Author's Notes: This (along with the next chapter) is more of a transitional chapter than anything else. Expect some drama, and a few revelations about characters (at least one big one.) Enjoy!
~Z~ Darkness Doesn't Cast a Shadow ~Z~
Chapter Three: The Discovery
The unicorn could have been transformed into a lizard,
Molly thought, or into a shark, a snail, a goose,
And somehow still her eyes would have given the change away.
--Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn
There was something wet and warm trickling down my fur, and there was a bleary murmur…a sob, rather, echoing above and around me. I allowed my eyelids to quiver open. The intense, wiry white lighting that filled my sight burned at my vision like a wildfire, but I didn't need to close my eyes, for within seconds a black heat engulfed my body and my eyelids sunk on their own. A fleeting echo of something distant fuzzed in my ears and flurried in my head like a Butterfree caught in a jar.
The fever in my body charred on for a stretched, deluded time and my unconscious was filled with visions of some fiery terror meanwhile. The dreams…they were so horrid I could feel my body dying beneath me, wilting like a flower caught in a January frost.
We are always dying. It is a fact of nature that cannot be debated. But to feel it…to feel it at that moment, suddenly a fast fear of death was gripping me. Trapped. I was trapped in the jaws of something bigger than life itself. And I felt so frightened…so alone…so helpless…
My body smoldered at itself, and somewhere that I was just grasping with the claws of my consciousness I could still feel the distant roll of the warm liquid creeping down my fur. It was comforting in a slow, agonized way.
Finally, though, a bit of outside warmth trickled through my internal infernos, and I was stable enough to melt away the gauze of my fever dreams and awaken.
The lifeless, artificial light above was dimmer than it had been before, and I was able to squint against it. Laboriously, I pulled myself into a sitting position, though I was just barely able through the pounding throb of my aching body.
A cough had lodged itself in my throat and I ejected it with some scraping difficulty. My neck felt flaccid and something I couldn't quite identify seemed different…foreign, and strange…but I ignored my state for the time being and peered around, wondering where I had ended up.
Letting my eyes wander upwards, I felt a rush of tired joy as I my eyes focused and I could see that Ash was hovering over me, and I guessed that he probably had been there the whole time. His big brown eyes were diffused and that spunky, golden radiance that always seemed to smolder from them was frail and waning, as if the drizzly gloss dampening his eyes had extinguished it. Two fresh tear trails glinted off of his face. His hands twisted at his hat, which he had taken off and scrunched up in his fists.
Why were you crying, Ash? I'm okay… I quivered to say, but my throat was weak and whispery and it hushed itself after the driest rasp had freed itself.
I let my gaze go panoramic out of curiosity, and I was verified by sight that I was in a room in the Pokémon Center, with drab white walls and a generous window with an impressive view. That made me feel worse rather than better. I felt confined, confined in my broken, battered body. How I wanted to run…just to feel the wind numbing my face…
Outside the window, a squall had overtaken the blue skies and was booming and blinking while the clouds stampeded liberally throughout the heavens like a herd of wild Tauros. There was my warning tempest. But it was too tardy to save me now.
Ash's apparent hesitancy in speaking was smashed as he caressed my head and murmured, "Pik--" He cut himself off as a pained look shielded the bit of fidgeting going on his eyes. He cleared his throat timidly. "H-how are you feelin' buddy?"
I blinked up at him. "Pikapi…" I tried to squeak at him, but it didn't come out right. "R-rai…chuu…ra-i..."
I froze and stiffened. Wha-what had I just said?
"Raiiichu!" I squealed, thrashing my head in bewilderment. And then I knew.
Ash's tears overflowed as he watched my frustration and he tenderly, as not to hurt me, draped his arms around me and pulled me into a hug.
"I'm so sorry Pikachu…" He sniffed, "I'm so sorry."
I examined my paws, which were now splashed with brown, then I looked down at my stomach, which appeared to have been dipped in paint the color of a cumulous cloud, although its thick consistency was broken by a pokéball-sized gash that revealed ripped red. My fur was the color of the sky on a hazy sunrise. I struggled to remain silent as a ripple of panic spread through my senses. I could feel my nose shuddering in a desperate, forlorn innocence.
I masked my face in his shirt and let the tears come, as fast and scared as the abrupt rain that had come over the land while I slept. His gloved hands swept over my back, and I flinched as he rested one of them on in-between my shoulder blades. I could feel it trembling violently.
"I-it's all my f-fault…" He sobbed, and his tears slid down my fur. "I'm so sorry…"
"~Y-you can't say it's your fault…things like this are never anyone's fault…~" I managed to choke through my tears, wincing against the jabbing, convulsive pains weakening my arms as I tried with all the energy I had to wrap them around his neck. Just to verify my words of intact faithfulness.
Ash sniffled and smeared the tears across his face with the back of his hand. He loosened his grip on me and partially set me back down on the bed, but he kept that one hand on my back. I crumbled under my new self-reliance, and I was unable to struggle back into a sitting position, so I just stayed as I was, sprawled clumsily out on the pleasant, chill sheets of the bed. Patting my head shakily, Ash remained for a lingering moment, and both our gazes wandered out the window and into the storm.
