The Gravity of Darkness
Disclaimer: See Chapter Seven.
Chapter Nine: Just When You Least Expect It…
Thud
Rose opened her eyes to see a shadow standing over her with an arm outstretched and slightly bent upward - but what had made that sound? Looking down by the figure's feet, she saw the body of the man that had almost killed her.
"Sorry I'm late Rose, I almost forgot that people were looking for us."
"Dad?"
The figure bent down into the light, and Rose saw the face of her father, clear as day and unmarred by the slight blue-purple tinge of Psychic projection. She was speechless.
"I'll get to the details of my appearance later. Right now," he started, standing up to full height, "how 'bout we deal with these posers first," he finished, aiming the pistol he had at another man standing over Riolu and firing. The man dropped away from Riolu as another soldier stepped out of the forest and looked at the pair.
"What the…Spartan? How're you alive?"
"Who said anything about being alive?" Scott replied and calmly fired the pistol into the man's face with a slight smile.
Now the others were taking notice at the unexpected visitor in their midst and opened fire on him. However, the rounds got absorbed into Scott's body.
"Surprised? I'm not surprised that you are. Hell, I'm willing to bet that none of you have ever met me, let alone fought me. So here's your first – and last taste of my power." With that, Scott glowed a dark blue and all the rounds that had entered his body shot out and hit the soldiers that had fired them, killing them instantly.
"Dad?"
"Ah, right. About my appearance. To put it simply, I decided to go all out with my powers and create a new body, but -"
'It's not permanent,' a new voice said.
"Mom?"
'Yes, dear. Scott, I don't know HOW you got these powers, but you should know better than to put all of it into a new body. With all the side-effects and strain Psychic energy puts onto it, I'm surprised that it already hasn't disintegrated on you.'
"Right. Well, I never told anyone how far my powers had progressed, and -"
'And what?'
"To say the least, I'm more powerful than you could imagine. Not the most powerful Psychic, but not that under-developed either."
'I ought to -'
"Pardon me," he said suddenly, and disappeared.
Gardevoir sighed. 'Your father…' she said and also disappeared.
Meanwhile, a lone soldier was running through the forest, every now and again looking over his shoulder as though expecting something there, along with his hand reaching towards a handheld radio.
"Where do you think you're going?"
Shluck
The soldier stopped dead, and looked down. A thin metal blade jutted out of his middle, and at the end, a hand holding the blade's handle. As the soldier looked up, the blade pushed deeper into his body.
"S-Spartan?" he gasped.
"I'll take that," he said, snatching the radio away, "and I think I'll take this too," he finished, swiping the sword horizontally through the soldier's body, causing the man to nearly sever into two.
With a soft swoosh, Gardevoir appeared.
'Where have you been?' she asked.
"Look down," he replied. "This soldier was just about to radio in our position. I couldn't let that happen, so I killed him. Don't let Rose sense anything from here. She's very perceptive - like her mother," he added with a sly grin.
'Why hide anything from her?'
"Despite all that has happened, I don't think that now is the time to see her father doing something this gruesome to another body, human or otherwise. Using a gun is one thing, using a melee weapon is entirely different."
'I don't see how, but alright. Let's go back and see if everyone is okay from this unexpected attack.'
With simultaneous whooshes, the pair disappeared.
Back at the entrance to the bunker, Rose was trying to shake Riolu out of a stupor.
"Riolu, RIOLU!"
"Would - you - stop - shaking - me?" he replied.
"Oh thank Arceus you're alright!"
"No thanks to your shaking, yes," he replied.
Dual whooshes signaled the arrival of both Scott and Gardevoir.
"You two alright?"
"We're fine dad. What's with the sudden disappearance?"
Scott quickly glanced over at Gardevoir and looked back at Rose. "Nothing. I just thought I sensed something."
A groan made all of them jump. Scott was the first to recover and whirled around, pistol suddenly in his right hand.
"Whoa! Hold up, I'm on your side!"
