Part 4.5: The Champions

CHEMICALS AND MEMORIES

Note: Got a shorter chapter here. Was considering having it be a two-parter, but eeeeeh it's 'kay. A bit overdue, this one. Schoolwork and other life business thingies caught up with me. That's okay! I'm still writing Wave. Those of you who keep up with the story here might want to go and check out what I got going on at DeviantArt (C-Mnesia). There, I've been putting up polished chapters of Epidemic, with extra content and stuff. I figure it's fair since FF gets to be like twenty chapters ahead. But hey, DA's gonna catch up!

Disclaimer! I don't own POKEMON!

I wasn't allowed to be Zatch. The new world order made sure that, so long as I lived and fought, I would fight the battle a different character every game, every round. I was a catalyst for change, someone who only held onto an identity that was fruitless, stifled with rigor and struggle, and, no matter how cute or pretty an imagination made me, I was few notches short of splintered. My spirit didn't let me collapse. My mind didn't let me rest. My body kept unfolding. The creases in the my paper-thin skin flattened, before I became reconfigured, shaped into a different breed of origami, erased, recolored. Why'd that have to keep happening across the human world? It was because of Laza, someone who called me his sister now. He didn't define the term. What did being his sister mean for me? Did that mean that he was my brother? I only had one brother, and never would I have another, but never would I have a sister again. Why did you want me to be that sister, Laza? Was it because I failed? I couldn't protect her? I couldn't protect Zelda. No one. I was at the bottom of the totem pole. I was supposed to be protected, not to protect, only to dream of courage sans consequences. In this body, Laza told me I had potential that surpassed my understanding. Flattering, actually. If I had the most dangerous person humanity's ever encountered call me special, then forgive me if I found it a little hard not to bite. Back. At him.

Here I was. I was something new, something quadrupedal, with ribbons, bright colors, blues and whites. I was sensitive. I was in a room with others who were hurt: Pokémon, skywisps, and humans. Who was with me? The pink skywisp, and another. Doctors? I glanced at one and she reciprocated.

"What did I just watch?" someone asked. Her associate, maybe. The associate was close by, but the pink one was still silent.

I sighed and glowered at the ground, my mind locked on Zelda, course set for someone who didn't care for the sister he lost. I didn't want to change. I needed something to make sure that I would never change. I needed a backup plan. At the very most, I wanted Zack. Where did he go? I needed him with me.

"Where's Zack?" I asked, keeping my head still.

"Who?" the pink skywisp replied.

"My brother. Where is he?"

"Zack Hummings," the other skywisp started. I looked at her. She was of a different color, different design, a sea blue, algae and mossy turquoise. The way she floated and smelled and stared at me somehow informed me how new her spirit was. Spirit? No. Not that. What was that? There was something else bright inside of her—all around her, and all around the pink one close by, pungent and airy, cosmic. "Was taken to a laboratory. He's under the supervision of one of the researchers."

"Tell me where to find them." I demanded, growling.

"That's... classified information." she hesitated.

"No, Zatch needs to know. Excuse me," the pink skywisp began, her voice different. There was a shimmer, a flicker, a flash and a simmer around her small hands. Those objects were no more, the shining batons, laces. She read as a different being altogether, another soul. "What are you? Why didn't you... let me save you—let us save you?"

"What are you talking about? I didn't do this. Laza did. What, you didn't see him?" I queried, watching her, fickle movements. She was deep, unlike the other skywisp, baptized, a fume of angelic ozone drifting from every angle of her serpentine body.

"I didn't see him, but I heard his voice. I heard what he wants you to do. Hey, if you want to do that, people are going to try and stop you. It's not a great idea."

"That's tough. I need to do it, and I need Zack1 by me while I do it."

"Okay, hey, fine. I don't want you to make a mess in this place. I don't know what you are or what Laza did to you, but... I almost... saved you..."

She was upset, wielding frustration that weighed her down. Still, she was floating above the bed that I must've been upon, blood staining the white cushion. There was another bed by that one, almost touching, devoid of a body, but brandishing the evidence of his presence, the stains having coagulated, dried, yet with a bright color, almost fresh. I came here with a bullet wound, but now I was clean and healed. She—the skywisp—didn't do anything to save me. Why all the disdain? Where was that coming from?

