Chapter 21: Activation Energy
A/N: Well, here we are again, with another thrilling installment of MM! As you may've noticed, things are picking up a little bit with regards to action and that sort of thing, and we can expect that pattern to increase until the epilogue. With regards to the ending, I'm just hammering out the details now, so... expect it!
Let's see... not much in the way of news... sorry about not responding as quickly as I would've liked to reviews... I've been extremely sick... there's this viral intestinal thing going around, and it's the pits. But... that's beside the point. Just... as always, for those of you who want to become more involved, skype is always open for more pokemon/tf people (Feel free to contact me for more information), as are the forums (off-site these days, we've moved off ). If you're looking for some more great TF related stuff in this universe (Albeit lacking in mew and Alvin most of the time), then DarkPokemonLover or Kirby Oak may have you covered.
But... I guess that's it! As alawys, if you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave a review, or contact me some other way! It was and always has been the reviews that keep me writing...
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"So... this is how we're going to get inside?" The little row of Pikachu stood perched on the very edge of the large metallic gateway into the mountain below. By the time Alvin had awoke, Logan had already been hard at work disassembling some sort of ventilation cover. How she had done it, Alvin didn't know, but the many hundred of pieces of the fan and the weatherproofing had all been arranged neatly on the grass by the time he was awake, and the female was poised on the edge of the hole, looking down the expansive shaft into a void who's mysteries Alvin could only guess. The shaft sloped violently, while not quite vertical. He hoped quite strongly they wouldn't be using this way in.
Logan nodded. "This shaft usually vents superheated steam from one of the..." the other pikachu mumbled something, while not actual words, the thought was conveyed into his head. "two fusion reactors." Obviously the pikachu language had no such words. This female seemed to be finding them, though... and not just finding, but conveying meaning as well. How could she do that? Speak words that didn't exist? Alvin didn't dwell on it, or tried not to. "This reactor is offline for maintenance this morning, so we'll be able to get inside. I've already disabled the tampering alarm on this unit, so... we should have things fairly easy. I mean... until we actually get inside."
"What's waiting for us? Why are we trying to get David out before finding that... thing... that will change me back?"
Logan's answer did not disappoint. "Your humanity is in there. That's what's drawing power from those reactors. It takes only one of them running at 5 to power this base... the rockets found it first. They've had it for more than a year now..."
Alvin's questions persisted, his tone more curious than anything else. "What are they doing with it? Surely they don't have many pichu to return to humanity?"
Logan's expression was grim. "Not exactly. Let's try not to concentrate on that, alright? If we work properly, we won't..." The pikachu trailed off, expression suddenly blank. She shook her head for a moment, clearing it of something. "All right, it's time. Just slide down the shaft... when I stop, stop with me. David is being moved into a holding area a room away from the device you're looking for. This shaft runs directly above that room."
Once again, it seemed this Pikachu's sources of information were nearly supernatural. how in the world could she know all of this? How could a pikachu know what the inside of a Team Rocket facility looked like, or the maintenance schedule of their reactors? But if it was a holding area, that meant David wouldn't be there forever... they had to use the opportunity while they had it. "All right. I'm ready." He turned to his daughter, then his mate, receiving scared nods from the both of them. They were ready.
Logan leaned forward, out over the edge... and in a blur of yellow, vanished into the dark. Alvin imitated here, slowly leaning out over the dark... until his own center of gravity took him over the edge. The fall lasted only seconds, as something thick and metallic quickly came in contact with his paws. The shaft was at least three feet wide and two tall, meaning there was plenty of space for bouncing around as Alvin slid quicker than he could ever remember moving into the dark, careening down the twisting, violently sloping metallic tube. Alvin resisted the desire to yell, to scream in panic... but only just. As the tube descended, he eventually skidded to a halt. The tube was not completely dark, but lit with reflected light from above. Several paces ahead, Alvin could see the female pikachu, clawing at a thin line in one of the many brackets. He pawed up to her, careful to keep his paces as quiet as possible. Her efforts shouldn't have been making so much as a dent, on metal this thick, but.. each mark drove deep scores into the steel, screeching so loudly it seemed clear to Sparks the entire base must hear the by now.
