Chapter 3

Encounter

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He strode slowly and carefully through the bleak forest of fir trees. The stars glimmered in the bleak mantle overhead, like luminous spears stabbing the ebony skies.

The human name of that forest, Proteus didn't know.

The pokemon name, it had never existed.

He had been walking for he didn't know how many hours after he had left his home's borders, always headed north, for back then, that way was as good as any other. He still didn't know what he'd do with his life now that he was out, and every time he tried to come up with a solution, he'd remember his family, his friends, his home. And it hurt. So, he kept looking at the stars through the shadowy canopies, for when he did so, he thought of nothing.

The shadows moved around him, dancing in plays of darkness and secrets in the moonlight. Proteus could tell that there was far more to those shadows than mere blackness, so he kept a watchful eye every now and then.

He walked until he found himself upon the edge of a trail. It was rather large for a forest trail, and there were twin marks in the grassy ground. At that time, Proteus didn't know what could cause those marks for, during his short life, not one human had crossed the lands where he lived. Not into the secret places where his family lived, at least.

The light that came from his right was blinding, and it hurt his eyes. As an instinct, he leapt to the side of the path, and stood there, watching the passing vehicle. Large, roaring as it crushed the floor beneath it. Proteus' father had told him once of the contraptions humans could build to move themselves and their things through large distances, for these were fast and strong, and they themselves were not. Proteus assumed that that must have been one of those things.

It passed right in front of him and, as it continued its way through the hidden path, Proteus had a strange feeling. It was like that vehicle... no... something, or someone inside it, called out for help. He felt anguished cries of fear, in the thin threads of his mind, of reality as a whole, and that unsettled him. He could feel their thoughts, their emotions, and he knew they were afraid.

Then, almost as quick as it had come, the feeling passed, replaced by pain. The burning, now more familiar than he would ever want it to be, surged through him like the swells crashing violently on sandy shores. It disappeared soon, and he was left with the nausea and the trembling. He was starting to really hate evolution.

What had he turned into this time? He couldn't seem to remember or know exactly, but he remembered the feelings he had. The scared thoughts. Minds. Psychic. He must have turned into an espeon for a short amount of time. Great. He couldn't even control the transformations. Well, maybe he could trigger them if he wanted. If he wanted.

But the cries of help did not leave his thoughts, as well as something else. Another feeling, fleeting, almost unnoticed in the despaired cacophony. An emptiness, a sadness of some kind. It was like trying to remember something from a dream. A really bad dream.

So, with nowhere else to go and nothing else to do, Proteus followed the hidden trail, towards an uncertain future, but that certainly didn't promise to be pleasant.

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Cold it was, and bright. That was what Hera felt as she woke up. Her first instinct was to look around, but she found with only slight surprise that she could only move her head. Metal cuffs, cold and hard, restrained her paws with rough edges that hurt her skin. She was sprawled with her belly up. A human might have been comfortable like that, but she felt like her legs were going to be snapped apart.

The room looked like a pokemon center's emergency room. Sterile white walls, sterile white ceiling, sterile white everything, with small metal cabinets and devices. Such lovely decor should be in a States and Houses issue, she thought with a sarcastic smile.

After an excruciatingly boring wait, almost an eternity in which she just stared at the ceiling, her mind blank, the door, also white she noted, opened. A young man came in, clad in doctor's clothes, followed by a hulky other of red hair and icy eyes.

"Oh, she's already awake." the young one said, half-surprised, as he brushed a black bang from falling in his eyes. His voice and his face seemed soft enough, young enough. It was almost soothing to Hera. Almost.

"Humph, ain't the lil' bitch tough." the hulk sneered behind him, moving so the eevee could see him perfectly.

That voice, that grin, that face. Reden.

Joshua's empty body, sprawled in a pool of his own blood.

If Hera weren't restrained, she'd have torn him apart right then and there. Instead, she had to content with a menacing growl that would have made a charizard proud.

