A/N: So, this is the actual rewrite of an old fic of mine called Spiteful Mutation. This is also an optional prequel to the story Deceptive Ataraxia. You don't need to read it, but that's up to you.

Also, I've marked this T, but hell if I know. Let me know if at any point you think it breaks the M barrier. The sequel certainly does...

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Chapter 1; Descent into a Nightmare

"Oh?" the man drawled, his only visible eye lit with amusement as he regarded the image held on the pad's screen. The clotted red color of it was almost washed out to gray under the clinically bright lights. "My, but she did grow to take so strongly after her father. Where is this?"

"Hearthome City, in Sinnoh." The subordinate's voice was clear, despite the way his head was bowed, eyes respectfully averted as he waited.

"Ha! What a lovely coincidence." He passed the pad back. "Send a message to the Hearthome lab's head and order the girl brought in. Tell them to document thoroughly, and…" the man tapped his fingers against his lips, thoughtful, the red lens over his right eye gleaming as he turned and went to the console nearest him. A moment later he held a pokéball with a black x painted across the top. "They are to use this."

"Sir, Faust managed to lock these before he fled…" the subordinate stated hesitantly.

"True, and while it is tragic that we cannot release the pokémon within safely, an example must still be made. And the lab only requires the genetic material, not a living specimen to take it from. Send it."

"Yes, sir."

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"Is that her?" Kevin asked dubiously, Kirlia making an agreeing sort of noise at his side. Erebos glanced away from the tech on his wrist, following the direction of Kevin's eyes, and grunted an affirmative noise as he pushed himself away from the wall. "Why her?"

Erebos turned just enough to look at Kevin over his shoulder, weirdly forgettable face uncannily blank, dark hazel eyes hard. "You should know better than to ask questions like that by now." It was still a little jarring to see him without a white labcoat thrown on over his normal, civilian clothes.

"I know! I do, but—" Kevin gestured across the emptying lobby of the Contest Hall, at the girl dressed in a janitor's jumpsuit, mopping up a mess with a vaguely hostile expression on her pale face. Kevin knew her stats from the profile they had been given: Naira Alfelm, 18 year old female –two years older than him!–, dark green hair, pewter gray eyes, no pokémon to speak of. Recent hire of the Hall's janitorial staff. No family in the city. He knew, okay, but she wasn't anyone special, not like the business heirs or rising stars or rich kids that had already been snatched. "If they wanted some normal girl, there are easier places to get one. Less public ones."

"Shut your mouth, boy," Erebos warned him lowly, pointedly jerking his head to bring attention to the group of trainers passing close by. The man's eyes were narrowed to dangerous slits. "The next time you suggest snatching a prostitute, I'll let you explain why to Morgan."

"I didn't!" Kevin defended hotly, prickling horror shaking his spine at the thought. Kirlia made a small sound and tugged on the hem of his shirt, pulling his attention away from the argument and back to their target. Kevin felt his nerves start back up again when he saw her leaving the Hall, hair hanging loose around her face from its previous messy bun, a patched jacket thrown on over her jumpsuit. He swallowed and hoped Erebos couldn't see.

"Come on," the man grunted, and Kevin took one more deep breath before following his senior out into the dark. He'd known what he'd be getting involved in when he'd chosen living with his father's sister instead of moving to another region; what happened after was all on him.

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Naira ducked her head and pulled her jacket in a little tighter, quickening her pace and wishing again that she had enough money to actually live in the city rather than on the outskirts. Yeah, the scenery was nice, but walking home after dark every night got a little…unsafe, when the wild pokémon got rowdy. A benefit of working in the Contest Hall was being able to take any discarded poffins, and those were great distractions, but sooner or later the seasons would turn and that walk would get cold.

"Ah, excuse me, miss?" Naira glanced up, blowing bangs out of her face, and saw a nervous looking teen standing by the mouth of an alley just before her. She stopped, a little impatient, and he offered her a queasy smile. "Um, sorry, I was hoping you could help me really quick? There's something wrong with my Kirlia and my gear isn't working so I can't call for help."

"Why don't you just return it to its pokéball?" she asked a little blankly, and then pointed a thumb over her shoulder. "The Pokémon Center is two streets back that way and one north." The boy grimaced and looked into the alley, shifting. Naira narrowed her eyes, suspicious, but she was pretty sure she could beat the hell out of this boy if he was up to something.

"He keeps breaking out when I try. Please, I need help, just, do you have gear? Can I use your phone?" She scrutinized him hard for another minute. He appeared a little younger than her, face still a little round with baby fat, chestnut brown hair falling into grass green eyes where it'd come loose from its gel. He also appeared genuinely distressed, eyes flickering into the alley more frequently the longer she went without speaking. Naira sighed and pulled her hands from the minimal warmth of her pockets, cheap, clunky phone grasped loosely in her left. The teen's face lit up.

"Yeah, sure, here. You want me to look at him? I know a little bit about pokémon." Well, as much as she could pick up with her father adamantly refusing to allow her to leave on a journey. Still, she knew enough. She'd helped injured wild pokémon fairly frequently back in Oreburgh.

(It still stung to think about how she'd left home, but… Less, now, with three whole months between then and now.)

