Having been to Glacies before, Quill, Aamira, and Lucario all underestimated just how cold it could get. Even while on Capricorn's back, Aamira felt close to being frozen solid. She spent half of the time curled up in his mane trying to keep warm while Quill walked by Lucario with his fire flared up, trying to keep the both of them warm.
The snow was getting deeper and they were near their limits. It had been snowing for the last few hours and they could tell it was only going to get worse.
"I think eventually it should all turn to ice. We shouldn't have as much trouble walking then." Aamira shouted over the noise of the wind. Quill was the only one who was able to hear her over the wind, so he relayed the message to Lucario.
Aamira wished that all fires were like Capricorn's. She guessed this was what all fire felt like to Quill and other fire types; warm and bright but not able to cause a burn. Aamira wondered if Capricorn was ever so nervous around her that he would burn her by accident. It must have happened at some point unless he was trained not to do that before he was given to her. That was probably the case. She would have to remember to ask Faris later and to do that she'd have to not freeze to death first.
With the wind blowing the way it was and the blizzard that was starting up, Aamira hardly even noticed when Capricorn kept walking. If Lucario hadn't been keeping an eye out for potential ambushes by looking for their aura, he and Quill probably would have kept walking without even noticing.
He doubled back with Quill walking close behind him. "Is something wrong?"
Aamira looked up and finally realized that they weren't moving anymore. She patted Capricorn on the neck and tried to coax him to move forward, but he wouldn't budge. He wouldn't even blink.
"He looks scared." Quill said. "What do you think it is?"
"I don't know." Aamira jumped down off of his back and tried to talk to him in a low soothing voice while rubbing his snout, but he kept staring at some fixed position off in the distance.
Lucario turned in the direction that Capricorn was facing. "I don't sense anything over there."
"I don't hear anything either." Quill said.
"Come on now, there's nothing to be scared of." Aamira started pulling on his reins, but he still refused to even lift a hoof.
To Lucario it felt like it had appeared out of nowhere. It wasn't even like a small fleck of energy that had just appeared; from his view it seemed as if a huge sun had just formed right in the middle of the tundra. Capricorn reared up and bolted back in the direction they had come from before Lucario could even react. Lucario dove towards Aamira and Quill and knocked them to the ground just as a white beam of light passed over them.
Quill got up and used Flamethrower in the direction that the attack had come from. The attacker, who was just barely visible through the thick snow, jumped out of the way. There was a sound something like cards shuffling followed by a soft click. They waited a while, but nothing happened.
"Move!" Lucario ran to Quill and pushed him out of the way just as a shimmering blue beam of light shot towards them from a different direction from the one the pokemon had jumped in. It moved so silently. Even without the wind, they probably wouldn't have heard it.
The shuffling sound came again, but this time instead of waiting, their attacker attacked again immediately after it was ready. Lucario was too far away this time to run to Aamira's rescue. A yellow beam of sparking electricity shot towards her. Aamira attempted to move out of the way, but to her it seemed like the attack had appeared out of nowhere and it was too big to dodge in time.
Aamira screamed as the attack just barely hit her and she fell to the ground into the deep cold snow. It hurt at first, but didn't do too much damage. Aamira tried to move, but she couldn't. Was she paralyzed? It was possible for a pokemon to paralyze a human like this, but if that beam had hit her the wrong way, it could be permanent.
Lucario had run back towards Aamira the second he sensed the attack coming, but wasn't fast enough to get her out of the way in time. Almost as soon as Aamira hit the ground, Lucario lifted her up, supported her the best he could, and ran as fast as he could. While carrying Aamira, Lucario wasn't able to look for signs of an attack. Quill was right behind him, looking for any sign of their attacker. A few times he heard the cards or whatever they were shuffling and he was able to keep track of where it was to some extent.
They kept running until they had crested the mountain they were on and managed to get to a lower valley. The snow wasn't as deep there and it wasn't snowing as hard. Quill hadn't heard the sound of their attacker for a while now. The two of them stopped running to give Lucario a chance to look around. He couldn't see their attacker as usual, but he managed to find a den where a few other pokemon were sleeping. It would be a good place to hide for a while.