He seemed only to please himself with her behavior, and that angered her even more. "You're too lucky that that asshole of a trainer you had was stupid enough to stay in a gun's way." he told her, his voice dripping with indifference and amusement.

Had. Yes, she had a trainer. She had, but not anymore.

She growled louder, though her eyes threatened to spill the tears that it still hadn't. But she would not cry, not in front of the bastard that had taken her trainer's life. He would not have the satisfaction.

Be brave...

"That leg won't be healed until around half-a-month," the young one said as he surveyed her. Hera noticed then that her left leg was patched up, pretty much put together back in the right angle, encased in plaster. "Until then we can't ship her to the main headquarters."

"Well, I couldn't fuckin' care less," Reden said as he approached Hera. He looked at her face closely, the defying grin still in his lips. Hera wanted him to come just a little closer. Maybe she could bite his nose of. That would be fun. "You know," he said to her, "I really have to restrain myself from planting a bullet on your head too."

"I heard she gave you one hell of a trouble back at the raid."

"It's none of your fuckin' business," Reden told him, making Hera pleased to know that he'd probably be the laughing stock of the team from now on. He then turned to leave and, when he was at the door, he said, "When you're done, put her with the other creeps. Put her in a dark, hidden corner. Maybe they'll forget to feed the bitch." And he was gone.

Hera was slightly relieved, though she still felt horrible as a whole. She tried to blink back the tears that had threatened to fall, but one came out anyway. She cursed in her mind.

"Now, this will only sting a little," the young doctor said as he held a needle that Hera hadn't seen before, filled with some sort of chemical. She, of course, was against it, but right then there was nothing she could do about it.

It stung her, and right after she felt herself increasingly drowsy, her limbs going limp. It was only a matter of seconds before she was sound asleep.

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Later, when she woke up, Hera was in a small cage, in a dark room, where little if anything could be seen. There were other cages around, piled up in tiny mountains, with one or more pokemon in many of them. She recognized some from the incident at the pokemon center, and one of them caught her attention. It was the sandslash she had talked to, before her little stunt. The pichu was nowhere to be seen.

"Pssst, hey," she called him.

He turned to her, and he seemed to recognize her almost immediately. "You!"

"Shhh, quiet." she whispered. She didn't want to draw more attention than she had already.

He started whispering. "It's you. The crazy one."

The statement irritated her for a moment. "Excuse me?"

"Oh, sorry. It's just that you pulled quite a stunt back there," he said. "It was quite impressive."

She then faced the floor of the cage. "Impressive? You thought it was impressive?" She eyed him sharply. "It was stupid, that's what! A fucking stupid stunt!" she told him, her voice rising slightly.

He apparently knew what see was talking about. "I'm sorry... about your trainer, that is."

Her eyes stung. She did not answer, unsure if she could keep a steady voice.

"You're very proud." he said. "Maybe too proud." And he disappeared into his cage.

She wanted to reply to him, say something in her own defense, but she didn't. She didn't have the right to. She was completely to blame; her pride, her courage, all that she had always praised and gloated about, led to the death of the one person that meant the most to her. She hated it now. Hated it all now. She hated herself.

A sob escaped her throat. She could not keep it in, and soon the tears were flowing. She remembered Joshua, of the things they had done together, of the battles they had fought, of the places they had seen, and most vividly of the times they had simply played in the grass, like the greatest and closest friends. Of his eyes, his eyes as blue as the deepest ocean.

The dark room was filled with the sound of her sobs, as she cried in savage bursts, breaking down completely in that dark room. She did not care if anybody listened anymore; she just wanted the emptiness in her heart to go away. She wanted Joshua back. She wanted her life back.

Then, for the first time since she was a small cub, Hera cried herself to sleep.

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Five days. Five long, confusing days for Proteus that he spent either finding food and water or watching over the human building hidden within a clearing on the thick jungle.

