Disclaimer: I do not own Pokémon, and I am not making any money from this fanfiction.
Clive awoke with pins and needles tingling all over, and a dull ache in his legs. His eyes began to adjust to the dim lighting, and he beheld his dingy surroundings with trepidation. He was sprawled on the chilly concrete floor of a poorly-lit basement, just in front of an imposing metal door with a small locked hatch near the base.
He sat up, and pulled back abruptly as he found himself eye-to-eye with another experiment. It was part Croconaw, and the protruding snout had distorted the other boy's former features. "Who are you?" Asked Clive, nervous, but the reptilian recombinant just stared at him oddly before shuffling off, bored. Something about the Water type's expression had been rather disconcerting, but Clive wasn't quite sure what. Looking around, he could see several others prowling the dank enclosure, though some retained more of their human features than others. A few of them were brawling, but Clive wasn't inclined to investigate that more thoroughly than was necessary.
He heard a clank from behind him, and every eye fixed itself in his direction. The others were all moving towards him now, greed playing across their faces. A Sceptile girl shoved him roughly out of the way to reveal the bowls of chow being pushed through the hatch by an unseen hand. Feeding time? How long had he been out? He knew now what had disturbed him in the Croconaw boy, for every eye around him clearly gleamed with animal madness. The boy he'd spoken to couldn't tell him his name, because he neither still had one, nor remembered what a name was. Horror rose in him, and gripped his lungs with a frozen tightness. He closed his eyes, and started chanting to himself. "My name is Clive Harnell, and I am a person!" Most of his fellows took no notice, more concerned with food.
He was startled out of his mental refuge by an outburst from another test subject, who was shaking him hard. "Eat, Stupid!" Cried the Mawile girl, with a voice harsh from long disuse. He looked up at her, and was relieved to see that though glimmerings of insanity were showing, her eyes were free of the shallow glazed blankness that haunted the visages of the other prisoners. She dropped a handful of kibble in his lap, then sat and watched him, chewing her own. When he seemed hesitant at the prospect of consuming it, she berated him. "Eat or get weak, Stupid! Weak ones don't come back!" Clive slowly began eating, puzzled by her choice of words. "Back from where?" He inquired, once she seemed placated. The girl stared at him as though he had become a small radish. "Being taken." She stated bluntly, making it clear that she would say no more on the topic.
The others had now begun to disperse, having exhausted the food supply, but the Mawile girl remained where she was. "My name is Clive, who are you?" Asked the Muk recombinant, desperate for some semblance of normalcy. She considered the query for a while, dredging half-forgotten knowledge from the recesses of her mind. "I think... Before the dark, I was Sunny." She murmured slowly, not completely certain. She sat in hushed stillness after that, no longer used to the sound of her name, if she had even got it right. Rage boiled in Clive's brain as his fear receded. He clenched his gloopy fists in furious anguish, and started pounding on the door. Neither his captors nor his fellow inmates took any immediate notice. He sat back down, avoiding the damp patches on the ground, and put his face in his hands. Sunny, seeming slightly distracted, decided to speak up. "Shouldn't hit door." She stated blandly, and Clive lifted his head to look at the other teen. "Why not?" He asked dubiously, unwilling to not at least make an effort to get out of the basement. "Might open." She responded, bitterness clouding her voice. So the door didn't lead to freedom, just to tests. Clive contemplated his hands, not for the first time, and recalled that he had no real options on the outside anyway, not as the freak he had become.
Sunny, unconcerned by the new guy's glum acceptance of her warning, began holding her glossy black hair taught with one hand, and using the claws on the other to shear it to a more manageable length. The result was far from tidy, but was less likely to get caught on things, or yanked. Her eyes were hazel, Clive noticed as he lost interest in his hands, and too large for the rest of her face. Like the Pokemon whose genes she'd been infused with, she had a long black set of crocodilian jaws dangling from the back of her head, and her skin was awash with yellow pigmentation.