The pokemon they intruded on weren't happy about sharing their territory though. Two of the biggest ones woke up, growling and baring their teeth, almost the instant they came in.
Aamira moved slightly while still being supported by Lucario. It looked like the paralysis was starting to wear off, but just barely. "Would you be kind enough to let us stay the night? Just one night. We'll be gone before you wake up in the morning and we'll never come back. We'll leave some berries here for you too."
The two pokemon growled, but didn't advance. They glanced at each other and then the larger of the two spoke. "One night. See to it you're gone before we wake."
With the two larger pokemon joining the others and going back so sleep, Quill, Lucario, and Aamira had the chance to rest for a few hours.
"How do you do that?" Quill asked. "You can always convince pokemon to do whatever you want them to."
"I can calm people down with my aura, but nothing as advanced as this." Lucario said.
"I don't make pokemon do what I want, I just negotiate. A human that can understand them isn't something very common, you know, so of course they'd be curious to hear what I have to say. I tried making a Weavile catch some fish for me once when I was staying in Hearthlan, but it got mad, took a swipe at me, and ran off. The thing is knowing how respective pokemon think and being able to offer them something they want or appealing to their better nature in some way. Like if I was in danger and I needed help, I could make someone rush to help me for no reward but just because it's the right thing to do. Of course in that case I would try to come up with a reward."
Quill nodded towards the pokemon sleeping at the back of the cave. "So what about those pokemon over there?"
"Beartic are common in these areas. Around this time of year there are always fights for territory between Beartic and other pokemon. There's less food too. Those two bigger ones were the Patriarchs most likely. They're the leaders. They protect and divide food among their groups and also order the others in the group in battles similar to wars between different groups. They're really important that way and it can be stressful at this time of year. When someone comes into their cave they would most likely think that they're either invaders or extra mouths to feed. All I did to convince them to let us stay was convince them that we're not invaders and offer to feed them instead. There's no guarantee it would have worked though. They're usually aggressive for another reason this time of year. You'll see if you look over there."
The Beartics' large bodies blocked anything that might be hiding behind them. Lucario tried to see the aura of whatever they were hiding and saw small flecks of light hidden behind the Beartic. "Eggs?"
Aamira tried to nod, but still couldn't move enough to make the motion at all noticeable. "Yea. This is their mating season. They have the timing down perfectly. Beartic have their eggs in this harsh time of year and by the spring when food becomes plentiful again, the eggs hatch. By the time the weather becomes harsh again, they're able to fend for themselves for the most part. After two or three years of age, they would normally leave the group. Females are usually accepted into other groups or will rove around looking for roving males from other groups to start their own family. Males either have to find a roving female to start a family, or have to fight the male Patriarch of another group. If the roving male wins, both Patriarchs are banished if they're not killed and the females will fight for the other Patriarch position. Sometimes both a male and female will challenge the Patriarchs and they'll take over together."
"With all of that fighting, they must not live long." Quill said.
"They're one of the more violent species of pokemon, but they just do what's necessary to live in a frozen world. If they traveled farther south, they would have more room to live and food would be more abundant, but their primary food source is fish and they catch them by freezing the water with their breath. Too far south and it would be too warm for their breath to reach farther down in the water. They're stuck here, so they fight. As far as I know, they're the only pokemon species that can get eggs without actually loving the ones they're with. I guess they just love power and little else matters. For that reason, only the Patriarchs of a group will ever have eggs."
"So if they want kids, they have to fight." Lucario said. "I kind of feel sorry for them."
"Again they just do what they have to. Welcome anything that's beneficial and discard anything that isn't. That's what makes them natural leaders. The leader of Dargan has a Beartic for a partner, in fact."
"But what if someone in their group was something considered not to be beneficial?" Quill asked.
"They'd usually be kicked out. They don't normally attack anyone from the same group as them unless challenging one of the Patriarchs, so they'd just be abandoned somewhere, even if it was just a Cubchoo. Actually that's what happened with the Elder of Dargan's Beartic. She was abandoned as a Cubchoo because she was weak and got sick too often for the group to take care of. It was either use all of the berries on her to try to make her stay healthy and have them all starve to death, or kick her out. The elder's parents rescued her after finding her when fishing and she lived with her partner ever since."
