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The Desert.

Even on a planet characterized by the abundance of life, this hostile environment shows Earth's relation to the many other dead rocks shooting through outer space. An area abandoned by mother nature, the long dunes of sand and rock marking the world like a bald spot, a scar that refuses to heal. Inside the hottest volcano or outside in the coldest tundra, none can match the desolate wasteland of the desert's rapidly changing climate. Scorching days and frigid nights, it is a region where the strong go to be left alone and the weak go to leave this world.

But like all geographical locations, it serves as home to many resilient critters and is occasionally crossed by travellers. On a hot day nearly two decades before the arrival of Deoxys and creation of No Man's Land, two such travellers could be seen marching over the unforgiving dunes.

The first traveller was a colossal Krookodile, the weight of his footsteps sending sand whirling around. Colored red like bad sunburn with black stripes and dragging with him a heavy tail, the bipedal crocodile would seem to be as far away from his natural habitat as possible, but in truth was the only traveller native to the desert.

The second traveller was a slender Simipour, gracefully stepping through the harsh environment. As a Water-type she was managing fairly well despite the dryness, her long hair having stored vast amounts of water for the difficult trip. Much to her annoyance, the natural moisture of her skin caused sand to get caught between her toes, and she was by far the most eager when it came to leaving the desert as quickly as possible.

However, even there were only two figures, there was in fact a third traveller in their group. The third traveller sat on top of the Simipour's head and hid inside her crown-like hairdo, shaded from the sun and taking advantage of the cool wetness. She was their child, but looked nothing at all like her parents. Although she had inherited the black and red coloration from her father and her mother's soft skin, she was standing on four legs instead of two and had a body completely covered in thick, bushy fur. Lacking the ability to sweat, she constantly rubbed her body over her mother's moist appendages, close to overheating in the blazing sun.

"There, there, Zorua..." the Simipour whispered with a slightly boyish voice while reaching up and cuddling her restless baby. She felt bad for her, children her age should be running around in a forest and playing, not lying on the verge of a merciless heatstroke.

"'Ey, doin' fine wit de water?" the Krookodile asked with a gruff voice, "Dunno when de next oasis'll be comin' up."

"Zorua's fine, but a bath would feel quite nice right about now..." the Simipour replied while stretching. The Krookodile moved next to her, trying to get a better look at the baby nestled inside her hair.

"'Ello dere, cutie," he said while trying to make his voice sound as gentle as possible. It was an impossible task, years of rough sand having taken their toll on his vocal folds. Zorua carefully peeked out, stared at the intimidating Pokémon for a fraction of a moment before eliciting a small gasp and hiding deeper inside the hairdressing.

"Ahh... Kid's scaredy-cat of 'er own dad..." the Krookodile muttered in defeat, scratching the back of his head with one of his thick claws.

"Oh, don't be so hard on yourself," the Simipour said as she grabbed hold of his free hand and leaned in closer, "She just loves her mommy a lot... And hates the hot sun! Don't you, sweetie?"

Zorua nodded and nudged with affection against her mother's hair. The Krookodile could feel the coolness of his wife's hands, contrasting the coarse, heated and leathery skin of his own. He knew little about what lay outside the desert, but could clearly tell his daughter was not suited for this kind of place.

"Ah, lil' Zorah. Tough luck, gettin' stuck wit fur out here," he explained while trying to sneak a peek at his daughter once more, "But don't you worry 'bout nothin', dad's relocatin'! Movin' up in life 'n all that!"

"Yes, you are," the Simipour agreed before bringing his head down and giving him a small kiss, causing the overgrown crocodile to turn even redder. She remembered how reluctant he had initially been to her suggestion of moving back to her old neighborhood. Born and raised in the desert, he complained that leaving the dryness and heat behind would ruin his rough skin and respected image. She knew he was mostly just afraid of having to be with other people too much, seeing how his fearsome appearance had long served to intimidate and scare them off.