The door swung open, and Sunny jumped back, hissing. A Raticate-featured youth sprung out from behind it, and bolted to the far side of the basement. The door remained open. Some of the more intimidating prisoners began herding their fellows towards it. Clive had managed to sneak a look, before Sunny pulled him away, and he'd seen another metal door. A Sneasel boy had just been pushed onto the short space of steel floor between the doors, and began to howl despondently as the closing inner doors blocked him from view. Once again, the crowd dispersed. "Clive stupid? Want get taken?" Admonished Sunny scornfully, "You stay back, do what I do." Nodding, Clive lay down, suitably chastened, and stared at the ceiling. It was dark grey, with some mottled patterns where damp had seeped through in previous years.
Once Abyaz and Jessica had recovered from their run, Dr. Sidney asked them to lie down inside some scanning machines. As the pair were scanned, images of their internal structures were displayed on nearby screens. Dr. Sidney's pen moved back and forth across the paper on her clipboard, her eyes dancing with excitement as she took copious notes from the readouts. It looked as though young Ronstadt had hit on a good idea this time, these two were ideal! She grabbed a pair of requisition forms from the desk next to her, and started filling them in. Abyaz looked nervously around the inside of the scanner, and chewed on his lip. It was too small! He hoped that this test would be over soon, so that he could get out of the cramped tube. His wings started to twitch, which disrupted the image slightly, drawing Dr. Sidney's attention. She decided to let the experiments out of the scanners, as she had collected all the data on their innards as she needed. Besides, she needed a few details from them so that she could finish filling out the forms. Pushing a button, she caused the bottom halves of the scanners to slide outwards.
Abyaz jumped out immediately, stumbling over in his haste, while Jessica clambered out with a touch more decorum. "Okay," said the lab lady, "I would like you to tell me your names, so that I can put them in your records." The Surskit girl put her arms behind her back, glancing down towards her feet, and replied quietly: "My name is Jessica Harwick." Dr. Sidney smiled at her and wrote this down, before turning to the Togetic boy. "I'm Abyaz Sygnus." he answered, "Why do you have a boy's name?" Dr. Sidney laughed, and explained to him that some names are used for males and females. "Now I would like you to tell me your ages, and when your birthdays are." she inquired primly, but not in as clipped and terse a manner as some of her colleagues might. "I'm five, and my birthday was two weeks ago." Abyaz piped up eagerly. "I'm fifteen," replied Jessica in soft tones, "My birthday is on the fourth of April." Having attained the information she desired, Dr. Sidney completed the paperwork to her satisfaction.
The Whitecoat performed a number of other tests upon the pair, some involving needles and blood samples, but Abyaz was willing to put up with that sort of thing. So long as he wasn't placed in a box or a small space of similar proportions, he would behave. Dr. Sidney walked the pair of children down a white and grey corridor, before swiping some form of security pass on a door, which opened automatically. Leading the experimental subjects through, she shut the door behind them. They were in another corridor, this one completely grey, with a row of cell-like rooms on either side. The scientist swiped her pass on two of the doors, one opposite the other, and gestured for the fusions to enter their quarters. Quietly, Abyaz and Jessica obeyed, watching as they were locked in. The doors were clear, so they could still see one another, and they had a lot more room than when they'd been kept in boxes, so they were quite pleased.
In a cell not far away from the new 'recruits', a male Dragonair teen stared at the incoming experiments. He'd been here for some time, and was used to the routine. Every so often, their supervisor, Dr. Sidney, would bring in one or two fresh faces, who would be expected to perform up to a certain standard in Scout tests, and had to be amiable, as handlers often had to work with them in conditions less strictly confined than for other captives. Being a Scout had certain benefits, such as better accommodation and food, and the chance to see the sky every so often, but the training could be taxing. The boy, whose name was Ristoril, was uncertain as to the potential of this pair. Certainly, the younger ones tended to adapt well, but there was a limit to that.