Just gotta say that if the ownership of pokemon was catchable, then I can't ever possibly catch 'em all.
Balazar swam through his nightmares, most filled with the image of the beast they had fought back in the desert. The Scourged God. In every vision, he saw the world drowned in the blood of the innocent, populated only by the spirits of the dead. He saw the globe, covered in lines, all of them gray. He saw nothing but swirling runes, all speaking nothing but evil in their intent.
He couldn't tell whether this was to be the future, or the past. He couldn't tell if this was the true future, or a possibility. Only visions of the future were this clear, yet so cryptic.
He thrashed awake to the sound of screaming metal. The entire side of the Center had been ripped open, and behind it, there stood a huge robot. Armed with a hydraulically powered gripping claw that probably came from one of the abandoned factories to the far south, and what looked like a heavy cannon, the mech reached in for the being lying on the bed one over. Mewtwo.
With a blast of force, Balazar knocked the claw into the ceiling, pinning it temporarily. Mewtwo levitated from the bed, eyes already clouded with rage. He crunched the hydraulic lines in the claw, and ripped the hoses free. Black oil sprayed all over Balazar, who had rolled right under the mech. From there, he punched upward with a great blast, ripping the claw arm completely free. Then he shoved the mech out of the room.
Now out in the open, he picked up the arm with his mind and hurled it through the center of the mech's chest. It collapsed, but not before firing a cannon shell as it slammed into the ground.
Balazar knew that he was going to die, and that he could do nothing to stop the shell. He simply couldn't bring the might of his power to bear on the shell. He wasn't fast enough. But he didn't need to be.
With a scream of the sound barrier breaking, the red pokemon slammed into the side of the shell, and grabbed it. She whipped around and, with a scream of fear-induced rage, hurled the shell back at the mech. With a thunderous explosion, the machine exploded, leaving behind a smoking hulk and a deep crater. Mewtwo lowered to the ground, eyes dulling to their normal violet. Team Rocket would pursue me still…Balazar, the men who tried to kill you are after me. It might be wise for me to go into hiding, and take the pressure off of you.
"I'd rather you didn't. You'd be throwing yourself to the mightyena, and then who'd train me?"
True. In any event, Latias, I think, wishes to speak with you.
"So you're Latias. Thanks for saving me," Balazar wrapped the red pokemon's downy neck in a hug, slowly kneading the tensed muscles. She turned her topaz eyes on him. Then she wriggled free and led him to another room. Wes stood, submachine gun out and ready, guarding the still-weak Latios. Latias touched him with one of her claws, and then her eyes shone.
- Latias let the boy into her mind. She had a blood debt to him; she would let him do anything he wanted to her. And she wouldn't stop him. But all the golden psyche did was wait. Curiously, she extended her core to him, as if offering it. He didn't take it. Finally, she spoke. I have a blood debt to you. Why have you not done with me as you wish?
Because I already have.
At this reply, she was startled. She would have noticed if anything in her mind had changed; memories were hard to truly destroy. What do you mean?
You are perfect the way you are. Granted, I think you need some proper rest, some peace, and some proper feeding, but I think you are fine. Why do you want me to mold you to be my slave?
Because that is the meaning of the blood debt. When you saved me and my brother, without need, our lives became yours to shape and own.
Then my father is in blood debt to your brother.
One in blood debt cannot hold the debt over another. That can only dissolve the blood debt. My brother has no debt; it is mine. Do with me as you will.
I already have.
But you have done nothing!
Exactly. What would you have me do?
Well…traditionally, in the case of a male holding the debt on a female, he will…force a mating. The blood debt gives me over to you mind…body…and soul. You own all of me, including my…virginity…
No. I…I cannot, and will not, participate in such a barbaric practice! I saved you because it was the right thing to do, not for the prize. If you truly want to give yourself to me, then do it in this way: join me. I will care for you as I would my sister. I will encourage you to greater strength, to greater abilities. I will train you as I would any other pokemon, and I will ensure your safety. That is my demand.
Then I have no other recourse. I offer myself to you in the way you have described.
Latias felt him leave her mind, then watched as he pulled out a ball. Then he threw it at her. It hit, and with a whine, excited her particles. With a whoosh she was sucked into the ball, into a pocket dimension, one that was poorly simulated. There came a thunderous boom, like that of the dungeon door, and then suddenly she was hurled out.
"I won't keep you in a ball for too long, Latias. Come on, why don't you meet the rest of my team," her master told her, and obediently she followed. Out of various balls flew a Salamence, an Umbreon, an Ampharos, a Delcatty, and an Ursaring. But the sixth shocked her.
