shove it down on my head, and latch it to the shoulders. Last, I pull the gloves on.

I glare at myself in the reflection of the heating metal. I look like the tin man from the Wizard of Oz spawned a demon child with the Michelin Man.

But hey, that's what you get when you work full time minimum wage doing the job no one wants to do. A fat suit, the smell of death, and the world's dumbest pokemon partner.

Before anything, I tromp to the back where there are two mining carts, and I push one under a funnel. I tug the cap open and coal pours out into the metal with a sound like hail on a tin roof. I wait for the cart to fill, close the funnel, and grab my shovel. I push the cart to the massive furnace that is nearly the size of a small building. Opening the rear panel, the air blasts me like a heat wave, searing even through the fire proximity suit. I dig the shovel into the coal and throw it deep inside. The black coals whiten inside the furnace, and I begin the monotonous chore of filling this furnace. Cremating an onix is different from cremating flesh organisms. To melt an onix down, this furnace has to reach a scorching 1,200 degrees Celsius before I can pour the molten rock into the appropriate urn.

So I shovel coal into the furnace until that familiar twinge stabs my lower back and until the mining cart is empty. I go back for two more loads because this furnace is massive and the onix itself is an above average 29 feet, and young to boot. If that kid hadn't squandered such an exotic and powerful pokemon on a normal gym like an idiot, it might have grown into a beautiful Steelix. And a record-smashing length, too.

Instead, with the furnace loaded up and gaining heat, I turn the knobs to add pressure and hold the heat in. Then, I open the door from the furnace room and step into a clinical white room. I double check the two purrloin and the lillipup inside, and make sure to have the funeral urns lined up for the order they would be cremated in. Lille Bobby wanted the blue waves for his lillipup; Abigail wanted the pink flowers for her purrloin; and Timothy wanted the shiny gold one for his purrloin. Little tiny Tim with the tiny dead roadkill.

"All right, cart 'em in for me," I say to the pokemon standing ready. The golett nods with so much vigor you could mistake it for enthusiasm. I narrow my eyes in my suit and point to each body so the thing can't mess it up. "Dog first, then neck-break," and I point to Abigail's purrloin, "then throat stitches," and I point to little tiny Tim's purrloin. Another pokemon fallen victim to Cheren's throat maneuvers. You'd think they'd outlaw such a thing, but hey, pokemon battling was VIOLENT, and things like that were to be EXPECTED. Bunch of blitzle shit. If the Plasmas had gotten their way, the League would have had to own up to the barbaric battling pits and actually be held accountable. Maybe even instated some rules and regulations to gym battles, but no. Not even legendary dragons could change people's minds.

For now, I open the adjacent door to a massive room that looks like a cross between a garage and a hospital room. This is the prep room for the large pokemon, like the onix, that trucks had to cart in. I treated them in here. I mash my fist to a red button, and the inner garage door opens up to the furnace room. I walk up to where the rock snake pokemon is coiled neatly on a wide trailer hitch.

It's a pity, really. I hover closer to the strange and magnificent pokemon and run my hand against the lifeless stone. It's rough, a sign of a young onix compared to the smoother touch of an old, weathered snake. Supposedly wild ones live out in Victory Road and Twist Mountain. I've never seen one before, and it's a shame that my first one has to be dead. But, that's always how it works. I don't know why I expect different.

I pass my fingers over the back of its head. Bite marks. Kids always underestimate Cheren's work up and bite combination. Cheren is a whiz of battling, a man of sheer talent that nearly conquered the League on his first pass. Supposedly his record holds quite a few deaths, so it was no wonder he chose to break kids before they got far in their journeys. I bet it would be easier to shatter their hopes early instead of letting them get in over their heads.

A heavy sigh blasts from me. I step back, trying to see the full extent of this gargantuan pokemon. How much did mama and daddy pay to get an onix shipped out to make sure their kid beat the first gym? I shake my head and move back to crank the truck engine. It's a pity, that's what it is. The onix could have lived perfectly fine alone, but it got dragged into this League mess, tossed on some kid who clearly didn't know jack shit about battling, and now it's dead.

A crash rattles from the furnace room and I look up and swear under my breath. I stomp into the heated room, shouting, "Golem! What did I tell you?" The golett stops guiltily, the broken neck purrloin dangling by its tail from its fist. The lillipup had tumbled to the floor and both gurneys had somehow overturned. I point again at the insufferable golett saying, "Stop. Listen. What did I tell you?"