"D-don't worry..." The female said as she worked, without so much a second's hesitation, answering a protest he hadn't actually made. "These conduits are heavily insulated, so no one will know we've arrived... until we're ready." She stopped carving, stepping back from the metallic wall of the shaft. "It isn't time to go in, yet... he won't be in this area long, so... we have to be ready."
Alvin leaned in close, surveying the score-marks Logan had made. A uniform sphere, ready to pop out when they were ready... he only hoped no one on the outside noticed this. "What are we going to do? The question was a simple one, but one many in his place very well might neglect. But Alvin wasn't about to just go jumping into... whatever situation they would be in. At the very least, someone would be moving David, likely several heavily armed someones, as they were dealing with a powerfully gifted individual.
"The metal of this shaft is non-conductive..." she began, pausing as two more chu came shooting down the passage, and waiting for them to join the pair before going on. "When we open this, aim forward and low... blast at the forward two guards, and aim for the head, if you can..." she seemed to be speaking the entire group of chu, aside from herself, her tone relatively straightforward, placid. As though she had just asked them to tighten a bolt.
"And... you?" Alvin asked, more for curiosity, reference, than anything else.
Logan went on. "Your friend is wearing a psionic inhibitor, operated by a scientist who's nature may allow me to convince him to cooperate. He is no longer a willing employee here. I will try to get him to disable the device being used on David... but if the controls are damaged, it could kill him. We can't remove the inhibitor... it's been surgically applied, and will take surgery to remove." For several seconds, her expression returned to that blank, empty state, as though she were watching a distant television screen, gazing off into what looked to Alvin like nothing more than solid wall. The curious expression did not last long, however. "They're coming... try not to concentrate on what you're looking at, just hit the ones in black uniforms... the pink one and the white one are the ones we're trying to protect."
Alvin raised a paw, about to protest, to question... pink one? What in the world was logan talking about? But he didn't have time to find out... for the next second, Logan slammed into the circle she'd scored into the side of the shaft, bursting it at once, and the relative peace within the shaft turned to chaos in half a heartbeat.
First, it seemed apparent that the shaft was not as well insulated as they'd hoped. As soon the hole took shape, Alvin felt an enormous blast of force rock him straight back to the other side of the shaft, and seconds later, the shaft itself tumbled to the earth. Alvin blinked, confused, as the conduit around him seemed to be lifted from the earth, and he was soon beside the other pikachu, huddled together in a crumpled heap. Dimly, through the pain, Alvin forced one of his eyes open. His vision was blurred, making it difficult to see anything more than a few feet from him. Two men, black uniforms... and weapons trained on their little pile of pikachu. Behind them, he could see two vaguely humanoid figures... but he tuned them out, focusing instead on the two in front of them. Logan, it seemed, had been knocked clean unconscious by the fall, Volte was struggling to push herself onto the right side... but Mia and himself seemed unharmed, more shaken by the fall than anything else. Looking up, Sparks could see they were some of the luckiest pikachu alive... a fall from that distance and no serious injury?
"What should we do?" One asked the other, gun only half-trained on the pikachu, half angled at the ceiling, where two well-placed shots had taken the brackets that had until moments ago held the ventilation shaft to the ceiling, blasting cleanly through thick layers of foam and insulation. The second man was only just correcting his hold on a large, rifle-looking weapon, who's end he had apparently used to free the vent from the wall. "This looks like alot've damage... it'll come out of our pay without a good reason for it..."
The other rocket appeared to be paying the pikachu little mind at all, adjusting his weapon, checking to be sure everything was in working order. "You don't think catching intruders is a good reason?"
"Not pokemon intruders!" Alvin was only just blinking the blurred grogginess from his eyes when he felt something large and heavy slam painfully into his body, his world spinning, spinning... and ending with an unpleasant bump. Mia beside him inhaled sharply, but was just now too terrified to move, too frozen with fear to run or make any moves to change the situation for the better. What was worse, with Alvin kicked nearly senseless in a single blow, she was now the most healthy of any of the 'rescuers'. "Seargent'd probably be on our hides about how we should've called to turn on the reactor, kill them with steam pressure... now we've caused damage that'll keep it offline for at least a day..."
