Two days later, the
Ketchum party was readying itself for its' return to Pallet Town,
where Ash's victory would be celebrated again, this time with a
party to which everyone living in the town was invited.
Brock was trying to
find his backpack which, for some reason, wasn't in his room. He
knew that it wasn't in Ash's room, or Misty's. Brock grinned as
he remembered searching Ash's room. The boy didn't notice him, he
was too busy staring at the Supreme Championship trophy and
whispering "I don't believe it!" over and over again,
with a big smile in his face.
"Perhaps someone
put it in Mrs. Ketchum's room by mistake," he thought.
Brock left his room
and walked down the corridor to her room. He was about to knock
on the door when he heard something. Curious, he approached the
door and listened.
A woman's voice, was
speaking in a hoarse and nervous tone, but one that was also
strangely cold and inhuman: "I'm losing
cohesion."
A man's voice
responded in a reassuring murmur, that Brock, much to his
frustration, couldn't understand.
The hoarse feminine
voice: "No, I lost the last doses of the serum. I don't know
where I left it!"
The Pewter City Gym
Leader knocked on the door. He heard the hoarse voice curse
venomously before Mrs. Ketchum opened the door.
"What is it?
Oh, it's you, Brock." Delilah tried to clear her ferocious
scowl off of her face and offer him her usual warm and reassuring
smile. She didn't do too well.
The young man blushed
immediately. Delilah, who seemed too tired to notice his
reaction, was dressed in just a T-shirt over the bra and panties.
"Um," he
said uncertainly. "Mrs. Ketch Ketchum, do you
uh know if they left my er backpack in your
room?"
Delilah's eyes shone
with surprise. "Oh, yes! Yes, they did, Brock. Your backpack
is on the table." She opened the door. Brock noticed the TV
set in front of the bed.
That explains the
voices, Brock thought. She must have been watching
something on TV. When he picked up his backpack, Brock
noticed that the wardrobe was open. The only thing hanging up in
it was a black plastic rain cape. He thought that was odd, until
he noticed the packed suitcase sitting on the bed.
"Have you got
everything Brock?" Mrs. Ketchum asked, smiling slightly as
the young man from Pewter City looked around him with those
narrowed eyes of his. He should have become a cop,
Delilah thought irreverently. He has just the right attitude.
Brock nodded and
turned to leave the room. The room was dimly lit with the light
of a tied lamp. Back-lit by the corridor lights and with her
hands poised on her waist, Delilah suddenly looked very
threatening. Brock swallowed dryly and left very quickly.
She watched him leave and then closed the door.
Delilah leaned
against the door, her face expressionless. Her brown eyes
suddenly began to glow a brilliant green. Within there was just a
hint of slitted pupils, like those of a snake. "No damn
you keep control," Delilah hissed, her voice as
cold as liquid nitrogen. Biting her lip, she closed her eyes and
frowned in concentration. When she opened her eyes again, they
had returned to their normal chocolate brown...
A week passed and the
Ketchums were back home in Pallet Town. Brock had to go to Pewter
City to sort out another mess caused by his well-meaning but
frequently irresponsible father. Sometimes Brock wondered who was
the brat of the Harrison family: his youngest brother, Steel, or
his father... Misty had taken the opportunity to go to visit her
sisters in Cerulean City, especially her middle sister, Violet,
who had surprised everyone by announcing her engagement.
It was already night,
but Ash was still outside the house, playing with Pikachu and
Chikorita. Then he heard a noise from inside of the house, a
noise like a cry of pain and the breaking of glass. Ash looked up
in concern and summoned his two best Pokémon to his side. Mom,
he thought and ran into the house.
===========
Delilah was breathing
slowly, trying to control the pain that had turned her nervous
system into threads of fire that scorched through her limbs.
Suddenly, all the strength drained out of her and she dropped to
the kitchen floor, knocking down several glasses and plates that
smashed loudly against the linoleum.
The pain was
unbearable, but still Delilah didn't scream. She didn't want
Ash to know that she felt such pain... A pain that she knew so
well... Delilah concentrated, focussing all of her formidable
will to force the pain away, but it did not work this time. With
a growing sense of utter horror, she realised that she could no
longer stop this process from taking place, no matter how much
she couldn't let it happen...
"Mom?" Ash
had entered in the kitchen.
"Ash run
away" she whimpered as her body tensed and then
suddenly spasmed as if she were epileptic. Then it happened. At
that moment, Ash Ketchum became witness to a transformation that no
one, especially a thirteen-year-old boy, should ever
see.
