DISCLAIMER: I do not own Pokémon, which is of Nintendo and Game Freak.

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WARNING: Adult themes are commonly depicted within this story, such as profanities, physical or sexual violence. Please refrain if you are susceptible.

Chapter XIII

Thick, heavy layers of fog covered the forest for the entirety of the night, lifting more and more water into the air as helicopters swoop down in reconnaissance with their spotlights; wolves howled, plentiful and aggressive, patrolling and threatening any soldier to dare enter their territory. Even the moon, which had welcomed the boy and the creature for a short time, seemed to willingly hide itself behind clouds, as to reveal their presence to no one.

What kind of magic or entities were behind that blessing, or why they had decided to protect them the young man had no idea, but he was certainly thankful for it. The forest was known and mythicized to have a mind of its own, and even though that fact didn't make the sound of the rotor blades any less intimidating, the boy was glad the forest was apparently approving of his actions - few other humans had managed to survive a single night inside that place, as the Will of the Forest would not tolerate their presence after sunset under normal circumstances, hence the namesake of the place itself.

Was he deemed an exception to the rule? As soon as he began believing so, a brief rush of wind raged and extinguished the bonfire. The boy sluggishly put it back on, but he had learned the lesson: his presence was tolerated, not accepted; the following morning he would be allowed passage through the forest, not his stay.

As such, what exactly was he going to do? Once past the woods, plains would be laying out in every direction before his eyes: too easy it would have been for the Federation to find him there! But he was bound to die anyway without the protection of the Will, which clearly cared for the creature's life only.

On that regard, what was she going to do the following day? Considering the pace of her recovery and by her words, she would have been able to stand on her own by morning, maybe even defend herself. And while that was a good outcome, the boy couldn't shake off the feeling that she could have just abandoned him and gone on her way; maybe she would have even killed him, just to be safe.

Their previous interactions became meaningless at that realization. Sure, they had talked for a little while; sure, they had fought a battle as allies. Certainly, he had even seen her kinder side! Did any of that matter, though? They were still sworn enemies, after all, and the boy didn't know yet why she had saved him that Sunday morning - she had never answered that question, and he didn't ask her again. In truth, he knew next to nothing about her, and at no given time he could figure out was she was thinking. Because of that, and because he was faithful in the goodwill of every single being of the universe, he had been likely giving her a humanity that she didn't possess.

Facts, on the other hand, were speaking the screaming truth that she was powerful, that she was deadly and, most of all, that she was hostile. He remembered well how she had butchered soldiers upon soldiers back at the square of the City: heads were flying, blood was pouring out of chests, eyes, brains, severed necks. And she had laughed at them; she had toyed with them, and then enjoyed herself at the death and pain of humans just like him. What about his friend, and persecutor of hers? The image of his lifeless body pouring gray matter still haunted the boy. That dark side of hers, which sometimes could be fascinating, became once again in his mind the pure, distilled horror that the Federation would profess regarding all monsters like her.

They had chatted that night and she had been nice enough to him, that was his only consolation. But what initially had seemed progress towards some kind of friendship crumbled when the simple, insidious thought crawled and infected the young man's brain, that she might have faked that behavior. Because there had been another time, one other time in which she had pretended friendliness: when she had needed him to set her free. Weak, open to him, even loving she had been that time! Who was to say she wouldn't have acted that way again, if she had to?

Control, Conditioning of the Mind. He was sure of it, she had exploited him yet again, as she pleaded and cried for help so she could convince him not to capture her, and then use him as a litter to travel through the forest. She had also talked with him later on, making sure, during that instance, to sound reasonable and human-like: that way she could be safe, because he would have not attempted to kill her in her sleep so long as he would have kept believing there was some good in her.

In short, she didn't care for him, she simply needed him to stay put until she could recover her strength and dump him.

