-a/n-
Nurses aren't always assassins, and I have no idea how drugs work.
-TDK
"Is he going to be all right?" Lucy asked, scurrying from end to end of the headboard of the hospital bed.
Some three hours ago, she had left the forest with the host of freed Pokemon. Their owners, upon hearing that Pan had gone further in, had been more than eager to help, and had hurried in, finding hundreds of insect carcasses strewn about a grove, with Pan lying at the center. They had scouted around the area, and had also found Connor the Charmander, Shadow the Zorua -at his appearance, many questions had been asked- and Jacob the Durant, lying in a heap on the ground about fifty metres away from the grove.
A host of flying Pokemon had constructed an airlift, and the four had been taken back to the Pokemon Center, and into the hospital ward that lay deeper into the pink building's layout. Jacob had recovered first, barely two minutes after being put into a bed, with Connor and Shadow awakening just half an hour later. The nurse, having diagnosed them, proclaimed that they were healthy apart from a buildup of red dust in their lungs, which she had quickly flushed out with some sort of blue paste.
However, it had been two hours of silence since then, and Pan still hadn't woken up, nor shown any signs of mental activity. In fact, apart from the fact that the heart monitors still showed that blood was flowing through his veins, the doctors would have proclaimed him dead.
Jacob shrugged where his six legs connected to his pain body, clicking his pincers as he did. "I hope so."
Connor, crouched on the side of Pan's bed, nervously raked his claws up and down the poles of the metal bed, creating a shrieking cacaphony.
"Stop it," Shadow muttered, and the fiery lizard murmured a quiet apology, fidgeting.
From his vantage point on the footboard -Shadow was still mortally afraid of bugs, and Lucy and Jacob, friendly though they were, were still bugs- Shadow licked his paw, his mind whirring.
The small Zorua hadn't been briefed on who exactly had been chosen to be the Challenger in the bet, but knew that the person would be a Champion of some sort. That didn't narrow it down much; 'Champion' was usually an honorary title, given to a Trainer who managed to defeat the League and the Champion. However, when he had been told that the Challenger was an actual, bona fide, manages-the-day-to-day-workings-of-the-region Champion...well, that was something else entirely.
Real Champions -those who were in charge of the League itself, and enforced the law in the region- were extremely competent, far above the usual Trainer-Champions. When Shadow had been told by Flora, on a wild night gazing up at the stars and drinking honeysuckle wine, that the Challenger had been the Manager-Champion of another region before he or she had become the Manager-Champion of another region, it had added to the mystery.
In fact, according to his intelligence, such a person didn't even exist -yet a cursory scan of Pan's mind on their initial contact had told all Shadow needed to know about the boy; everything Flora had told him was true, and more besides. The boy apparently had a strong sense of justice, sympathy towards Shadow's kind -that was to say, Pokemon- and a sense of being equal with Pokemon, not to mention extreme battling competence. Pan was extremely attached to his Pokemon -and that made everything Shadow had just realized all the stranger.
For some odd reason, the boy hadn't even made one remark about losing his Pokemon, or his home; Pan hadn't even asked about what was to become of Hoenn after he left it! Surely the entire region would be in chaos; the League may even have fallen -but had Pan asked? No. Such behavior went against all the information the small fox-like creature had on the Challenger, yet it was true nonetheless.
And furthermore, Jacob and Lucy's talking had just reminded him of something; Shadow's spell of communication worked only on Pokemon which Pan had caught with a Pokeball. Connor, of course, was an exception; the small Charmander, tears now brimming in his eyes, had been given to Shadow by Flora. And yet the boy had talked effortlessly and fluently to the two Pokemon.
In fact, Shadow realized with a jolt, Pan had broken down the language barriers between all of them! He hadn't realized it with Connor, but he could now understand the Durant, Joltik, and Charmander with ease, though the Zorua himself was unable to decipher what exactly they were speaking in. It definitely wasn't Common, the tongue which most humans spoke with between races, or Monish, the language which was a standard between all of his kind, used for inter-species trading.
After all, the four of them had talked for quite a while with the nurse in the room, and the human female hadn't even noticed, nor given away any sign that they had even been talking.
With an even larger jolt, Shadow realized something horrific; out of all his comrades, he was the only mon -as Pokemon called each other, having not been imprisoned yet- out of all of them who was actually...well, a mon. Connor had apparently been seduced into accepting the offer by some unsavory beings, Jacob had been killed, as had Lucy; none of them were human.
The Zorua shook his head; indeed, matters were strange all around -and it was definitely up to him to get down to the bottom of things.
A few tense moments later, the tar-gray door's steel knob twisted, and a dour-looking nurse poked her head through, and Shadow groaned inwardly.
The lady was, while very good at her job, extremely annoying, constantly 'checking in' on Pan and glaring at them as though they were responsible for the comatose boy's state. In her last visit, she'd made pointed remarks that implied Pan would be better off with a store-bought team.
Shadow shuddered at the very thought; when a Trainer found a Pokemon, they tried to catch it, and the Pokemon tried to escape; it was all very well and good, and sporting. However, recently, larger corporations had been trawling the bottoms of lakes and rivers in order to capture massive quantities of Pokemon, as well as putting enormous nets over sections of Routes, for the same purpose. They then injected the captured Pokemon with obscene quantities of growth hormones and vitamins, eventually selling them to Trainers. The entire process was terrible, and half the caught Pokemon were outright culled because they weren't up to standard.
Jacob was not so subtle in his disapproval, instead glaring at the nurse and banging his antennae together. In the Durant culture, it was an outright mark of hostility, and often the precursor of a challenge to the death. Jacob, of course, having been brought into his body by the same force that had brought Pan in to Hilbert's body, had no idea of this, merely the knowledge that it was not a compliment.
