Thread: last of a dying venipede

Attempted Capture: Venipede
Characters Needed: 5000
Actual Characters: 6009


Nicole stood in her kitchen, her long, blonde, flowing hair moved as the ceiling fan spiraled in circles above her. She was in her kitchen that contained most things you would find in any other apartment; a refrigerator, stove and a microwave. She had had bug problems, but none of them were ever like this.

“EEEECCCKK!” Nicole screamed as she jumped onto a wooden chair in her kitchen, fearing the thing that was below her. She had been surrounded by a swarm of larva like insect Pokémon. The Pokémon had a forest green body with a magenta upper body that included a hump on its back. Nicole grabbed herself as she began to shake with fear. Nicole’s mother had been killed by bugs, which pretty much started her phobia of insects. One morning she had awaken to find her mother dead from continuous bug bites, in the very kitchen she was standing in now, Tears began to stream down her face as the insects began to work their way up the wooden chair. Nicole quickly moved to another chair located right next to the one she had been standing on before as the swarm worked their way up the chair she had just left.

Nicole could feel her heart beating from within her. She had been scared, since she was living in her apartment alone. She reached into her pocket to grab her phone to call the local bug catcher so he could rescue her before the bugs could get the chance to consume her flesh; yes she was being over dramatic about the larva centipede Pokémon, but she didn’t want to risk it.

