Twin2: No, Winging It has NOT been abandoned. I just really needed to get this one moving, because it was slowly driving me insane… Next Winging It chapter should be up in a few days, assuming I don't get any detentions or whatnot in between now and then.

Welcome to: Out Of The Darkness.

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One: Pain

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No matter how bad you think it is, the situation could always be worse.

Unless you happened to be me, right here and right now.

Whatever the hell they were doing to me, it bloody hurt. Knives forced themselves into every inch of flesh, burning pain roared all over and my bones themselves felt as if they were splintering from the inside. Plus, my nose itched.

Flashes of light exploded over my eyes in the face of the pain and I could feel my heartbeat pulsing painfully in my arms, in my fingertips, in my head, ears, feet, toes; everywhere my blood was sent, it took with it a fiery pain that never slackened.

But what clinched this situation as the worst I'd ever known was the fact that I couldn't fight back. I was trapped. Options: zero.

Nothing I could do seemed to make the pain stop or even slow it down. It simply gained ground, more and more, fighting its way up the pain threshold. But through all this I refused to scream, only fought silently, my face rigid with pain and hatred. I twisted to the side, trying to escape the tight bonds that held me down, but they only seemed to dig in more, adding to the pain.

A final, spearing agony shot through my head and I screamed aloud at last, arching my back against the pain and fighting more furiously than before. The scream slowly changed into a piercing shriek, and the people around me were forced to cower with their hands over their ears, now yelling in pain themselves.

The last note of the screech died away and I fell into a blackness so deep I hoped I would never wake up.

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As soon as I registered my wakefulness, I wanted to go back to sleep.

Pain still streamed through me like fire in my veins, but it was duller than before. Not exactly bearable, but I could handle it. Just.

I could feel my hands shaking, needle-sharp pains burning in the tips of my fingers and toes. My skin prickled all over but I still couldn't move to scratch it.

I let out a soft, mournful howl, surprising myself. I only made that noise when I was extremely upset, and it sounded more haunting than usual. Then a face shifted into my view and I snarled, the sound a vicious, feral curse.

He didn't move back at all, instead leaning closer and inspecting the air next to my head as if it was the resting place of the Hope Diamond. I twitched and strained, trying desperately to free myself and cause some serious damage. I tossed my head angrily and felt that it was slightly off-balance, but I was too furious to quite care.

He leaned a little closer and I snapped at him, the movement odd for a human but currently my only defensive mechanism. He certainly jerked away fast enough at the prospect of meeting my teeth.

I growled, long and low, letting my lips curl away from my teeth: a clear threat. The man gulped and backed away as the blackness pulled me under again.

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This time when I woke up, the first thing I noticed was the absence of the pain.

I wasn't numb: I could feel all of my fingers when I drummed them against the floor. I was just… not in pain. Odd. Very odd.

I didn't want to open my eyes. I was still so tired… it felt as if all the life had been sucked out of me…

"Hey, kid, you alright?"

I didn't move, although my heartbeat was now going double the speed it should. I wasn't alone.

"Kid, you've been asleep for two days. If you don't wake up soon I'm gonna assume you're in a coma."

This was all I needed. Yep. I really needed someone to be forcing me awake when I would rather just lie back and die in the mere memory of the pain I had been through, forget the pain itself. At the recollection of it my lower back began to ache from my frantic thrashing and my wrists and ankles, where the ties had been cutting deep, started to sting.

I twitched slightly and then opened my eyes slowly. It was blurry and unfocused; the lights were too bright. I shut them again, trying to just fall back into darkness…

Something prodded my shoulder.

"Upupupupupupupupupupupupupupupupupupup!" a new voice demanded loudly. "Upupupupupupupupupupupupup!" Now it was poking me in time with every syllable. I growled.

"Keisha, stop that," said the first voice. The poking didn't stop.

I let out a soft, dull hiss of warning, but knew I didn't have the strength to back it up.

"Hey, it's alive!" said someone else sarcastically. "Darn, that means I don't get to eat it!"

"Pipe down, Titan, you'll scare it. Don't you remember what happened when someone pissed off Arden?"

"Vividly," said 'Titan' dryly. "But I'm hungry."

"Well, this one looks about as dangerous as her."

Alright. They'd piqued my interest now. I wanted to see what was going on and if I was in any danger. I opened my eyes again, and everything was a little less blurry than before. Someone was watching me: not close enough that I felt threatened. I focused on the face, ironing out the blur in my vision.