The redheaded nurse, dressed in a standard nurse uniform -a pink dress with poofy sleeves, long skirt, and white apron- eased the rest of her body through the door and into the room, making every effort to make as little noise as possible.
Shadow glared at her; the woman acted as though Pan was a sleeping baby, not a Trainer in a coma! The fur on his neck stood up, and he bared his stubby fangs at the nurse, who didn't notice.
In the nurse's hands was a tray, with one syringe on its steel-gray surface, filled with an oily black substance. As Shadow watched, a frown on his face, the nurse, all semblance of happiness now gone from her face, walked over to Pan, and took the syringe from the tray, letting the tray itself fall to the floor with a clatter.
It was this clatter that knocked them out of their daze; Lucy lunged towards the syringe, vaporizing the bottom of it and causing the substance to leak out onto the nurse's hands. A second later, Shadow pounced, knocking the woman's tar-covered hands onto Pan's forehead, where it was absorbed. Jacob darted forwards, steel legs click-clacking on the tiled floor of the ward, and grabbed the nurse around the waist with his pincers, throwing her off to one side where she lay, slumped.
Connor, for his part, had looked up wildly and flinched upwards, claws carving a deep cut into the would-be-assassin's belly. Yet the nurse made no noise, not screaming or shouting at the barrage of events which had left her mortally wounded.
A split second later, however, she did scream, as the tar flowed under her fingernails. Shadow whipped his head around, instinctively throwing himself back as the nurse screamed and screamed again, expelling a blackish-green substance from her mouth as the oil worked its way through her system. Then Jacob's carapaced eyes widened, and he looked down at Pan's face, where the tar was being absorbed into Hilbert's pale skin.
Shadow growled savagely, turning his attention away from the now-still nurse. He had seen the viscous liquid working its way through her system, and had seen her veins slowly fade to black and then wither away. No doubt she had been possessed; her screams had sounded otherworldy, as if another person, far away, had been screaming in pain as well. Nothing could be done for her, so he focused his attention on Pan, the Champion, the Chosen One.
"Lucy," Shadow growled, "can you try and...do whatever to you do to that stuff in his body?"
The Joltik, legs quivering and giving off sparks, shook her head. "My sister always told me," Lucy whispered, "That when particles collide, they damage the little things around them."
"In other words," Jacob put in, pincers clacking together, "If she tried, she might kill Pan."
"Try it, for Arceus' sake!" Shadow roared, at his wits' end. He had traveled all over Unova, seen and done things no other member of his species had done before -save one, whose name was no longer mentioned- and squirmed his way out of many an impossible scenario -but this was different. Now, the small Zorua felt powerless, out of his depth. What good were his powers, he thought viciously, if he couldn't use them for anything real?! "It's all we have," Shadow finished weakly, legs giving out underneath him.
"It might not be deadly," Connor ventured. "I mean, it did get that weird stuff out of her" here the Charmander jerked his ever-burning tail towards the corpse of the nurse "didn't it?"
"It also killed her," Jacob replied, eyes on Pan. "Now, all we can do is hope-"
Perhaps he would have said 'for the best', perhaps 'and wait'; none of them ever got a chance to find out, for then, Pan's eyes jerked open, and he sat up with a jolt.
"Yello?" Pan pursed his lips, looking down at his legs, which were covered in a white sheet. "Why am I in a bed?" He asked, glancing around. "Why does everyone look so sad?" Then his eyes fell upon the dead nurse, and he jerked away, scrambling against the headboard in an effort to put as much distance between him and the corpse as possible. "Good Mew, what happened?!"
Connor was the first to recover, pouncing onto Pan and nearly shredding the blue-and-white-striped pillow with his claws. "Pan!" He shouted happily. "You're alive!"
Pan raised an eyebrow drily. "Well, yes, that is what the circumstances would imply." He looked at Shadow and Jacob, frowning. "Where am I?" He asked, puzzled. "Where's Nask -and where's that evil thingummy?"
Connor frowned, and was about to answer when Jacob butted in.
"You mean you don't remember?" The Durant shook its head from side to side, clicking its metal pincers as it did so.
"Not a thing." A distressed expression came over his face. "Was I -you know, hurt? Am I going to die?"
Shadow shook his head, leaping from his post onto Pan's shoulder and making himself comfortable. "Nothing so dramatic," said the Zorua airily, waving a paw. "You were in some sort of coma, presumably induced from the same incident which caused you to lose your memory."
"You gonna tell 'im about the assassin?" Jacob asked, tossing his head in the direction of the corpse.
Pan frowned. "Assassin?" He started, panicking, but Shadow dug his claws into the hospital gown, baring his fangs.
"Yes," The small Zorua growled, Shadow's appearance becoming more threatening than he actually was. "That nurse came in here with a syringe, planning to kill you."
"She didn't count on us." Connor laughed, making a fist with one hand and punching it into the other in an effort to make himself be intimidating.
Pan raised an eyebrow, smiling wryly. "Was that supposed to be threatening?"
"Well, yes," Connor admitted. "...Wasn't it?"
Silence filled the room for a second, before Lucy piped up.
"I was scared," she squeaked, looking up at Pan with huge blue eyes.
The Champion immediately softened, smiling and letting the small Joltik onto his other shoulder. Shadow, panicking, attempted to crawl as far away from Lucy as possible, then realized that they were both stuck less than a foot away from each other. His desire to be comfortable and his fear of bugs warred, until the former won out, and Shadow shrugged. He'd have to get used to Lucy, he supposed; they were, after all, stuck with each other.