"They just do what they have to in order to survive." Lucario said. "I'm not sure if I could live by a law like that."
"I don't think anyone could. Beartic are pretty tough." Quill said. "So how are you doing? Can you move yet?"
Aamira tried to move her arm and managed to raise it a couple of inches off of the ground. "I still feel kind of numb, but I think I'll be okay after a few more hours."
"Get some sleep. We'll keep a look out for that pokemon that attacked us." Lucario said and then added in a whisper, "We'll keep an eye on the Beartic too just in case."
Aamira laughed. "I don't think that's really necessary." She closed her eyes anyway and was asleep within a few minutes.
There was silence for a while aside from the wind outside whistling through the valley. Quill couldn't hear the sound of that pokemon that was following them. Lucario couldn't see it anyway unless it was just about to attack, so he took some time to check the map. They had run off course, but they still managed to make some progress. If only they had kept going a little further. The next valley over was apparently filled with hot springs and was lower down. The snow probably didn't even reach the valley floor. There was a small village there too, but it was a large valley and they would have been able to avoid being seen if they had to. If that pokemon was still chasing them though, maybe this was for the best.
"So what did you want to talk about?" Quill asked.
Lucario looked away from the map and rolled it back up. "I thought you wanted to since you changed the subject so quickly. I guess we're finally getting in sync. There's something weird about that pokemon that's following us. I can't sense it, so it must be working with Zoroark."
"I thought the same thing, but I don't get how that's possible though." Quill said. "I mean, why here? Has it been following us from the start? Is it just a coincidence that we were here at the same time it was?"
"I don't know, but you can see there's definitely something strange about it. Its attacks look really strong. It went after you with what I think must have been a water type attack. I think it realized I could see its attack because it attacked Aamira once we were both separated from her. And that's another thing. It attacked her with an electric type attack."
"She's a lot better around electricity than she used to be, but I think it still scares her." Quill said. "But it is weird though. You'd think that the electricity would have caused at least a few burns, but she doesn't have a single scratch. It's like that was entirely meant to paralyze, right?"
"Which means it wasn't trying to hurt her, it was just trying to catch her. It didn't have any problem with attacking us either. It has to be Zoroark behind this. I don't think that it's here by coincidence though. It had to know we were here somehow. Some way of tracking us or some way of knowing where we were going."
"We've been traveling at night. It's been snowing really hard so it seemed safe, but maybe there was a break in the clouds that we didn't notice and Zoroark saw us. The pokemon that was chasing us was pretty fast and stealthy, so it could have caught up with us and followed us until finding a place for an ambush."
"Hmm…" Lucario closed his eyes and crossed his arms. Quill tried not to laugh. He had noticed Lucario do this a few times now, but it was still funny to him. It was the same thing that Aamira always did when thinking about something. Quill couldn't stay smiling though; whenever Aamira did this, it was usually because they were missing something.
"What's wrong?" Quill asked.
"Something just doesn't feel right. Capricorn was startled by the pokemon chasing us. It's like he could sense it or something even though I couldn't see it and you didn't hear it. Maybe Capricorn just has that kind of ability, I don't know, but if it was following us for a while, shouldn't Capricorn have been able to sense it before then? After reaching a certain point, Capricorn didn't want to move further. We weren't being followed; it was standing in front of us. It easily could have attacked us from behind and we would have been caught completely off guard. It had to have been there already when we arrived."
Quill could see Lucario's point and it did make sense, but there was just no way that the pokemon following them could know where they were going to go. Even if Zoroark had seen them, he couldn't have known where they were going. "It does seem weird, but we're not in a good situation here either. Maybe we're just overanalyzing it and trying to find something to blame it on. Maybe it didn't want to attack Aamira from behind because she was on Capricorn's back and it might have startled Capricorn. By circling around it was able to make Capricorn stop and gain an advantage."
