Ancestry
The Mechyena Saga

Obsidian Blade

I. Sticks and Stones.

The bleacher hurt. No, that didn't do it justice. The bleacher hurt a lot. And it was cold, the unforgiving metal crushing my breast underneath me even as the edge dug into my cheek, forced against the cheekbone by the odd angle I'd hit it at. Even though common sense stated clearly that if all this was so I should just get up, I heaved a heavy sigh and closed my eyes, leaning my weight back until I was resting mostly on my knees. The rough cement floor wasn't ideal but an improvement is an improvement.

"Raven!" called my father from the raised arena behind me, his voice harsh with irritation, "Get up, girl!"

I made a cradle of my muscular arms, bound with combat tape almost to the elbow, and rested my head within, unresponsive.

"Well?"

Despite his weight, he made very little sound vaulting the ropes encircling the ring and landing level with the bleachers but it was enough for me to be aware of his approach, thin soles padding on the dusty floor. His massive hand clasped my shoulder too tightly, fingers pressing painfully against my collarbone. It turned me easily, as though I were a rag doll, and I didn't resist, my head rolling limply on my neck so that I wouldn't have to meet his gaze.

Growling angrily, he shook me, barking, "Get up and tell me what went wrong there!"

He knew, of course – this was just another test, one to which I knew the answer. The brief fight was still crystal clear in my mind, from the blows traded to the way his advice played through my skull as we fought. I had been perfectly focused at first…

My eyes never left his chest even as I adjusted my stance a fraction of an inch, hands already balled into fists.

All attacks make the torso move. Even the slightest twitch can give away an oncoming attack.

And there, there it was: a ripple in the cloth hanging from his left shoulder. Immediately I leapt forwards, ducking to avoid the punch, only to have his knee jerk up hard into my stomach, forcing the breath from my lungs.

"Too damn easy to trick!" he bellowed as I staggered back, clutching at my abdomen and gulping in vain for air, "And now wide open!"

Always push every advantage to its full.

Of course he wasn't going to forget his own advice, even when it was his flesh and blood breathless and helpless in front of him. Mercilessly the man threw himself into a hard roundhouse, the black cloth of his fighter's trousers flapping around his muscular calf suddenly becoming the focus of my attention as panic and lack of oxygen distorted my vision.

They always have another trick up their sleeve.

Gritting my teeth, I danced out of the way and then back in again, landing a few solid punches to the soft area just beneath his ribcage. My lungs were filling properly now; I drew deep, steadying breaths as I attempted to gain the advantage from his bad judgement, aiming a swift uppercut to his jaw as he turned.

If your concentration never wavers…

It would have been a good blow, had I waited a split second later. As it was my strike brushed his ear – I'd not anticipated the slight bend in his knee as he came around; I'd thought the jaw would be higher than it turned out to be – and in a flash he had me in a headlock, struggling against his vastly superior strength.

"I taught you better than this!" he exclaimed, holding me long enough to make his superiority unquestionable before hurling me into the ropes, "Don't you listen to a word I say? You could be a champ if you weren't such a waster like your mother!"

Amber eyes watering from the impact, I spun around furiously, incensed by his words. The blood thudded like a drumbeat through my head, drowning out the advice that had guided me before, and with a feral cry I launched myself at him. Blindly I struck again and again, the deflection of every blow making those that followed all the more sloppy with fury.

'You don't understand! You don't even try! You don't even care! You're just a machine and I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!' I raged internally, disengaging abruptly only so as to hurl myself at him in a flying kick.

"That's not concentration!"

His roar broke through my rage-induced stupor too late: he snatched me easily out of the botched kick, teaming my own momentum with his brute force and sending me soaring over the ropes. I wasn't even fast enough to yelp before impact, my full weight crashing down across the first metal bench…

…focus was never something I could maintain squaring off against my father and I felt myself blush angrily at the knowledge, finally raising my gaze to his. As I had expected, his mouth was a line of disapproval, dark eyebrows furrowed together over cold, unsympathetic blue eyes.

His lip curled and he spoke, "And just what makes you think that was a question? Tell me!"

Wetting my lips, I jerked my shoulder free of his grasp and stumbled to my feet, swatting dirt from my grazed knees.

"My problem," I said slowly, my voice low, "Is having ever listened to you."