"Pikachu…" Ash sighed, and I lowered my eyelids in remembrance. "Look, Pikachu…look at that poor Pidgey out there."
Ignoring my pain for the moment, I craned my neck and squinted, and sure enough there fluttered a single Pidgey, a taupe-colored bit of fuzz being bullied by the wind and almost white against the enraged black of the boiling storm clouds. My vision softened at the sight.
"He doesn't look like he's very good at flying yet." Ash commented dully, as if talking to himself.
"~…At least he's free, though…~"
"Whadda you mean?" Ash turned to me. "You want to be free?" There was a dull, fizzling glow melting in his eyes, and at that moment he looked like a little kid, with his big, scared, sad eyes threatening to overflow.
"~I didn't mean it that way, Ash…~" I murmured, directing my eyes away from Ash's. "~I…I meant that…well…that Pidgey there, he's free to make his own choices and stuff. He can evolve whenever he wants to. I'm stuck in this body, and it wasn't my own choosing. And, to tell the truth, I'm scared…~" I closed my eyes, inwardly reflecting. "~Scared of myself…now isn't that silly…~"
Ash stared at me for a long time after that. But then his eyes further dampened themselves, and he piped up, very quietly, very timidly. "But…what you're forgetting is he can't choose to get himself out of the rain. The wind is pushing him where it wants him to go…and he can't help but let it blow him around."
I can't help but let a smile twinge at my mouth. Ash is really a lot smarter than he usually gets credit for. I don't think he even noticed how insightful that sentence was.
"~But we'll get through this together…right?~" I said, hope rising like an escalating swell. However, the wave soon licked against the shore, and just as quickly as it had broken, it slid back into the sea of sorrow, the depths of desperation.
"Yeah…together. Ash and Pikachu, like always." Ash whispered. But his voice and his eyes were dead, as shot as a Farfetch'd during hunting season.
Ash turned back towards the window, and I watched a single tear fall softly down his cheek. The Pidgey was no longer in sight, and in perfect silence we watched the storm blow fury in panes of rain.
::=*=::
Brock's swooning over the newest Nurse Joy was, for once, short-lived and ended with him looking over to me instead of having to be hauled away by the ear.
Since I had been so absorbed in my freak evolution, I had hardly paused to consider the extent of my injuries, but by now their stinging had become too insistent to ignore. I had four cavernous gashes that arched across my face, two of which missed my eyes by only the most minuscule of measurements, two puncture wounds on the back of my neck, and, most grimly, a gaping gash torn over my white belly. I knew this only because Ash had carried me over the mirror on the wall across from me so I could see myself. This had upset me greatly, though, and after a quick glance at my injuries, I limped back over to my bed and cowered beneath the sheets and pillows, trying not to cry. It took me an hour or so before I felt emotionally stable enough to creep back out from under my hiding spot.
The local Nurse Joy was like all the other Joys, gentle and quiet, and she needed only scrutinize me for a while before she delivered my prognosis for my external wounds.
"Your Raichu's wounds are mostly quite superficial, so they should heal up in time. The only thing that worries me is that gash on his stomach, since it seems he ripped several muscles in it. For that I'd just say to restrict his movement for 2 or 3 weeks."
Ash gave me a whirling glance upon hearing this news, but he also sported a pinched smile. He seemed relieved that my external injuries were temporary. I was, too.
Nurse Joy exited the room for a while, presumably to go get her stethoscope and other medical gear, which gave Misty and Brock a chance to see how I was doing.
Misty came over and was stroking my head leisurely with the back of her hand, but Brock remained a few feet away.
"Are you okay…" Misty paused momentarily, "…Pikachu?"
"~Pretty much…~" I answered. Misty wasn't as fluent with my speech as Ash, but I could tell she understood by the look on her face. A little smile flitted across her lips. "That's good…"
Brock smiled and nodded, too. "Soon we'll be back on the road, and you won't even be able to tell your injuries were ever here." A silent flicker of contemplation darted across his eyes. He probably realized then that we could never just forget this ever happened.
For some reason, it felt a bit odd to have Misty and Brock talking to me directly, for I was unused to being spoken to as if I was a human. Only Ash regularly holds normal conversations with me, because Misty and Brock tend to have trouble with translating my speech.
Suddenly, something dawned on me, and I asked abruptly, "~How did this happen? I could only have evolved by use of a Thunderstone, and there weren't any of those around.~"
Ash and Misty wore a matching clueless look on their faces as this revelation settled, but Brock piped up, interrupting Ash in mid monosyllable comment.
"I was thinking the very same thing when you evolved. The only theory I could come up with was that the gem inside StormEye's forehead is perhaps a Thunderstone that caused you to evolve when StormEye used that Headbutt on you."
Ash and Misty nodded a 'yes' in unison as the confusion cleared from their eyes.