"...Whose blood is this?" I asked her, looking at the beds.

"Your sister's," the other skywisp answered. "She's been..."

"Don't," I finished the thought, despite the unwillingness for this sea-colored wisp to continue. "I don't want to know what you've done."

"I couldn't help her," said the pink skywisp. "Those 'weapons' that you saw me hold, they... they could have done it if she was still with us. By the time she got here, she had already passed. I can erase every trace of time from an injury, but I can't bring the dead back to life. I failed to save you. I failed to save that little girl. I'm so sorry, Zatch. P-please, if you're going to do anything here, just take your brother Zack and leave. Don't disrupt Delta Meadow. I'm not saying it for no reason. We... They retaliate. They'll hurt you and your friends. I've seen it."

"W-wait, you tried to save Zelda?" I stuttered. This place was evil, but I wasn't under pressure in this room, and there were no foul vibes coming off of any of the people here, human or not. I needed to think clearly. I needed to look through the fog of anger. "Who are you?"

"I'm Mari. They call me a doctor. I don't like what they do here. Don't think for a second that I advocate any of it."

"What is... 'any of it'?" I wondered, but then I didn't want to wonder, and I shook my head in dismissal. "Never mind. I don't got the time."

"That's right. You need to go and get Zack," Mari sulked. "Get Zack, leave, and turn into Sera so that you don't have to be angry at Delta Meadow."

"That last part? Not gonna happen. I'm only going to ask this one more time: Where is Zack? Where's the lab holding him? That researcher? C'mon!" I burst, slamming my front leg into the tail, stomping.

"I'm not high enough to know." Mari said.

"And I'm high enough to know and not to answer, but I've got nothing left to lose." said the other skywisp.

"Miss Del Cruz?"

"Agh, is that what I go by now? Yes, I'm not pulling strings anymore, and I don't think its the best idea for this, uh, embodiment of Laza's run around. You'll find your brother..." she paused. I watched her do so with acrimony burning in my gaze. "I have a better idea. Let me go get him for you. Please wait here."

"Like I trust that." I spat.

"You can, hey. Don't worry. Del Cruz is a good person. Okay?" Mari mediated, gentle and honest, but not without the vibrations of insecurity locked away inside of her voice.

"I'll only be a moment." said the seafoam skywisp. She gave a few seconds for objection, looking my posture over, before leaving the room, and with it my blindness and animosity, the broiling hatred that never once ceased its ravage, its recall of a man in white with red eyes, conglomeration of everything bad, all things vile, sevenfold vice.

…

I was sitting, sitting in a position I'd never been so before. A minute had passed to justify this action, a minute too long. So many thoughts. So many expressions in my face, in her face, the last one. I wanted to see her before I went. Away. I went away. We went our separate ways. Death in different ways. It stung like needles dipped in choler. I held her close to me when she wished for her mommy and daddy back. She said she couldn't see. She twitched just to stay awake, to keep herself from slipping too low, to breathe. She did that for her mommy and daddy, for her big brother and even bigger brother, with a hole in her chest, a hole in mine, and a gap in the chain that made us a family, growing wider, dividing, rusting.

So, I needed to try and... to try and... do that... for mommy and daddy... for that even bigger brother, that little sister, and... that...

...other... the other brother...

"Wake up," Mari said. Wrong. I was wrong. Not Mari, but the same body as Mari. "Let's talk."

I looked up. She was sitting on a counter, space cleared. The medical supplies were piled beside her, disorderly, clipboards among vials, vials among papers, papers among bottles of white and black and orange. The serpent was sitting in such a manner that if she had legs they would be crossed, her fingerless hands—one over the other—on the spot where a waist would be, or perhaps a lap. Her tongue flicked out, tasting the air, retracting into her lips as quickly as it had left.

"I don't feel like talking right now." I rumbled.

"I wasn't talking to you, Zatch." she claimed. Who was she? Who was she talking to? I squinted at the lady.

"Laza?" I guessed. It was a stupid guess anyway.