"Maybe…" Lucario stretched and took a minute to look around to see if anyone else was in the area. Aside from the Beartic and their eggs, they were alone as far as he could tell. "We should get Aamira's opinion on this once she wakes up. I just didn't want to mention all of this before when she was awake or she wouldn't have been able to rest. Maybe you should take a rest too. I can watch things while you're asleep."
Quill shook his head. "You can't see that pokemon's aura, but I might be able to hear it if it makes that shuffling sound again. If it doesn't though you'll at least be able to see when it's about to attack. We both need to stay awake."
Quill was right, of course. They had to work together. He and Aamira both had the habit of trying to do everything on their own. Quill was the only one who would want to share someone else's burden rather than try to take it all on himself.
Lucario had finally gotten used to the aura in this world, so he didn't have any trouble staying awake. Quill, on the other hand, looked like he could topple over at any minute. Aamira woke up early in the morning. It was still dark out and the Beartic were still asleep. They decided it would be best to move on before they woke up. They each took a few berries from their bags and left them in the cave near the sleeping Beartic.
One of the smaller Beartic was just waking up and looked towards Aamira with one drowsy and only partially opened eye.
"We were just leaving." Aamira assured the Beartic. The Beartic noticed them placing berries on the ground and pretended to close its eye, but they could see that its eye was still opened partially to watch them just in case. Aamira got a short glimpse of the three eggs that a few of the Beartic were curled around to keep warm. She didn't dare get any closer, so they left after that. They had a feeling that the Beartic kept watching them until long after they had left the cave.
They headed towards the mountains again, planning to alter their course by going through the hot spring valley that Lucario had found on the map. There were several other pokemon scurrying about, taking advantage of the break in the weather. It looked like it would snow again though. They would have to hurry in order to get over the mountain before that happened.
"We'll just have to hope we don't run into any more Beartic." Aamira said. "We probably have the scent of those other ones on us after sleeping in their cave. The snow is fresh too. If we take a bad step, it could cause an avalanche."
Quill moved in front in order to test the ground since he was the smallest and the lightest of the three of them. Lucario walked behind Aamira in order to keep a look out for any potential threats. Aamira could tell that Quill was tired and realized that he hadn't gotten any sleep that night. She noticed Lucario stumble a few times too. He was probably suffering from a terrible headache from looking at auras for so long. Aamira herself was still stumbling slightly from the lingering effects of the paralysis. They were in bad shape. She ate a Cheri Berry hoping it would help a little, but it didn't do anything more than make her feel hungrier. They had run out of food a while ago and they had to save the berries for emergencies.
It was the middle of the day by the time they crested the mountain. They could see a little brown and green in the valley below. Aamira had heard about this valley when she was living in Dargan. The whole valley used to be a huge volcano that covered the entire world in ash and caused it to freeze over. After years of cold and darkness, normally the people here would have died out. There was one pokemon, however, that lived inside of the volcano itself. It flew to the village that at that point existed on the side of the mountain and used its light as an artificial sun to keep the people there alive. When the sky cleared, the pokemon retreated back to the volcano and wasn't seen again. A shrine was built to it and every year when the weather turned cold and harsh, the people would leave presents for it. It became a tradition to give gifts to one another at that time of year.
After the volcano went dormant, the original village was almost entirely destroyed in an avalanche. With the fertile soil left behind by the volcanic ash, the village was able to move into the valley and plant crops. The original shrine to the pokemon still stood in the mountains, but it was lost a long time ago.
Aamira didn't completely buy that legend. Somehow the village was unharmed by an exploding super volcano but it was destroyed in an avalanche? Considering what the conditions in this region were like, most buildings were built with a strong foundation made to withstand avalanches. Still there was always some truth behind these legends, and Dargan had a lot of legends.
Aamira was considering suggesting going into the village and getting something to eat. She was sure she could come up with a story to explain why someone her age who was obviously not a Dargonian would be wandering around in such a dangerous place. She could just say that she was orphaned and had always traveled with her partner and various other pokemon she came across from time to time.