"What was it, then? Do..." Alvin's world was spinning all the more unpleasantly now, so much that it was difficult to concentrate, even long enough to put together the english words they were saying. Something about missing scientists and abnormal numbers of pokemon, something about 'the early stages of preliminary testing' and 'past subjects'.
Mia, however, could hear perfectly, and wished very much she couldn't. After so long in the wild, very little of what her trainer had taught he remained in her brain. While she stayed with David and Alvin, her understanding of the language had improved, but now... she wished she'd paid more attention to what David had said and less to what he'd been feeding her.
"You think... we put enough holes... they won't be able to tell the difference?" The larger of the two men spun his rifle in his hands, a rather dangerous task he seemed to perform almost without effort... but Mia didn't know this. She did know that the device was dangerous... as her first trainer had nearly been seriously injured by two men bearing similar devices. A policeman had arrived in time to prevent something serious... but Mia would never forget the appearance of a gun. No matter how they looked, long, rounded, metallic objects would always be guns to her.
"Maybe... and it might be... I mean, they did get in here somehow... maybe they really are? But do you want to chance it?" The smaller of the two man lowered his weapon... much more purposefully this time, training it directly on Alvin. "But if he's..." The man said a series of words Mia did not understand. "Then they won't know if they were wild or not, will they? We'll have done a great service... a great... favor... Raiden won't say otherwise, will he? And the mew... it never talks to anyone, so nothing to worry about there..." The man fiddled with the weapon, removing the safety and pulling the hammer back, making a slow job of what could've been a quick process, angling the handgun square down at Alvin... at... at her mate!
"NO!" Mia leapt to her feet, jumping a full foot into the air in the process, landing several inches away from the others, away from Logan, Volte. By this time, Logan had began to stir a little, although not quite conscious yet. Naturally, the human observers in the room did not understand what Mia had said, but Alvin did. His mind was groggy, world foggy and clouded by pain, one eye closed by blood. But he saw Mia, suddenly standing on her hind legs, several feet from the others, face more angry than he had ever seen it. A second later, the corridor was ablaze with energy, a bright flash of electricity so bright several of the fluorescent lights above exploded in a shower of glass and sparks, held only by the thin plastic film meant to defuse their light. Mia had not missed. The man's body went rigid, all his muscles violently contracting. The energy itself caused him to stumble, offsetting his aim before he fired, sending the bullet through several inches of concrete to Alvin's upper left. The man stumbled further, falling over backwards, and collapsing into a crumpled heap. He would not rise for some hours.
The next series of events transpired so quickly that, when they were over, Alvin was left blinking blankly up, throughly and utterly dumbfounded. Mia stepped forward, still blazing with energy... but the other man was faster. He'd been momentarily stunned at her first attack, so surprised to see an animal she thought disabled deliver such a powerful blow... but he would not make that kind of mistake twice. As she moved forward, so too did he angle forward with the rifle, inclining the weapon with military precision. The narrow corridor echoed with the sound of one shot, then a second, then a third. Bang! Bang! Bang! The force on Mia's tiny pikachu body was enormous, slamming her straight into the wall with the first shot, bones crushing with each successive blow. She did not stir.
Alvin jump to his feet, screaming his mate's name, eyes locked on where she'd fell... and the remaining soldier took aim, just as he had with Mia, ready to fire just as he had with Mia.
He didn't get the chance. As Alvin's eyes began to clear again, he saw the man stumble, saw the rifle hit by something blue and energetic from behind him, saw it fly to pieces in his hands, and seconds later, saw the same force catch the man full in the chest, and watched him slam into the wall, crumpling to the floor. A pink /something/ moved over Alvin's head, towards the two blurred figures further down the hallway, toward those two objects he still couldn't quite see... but Alvin didn't care, hardly noticed at all. As Volte had already done, Sparks padded the distance to where Mia lay, sniffing at the body of his mate. There was no pulse, no breathing... and no small wonder.There was little blood on her front, only splotched in places here or there where the bullets had entered the body... but as Alvin tried to lift her, tried to check physically for the breathing he knew had to be there... it just HAD to, he found the wounds on her back were much less clean, and his paws were suddenly wet with blood... Mia's blood... his mate's blood... and still he clung to her, stubbornly ignoring what his senses told him. She couldn't be gone... Mia couldn't be gone! The idea of a world without Mia, a world without... it was almost... beyond his very imagination! Dimly, almost as though his body were an echo, a dream... and with every second, he became more awake, and less a part of this new, strange world... a world without Mia, without his mate. He could feel a set of weak paws pulling him back, and hear the faint echos of Volte's cries. Mia hadn't so much as stirred, nor would she.
