The Night is always Darkest before the Dawn

"I know it seems hard sometimes but, uh, remember one thing, through every dark night there's a bright day after that. So no matter how hard it gets, stick your chest out, keep your head up and handle it. " – Tupac Shakur

Night

Eddie Jones was your average run of the mill trainer. He was not really good-looking, didn't have any really powerful blood gifts, and was not particularly good at catching and training pokegirls. He had embarked on his journey as a tamer late at his teens at the age of nineteen and in three years did not have much to show for his efforts.

He only managed to capture a single pokegirl, an Armsmistress Helena. It was sheer luck as she had been nursing a wound from a run in with ferals and did not have the strength to resist the capture beam of his pokeball, she had been an amazonchan then. His starter pokegirl had long since died through an unfortunate series of events involving one of the infamous teams targeting him for an obscure reason only relenting after he proved to have nothing of value.

Currently Eddie and Helena were on route to Dublin about 25 km from town. Eddie was watching his surroundings out of habit and was unable to shake the feeling of foreboding that washed over him. Night was approaching and the sky was overcast with low-hanging clouds. Being so far from town meant they'd have to camp and try to weather the storm.

He raised his hand signalling to Helena to return to his side. He had sent her to investigate some rustling a little ways off in the underbrush. He decided they would camp here a little ways off road as there was a fairly large oak that would provide at least a little cover from the oncoming rain.

As they set up camp some rustling could be heard coming from the underbrush about 20 meters from their position. Helena seemed relaxed, however, so he paid it now mind and sure enough the rustling stopped a couple seconds later. Then again about a minute later the rustling could be heard, he raised his head and made his way to the noise. Helena raised an eyebrow at him but otherwise continued with what she was doing. Parting some leaves from the bush he was sure the noise came from, he gasped. Lying on the ground covered in blood was what looked like a Megami or Megami-Sama, he'd confirm it later with his pokedex, and slightly twitching. He called for Helena to grab one of his balls, his mind already beginning to forget how he came upon his megami.

"He's waking up sir," the nursejoy said, her brow in solid concentration as she poured healing energy into the subject lying beneath her. "His vitals are normal and he doesn't seem to have any damage."

They were in a long ago abandoned laboratory that had been confirmed as belonging to Sukebe. They had been doing a routine check as protocol before clearing the lab to researchers when they came across a hidden room where they found their current patient in a large tube of primordial liquids with life-monitoring equipment attached to it. Oddly, the equipment had still been running as though Sukebe knew one day the man would be found.

BLSF Staff Sergeant Seamus O'Donnell and his small combat task-force were quite surprised with the findings. MI6 had sent the request for the BLSF to search the area around the site believing an inactivated laboratory or base of operations for their enemy had been hidden there. His group had been sent due to their experience in clearing Sukebe's leftover bases and from that experience he couldn't recall a time where the madman had left anything incriminating about his experiments, let alone a completely live specimen. Sure the being was male but these days anything that had been in contact with Sukebe may as well have been a leaking nuclear reactor.

Sure they managed to force the psychopath and his following into the deserts of Africa but something told him that all was just going according to plan. His nursejoy, Michaela, notified him of the man waking.

He was an ogre of a man, his hulking upper body nothing but sinewy muscle. He had been incredibly heavy as well, something one would expect from a rhinodame not a human male. At full height the man shouldn't be any taller than 5'7" or 5'8" which was quite short but did not take away from the man's imposing stature even when unconscious. An unkempt beard grew from his face as if it had never been trimmed it had likely kept growing when he was in that tube. The most peculiar thing about his appearance was, however, the odd way his hair had grown into two horns protruding from his head, one on each side. It made him look almost wolfish.

A low growl signified that the man was now awake. "Where am I?" he said gruffly, his breathing laboured. He sat up looking around, his confusion evident in his eyes.

"A laboratory, soldier," Seamus replied. He was referring to the man's dog tags that he failed to notice earlier. The words Wolverine and Weapon X among the things he could make out. It was an old tag, something used from before the war that much was sure.