From the last ball erupted the Goddess of the Current. The female Lugia, however, had been corrupted. Her blue and white was gray and purple, and her eyes burned red with suppressed anger, not quite rage. Not yet. But she was still horribly disfigured, a long white scar running down the left side of her sternum. A big scar…
The team swarmed around her, with the rather notable exception of the Goddess. She only asked, "How'd you join?"
"I am in Blood Debt," Latias replied.
The Goddess bowed her head, knowingly.
"I'm sorry to butt in, but we should probably get moving. Those CIPHER goons have some new help," Wes said, already limbering up his little arsenal and moving to his bike, which had somehow managed to teleport itself from the desert here.
"Where do we head?" Balazar asked.
- I suggest we move to Citadark Isle. Mewtwo inserted. CIPHER will least expect you and your team to be at their last base.
"That's a good idea. Wes, you and I will ride on Lugia. Mewtwo, you teleport there and do some recon; I don't want to walk into a trap. Everyone else, back in your balls and ready to fight," Balazar ordered.
Mewtwo warped out, a flash of light the only remainder of his presence there. After whipping through the black, he popped out in the middle of a blackened volcanic isle. The volcano spewed lava down the mountainside, directly into the water, although Mewtwo noticed that it took a detour through a run-down facility perched on a cliff side. No sounds but those of the land echoed here. With another pop he reappeared in the facility, eerily similar to the facility where he had been created. The room he was in was dimly lit, although the doors still had power. He advanced through the corridor, keeping a blast of force ready to meet an unfortunate lurker.
There was no one. Nothing but the scurry of tiny Rattata, likely brought over on accident. Computer terminals stood shut down, gathering dust. The large screen on the wall was shattered, pieces of glass creating a razor-sharp hazard. Flickering lights sent shadows arcing in strange patterns.
In one corner, a man huddled. Mewtwo immediately grabbed the glass shards in his psychic grip, readying a razor-sharp hail. He rocked back and forth, gibbering madly.
Mewtwo had once learned that life was a sacred gift, only rarely forfeit. He had learned that the taking of a life was a great sin, a great burden to bear, and a mark of evil. Then he launched the glass, eyes glowing coldly. For the mad, there was no mercy.
Now he was sure that Citadark Isle was cleansed from its old inhabitants. Balazar, the island facility is clear, he said.
Good. We'll be there in thirty minutes, we had another small incursion. Keep it abandoned for us, will you?
- Latias clung to the Goddess's hide, claws as light as she could hold on safely. Her Blooded was an oddity; perhaps this was just due to his being a human. She knew only long years with the human had kept the others from making fun of her for being in Blood Debt to a human, a soft-skin with no ability. But he was a Psyker, a powerful being straight out of legend.
Of course, weren't Psykers supposed to be pokemon? Beings that could control so much energy shouldn't be human, because humans were naturally greedy, power-hungry monsters. Latias still remembered the Great War, which though it was easily a few hundred years ago, her race was extremely long-lived. She was only a newly-hatched Latias when the War broke out, but she still remembered when Alto Mare was lit aflame, when the city burned to the ground and the island shattered and sunk. The great, booming artillery pieces that the humans had used the island as a platform for vaporized under the sound and flash of the last explosion, the one with the huge mushroom-like cloud. To wield such power so aggressively…that was why all Psykers were pokemon. Latias had lost all her family except her brother, and they had fled to "mainland" Hoenn.
But now she was in the company of what was indubitably a Psyker, and what was indubitably a human male. He probably wasn't over the age of fifteen, so he was in the beginning of his breeding age. Latias wondered what he would look like, because she still didn't believe his promise, but she shook the images out of her head.
Another one of those whirring human contraptions strafed past them, and the Psyker's sire sprayed at it with his loud stick-thing, one of the stick-things that had plagued her dreams after Alto Mare.
- Balazar gripped the pilot's heart with his mind, then crushed it. He grasped at his chest, wailing and gasping as the chopper whirled out of control and slammed into a cliff. He was having Lugia ride the waters low, so low that he could reach down and put his hand in the water.
The CIPHER mothership hovered into view, and he grinned savagely as he reached out with his power. The mothership had four huge spinning rotors. If even one of those thing went down, then the entire hovership would be destabilized. He crunched the huge nut at the center of the rotor post, and the blades hurled off.