"Perchance," she shrugged, eyes closed for a second or two. "I'm not too sure myself. Who is anyone nowadays? It seems like everybody is their own special gemini."

"What the heck are you talking about?"

…

Divided again, huh?

Brother put me in a difficult situation this time. Hey, wait, didn't something like this happen before? A really long time ago. Hm. Gee, I'm not so sure!

…

"Don't mind me, boy," she said... my head... aching... my body tingling, my nose twitching, my eyes droopy. "You there, little girl. Come on. Show me your true hue."

…

She's scary. I don't get it. Where did this snake thing come from? She's not a Pokémon, but there's a lot of that good old starry nectar in her. Did somebody mess up?

Huuuh, I've been holding back a little bit, Brother. Sorry. Let me see what I can do.

…

Voices in my head, thoughts that I couldn't predict. But, still, they were my own thoughts. I was thinking them. I was making them, conceiving, delivering. I stood up. My actions were buried beneath subconscious motives. I felt it finally necessary to speak what was really on my mind. Maybe she would have understood me a little bit right now. It wasn't the easiest being a willpower within a willpower!

"Are you so sure this is the best place for two Gamma beings to be having a little chitter-chatter?" I asked the serpentine, a bounce in my voice, a rhythm dancing, sweet melodious music~!

"Better late than never," she answered. "I couldn't even count the cameras watching us right now. By now, all the high officials know you're here. But they won't give you trouble with me around. As a matter of fact, I'm the one you should be worrying about, girl."

"Are you the one who Brother was talking about when he mentioned 'stray Gamma'? I'm sorry, but you're a teensy bit sketchy! You're not a Pokémon. What are you?"

"I am a skywisp. I am a warrior who has lost everything but her mission and her Symbi. My name is Mars," she said, resent and distance painting her voice. "And what are you?"

"I'm a sylveon! Once, I was a performer, then I was a professor; but now, I'm not so sure what I am. I have a brother who needs my help. So, maybe I'm just his sister! Sera, 'cause I'm Serapheon. Yeah, that sounds right~!"

"Your name still crosses paths with paths themselves. You have a history. So, you're a lot like me. You needed a home, a body to input chemicals and memories," Mars explained. I was 'a lot like her'—she probably knew a little more than me. She was around before me—that was the best assumption I could make. "I would be a hypocrite were I to criticize you for stealing a body, but the actions of your 'brother' present questions. How opportune the time for him to take Zatch from Solacea upon a death bed."

"What'cha saying~? Zatch? If your 'Solacea' thing touched Zatch, then Brother wouldn't be very happy, and things would've become a big mess for Zatch."

"What proof have you to lift that claim upon a pedestal for the world to see? Could I not have simply saved a life? In that stead, your 'brother', if he could be called such, masked a poor, sad boy with a body that's not his."

"Oh, come on," I sighed, rolling my eyes. Hypocrite, I think so! "You stink of Gamma. You're like a fountain of it! I don't know what's up with you and that other girl—Mari, huh~? But you took a body, too. Don't blame me for something I couldn't control, please, thank you!"

"I had no choice," she growled. "I should have died long ago, but I've become nothing but my own escapade. For that, I will never be able to apologize enough to my dear Mari. Sera, heed me: You and Laza have denied Zatch a chance to live, and that's come to my attention. How much further do you plan to go? What will you do with the piece at the heart of Delta Meadow?" she paused. I gave her words the space they wanted, but not the response they thirsted for. "Laza said that he dislikes death so. Why, then, did he doom Zatch? He has told you nothing you should hear and everything you want to hear. His motives are like shadows."

…

I couldn't... reply. I couldn't tell her the truth. I didn't know the truth. I just couldn't seem to remember it! What was it?! Brother, what was the truth again? Gee, I was always the forgetful one, wasn't I? Wait, was I the forgetful one? I forgot. Wait, wait, no. This wasn't like forgetting something. When you forgot something, it was still there in your head somewhere. Maybe it was on the tip of your tongue. But this was like something else, like the memory wasn't there yet, like it was still to be made. It was a small piece of a bank of things yet to happen. Maybe that bank was the piece of my brother that I needed to get. No, wait a sec—Zatch needed to get that. I couldn't stay for very long yet; but, sadly, his time was wearing as thin as the ribbons on my bows.