The phone rang a couple times. Then, the exterminator answered.
“Hel-“
“HELP!” Nicole interrupted, “I am being swarmed by this strange larva-like Pokémon!”
“Ok, Miss, I will be there in a few minutes!” He assured her.
“Alright, thanks,” she squealed as she hung up her phone.

~~~~

*Knock knock*

“Hurry, get in here!” Nicole screeched as the exterminator opened the door. He had short dark brown hair, which was spiked in a douche bag Mohawk style, he winked and said “The names James.”

“I don’t have time for you to be hitting on me,” Nicole told him as she wiped the tears out of her light blue eyes. “Get these things OUT OF MY HOUSE NOW!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll get right on it. And they have a name. They're Venipedes,” James said as he examined the walls of the old apartment. “They seem to have been living here for a long time,” he said as he studied the holes in the wall from the Venipede bites.

“Ok, here’s the plan,” James said calmly. ”We need to find the head Venipede and capture it. Capturing the head Venipede will cause the rest of them to migrate to a new area.”

“Why can’t we just step on them?” Nicole wondered as she jumped onto the tabletop. “And why aren’t they going after you?”

“Bug repellent,” he answered, while winking in her direction.

You really need to stop that,” she demanded. “Also, how the hell are we going to find the head Venipede?”

“Just leave it to me,” he said as he grabbed Nicole off the table and set her down safely on the ground. “Here, put this bug repellent on, it will keep you safe,” James told her as he handed her a dark green can that had a thick red circle with a line through it on the front. After Nicole put on the bug repellent, James and Nicole began to work on their trap for catching the Venipede.

“Well, it’s a known fact that Venipede posses a deadly poison in their teeth, so we don’t want to get that close to them,” James told her as they stared at the once clean table that was now covered in magenta and forest green deadly insects.

“Alright,” James said as he placed a couple Pokeblocks on the floor. “If I’m right, this colony of Venipedes will let the head honcho of the group eat a Pokéblock before they do. There are different Pokéblocks so that they can have a variety of choices just in case they don’t like a flavor.” He sounded so sure of himself. Yeah, he was cocky, but Nicole didn’t care as long the Pokéblocks worked.

“If this doesn’t work, you can stay at my house,” James told Nicole. “Or if it does work, you can still come stay the night.” James winked as one of the Venipedes made its way toward the Pokéblocks.

James quickly pulled out a red and white Pokéball and tossed it into the air. A red beam shot out, revealing a Charmander. The salamander-like Pokémon was a reddish orange color with a tan belly and a small flame on the tip of its tail. The head Venipede looked up and knew that Charmander wanted a battle.

Venipede quickly ran forward, its short, stubby legs moved fast as it opened up its mouth preparing to unleash a Bug Bite. James was too busy showing off to Nicole about his Charmander, allowing Venipede to get a direct hit.

“Oh crap… Charmander use Ember!” he called out as Venipede removed its teeth and quickly jumped back, attempting to avoid the ember. It was too late and got hit by a powerful close up Ember that left Venipede with a bad burn.

Venipede took the pain, but then retaliated with a Toxic; a medium-sized, purple, ball of poisonous liquid came shooting down at Charmander, leaving it covered in corrosive toxins that continued to eat at Charmander’s flesh.

“Way to go,” Nicole said with a smirk on her face.

“No one asked you,” James told her as he told his Charmander to use Flamethrower, not worrying about what it could do to Nicole’s apartment. A rush of fire came splurging out of Charmander’s mouth destroying everything in its pathway, then landing a direct hit on the Venipede, causing to faint. Soon after that, Charmander also fainted due to the intense pain from the Toxic.

James called his Charmander into its ball, then came to the conclusion that catching this Venipede could help him with future Venipede problems. He grabbed a spare ball from his orange backpack he had brought with him and tossed it at the fainted Venipede. Its body was quickly engulfed in red, then swallowed into the Pokéball.

Claimed.

Introduction: This was a bit confusing, to be quite honest. You quickly moved into the main plot and never really cared to explain what Nicole was doing in the kitchen before she found the bug, or even how she noticed the bug. It would have also been interesting to describe when Nicole lost her mother to bug attacks. How was she killed? What bug was it? Make sure to elaborate on your introductions to make way for the plot. A confused reader is an unhappy reader.

And by the way:

She was in her kitchen that contained most things you would find in any other apartment; a refrigerator, stove and a microwave.

Really? That’s really obvious. Don’t do things like this. (Yesterday was Thursday, Thursday. Today it is Friday, Friday. ;3)

Plot: Nicole is terrified by a swarm of Venipedes and calls an exterminator. He quickly solves the problem while hopelessly flirting with Nicole.

This is a very simple, short plot that would have been more interesting with some kind of twist. I understand that the story is short and isn’t supposed to be a complex, suspenseful story, but you could have included something that keeps the reader interested. The story was lacking that.

Also, everything just happened all of a sudden. The story was very fast-paced, and not a good kind of it. You shouldn’t just flip from one thing to another. Make everything flow together. After Nicole called, you automatically went to when the exterminator arrived. That time period could have been the time where Nicole attempted to get off the chair, but be bitten by a Venipede. It could’ve been the time where Nicole nearly panicked from fright. Try not to do to switch from scene to scene so abruptly.

Grammar/Spelling: There weren’t many ongoing mistakes here. I noticed that you had quite a lot of typos. Make sure to use a spell check and grammar check, because if it gets too serious, a story could be very hard to understand. I noticed that you had a problem with your commas.

Venipede took the pain, but then retaliated with a Toxic; a medium-sized, purple, ball of poisonous liquid…

For example, the comma after purple doesn’t need to be there. You don’t need to put a comma after the last adjective if there are two or more describing a noun, unless you add a conjunction after the first comma. You could also move around the sentence.

Venipede took the pain, but then retaliated with a Toxic; a medium-sized, purple ball of poisonous liquid…

Venipede took the pain, but then retaliated with a Toxic; a medium-sized, and purple, ball of poisonous liquid…

Venipede took the pain, but then retaliated with a Toxic; a purple, medium-sized ball of poisonous liquid…

Either would be correct.

Detail/Description: You managed to describe most of the things in the story, but you don’t seem to do it in a way that flows. Sometimes it seemed like you were trying to shove the descriptions down our throats. When you describe things, try to make it all flow. Don’t just put details in to put them in. Describe things as the story is going along. Otherwise, you managed to describe things pretty well. You could use different words in your descriptions though. Try not to use common words a lot, as it can be boring. Overall, it was pretty good.

Length: This was about 6000 characters, a little over the minimum. Elaboration, a better plot, and better descriptions could have lengthened the story a little bit.

Battle: The battle was very short, and that’s not good. The battle should be a good amount of your story, especially if it’s a shorter one. There weren’t many moves done, so you could have lengthened it a bit. I like that you let Charmander take a hit instead of Venipede being easily defeated. I understand that Charmander has an advantage to Venipede, but you could’ve made it a bit longer. Everything seemed very rushed, as if you just wanted to get the battle over with. The battle is a very important part of the story, and a bad one could ruin everything. It was alright, though. Keep this in mind for the future.

Outcome: So, the story wasn’t bad, but there were a few things you could have improved. I hope that you take everything into consideration for your future stories. The story was good enough for the capture, so it’s yours. Venipede was captured!