Army of Me
Author's note: Yo! Sorry it took me longer than usual to upload... School happened. Chapters'll be more infrequent, but I assure you I'll still be posting. Thanks very much for the reviews! I now have links to the songs so far on my profile, so if you want to listen to them, they're there (I've tried to choose the videos with lyrics. Two birds with one stone!). I don't own any of the music, nor do I own Pokemon. Enjoy the chapter and its song, which is by Kate Havnevik
Chapter 3: Unlike Me
Team Lance trudged in the general direction of the village; while the sun was still in the sky, they were cold and sore and smarting from their defeat. Wave held the thin gash on his side protectively, keeping any more blood from oozing out. Zephyr's head pounded. Slade, a reptile, was sluggish from the cold. Morale was low.
The Absol tread softly on the frosty snow, paws making the faintest of crunches. She slunk close to the ground, her white fur blending in with the surroundings, and crept briskly up to the rescue team. She felt a bit guilty for leaving them to the avalanche, but shook it off. No need for any of that. She waited until she was right behind the Sceptile, then cleared her throat.
To her satisfaction, they all jumped.
"I hope you realize that we are entitled to apprehend you at any time?" The Sceptile said sternly, drawing himself up to his full height.
The Absol was tempted to say, "Good luck with that", but refrained. Instead she remarked, "Yes, Slade, I am aware."
They jumped again.
" Y-you know my name?" Slade gasped, than instantly regretted his stupid question.
The Absol managed to keep a straight face. "Considering that I've been keeping tabs on you all morning..."
"You what?" Zephyr squawked.
"Not many Pokémon come looking for me. You deserved special notice."
Slade looked uneasily at his companions. It was unnerving to find out that they'd been spied on for the past few days without any inkling of it at all. "W-well, since you know all of us so well, why don't you tell us your name?" He finally said.
The Absol paused for a moment, unsure whether to share this information. "Artemis."
Fitting, thought Slade. She'd tracked them so silently he hadn't noticed her at all. She blended in and stood out at the same time. Red eyes looked impassively from a dark face, one bisected by a long, jagged scar that ran from her hairline to her chin. That eye was clouded, and he realized that it was blind. They had been beaten by a single, one-eyed Pokémon. It was pitiful, really.
"Now that we have all the niceties over with..." Artemis said dryly, looking intently at the three Pokémon. Wave shuddered. Her gaze was as keen as their Guildmaster's, and Ari was famous for his glare. "I have a proposition for you." Artemis finished, the corners of her mouth curling up in a small smile. She waited.
"And what would that proposition be?" Slade said guardedly, taking the bait.
"You're looking into the natural disasters. I am too. If you'll allow me to help with the investigation and hold off on arresting me, I'll tell you what I know and give you my assistance with battles and mission and whatnot... Not that you'd need it, of course," she added smoothly.
Slade frowned. That last bit was definitely unnecessary, a little dig at how easily they had lost.
''No way are we working with you!" Zephyr snapped. He was rankling over their defeat too.
The Absol stayed where she was.
Slade considered. He was very tempted to agree with Zephyr - he didn't trust her, the way she appeared and disappeared and leered at them with her blood-red eyes. He could think of a lot of things that could go wrong if they took her in, and orders were orders: Ari wanted them to arrest her, and Ari was a force to be reckoned with. Battle-hardened, their Guildmaster had an iron will. It was rare for him to back down. On the other hand, it would be good to get a lead on the natural disasters, and with her senses, Artemis could come in handy. Besides, it seemed that she could be as stubborn as Ari if she wanted to. She wasn't about to back down either. Slade considered a bit longer. They could agree to the deal, get her information and help, and take her back to the Guild, where all the teams could assist in putting her in jail. She would never know...
"C'mon, Slade! Tell her to go on her happy little assassin way! We can do our thing without her," Zephyr coaxed.
"Hold on, Zeph... Artemis could actually help us," Slade said. "I don't like it any more than you, but she could give us valuable information."
"I guess that's a yes," concluded Wave, ignoring Zephyr's scowl.
Artemis resisted the urge to say, "Well, if you're sure." Instead, she nodded. "All right."
XXX
"So where are we going again?" Zephyr grunted, eyeing their new companion suspiciously.
Artemis sighed. "It could be bad if I went into the village. There's no knowing if I'll be recognized as "the Demon" or not, and I'd rather not take the chance. So you all get to see my hideout."
"Huh," Zephyr said. "Doesn't it bother you, being called a demon?"
Artemis blinked, surprised. Didn't it? "I..." Why did he want to know, anyway? He barely knew her. What was the point of... "I thought you wanted to know about the natural disasters, not my feelings on silly things like that," she finally said.
"Okay, okay, I was just curious. I didn't know you were upset," Zephyr huffed.
Artemis looked irritably at Zephyr. "I didn't say that."
"But then why..." Zephyr began, but Wave cut him off with a Look. "She doesn't want to talk about it," the Swampert hissed.
"She's going to be on our team - I have the right to ask her an innocent question!" Zephyr muttered back.
As his teammates began an intense, whispered discussion on tact and overt curiosity, Slade quickly changed the subject. "Are we going to reach your hide-out soon?" he asked.
Artemis, faintly relieved, said, "Yes. We're almost there, actually. Just around this ridge..." She led Slade and his bickering companions around a hunk of icy boulders and said, "Ta-dah!"
"You know you want to - wha?" Zephyr said, startled out of his argument with Wave. "But there's nothing here. Just a few miserable-looking trees and too much snow."
"Yes, well..." Artemis padded over to a snow dune heaped against the rocky ridge and pushed the white flakes aside. Behind the dune was a hole in the face of the boulders. "Follow me."
Team Lance warily squeezed into the passageway after her.