It wasn't witty and it certainly wasn't smart, but it incited the response I desired. The backhanded swipe caught me across my already bruised cheekbone, snapping my head around audibly and almost taking me off my feet. Pain spread through my cheek and eye socket, drawing an involuntary whimper from my lips before I bit down hard to stifle the rest.

"Get out!" he snarled, "Get the hell out!"

Wasting no time at all I spun on my heel, raising a hand to cradle my cheek, and ran toward the back exit, glancing back from the doorway to see my father standing stock still where I had left him, the harsh light from the brackets overhead casting such dark shadows over his face that he looked as though he had been carved from insensitive stone.

'Much like his heart,' I thought darkly, darting out into the backstreet.

Outside, the sounds of Malmarsh city at rush hour accosted my ears: the low growl of engines as cars crawled through traffic jams punctuated by horn blasts and angry shouts as pedestrians took their lives in their hands and dared to use the pelipper crossing. Tugging the door shut behind me, I made my way toward the street, kicking sodden bits of cardboard that had escaped the dojo's massive bins out of my way. Something squeaked in the gloom, a curly purple tail visible for a second behind a pile of crates before its owner hid itself properly.

I shook my head: rattata were the only Pokémon voluntarily inhabiting this city, and in truth I wasn't at all surprised. Even at street level the smog was visible, if not actually hanging in the air above the river of traffic then staining to black with chemicals the massive stone blocks of the once-grand buildings flanking the road I turned onto. There had been a few trees growing in squares of earth cut into the pavement once but they had since withered and died from the pollution, leaving either brittle wooden spikes yellowed as a result of the pub crawl or just empty plots of dirt, in which rubbish tended to accumulate.

I skirted one of the latter now, then stepped into the gutter to make way for a group of nattering school girls in their sluttish uniforms. All of them managed to pause long enough to eye me up and down with scorn, no doubt offended at having to tolerate such muscle-bound menaces as me cluttering up their pavement.

"You could at least try to cover it up!" one of them called after me once a safe distance separated us, and I didn't need to ask what she meant by it. Wearing black spandex shorts and a white, broad strapped white tank top did nothing to conceal my heavy build, the product of years of intensive training. As far as I was concerned, I was a brick outhouse with poor fashion sense, and I sometimes wished girls like those would adopt the same view and stop applying their standards to me.

Brushing a few errant strands of my rust-red hair from my face and regretting it the instant my fingers grazed my flesh, sending a red hot jolt through my features, I was about to break into a trot when I became aware of someone calling for me. Glancing up, I cast my gaze around until I finally sighted a tall, broad-shouldered figure squirming his way between two cars gridlocked nose-to-tail in the road. I could almost hear the pop as he finally lurched from the miniscule gap, waving his arms like an idiot in case I hadn't noticed him.

Crossing my arms over my chest, I raised my chin and grinned.

"Y'know you could've just gone around the back there, right, Jez?" I commented as he got within hearing range, "That way there'd be no risk of needing a crowbar to get you out."

He rolled his eyes at me, "Yeah, and y'know you could bother getting changed once in a while and avoid looking like some sort of… sort of…" he waved his hands vaguely to indicate my fighter's attire, then seemed to give up in his quest for words. There was a pause as he stared at me for a second, a frown spreading across his honest face, "Ray… what the hell? You look like you've been hit with a girder or something."

I blinked, "What- Oh… Nah, not a girder. A bleacher."

I waved a hand dismissively, turning with an arrogant swagger and continuing onward down the road. He matched my gait easily, picking at the gel in his short brown hair as he always did when he was worried.

"How the hell did that-"

I cut him off, "Don't worry about it. I messed up and fell into it, 's not like anyone picked it off the floor and beat me around the head with the thing."

My snigger went unanswered and trailed off when it found itself lonesome. Turning off the main road into one of the side streets, we passed a game of football in someone's driveway as well as a group of men in plaster-splattered overalls arguing in the lee of a garage door. Coughing self-consciously after tripping over the corner of a loose flagstone, I decided to break the silence.

"Where were you, anyway? I was meant to be sparring with you today, not him…"

Jez shoved his hands into the pockets of his blue tracksuit bottoms, keeping his gaze fixed on the ground, and I pulled to a halt.

"Alright, what's up?" I demanded, resting my hands on my hips.