"Who - or what, are you?"
"I'm Ace. I was running away from the Black Ops when I ran into this bunker and this Riolu here - and got a slightly painful welcome."
"What about your appearance?"
"Black Ops' doing. Apparently I was selected to be a part of an experiment, and they turned me into this. Half human, half Umbreon. Can't say I enjoy being like this, but it has some advantages."
"I don't fully trust you…but alright. An enemy of my enemy is my friend, as they say."
"Nice to meet ya then. I overheard those soldiers talking about Spartan. Is that you?"
"Yes…I haven't used that name ever since I left the Black Ops, more than ten years ago."
"And you're still alive?"
Scott laughed. "Why does everyone still assume I'm alive? No. I've been dead for five years. Long story short, it was the same people that made you like that who killed me. Needless to say, I made sure I took down as many operatives as possible, but I think one got away from my final efforts."
A flash of pain shot through Ace's skull and a blur of repressed memory flashed in front of his eyes. The sound of gunfire, the flash of grenades, and the blistering heat of a forest on fire. He grabbed his temples and groaned.
Gardevoir immediately took notice of these symptoms and the pain of these particular memories, but said nothing. Her doubts would be answered in time, even if it took the rest of her afterlife.
"What's wrong with you?"
"Migraine. No idea what caused it. Hurts like hell though."
"You'll get over it. Meanwhile, why don't we go inside and grab a bite to eat? Rose, I need to talk to you. Alone."
After everyone else was inside the bunker, Scott turned to his daughter.
"Rose," he started.
She looked up at him, curiosity in her eyes.
He sighed. "Rose, what were you thinking last night?"
She cringed, knowing that this would pop up sooner or later. She just hoped that it would be later and not now.
"I know you love him, but you two should've waited for your final evolutions to do such a thing."
"But dad," she began.
"No buts'. Please, promise me that you won't do that again until you're a Gardevoir and he's a Lucario?"
She wasn't even planning on doing the deed again until then anyways, but she decided to make the promise to him anyways.
"I promise dad. No more of what happened last night between me and Riolu until we've evolved."
He smiled. "Okay then. I did this talk mainly because your mother and I sensed it - as most Psychics would - and she wouldn't stop berating me about it all night as well. Now let's go in and have brunch. Doubtless you and Riolu are hungry."
After their meal, Scott was talking to Gardevoir.
"I don't trust him. Something's off about him, but I can't place what it is."
'I have the same feeling. But for me, it's hard deciphering the jumbled memories as he's been genetically merged with a Pokemon. All I can tell is that he's in a massive amount of pain, but he's unwilling to show it.'
"It's not that. For some reason, I feel as though he was at our place on that night. Somehow he was involved with my murder, but I can't place it."
'Let it go for now Scott. We'll find out more soon, I can feel it.'
Meanwhile, Ace was strolling around the hill that was the bunker, trying to remember what had happened before the experiment.
"Who am I? More importantly, what was I like? I can't remember anything…"
"Hey."
Ace whipped around, but only met the red eyes of the Riolu.
"Oh. Hi."
"Don't mind if I join you, do you?"
"Go ahead."
"Sorry about earlier, really."
Ace laughed. "Probably my fault for aiming the gun at a Pokemon who could whip my ass into submission."
"All the same, I'm sorry. I was shot by another human just a few days earlier, and I still had some residual issues with human weapons."
Just as Ace was about to reply, a scream shattered the night air. Riolu, having both enhanced hearing and Aura sensing, knew immediately who the scream belonged to. Without a single word to Ace, he bolted into the forest, looking for the one he loved.
Once at the scene, he probed the immediate area and got a faint whiff of human scent along with an evil Aura, travelling with both the scent and traces of Aura of his lover. He knew that if he didn't act in time, her fate could be the same as his parents - death. He also knew that they couldn't be too far off, and he could hear a human panting, either from exhaustion from carrying something, or from…other activities. Neither was welcome in either instance, and Riolu hurried to find the source.