"Alvin... I'm sorry... the fall, it... I couldn't save her." But Alvin wasn't listening. He was hardly thinking, hardly aware of his own breathing, his own thinking.
How long he remained almost motionless, clutching the fallen body of his mate, he did not know. But... as he sat there, he was suddenly aware of a pair of... hands... paws... something... lifting him and his daughter into the air, resting them both gently together holding them...
Alvin could suddenly feel the earth beneath him, under his bare feet... toes! Alvin had toes! Indeed, his arms, legs... skin... it was all here! His clothes were simple, a plain white jumpsuit without so much as a pocket, but... that was of little issue... he was human again! The sky above was dark, lit only with the stars and a full moon, but after a year without artificial light, Alvin hardly noticed this at all.
"I'm sorry... I've gotten better, but not that much better..." A second later, the rather featureless field in which he stood was suddenly populated with a second figure... David! Without so much as a second's hesitation, Alvin hugged his friend, utterly without shame. David blinked, confused, but showed no sign of embarrassment either. Two tired old soldiers, embracing after a long and deadly campaign. "This isn't real. In a few moments, when this ends... you'll be what you were, until we change you back... I can't alter your body, unfortunately... Raiden's deactivated the inhibitor, but it can't make up for months of wearing it. I don't expect I'll learn what I need to for awhile..."
Alvin let go, remembering his mate... trying to fight back the tears, but failing in the effort. He couldn't forget Mia, wouldn't ever forget... couldn't afford to forget.
David lowered his eyes, expression grim. "I wish I could've known her better... she was like you then, after all... wild pichu don't do much thinking..." David trailed off, expression fixed on something far away, something obscured by cloud... Alvin could see it was meadow now, although of what kind and where they might be was beyond him.
"So she's really... g-gone?"
David nodded, expression grim. "If my kin can't bring her back, she's gone. Logan would've done all in her power to stop it, but... she's not invincible. Some things simply can't be done... like bringing back the dead."
Alvin, though, had heard a set of very different words. Or, at least... the words he noticed were not quite the ones David had intended. "Your... kin? What are you talking about? Isn't Logan a pikachu? Aren't you human?"
David answered both questions together. "Not exactly." He smiled faintly. "I can control my appearance here, just like I'm controlling yours... I couldn't do that before, remember? A great deal has changed since we spoke last..."
Alvin's expression was suddenly blank, his face vaguely curious, but otherwise unobservant. "What have they done to you, David?"
David's smile widened. "It's not like you'll get to remain ignorant for much longer... but if I show you now, you promise not to scream... alright?"
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In what seemed like an instant, David returned Alvin and Volte to the ground... but as he already knew, this David had changed a great deal in the year or so that separated them now from their last meeting. His features were much lighter now, passive, eyes the largest and brightest blue Sparks had ever seen. These were where the mind changes ended, however. His entire body, it seemed, was coated with a short layer of... lightly pink fur, his limbs thinner, almost catlike in their strange grace. He wore a plain white jumpsuit, stitched with some meaningless number, and behind him... "You've got one too!" Alvin had first said, indicating his tail.
"I know... it comes with the genetics, I guess..."
"But... if they can do this to you... why haven't they made more? I mean... why not use rocket staff? Some of them have got to be willing to give up their bodies for power like... like you must have..."