The man was silent, his eyes hinting he was thinking something over. A flash of recognition and then something unidentifiable crossed his eyes. "Well then Sergeant," he started reading the badge on Seamus' uniform, "take me to the commanding officer."

A group of feminine figures shrouded in robes and burkas trudged across the sand dunes of the Sahara desert. The leading figure, who wore white robes, raised her hand signalling the rest of the group who wore black robes to stop.

"We shall wait here, nobody is to venture any deeper into the desert," she spoke in an authoritative voice, "we shall continue our search at daybreak."

"Yes Mistress Amirah," sounded the solemn voices of her companions.

The group then got to work bristling about starting a fire and cooking supper. Mistress Amirah sat down a little ways off taking refuge in the little shade provided by the large sand dune they camped beneath.

One of the black robes approached her bringing her a small meal of camel meat and flatbread. Amirah accepted the food with a nod of gratitude and began eating. The black robe sat with her.

"Mistress, we have journeyed in this desert for three days. We have not come across what we search for neigh anything except sand and scorpions. Some of the others have began to doubt the information that human gave you."

"Worry not Nadia, my daughter, for I have peered into the strands of fate and have learned what we look for we will find here," the mistress replied tiredly. While she did believe they were on the right track, the long journey in the scorching heat of the desert had taken its toll on her nerves. She pressed on, "We will find it soon that much I am certain of."

"Very well, Mistress." Nadia however was not sated. She wanted to go back to Sanctuary and find the human that led them on this goose chase. Unlike the rest of her sisters she did not believe the myth that Sukebe survived the onslaught by the joint military might of the world. It was impossible to believe so, after the humans so effectively turned Sukebe's forces against themselves. Who would have imagined Sukebe would have programmed such a disgusting flaw into their genes. She shuddered at the thought.

The sun was beginning its decline beyond the horizon and it would be night soon. She will just have to follow her mistress' will, for now.

Wolverine. The name signified something more than human, the hunger of an animal, the cunning, and yet it still held a noble air. The fact that such a name could be borne to a human male was beyond her. All the genetics studied and tampered in this world stated it was impossibility for the male counterpart of the species to be anything more than weak, frail. But here he was a paradigm of the eon old belief of men being the stronger of the race.

Sukebe had destroyed that belief the infusion of animalistic traits into the human race bred one thing, pokegirls. It was a testament to the strength of the female half of any species being the greater in Mother Nature. Now mankind, the very species to have scorned Mother Nature through out its existence, had also been subject to its will.

But the readings that she got from this human. His skeletal structure could not be natural. It was of an alloy that surpassed the toughness of any known substance to date. No metal, nor carbon crystal, nor pokegirl hide could boast the durability of the alloy his skeletal structure seemed composed of. Then his mass, nearly two tons, was far greater than anything a mere human male should be able to withstand let alone move with the grace and agility he had displayed. He moved like a cat pokegirl in stalk of her prey. Eyes watching, the body barely registering a twitch and yet tense to the point it seemed ready to burst at any moment. To top it all off it seemed he had some kind longetivity and not of the pokegirl kind. Many politicians would kill for that gift, even more so if from a non-pokegirl source.

Beyond the physical, the mental scans she conducted registered nothing. Her mind was simply blocked off from his mind the frightening mirage of a flaming phoenix assaulting her mind every time she attempted to read him. The worst part was that it obviously wasn't from him. It was perplexing however as there shouldn't be many pokegirls capable of forming a mental block able to withstand the assault of a psychic while they weren't in the general vicinity of the assaulted victim. No this blockade seemed as much a part of him as it was not, perhaps it was another entity, a symbiotic being of some kind.

Well enough postulation for the day as she had done her tests. He was cleared to go and meet with her superiors. Hopefully they wouldn't order him dead before she could study more of him. It was rare that an Ala-Ka-Wham met a being that could intrigue them and hold their interest even after they attempted a mental scan. Oh would she delight in tearing his psyche bit by bit to get to solve the mystery that is Wolverine.

I am James Howlett the man, the murderer, the mutant. Not even two weeks removed from the soup I floated in and I was already ostracised for what I was. Well whatever, I could pay back mankind later for the unfair treatment, it was only fitting.