Oh, how quickly can emotions overcome each other in that wild jungle of farfetch'd conjectures that is the mind! The creature, the Will of the Forest, the Federation, and along the surgeon's work on his body, his father, the Heavenly Savior, Luxray, and all the other fears and events the young man witnessed, they began mixing and blending together in a confusing mud of anger and terror, without lack of continuity and without any logical or temporal order. Thus he kept thinking of her monstrous side, firmly persuaded she had tricked him once more, and of his most diverse, unsolvable problems, stuck in a loop without exit, for he knew he could not run away; all night long he sat without rest, until exhaustion got the best of him as the sun was a couple hours away from dawn.

/

They didn't share much talk as they woke up. All the fears of the boy assailed him back as the creature stood up, closed her eyes and began to channel energies through a stance similar to yoga, but with her legs straightened vertically. After a minute or so, though, she lost the composure, apparently without success, and never tried it again. Instead, she began to hover in the same direction they had been travelling the previous day.

He trailed behind her through the thick vegetation, unsure of what to say. Still, as she had been completely silent, he felt the compulsion to say something, which was an idea as stupid as it sounded.

"A-are you feeling better today?" he timidly asked.

"Yes," she coldly replied, without even looking back at him.

"Oh," he blurted, and pondered a few instants before speaking again. "That's… good. So… hum... why don't you just... teleport away from here?" The more he said the less he voiced, to the point his last words were just hushed mumbles.

"I cannot," she stated, quite irritated. "Only to places I know, and only small distances," she explained in a least effort attempt.

"Oh, I… I didn't know that," he said, and continued. "This means you remember… you remember well that spot in the forest where we have met Luxray?"

"I do," she said, and didn't elaborate further.

"And why is th-"

Her eyes blazed as she lifted the boy in the air, out of nowhere! She sent him flying against a nearby tree, although not at a dangerous speed, and pressed him against it, effectively blocking any of his movements. Her brow was furrowed, and the lines of her face were emphasized by small, clear-cut shadows. Even her long eyelashes seemed to point spikes at him as she devoured him with her look.

"I don't get it!" she loudly screamed, and heavily breathed thereafter. It was quite a shock to hear such a strong, intense shout out of her crystalline, melodious voice.

The boy froze, scared beyond reason, flailing and failing at the simplest of thoughts.

"I don't get it," she reiterated; her words almost trembled. She was upset, clearly, but her physical stance lacked hostility, while her unfocused eyes hinted uncertainty.

"What are you doing?" she said. "Why are you acting this way? What do you gain by doing this? Are you toying with me? Or are you just stupid?"

"I'm tired of second guessing. Just tell me, tell me why you treated my wounds, tell me why you escorted me to safety, and tell me why you didn't make me your pet slave back there!" she commanded with renewed strength in her voice. Such rage she expressed, for such a rational and collected being!

She was not willing to bargain, the boy could tell that much. What he could not sense, instead, was the fearful, scared trembling of her eyes: she was hiding it, but she was on the verge of tears. In just two days, the most fundamental of her dogmas had been put to the stakes by a single human, after months of rape and years of personal experience which deemed the idea that humans were Evil an undeniable principle.

A single example is enough to counter an entire theory.

But was that young man before her a proper counter to that principle, or just a craftier person? Had she found a trustworthy human, or a very good liar? She could not wrap her head around those questions, and with all she had experienced, she had been exhausted. She was so distressed she could not even meditate, not even for a minute!

She had tried time and time again to understand him, surely: she had sensed his emotions, and through those she had tried to connect the dots of his patterns. But the figure that came out was just a jumbled mess of lines and contradicting goals! She hated it, she hated the idea she could have been wrong for all her life, she hated the idea that the human before her might have been just as scared, just as lost, just as lonely as she was, which was the only reasonable explanation to his behavior. So she did the only thing she could, the same thing he had done to her, the thing that was not much different than asking a criminal if he had committed a crime: he asked him, directly.

The boy, on the other hand, felt his vision blurring and his touch numb from the sudden action of the creature and the copious amounts of adrenaline he had been put through, the umpteenth time within a few days. Seeing Death calling at his door, and unwilling and nonetheless unable to think any further, he released all his frustration with the most honest answer he could give, careless of what her reaction would have been.

