Notes: Well, this was a quick update. That's probably because I already had this one typed. It may take a while for chapter 3… but I'll try and finish it when I have time. This week is pretty tight. Ah well. Enjoy!
Brian closed his sapphire eyes and sank backwards into his dilapidated easy chair, curling his thick sea-colored tail around his aching ankles disconsolately. Blood dripped off his toes and onto the dirty, stained floor, warming his feet in a pleasant contrast to the stink of the numerous lacerations on his muscular legs. He was relieved that only his lower limbs had suffered – his torso, face, and arms had escaped major damage. He couldn't say the same of his opponent, who'd had to be rushed to the Pokemon Center for emergency limb re-attachment. Brian despised cheating trainers who double-teamed him in a one-on-one regulation match.
"Oh, for god's sake, put something on those," Curt growled as he stepped into the dingy room. He shut the rickety door to their small shared flat, grimacing as paint peelings flaked off and fell to the swiftly-growing pile at his feet. So many things in this tiny one-bedroom shack were in disrepair, so many things that could be paid for if Curt could quit his addictions. The Two chose to ignore this glaring fact and dropped his black bag of drugs onto a three-legged table leaning precariously against the wall.
"Shut up," Brian muttered in reply, curling up into a tighter knot. "They're nothing."
Curt snorted and hopped a few steps to Brian's chair. He peeled the Two's crimson-stained tail away from his legs and grimaced at the savaged flesh beneath. Normally Brian's fur was a deep azure, striped in alternating red and black from his left shoulder, crossing across his pelvis to his right leg. Now, though, the fur on both his legs was a matted mess stained nearly black.
"Nothing, huh?" He crouched on his haunches and began to lick Brian's wounds vigorously, drawing a pained and annoyed hiss from the other's mouth.
"Get off," he snarled, kicking at Curt's jaw with a flash of ebony claws. Curt jerked his head back and pinned Brian's leg to the chair with one massive paw, unheeding of Brian's vehement protests. He thrust his companion back into his seat with psychic energy each time he made a move to escape.
"We have an assignment tonight, idiot," he spat, rubbing Brian's crusted blood off his charcoal-black muzzle. "And as you used up our potions last time-"
"I used them?" Brian narrowed his eyes and dug his claws into the chair arms. "You're the one wasting our cash on substance abuse."
"Don't forget I'm also earning most of that cash," Curt replied with growing anger and annoyance. "I'm on the street every day. You spend most of your time sulking up here."
That shut Brian up. The azure Two crossed his arms sulkily and let Curt continue his ministrations. He wouldn't admit it, but Curt was right – they had an assignment tonight, and his wounds needed a good cleaning. Besides, the rough scrape of the ebony Two's tongue on his leg felt good. The previous night they'd both been too bruised and worn out from fighting to do much more than collapse on their shared futon and fall into an exhausted slumber. There were still a few more hours before the sun set and they were called to action, and Brian wanted to be certain those hours were properly used. To make his intentions known he flicked the tip of his blood-encrusted tail slowly across Curt's neck.
"Will you stop and let me finish?" Curt growled, though he made no move to push Brian's tail away.
"I don't think you've even started," Brian replied, dragging his tail down Curt's spine. Curt shuddered and stopped dead for a moment as the blue Two's tail slithered across his rump. When Brian pulled away, the black Two stood up and crossed to the end table that held his drugs. "You asked for it," he growled in a strained tone as he pulled a long syringe from the little black bag. Brian watched hungrily as Curt slid the fine needled end into his perforated veins. Curt, by now so used to the prickling pain of the needle, only closed his eyes in bliss as he depressed the plunger, injecting several CC's of X-Special into his toxic bloodstream. To get the desired effect he always mainlined the drug, and took far more than the recommended dose. This not only enhanced his psychic abilities, but also acted as a stimulant to his senses of sight and touch. He slid the needle out, licking his lips as the drug began to circulate, and dropped the used syringe onto the floor blindly. He then prowled back to Brian's chair, straddled the blue Two's legs, bent low over his face with feral desire plainly written in his grey-blue eyes…
The neighbors downstairs had stopped coming up to tell the Twos to stop thumping around, especially after a few of them had lost fingers from interrupting Brian and Curt's violent activities.
~.~.~.
Early sunlight peeked in through the grass-mat shades adorning the Flares' bedroom window. The night before Alec had attempted to close them thoroughly, but before he could cinch them completely closed his wife had pulled him down onto the bed and so thoroughly distracted him that he completely forgot the shades. It was their seventh wedding anniversary, after all.
"Ummn, you forgot the blinds," Sarie mumbled drowsily as she buried her face further into her husband's neck to block out the light.
Alec grumbled something incoherent and rolled over. His unruly black hair was even more tousled than usual, sticking up in odd places around his peaceful face. The sunlight hit his shoulder and threw a shadow silhouette of his body against the wall, shading his eyes from the intrusion of the morning. Nothing was going to get him out of bed this early, especially not after last night.