His reverie was broken by Connor, who replied, looking hopeful.
"Really?"
"Arceus, no," Lucy said, shuddering. "That was terrible."
Jacob laughed, and then frowned; his expression didn't change much, Pan noted lazily.
"Arceus?" The Durant asked. "Who's that?"
Pan and Connor shrugged, but Lucy looked thoughtful.
"Do you know," she began, one leg idly scratching the fur underneath her mouth, "I feel the name in my mind, but...I just can't place it."
They might have gone on like this all day, had Shadow not intervened.
"Enough," he growled. "If whoever erased Pan's memory sent one assassin after him, they won't hesitate to do so again; we need to get out of here."
Pan nodded quickly, and stood up, legs shaky from inactivity. Lucy squealed, almost falling off, and Jacob and Connor backed away, the latter pinching Pan's backpack between his pincers and throwing it to the Champion, who caught and put it on.
"Right," he said decisively. "We're going out of the window and off the roof; there's no telling what they've put in front of the door!"
Connor frowned, walking over to the door, claws clicking on the tiled floor, and tried the knob. The door swung open, revealing nothing but a regular hallway, full of bustling sound.
"What's wrong with the door?" The Charmander asked, reluctantly walking back over to Pan, who was shaking his legs to get some feeling into them.
Pan raised an eyebrow. "Doors are for people with no imagination," he replied.
"No," Connor replied, "doors are for regular people. Why don't we just use the door?" He couldn't see why Pan was so eager to go out of the window, really. Though he liked flying as much as any other Charmander did -quite a bit- Connor despised heights from when he was a human.
Shadow rolled his eyes, and sighed. "Connor, Pan was being sarcastic when he said 'what they've put in front of the door'." Seeing the Charmander's frown, Shadow sighed again, continuing. "Whoever sent the assassin could easily have stationed agents in the lobby; it's what I would do."
"So do you send assassins after Trainers often?" Jacob asked, inspecting the window.
It was a regular large window, twenty or so square feet in area, with lengths of wood criss-crossing in front of it for decoration. Breaking it would be no problem, but there would almost certainly be an alarm attached to the window, and the Durant didn't like their chances of outrunning the hospital guard. As they'd trailed behind the emergency medics when carrying Pan into the hospital, he'd noticed a dozen or so guards with bows and daggers patrolling the outskirts of the hospital.
Shadow made no comment, instead scrutinizing the wall around the window. He spotted a badly concealed alarm halfway up the left side, made to look like a painting. It was, in fact, an extremely good disguise for it; nobody would have checked under a painting of soup cans for an alarm. Even if they had, they would have seen only a small knob, which could easily have been just for hanging the painting. However, the same natural gifts that gave the small Zorua's people the ability to cast illusions had also given them the ability to see through illusions; after all, it wouldn't be much of a civilization of theirs if thieves could wander wherever they pleased.
"Alarm," he reported, pointing a paw to it. As the others looked at it, he wrinkled his nose, formulating a plan. "Lucy, do you think you could disable the alarm?"
"Hmmm..." Lucy hopped off of Pan's shoulder, scampering up the side of the window and onto the painting. "Could you help me?" She asked, struggling to move the painting aside.
Jacob made to knock the painting off with one of his antennae, but Pan made a shooing motion with one hand, taking the painting off with the other. After all, it wouldn't do to have the alarm activated before they even got out of the room.
Her barrier gone, Lucy leaped onto the knob, placing all of her legs on the alarm and closing her eyes. As a Joltik, she had a natural affinity for electronic devices, and she could sense the circuitry in the device. Working with the utmost concentration, Lucy used a small spark of electricity to travel the inner machinations of the alarm, trying to cut its power.
As he watched her do this, Shadow frowned. Unova -and indeed, the rest of the world- had complex devices such as alarms and medical equipment, yet the scientists of the regions never seemed to use their skills for warfare. The elders of his species, the Zoroarks, were especially attuned to the layers of history in the world, and his own grandfather, Depth, had come out of a vision, just over a week ago, with a startling pronounciation.
He had claimed that there was a time, millenia before theirs, that humanity had been the sole race to tread the earth. Depth had said that the humans -the Trainers, he assumed- had long since killed off all the Pokemon of their time. Deprived of any sort of violent activity, the humani -as moni, the Pokemon's name for Pokemon as a whole- had proceeded to murder each other. Here, Depth's vision had become even more disturbing; in the strange past-world, the humani had had strange, cylindrical devices, capable of killing dozens at the slightest squeeze, enormous buildings which could move and create enormous explosions; all these, and many more.
What was more, the humani existed in much greater quantities in the strange past-world, in thousands upon thousands upon thousands upon thousands, in numbers which Shadow could not even begin to comprehend. All this, and much, much more, hinted at a point in the past where humani had been much more advanced and civilized than the present. This in and of itself was not too worrying; Shadow's parents and aunts and uncles had argued that the present state of the humani was for the best, and all had agreed.
But Depth had said that in the past-world, armed humani had stormed small clusters of buildings made out of straw and mud, in a land where the sun beat down relentlessly and the people were of a much darker skin, and massacred the humani there. Again, this was not shocking -but what Depth had spoken next had hushed everyone.
The massacred humani had fought back -with weapons almost exactly like the so-called 'advanced' tools of killing in the present. And when one of the armed humani had been injured, his comrades -after killing the rest of the brown-skinned humani- had taken him to a strange creation with lengths of metal protruding out of its top. There, they had cured him -with medical equipment almost exactly like that of the present-day world.
