Chapter Fifty-Two
As the days went by, the air grew heavy and putrid as it soaked up his anger. Landfills smelled fair by comparison. Bruno drowned in it, gasping for air, struggling to swim for the surface, only to be blocked by a buzzing barrier of plasma. The currents whipped around him, slamming into his chest, knocking him off his feet. Every twitch of his arms and legs in effort to resist the current brought unimaginable agony, searing heat and biting cold, stinging nettles and paper cuts sank through his flesh and into his bones, gripping his heart with a deathly cold, fiery hot, unimaginably angry will.
One day, he stopped resisting. With that, all the pain vanished. The current swept him along, pulled him deeper into the sea. He breathed in the festering hatred as readily as crisp mountain air, and floated like a feather through fog, blanketed in ecstasy.
The tides swept him next to a Raichu and a Chatot, bundled together beneath a white robe, posing as a human. The plasma parted only long enough for the briefest of caresses, but soon, the Raichu and its companion drifted with him, swept along by the anger that sang within their bones.
The Raichu touched others, whispered in their ears, nudged them into the water, where they too were swept away. Even confined in his impenetrable cell, Bruno could sense the anger swelling around him, though it was a mere drop compared to the ocean bundled around him.
The currents nudged the Raichu to the generator rooms. With a single spark, Bruno was free. A torrent gushed from his cell, smashing into everything on the floor and pushing them ahead of him, up the elevator, to the humans lurking above. Each human soul was a midge, buzzing around his ears, an irritation to drown in his anger.
As he walked towards the elevator, he noticed bubbles of aura resisting his call. He glanced in one room and saw an ampharos in a bed, unconscious, hooked up to machines monitoring its heartbeat and blood pressure. Like oil over water, the ampharos floated above the anger's current, untouched by it. If he wanted to, Bruno could smash its aura to pieces, but they were not humans. They could wait.
Up his Pokémon went, and down they fell as bullets tore through them. He smiled at the thought of drowning those humans in their own blood and pushed the current further up the shaft. Flocks of Chatot, stripped of their hooded perches and Bluetooth speakers, spoke unearthly cackles and anguished screams as they swarmed up the elevator and flew into a stream of gunfire.
The humans thought they were winning, and though Bruno wished to let them savor that hope just a little longer to sweeten their despair, he could feel others coming. Them. The ones that filled him with this anger. Lucario, and their police allies, swarming into the tunnels like rats. Each Lucario burned his eyes, and there were enough coming for him to outshine the sun.
The current lifted him up the elevator, but not fast enough. The lights surrounded him. He threw up a barrier and pushed it through the corpse-strewn hallway. A wall of flesh rose before him, soaking up bullets and fire before burning away, revealing the hallway ahead of him.
And at the front of it all, in front of assault rifles and cannons, flamethrowers and Lucario, was Peter. His eyes glistened with tears, and a smile lit up his face. The sound of boot on metal echoed across the silent hallway. Gunpowder smoke drifted in thin wisps from the weapons, forming a swirling cloud that muted the lights.
Peter's soul was a cracked shell, with liquid contents sloshing over and disappearing into the air with every agitation, but its light held the same gentle warmth that had helped Bruno sleep for years.
When Peter stopped just short of his barrier, he spoke, and Bruno's barrier drifted away. His legs moved on their own, and his arms wrapped themselves around the man, pulling him into a tight embrace.
Bruno let himself get swept up in the embrace until he felt the current pushing his arms into a vice-like grip. Confusion and panic twisted Peter's face. Bruno pushed against the current, struggled to hold his arms back, but every effort to resist drove nails through his skull, seared the flesh off his bones, and blackened his insides with frost. Bit by bit, the current wore away at the features of Bruno's soul, smoothing him into a blunt, round boulder.
When Peter's spine snapped, the consciousness that called itself Bruno vanished. All that remained a nameless, emotionless husk, drifting in the rivers of human blood that ran down the halls of the White Knights' Headquarters. With each step he took, more Pokémon were swept up by his anger.
Wave after wave of Pokémon poured out of the elevator, shielded by Bruno. The Lucario stripped their protection away, and the barrage of gunfire mowed them down, but their numbers only swelled as the battle dragged on. Bruno's lines pushed steadily forward. The White Knights and the police were split apart by the narrow hallways, and without the help of the Lucario, bullets glanced off of thin shields of aura, with the occasional explosive or higher caliber round breaking through.