David nodded, expression more grim than it had been even when he first spoke the news that Mia was, in fact, dead. "Some would sell their souls for it, I've no doubt... and several have tried. Pray we don't meet them, Alvin... there are some things you're better off not knowing. Raiden is a good man here because circumstance compelled him..." The creature shuddered, and the illusion of David's body returned to the human appearance Alvin knew so well. "He's been manipulated genetically, just as I have... he has some pokemon instincts now... but his human mind is still there. Rocket's alterations to his body did not target his mind, and he is no telepath... I've learned from Logan that some of his predecessors tried to build a modified clone using the same genes they used for me... he nearly ended life as we know it, she says. I don't know if that's true... but I've seen what they did. The others... they didn't use pokemon genetics as they were, altering the human genes as they went... that's how they created me. They created me because of what they got in that other process, and what they did not desire to repeat. I don't have quite the strength that they do... but I don't need it. I'm a born telepath, and they were not. Their powers only work because of the sheer volume of the energy behind them."
It seemed David had more to say on the matter, but Alvin cut him off. "So... why are they doing this... messing with people, hurting you... why?"
David frowned. "The device... the one that can change you back... its part of something much bigger, much larger, more complicated than even the rockets suspect... fortunately, too much of the device has been destroyed for it to be possible to assemble in its entirety..."
"What are they doing with it? Making a bunch of pichu?" Alvin grinned.
David's expression showed no sign of loosening up. "I only wish. The object can be used as a sort of transportation device, like some of those people in saferon... only without the telepath. They're all telepathically controlled, but technology's getting better about replicating such signals. They've managed to open a sort of... gate. A kind of in-between..." He shook his head again. "Humans can't survive it... my kind can't survive it... but these manipulations... these changes... humans can't survive there, but pokemon can. It's something to do with the level of intelligence, Logan says... but I don't fully know. I only know... whenever they try to take me through it... even looking at it makes me... ill? Angry? I don't know... they haven't got me through it yet... I wouldn't survive if they did." David's appearance seemed to flicker, and for an instant, Alvin felt as though he were suddenly much closer to the ground. "B-but... I can't hold this illusion much longer... I need practice, more practice..."
There were so many more questions Alvin had wanted to ask, so much more he wanted to learn... why had Raiden joined them, what consequences would he face as the result of those choices... how would they escape this base? Getting into a facility of this size had been possible because no military measures could be effectively taken against wild pokemon. A part of humans as large as they were, however, could not exit through the ventilation. And Mia... no, he couldn't think about that, not now... As he found himself on the ground again, Alvin could tell he'd been moved during that brief connection with David, something else his friend hadn't been able to do, in the past.That, it seemed, had changed. He could feel the padded paws now, see his friend... or what was left of him. The creature stood about the same height, seemed to weigh a similar amount... but it was there the similarities ended. Even more changed, it seemed, was the man he knew must be Raiden. To call him a man, though, was almost cruelly inaccurate. There was little human about him, save for the two legs he used for standing. His body, like David's had a thick coating of fur, his limbs were thin and nimble, head misshapen, with large ears not unlike his own, and gigantic teeth, none of which seemed able of doing physical damage. the most threatening thing about him came from Alvin's innate sense of electrical energy, which showed him the immense concentration of high-voltage electricity near the upper portion of his body, likely stored somewhere near the two yellow-colored patches on his cheeks.
But Alvin did not stare. David's appearance had shocked him, but he hadn't stared then, and he wasn't staring now. If anything, he felt a kind of unspoken, instinctual affinity towards the man. Why? Being an electrical rodent was a dangerous business. Anyone that didn't want to eat you could be a potential friend, as far as Alvin was concerned. But that wasn't what he was thinking about...
The room was expansive, and from the ground several times more-so. By the looks of the ceiling, it'd once been an airplane hangar of sorts... but that had changed. The facility had been stripped nearly to the rock. An empty area on the far side of the chamber held bunks and a rudimentary living area, currently empty. They had all gone to someplace David called the "Beachhead". In the center of the room, mounted on a heavy steel platform and held in place by two heavy robotic arms, was the device. A dark, dense metal, engraved with scores of symbols which meant nothing to Alvin. The structure itself was roughly round, with several apparently free-rotating wider and smaller wheels, roughly six feet across at its widest point. Was this the thing he needed to change back? Was this humanity?