Disclaimer: I do not own Pokémon.
Rated: [T] However, this story will be rated [M] in future chapters for adult situations, violence, and more.
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Prologue: Capturing the Devil's Pawn
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Viridian City: Team Rocket HQ – Hidden Lab Wing [11:39 PM]
"Attention: All combat personnel, there has been a security breach in the West Plaza; Sector 21. Report there immediately and proceed accordingly," blared the speakers in every part of Team Rocket's Experimental Facility.
"Good job, Luca," a young man dressed in an interesting dark blue tuxedo murmured as he ran down the barren hallways of the building. He stopped suddenly as a grunt rounded a corner ahead of him and sent a hail of bullets his way.
With a swift dodge to the side he back-stepped and took cover behind a metal storage box near his position. He felt blood coming from where two bullets had grazed his cheek. "My, my…Giovanni must really value that puppet of his, since his boys are using guns and not Pokémon. Too bad he's going to lose it in a few minutes." His body became enveloped in a light violet energy, causing an unknown wind to play with his untamed hair.
"Flash and clear!" the grunt shouted as he threw a flash grenade down the hall to blind the intruder. He pushed off the wall and ran forward as a few more grunts came to his aid. However, none of them were expecting a large scale attack from their solitary opponent.
"Gaia Breaker!" the young man shouted as he jumped from his temporary cover and into their collective sight. Multiple small pools of vibrant blue light appeared before him and sent trails of beam energy straight into the grunts path. It cut through each of them, brutally and efficiently. "Sorry, guys!" He resumed his brisk sprint, comically using their bodies as stepping stones towards his destination.
"Attention: All combat personnel, there has been a security breach in the South Lab; Sector 43. Report there immediately and proceed accordingly," another announcement came from the speakers.
'I take it there have been no distractions, Riley?' a telepathic message voiced in the young man's head.
'Haha! Just a few stragglers, Luca.' He broke off his next thought as the room he had been looking for came into view, unguarded because of the security broadcasting. 'Meet me at coordinates 40:26:46N, 79:56:55W of this building and be prepared to teleport us to the Viridian City entrance. I've found Giovanni's doll.'
"Here goes nothing…" Riley braced himself to eliminate a deadly target modified from Giovanni's sick lab experiments. From his information network, he found out it was supposed to be a prototype for Team Rocket's SS Program, or Super Soldier Program. So whatever was beyond the 12-inch thick, steel plated door, had to be destroyed no matter what. Organic life or not.
Riley blasted the door through with a large exertion of wave force from his aura reserves. "Time to-" his words got caught in his throat as he took in the image before him. The room was fully padded, and in the middle of it was a liquid-filled glass tube with a male child inside. Numerous vein-like wires were attached to its body, with an over-sized metal helmet covering the head and emitting strange flashes from the bulbs on the side. The whole thing screamed inhumane, and was completely wrong. Giovanni was breeding life at its earliest stage to his will, not modifying his current supply of brainwashed comrades.
'Your pulse hitched severely, are you all right?!' Lucario's concerned telepathic voice chimed in, breaking Riley from his stupor.
'That bastard, Giovanni…he's cultivating a child to become his future Super Soldier. I…' Riley cursed softly as he knew time was running thin. But he didn't have the strength to kill the being inside the glass tube.
'An Aura Guardian draws strength from personal ethics, not from bad decisions. You know what to do,' the sagely voice of Luca, his longtime friend and teacher, advised him.
The blue tuxedo wearing man nodded in affirmation with a smug look on his face. 'You're right, Luca. I've already got quite an ironic scheme planned in my head.' His only reply was a strained sigh from his friend.
Riley shattered the glass with a solid fist and caught the boy as he fell from the liquid suspension. He quickly, but carefully as well, tore the wires from the child's skin. He was about to take the helmet off when he felt a familiar aura appear next to him.
Lucario paused for a few seconds, digesting the status of their new luggage. 'He'll be fine, let's go.' His paw latched onto Riley's cuff just as a trigger for detonation was pulled.
"Sayonara, Giovanni!" the young aura guardian yelled as he dissipated with Lucario.
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Route 1 [1:23 AM]
"Those were some fireworks, weren't they?" Riley asked as he reminisced the colossal explosion that had taken place in the center of Viridian City. He may have been one of the more virtuous of people when it came to peace, but he never ceased to get excited when a good blast or two would happen.
'How much C4 did you pack into that place exactly?' Lucario asked.