As Aamira was daydreaming about all of the delicious food down at the bottom of the valley, Lucario ran towards them and pushed her and Quill to the ground just in time to avoid a red burning beam of light that shot over them. The aim was high though and too easy to avoid. They realized too late that the beam wasn't aimed at them but rather at the mountain side. The looser fresh snow on top of the ice suddenly gave way and the three of them, still hunched over after avoiding the attack, were instantly swept up in it.
The three of them held onto each other as they slid down the steep cliff side. By the time they finally stopped moving, they were covered by at least a few feet of snow. Quill blew out a little air to figure out which way was up. They had become so disoriented that they couldn't even keep track of that. After figuring out which way was up, Quill flared up his fire and shot a Flamethrower up through the snow. He did this a few times until the snow was melted enough for them to struggle their way out of the snow.
Aamira managed to get both of her arms free and managed to pull herself free from the snow. After that she managed to help Quill and Lucario get free too. All three of them were freezing now and it was only worse with the water covering them that Quill had created by melting the snow.
Before they had the chance to recover from the avalanche, another grayish beam of light shot towards them. A sharp pain and intense cold stabbed at Aamira's legs. She looked down to find that her legs from her calves down were entirely frozen. She struggled to get loose for a moment before realizing it was hopeless and turning as much as she could to see her attacker. A few yards away, there was a purple pokemon with glowing red eyes and a cannon on its back.
Quill moved to melt the ice around Aamira's legs, but that same shuffling sound came from their attacker that they had heard before. A series of disk-like objects shuffled through the cannon before a blue one locked in place. The pokemon attacked Quill with the same move it had used before and the water-type beam shot towards him.
Quill was hit by the beam and Lucario ran towards the pokemon to fight it up close in an attempt to distract it from Quill while he tried to free Aamira again. Aamira stood rooted to the spot, watching the sudden chaos that had erupted around her knowing that there was nothing else that she could do.
Each time Quill was close to being able to free Aamira, their attacker would manage to line himself up while fighting with Lucario and fire the beam again. It must have taken amazing concentration to be able to fight one enemy up close while simultaneously firing the cannon at another.
The pokemon's arms and legs suddenly folded up and it shot into the air. It came swooping back down, knocking into both Lucario and Quill at the same time. Aamira was just barely able to lean over far enough to avoid being hit when it attacked Quill.
"Don't worry about me!" she shouted to Quill. "Just help Lucario knock it out and save me later."
Quill looked a little conflicted, but he nodded and jumped into the battle. Quill attacked it with Eruption. The attack did some serious damage and left it with a burn, but that seemed to just make it madder. It attacked with its cannon, which was still set to the water type attack. Quill tried to attack with Eruption again, but the attack was getting weaker with all of the damage he was taking and their enemy was able to dodge it easily.
Lucario tried to distract it with Aura Sphere, which did do a lot of damage for a while, but the pokemon they were fighting hardly seemed phase. It didn't even flinch from the burn caused by Quill's Eruption. Wild flames surrounded the pokemon and it ran at Lucario with blinding speed. It managed to attack him several times and while doing so switched to a yellow disk. After finally ending the attack, it fired its cannon at Lucario. The electric type attack shot towards Lucario, but Quill managed to knock the pokemon out of the way by digging up from underneath it and throwing off its aim.
"What's it doing?" Quill said.
"Just a wild guess, but I'm assuming catching Lucario would be considered something like extra credit. It probably thought that actually beating both of you would be too much trouble." Aamira said.
Lucario attacked it with Dragon Pulse and Quill combined it with his Flamethrower. The attack hit the pokemon, but even though it did a lot of damage, it didn't flinch and its attacks never got any weaker. No matter what they did, it never slowed down while the two of them were getting worn out from the fight. It attacked both of them with Tri-Attack, which left Quill paralyzed and Lucario burned. It took advantage of Quill's momentary immobility and attacked it with the water-type beam from its cannon.
Quill closed his eyes, ready for the attack to hit, unable to move any more than that. Lucario dove in front of Quill and blocked the attack. Fire surrounded their attacker and it prepared to charge at Lucario. Lucario didn't have much time, but he could only see one way to beat it. He placed his paws against Quill and used Heal Pulse. Just before their enemy's attack landed, Quill jumped out of the way and burrowed under ground. Lucario was hit by the fire type attack, which, combined with his burn, was enough to knock him out.