"You know, I do believe that theory is true." Nurse Joy chimed as she strode in with her tray of medical utensils. "Try looking in Thursday's newspaper." With her head, she gestured towards a newspaper sitting on a nightstand near my bed.
Ash snatched the newspaper up, scanning his eyes across the front page. "'New Gym Leader Selected…'" He mumbled the headline, then skimmed over the story. "'…It is believed that when the lightning struck StormEye as a kitten, it raised his power levels to the maximum. It is also rumored that it turned his gem into a Thunderstone, as a Thunderstone is really only a rock with a certain molecule structure that has been struck by lightning…'"
"So that's how it happened…" Misty murmured, leaning herself on Ash's shoulder and yawning. Ash tried halfheartedly to shrug her off, to which she responded and shot him an irritated look.
"It seems so," Nurse Joy said, picking her stethoscope off its tray and perching the headpiece over her ears. She placed the cold metal disk against the fur of my chest, then listened. Everybody silenced themselves.
She took the stethoscope off, jotted down some notes on a paper inside a manila folder, and then proceeded to stick a thermometer in my mouth.
"Hmmm…" Ash muttered in the background as I shifted the thermometer awkwardly around in my mouth. I watched him as he continued to read another selection from the newspaper article. "'…Although StormEye may seem undefeatable to the untrained eye, he only has the advantage over pokémon smaller than himself, therefore a large, bulky pokémon such as a Snorlax or a Kangaskhan would stop him cold in his tracks…'" Ash gave a soft huff, then resumed reading. "'A Golem would be especially helpful against his potent electricity and swift, sinewy physical attacks.'"
After a dragging few moments, the thermometer was taken from my mouth. A spurt of slight alarm shot through my veins as I saw Nurse Joy's brow furrow.
But her voice was calm, though perhaps trembling underneath her composure, when she said, "Ash…I don't think we really should be concerned, but if anything odd starts happening with your Raichu, call me or my nearest relative right away."
"Why?" Ash said, a bit louder than was needed, releasing the newspaper from his grip. His body posture went a little stiff.
"Well…It's not much of a big deal, but your Raichu's body temperature is just a tad above normal. His heart is beating quite fast, too. It's probably just a result of the unusual circumstances, but there have been cases where…" She trailed off in reluctance, but Ash insisted that she keep going. "Oh, don't worry about it! It's extremely rare, and I'm sure the fluctuations from normality would be much more intense. Just, do call if anything weird goes on."
Ash seemed satisfied with this response, though hardly. "When can we get back to journeying?"
"I would say it would be okay by later this evening, but I don't imagine you're going to want to go out into the storm. You can stay here until it blows over, if you wish."
"Okay."
"The rooms are full up with injured pokémon, but you can stay in the lobby."
"All right, thanks." Ash nodded gratefully.
"~Can I come, too?~" I asked, a bit of unintentional desperation creeping its way into my voice.
"What did he say?" Nurse Joy inquired.
"He wanted to know if he could come with us." Ash translated.
"Oh…I suppose if he would be more comfortable that way, it would be okay."
"Rai." I affirmed, struggling my way into a crouched position and taking a tottery step towards Ash. "Raii…chuu…" I squeaked, and my legs sagged beneath me, leaving me stranded where I stood.
Ash gave a watery blink, then came over and folded my decrepit body neatly in his arms. I basked in the soft warmth of his arms, and my tense, jittery body relaxed ever so slightly.
"It's gonna be okay, Pikachu…" He soothed, tenderly gathering me up to his eye level. "Even if you're physically not the pokémon you used to be, I know you're still the same inside." Sincerity shone bold in his eyes and beamed off his face.
"And who knows," Brock added. "They say 'What doesn't kill you make you stronger.'"
Ash, Misty, and I all nodded to that statement, soft, candled smiles glowing in our faces.
Ash carried me into the lobby, where we prepared to sleep as normal. There were two couches, which Brock generously offered Ash and Misty could have, and I settled myself under the warm glow of Ash's sleeping bag, curled up by my trainer's stomach. I listened in contentment to the heavy purring of the thunder outside, the click of the rain against the roof, for a long, long time, wondering if life would ever be the same…and wondering just how much had really changed. Soon, the cozy befuddlement that is sleep swathed me in its satisfying folds, and the world faded and twisted itself into the disjointed mask of dreaming. I don't remember any of the dreams I dreamt that night, but perhaps I dreamed of what used to be, and what was right then, and what will be. Or maybe I dreamed of something stranger than my conscious imagination can conjure.
All I know about that night, is that it was the first time that I thought maybe, just maybe, everything was going to be all right.
Too bad fate had something different planned for me. Another twist in the trail, one that would send me down paths of deceit and deception. One that would eventually bring my worst nightmares to be. One that would bring back an ancient evil, an evil that could not be stopped save for the destruction of my own being… You will see, as my story goes on.
::=*=::
Author's Notes: Wasn't that an original way to get Pikachu to evolve? ^_^;; I thought it was, at least. But, that isn't all! Next chapter, another surprise will be revealed, and in the next two or three chapters after that, yet another (that one will take the cake for shocking revelations.) As always, please review!