His mother had fallen
in the ground of the kitchen, writhing with an agony that
transcended any other pain a human could feel. She was making a
liquid sound of torment as if something were tearing her lungs
out. Then her face cleared of all expression and she jerked
backwards, almost flipping herself off of the ground with the
violence of her movement. Ash watched in horror as his mother's
clothes suddenly flashed into a translucent blue gel and flowed
into the shape of her body, still beautiful despite her
thirty-seven years. Simultaneously, her skin and hair lost its'
colour and flowed smoothly into the same alien viscous fluid. Ash
saw his mother's kind, warm brown eyes suddenly turn a deadly
green shade and the pupils of her eyes lengthen into snake-like
slits.
The inhuman thing
that had been Delilah Ketchum howled in pain and frustration, a
sound that could not ever be produced by a human throat.
Ash stared helplessly at the naked human female form rendered in
a flowing blue gel-like fluid as it shuddered and then relaxed.
Ash could only stand there, paralysed with utter terror as he
stared at the thing before him. His mind whirled, and although
the fluidic face retained the shape and form of his mother's
face, he could not accept that this could be her. Behind
him, Pikachu and Chikorita were frozen in fear. They were two
courageous Pokémon, but this was a horror beyond even their
ability to fight.
Ash was trying to
figure out what to do, when one of the thing's
gelatinous arms reached out to him in what was either
supplication or the precursor of some attack. "Ash," it
said in his mother's voice. Ash unfroze instantly. Instinct took
over and sent him staggering away from the monster reaching
towards him. Ash shot through the doorway and fled into the
night, screaming like a lost soul.
Delilah felt sore all
over as she pulled herself uncertainly to her feet. On the other
hand, the pain was gone, thank God; returning to her
minimum-energy 'default' form was a strangely liberating
experience. Feeling free, loose and extremely comfortable, she
strode to the window to call her son back. Ash was already long
out of earshot, and was barely visible to human
eyes. Delilah's body compensated automatically, providing her
with the perfect night vision of an Umbreon and the telescopic
vision of a Fearow. She spotted her son's fleeing form
immediately and her perfect sense of spatial acuity noted that he
was running right towards the Pallet-Viridian Fault, a deep
geological chasm to the north of the town.
Delilah strode past
the two trembling Pokémon without a backward glance and walked
out into the cold air, not noticing the air temperature in the
slightest. She took two running steps forward and two graceful
wings like those of a Fearow's suddenly flowed into being from
her back. She leapt upwards and soared gracefully into the air in
pursuit of her panicking child.
==========
Ash fled mindlessly
through the forest. Branches and twigs tore at his clothes and
flesh, but he was unable to think of anything except that nightmare
that he had just barely escaped. Whatever it was, it had
adopted the form of his mother. Fury and terror collided in his
head as a part of him wondered how long that he had a... had a...
a changeling as a mother. Days? Months? Years?
An even more terrible possibility occurred to him: that the
breasts that nursed him and the womb that bore him
"NO!" Ash shouted into the night. "That monster
is not my mother! It is not!"
Ash continued to
babble a half-insane chant of denial as he fled through the
night, trying to convince himself that he had somehow not
seen what he had just seen. Then, suddenly, he was in free-fall,
tumbling down into a darkness that had opened up beneath him
without any warning.
A tiny part of Ash's
mind that was still capable of processing information about his
environment announced that he was falling into the
Pallet-Viridian Fault. He seemed to remember hearing at school
that it was about four and a half miles deep. He felt strangely
glad when he realised he was falling to his death. At least he
wouldn't have to deal with
Suddenly, Ash wasn't
falling anymore. He felt a surge of acceleration as some flying
creature seized him around his waist, arced around into a zooming
climb and soared up and out of the fault. Ash could hear the
beating of huge wings, a sound that made him think of leather or,
maybe, human skin slicing through the air. "Ash, are you
okay?" he heard a familiar voice ask. "Did you
hurt yourself?"
Ash twisted around
and stared into an image from his most horrible nightmares. His
mother was looking at him, her face filled with loving concern,
but her face was formed out of a translucent blue gel-like fluid
that shone like the surface of a lake in the moonlight. Her eyes
were green with black snake-like slits. Ash was certain
that they were glowing softly. The flesh that Ash was pressed
against in a loving, protective hold was cold and the flesh of
her arms flowed like oil under his hands. Behind her, huge
graceful wings of blue gel-like fluid beat a steady rhythm.
Ash abandoned his
last slender toehold on calm and sanity and got ready to scream
his throat raw. Suddenly, her cold hand slapped over his mouth.
Ash felt a tingling in his head that he barely had time to
recognise as some manner of psychic attack before he was sleeping
peacefully.
With tears flowing
freely down her face, the being that humans knew as Delilah
Ketchum adjusted her hold on her son and extruded an extra pair
of arms like those of a Machamp so she was holding him tightly
against her body. Then she turned gracefully and flew back
towards her home.
If you had looked up,
that night in Pallet Town, you would have seen a strange shape
fly overhead, illuminated by the moonlight; a shape that could
have been an angel or, perhaps, a demon...
What do you think?
Read and Review!
To be continued...