The gathering had been stunned; the advanced civilization in the past was not exactly anything to wonder about. After all, some sort of mass extinction event could easily have occured, wiping out the destructive humani so that the present world could rise, a much better world. However, for humani in both times to have used the same weapons and medical technology...?
From then onwards, the rest of the Illusions had done little but survive, shell-shocked at this revolutionary news. It was this that had prompted Shadow to accept an offer which had been asked of him months ago; to be the guide of a humani who would apparently complete the League Challenge, becoming famous worldwide. There had been a substantial salary involved, but Shadow had dismissed it; he wanted to be the guide only to be able to travel the world, and hopefully decipher the mystery behind his grandfather's vision.
Speaking of which, Depth had disappeared just a day before Shadow had left, leaving the forest with a man. The Illusion's scouts, unable to get a good glimpse of the man before he had hurried into a bush to wait for Depth, had noted only that the man was apparently dressed like a knight.
At this memory, Shadow's eyes widened; could it be...? But it was then that Lucy interrupted his reverie, squeaking excitedly.
"I've done it!" The electrical mite exclaimed. "The alarm is off; we can get out!"
Pan nodded sharply, and Jacob moved forward to break the window with one of the steel balls dangling off his antennae, stopped by a hand from Pan, who was frowning.
"What do you think you're doing?" Pan asked.
Jacob tilted his head to one side, confused. "Breaking...out?"
Pan rolled his eyes, using his thumbs to turn the latch at the center of the window from horizontal to vertical, sliding the window open and letting a gust of air into the room.
As the breath of fresh air touched over the corpse, the nurse's eyes flickered open, a gruesome smile splitting its face. It no longer had the ability to kill the Champion, the dark being knew, but it could certainly raise the alarm. It rose unsteadily to its feet and lumbered out of the door, unnoticed by the other five, who had all clambered out of the window, plopping down onto the concrete around the hospital.
"Why would you think that the window had to be broken?" Connor persisted. "I mean, you were a human once, right? Unless we were in some sort of prison, why on earth would we need to break a window to get out of the room?"
Jacob snapped his pincers at the Charmander, who jumped back before continuing to walk down the hospital's entrance roundabout. The building itself bordered the outskirts of Accumula Town, serving as an easy way for Trainers and their Pokemon injured on Route Two to be healed, which was lucky for the five, as Pan was still a little bit weak.
The hospital itself was a large, sprawling three-story affair, with two wings spreading out behind it. The roundabout itself was enormous, and required a bit of a walk to get across, serving as an extension of the lobby, where stretchers could be dispatched to bring in patients. In the center of the enormous stretch of blacktop was a fountain of the creator of the hospital, spewing out water from his moustache.
Currently, a large party was crossing the roundabout, doctors and nurses, their mid-afternoon lunch break ended, headed towards the hospital to resume their shifts.
The team, however, noticed none of this, fast-walking across the hundred yards or so to not be noticed. Unfortunately, however, it seemed as though their efforts were in vain, for just as Shadow was thinking that they might have escaped, an alarm began to ring, a harsh clanging that notified all of the guards that there was a possible threat escaping the building.
"I thought you disabled the alarm!" Connor shouted, as they started to run instead of fast-walk; if they were lucky, they'd be lost in the crowd of people crossing the roundabout.
"I did!" Lucy squeaked, panicked. "Maybe...maybe somebody saw us leave?"
"It doesn't matter!" Pan said through gritted teeth, fighting to keep running. His muscles, exhausted from walking through the forest and subsequently defeating the Darkness, had had just enough time in bed rest to stiffen, but not to relax. Inwardly, Pan doubted he could keep up the pace much longer, but that was a bridge he'd cross when he came to it.
"Guards," Shadow said briefly, hooking his claws into the fabric of Pan's jacket and turning in the direction of the oncoming guards.
There were three of them, clad in dark pink uniforms with bands of white circling their shoulders, waists, elbows, wrists, knees, and ankles. Each guard carried a standard-issue crossbow -at least, as far as Shadow could tell; from roughly fifty feet away, he didn't have too good of a glimpse of the guards, after all- as well as a long dagger, or dirk, stuck through their belts. Any more than that, Shadow couldn't tell -but he knew that Pan wouldn't hurt the guards, and he didn't even know if they'd be able to defeat them, so the only option was running.
Jacob, having tilted his head backwards to confirm Shadow's message, had apparently come to the same conclusion, for he stopped for just a second, scooping up first Pan and then Connor and allowing them to ride on his back.
"We don't have time," the Durant said briefly, allowing his riders to adjust themselves to the hard, domed carapace on his back. "I can run much faster than the lot of you; Pan, get out the map -let's go."
And with that, Jacob's six legs whirred into motion, becoming a blur as they hit the ground over and over again, carrying the large, steel-plated insect and its passengers towards their destination. He raced around the crowd and exited the round-about, onto the main dirt road that led towards Route Two. The road was just over six hundred or so yards long, and served as the entertainment and business center for the town, full of restaurants, theatres, and assorted shops.
"Won't you get tired?" Lucy asked concernedly, as Pan, fighting to stay on Jacob's back, shrugged off his bag and began rooting through it. "I mean, we are awfully heavy..."
Jacob snorted briefly. "Durants can carry up to ten times their weight and still walk," he rasped, the moisture in his mouth being flung away by the wind. "All of you combined are maybe one or two times my weight; I think I can manage."
Shadow had said nothing this entire time, but sighed slightly, allowing his claws to sink back into the pads of his feet. "That was a close escape," he murmured. "I wonder why the guards didn't-"
"Ponyta!" Connor near-screamed, having being put on the Durant's back facing backwards. "They've got Ponyta!"