Meanwhile, Zorua did her best to keep quiet, having promised not to cry during the harsh journey. It had been difficult to leave her friends and the large oasis behind, but at the same time she felt excited as to where they were heading. Her mother had described it as a fantastic place completely unlike what she had ever known, where it was permanently afternoon and not always so warm or cold. Endless reaches of clustered trees, tiny flowers that smelled nice, enough water to drink and swim around in as much as she wanted and most importantly, no sand or sun. The days were mercilessly hot, but she took refuge in dreaming about the future, unable to even imagine what the future held in store. Being nocturnal and finding sleep to be the most effective way to tolerate the warmth of the day, Zorua dozed off not long after.

She slept far into the night when without warning, she was abruptly thrown out of her little home. Landing on the chilly sand, she peered around in the darkness to find out what was going on.

"ZORAH!" a gruff, scary voice sounded from somewhere, making her flinch in surprise. It was her father's voice, a large and intimidating creature she was not about to come running to any time soon.

"Mom! I fell!" Zorua shouted, twisting her head around and seeing nothing but darkness and sand in every direction.

"RUN, ZORAH!" the fearsome voice boomed again, Zorua noticing that it was coming from behind. Turning her head back, she saw a huge red flash zooming through the sky. It frightened her so much that she jumped back, staring with terror as the redness dissipated into the black night. After that, all that followed was complete silence.

"Mom!" Zorua continued, blinking rapidly as the sudden brightness had hurt her eyes. She waited a few moments, but there was no response. Looking around again, she finally realized that both her parents had disappeared.

"Mom! Dad!" Zorua began to shout again, but there was nothing. Wobbling back and forth while trying to comprehend what had just happened, she found herself beginning to shake from the cold. Immediately thinking to nestle up with her mother, her feelings of cold were overtaken by feelings of loneliness.

"Wh-Where did y-you go..." she sobbed as her eyes began to tear up. Had her parents not noticed it when she fell out? Had they forgotten about her and continued their journey? Zorua had never been alone before and had no idea how to cope with it. She had no idea where she was, where to go or how to find her way back to the oasis. There was nothing but sand in every direction, reaching on for eternity. Not knowing what to do, she lay down on the sands and cried with her eyes closed, waiting for someone to come pick her up.

A long time passed. She ran out of tears and was beginning to feel thirsty and hungry. Even so, she dared not open her eyes even for a moment, scared of what else might appear from behind the darkness of the dunes. As she laid there she thought of her mother, imagining that she was on currently her way back to come pick her up. Even now she could smell the fragrance of her mother in the air, pretending she was still with her.

However, as time went by, the smell of her mother was beginning to diminish. This scared the small Zorua more than anything; all her life that scent has been there, and now that it was disappearing she had no idea what to make of the odorless desert that was taking its place. It felt like emptiness. It felt like death.

It scared her so much that she forced her eyes open and span around, trying one last time to locate her mother. Suddenly, she noticed her mother's fragrance slightly more present in a certain direction, and immediately began to follow it. Running through the sand with her tiny body was no easy task, but she found that she was able to smell more of her mother the further she got and imagined herself getting the closer to her with each step.

The corner of her eyes was the first area to dry out and begin to ache. Her throat soon followed, due to her earlier crying. The sun was beginning to rear its ugly head by the horizon, which only made her speed up more as she could not imagine surviving a day without the Simipour and her precious, life-giving water. Closing her eyes to endure the strain, she continued rushing ahead through the shapeless landscape before bumping her head into something.

Rubbing the newly-formed dent on her forehead, she slowly looked up to see a peculiar stack of rocks standing high above her. She had no idea what she had found, but knew one thing for sure; the smell of her mother was stronger than she had ever sensed! It positively clouded the air, filling her nostrils and mind with vigor and hope.

"Mom...?" Zorua whispered as she walked up to the rocks. They had been laid too solidly to smash down, and she was far too short to jump over them. However, the mortar had been frugally added, so finding a crack to peer through was easy enough. It only took a single glimpse of light blue for both her and her heart to leap up. Finally at the end of this nightmare, Zorua hastily stumbled and shuffled her body around the stack of stones, at long last face to face with her mother again.