Quill came up underneath their enemy and immediately followed up with Eruption. Thanks to Lucario's last second Heal Pulse, Eruption did enough damage to make their enemy barely able to stand. How it was still able to keep going, Quill didn't know. Any other pokemon would have at least slowed down from exhaustion or cringed from the pain at least once. This metallic terror never even flinched.
Before Quill could get another attack in, the pokemon walked over to Aamira and put one of its claws up against her neck. Quill immediately extinguished his flame, not wanting to provoke it further. He was surprised though to hear Aamira actually laugh.
"You're getting desperate aren't you?" She reached up and grabbed the pokemon's arm, forcing it away from her. "You're supposed to catch me, not hurt me."
The pokemon stared at Aamira as if trying to tell her something. Aamira stared back into its eyes. For a moment, she thought that she felt some sort of connection with this pokemon. There was a connection, but even though it surprised her at first, she realized after a moment that it wasn't the kind that she had been hoping for. She would gladly accept even this violent hunter as her partner, but this was something else.
While Aamira was holding onto the pokemon, Quill used Flamethrower one last time and finally knocked it out. He ran over to Aamira and slowly melted the ice around her legs, being careful not to burn her by accident.
"So what's with this thing?" Quill said while taking a closer looked at the defeated pokemon. "It looks like it's wearing some sort of armor or something."
"It looks more technological to me." Aamira got closer to the pokemon and found some sort of panel on the cannon. It was almost seamless and would have been impossible to find if not for the time she had spent living in Sylva where doors to Treehouses were hidden the same way and if she hadn't known anything about Zoroark's technology.
She pried it open with some slight difficulty and found some sort of computer interface inside it. She tried hacking into it to figure out what this pokemon was and if it was, in fact, Zoroark who sent it. She wasn't Eevee or Darach though; her knowledge as far as computers went was only minimal. The coding for Porygon's Up-Grade and for Porygon himself had all been taken care of by Eevee and Darach while she just basically watched and tried to learn what she could.
By the time Aamira managed to get in, Lucario had regained consciousness. While Aamira had tried to hack into the computer, Quill had been busy healing his and Lucario's wounds.
"I don't believe this!" Aamira shouted, making Lucario who wasn't fully awake yet, nearly jump to his feet.
"What is it?" Quill asked.
Aamira started typing frantically, hoping that somehow she was wrong about this, but that didn't seem to be the case. "This pokemon's name is Genesect. It has some biological and technological components to it. The structure of its DNA is badly broken up, so combining it with a machine was the only way to keep it alive. It must be some kind of ancient pokemon for its DNA structure to be this badly damaged. It must have been the result of a cloning experiment of a long dead pokemon."
"So what's the bad part that you can't believe?" Lucario looked over Aamira's shoulder, but he didn't understand most of what he was looking at. He didn't think Aamira understood it much better either.
"I'm guessing it was built as a hunter even back then, and a really skilled one from what I can tell, but this cannon is something new. Zoroark had this added to make him an even more precise hunter. The disks stored in it let it change the type of its attack, Techno Blast."
"I still don't really see what's so bad about that." Quill said. "I mean, as far as Zoroark goes, this seems pretty tame to me."
"Well, a few years ago there was some research done on a way to alter weather. It worked to some extent, but was discontinued because it made the pokemon rampage in the area it was being tested on. The scientists found out that the brain might actually work on the same frequency as weather. I don't really understand how that's possible, but that made a lot of people think that mind control might be possible. That's basically what this is. Genesect still has a brain like ours, but this cannon on its back not only acts as a weapon but can also be used to control it. This might actually be how Zoroark altered Capricorn and Blue's minds."
Lucario shook with anger, barely able to control himself at the thought of something like this. "How can he do something like that? To just alter the mind of a fellow pokemon? Genesect still has a conscious doesn't it? But it can't do anything about it."
"I can't imagine what it must be like to be able to think and see for myself and still have to follow the orders I was programmed for." Quill said. "Maybe Genesect never had the chance to learn to care. Maybe it thinks that's normal."