Shadow whipped around and muttered under his breath angrily. While Connor wasn't exactly right, he wasn't far off; the guards had momentarily stopped to bring out their Rapidashes, each saddled and bridled so that their flaming manes, backs, and tails wouldn't catch onto their rider's clothes. While he didn't doubt that Jacob was fast, he severely doubted that the steel-covered ant could outrun a Rapidash.
"Lucy, Connor," he shouted, fighting to be heard over the wind, which had picked up, "When the guards catch up, hit 'em with everything you've got! I'll try and throw down an Illusion, but the Rapidash are running too fast!"
"Oh, shaddup," Jacob clicked. "You think I can't outrun a horse on fire?"
Shadow was about to reply incredulously, but Jacob continued on the same breath.
"I could, but with you lot on my back, it'll be a close thing." The Durant squinted into the distance; they had a few more hundred yards to go before they reached the toll-gate that served as the entrance into Route Two. Once there, they'd be able to hide from their pursuers. Of course, they could have hid in the shops themselves, but Jacob didn't fool himself about their chances; the guards most likely knew the town inside-out, whereas they could easily get lost, or stumble into someone -or something- worse than their pursuers.
"Once we get through the toll-gate," Pan shouted, looking up from his map and squinting into the wind, "we can hide in the clumps of grass until the guards go by, then make our way towards Striaton and continue with the League Challenge!"
"Watch out!" Lucy squeaked. In Jacob's haste, he hadn't noticed that a lone news-cart, its brakes never well oiled, had rolled down an alleyway and into the street, now just a few yards ahead of them.
The Durant's eyes widened, and he frantically tried to run away, but he was going too fast, and they burst into -and through- the cart, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. A newspaper flew into Pan's face, and he grabbed and unfurled it, frowning at the title.
"Pro-Pokemon Radical Group Loses Court Case When Defendant Becomes Paranoid and Accusatory?" Shadow read out from his perch on Pan's shoulder, raising one blood-red eyebrow. "Give me a better view."
Pan obeyed, his eyes scanning the article. Apparently, some sort of radical group, all about 'freeing Pokemon' -whatever that was supposed to mean- had had one of their members arrested for attempting to steal a girl's Pokemon to 'liberate it'.
In court, the hearing had been going relatively well, the defendant's lawyer easily winning the case, until about five or so hours ago, when the defendant had suddenly gone out of his mind, screaming about plots and how he hated all of the scum in the room. That, of course, had not improved the group's chances of getting off scot-free, and the judge had apparently declared the lot of them criminals.
After that, the team had broken up, breaking out of the courtroom and defying capture; the accused boy had disappeared in the confusion, and the theives were dubbed 'Team Plasma' after the blue-white uniforms they wore.
At this, Shadow wrinkled his nose; blue-white uniforms...? That rang a bell, certainly...he never got a chance to follow up on that particular thought, however, because then Jacob stumbled to a halt in front of the check-point.
"We're here," the Durant clicked wearily, crawling to a full stop and letting himself fall to the ground.
Pan, confused, looked back, to see their pursuers halted at the wreckage of the news-cart, which had devolved into a full-scale riot as other carts had crashed into it, creating a total blockade of the street.
"Well that was convenient," he managed.
The checkpoint building was not very large; the size of a one-story building, it had an open front and back for cyclists and runners. Inside the building was a large, wall-length television which reported the news and various Unovan bulletins. There were rows of leather seats in the building, where various Trainers slumped, sat, or slept.
It was rectangular, the front and back thin and the other sides wide, and the left and right walls were covered by large blue desks, around five or so feet off the ground. There were two Trainers at the desks, filling out forms with pens bolted to the desks.
It was behind these desks that three harried-looking clerks rushed to and fro, their hands full of papers and the like. Pan, getting off of Jacob, trudged over to one of these clerks.
"Excuse me," he muttered. The clerks took no notice of him, typing information from a form into the enormous computers that were built into the walls.
Shadow scratched him on the ear. "Say it like you mean it!" The fierce Zorua commanded.
Clearing his throat, Pan tried again. "Excuse me!" He called, trying his best to look important and business-like. It didn't work; the clerks still paid no attention to him, though one did detach herself from the computer to pick up a thermos and sip from it gratefully.
"Oh for Arceus' sake," Shadow muttered exasperatedly. In the next instant, he cast an Illusion around Pan, changing the barriers of sound around the pale-looking Trainer so that his voice would be amplified. "Try again," he suggested.
Pan rolled his eyes, took a deep breath in, and let it all out. "EXCUSE ME!" He shouted, the Illusion amplifying and transmitting the sound to be ten times louder, causing it to reverberate around the room and wake up all of the relaxing Trainers.
The clerk with the thermos of coffee, who was the closest, got the worst of it; the shout actually pushed the thermos out of her hand, and it fell to the floor.
There was a pregnant pause, during which Shadow, disheveled -his abilities did not, unfortunately, extend to not being affected by the sound-related Illusions which he cast- hurriedly took down the Illusion. After a second or so, Pan spoke up.
"I'd like to go to Route Two," he said with a smile; as the speaker, he heard his voice normally.
The female clerk with the coffee fell over, and another hurried towards him, a sheaf of papers in his hand. He thrust the lot at Pan, who caught it, staggering under the force.
"Here," the young man snapped, pushing up his wire-frame glasses with one hand. "Fill these out; your reason for travel"
"Going to Striaton City," Pan interrupted cheerfully.
"your Pokemon and their levels," the clerk continued as though nothing had happened, snatching back the papers, grabbing a pen from a coffeepot, and filling out the forms himself.
"Durant, Joltik, Charmander, er..." Pan blinked, confused; he wasn't exactly sure whether or not he was supposed to reveal Shadow's species name.