Golem ducks its head. It lifts the purrloin and then adds its other hand to its grip. "BOTH hands!" I shout at the dumb ghost. It flinches and nods. "Always, ALWAYS both hands, Golem! You have one job, all right? BOTH hands, my god . . ." I stomp back into the garage—waddle, more like, in this ridiculous heat suit—and I crank the truck engine harder, muttering, "Stupid, klutzy golett . . ." The last thing I need is people realizing that the pokemon my dad caught for me is Bambi on ice at all times and dumping their precious dead pokemon on the floor. Someone would sue for heresy or something.

The truck engine roars to life, and I climb in and drive the onix adjacent to the big furnace. I check the temperature. 1600 and climbing. By the time I finish with the little ones, we'll be ready to cremate the big one. I open the first chamber, and heat leaps out like a dog on a chain, snapping at my pillowed suit and leeching in through any exposed gaps. I take my shovel, slip it under the lillipup and shove the dog in like pizza in a brick oven. Pulling the shutter closed, I then open the second chamber.

Golem is still looking at his feet. Before I chuck the cats in too, I grin and poke one with the end of the shovel. "Hey, Golem. Must've been on his ninth life, yeah?" Golem looks up at me with so much offense shining in his eyes I almost snap at him again, but sharp laughter screeches above me. The magnemite running maintenance twirls its magnets at me. Thin streaks of electricity web out from the ends like streamers from a party popper. I nod and grin wider, and I point up at him. "See? Magnets appreciates my humor," and I shove the purrloin in the furnace.

Once all the little ones burned, I check the heat for the onix's tomb. We idle a few minutes while the furnace reaches peak levels of hot and then I let Golem wrangle the onix inside. As much as I dislike my dad, he at least had the right idea picking the ghost type out for me. The machoke that previously worked here died of old age. But a ghost? As long as Golem wasn't battling, it'd live forever.

As Golem shoves the Onix in the blazing furnace, the tail drops and completely unrolls. Golem tries to catch it, but the rest of the snake collapses awkwardly in and out of the chamber. Golem whines and shoves its hands up, both full of the rocky onix. I groan and rub my head. Thank god it wasn't a battler. It wouldn't last five seconds if it couldn't manage anything else in life.

Finally though, Golem hauls the pokemon inside, and I shut the furnace. This job is too damn hot. Sweat pours down my body and no amount of deodorant could help me. I'm a sticky wet mess, and not in a good way. I disrobe from the heat proximity suit and leave the furnace room back into chilling air conditioner.

I scrub the mortuary and fill out paperwork in the meantime. After three hours, I come back to the dog and cats, open the furnace again, and use a long, hoe-like rod to smash the calcified bones down. They burn down even more, and then I turn off the furnace. I check the onix, stir up the melting rock, and leave it to the extreme heat.

Now comes the fun part. I scrape first the lillipup's remains out of the furnace and into a metal box. I carry the box aside and sift through the remains for any metal pieces despite doubting that the lillipup had any metal in it. But hey, that's policy. The machine it goes into next doesn't like metal, and if for some reason a piece of metal gets in it and breaks it, I can't afford that.

There is no metal in the lillipup remains, like I expected. I collect the remains one more time, dump it all into a square machine. Dust clouds up and batters my dust mask. It doesn't smell like death, just dust. The extreme heat of cremation doesn't allow for decomposing parts.

I put a lid on the machine and turn it on. It whirs to life with an awful grinding noise, and I wonder how many people know that we put their loved pokemon bones into a blender. The bones have to be pulverized into fine dust to go into their little cremation pots. After the lillipup is nothing but dust, I pour the material into the blue urn for Bobby. Then I go back and blend the two purrloin and put them in their urns. Viola! Three perfectly cremated pokemon. Sometimes I like to horrify the teenage trainers with the gritty details. "Oh yeah, your Riolu's head was tough to crack in the fire, it had good, strong bones." They blanch as pale as the remains of their pokemon. Funny, really. Stupid and petty, but funny all the same.

I check the time. It's running near five o'clock now, and I've got places to be, but I have to wait on the onix to melt fully before I can put it in the cooler. The kids with the cats and dog could pick up the remains tomorrow, but the onix? It needed three days to cool in our little freezer. Sensible kids left 450 pounds of liquefied onix behind. Rich kids demanded liquidation, a fancy urn the size of a dresser, and a crane to put it in their front yard as garden art. Or something. I don't know what people do with a dresser-sized urn of onix, but it can't be sensible.