The truck he followed had stopped and entered in that place. Many humans in black clothes patrolled its perimeter, some of which with growlithes or arcanines in tow, which made it that much harder for Proteus to keep himself from being discovered. He thanked the Gods that his father had taught him how to survive in the jungle against predators, even ones with the sense of smell of an arcanine.

The building itself was large. Three stories high, though nothing could be told about the underground, with three watching towers at key points, and a single gate, through where the humans and their vehicles passed quite constantly.

In that fifth day, the temperature had gone up sky high, becoming almost unbearable, and Proteus could tell that the humans weren't very happy about it themselves. The golden-white sun blazed above him and there were no clouds anywhere. Even though there were trees for him to hide beneath, the humidity didn't help at all.

Crouched in the underbrush, eyeing a duo of humans standing near the entrance, holding something that he believed were the weapons his father had also told him about, that could kill hundreds of yards away with a single shot, Proteus tried to reason, yet again, why was it that he was doing that insanity. He couldn't. The only thing that came to him was the cries for help, and the other feeling, the one he still couldn't put a finger on.

That feeling was what came to his head most often. That strange feeling of hollow. It was like in had brushed right past him, while the other minds lingered for a while. He felt attracted to it, for some reason. And so he waited, and he watched.

He had experienced another random transformation not a day ago. He had been drinking at the river nearby, when he was attacked by a wild mightyena. He jumped at the water to save himself, not even noticing that he was already a vaporeon, and swam at an amazing speed through the riverbed until he was back at safety. Then, out of the water, he changed back. The pain had not lessened a bit.

Something caught the humans' attention, and Proteus froze. But they ran to the other side, and, for the first time, Proteus saw a safe gap in the security, through which he could pass unnoticed.

He ran as fast as he could, hoping that he wouldn't turn into a jolteon all of a sudden. He padded to the door-like opening on the main gate, and slipped in.

The crates scattered through the sides of the building offered him a perfect way to go by unchecked. He walked around them, careful not to knock them down, until he was right beneath an open window. He tried to hear or smell anyone in there and, judging it to be safe enough, he jumped in.

The room was a storage of some kind, cardboard boxes thrown about in a promiscuous way, like they had been stashed in a hurry. The place smelled of dust and old wood. It was dark, and Proteus' eyes took some time to adjust. He leapt over the boxes, and headed for the door.

After minutes of excruciatingly unnerving and embarrassing failed attempts, Proteus finally figured how to open the blasted thing.

The corridors were mostly empty, and the unusual eevee let his nose guide him through the endless hallways and seemingly infinite doors, searching for the cent of many different pokemon in one place, which was what he thought had given him that strange feeling. He walked through other rooms, hid from passing guards, opened a door or two, and walked down a flight of stairs, though not without tripping and falling down more than half its extension.

One of his new life goals was to find the damned soul who had designed that place, and slit his throat.

In the sub-terrain level, Proteus found almost no humans, except for some lonely figures within dark rooms doing things he did not want to find out much about. And then he went down another level.

That was the most creeping one. It was almost pitch black, and he had to trust solely on his nose to guide him through the endless corridors, until he eventually found a door. Red neon lit above it faintly, hardly enough for Proteus to see more than the top of the door itself. He went to it, and tried to trespass, but it did not slide open like he others when he turned the knob.

Frustrated, tired and with the heebie-jeebies all over his body, Proteus growled loudly, then sighed heavily. He'd have to give it a try.

He thought on what would be most suited. He pondered for no more than three seconds before the obvious hit him. He closed his eyes, focusing his entire mind on the form and the element he wanted to incorporate. He didn't know if it would work, but he had to give it a try.

When he opened his eyes again, everything seemed different. He could see almost perfectly in the darkness, and even beyond it. He felt comfortable in it, and, just for a moment, he actually thought that it wasn't such a bad idea after all. He turned back to his senses soon enough, though.

The shadows danced aplenty around him, moving through reality and outside reality, in ways no other being could see. Shadows did not obey the rules of what was real. They were nothing and had always been nothing. But, for Proteus, the nothing had suddenly become something. Something vast, an invisible mantle that covered all the reaches of the 'real', and especially the 'unreal'.