"Just say Oshawott," the Zorua replied mentally, hurriedly climbing back down into Pan's shirt.
"...Oshawott. Uh..." Pan also had no idea what level his team was; they hadn't really done any training, but surely their fight against the nightmare-creature -the amount that he could remember- had to count for something?
His team's level effectively referred to their growth; when Pokemon battled, their hormone systems went into overdrive, pushing adrenaline through their veins and also causing them to grow slightly. In the wild, this rarely mattered, as Pokemon barely ever got into battles, thus meaning that they didn't grow abnormally quickly. However, under the command of a Trainer, it was quite different, and the Pokemon tended to grow at a rapid rate, fitting years of growth into weeks or days.
Somewhere along the line of humans 'domesticating' Pokemon, someone had realized that a system needed to be put into place to put a regulation into place concerning the growth of a Trainer's Pokemon -and thus, the leveling system was born. Pan frowned; usually the Pokedex did all of the work for him, but he couldn't even remember getting a Pokedex, to be frank.
"...ten?" He managed.
The clerk looked up from the forms, suspicious. "Well, what is it?"
"Ten," Pan replied with more authority.
"Hometown"
"Pal-" Pan began cheerfully; he had grown up in Pallet Town, all the way back in Kanto...to think, how far he'd come! Shadow, eyes widening, scratched him frantically on the ear, but it was too late; Pan was already saying the latter half of the word destined to change his life. "-let."
"Why did you scratch me?" Pan asked mentally, annoyed.
Shadow said nothing, instead curling into a ball and preparing himself for an Illusion. It would have to encompass all of them, somehow making it seem as though they'd been carried off, while still allowing them to escape...he groaned softly; why?
The clerk, meanwhile, dropped the pen, eyes growing wide, and reached for the phone behind him with scrabbling fingers as a cold pit settled into his stomach. There was an immigration law in Unova; there had been since the founding of its League. Border control was fierce, killing refugees if necessary -to his mind, this meant that the boy standing in front of him was a cold-blooded killer.
In fact...come to think of it, hadn't he read in the papers about Port Castelia being under attack by terrorists? It had been right on the page after that story about the radical group's declaration as criminals! The clerk finally managed to grab the phone off the wall, and said into it one breathless word: "Skatole."
It was the code word for all checkpoint offices to utter into the phone, were they to discover a possible immigrant. The phone was on at all times to ensure that nothing strange was going on in the offices. If a fight occured, or a compromising conversation occured, every bit of it would be recorded, and sent to the Unovan Intelligence Service.
Twenty-five miles away, Mark Anuyit, deputy of the U.I.S., dropped his head, clenching and unclenching his fists in an effort to keep his calm. It had been just over a half hour since they had taken care of the Port Castelia bombing business, and his agents had assured him that all the refugees had been captured.
Yet here, clearly, someone had slipped under the net, for the Accumulan Checkpoint Office had just issued an immigrant alert. Anuyit had no choice but to send in an entire team of Rangers; they would have to order a media blackout and hope for the best. If these people were good enough to get away from his agents once, there was no telling what they could do in the future.
"Send the nearest Rangers to the Accumulan Checkpoint Office," Anuyit barked into a commanding officer's face. "And get me on the line with whoever was in charge of the Port Castelia cleanup; I want his termination letter signed on the dotted line by tomorrow."
"Sir, yes sir!" The officer fast-walked away from the deputy commander; he certainly wouldn't want to be the head of the cleanup operation right now. Anuyit was a tolerable man at the best of times; when nervous, he became downright awful.
But then, now the Rangers would be moving in -and the entire sorry business would be cleaned up in a hurry. Anuyit allowed himself one smile before going back to his paperwork.
Of course, had he taken the time to consider the situation and called the office back, he would have surely retracted the troops. After all, what sort of immigrant would go through every checkpoint from Castelia to Nuvema without being caught, presumably reach Accumula, and then turn back and make the most idiotic mistake possible?
But Anuyit hadn't taken the time, confident that whoever had sounded the alert was sure that they had an immigrant in their midst. And now the order was being sent -the order to exterminate Pan H.G.
Back in the checkpoint office, everything had gone to hell. Shadow had quickly covered himself and Pan in an illusory bubble which connected to Jacob, Lucy, and Connor on the far side of the office, close to the doors -for security's sake, Pokemon weren't allowed inside the building- and created an Illusion of an explosion.
This, of course, had only reinforced the idea that they were highly dangerous terrorists, and a second later a guard had appeared from behind the blue desk. Shadow turned his head as the five of them hurried to move against the wall; the doors had automatically been locked down, so they'd silently decided to wait until everything cleared over and sneak out. He wished he hadn't.
The guard had a mechanical crossbow, a S.E.S.-which stood for Segmented Entry Shot- Sauer, the crossbow favored by the Unovan Guard Detail for its single-shot power. After all, in their line of work, if a target took more than one shot to take down, they were in trouble that no rapid-fire bow could solve.
Shadow gulped upon seeing it; while he had obviously never handled one of the devices, he knew that the crossbow bolt, upon entry, would split up into segments that lodged themselves in the unfortunate target's stomach, incapacitating but not killing them.
"I'm going after them!" The guard yelled. Without waiting, he dashed off, unlocking the door as he went.
Pan nudged Jacob and lifted his chin towards the door; while he had no idea what the fuss was about, he had been in such situations before, and knew that they would need to leave before further reinforcements arrived.
The Durant nodded, and Pan got on, Lucy and Shadow on his shoulders, followed by Connor. His steel-shod legs making scarcely a sound on the blue carpeting of the office, Jacob padded out of the doors -and threw himself to the side as a crossbow bolt embedded itself into the tree directly to the side of where he had just been.