"Maybe, but I think that Genesect didn't want to fight like this. It could probably still feel the pain from all of the attacks it took, but the programming made it keep fighting anyway. It was practically being tortured in that battle." Aamira was thinking something else too, but she wasn't sure if she wanted to mention it. "I guess it's kind of the same with me though. Zoroark messed with my DNA somehow to try to make me obedient. I think he's had a lot of trouble with that in the past. Still I think that might have something to do with my reluctance to fight him. I don't know how to describe it. Just the thought seems somehow unnatural to me. So I guess Genesect and I are kind of alike. When we looked into each others eyes before, it was almost like we could understand what we were going through."
"That's kind of creepy." Quill admitted. "But it's cool at the same time. It's like he's your brother or something. I wouldn't mind having another brother. Can you maybe disable the cannon or something? Or do something to help him at least?"
Aamira typed on the screen for a moment, hoping to figure something out, but all of this was really beyond her. She would need either Darach or Eevee to do this for her. "I don't know how to do that or if it's even possible. Well I guess it would have to be possible somehow, I just don't know how that would be."
Genesect's foot twitched slightly as it started to regain consciousness. Aamira thought that she would at least have time to close the cover on the cannon before it woke up completely, but out of nowhere Genesect was fully awake and started to thrash around wildly.
Aamira wrapped her arms around it while trying to hold it still and keep the cannon pointed away from everyone at the same time. Without even aiming, Genesect started firing the cannon off wildly in random directions. Lucario and Quill jumped in and tried to hold Genesect still while Aamira went back to typing on the screen. There had to be something there to calm it down.
Finally she found something that looked like some sort of shut down code. She didn't know for sure what it was, but they couldn't hold Genesect down for much longer. They wouldn't be able to withstand a second battle with a pokemon that never tired. She activated the code just as Genesect was about to fire its cannon again and it suddenly went still. The cannon's power faded and Genesect's arms slumped to its sides.
Quill and Lucario placed Genesect in a sitting position similar to the one it was in before. Aamira sat in the snow with her hands on her knees, trying to stop the shaking. That was just a little too much for her. It felt like she had been trying to disarm a time bomb.
"Maybe you should wait until we get back to Darach to turn it back on." Quill was shaking and out of breath just like Aamira was.
"Can you still look on that computer thing when Genesect's like this?" Lucario asked. "I was hoping you'd be able to find something on why it was here of all places."
"Now that you mention it, it does seem kind of strange. I'll try it."
Aamira sat back up and started typing on the screen again. At least they thought that's what she was doing at first. "It's not responding. It's like all of the data's been wiped out. What's going on? The power's draining!" Suddenly panic stricken she started tapping on the screen frantically, but nothing she was doing was working.
The three of them watched as the screen went completely dark. Aamira kept trying to type on it, but it was useless. She sat back in the snow, shaking worse than before.
"What happened…?" Quill asked, although he was almost too scared to.
"I found some kind of code. I thought it was to shut it down, but I think it was something else. Some kind of termination code. Darach found something like that in Porygon's coding too. He said it was to erase important data to prevent an enemy from getting it. In Porygon's case, it would erase him completely, as if he never existed."
The three of them were quiet for a moment before Lucario finally managed to speak up. "You said that Genesect had something biologic too though. He wasn't entirely made from some program, right? He still had a brain of his own and organs and everything, right? So that code couldn't have…"
Aamira shook her head, trying and failing to keep tears out of her eyes. "His genetic code was too badly damaged. Zoroark probably couldn't find a better sample to use. I don't think he could survive without the technological part."
Aamira couldn't believe what she had just done. Whether with a sword or the press of a button, this wasn't something that she ever wanted to happen. While before this pokemon had been trying to capture her and hurt her friends, it wasn't his fault for what had happened. She hardly knew a thing about Genesect and somehow it felt as though Aamira had killed a part of herself along with him. She thought back to the Beartic who did whatever they needed to in order to survive. Hadn't Aamira done the same thing? So why was it still so difficult to accept this?