"MOM!" Zorua screamed in pure joy as tears flowed down her face. She positively tackled her mother's hair and nuzzled against every inch of it, sucking up the moisture and motherly love like a sponge. Laughing and crying at the same time, she rolled out of the hairdo to give her mother a kiss.

It was then she realized something was wrong. Despite her energetic assault, the Simipour was fast asleep. Her mother did rarely open her eyes, but a tackle had always roused her in the past. Zorua tried again, carefully nudging her mother's face.

"Mom?" Zorua repeated meekly as she nipped lightly at her mother's neck, trying to get a response. When she tugged at it, she noticed her mother had lost an astounding amount of weight, her very thin body dragging itself a full centimeter across the sand as Zorua fell back in shock.

Speechless and stunned, she was beginning to notice some of the details she had missed before. The stack of rocks had been dull and grey on the outside, but in here there patches of red across the walls and even in the sand. The lingering smell was definitively her mother's, but it was mixed in with something so grotesquely repulsive that it was making her nose sting in protest. The most disturbing detail was that despite her mother's perfectly intact head and hair, the rest of her body was had become completely flat.

Zorua tilted her head, wondering why her mother was sleeping halfway submerged in the sand. She knew she would have to ask her after she woke up. She did not have long to ponder this new turn of events as something moved in the corner of her eyes. Turning around, she saw a tall shadow looming over her before something heavy and hard fell down on her head, the echoes of whatever was smashing down on her cranium being the last thing registered by her brain as she lost consciousness.

The dizziness was still present when she woke up, wondering over the strange new world she found herself in. Everything was bright, spinning and looked fuzzy, and there was a throbbing headache overtaking all her other emotions and thoughts.

As she slowly came to, she realized she was someplace new. The color green made her immediately think of an oasis, and her assumption proved to be accurate as she carefully rubbed her eyes. The oasis was small and unfamiliar but had bushes, trees and water, the strong sun reflecting off the latter and making it even more difficult for her to see. While this sight would have made her jump for joy during her earlier trek, for some reason she still felt depressed. In the back of her mind, she knew something was still missing.

Gathering her thoughts while looking around, she noticed she was not alone in the area. There was another creature, a dusty-looking Pokémon sitting underneath a crooked palm tree with his arms crossed. Although quite a bit bigger than she was, he was still only about half the height of her father and had a bit of a stubby appearance. Very many large spines covered his back, and his claws were about the size of her entire head. His dry, cracked skin reminded her of a Sandshrew that had lived by the oasis where she grew up, but this one seemed far more mature.

Still disoriented, she began to approach him as her memories came flooding back. The Sandslash took notice of her approach, but made no attempt to get up.

"It was stupid of you to follow us," the Sandslash spoke with a steady and defined voice, "But between here and the hot desert sands, I suppose the outcome would have been the same."

"... Mom...?" Zorua wheezed weakly, still thinking of what had happened. The Sandslash examined her for a moment before closing his eyes.

"Too late," he said calmly, "They tanned and ate her. Dad too."

"... Tanned...?" Zorua repeated with confusion, not recognizing the word and thinking her mother had been much too thin to have eaten recently, "No, mom... Mom's by the rocks! I saw her!"

"What you saw was her face and skin, stripped from her corpse," the Sandslash explained slowly with a hint of bother in his voice, "Quite soft. It will keep them warm during cold nights."

"Th-they can't do that!" Zorua exclaimed, horrified at the thought of some random stranger using her mother's water-giving hair while she was away, "She's MY mom!"

The Sandslash sighed as he opened his eyes again. He really hated the naïve ones, always pelting him with questions and ruining his siesta. Many years had passed since he gave up on sharing any manner of empathy, and decided to just get it over with.

"Do you even understand the concept of death, kid?" he asked while readjusting his position against the palm tree, "Your mother is gone. They pulled off her hide, chopped the rest into pieces and ate them. You will never see her again."

Zorua continued looking at him with a blank expression. He stared back, not sure of what to make of her reaction. After what seemed like an eternity, the small Pokémon simply turned the other way and began to walk away from him.