"One in each room, so…" He was going to use his fingers to count but nearly forgot the unconscious boy in his arms, now wrapped in a generic traveling blanket. "I'd say at least sixty." The young man responded cheerfully.
Lucario shook his head at his partner's overboard antics. The wolf-Pokémon signaled to him as they approached a wooden sign in the veil of the dark. 'We're finally here. Let's hope our old friend can assist us.'
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Pallet Town: Professor Oak's Lab [1:30 AM]
A series of agitated moans, followed by a hefty number of risqué curses, filled the lab as the prestigious Professor Oak broke another pen. He hated all levels of calculus, especially theory. And somehow, it had found its way into his branch of study, Pokémon Research.
He scratched his grey crop of hair irritably and marked off another failed equation. Instead of continuing, he huffed defiantly and sat back in his chair. "I'll just leave it for Delia…" A loud rapping on his front door made him fall back, adding to his already sizeable headache. The professor didn't seem to notice what time it was.
"I'm coming, I'm coming!"
As soon as he unlocked his door to address the late-night visitor he was pushed aside quickly by two figures. "What in the-"
"Samuel, something's wrong with this kid! He's convulsing, I think. Luca and I tried infusing him with our Aura but it just worsened his condition!" the distressed voice of Riley perked his concern rather than anger.
"Lay him on the table in the next room and I'll see what I can do!" The professor's surgical mode flipped on as he saw the boy thrashing around, the mouth opening in what seemed to be silent screaming.
Forty minutes passed as Riley and Lucario paced in the visitor's area of the generously sized house.
"Did we do the right thing, infusing him with our energy?" the apprentice Aura Guardian asked.
'Yes. Generally, it works on all living beings. I have never heard of it backfiring…' Lucario responded while in deep thought.
A few more excruciating minutes passed while the two wondered what kind of primitive treatments the child had gone through while in Giovanni's possession.
Samuel Oak walked in, and immediately felt the tense atmosphere. "The boy will be fine. He was just suffering from a form of shock and a significant amount of blood loss. He'll be awake by tomorrow morning, most likely."
The mood heightened considerably, but he wanted to know what had happened. "I took it upon myself to do a few DNA tests and took a blood sample. Even with the use of the military's best tracking software, I could not find any relations to the boy. His strands are very unique indeed …"
Lucario picked up on the professor's silent inquiry and motioned for Riley to let up.
Riley nodded and began to speak. "First off, nice to see you again, too. And second, the injuries and trauma have not been caused by us. It's all of Giovanni's doing."
Oak crossed his arms sternly. "Explain."
The young man smoothed out his tuxedo casually before sitting down on the gaudy sofa next to him. "Five weeks ago I heard a certain rumor from a reliable friend of mine. He said that Team Rocket was getting excited over a project of theirs that had been in execution for nearly eight years, and it was supposedly going to advance their influence tenfold."
"What could do that?" the professor asked skeptically.
"…A soldier able to be deadly proficient in all forms of combat. Like a veteran, except without the twenty or so years of experience. Team Rocket dubbed it the SS Program, otherwise known as the Super Soldier Program. It involves the injection of various drugs to increase strength, endurance, and tolerance to injury. Alongside those injections, the persons involved would be subjected to assembled visual lessons in a hypnotic matter, to condition them into the best, and most efficient of warriors within a couple of years time." Riley ran a hand through his messy hair.
"Only Giovanni would go to such lengths for more power…" Oak commented to himself.
Riley continued on with his story. "So hearing this, and knowing that my source was trustworthy, I set off to go and take out the facility said to be harboring the equipment and soldiers. To make things short, when I got to the damned room appointed as the SS Program setup, I only found one tube in there." Riley motioned to the neighboring quarter where the boy was laying down, "And that kid was in it, connected to all these small vessels and with his head stuck in that metal scrap we brought in."
Professor Oak rubbed his chin hard. He knew he should have ignored the insistent knocking. "So that young lad is Giovanni's 'Super Soldier'!?"
Lucario nodded affirmatively from his spot, leaning against the cold plastered wall.
If his hair wasn't grey already, he knew it was now. "So what do you want me to do?"
"Hah!" Riley stood up triumphantly. "I knew you'd come through for us! All we need you to do is watch over him till he's of age."
"Of age?" Oak asked confused.
"He has the potential, just like me, which means I'm not the last Aura Guardian in the world anymore." The young man said with a stern face.