Still unable to meet my gaze, my closest friend scuffed at the ground with the toe of his grubby sneaker.

" 'S your dad," he mumbled finally, tugging at his collar, "He doesn't want me around anymore. Kinda kicked me out of the gym, 'cause he reckons I'm a distraction to you. Y'know, in that way."

I simply gaped, my mind suddenly completely and forebodingly blank.

"And I told him that wasn't true, of course, I mean, if I liked you that way then I'd practically be gay, no 'ffence, of course, but you're just like another of my mates, only smarter and stuff, and probs a lot stronger too, so 's really…" he trailed off, finally daring to glance up at me and apparently not liking what he saw, because he quickly inquired, "Uh, Ray? You alright? Only you're kinda…"

My words seemed to catch in my throat; speaking was like spitting, hawking my meaning up and gobbing it out in segments.

"Who. Does. He. Think. He. IS?!" I choked, my hands balling into fists, "He can't do that! You're one of his best pupils! And my friend! Even if it was 'like that' he doesn't have any right…!"

Jez mumbled noncommittally but I hardly heard him; thought had rumbled back into my brain like a thunderhead, and with each thunderous boom of indignation the white hot bolts of fury grew ever closer to striking. That man. That impostor of a father! That taskmaster who had killed off the loving, supportive, protective man I'd known in my childhood and was going to do the same now to the only friendly figure I had-

"He can't do this!" I screamed, and before Jez could stop me I was running back the way we came, knocking over a can of paint the builders had left out, kicking the football as it rolled into my path, shouldering through wasters and workers and all the other rabble getting in my damn way before lurching over rubbish piled in neat little squares and vaulting the rattata too slow to move as I raced up to the back door of the dojo, rammed my keys into the lock and turned.

Apparently he hadn't fused with the floor, because the man was gone, leaving the arena in darkness. I didn't pause to turn on the lights – I practically lived here, anyway, and knew the place well enough to leap from the closest bench to the ring, vaulting over the ropes on one side and then the other, down into where the audience would have sat despite the complete and utter darkness. Although I barely paused to catch my balance I slowed to an angry stalk as I reached the corridor, the toes of my boots hissing as they grazed the cheap nylon carpet.

Striding towards his office door, I reached for the handle just as it slammed open and my father stepped out, reading from a sheaf of papers clutched in his hand. Before I had time to think I'd already reached out, smacking the reports from his grip and sending them fluttering all over the place. There was a fleeting second in which he just stared, a look of sheer confusion seeming alien on the harsh, hard lines of that face, and then his temper flared to match mine.

Or at least challenge.

"What do you think you-" he started, only to take an involuntary step back as I took one forward, waving a finger in his face.

"No! What do you think you're doing?!" I snarled furiously, "You told Jez not to come? Because he was holding me back? That's a load of bollocks and you know it! I learn way more from him than from you, you hateful, arrogant, stupid-"

"Learn more from him than from me?"

My father seemed to have doubled in size; he loomed over me, eyes flashing and muscles so tense they bulged.

"Learn more. From him. Than from me," his voice was cold now, so cold he didn't need to shout over me – the malice in his gaze had frozen my body in place and my voice with it.

"Uhm…" I mumbled articulately, swallowing.

"I thought not," he growled, "Now pick this mess up and stop spouting crap."

And I nearly did. My knees actually started to bend; I dropped my gaze and felt my resolve slip… But for some reason I glanced up, just for a second, and saw that look of malice again. It was so complete in its hatred, so devoid of any empathy or paternal devotion – it was not the look of a father, it was a look of an oppressor. Tightening my fists once again, I hardened my gaze and stamped my foot.

"No."

He halted in the midst of stepping around me and turned his gaze slowly to meet mine.

"What?"

"No!"

Subconsciously I had sunk into a fighting stance and my voice had changed to suit it, forced up from deep in my chest without even a hint of indecision in its tone.

"I won't! I'm not spouting crap! He's a friend and a sparring partner and you can't just send him away!"

Usually if I reached this stage of conflict my voice would be wavering embarrassingly, tears would be threatening to fall and I'd already know I was only winding myself up for a worse defeat. This time, however, my eyes were dry, narrowed and determined. I would win this argument. There was no way I was backing down. No way I was just going to roll over and submit to him. Somewhere in the back of my mind I saw the path he was prescribing unfurling, long and deserted, without friendship or reward. I gritted my teeth. Complying with that was not an option.