A little further along a hidden path, the human in question was struggling with Rose, who wouldn't stop her attempts to escape this human's clutches.
"Quit struggling, damn you! You're hard enough to lug around without you moving - but it's going to be worth it when I get you back to the cabin…oh yes. I'm going to have my way with you before handing you over to the Black Ops. From the looks of things, you're the so-called daughter of the dead specialist sniper of the former do-gooders."
Rose could only widen her eyes in fear as she tried to speak, but the human had placed a cloth in her mouth to prevent such a thing from happening. She couldn't run either, as he had bound her arms and legs as well. Sure, she could teleport, but how would she get away? For her, the teleportation process drained too much of her still-budding Psychic abilities, and she could only manage one teleport per hour, not mentioning that her powers were still regenerating after she made herself a new dress after her mating with Riolu. Who knows what could happen to her in that time? Her only hope was that either her parents or Riolu would save her.
Riolu, however had overheard the human talking, and knew that it was either now or never to get her back. He sprang from the bush where he was hiding, and aimed his anger into an Aura Sphere, one much larger than he could normally produce, and under his fury, he knew that it was his time. Launching the orb, it collided with the human's head, making him drop Rose and sending the body head over heels onto the forest floor. The light from the Aura Sphere didn't dissipate, but increased as Rose took notice at the changing form of her lover. From a small but lithe body to a much larger one as larger, sinewy muscles rippled underneath the darker blue of his fur and the pale yellow of his chest fur along with three new spikes located on the top of both his paws and the middle of his chest. Her Riolu had evolved into a much more mature Lucario.
"Don't you DARE touch her."
"Or what?" the human replied, going into a crouch and producing a sawn-off shotgun from his cloak.
Lucario disappeared - or appeared to, as his speed was increased tenfold, suddenly appearing by the human's shoulder.
"Or this," Lucario replied, and took hold of the arm that held the weapon and bent it far back, snapping it with a loud crack and rendering it useless. As the man screamed in pain, Lucario snapped out his leg, and tripped the man onto the forest floor again, but this time breaking the man's leg in the process. As Lucario charged another Aura Sphere and aimed it at the human's face, he heard a cry behind him.
"No, Riolu, don't!"
Lucario froze, Aura Sphere mere inches away from the man's head, and instead directed it at the sawn-off, bending it into an unusable form. Standing up to full height, Lucario gave the man a threatening growl and moved off to where Rose had managed to spit out the gag and swiftly cut the ropes binding her limbs. Once free, she threw her arms around him and hugged tightly.
"Oh, Riolu! I'm so glad to see you!"
He chuckled deeply. "I think I'm Lucario, now."
She blushed, but before she managed to say thanks in a different manner, a whoosh brought them back to their senses.
"Hold it. Turn around slowly. Let go of my daughter, or I will shoot."
"Dad, wait! That's Riolu!"
"Lucario," he whispered into her ear.
"Riolu? Is that you? Damn, you evolved already? That was fast, considering I thought your species needed more time to evolve naturally…"
"I was rushed into it, given the circumstances at hand, Scott," Lucario replied.
"Ah, yes. For the man that wanted to 'have his way' with my daughter…" A single shot rang out through the night, and only the light thump of limbs falling onto the ground accompanied the sound of the gunshot.
But that went unnoticed by both his daughter and her mate, as they were in an embrace only lovers could be when presented with relief after an event such as this. As Scott watched, his daughter started to brighten with the moon, and she began to change. Lucario had to release his hold on her and stand back as she transformed. When the light died down, the form of a Gardevoir was left in its place.
'Looks like you're not the only one with a new form,' she said with a slight giggle.
Continued in Chapter Ten…
A/N: The defeat of the Black Ops at the bunker and unexpected events lead to Riolu's and Rose's evolutions! What can come of these new changes? More in the next chapter…
- UBE Chief