The umbreon jumped gracefully through the darkness, disappearing for a moment from existence.

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Tap, tap, tap...

Hera had been tapping her paw, claw outstretched, at the cage floor for she didn't know how long. She found it to be soothing, the consistent and persistent sound keeping her mind numb and silent, devoid of thought or memory. It was a very nice feeling.

Unfortunately, the same repetitive sound had a different effect on other pokemon. Like driving a certain sandslash to the brink of insanity.

"Would you stop that!" he shouted at her.

She stopped for a moment. Then, when she thought the hedgehog had assumed she was done, started tapping again, louder.

"I told you to stop that, damnit!"

"I don't hear nobody else complaining, spike-head," she told him.

"That's because we are the only ones in here!"

She decided to stop it there. It was true; there was nobody else in that room with them. There were others in the beginning, but the Rockets took these after one day. The two of them were left there, alone, for the last four days. Nobody came to them with either food or water, besides what was already in their cages to begin with. Hera could really use some water right then.

The sandslash and her had gotten to know each other. Through insults and witty jokes, that is. His name, she had found out, was Rocker, and he was also trained, his keeper a girl of around Joshua's age, named Meghan, and apparently with a very shy demeanor. Hera wondered how would Joshua and her relate to each other. For a moment, she also remembered the blush he had on his cheeks that day after the battle with the older girl.

The pichu was Meghan's newest pokemon. He was named Ken, and was still practically a newborn. Meghan was going to let it grow up a little before she would let it fight in any battles. Hera had found him adorable, and wondered how good-looking he'd be in a few years. The pichu had escaped the center, mostly thanks to her, though that didn't help Hera's feelings much.

That was mostly all that Hera had found out from Rocker. That and the fact that, like her, he seemed to have been forgotten to die in that dark room. Hera could see in it a lot better now than before, already capable of distinguishing shapes and things she couldn't at first. That's what you get from living in darkness for days.

Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap...

"You want to drive me crazy, don't you?" Rocker growled from his cage.

"It's not me, you moron!" she whisper-shouted at him.

Indeed, the taping sound wasn't hers. Something else, with claws, apparently, was walking through the large room, coming from the door at the far side. Hera remained silent, and Rocker took her cue and uttered no sound as well. She didn't know whether or not it was one of the Rockets' pokemon, and she wasn't looking forward for what they had in store for her.

The tapping continued for a while, approaching them. Then it stopped, replaced by a very faint light coming from that direction, followed by a groan, then someone's labored breathing. All the while, Hera could only wonder how much weirder would her situation become.

The sound resumed, though this time muffled and quieter, like whatever was coming now was lighter and with shorter claws.

And, soon enough, an eevee was standing right in front of both their cages, squinting against the darkness as he slowly made his way through the room. He ended up bumping his leg on another tiny cell, and yipped in pain.

Hera tried not to laugh, but it was almost impossible. A snort-like sound escaped her as a result.

He whirled around, facing her cage with narrowed eyes. Hera quieted down completely, but he was already coming towards her, slowly, as if expecting whatever was in there to jump out and eat him.

Hera should have been thinking about what would happen if the Rockets got her, about what in the world were this eevee doing there, about anything disturbing and worrying. Instead...

Hmm... he's kinda cute.

"Hello?" the newcomer asked the dark space in the cage, very shyly. It wasn't Hera who gave him a response.

"Hey, kiddo!" Rocker called the eevee, who almost had a heart attack.

This time, both caged pokemon erupted in laughter. Hera simply couldn't contain herself anymore. He was too hilarious.

The eevee looked at both cells like he had seen a ghost, then his brows furrowed in irritation, though his body still shook.

"W-would you two stop it! I-it's not funny!" He apparently tried to make his voice leveled, but it still came out shaken with scare and embarrassment.