I had to go now... It was too hazy in here. Not enough food for thought—or maybe Gamma. Gamma for Gamma.

…

I coughed and pressed both rows of my teeth together, squeezing until it hurt, eyes shut. My head was sore, a steady flow of watery pain, leaking out of my ears. Who was talking? Who—what was that noise in my mind?! What was that calling? Someone was pleading with me. Someone wanted me to come home—come home where?!—where were you?!

I looked back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

"Miss Del Cruz?" someone said. It was Mari. There was a gap in my memory. There was a hole in my conscious growing wider.

"Yes, sorry for the delay," Del Cruz said. By and below her was an orange Pokémon, free of harm. He was wide around the white belly, with a ropy tail and yellow cheeks. I knew this one. My repressing heart reminded me of that. For a moment, there was clarity. For a moment, I was happy to see that one of us was still alive. "There was an order to empty out the halls. Allegedly, Vasquez is roaming the interior of the building freely. Orders are to avoid conflict at all costs. DT-HX2 is going to manage the threat."

"Death Knell? Gah, shoot! That's overkill! I don't know if I can let that happen. What do I do?"

"Maybe you should reach Death Knell before they do. I've heard someone else is with Vasquez. Nikki, I believe. I'll keep a lookout here. I still have to look after my patients."

I didn't care about that. The sounds of their conversation rushed away like rapids. I was looking at the raichu, he back at me, like he was trying to translate something. I knew that look really well. That was the look he gave to us when he wanted to assign us a role for a song, a part to play in a melody or a bass line, a rhythm or a vocal lead. Puzzling. He wanted to figure stuff out. A leader. He was always so proud of how cool he was in school, at the top of his class with a high GPA. I was so happy to have someone like that here.

"Za-..." he murmured. Of course he didn't finish. How could anyone finish? Nothing was finished. I was looking down at him instead of up.

"Zack, that guy in white killed her." I started.

"I know. The guys in white kill everyone here. I-I thought you were..."

"Laza did this to me. He called me his sister."

"That's bullshit," he shook. "Laza's not your brother. I am!"

"Always," I cooed. I came up to him when he decided to come up to me. We met in the middle. He hugged me first, his arms around my neck, tail around my back. I thought I had nothing with which to embrace, but the ribbons at my neck and head proved me wrong. Awkward, I sent all four of them around his back, meeting at his chest, before letting my muzzle drip into the space between his ears. "I have to hurry."

"Why? What's the point? I'm in no hurry anymore. She's gone. Our little legacy is gone." he sniffed, breathing static into my neck.

"I know. I know, Zack. If I don't do what Laza says, then, I become a legacy of his, I guess. He's gonna keep changing me until I'm someone named Sera."

"This is fucked. This whole thing is fucked," he snarled, tightening his paws around me, a guttural sand in his voice. "I can't lose both of you. What'll I do? What do I say to our parents?"

I didn't say anything.

"What, Zatch?! What am I supposed to do?!" he screamed.

"You stay with me for as long as possible. Keep reminding me who I am," I answered. I could only answer away from the rage he demonstrated, polarity keeping a balance between us as it always has. "Keep bringing Zelda to mind. Keep humming one of her melodies. She'll never die. She has a song to be sung and she'll never die."

"Zeldster." Zack continued. He took a deep breath, another swarm of static making the fur on my neck stand on end. After the breath, he presented me with music, something major, in major, something so simple. It sounded sublime in his voice, a perfect harmony of his new throat and his old hobbies, so much talent, so much passion put into hymn. He hummed, and I hummed with, once I found the melody. Something so basic was so deep, so heavy. Something as simple as a sine wave with no mods, assigned to no FX channels, reverbs or delay—she never did know how to do all of that. That was okay. She still made things sound so beautiful. Childish. Zack and I loved that aboard 3-DJ. That third dimension.

That was our sound, and Autumnridge listened.

That was our story, and it ended too soon on notes out of tune.

"C'mon. You and I need to leave." he told me, his voice breaking after delivering song beneath chatter.