Instead, I stay late, pouring the liquefied onix into an urn with Golem's help, watching the molten rock fade from its golden glow within minutes. The heat-proof urn holds the high temperature rock, and I shut down the furnaces for the night. Golem and I rock the heavy urn up the loading slope and into the truck. I back the truck into the garage, and then we rock the urn into the cooler. I close up shop around seven, and return Golem. I'm grimy with sweat and the dust of pokemon clinging to my skin, and I'd like to scrape every inch of my body with a rock to get it off, but I walk seven blocks down the road to the hospital. I throw a wave at the desk lady, Karen. She knows me. She knows my routine. I think a lot of the staff does. It's hard to miss a girl that looks like a construction worker, especially in a pair of pants. Nice girls wear skirts, they say. Lucky for me, I am not a nice girl.

I take the elevator and walk down the long halls to room 3B. I knock and don't wait for an answer. Pushing open the door and walking in, I slouch down on the only chair in the room and gaze at the white-washed wall instead of at the patient in the gurney. I slip my suspenders off my shoulders and let them dangle by my baggy pants.

"So how's the patient today?" I say in my best nurse's voice. I can't keep it up long. Bitter sarcasm colors my words. "Did they feed you from a tube today? Do you still pee in the bed? I bet you do. You know how I know? Because I'm still working that dead-end job to pay for YOUR hospital bills, and my oh MY does that money funnel down the drain faster than I can make it."

There is no answer. I shift and groan in my seat. My back aches. Curse that onix. At least no one else had a faulty battle today and killed a pokemon. I only had to deal with Cheren's unfortunate victims.

I glance at the bed. Their skin seems pale and washed out. Too much like the color of ash. I look away and knead my neck. "So uh. Hugh come by and see you today?" I wait the appropriate amount of time for a reaction before plowing ahead. "He's going on a pokemon journey. Idiot. I've tried to talk him out of it, honestly, but he thinks he can find his sister's purrloin. Mittens, the one with the little white paws, remember? I say purrloin are a dime a dozen, but I can't argue with presents from dead dads. If his sister's fixated on it cause dead daddy dearest gave it to her, who am I to judge?"

The machines beep a slow, mechanical heartbeat and it echoes in the cold room. I glance at the foot of the bed, seeing feet propped up under the covers. "You cold? Need more blankets? You usually have three, not two."

The air feels heavy. I despise this place. I work in a place where death has already had its way. It's cold and empty and cruel with the furnaces for company, but at least I don't FEEL it. Death. It weighs over this damn hospital like a dark shroud, and it seeps into this room in particular, leeching off the life in the bed, like slurping the last little bits of soda from the bottom of a cup.

I roll my eyes and pick at my nails when there's no answer. "Whatever," I mutter. "How about I tell you a story instead? You know this one. You'll be thrilled to hear it again. It's the story of how a girl's best friend in the whole world had to get star struck about pokemon battles, just like the girl's dad. Dad leaves to be a hot-shot trainer, but no, you, you decide to stay and become a referee. Then, bam! One day, a high powered pokemon's rock slide goes awry, the referee is caught in the cross hairs, and now you've been in a coma for two years! Story end."

I glare at her now. Pale and waxy and unmoving. She might as well already be dead. "Two years. I gave up everything to take care of you. Scholarships. Grad school. Life as I knew it, all the plans I'd laid, I put them all to rest because you had the chance to wake up. Because I LOVED you. I've paid for your fucking life support, dealt with a shit job, lived in a shit tin can apartment, seven day shifts, I stopped everything for you. And what do I get?" I wait for her to fill the answer. "That's right," I hiss. "Nothing."

She can't answer, of course. She probably won't ever answer again. Really, I don't know why I waste my time anymore other than it being a relentless habitual cycle. I stand and pull my suspenders over my shoulders again. I hover for a long moment, and I don't know why. I don't expect anything after all this time. I DON'T expect anything. But I still stand there until the pressure in my chest builds so much that I can hardly breathe before I wave an uncaring hand at her.

"Try not to kick it overnight, Mom."

My family is a family that loves pokemon battles. My mother adored it, my father left his own daughter on a journey to be the best, and my uncle is one of the best.

Me?

I'm just a gal trying to make ends meet and watching all the threads of my life fray away.