"It'll be a bit tight for some of you, I'm afraid," Artemis said over her shoulder (Wave was regretting his third serving of breakfast that morning) "but it'll get wider soon. And it's good shelter from the elements."
Sure enough, the thin, sloping passageway widened into a fair-sized cave. In one corner there was a neat little nest of dry fir fronds and pine needles. On ridges along the wall was a well-stocked collection of berries. The cave was a little crowded with all four of them inside, and almost as frigid as it was outside, but with Zephyr's ample body heat, it soon warmed up comfortably.
"All right, now that we're here, what can you tell us?" Slade asked.
"What do you already know?" countered Artemis.
Slade sighed. He should have known she wouldn't make it easy for them. "Not much," he admitted. "We heard about the increase in natural disasters, and that you were the cause of them. That's it."
Artemis smiled wryly. "I'm just an Absol, not a Legendary."
"Sooo?" Zephyr said impatiently. "Get to the point!"
"You'll be disappointed to find that I know little more than you. I've just been working to protect the townspeople from the natural disasters."
Zephyr interrupted her, muttering, "Hence my earlier question!"
Slade elbowed him, causing the Blaziken to yelp. "Gah! You've got some pointy weapons on there, Slade!"
Artemis smirked slightly, but otherwise ignored the exchange. She continued, "I only recently realized something was wrong when the disasters got out of hand - I couldn't keep up with them anymore. There would be a bunch of disasters clustered in one area, or a sweep of them across a large distance, or any number of other unnatural issues. Sometimes a problem repeats, but there doesn't seem to be a pattern to it. It's really odd, so I've been scanning for the cause."
"What have you found?" Wave asked.
"Nothing much just yet. It's too uncertain, over too large a range, for me to pinpoint anything."
"So you can't create avalanches," Wave sighed.
"Not unless I shove an enormous amount of ice and rock or sneeze very loudly," Artemis said dryly.
Zephyr looked confused. "But then... Why are you always appearing just before the avalanche? And really - I mean it, Wave - I'm surprised you protect Pokemon that are scared of you."
"... I suppose that's a valid point," Artemis allowed grudgingly. "Basically, I can sense the change in atmosphere a natural disaster causes, and by mapping the trajectory, I can tell if anyone is in danger. I show up before the disaster to warn them. And as to the demon," she added, seeing Zephyr open his beak again, "I have gotten quite good at scaring them. If I told them nicely, no one would believe me - you heard the Weaville - so if I give them a reason to flee, well... Better they call me a demon than be badly hurt or killed by something beyond their control. I'm used to it by now."
Zephyr blinked. He'd thought she was just some untrustworthy prick, but if she wanted to protect the town so much, then maybe she wasn't that bad.
"Plus it's fun to be creepy." ...Okay, maybe she was.
XXX
After Wave had bandaged his side and they'd all had a chance to rest (Artemis slept outside, not trusting Zephyr's one-track-mind - she reasoned that while he didn't like her, she was still female, after all), Team Lance plus one set off to try and map the disasters. They had collected Artemis after squeezing out of her cave, finding her by her horn sticking out of the snow. They were ready.
"We don't have to worry about finding a disaster," Artemis explained as they trekked across the frosty landscape. "They're common enough now. Wave and I just have to focus on where they're coming from."
"Sounds difficult," Zephyr said dubiously. "Are you sure two Pokemon is enough?"
"Have a little faith, Zephyr!" Wave scolded. "Two Pokemon expand the focus. Artemis and I'll be fine."
There was silence for a while as the two focused, tilting their heads slightly to better catch the wind. After a moment Wave stirred. "There's one," he said. "A huge blizzard, out of nowhere."
Artemis nodded, ruby eyes aflame. "I got it too. For a second there, there was - this immense surge of power... I've picked up on it a few times before, but it's gone so fast..." She trailed off, looking frustrated.
"I wonder what caused it?" Wave mused.
If Slade had been in a cartoon, a light-bulb would have appeared over his head. "Artemis!" He gasped, in the tone one would use to cry, "Eureka!"
The Absol looked suspiciously at him.
"What did you say before, in your cave, when we said you were the cause?"
"That I wasn't a Legendary..." Artemis said slowly, eyes widening.
"That's it!" Slade cried. "It's Legendaries! I've read stories about them, how they cause trouble with their battles. I don't know why I didn't think of it before."
"Sooo... Are you suggesting that we step between some Legendaries and their battle of epic proportions?" Zephyr said incredulously.
"Yeahhh. The four of us, strong as we may be, are way outclassed. They're Legendaries, for Arceus' sake!" Wave added.
Slade looked at them beseechingly. "C'mon, guys. Can't I get a 'Slade's really smart! He figured it out!' or something?"
Artemis raised an eyebrow. "I think I'll side with the others, for once. It's suicide."
"Outvoted three to one!" Wave said triumphantly.
"Fine, fine. But if we went to the Guild and got everyone to join in, then we would have a chance!" Slade protested.
Wave and Slade looked at each other. "Well... Alright. We'd have to do something about it eventually," Wave said.
As they turned back on the route that would eventually take them back to the Guild, Slade thought of his plan to take Artemis to the Guild and arrest her when she was there, unable to escape. He wondered, with a slight sinking feeling, if she might be too useful for that to happen. Her fighting skills and sensory talent made her pretty valuable. Her scanning was even better than that of Wave's, honed to ferret out the slightest changes in the atmosphere. With a mission like this... Slade supposed they would have to keep her on the team. What will Ari say when we get back? Slade was deep in his musings when he noticed Artemis watching him curiously, head tilted a little to the side like she was trying to divulge his thoughts. He shuddered slightly and looked away. Artemis was on their side for now, but she definitely wasn't their friend.