I lifted my head from his. My nose caught the air, the wisps of cosmic irradiation pointing me out of the room, the spliced tips of my ribbons aiming for the open double-doors. There was a trail of translucent light, a stain on the world. It made me think of my phantom brother, Laza. It was his color, a color I couldn't name, a color with a temperature. It was a mission. Like Mars, I was that mission. I became my own escapade. Memory. The memories of Sera. I had those, too. I had what little memories she made here. I remembered everything that I said under her influence as though I said it. I remembered every thought as though they were mine, because they were mine. I shook my head and turned away from the raichu, my brother in the flesh, not of the plagued wind.

"We'll leave, yeah. But I got something to take care of. If I do this right, we can both get out of here alive. If I can't, then..."

"No, no, dude, do it. Do what you gotta do. I'm not walking from this place alone."

"You're not. Just promise me that you'll keep reminding me. Keep that up. I'm Zatch, right?"

"You're Zatch. You're Zatch Hummings. You always were a mess without me. That Zatch."

"That's good, that's good," I said, smiling, looking back at the guy who had the habit of being better at everything than I was. Big brother complex, guilty as charged. I could always say that I was pressuring him to be better. He didn't do too well with that pressure. It was fun to watch, and even funner to be a part of. Zelda and I got a laugh out of it. "You're right. I can't do squat without your help. I understand."

"Goddamn, dude. What a life we live."

"Let's try and keep living it. It can only get better," I said—I guessed. The truth was still out of my ribbons' reach. Mari and Del Cruz were still engaged in conversation, but I didn't need to excuse myself for interrupting them. "Hey. I'm going."

"Huh? Now?" Del Cruz gasped, broken from her previous thought. "Well, now is the best time to go. The halls are empty. Everyone's been dismissed from their duties until one of our more dangerous prisoners has been secured. Go on. Be careful out there. We won't be following you."

For that, I could've been grateful, if I wanted. This was the hive of the authorities, and for one of them to specify that she, among her kind, were not going to give chase, was extraordinary. It was a fantastic little tidbit that would've cheered me up had this same group of chasers hadn't sent Zelda to an early grave. Was there discord, though? Were there conflicts within the big bad enemy we named so early on? There had to be. In an organization that was afraid of the transformation—by the way, they were all transforming themselves, which probably meant that their original goals were becoming less and less defined as keeping humanity from disappearing—ah, whatever, that was the whole point of the thought anyway. What did humanity mean to the authorities? We only saw the human authorities, and they came across as the worst ones.

We won't be following you. That was what she said to us; but, the prime example of dissent bloomed in the other's face. Two skywisps floating beside each other—one of them made the claim to not follow, and the other had a dirty grimace that said something else, like she saw into the future, like that was contagious and I could see myself seeing her very soon. Mari. Did you give others that look very often? It didn't sit comfortably with me. It made me think that I was going to have to look over my shoulder more than I already needed to. With as heavy as they were now, I might've found that easy, thanks to Laza. Oh, Laza. Why me? Why not've given Zelda a chance?

Hm... That ran the risk of her becoming his sister. I could never stand for that. I could never even think of the day that I would wake up knowing I lost my sister to someone else. But here I was. Here we were.

Then, we left the spot, the room, the grave, on our way to the cemetery, cracked garden.

...

Delta Meadow.

Maybe I've actually heard the name once or twice mentioned before. I've always cast it aside, since it didn't sound too important to me. What sounded important to me was the promise that Edge made of returning the world to normal. He told me—he told us that we could live our lives like they were meant to be lived. He had a plan to bring Laza down. Like hysteria, I believed him. Like hysteria, chaos went ahead and happened around us. There were men and women in white and black, and these men women were chaos. These men and women were what we called the authorities. They kidnapped us and sent us away. Where did they send us? I asked and asked and asked, and no one could answer, because no one knew. Maybe some people wanted to know, so that they could join their friends and family again. I had that once. I had it with Vince, even if it was a little bit different.