"I can and I have. That's it, girl," he said with a snarl.

"No, no it's not," I insisted, "You will go and tell him you made a mistake! You'll ask him to come back! Beg if you have to!"

"Beg?" he spat out the word as though it were foul, "Raven Thomas, either you can shut up, pick up those papers and submit… or you'll neversee that boy again, insideor outside these walls! I don't give a damn what you think you can get me to do, it's all a pathetic little illusion – you are the underling here, bitch, and so you will do as I say!"

I gasped audibly, stepping back as though he'd physically slapped me.

'He… did he just call me…?'

"Don't look so surprised," he snapped, turning his back to stalk away, "You knew you had it coming."

'Had it… coming…'

I looked down at the fallen papers, barely able to distinguish them from each other as my vision swam with the tears I'd expected before. I'd always held this hope, a tiny little thing, barely worthy of notice, that perhaps he might change back – that perhaps I might see the smile he'd once reserved for me cross his face, even fleetingly, and that the rest of him would follow. He could follow slowly, I wouldn't mind, I wouldn't be impatient over it, so long as it happened eventually, and then we could sit together at mealtime and laugh over it, and this malevolent phantom would just be one of those little things that good memories erased-

'Never coming back,' I realised,'He's never coming back…'

The words, echoing in my head, broke the spell and once again I was running. Movement had always made me feel better; I could concentrate on the physical effort and forget about the rest, until exertion had buried it neatly out of sight and everyday cogitation could slowly beat it down until it merged with all the rest, gone for the time being. Perhaps, I hoped, it would work now, because I needed it to, needed it to so badly…

The change between indoors and outdoors registered only as a blast of cold air. I was blind to the passing brickwork, the cars, people, traffic lights and shop windows as I bounded down the main road, the tape on my left arm coming free and slapping against my back as though to spur me on. It stung, but not enough. I deserved worse for keeping such fragile little hopes for so long, for actually having faith in them.

You knew you had it coming.

No, no, but I should have done. I should have! Stupid Raven, stupid, stupid little waster…

On some level I was aware of the stares of other pedestrians as I raced past them, running in the gutter to avoid having to dodge anyone and splattering myself with filthy water and rotting leaves as tears flows over my swollen, bruised cheeks, but their thoughts seemed irrelevant somehow so I simply kept running, eventually turning into a winding side street when the main road went from dual carriageway to motorway, losing the pavement that had flanked it. I'd never been here before and dusk was fast approaching, cloaking everything in a sinister veil of shadow. Still, exhaustion was the thing that finally slowed me to a jog, not fear – Malmarsh was infamous for its crime rate and as a result I was used to dealing with desperate attempted-muggers and the like – and as I wiped my eyes, squinting, I found myself Forestside.

Nearly, anyway, and I easily corrected that by sneaking through the back garden of one of the houses providing the last boundary between city and nature. With rotting wood and peeling paint against my back I lowered myself to the ground, staring into the maze of tree trunks and undergrowth that started but a few metres away. I hadn't been here in a long while and even then it had been one of the areas that had been changed for human benefit, with trails and signposted lakes and picnic tables with umbrellas extending overhead. This part was wild – the fence behind me, however dilapidated it might be now, had been built to keep things out and those things lurked amongst these trees. There was a degree of… menace here, a lawlessness that even Malmarsh couldn't match, and as I blew my nose as best I could into the hem of my shirt I felt a sudden electric bust of excitement.

Although my limbs were burning from the long run and the ache of betrayal throbbed persistently in my chest, I took a deep breath and forced myself to my feet. I could feel determination brewing in the pit of my stomach, some sort of wild, silly plan working itself out somewhere in my mind, and as I gazed into the mossy darkness the breeze carried fresh air from its depths. It was nothing like the smoky, dirty air I was used to. It was clear and sweet. It smelled new.

Steadily I unpeeled the tape from around my arms, balling it up and tossing it into the garden behind me for the owner to take care of. I wouldn't need it. No one would expect me to be able to fight. So I wouldn't. Taking another deep breath as the wind brushed my bruised and swollen face, I began to walk. Somewhere through the leafy blockade was Olivine and I'd get there eventually.

There was nothing in Malmarsh to keep me.