"Please and thank you!" The boy said, audibly relieved as he took her phone and turned to the dark alley with her. Naira could just barely make out the white and pale green figure in the night-dark shadows, a curtain of black hanging deeply between the two buildings. Then— "Kirlia, now!"

Naira hit the ground hard as her feet were wretched out from under her by a wave of psychic force. She opened her mouth to yell when a deeper shadow separated from the rest, and a broad palm covered her mouth, an arm pulling her up and pinning her back-to-chest with someone considerably larger than the teen who had baited this trap. Naira yelled then, anyway, angry and not caring that it was muffled as she tried to bite, threw back elbows, tangled her legs with the man's and tried to make him fall. He was strong, though.

"Stop fighting, girl, or I'll hurt you," he said lowly –threat or warning?– and squeezed the hand over her mouth a little harder, bruising, his other arm like a band of iron around her middle. Naira got her right arm free and immediately reached back to try and claw the guy's eye out. He grunted. "Damn it, Kevin, will you stick her with the tranq already!"

She felt the boy coming up on her right and used the man's solid hold on her to fold up her legs and kick the teen with all her might. The radiating pain in her ankle was worth it to hear the boy go down with a wheeze and a weak retch—she got him right in the diaphragm. She barely had time to feel spitefully vindicated when the man growled and threw Naira down, and her head cracked hard against the dirty pavement, her vision blooming into a starburst of bright white and black fireworks. Then the hand was back over her mouth and she felt a sharp stab into the side of her neck.

Her vision came back just to fade out again, everything gone cold and numb, the shadows of two men and a pokémon gathered around, blocking the stars.

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The others had already stripped the girl naked and secured her to the table by the time Erebos had thrown on his labcoat and shooed that troublesome boy on to Morgan. When they noticed him enter, they parted, en masse, to allow him access to their newest acquisition, but Erebos gestured for them to continue. Most of his attention was fixed on the slight redhead lingering at the outer edges of the room, separate from the dozen or so other scientists. When he got closer, Erebos saw the other man was passing a pokéball between his half-covered hands, the red top scored by a thick black x.

"She's a bit thin," said the redhead without preamble, large, golden-brown eyes peering at him through limp strands of dark auburn hair. "Too bad this needs to happen immediately. If she was in better health there would be a much greater chance of success."

"Does it matter?" Erebos queried drolly to his only superior here, gesturing to the camera pointing at the occupied table. "Either way, they get what they want." The slighter man's eyes drifted away from him, giving the comatose young woman a clinical once-over as the others began inserting and securing the score of needles and tubes necessary for the process. Any minute now.

"Of course it matters, Erebos," he said, tucking the dead pokéball into the pocket of his overlarge labcoat. "They may want her for shock value, but we can actually make use of her if we succeed. What use is another corpse? We have plenty of those, already."

Erebos grunted rather than disagreeing aloud. He, personally, would rather a specimen to dissect than one that would make as much trouble as he suspected this one would. He'd seen the pattern. If they fought hard during the take-down, they usually came out the other side just as hard, with more power behind their swings. And because of a special order, this one wasn't getting something generally harmless.

Instead of a domestic little Deerling like he would've chosen for this one, she was getting a dose of battle-trained Grovyle. As if they didn't already have their hands full with the previously League-ready Sneasel. (Or Chess' freakishly strong Kricketune, but that was something else entirely, and not something he should be dwelling on right now, lest the disgust actually show on his face.)

"Ah, here we go," was murmured quietly beside him, and then, from the lead tech at the head of the table: "Enzyme 01 introduced…now, begin count, 90 seconds. Everyone at your positions, final checks."

All but the four necessary personnel cleared a space around the table, and those four plus the lead carefully slid the needles of their precisely 2 oz syringes into the fresh arterial ports connected to their specimen's body. The room had quieted until the only sound was the white-noise of running computers and the muted beeping of the screen tracking her heartbeat, quickly increasing. 110 bpm, 120, 145…

"Five, four, three, two, one, go." Said the lead firmly, and the four at each of her limbs depressed the plungers on their syringes, pushing oily-clear fluid in. "Two minutes," And those four moved back, until it was only the lead at their specimen's side, syringe ready at the port closest to her heart. Behind him, the screen let out the warbling tone indicating dangerous tachycardic arrhythmia, and Erebos saw the other man's face crease in annoyance, though his lips continued to silently count; 118, 119, 120, now, and the last syringe was depressed silently.

One second passed. Five. Ten. The alarm stopped, and finally…A bright white glow, reminiscent of evolution, began to overtake her skin from the heart outward. By the time the glow had spread to the tips of her toes, her form was already changing, body gone mutable in a way Erebos doubted would ever become commonplace. He listened enough to the others to hear that the energy output was within the expected numbers, then turned to leave. The process usually took about an hour, give or take, and he could use that time for more productive things.

"Erebos," he stopped short and grunted acknowledgement, but didn't turn to look at the redhead. "I'm serious; if she survives the initial transformation, you will insure that she stays that way. No 'accidents'. We don't seem to have the best luck with grass types, and I want to study one. Be good, hmm?"

"Fine," Erebos said neutrally, gritting his teeth when the petite man only hummed again and moved towards the glowing specimen. Sometimes he really hated his coworkers, but the job was too interesting to quit just for that.

Even if he wouldn't be killed if he tried to defect. Or –he glanced one more time at what had once been a human woman –worse.