But then Vince became Celebi, and I was left alone. I didn't have a best friend anymore. I wanted to be angry at Celebi for that. I wanted to demand to her that she go away and give Vince back. Leave us alone. We had nothing to do with your stupid mess. Now, I wanted to apologize. I wanted to say all kinds of sorry to Celebi. Who was I to throw blame at anyone anymore, except the guys who screwed up my life?

That was Delta Meadow. Where did people go when they became Pokémon? Skywisps? Whatever-the-hell else? Delta Meadow. Who took your life? Delta Meadow. Who changed everything for the worse? Delta Meadow. It wasn't Laza. Laza just changed how you looked. I shouldn't have cared about being a pikachu—I didn't! Truth be told, I didn't! I was fine with! It was okay. I had my brother and my sister and my girly boyfriend and his friends—holy crap, it was amazing! We didn't even need to go to school. I still had Mom and Dad, still had a chance at making music what with Lucia's spirit reassurin' us that we could still be human and do human things—and that was just superb. What Laza did was nothing that bad. Okay, whatever, fine, he had some weird ways of doing things. I got that! Yeah. Didn't we all? Edge, didn't we all have our own ways? I never understood that obsession with Cruce, or that vicious lust to take out Laza. After talking with him—actually talking with him and not being talked at—I found a person who knew who he was, knew he was guilty of crimes, and had a desire to make it all up. I think the best part of that was the first; I found a person. A person. Not a monster. Not a virus. Laza was a person.

I was never the guy to tell anyone who to hate. I would never be that guy, but if I was getting out of here alive, and surely one of 'me' was, then I had someone to fix. Edge, your enemy could NOT be Laza before Delta Meadow. There were two faces to the Wave, not counting yours.

Or were there three?

My life came in threes. Three was the nature of the beast. So, maybe there were three sides to this. I had three bodies. I had a three buddies—Zack was in there. I had three siblings...

…

There was an ethereal gust frozen in time, bending through corridors of gray and white. Between that and the medical room, there was no soul in sight. The walls were an empty canvas, the floors clean in some spots, cracked and dirty in others. My legs were still growing accustomed to their new length. At once, they were longer. Then, they were too short to be called legs. Now, they were somewhere in between. I knew how to run on all fours, but not very well, and even worse with how far my body was from the ground. I liked knowing how close my chest was against the grass when I ran. My tail was softer, but a little bit heavier. If anything, it was easier to move forward in a straight line. Turning corners was more difficult. Despite battling with a third infancy, I overcame the toil as best as I could, keeping my pace between quick and sluggish, not taking my legs too far off of the ground when I needed to turn. Sera wouldn't have had this problem, but see, I was still Zatch, and Zatch was still only just getting used to being a pikachu.

I had Zack beside me all the way, holding back. He could've darted ahead like a bullet—the simile didn't sit well in my stomach; but no, he stayed right by my fumbling side. As near as he was, he was following me. I only knew where to go because of the power I was given. I never questioned it. I didn't have the time to. And, really, I kind of didn't want to. Laza told me some things that weren't just about himself. He told me something about Delta Meadow. It was evil. It was 'vile', he said. If this place was full of the people I perceived as kidnappers, men and women of vice, then I was ready to help him put an end to the authorities. One time, not very long ago, I would have thought Laza to be a threat to humanity, the biggest we've ever seen. How fortunate of me to be on the forefront of that experience, right? Just a high school kid, yet here I was, dashing through a secret facility or whatever, siding with some Pokémon divinity in order to save the world from its horrid experiments. Was that even close to how I perceived it? Why'd I have to ask myself that question? Of course the hell not, it wasn't. No happy endings in sight. Forgive me a little bit if I found it hard to see through the blinds right now. I wasn't naturally a cynic.

I had come through so many halls with Zack. There were sharp-edged numbers posted on walls. If they had gaps, they would've looked like they belonged to digital clocks. We ran through laboratories. The lights were off and there was nobody there. It smelled clean, so clean that it was gross. I felt the lenses sting into my back from above. They were watching. This was a place they would be watching us in if ever there were a place for that. It looked too important in here, shelves of chemicals, labeled with stamps and insignias, counters stocked with folders, turned chairs and desks, black monitors, some with screen savers. Actually, the room was capacious, still young, like there were plans laid out for it, new and yet to be utilized to maximum potential. There were no filing cabinets with which to put the mass of folders into, and not a hint of personalization to each desk. There were boxes stacked in certain corners, some large, some tiny.