"Oi," the Sandslash called out, "They told me to make sure you don't leave. Sit still."

"I-I..." Zorua replied with a shaky voice, "... I need to..."

"SIT STILL!" the Sandslash shouted loudly, hoping it would stop her in her tracks. It seemed to have the opposite effect as instead the small Pokémon took off into a full run.

"MOM!" Zorua screamed as she ran as fast as her four legs could carry her, tears welling up inside her again as she thought of what the big Sandshrew had said. She knew he had to be lying, and tried to pick up her mother's scent once again to return to the stack of rocks as quickly as possible.

Before she knew it, she was pressed down into the scorching sands as the Sandslash stepped down on her, squeezing the breath out of her lungs and causing her to flail about like a pinned down insect.

"I knew you were going to be a troublemaker!" the Sandslash growled angrily and leaned forward, pressing one of his claws to the back of her neck, "Sit still, or I'll chop you up right here and now!"

Still not understanding what was happening, Zorua continued to struggle. The pressure on her back caused her to gasp for air, involuntarily drawing far too many grains of sand into her mouth in desperation. Tears spilled out of her face as she fought the hellish heat, twisting left and right and hysterically throwing her head in every direction, trying anything to find a way out of the unspeakable nightmare.

---

The next two days were just as hot and stifling as the ones before. Zorua lay by the edge of the water, gasping faintly with her tongue outstretched. In front of her lay a small plant covered in thorns, which had taken great effort for her to even carry there. It was green, white and slightly red from the blood spilt as she continued peeling off the spikes, trying to make it edible.

There was no fence around the oasis, but she felt too weak even try to escape. The harsh desert climate had quickly sapped her strength and left her a wheezing husk, the Sandslash being no help at all and seemingly quite content with just watching her die. Overcome by thirst she had dived into the water, and now overcome with hunger she had stolen some of the Sandslash's food. She had expected to be beaten again for it, but for some reason he did not seem to care.

As another thorn pierced her ill-suited forepaw, her old life seemed so very distant. How quickly the world had turned from a place of relaxation, opulence and love into one where every moment was a miserable struggle for survival. After hearing the Sandslash's many vivid explanations of the current state of her mother, all she knew about death was that it was the absolutely last thing she wanted to have happen to her.

"... Why me...?" Zorua whispered as she bit down, feeling the disgusting plant prickle the back of her tongue, "Why... Am I here...?"

The Sandslash scoffed, sitting by his favorite tree like usual.

"For sure they're not fattening you up," the Sandslash muttered as he chomped down on some cacti, his tough mouth seemingly unhindered by their thorny exterior, "As you can probably tell, food is scarce here in the desert. They're busy digesting their last meal, so they want me to keep you fresh until it's to kill and eat you too."

Feeling the last piece of cacti slip down her throat, Zorua almost immediately coughed it right back up as her stomach made a nasty turn. The realization hit her as she stared up at the Sandslash with a horrified expression. She was not keeping herself alive; she was only waiting for an inevitable death.

Terror crept up on her again as she forgot all about her exhaustion. As wretched as her life currently was, she did not want to die. Seeing the unblocked vast plains of the desert just over to her left, she decided to once more make a run for it. Dashing away from captivity and enjoying her freedom for nearly five seconds, she was quickly tackled to the ground by the swift Sandslash, just like she had been a few days before. His weight kept her pinned down as he aggressively pushed her face deep down into the sand.

"You dumb bitch!" he shouted furiously, "Where do you think we are? Nowhere, that's where!"

Zoura tried to scream and cry, but only received a mouthful of sand and dirt. The Sandslash eased up on his grip as she began to cough up the vast amounts of grime she had nearly ingested.

"Do you like the sand? Do you like the sun? Even if you were to get past me, that's the only thing you'll find for miles upon miles," the Sandslash said sternly as he pointed ahead of her, "Only the best of the best can survive in the desert. Surely you saw a few pale white bones on the way here? Are you eager to join them?"

