Red narrows his eyes as he stares down at Cody, shutting up and listening as they explain. The corners of his lips twitch as they finish, the shadow cast over his eyes falling ever so slightly heavier.
[CODY takes a gasp of air. They begin to breathe quickly, desperately trying to come down from the overwhelming sense of terror that had just struck them to their very core. They hadn’t seen it with their own eyes, but they instantly knew in the back of their mind that there was only one thing that could have caused such a horrid, indescribable feeling in their chest.]
[CODY remembered once calling it an eldritch horror as an off-handed joke, but only now did they finally understand how terrifyingly accurate that description was. In just those two seconds, all of their deepest fears about it had not just been confirmed, but exceeded.]
[CODY used to be so confident, so hopeful that they never would experience it for themself, because it had been made impossible to find in the wild through legal gameplay, let alone in the safe haven of their tower. But of course. Of course this RED would have carried that disease in here with him.]
[He must have done it specifically to toy with them. If he’d really been watching them as thoroughly as he’d claimed, he could’ve just stood back and waited for their players to grab a GameShark and do it to them instead. But no, he must have wanted to witness their first time in person. To see what a “real” human’s reaction to it might be.]
[Without thinking, CODY takes a fearful step away from RED, bumping into BLASTOISE’s shell behind them, and its voice snaps them back to reality.]
[After taking a moment to catch their breath and relatively compose themself, they manage to choke out a response.]