One of the other choppers finally got close, and the side doors slid back. Four men tried to jump across the gap between the bay and Lugia's neck. Wes took down three of the four before running out of ammunition, and the fourth gripped onto the underside of Lugia's neck. "Turn it around and land, and I won't pull the trig-KLHHHHHHH!" the CIPHER grunt gurgled as a huge rotor blade impaled him, and carved a long, deep furrow across Lugia's chest and lower abdomen. She screamed and curled, hurling the group on her back into the water as she herself splashed under, blood curling away like smoke.
Balazar hurled himself up, then pulled everyone he could see up. Wes was last, coughing and spluttering, before Balazar reached out to Lugia.
NO! DON'T TOUCH ME, HUMAN! LET ME BE! Lugia screamed back at him, thrashing in the water as more blood sprayed out into the water.
You'll bleed out unless you let me pull you out! Balazar hissed back as he wrapped tendrils of his mind around her.
NO YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND I CAN'T CONTROL MYSELF ARAHDJKBVNELANJWEIFHOAHATEHA TEHATEHATEKILLBURNBURNDESTRO YDESTROY! Lugia's mind degenerated as the shadows took over in her moment of weakness.
Balazar roared as he heaved, launching the wounded Lugia from the water. He dumped her on the grass on her back, then pinned her there. "GO, STITCH HER UP WHILE I HOLD HER!" he screamed as strength born of shadow, born of anathema, boiled up and fought him.
Wes dodged under the flailing tail, spikes razor sharp, fumbling around in his coat for the first aid kit on his belt. When he finally found it, he surveyed the damage.
The wound was, thankfully, shallow and relatively bloodless. However, the Lugia's thrashing and fighting had torn it longer and deeper, and if he didn't get some pressure and some stitching on the wound, the pokemon would bleed out. He slammed himself onto the open wound, face bloodied as he ran the needle through flesh and slowly closed the wound.
- I tried to thrash the human scum off of me in rage. How dare he touch me?! I was a goddess, a legend even amongst the legends, a ruler amongst rulers! Nothing would touch my hide, the hide that my father had said would be blessed and holy!
Then I shuddered as my psyche was penetrated once more by the Psyker's, my savior's. His mind formed a bulwark against the shadows that had been using my once grand pride against me. They had gotten smarter, and I shivered in fear. If the shadows could outsmart and claim me fully once again, I doubted even the Great Father could bring me back.
- Balazar stood his ground, mind both his shield and his sword. The shadows that roiled in Lugia's mind would step no further into her mind. Once more they drove forward, and he braced. The impact jarred him, but his righteous anger and concern for his pokemon succored him. Not again would he suffer, like the ignorant child, the counterblast of shadows. No, indeed, he would be the star and savior of the pokemon that could not defend herself. Finally, he attacked. He could not destroy the shadows, but he could disorganize and disorient them. With sweeping strike of the golden sword, he blazed away all of the shadows.
- Wes tied off the thread that held the Lugia's chest together, and couldn't help but notice that, towards the base of her long neck, below her collarbone and towards the pectorals that were the drivers for flight, he had felt a pair of softer mounds than the toned muscle that made up the rest of her body. He hadn't thought that the species as a whole would need mammary glands, but evidently…
Regardless, he was taken. But his son…
They had made pokemon/human relationships legal, had they not? And they were in Orre. Nobody cared about the law, anyway. It was made by the local warlord, and disobeyed at your own expense.
In any case, trying to set up a relationship would be wrong. He would let it develop on its own, or die off. He squatted down in the water to wash the blood off of his body and out of his coat, and noticed that the wicked slice across his own chest was slowly healing, but healing faster than any human should have a right to. He quietly pulled out his small rum flask and poured the rum into the water, giving it a quick rinse and then collecting as much of the blood as he could from his coat and skin. Maybe it would come in handy later, or at least as a chip for bargaining.
- Balazar slumped against Lugia, exhausted from his foray into her mind. She herself groaned as she felt the boy touch her, but both were too tired to care. Neither noticed that the sky was slowly turning a deep gold as the sun set and their time came up.
Oooh, maybe the seeds of romance! Or not, but I'm not telling. That would be a violation of the Author's Code, Chapter 9, Article 23, Subsection 4, Lines 52-56.
Please tell me you get the reference to a very popular strategy game published by Nintendo that just recently released a new game for the 3DS (which pisses me off because I don't have one).
If you can guess the reference, or have any criticism, tell me. I live only off of your responses, now GIVE ME THEM SO I CAN SUCK THEM DRY LIKE THE ATTENTION-VAMPIRE I AM!