"Where are we?" Zack asked, on his hind legs, nose high.

"Don't know. The energy flow goes through here. Uh, is it a lab?"

"Looks a little messy. Aren't these people top secret? Or, what, are these just standard medical reports?" Zack pursued, approaching a desk and scanning the underside of a few cream-colored folders hanging over the lip of the table.

"H-hey, maybe like... we don't do that. I don't want people after us for finding out stuff we're not supposed to find out."

"People are already after us. 'Sides, if they wanted, they could've hid it better," he started talking over me before I could finish, grunting as he reached with both arms. They could barely stand over his head. "We could find something about Vince."

"I don't think that's gonna be the case." I said, looking over my shoulder, haunted by the sight of open doors.

"Worth a shot. If it's nothin', we can move on." he claimed, finally using the bolt-tip of his tail to push the folders into his open arms. Reflexes toned, he caught a couple of them pinched between his paws. Satisfied with the clumsy effort, he dropped them at his feet, a few parting from the pile, a paper or two blown from the folder. He sat himself down and received a stray paper, then paused, looking down, reading. There were images of black and white, muddy and pixelated, with blotches of white in a box in the corner, robotic lines of text draping the page all the way to the bottom. For a moment, I thought my eyesight to be superior than before, only before I realized I was approaching Zack, piqued interest and I didn't even know it.

"What's that?" I peeped, taking a few glances at the folders amassed. The one at the top had a stamp over it in bold letters, diagonal, upside down.

"Zatch," Zack questioned, as if reading a horror novel, something silencing. "What's a Scionic Vampire?"

"A what?"

"'Doctor Jonathan Kaiser has banned the research of Element Gamma Scion from the human facilities and instead issued the investigations upon those afflicted with both forms of Wave.' Uh, blah blah blah, something about restrictions and repercussions...Uhm... 'Current identified forms of Element Gamma Scion include skywisps, bodily phenomena that cannot be associated to Pokémon, the meteorite itself, and the Laza-immunity hosts known as Scionic Vampires'."

"Element Gamma... Scion?" I hummed. There was static in my head. Everything shimmered around me, burning. The line of energy Laza left for me turned red, solid, dripping onto the floor, puddling, pooling, whispering ghosts. As quickly as the illusion blossomed, it fled. I gasped, but it was too quiet to take Zack from the papers.

"Oh, shit, this... Hey," he turned around, said nothing more, and gave me the paper between his paws. Hesitating, I took one pair of ribbons and pinched one end. I took another pair and pinched the other. I was holding the paper pretty steady. I could read, but I wasn't too sure what to read. What did he want me to see? "Third paragraph down. Check that out."

Third paragraph? It was short. It was... the opening to a list of names. I looked up to scan the title of the document. 'Report 3B-HX Scionic Phenomenon'. I returned to the paragraph.

I read,

Current subjects associated with Element Gamma Scion are to be contained in the Deep Meadow facilities, unless instructed otherwise. Upon associated print date, special exceptions to this regulation include facility personnel who have passed the allotted psychiatric tests, in addition to class Vulna subjects. To date, respectively, these subjects include:

Experiment CHV-HX1*

Doctor Jonathan Kaiser

Doctor Samuel O'Brien

Doctor Marius Setschur*

Lieutenant Gordon Brackor*

Doctor [REDACTED] Young

Doctor Robert Ramirez

Doctor Jerry McNeil

Lieutenant Allen Foster

Lieutenant Bartholomew Baker

Agent [REDACTED]

Agent [REDACTED]

Agent [REDACTED]

Katalyn Valentine*

Jack Vasquez*

Kieran Bailey

Travis McNeil*

*DO NOT ATTEMPT TO APPREHEND MARKED SUBJECTS WITHOUT HX-FACILITY ADIMINISTRATION. Exercise extreme caution when handling subjects under the care of the facility.

This list is subject to change daily. Should any of the specified subjects escape from captivity at any time, do not engage unless instructed directly under the authority of the HX-facility or the federal government.