When it became apparent to N that they couldn't hold back the onslaught of Pokémon, he ordered a full retreat. Men tossed grenades and planted claymores in their wake. Explosions spattered the walls with red and black, but more kept coming. Shots rang out. Men and Pokémon screamed as their blood pooled on the floors. They made a mad dash through the halls, leaving behind Knights screaming for help.
N got most of his forces through a barricade. They sealed the way with a metal frame two feet thick and a micrometer of plasma. Beyond that point was an emergency supply depot, with enough food, medicine, and weapons to see them through a siege. N knew that Bruno could smash his way through a mountain, but that invisibly thin lair of charged air defied all.
A quick count had his remaining forces at two-hundred and eighteen humans, most armed with assault rifles, five-hundred clips of bullets to go around, a dozen spent flamethrowers, two gatling guns, each with half-spent clips of a thousand, over a hundred grenades, and no morale. Men and women, with their masks askew, stared listlessly at the floor with lost, glazed eyes. Many wore bandages in shades of red.
When he cleared his throat, eyes rose towards him. N couldn't tell if the sudden light in their eyes came from hope, or tears of despair. He took a deep breath. The truth was out, now, and he was finished. Time to come clean.
"I must apologize you all. I have been deceiving you from the beginning."
There wasn't anything else he could possibly do, was there?
"The Pokémon that attacked us, they weren't Team Rocket's Pokémon. They were our own. They wore the same masks and robes as you. They ate with you, trained with you, and spoke with you. And it was a Pokémon we captured, in hopes of studying and using its abilities in the fight against Team Rocket, that twisted their minds."
A flash of inspiration came to him. It was a flimsy hope, but the alternative was leaving Bruno or Giovanni to decide the world's fate. He didn't know which would be worse.
"I want to show you all something. I want to show you what happens when humans have complete control over Pokémon."
Never had the mask over his face felt so heavy as he pried it away from his face, nor had the illusion felt so warm until he cast it aside and exposed his pink, lumpy flesh to the open air. Knights stiffened in their seats, and a few raised their guns at him.
"Go ahead, shoot," he told them. "I am a monster, one of many Pokémon wrought by human hands for a twisted purpose, and I was made unable to die." He paused and swept his gaze across the room. More guns rose, but none fired.
N stepped closer to them and raised his voice. "It was once my hope that mankind and Pokémon could learn to live side by side as equals. To this end, I had Pokémon every bit as intelligent as you intermingle with you, hidden by the masks and robes we wear. I had planned to reveal this to you after Team Rocket fell. I apologize. I should have told you all sooner."
He winced at the lie he would have to tell, but he'd already told countless more.
"Team Rocket had damaged Bruno's mind. It was my hope to rehabilitate him, but out of concern for your safety, we had him isolated on the bottom floor of the lab and walled off by plasma. However, one of their agents sabotaged the power to the lower level and escaped during the confusion."
Mutters rose among the Knights, and a steely glint shone in their eyes.
"Team Team Rocket intends to use Bruno as a weapon to overthrow the government. He'll use the fear of Bruno's destruction to make the public accept whatever demands he makes. If we do not act, both Pokémon and humans will suffer under the greatest tyranny in all of history."
One of the Knights stood up and asked, "What would you have us do, sir?"
"We will be reborn from the ashes of the White Knights, and learn from our failures." He flung his mask aside, and it clattered across the metal floor. "Cast aside your masks, for there will no longer be any secrets between us. The Knights are no more, and something stronger must rise in their place." He paused for a moment, considering what name to give them. "We must be a Team, an equal to Team Rocket, one dedicated to the separation of mankind from Pokémon, for the benefit of all. We shall be…" A proper name eluded him, until he thought of the one thing keeping Bruno from smashing down the doors and killing them all.
"Team Plasma."
Silence filled the room, and no one moved. N's face tightened, and his heart quivered in his chest. Then, the one standing stepped forward and raised a hand in salute. More copied the gesture, most sitting due to their wounds.
"I thank you all for your support," N said, "But we cannot do this alone. Our enemies are many and mighty, and we were nearly wiped out. We need allies." N gave them a lopsided smile. "And I know exactly where we're going to find them."
Changelog
12/27/18 – minor edits
