To everyone who knows him, Nando has always loved music and to be able to perform for others, seeming almost obsessed with it. But what if, when he was young, something terrible happened to him (or rather, was done to him) a long time ago? Something that nearly made it so he could never hear or play music ever again?
Experimenting Fear is a Pokémon: The Series fanfic by blackstarlight17. It can be read here
or here.
This fanfic provides examples of:
- Ax-Crazy: The scientist, who gleefully kidnaps and brutally tortures random people For Science!
- Bring My Brown Pants: Being a young boy in a horrific situation, Nando repeatedly wets himself as he's being tortured by the scientist.
- The Cameo: Although not referred to by name, Dr. Fuji from Pokémon: The First Movie is the one who performs the surgery to repair Nando's damaged ears.
- The Cameo: Ash, Dawn, and Brock appear in the final scene, meeting up with Nando when he is an adult.
- Children Are Innocent: Watching Ash and his friends happily talking amongst themselves, Nando reflects on the fact that they don't know how cruel the world can be, but that he's glad they have never experienced such horrors as he has.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: The scientist exploits Nando's fear of losing his hearing because of his love for music, blasting his ears with high-pitched sound frequencies, then shattering his eardrums by firing a gun right next to his head.
- A Day in the Limelight: This story centers around Nando, a minor character from Pokémon the Series: Diamond and Pearl.
- Dream-Crushing Handicap: Subverted — after being mutilated and rendered deaf by the evil scientist, Nando's parents believe that he will never be able to become a Pokémon Trainer. However, help comes in the form of a doctor who performs a miraculous surgery that allows the boy's eardrums to be rebuilt.
- Driven to Madness: At least some of the scientist's victims have gone insane from the tortures inflicted on them.
- Driven to Suicide: When he sees the scientist holding a gun, Nando silently wishes it would be used to kill him.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: The epilogue shows that Nando has grown into a fully independent young man and achieved his dream of being a Pokémon Trainer while having grown past the trauma of what happened to him as a child.
- Entitled Bastard: After Alice kicks her mother out of the house for her abuse of Nando, the older woman protests that her health is poor and that she doesn't have enough money to pay for her medication and doctor's appointments. For understandable reasons, this does not move Alice's heart.
- Friendless Background: Nando does not have any friends because he's scared of them seeing his terrible home life.
- For the Evulz: The scientist outright says he already did the hearing experiment on somebody else, but he does it to Nando anyway for apparently this reason.
- Get Out!: Alice wastes no time kicking her mother out of the house after discovering that she has been treating Nando horribly behind her back.
- Happy Place: When the scientist threatens him if his heartrate doesn't slow down, Nando calms himself down by thinking about traveling through Sinnoh with his own Pokémon, playing music for people and making them smile.
- Hold Your Hippogriffs: Multiple characters use "Arceus" in place of "God".
- Harmful to Minors: Nando has a really bad time in this story, being kidnapped by an evil scientist who forces him to face his worst fear for the sake of a sadistic experiment.
- Improbable Infant Survival: Many of the scientist's previous victims are noted to have died from the tortures inflicted on them, yet Nando is able to survive, and he's only ten.
- I Want My Mommy!: The "played for drama /
Nightmare Fuel" version; Nando pleads to go home to his parents and screams for them as he's being tortured.Nando: Why me? I didn't do anything wrong! I wanna go back home! I wanna go back to my Mommy and Dad! - Karma Houdini: The scientist is never caught or taken to task for his abuse of Nando or the other people he experimented on.
- Last Disrespects: Nando thinks to himself that, when his grandmother is dead, he will come to her grave and dance on it, then insult, yell, scream at and even spit on it as she has done to him.
- Laughing Mad: After being tortured with high-pitched sound frequencies, having them turned off and realizing he can still hear, Nando lets out a hysterical, insane-sounding laugh.
- Malevolent Masked Men: The evil scientist wears a mask that resembles a Yamask's.
- No Name Given: The narrative doesn't reveal the name of Nando's grandmother or the evil scientist.
- Noodle Incident: The scientist has already conducted the hearing experiment on someone else. We aren't privy to the details, but it was almost certainly just as bad.
- Obnoxious In-Laws: Nando's grandmother regularly torments her son-in-law, but her daughter does not realize how cruel her mother really is, driving a wedge between them. After she is exiled from the house, Nando's parents are able to fix their relationship, implying she was the most responsible for driving them apart.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Nando's grandmother calls him "some Arceus-damned queer" and a "little fag".
- Precision F-Strike: Alice's last words to her mother are "Fuck you!" after banishing her from the house for abusing her son Nando behind her back.
- Relationship-Salvaging Disaster: Nando's parents Alice and Ronaldo are on the brink of divorce because of various issues that include his father's gambling debt and his grandmother driving a wedge between them. It is only after the trauma of finding out their son has been kidnapped and tortured that Alice discovers how her mother has really been treating her son. She immediately banishes her mother from the home, and afterwards she and her husband are able to make up and repair their relationship, falling in love again once more.
- Shameful Strip: Although mercifully the actual act happens off-page, Nando awakens to find himself wearing nothing but his underwear.
- Serial Killer: The masked scientist, who kidnaps people and experiments on them to see how they react to being faced with their worst fears, not caring if they die in the process.
- Shout-Out: According to the author, the story's concept was inspired by the horror film Dread.
- Stress Vomit: Nando throws up from a combination of stress and fear when the scientist produces a gun and he thinks he's about to be killed.
- Sudden Name Change: In the original version of the story, Nando's mother was named Nancy. A later revision of the story changed her name to Alice.
- Tantrum Throwing: After waking up in the hospital and realizing he can no longer hear, Nando starts screaming frantically for his parents while throwing things around the room.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: Doesn't actually happen, but Alice's mother mutters that she should have poisoned her daughter's drink when she was pregnant so she would have miscarried Nando before he was born.
- Terms of Endangerment: The scientist mockingly calls Nando "my dear boy."
- Time Skip: The final scene takes place when Nando is an adult and has recovered from the ordeal of what he went through when he was ten.
- Tragic Mistake: Because he's in such a hurry to get his first Pokémon, Nando doesn't wait for his parents to take him to Professor Rowan's lab, decides to go alone, and gets kidnapped by a Serial Killer.
- Traumatic Haircut: As part of his ear surgery, Nando's hair has to be cut almost to the scalp. As an adult, he lets it grow long and beautiful again.
- Troubled Fetal Position: In the cover art, Nando is frantically clutching his hair and surrounded by a red background with evilly laughing faces.
- What Happened to the Mouse?:
- After the Time Skip, the fate of Nando's grandmother is not mentioned after she's banished from the family home. According to a comment by the author, by the time Nando is an adult, she's most likely dead.
- It is also not mentioned if the scientist was ever caught or if he's still out there somewhere.
- Would Hurt a Child: Nando is only 10 when he's abducted and tortured by an insane scientist who wants to discover his reaction to his worst fear.