It was Hera who stopped first. "Sorry, couldn't keep myself." she apologized, her voice still cracked with amusement.

He eyed her cage, and walked to it, until his muzzle was almost trespassing the bars. Now Hera could really get a look at him, and the thing which caught her attention were his eyes. They were wood-brown, like most eevees, but they had a violet hue to them. They also seemed to change tone slightly as he moved, like a kaleidoscope, never the same color for too long. She was so entranced by them, that Hera didn't even understand what he said.

She shook her head. "Uh... sorry, excuse me?"

"I said..." he repeated, "that you are an eevee."

"Well, isn't he an Einstein!" Rocker called from behind him. "Why don't we give him the Nobel Prize of Obviousness?" And then he was laughing again.

The eevee was clearly confused. "Einstein?"

"Shut your hole, Rocker!" Hera reprimanded the sandslash. "Can't you see he's here to help us?" And as the eevee turned to her, she added, "Aren't you?"

"Well, yeah, I guess, but..." He looked around. "Aren't there any other pokemon around here?"

"Used to be." Rocker told him. "But the fuckers took them away after one day and left us both here to die." he sneered. "Aren't they lovely hosts? We should come here more often."

"Who are you, by the way?" Hera remembered to ask.

"Oh, my name's Proteus." he said. "And yours?"

"Hera."

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Hera," he told her politely.

"Yeah, well, now that the fancy greetings are over with," Rocker said. "Can we get back to how the fuckin' hell do you plan to get us out of here?"

"You're an asshole, spike-head." Hera told him.

"I know."

"Well..." Proteus began as he eyed the bars. "Are these things fire-proof?"

"I don't think so," she said. "What are you gonna do, though? Give them a flame-thrower attack?"

"Might as well." he said, to Hera's disbelief.

"Great," the sandslash spoke sarcastically. "They got us a wacko savior. Whoopee-dee-do."

But what came next silenced the ground type quite effectively. Proteus edged back from Hera's cage and closed his eyes in concentration. He seemed to become a kaleidoscope himself, sparkling and glowing, like his body was doted with thousands of rainbow-colored stars. His fur waved around unnaturally, like there were wisps of wind circling him. And his body shape changed, slowly and consistently, into something else. It was beautiful.

In the end, Hera found herself staring in awe at a flareon, her mouth hanging limply from her skull. Proteus' eyes were still violet-brown, though now with a constant reddish tint, and they glowed and cracked with an internal fire.

"Now," he told her, "step back."

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Proteus was soon done with both Hera and Rocker's cages; the bars, with its edges melted away, scattered around the floor. They were now all free from their small confinements, but not totally free, for they were still within a heavily guarded Rocket facility, and three getting out wouldn't be nearly as easy as one getting in.

When he was finished, Proteus stepped back, and the lights came back, though this time they seemed almost like a mist, sickly looking tones emanating from it. He groaned again and, back as an average eevee, was left panting and shacking on the floor.

"Are you okay?" Hera asked him.

He looked at her from him crouched position. His eyes were back at never being the same tone for a single moment. "Yeah, I'm okay," he told her weakly. "It just hurts like hell."

Before anything else could be said, the sandslash was already between them.

"So, what's the plan?"

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Author's Notes: Whoo, cliffhanger! Well, maybe not that much of one, but hey, you can tell that things aren't gonna be pretty from now on, hehe. ;)

Oh, note to self: Never put any more interactive fics up. :P I'd suggest everyone to do the same.

Another thing: I'll only update this fic if I get at least 3 or more reviews for this chapter. That's not asking too much, is it?

Now, REVIEWS!!! ^-^

Three A's, a C, and PDBF: Well, Alex, whether or not Team Rocket will ultimately capture Proteus, you'll have to wait to see. ;)

grrr: I really intended to explore the emotional part of my characters above all else, and I'd advise all authors to do the same.

Eevee: I don't really intend to add any canon characters on this fic, but you can never be too sure, can you? ^^

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