It was a boy of… eighteen? Nineteen? His eyes were bright blue, the clear blue of a cloudless sky. There were odd ridges above his eyes, tinged green, while the rest of his skin was pale and tinged ever-so-slightly tan-yellow. Most of his hair was cropped quite short, but from what I could see, it was a dull blond. His arms were crossed over his chest and I could see long, unnatural protrusions coming from them shaped and coloured like elongated leaves. They looked sharp. His feet were bare, revealing slightly clawed toes, and he wore a blue polo shirt with black jeans.

"You alright, kid?" he asked again, and I coupled his image with the first voice I'd heard. "They threw you in two days ago and you haven't moved since."

I bared my teeth but otherwise didn't bother to reply, not thinking it needed one, and instead concentrated on pushing myself up from the floor. My muscles strained and I remembered how badly I'd mistreated them earlier, but I got myself enough off the ground to pull my legs under me so that I was sitting up cross-legged and then took the time to examine my surroundings.

There were seven or eight other people in the room, either sitting on the floor or the table, or leaning against walls. They were all not quite human: a boy who was looking at me with faint interest had a strip of steel running down the bridge of his nose and it carved through his hairline into a dangerous-looking spike at the back of his head. Stout ribbons of steel hung from his arms, not listlessly, but stiff, razor-edged and dangerous. His own eyes were brown.

A tall, lanky-looking girl was curled underneath the table and she watched me curiously. Her eyes were hazel, standing out from her bluish skin, and her ears seemed to have been swapped for a pair of small white wings. A white nub of a horn protruded from her forehead, between her glittering eyes.

There were several others, but the other one who was close to me seemed the least human of the lot. The girl who had no doubt been the one poking me had hard-looking, slightly green-shaded skin, and a humanoid body, but her legs were built more sturdily than a human's ever would, with only three toes and dangerous-looking claws. Two pairs of insectoid wings emerged from her shoulders, cream-white papery membrane stretched between rigid green struts. But her hands… had been swapped for blades. Long, dangerous-looking ones.

I understood then, quite suddenly, that she had been spliced, hybridised. She was a cross between a Scyther and a human. They all were, but with different Pokémon.

I swallowed, already guessing at what had happened to me, and looked at a cold, polished metal wall. My reflection looked back solemnly. All of my long hair had turned white, all the way down to the tips, framing my tanned face. A gem of black stone was set in my forehead. My hands were clawed, and my bare feet were both clawed and covered in fine, snowy fur. My neck and shoulders were also enveloped in the silky fur, along with parts of my hands and wrists. A blade of ebony rose from the side of my head and pale grey-blue eyes glared back from my reflection.

That was all the hint I needed. I had been turned into an Absol hybrid. A blend of canine and feline instincts.

"How the hell did this happen?" I asked bluntly, tossing my head slightly and feeling the slight weight of the blade – it wasn't the full size of an Absol blade. I was panicking inside but I wouldn't let the weakness show. "How did they do to us?" I've never been famous for my tact.

A boy spliced with a dark-type (I suspected a Mightyena from the black streaks on his cheeks and arms and unnaturally black and grey hair) up the back sneered, "We don't ask. None of us are scientists. We just sign up and boom, you're a hybrid."

It clicked. "You volunteered for this?!" I asked, completely stupefied.

"You didn't?" he asked back.

I felt a chill. The last thing I remember is one hell of a headache. And then waking up on the operating table, and bloody hell, it hurt. I shifted my weight and winced as something moved painfully underneath me. Kneeling to take the weight off it, I glanced back and yelped, self-control gone. "What the hell?! I have a tail! A tail!"

"Wait. You didn't volunteer?" the Mightyena boy intervened. The shock on my face probably clued him in, I thought bitterly.

"No," I said flatly, emotionlessly, not letting them see any more of me than was absolutely necessary. I was walking home from school and then my memory blacks out. What the hell is going on?

"Well, we all volunteered," he said snobbishly, making me curl my hands – and claws – in apprehensive irritation.

"I didn't," said the boy who'd first spoken.

"I didn't," said the Scyther girl, Keisha, I think her name was.

"I didn't," said the steel-edged boy that I now recognised as a Skarmory hybrid. "I was out on the streets and I got grabbed. Didn't wake up til the whole thing was done."

"They took me out of my own house," said Keisha calmly.

"My parents sold me to them." I stared at him in shock, and he smiled quite cheerfully. "Name's Iridium. Welcome to the life of a Pokémorph."