"Why would I? That doesn't make any sense!" he blurted out. "I didn't rescue you from that basement just to drag you down with me!"

His honesty flinched her. Indeed, he was answering with just the same desperation as she had posed her question.

"Listen," he began. "I've never done anything good with my life. Nineteen years I've served a regime I don't trust, nineteen years I've ignored the injustice of my life and countless others just because it was the easy choice. It was what everyone else was doing, so I did it as well. 'If you work hard, you pray to the Heavenly Savior and you go to the military school where they shout at you a lot and bully you, they'll feed you and you'll live the day just fine,' they said, and I had accepted that."

Sadness, Regret.

"It didn't seem that bad, and most importantly they gave me protection and security against the dangers of the world. I didn't have to fear for my life because I had accepted their rules."

Fear. It's hard to oppose the masses, it's hard to take action against something that's already in place, and that is especially true if no one cheers for you; Loneliness. She knew these things all too well.

"But what kind of life is that? They treat you like shit, they don't allow you to speak up or say anything or else they whip you, or they make you work even more hours than the impossible amount you already have to. And when you don't work, you pray to the Savior for hours upon hours every day, repeating and remembering to heart the stupidest slogans of the regime and the entirety of the passages of the Victorious Scriptures, which are the most useless pieces of literature I've ever read in my whole life!..."

Spite, Anger, Grief, Hopelessness, they were all exuding from the young man's voice and mind, and so powerful they were the creature's horn was hurting, overheating of a bright red; rarely had such strong rushes of feelings hit her! As if reverberating of the same frequence, she began trembling, and experiencing his same delusions, his same weakness, his same fate; the worst part was that his anguish sounded oh, oh so terribly similar to hers! She didn't want to be reminded of her own past and present, she wanted him to shut up, to say no more! …

"... Oh, and of course you have to give the Heavenly Savior gifts because of the megalomaniac God he thinks he is, cheer for the execution of traitors and monsters alike, repent yourself for sins you have never committed, sacrifice yourself when they call you for War, for that stupid useless retarded destructive and scary, oh so scary War! Because if you do that, then humanity will be happy again! Through a climate of terror and dictatorship, humanity will rise to happiness once again! And of course, because they believe that the world outside the cities is made of beasts, they convince us that they need to treat us like beasts to survive. Oh, that's just so logical, isn't it?!"

… But he was flailing as much as his constraint allowed him to, and shouted and spit words in Anger. She knew he could not contain these emotions, she knew he had to let them out, and she knew she had no right to stop him because she was the one who had asked for them: she had been the one who slashed open his wounds in hopes of finding the cure for her own illness.

"That's their excuse, but I could never believe that was true. And so, when I saw you in that basement… I… I… "

His speech had suddenly become stuttered and inconstant.

"... I felt guilty. I've never felt that guilty in my whole life, never. I was- I was enjoying myself in the City, before… before I saw you."

Sorrow, unbearable Sorrow. She could not contain a tear as she heard the warming kindness in that choked pronoun. She noticed for the first time that in his deep, black eyes, there were black holes that could not reflect light, but wished to.

"I was living the luxuries of the City, I was allured by its flashy costumes and parties."

Guilt; Regret for his choices.

"People were unhappy back home in my village, but everyone seemed joyous there, so I thought I would become too. Braindead, a zombie just like everyone else, I had forgotten about the outside world. And to think I had left my father just to get back inside the Federation's cage…!"

Spite, and Regret again.

"Someone had recommended me poorly. My judgement knew I shouldn't have trusted him, but his words were soothing, and pretended reason. I didn't think he was a bad person, actually I want to still believe that, but I'm not sure at all… If he really was the one who modified that poor Luxray, how can I still defend him? He seemed nice enough, but maybe that was just appearance? Did he treat me well just because I was his pet, his experiment? That was the reason I had recovered so fast, wasn't it? The reason I got a job in the Army as well, maybe? Because I was going to become a Frankenstein monster? I- I don't know, I'm just... It scares me to know the truth about this."

Doubt, and a spike of Fear. He paused for a second, his eyes lost nowhere, before his thoughts could flow freely once again.

