Disclaimer: I do not own anything pokémon related in this story. I do however,own my plot and the characters involved in it.

Copyright 2006 ©

Author's note: Well, it took me a bit to figure out how to submit this next chapter, but I managed to do it. -

Chapter Two: Life or Death

It was still down pouring torrents of rainfall when the others were asleep. The thunder would have cracked the windows if it got any higher in volume and lightning elucidated the entire house with an unsettling shade of cerulean. Clouds were so thick, that if a forest fire were going on nearby, it would've been hard to determine what was cloud and what was smoke.

Marc and Joe slept soundly, one snoring louder than the thunder outside, the other drooling so much; his whole pillow was a darker shade of color. I could hear Jill's heavy metal music screaming from her headphones, so apparently, she was untroubled by the hardness of the rubber mattress, and the sounds erupting around us. Turning on my side to glance up at the clock for the hundredths time that night, I sighed deeply as it struck one. An instant later, the red digital numbers shattered like glass and dissapeared from view.

I sat upright, staring at the blotch of darkness on the clock that had, moments before, spitefully struck the hour. Jill, disturbed from the creaky noices I made moving about on the air bed, shifted in her sleep, turning away so her back was against me.

Looking down, unnerved and somewhat afraid by such a mystery, I laid my head against the pillow, once again trying to fall asleep. And, once again, it was rudely interrupted. My hand was beginning to smart as if the tattoo had been torn off. I flexed my fingers inward to dull the pain, an uncontrollable fleck of tears plaguing the corners of my eyes.

A deep red blared from my tattoo suddenly, snarling at the skin with furious fangs, and blinding me, sealing my eyelids shut with an invisible force. I cried out in surprise, but the light seeped down my throat, inflaming whatever it touched as it streamed by, and had glued my lips together in the process. Hurling myself upward, I clawed at my throat, my chest, anywhere the light seemed to be traveling inside me and causing the most pain, all the while hearing Jill arise, screaming as I had and breaking off suddenly as her tattoo began to glow. The light escaped through my nostrils, I could tell from the bursting heat afterwards, and shut them tightly together as it left.

I had no air to breath, barely any strength to move, and every part of my body felt like hot iron had been pressed against it. In my panic, I thrashed on the ground weakly, desperate for air. My fingers could feel the smoothness of the door in my flailing and began slamming into it for help, the booming noise deaf to me. Having given up the fight for breath, I noticed a blood color seeping behind my eyelids, engulfing my entire body.

The next time I awoke, I had traveled farther than man had ever traveled, and would later endure a pain no ordinary man could endure. Coldness bled through my pajamas where I lay, but my entire body was already frozen stiff and I could hardly feel it. The seal cast upon my nose, mouth, and eyes had vanished, but I needn't have worried about breathing anymore. I knew what had happened before I noticed that the gentle drumming in my chest had stopped, and that I had sat there for minutes, and not felt the constant need for air. I was dead. Well, mostly anyway. Deep inside was a small flicker of life, small and decaying, but there.

With a rattled gasp, I tried to sit up, and in response to the struggle, drifted upward like I was a balloon being tossed. Slow motion. Not even feeling it. Turning my head slowly (I couldn't go any faster), I gazed into the ripple of nothingness surrounding me, at that moment realizing that this was mere inky darkness and not a void I was forever cursed to float in.

I patted the ground I was sitting on sluggishly, grateful for the vague texture of moss clinging to ancient stone. Plants. Life. But why was there life, and no sunlight? I couldn't see my hand waving in front of my face if it had been, it was so dark. Inspired by the thought, I tried, and floating backwards in surprise. My arm was sending off a pale green hue, and when I put my other hand behind it, I could see it.

Before I could understand what I had just seen, a quiet sobbing piqued my interest. I could tell it was female, but it was so faint, like it didn't belong. Like me.

"Jill?"

"Jade?"