He quickly got his balance again, but the rest were not so lucky; Pan and Connor had had a relatively loose grip, unprepared for an ambush, and they sprawled into the dirt. Pan made to get up, but stiffened when he felt the oh-so-familiar feeling of cold steel against his neck.
"Get up," the guard hissed, hatred etched into his face. He had lost a sister to a panicking refugee with a gun, and had nursed his grudge ever since. He waved the crossbow up slightly. "Hands above your head."
Pan got up slowly, his mind racing. He had no idea what he'd done wrong, but that didn't matter; unless he acted soon, he had no doubt he'd be jailed without a second thought.
"Look, I don't know what you think I've done but-"
Pan had taken self-defense classes in the Saffron City Dojo for two months before getting private instruction from Koga, the greatest assassin Kanto had ever known. Koga had told him a few elementary secrets of fighting; more often than not, it was better to get in one decisive blow rather than attack the enemy over and over again.
The ninja had also told him one thing: the enemy's mind is distracted when somebody is talking to them.
He quickly dropped to the ground; as he had hoped, the guard was momentarily stupefied, and didn't fire his crossbow. Without giving the other man time to react, he lashed upwards with a brutal punch that sent the guard reeling backwards -but didn't knock him out.
"Why you little-" the guard snarled.
Pan barely had time to react before the other man rushed towards him, and clumsily dodged. The guard, carried forward by his own momentum, windmilled his arms to catch his balance. As he did, Pan karate-chopped the other man under his ear, one of the many sensitive points on the body. The guard had time to widen his eyes before he slumped to the ground, unconscious.
Pan backed slowly away, breathing heavily, heart and mind racing. He'd just assaulted a Unovan guard -unless he killed both the man and everyone inside of the checkpoint building, this was it, the end of his journey before it had even started.
Connor, not understanding the consequences of assaulting a police officer or that the guard would be able to deliver a description of Hilbert when he awoke, laughed.
"You sure taught him a lesson!"
Lucy jabbed him on the shoulder from her perch atop his head -she was growing quickly- and hissed "shut up".
"Why?" Connor asked, stupefied. "He knocked him out," he continued on, oblivious to the silence of his companions, gesturing to the fallen guard, "so we can just get a move on!"
There was a pregnant pause for a few seconds, and Shadow spoke, slowly at first but then with more confidence.
"Pan's logic is that the guard will give a description of him when he wakes up, and that his Trainer's license will be removed -correct?" Shadow asked rhetorically, not expecting a response. He was taking in a breath when Pan responded despondently.
"Shadow -it's time they knew." Pan sat down heavily on Jacob's back, looking at Connor and Lucy with heavy eyes. "Look, you guys, I'm not...from around here."
Shadow groaned, realizing that the cat was out of the bag; even if he forced Pan to stop, the damage would be done. Well, it couldn't be too bad, he rationalized. Jacob frowned, twisting his head around to fix Pan with a beady eye.
"What are you talking about?" Jacob asked slowly, narrowing his eyes. He'd known something was up ever since he was reincarnated as a Pokemon, but he hadn't thought much of it. Stranger things had happened, after all.
Pan sighed again, and told them. About how he had been born in Kanto, rising up through its ranks as first a gifted Trainer, then a prodigy, next a mastermind, and finally a Champion before continuing on to conquer Hoenn as well. How he had dove into a strange spot into the ocean and found himself in a strange place, drifting throughout dimensions, and how he had spoken to Shadow.
He told them about waking up in Hilbert's body, in the strange land of Unova, and immediately choosing a new starter Pokemon -which had turned out to be the tricky Zorua himself. How Shadow had shown him his strange powers over the realms of Illusion, and explained to him everything -most importantly the bet, and how Pan would have to become the Champion of Unova, lest it be destroyed.
In fact, Pan told them everything he knew -except the scene which had played out in that grove of horror, which had been tucked away in his mind. When he finished, he looked up with a heavy heart; just ten minutes had passed, and nobody had spoke but him. They would, of course, leave him -after all, what Pokemon would want to be with a Trainer who was both certain to take on the League Challenge and hindered at every step?
"Well, if you're done with yer' little story, we can get a move on," Jacob said at last.
"Yeah, really." Connor yawned, stretching his arms out; they had traveled through the night, and the sun was rising -usually the time that he'd have been asleep as a human.
Lucy was, of course, more understanding. "Pan, we don't care," she said as gently as possible. "We'll stick with you."
Pan's face lit up. "Thanks, you guys." He frowned, looking down at the still-unconscious man, who was starting to stir. "We should get a move on..." Moving swiftly, and taking care not to wake the guard, he dragged the man into the bushes by the roadside, as Connor hopped onto Jacob, Lucy and Shadow on his shoulders.
The latter was silent, as Pan finished his work and got back onto the Durant. Shadow was troubled; looking down on the events that had occurred, he wasn't too sure about what was going to happen. Before Pan had spoken up, and reminded him that the beings which had placed the bet were sure to interfere, he'd been relatively sure that Pan would be able to pass just without saying much or looking up very often.
Now, though...he wasn't confident. Though in all honesty -what could they do? The Zorua frowned, reminded yet again that he had very little idea of the power of the beings which had placed the bet. He was just mulling over the limits of their power, relatively sure that the fact that they hadn't simply destroyed Pan themselves -or in some manner kept him at the checkpoint office- was an indication of their prowess -or lack thereof- when a black-feathered arrow embedded itself in Jacob's carapace.
Shadow squealed, frantically scanning the countryside for signs of the intruders.