'Probably even greater potential than you, Riley,' Lucario added, having felt the boy's impressive aura since they had taken him.
"You're kidding me…Giovanni was playing around with ancestral DNA? He couldn't have gotten it off of you."
"Exactly, I was surprised too. But that won't be a problem anymore. I destroyed the whole Team Rocket HQ Lab Facility. Anything DNA or blood related would have been kept there." Riley grinned as he remembered the plumes of smoke and the enraged fire explosions.
"Now why can't you two take care of him? I don't really have time to take care of children anymore, let alone a boy five years old." Oak said with a serious expression. "This boy, if anything, needs a family to grow up with. If he still remembers whatever went on in that facility…there could be a problem."
Riley palmed his face irritably. "Well, Luca and I can't provide that kind of environment. We live on a razor sharp edge. That's why we have to wait till he's old enough to understand and appropriately use his powers."
Lucario dropped his head lower, shamed that he forgot the circumstances behind the boy's background. A thought clicked in. 'Maybe he knows someone strong, with the ability to instill the kind of ethics Aura Guardians uphold and at the same time protect the boy from corruption with a decent family,' he said to his partner.
"Hey, Samuel! I've got a brilliant idea that I came up with myself!" Riley clapped his chest proudly, ignoring Lucario's hard gaze. "How about leaving him with someone you know? A person who can guide him down the right path and away from any corruption installed in his head, an individual with a nice developing family to support the kid as well."
The professor's aged eyes narrowed as a minute list of people came to mind. He lit up when his mental highlighter went across one man's name. "There's this one Gym Leader who I know has been complaining about not having a son. He was pretty open to the idea for adoption, and he has a very nice family." He laughed at his two visitor's pleased expressions.
"That's perfect, Sammy!" Riley slapped the older man's back appreciatively. "Now I'm sorry to cut our reunion short, but Luca and I better split before Team Rocket finds us hanging around here. We've got their Super Soldier secured; all that's left is to wait until he matures." The blue tuxedo wearing man gave an exuberant thumb up before his Lucario came from his side and teleported them out of the spacious house.
"So that's what they're up to…using that bastard's own weapon against him." The professor grinned joyously. He felt that Team Rocket's days were numbered. They had always been a thorn in the side for him, and a depressant to the Pokémon world. All he needed to do was make a call to set the plan into motion. "You'd better raise this child right, Norman."
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Pallet Town: Professor Oak's Lab [3:02 PM]
Delia checked over the results of the physical and mental tests with evident interest. The Professor had explained everything to her, and asked that she make sure there were no irregularities in their silent guest, especially within his psyche, before sending him off to his new family.
"Does he check out?" Oak walked over to his assistant's desk.
The petite woman turned her chair to address him and handed over the clipboard with the results. "He's very fit and exceptionally agile for his age. If anything, he's adjusting well to being out of that glass container. No withdrawal symptoms at all." She took off her glasses and stared out the window left of her, where she could see the boy trying to catch a bewildered Oddish.
The professor examined the next sheet. "And he looks fine mentally, no abnormal conditions or signs of even one developing. However you wrote here on the side…" he read on, his mouth turning up considerably. "…that he has no memory of his life these past five years? This is great!"
"Don't get too happy, Professor," Delia warned. "For some reason, it seems he won't speak."
Oak rubbed his chin characteristically. "I guess you would say 'can't' if it was included as an abnormality in his mental check up. Are you sure he simply doesn't know how?"
The red-haired woman shook her head. "No, that seems highly improbable. I wouldn't be surprised if his IQ was in the range of 120-140. He has above average intellect, even for an adult. And he definitely has the motor skills and necessary functions to talk, he just won't."
He made a content sigh as the clock above them caught his attention. "Well, he's still able to act and behave appropriately, right? I have to drop him off soon and explain everything more in-depth to Norman."
Delia smiled motherly. "Yes, he is well behaved by any standards, including mine. Norman will definitely be happy to add 'Ash' to his family unit."
Oak nearly laughed at her odd phrasing at the end, but caught hint of the name before it. "Ash, you say? Where did that come from? Did he say his name was 'Ash'?"
She shook her head. "Sadly, that was the name of the child I was going to give birth to. My doctor commented how he already knew what color my baby's hair would be. He said it would be a dark gray, almost like the soot from a volcano. And this boy, his hair is nearly the same shade. Hence, 'Ash'," Delia explained depressingly.