"Thank god, Jill, I'm so glad to hear you...but where are you? I can't-

"We can't see each other." Marc grunted the rest of my sentence for me; another voice lost in this unknown place. "But I can see myself. I'm glowing and I'm see-through." He made it sound so casual. Like he had been all his life.

"Where's Joe?" I demanded immediately, striding over to where his voice had been carried.

"Over there..." He sounded no closer then before, if not farther away. Josef sniveled in response.

Without warning, a dark chill surged through me. The back of my spine prickled, chilled to the marrow out of fear I couldn't describe. Something was close by and threatened to destroy what little life we had left.

I could feel the hot breath of many beasts, the shuffling of great bodies moving clumsily around me. Farther away, I heard Jill scream, and found out why a second after.

They were all around me, snapping their maws inches from my limbs, wishing nothing more than to tear them off and relish in my screams of pain. Millions of teeth flashed with malice, dripping a dark liquid from their deadly tips. Countless glaring eyes hovered above them, just as piercing and frightening,

Beyond screaming, I turned around in a circle for any ways of escape, shaking so violently, I could almost feel my dead body's movement. I fell on my knees, silent tears crawling down my pale face. The creatures howled gleefully at the sight, snarling even louder than before. One even went through the trouble of lunging at me, pausing over my cowering body, and reluctantly returning to the group. They were torturing me, even though not one had attacked. The very thought of such animals so close would be enough to beg for death. But I couldn't do anything of the sort. I was already dead.

What was only a few minutes of a world of bloody teeth and growling creatures, felt like an eternity. When I could bare the scene no longer, at the peak of sanity, I allowed myself to withdraw into the comfort of unconsciousness.

Despite the living hell surrounding him, Marc stood fast, calmly watching the sight with a false smirk while stifling the urge to pass out. He was frightened beyond words yes, but had learned, from fourteen years of experience, never to show your weakness to the enemy. And he was quite sure that these beasts were the enemy.

With apparent unwillingness, they all retreated far off in a neat line; the only hint of their presence the menacing glint of their eyes in the dark. One of them glided over to him gracefully, glaring with rueful eyes that made Marc feel oddly guilty.

"Welcome child. I'm sure you've enjoyed the hospitality my friends have given you, and must admit that I am impressed that you, unlike the other three, haven't passed out yet." It hissed in a voice that was impossible to prove its gender.

"I get plenty practice." Marc responded with a low voice, trying his hardest not to look the thing in the eye.

"Oh do you then?" It sneered, the foul breath of his speaker making Marc want to gag. "Then maybe you won't mind seeing this. Be quick about it; the closer you get to death, the harder it is to hear you."

It conjured an orb, oh too familiar to the creatures in the room, and a very faint picture played along it like a recording. Cautiously, he took the courage of peering closer inside.

Four very dead looking bodies lay in a mass of beeping machines and feeding tubes, so concealed in wiring that it took him a while to realize who they were. "That's us."

"You are the smartest of the bunch, aren't you?"

The orb dissipated into shimmering sparks, leaving him dumbfounded at what he had just seen. How could they have been there, when their bodies were right here? Marc patted his arm, sickened when he couldn't feel skin rubbing against skin. He wasn't here. It was all a horrible dream that he'd never escape from. Death.

Reading his expression, the creature speaking to Marc chortled, eyes narrowing. "Oh don't worry. You're stil partly alive, and in a short time, you'll wish you weren't. Allow me to demonstrate..." He heard it snapping its claws together, and something that he could only describe as a mutated claw whistled through the air and slashed at an arm, severing it so deeply, he already knew it was lethal by the overwhelming pain blossoming there. Still, the moment the attack had made contact, a spark of life flared in his chest, jump starting his heart and refilling his lungs with air.

Crying out in an agonized scream, a terrible sound Marc wasn't familiar with, he clutched his arm, attempting to constrict the pain away.

"As much as we'd like to keep you here, and torture you until sanity breaks," It began, and he listened, barely understanding under the distraction of his severed arm. "We have all agreed to make you suffer by altering your appearance, as you have done to us."