"What the-" Connor managed, twisting around, before another arrow sped past his shoulder, drawing a thin line of blood. "Agh!" Connor shuddered, slumping; it was as though someone had purposefully sliced his skin open -not enough for it to bleed, but enough for it to sting tremendously.
"We're under attack!" Pan shouted needlessly, nudging Jacob's head and bringing the Durant around to the direction where the arrows were coming from. "Shadow -get an Illusion up!"
Shadow growled, shaking his head. "You'll have to protect us while I do!" He shouted. "As soon as a physical object pierces the Illusion, it'll be revealed!"
"What do you want us to do?" Jacob brought his head around to face Pan -but was forced to retreat it back into his shell, as an arrow stuck itself into his back, near the area where his neck snuck back into his shell.
"Damn..." Pan muttered, coming to a decision.
It was clear that they were being fired at...but by who? His mind whirled through options, before a series of clues presented themselves to him. The arrow that had been aimed at Connor's shoulder -aimed at his head, until he had twisted. The next shaft, sure to cut Jacob's head from his body -until the Durant had twisted as well. Expert archers, obviously -and near enough that the wind wouldn't have made a difference in their calculations.
He slid off of Jacob; sure enough, another arrow came from the same direction as the rest, reacting to his movement -not he himself. The archers were far enough away that they couldn't clearly make a distinction between Pan and the sky -but the same didn't apply with Connor, Shadow, or Jacob. They were experts, and they were aiming to kill.
"Shadow!" He shouted, throwing an arm around Connor and dragging him under Jacob. "Jacob's shell is too thick for the arrows to pierce through; hide under while you make the Illusion!"
Shadow nodded sharply, scurrying off of Jacob and hiding under the Durant's massive body. Closing his eyes, Shadow allowed himself to drift into the state of peace that allowed him to tap into the natural web of lies and deceit that was at the center of the world, and began preparing his Illusion.
"What should I do?" Lucy squeaked anxiously, her eyes full of worry as she looked up at Pan.
The Trainer bit his lip; with further training, Lucy would be invaluable -but as she was, she was almost useless...
"Nothing for now," Pan managed. "Just...get under Jacob with Shadow. If an arrow comes, try and zap it."
As Lucy scurried under, Pan looked towards the direction where he knew the mysterious archers were hiding. What would happen now?
He got his answer very quickly; a few more arrows whizzed past his head, and he was forced to weave around them, before their mysterious assailants decided they'd had enough, and revealed themselves.
There were three of them, jumping down from trees about fifty yards or more down the road. Two were tall young women, dressed in long green cloaks and clutching longbows, the third a grizzled, short, old man with a curved sword in each hand. It was this man that now spoke, pausing only to take a swig of a leather waterskin.
"By the order of Lady Sa'salin, you are under arrest for the destruction of the Royal Unova and subsequent terrorizing of Castelia City," the old man rattled off, voice loud even from such a distance. When he was done, he settled into a combat stance, low to the ground, swords at the ready. If the refugee didn't move, he'd be shot down -and if he tried to run away, the man would pursue him.
Pan's mouth settled into a hard line. "So be it," he murmured, and sent a signal down his mental line with Shadow. "Are you done yet?"
"Yes," the small Zorua replied verbally, scampering back onto Jacob's back, Connor at his heels. The latter had apparently gotten over his injury, and was now staring angrily at the calm trio.
Pan smiled wickedly. "Then let them see the might of a Champion!" He crouched low over Jacob, and said one word.
"Fast."
From fifty yards away, the younger of the women tensed. "Should we fire?"
The man smirked. "Not necessary; if he's planning to charge, I'll chop the terrorist's head off and deliver it to milady personally." The two women nodded, creeping back into the bushes.
"What the-" the older muttered, seeing movement. "Sir -the refugee appears to be charging, extremely fast!"
"So be it," replied the man coldly, spitting out a chewed-up wad of the adrenalin-drug the police called R-00X. He had no fear; and after all, why should he? The man was a veteran, survivor of hundreds of successful missions -and that was alone. He didn't know the two Archers, but knew that they were relatively good; after all, he himself was one of the top Swordsmen in the region.
And that, as Shadow would have said, was his downfall.
As he saw the Durant charge, he leapt forward in glee -not stopping to think that maybe it was a trick, that maybe he should have waited. Pan and Shadow had discussed their plan mentally in detail.
"Are you sure he'll leap?" the Zorua had asked after informing Pan of the nature of the Illusion he'd created; it was an Elastic, one specially prepared so that he'd be able to modify it at will.
"Positive." Pan knew combat veterans; only the enthusiastic had that note of living in their tone -and the enthusiastic met every challenge head-on.
And so, as the grizzled man leapt forward, blades snicker-snacking, the Illusion disappeared.
"What the-" the man managed, before looking in front of him -because, as though from a nightmare, a Durant and rider had appeared, the former's pincers outstretched.
It was only his combat-honed reflexes that allowed him to twist his body to the side, landing him in a heap at the side of the road.
Pan's eyes widened, and he swore under his breath; now the element of surprise was gone, and he wasn't willing to bet a cent that the archers wouldn't shoot him down with the next step he took. So instead, he pulled back Jacob with a soft touch of his ankles.
"We are not terrorists!" The former champion of Kanto and Hoenn called, and the female Rangers stiffened. "I am just a regular Trainer who made a slip-up! Please, erm...I don't want to hurt any of you, but as you just saw, I could! So, uh...don't follow me! Yeah!"
And with that, Pan rode off, past the three Rangers.
"Smooooth," Shadow commented dryly.
"Shut up," Pan snapped.