Non-infected subjects exhibiting signs of Scionic phenomena will undergo conversion at a high speed regardless of age. Contrary to recent findings with respect to Element Gamma Laza, adults over the age of twenty have shown to experience metamorphosis at the same rate as minorities... I stopped reading.

I looked at the picture, fuzzy with black and white and no in between. There was a sharp shape hidden within it, something staring back at me. I saw an eye. It was in the center of something attached to a pole. A sickle, maybe. I looked over the document for the word 'sickle'. Nothing matched. I looked at the picture again. Why this? Why not one of those names from the list? What did this creepy tool have to do with...

...Katalyn Valentine? Bart Baker? Danithan's father?

Travis McNeil... That Travis?

"That list," Zack spoke, near mute. "We know some of those people."

"I don't get it," I said, looking over the paper. "It's a little scary, but I don't know what any of it means."

"That Chevron bastard said something about Travis and Element Gamma Scion."

"What? Really? How do you remember stuff like that?"

"There wasn't much else to pay attention to at that point."

"What do you mean there wasn't?! We were being invaded!"

"Yeah. Probably because of Travis. Not saying it was his fault; hell no! But he's on that list, and he's got a star next to his name. They need him for something here. And that's why they went after us. Maybe one of the reasons—I-I don't know."

I returned to the paper, reading, eyes close to the text. Stray Gamma. Stray Gamma, I thought. Laza, you said there was a stray Gamma. Did these doctors really find it? You said they knew nothing, but... what was Element Gamma Scion anyway? And Mari? Was she a part of it? I felt it didn't matter if I figured this out or not, but it was chilling. It made my ribbons feel stiff and cold. That sickle. What about it messed with me?

"So now we got vampires. For what it's worth, I'm not that surprised." Zack sighed, tucking a few papers back into their folders as if he knew where and how to organize them. I handed the document in my ribbons over to him and he accepted, giving it one last look, his eyes stuck at the corner of the page for one, two, three, four, five, six seconds, before putting it down, a ghoul reflecting his vision. With a quick scoff, he shook his head, and returned the page to its supposed place.

I cringed. My eyes were sore, my thoughts buzzing, metamorphosing. I took my focus away from Zack for a little bit, then brought it back. Standing in his stead was Laza, smiling at me. I blinked, and Laza was gone. Zack was as he should've been, placing the folders on the desk chair beside him. I... I... groaned. My bows felt loose, like they were going to fall off at any time. My limbs and tail were lighter than usual.

"Mm. I guess we should go. How you holdin', bro?" he asked.

"I'm okily-dokily~!" I answered, nodding, eager to get this over with so I could get outside and run around again. This place was a drag! Too dank and depressing—it needed more blue and pink.

"No. Try that again, Zatch Hummings."

…

"Yeah... I'm... I'm good." I answered—me. Me this time. Sera was surfacing. Too much time wasted reading spooky stories in a disgustingly gray place.

Footsteps. A click. The lights.

Buzzing, fluorescent beams.

"Hey? Who're you two?" a lady asked. I only looked for long enough to see black hair, a tattoo, white coat tied around the waste with the sleeves hanging, black shirt—She was a young Asian woman.

We ran. No looking back.

Sometimes it was hard not to.

I wished we hadn't read those reports. Now I had to look back. Now I had to ask more questions. Would Zelda have been alive if Bryan didn't bring Travis to the Grove? Would things have been any different? I wouldn't be here. Zack wouldn't be here. Maybe there was a reason Travis didn't find the Grove at first. Maybe he just didn't belong. What was he? A spy? That didn't make sense at all. Nothing did. Nothing made sense!

It wasn't his fault. It was Chevron's. He was the one who put a bullet through our hearts.

Sera, I know you're probably not fully in control of this whole thing, but you gotta feel the pain I do. If I don't make it out of here and you—I don't know—become me or something, just... get Chevron. Put him in his place. Please. That's all I want from you. I want my sister to rest easy knowing her murderer is broken. I don't care how you do it. Please, break him.

Characters Involved: Zatch, Sera, Mari, Mars, Del Cruz, Zack, Laza