"But what did we do!" He blurted out, sobbing out of pain and frustration. His courage had failed him. "I don't even know what the hells' going on! I want to go home!"

"Don't you dare interrupt me, you poor excuse for a human being!" It screeched, temper boiling, and he felt another blinding pain on his injured arm, severing it as far as it would allow without the threat of amputation. Blood pumped in rythym with the heartbeat he so desperately wanted before. Now it would be the second death of him. "Are you that naïve? Before the sun dipped on your planet, you sealed a passage, vowing to forever remain loyal to us. Our soothsayer revealed that this is not so! And due to your mistake, we suffer."

"But I don't even know what you are! Why blame me, and not one of the other three?"

"Blame you?" The creature mused, eyes twinkling. "My dear boy, what you may think of as blame, is a gift."

Marc cocked an eyebrow suspiciously, gritting his teeth as his arm moved with his cowering body, dragging across the stony floor to leave a pathway of crimson in its wake. "What are you talking about?"

"Those fools that lay unconscious nearby are weaklings. They cannot handle the power I'm giving to you correctly."

"Power?" Marc could feel his heart relaxing to a rhythmic drum. Whether it was the withering of his new found life, or the silky words, he wasn't sure.

"Power that only you can exploit into usefulness. Your… 'friends' will have this power too, but unlike you, they will be unaware of it. Think of all that control when you awaken again…" It paused, looking over Marc with eager eyes. "Are you interested?"

"Yes."
"What are you..?" My question traversed across the plains of my mind in a peaceful whisper of wind. I could feel that one of the things had entered my dream, standing beside me like a relentless shadow.

It didn't answer, but I knew that my question would be fulfilled the moment my stomach churned and my body felt as if slammed against a wall. Ripped from unconsciousness like a sticker, I dared not open my eyes, although the temptation was great. Instead of lying on stone and moss, I could feel smooth, powdery substance grinding softly against my knees. The air had suddenly turned thin, stale and smoky with a tinge of mold and decaying walls.

"If you wish to see the answer to your question, then build the courage to look me in the eye. Hurry! Your time is short." I obeyed.

My eyes widened at what I saw. "No...This can't be. It- You're not real!" I yelled into the face of a mew, a pokémon I had long forgotten over the years.

Or at least, I thought it was a Mew. It still held the bodily structure, a bit cat-like and graceful as it hovered above ground, but everything else had changed. Its tail was dotted with green spikes that ended with a black scythe that curled upward to its soft underbelly. Its back was also plagued with green barbs, and its newly obtained ebony claws were longer than half its body-span, drooped low to the ground, unable to stay upright from the extreme length. Fangs peered out from its lower lip, giving it a caveman-like appearance. The eyes, once innocent gems of opal, were now angry stones of jasper.

The mew's lip curled into what I thought was a smirk. "How could something that never existed kill you with mere light? How could it travel to a different universe, and seize you with the small bit of psychic energy it could bring with it? How could it take you here in death, and still give you pain?"

I couldn't answer; there weren't any for those questions. I was too distracted to reply at all. How could this be real? How could it? They didn't exist. How could it? "What happened to you?" I asked quietly, lowering my gaze.

"You broke your vow. The one you carved into your hand. You were not trying to conserve your childhood; you were sealing a pact to never turn your backs on us. And, according to our soothsayer, that was false. Now look at us," It spread its nails apart with difficulty, raising arms as if awaiting an embrace. "We have suffered for your foolishness. So you shall suffer as well." Its eyes pulsed a threatening sapphire.

"Wait!" I cried out, lifting up my hand. How... they weren't real...could never be-

A flash of blue, a pain I couldn't endure, and then nothing. No fickle of life remained this time. I was truly dead.

Now see what happens when you're patient throughout the first boring chapter? A good old cliff hanger. Oh right, and a cookie. throws cookie at joo