"No!" Zoura shouted as she breathed heavily, still attempting to free herself and keep running, "Mom said there's a place with no sand! No sun! I'll keep walking until I get there!"

"Bah! A furry little shit like you won't survive a day of walking with those short, mangy legs," the Sandslash growled as he picked her up by her tail, an extreme pain shooting up her spine, "You'll be face down in the sand before sundown."

Hanging upside down she flailed back and forth, the Sandslash rudely throwing her into the water. Instinct set in as she crashed through the surface, causing her to immediately paddle upwards. However, a sudden stiffness shot through her muscles as the Sandslash's words began to fully sink in. Slowly her efforts to swim up waned.

There was simply no point to it. Even if she was to cross the barrier of the surface once more, the only thing she would be met by was a world of strife and unavoidable death. If that was to be the case, she wondered if maybe it was better to just die right there and then. Dark thoughts clouded her young mind when suddenly her lungs began to scream out for air. Trying to resist it, she kept telling herself it would only be five more seconds. Five more seconds, and then it would be all over.

Her mental fortitude shattered as something grabbed on to her tail again. She panicked as something violently drew her upwards, forcing her back to the surface and back into hell.

---

A similar scene presented itself a week later. Zorua had once more tried to drown herself as the Sandslash jumped in and pulled her body out. He dropped her on the sandbank as he crouched down and began to roll around in the sand, trying to get as much moisture off his body as possible.

"Stop doing that, you little shit," he muttered tiredly before walking over to Zorua and kicking her in the gut. A wad of water flew out of her as she entered a coughing fit.

"What good is your body if you die and start rotting before dinnertime?" he continued talking as he walked up next to her, "You are meat, not fish. Act your part."

"Not... Meat..." Zorua whispered quietly as she lamented over another failed suicide attempt, "I'm... Zorua..."

The Sandslash sighed. He felt too tired to keep beating her up, seeing how it was not having much effect with deterring her. Instead, he sat down next to her, eliciting a flinch from the tiny creature.

"Zorua," he repeated with dismay, "What kind of language is that?"

"... That's my name!" Zorua snapped back as she stood up, anger overtaking her as she braced herself for another beating.

"Idiot. You don't get to have a name," the Sandslash growled bitterly while staring at the distant dunes, "I have a name. It's 'Seif'. You do not have a name, because you are a walking piece of food."

"I'm not food! My mom said I was u... Un..." Zorua yelled as she struggled with remembering the word, "... Unique!"

Seif looked down at her with a jaded expression. She had no way of knowing just how many Pokémon he had been guarding at this oasis, only to watch them be turned into strips of flesh and eaten. It suddenly occurred to him what she had been referring to, realizing her black and red fur had seemed unfamiliar for a reason.

"True. Haven't seen one of your species before," he admitted before shaking his head, "But that only means you might taste bad. Then you are not meat, but garbage. If so... Just sit back and wait for your disposal."

Zorua continued staring up at him with defiance. Her matted down fur gave way to the many sores he had inflicted upon her this past week. Despite her beaten figure, Seif could predict what she was about to say.

"I'm not garbage!" she roared meekly before starting to run away. However, just as Seif was about to chase after her again, she made a turn for one of the bushes and disappeared inside, hiding herself. He muttered a few bitter words as he himself returned to his favorite tree and fell asleep.

It was not until the next day that he realized what she had been planning that night. Thinking himself part of yet another hastily improvised attempt at escape, Seif suddenly yelped as he stepped on something sharp while chasing after Zorua. Several thorns were sticking out of the ground, where Zorua had buried and hidden several cacti. The Dark-type smiled to herself as she continued running and evaded the carefully laid out traps, making it a few feet further than usual before the Sandslash popped out of the sand in front, having dug his way underground to avoid the spines.

His wrath was more severe than usual, but even as he trashed her she could not stop thinking about the few extra meters she had reached away from the oasis. Already she was beginning to plan her next escape. Abandoned by her parents and left alone in a world that wanted nothing more than her death, she finally understood that the only way she was getting out of this would be to rely upon her own wit.