The professor laid a gentle hand on her shoulder and allowed the serene quiet to settle in before speaking. "I'm sure Ash will grow into a fine man. I'm sorry I didn't ask you first if you wanted him."
Delia allowed a quiet sob to leak out before responding. "No, the family he's going to will be able to raise him better than a widow like me can. I'll just have to wait till he's older to see if he's what I expected my 'Ash' to grow up like."
They watched as Ash was playfully assaulted by a group of giddy Oddish.
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Petalburg City [6:30 PM]
Professor Samuel Oak jumped off his Pidgeot's back as it landed in front of Petalburg City's Gym, home of Ash's adoptive father. The dark-haired boy followed his example and imitated his back-pained posture, either mockingly or out of naivety, he didn't know.
"Samuel! It's nice to see you again, old pal!" A tall man in his late twenties walked over to the two and slapped Oak on the back good naturedly, though the Professor wasn't in the state to return the gesture. He looked down and saw a pair of huge brown eyes stare back at him curiously. "You must be Ash!" he stated happily.
Oak straightened up and nodded. "Yes, that's right. Ash, this is Norman, your father from here on out." He watched as Ash wore a small smile and held up his right hand to shake with Norman. Instead, the larger man took the boy into an unexpected hug.
"Haha!" Norman let the startled Ash drop out of his arms and stepped to the side, revealing a small girl who squeaked in surprise. "C'mon, May! Say hello to your little brother, he's going to live with us starting today."
The Gym Leader couldn't help but laugh harder as May ran back to the house as fast as her small legs could carry her. "No worries, m'boy. Go ahead and get acquainted with her before we settle down for dinner." He smiled as Ash nodded seriously, like he was on some type of mission, and sped off at an amazing speed after her.
Professor Oak grinned, but soon became more serious when he looked Norman straight in the eye. "Let me divulge his major background to you before I leave. It's very important that you know what Ash is, and what he is meant for."
Norman disregarded the Professor's strained demeanor and dragged him over towards the Gym, where his wife was cleaning. "No need to get all stiff Professor, I know what I was in for when you brought up adoption. But if it's that serious, we'll just have to go over it after dinner in the presence of Caroline." He opened the glass-paneled doors and said excitedly, "Now let's see how good you've gotten over the years, Samuel!"
Oak didn't resist, but gave a look that basically said, "I'm too old for this shit," with the creases to emphasize it.
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[Author's Note]
Thank you for reading my second attempt at a Pokémon Fanfiction. My other Pokémon story, Collapse of Frailty, is on a hiatus as I feel it doesn't have the substance or character development needed for the type of genre I'm delving into. The relationships seemed rushed, pushed upon the reader rather than natural and free flowing. In this one, I'm hoping to make each relationship Ash has comprehensible. Like, for example, May will be his sister, making them pretty close. However, because they are not blood related, I find that it'll make for an understandable and easy relationship. But in no way will their personalities change too much. Only Ash will suffer an extreme makeover, due to his circumstances. And the pairings? Well, I'm considering this; Ash x Harem (May/Dawn/Sabrina), but I may switch or take someone out for Cynthia, Erika, Misty, or some other character of interest.
I've also wanted to write this because certain ideas have been spinning in my head. Such as, using Riley, the apprentice Aura Guardian of Lucario, as a freedom fighter of sorts and a future mentor of Ash's. I mean, since Ash has the power to use Aura, why not have Riley, the last potential Aura Guardian, teach him how to use it? Then came the other idea: Ash being some kind of cloned existence with residual DNA of an Aura Guardian. In consequence, Delia isn't his mother anymore nor do the father speculations matter. Of course, there's more to it than that but I'd rather display it in the story.
Each of my stories usually contains a short bio of each major character after the first chapter, so I'll go with that tradition and do it when I post it next. However, I would like to see the responses first before I even think about going on, so I know I'm not totally wasting my time with ideas that the general fandom doesn't think interesting or favorable. And keep in mind, that if the story does go on, it will be rated [M] for future sex, violence, and language. The story will get darker, as Team Rocket is more than some organized gang of thugs in this alternate universe There's going to be three timeskips [Chapters 1, 2, and 3, respectively]. So, please read and review!
PS- Forgive me for any blunt grammar or spelling mistakes you find. I'm not too good with either, and I'm trying my best without a BETA. Also, a sidenote, each chapter I publish tends to be around 4,500-5000+ words (equivalent to about 9 or so pages in MicrosoftWord default format).
