Day One: Part 1

[Karl Jak]

Face to Face
#22 Neal vs #35 Wartortle

Neal strode into the diner and looked around. It was a nice little place, with that nice vintage flair that probably attracted all the hip, young crowds if this island ever had a living population.

He’d only been on this island for a little bit, and he’d yet to hear any cannons firing in the distance. Wasn’t this supposed to be the Hunger Games? Wasn’t there supposed to be some massive bloodletting in the opening minutes that would set a ghastly tone for the remainder of the competition? Neal felt kind of bummed out as he let the doors of the diner swing shut behind him.

“Well I guess this a nice place to relax,” the young man muttered beneath his breath as he walked over and took a seat at one of the many empty booths.

Just as he was about to relax, a rasping, diabolical voice caused him to jolt up in the booth. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing here, Homo sapiens?”

Spinning, Neal saw who was speaking to him. “…a Pokémon?” He muttered as he sized up the Wartortle glaring across the diner at him.

“You know what I am, Human?” The reptilian terrorist spoke through a toothy grin as he hopped over the bar and glared at the diner’s newest visitor. “But do you know who I am?”

“…A Water Type?” Neal asked as he glanced around to make sure this wasn’t some type of terrible prank. He could handle a lot of the goofy things, but the fact that he was being menaced by a Pokémon in a diner in the dead of night was almost enough to stretch his suspension of disbelief.

“Har… Har… Har…” Wartortle remarked as he reached behind his back and grabbed something. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

“Uhh,” Neal dug into his coat pocket and fished something out—a piece of laminated paper. “Want to play Uno?”

“Die.” With that, Wartortle pulled out a gun and pulled the trigger. Neal had all of less than a second to react before the first nail punched through his coat and scrapped bone. As the second and third sunk into his flesh, he did the only desperate thing that came to his head, and he threw the card in the hopes that he could channel his inner Gambit (or Twisted Fate, perhaps). Although no explosions followed, the whir of the nail gun stopped long enough for the young man to hear the incredulous reaction. “You threw a fucking card at me?”

Instead of responding, Neal channeled his inner desire to keep living, and he threw himself through the window of the diner as the nails started to zip through the air around his face and other essential pieces of his anatomy.

When he hit the ground, Neal made sure he had his bag, and he ran as fast as his legs could carry him. In the span of a few hours, he’d gone from chumming it up with Jak and Daxter to having a cigar-smoking Pokémon try and murder him with a nail gun.

This was either the worst day ever or the start of a fantastic story.

[spoiler]Neal has been shot up with nails... to channel my inner Wartortle: "It fucking hurts." -- They count as a Minor Injury, +4 Damage
Neal has the Uno Cards / Wartortle has the Nail Gun[/spoiler]