I wasn't ignorant of my situation in fact I was shocked that they hadn't tried to kill me yet. I had been an experiment of that man after all. It was all I could do to not resist the restraints they had shackled to me. Please, these flimsy things wouldn't hold Magneto's little toad child.

They knew very little of me, no, of us. My brothers and sisters, we were on a routine patrol through the galaxy when a Skrull Interceptor and Galaxis battleship happenstance in our path, or we in theirs. Needless to say we got caught in the crossfire, and ended up stranded on this planet so similar to our own and yet so different.

It must have been ten decades, maybe more. Among our group only my brother and I had survived beyond fifth decade. The others did not possess the advanced healing factor that kept our aging regressed. By the fifth decade our abilities had been uncovered by a covert military unit that enlisted our help for our freedom and identities. They wanted what we wanted, a quiet transaction. No noise, no cameras, and definitely no paparazzi and the hordes that would undoubtedly follow them pointing and gawking like some new animal exhibit at the zoo.

We fought many battles for them the World Wars I and II the most prominent and won every time. We were then left alone, forgotten, until another 5 decades passed and the World met another even madder man than any before. Sukebe the pervert, the genius, the insane asylum reject and whatever else you wished to label him interrupted our slumber and our peace. He also interrupted our boredom and our meaninglessness. And once again humanity called upon us to fight their battle once again. With my current situation in the BLSF headquarters right now I'm certain I'm going to be thrown back into the war. My life has been a story of bloodshed and guts and it seems god has damned me to even more of it.

Very well then, my only hope is I never meet the end of it.

Eddie was ecstatic. It had been four gruelling long months, but his file was finally under review for the BLSF Lieutenant training program. He had only bothered with getting his trainers license because of its value in the BLSF. Nowadays, while there was still some individual human officers in the military, they were far and few between.

He had been very close on giving up pursuing a career in the BLSF and was about to settle down in a town and maybe open up an Inn or shop, however, came across his alpha, a Megami-Sama named Luciela. After that everything was uphill as he cleared the rest of the trainer's journey in under a month. His harem had also grown considerably with the addition of a Sorceress, and a Valkyrie. As he had cleared the training program within the allotted four months he had spent the additional two months left to get some necessary down-time and well meant training in for his girls.

He also spent the time catching up with the progress with the war between humanities forces and Sukebe's last stand. Actually, his file being under review so quickly was indirectly sped up by the deaths of many Officer level BLSF personnel on the battlefield. He only hoped he wasn't rushed into deployment. After all he wanted to maintain a lengthy and rewarding career.

Currently he was enjoying a well-prepared breakfast of pancakes, eggs, and bacon in an Inn just outside Dublin. One of the catgirl waitresses kept stealing glances his way, and hovered around his table for far too long. He didn't like all the necessary attention, but if she was going to stare he might as well talk to her.

"Well if you're gonna stare all day you may as well introduce yourself," he began smirking at the now blushing catgirl. "Why not have a seat and we can enjoy breakfast without boring holes through one another, hmm?" he finished.

She calmly walked over and looked at him at point blank range, her brow furrowed to an impossible degree. "Something about you…" She started, and then suddenly a look of total anger overtook her and quickly took off, the doors of the mess hall still swinging in her wake.

"Ouch, that one smarts," he said aloud to himself with a slightly bemused expression. "I guess not everyone wants a piece of the Jonestar, too bad for them." And with that, he continued eating.

Luciela on the other hand was not amused; she had seen the entire thing go down from her spot across the mess hall. To think a mere catgirl would be able to dispel the carefully constructed charm she put on her tamer. This would not do. How would she build an armada capable of avenging her against him if she couldn't even fool a catgirl?

She blamed her tamer. The man was unremarkable at the most and her month with him had shown he didn't have much going for him in terms of drive either. He didn't come across as intelligent either but he usually was too aloof for her to get a good read on. No matter though, she would keep with him until she could reach her goal.

If all went to plan, she and her sisters would have a world to run fairly soon.