That resolve lasted a good five minutes before being thoroughly shattered by a rumble like two dozen stampeding ryhorns, a rumble that echoed down the hallway and dragged both Alec and Sarie out of bed. Sarie was the first to rise, as she was less tangled in the bedsheets. She pulled on a white robe emblazoned with the Indigo Plateau Seal of Excellence – a gift from the newly-instated members of the Elite Four to the gym leaders of Kanto – and shuffled off down the hallways towards the source of the noise.
When her feet led her into the spacious Battle Hall, she was struck by a combination of awe and fear. Standing at her usual spot at the far end of the room was a tall, lean Two with a coat of mottled blue and silver. His deep blue tail was lashing behind him, and waves of psychic energy emanated from his body in waves. Standing behind that Two in the high trainer's platform were Sarie and Alec's two children, and that worried Sarie the most. On the other side of the room, closest to the entrance hall, stood a boy no older than twelve, flanked by a Raichu and a Gollum. An injured Beedrill hovered in front of him listlessly. As Sarie dashed along the sidelines towards the Two she vaguely heard the boy call back his Beedrill and send out his Raichu.
"Kids, are you ok?" she called to her children as she ascended the stairs. She would leave the Two for later – right now she wanted to take care of her children.
"Uncle Tassadar said you and Daddy wanted to sleep in," chirruped her daughter. "He let Arthur do your morning gym work for you."
"Did he?" Sarie said, a little less worried now. If 'Uncle' Tassadar had admitted this Two to her gym, then he must be all right. Tassadar had an excellent judge of character.
"Arthur's so awesome!" the little boy exclaimed as he leaned over the railing to watch the fight. Sarie had to agree with her son. The Two was magnificent and, even if he wasn't the most powerful of his kind, he was in top form and working to the best of his abilities. It had taken just one kick from his powerful hind limbs to put the Raichu out of commission, and he was making short work of the Gollum with a barrage of psychic assaults.
Even though Sarie felt a little more calm about the situation, Alec certainly did not. He dashed across the room just as the Gollum fell with a deafening thud. He skidded to a halt in front of the Two even before the challenger had returned his fallen pokemon.
"Who are you?" he demanded, adjusting his glasses reflexively. Always the protective father, Alec didn't trust a stranger anywhere near his children.
The silver Two turned to Alec and bowed slightly, a strange gesture for a male Two. They rarely showed any sort of deference to human beings. This one, though, looked young – no more than nineteen – and wore a gentle expression enhanced by the pale blue tear-marks below his sapphire eyes and the tousled boyish hair that was the same color as his tail. A mosaic of streaks and spots in the same pale blue as the tear-mark covered his left arm. "I am Arthur, sir," he said quietly. "I apologize for intruding, but I was seeking a place to stay when I found your gym. The Pokemon Center turned me away, you see. I asked sanctuary from an Alakasam on watch at the door, and he let me in."
Alec seemed a little disquieted by the statement. Anti-Two sentiment had leaked into Viridian's fairly tolerant community in recent years as reports of Two attacks on humans became more common, but he didn't think the Center would turn down any creature in need. Alec himself harbored no animosity towards the Twos, but then again, he'd been there two decades ago when the last successful Two experiment escaped. He'd been only six at the time, but his father had told him what had happened. After all, hadn't his father worked on the Two project for years? He'd likely been responsible for many of the first live Twos, the first survivors who had escaped execution. Over one-hundred of these failed experiments had escaped over the ten years that led up to the creation of MewTwo, and over the past thirty years those highly sexual creatures – Twos were born to be bred, after all – had spawned hundreds more second-generation genetic anomalies. In his own scientifically curious way, Alec had followed the evolutionary progress of the Twos. He held no animosity towards them, but he didn't trust any strange creature with his children.
"Well, you're welcome here," Sarie called down before Alec could say anything more. She then turned to the boy at the opposite end. "And you, young challenger – you fought a good match. Heal your partners and return again to try your strength a second time."
The boy nodded a bit dejectedly and slunk out of the gym, cradling his three pokeballs in his arms. Arthur turned his eyes on Alec for confirmation. Though it was obvious that Sarie ruled the roost, the Two had been programmed to see males as the dominant members of any relationship. Alec looked at his wife a moment, then shrugged and smiled. "It's fine with me," he said.
Arthur gave a half-smile, a little relieved and a little unsure at the same time. Though he was grateful for a place to spend the night, he was also wary of spending too much time in the company of humans. He desperately wanted to be accepted by the community of Twos, but at the same time it couldn't hurt much to stay with humans for one evening. Besides, there were no Twos around here anyway – and the little human children were rather endearing. So Arthur would spend the night, lick his wounds, and make some plans for where his feet would take him next.