"... When I saw you, defenseless and crying, beaten and violated beyond any brutality, I didn't care anymore about anything. I didn't care you were an enemy, I didn't care you would have killed me afterwards. I freed you because I couldn't stand seeing how a human's deprivation and lust, how all the hypocrisy and wrongdoings of the Federation were destroying something so beautiful... so beautiful as you are."

His voice was cracked, but warm and heartfelt. Hope, Joy. And Sweetness. Her heart felt much, much heavier, drowning in self-contempt so much that she had to physically hold her breast with both her hands. How could she had been so insensitive?

"I know you've tricked me into doing it, I know you wouldn't have cared for me just because I would have saved you, and that you still probably don't. I know you possess powers I can't even comprehend, and I do realize you had tricked me into doing it, and that I was probably under your influx all along. But... I like to think I would have still helped you."

How horrified, how scared he must have been! What had she done, how could she hurt such a lone, powerless boy!?

"I fear a War will ensue from what I have done, I have realized that's what the Heavenly Savior wants. He capitalized on the death of his son - just how unlucky was that, of all the people you could have killed… - If people will follow him, it'll be a disaster. There's no way they can win, that's for sure. Brutality, that's what will happen for both sides, for both humans and all creatures, and that's going to be the only result that we'll get from this. But I don't blame it on you, at all, nor do I blame it on myself. It would have happened, eventually, because humans wanted this War. Badly. It was all they would talk about, most of the times. All their prayers about a future golden age, about being rich and powerful and merry again… Because they dream of perfection and happiness in the future, they forgo joy in their present. It is such a stupid, big mistake to do! I wish I was stronger, I wish I had powers like yours so I could do something about this world, about this messy, impossible chaos so I could try and repent for the mistakes of my kind… But as it is, I'm just a puny human who'll soon die at the hands of a wolf or a bear or, if I'm particularly unlucky, of another fellow human."

He was just a puny human, he was right: a puny human whose only defect was to be too harsh on himself. She wished she could just tell him that, she wished she could console him in some way. Could she, though, after all she'd done? Could she make it up for him, after having shattered and crushed all of his hopes? She was scared, she really feared she had messed his frail being beyond recovery.

"The Federation is on my tail. They want me dead. Had i caught you you would be just in danger as I am. I'm sacrificing myself for you, because it's the only thing in my power. Because if I can exchange my life for yours, I feel it's a good trade, and I can die in peace. It really seems there's no place for me in this world, after all… while you do have one, don't you? Your family, your friends… I'm sure you guys live a much more fulfilling life than we do."

If only he knew… Family, friends? Yeah, right, she wished those still existed. And her, worth his life? How was such an ungrateful bitch as she was worth anything… ?

"So do me a big favor, will you?" Please, you and all the other creatures, get together and win this War. Exterminate us humans, like we deserve, so that the world may become a peaceful place once again, at least for you guys."

With that last sentence, he was finished.

She was furious at herself, at her stubbornness and heart of stone. She felt an intense hatred for that logical, stuck up part of her that saw everything as goals and predictions as clear as math, hardened through years of self-imposed harshness. And even though her reason was still telling her to stay on her toes, that she would have regretted later what she was about to do, she didn't listen to it, not that time. She was still in time to make up for her behavior; she had to, he deserved it, after all she had inflicted on him!

And so, as she released him from her powers and as he fell towards the ground, completely worn out,

She flew to him and held his hand.

His palm was sweaty, and terribly hot, but she didn't care. She slowly intertwined her slender fingers with his own, one at a time, forgetting all of the hurries of her world to get a firm grip; then, she gently whispered to him, with the care of a mother, "Thank You, human."

It was all he wanted. Those few, small words were all he had wanted to hear for all his life, for what had seemed like an eternity… !

Their cheeks were pepper red, they could hardly keep their eyes open and they were still shaking of nausea, drugged by the after of confusing feelings and striking emotions, but they still managed a smile, a warm, open smile to each other, all they needed to forge a promise of friendship and goodwill for their future.