Chapter
5 – The Mark of Omega
In a dark room of a isolated house
in the outskirts of Pallet Town, a woman in black read the text
in Portuguese that appeared on the screen of her computer:
"Amor é fogo que arde
sem se ver;
É ferida que dói e não se sente;
É um contentamento descontente;
É dor que desatina sem doer."
She sighed and leaned back in her
chair, wishing that she had hair she could run her fingers
through in frustration (the 'hair' on her head was an extension
of her flesh, which she could shape and fashion like any other
part of her body. Touching it always made her feel
uncomfortable).
One of the few good
things that came of her time as a Team Rocket agent had been the
intensive training with languages that she had received: she knew
how to speak ten languages perfectly (not counting the languages
spoken by the 251 species of Pokémon. She had learned them
in the strangest of ways as Agent Omega). Her work as a book
translator, it was one of the few civilian jobs that she knew how
to do ("mercenary," "assassin" and
"thief" were not choices that appealed to her as a
mother). Unfortunately, she wasn't in the mood for it
right now, so it would have to wait.
Delilah saved the
file and shut down her computer. Rising from her work desk, she
began to pace to and fro, her strange liquid-based body flowing
smoothly from position to position in the semi-gloom of her
study. She had not discussed with Ash the worries that had
occurred to her while listening to Misty's heartbroken dreams at
Violet's wedding reception.
How the hell was she supposed
to do it, anyway? 'Excuse me, Ash, but I don't think that is
a good idea you tell Misty the truth about me. It is quite likely
she would hand us over to her father as a "let's make
up" gift.' Ash would be very offended if she even tried
to suggest something like that. After all, he might not admit it,
but his feelings for Misty were becoming more and more important
to him with every passing month... Still
She made a decision.
* * * * * * *
Ash read a comic book
in the bed, while Pikachu, sitting on the floor, was eating his
Pika-chow. Then Ash heard a knock on the door.
"Ash?"
"Yeah, come in,
Mom."
Delilah opened the
door. Ash noticed that she was in what she referred to as her
'default' form. She had explained that, like a Ditto, she had to
expend energy to take and maintain any other form. It still made
him feel a little nervous, seeing his mother rendered in that
alien blue gel-like fluid, but it didn't bother him so much any
more. She was wearing a black knee-length raincoat, tightly
belted to spare her modesty and Ash's nerves. Ash wasn't the most
perceptive of boys, but he had realised that this was the only
item of clothing that his mother really felt comfortable
wearing. So, when they were at home and without any guests, he
graciously allowed her to wear it or just morph her skin into
clothing if she wanted to. It was another aspect of his mother's
nature that he was slowly becoming used to. It rather alarmed him
how easy it was to come to terms with a habitually naked mother.
Delilah stuck her
hands in her pockets. "Hi, Ash," she said with her
usual easy-going kindness, "are you busy? I need to have a
quick talk with you."
"Sure!" Ash
sat up and gestured for her to enter and sit down at his desk
opposite his bed.
Delilah entered the
room, noting that Pikachu still eyed her nervously. She had
decided that the little electric mouse wasn't afraid of her, but
was afraid of something she represented. She just wished
she could figure out what that was.
Ash frowned, noticing
that his mother seemed nervous and preoccupied. "Is
something wrong?" he asked.
"Yes, Ash."
She admitted, her slitted green alien eyes looking into his
chocolate brown eyes. "I have to talk to you about something
very important."
Pikachu leaped in his
trainer's lap, sensing his concern. "About what?" Ash
asked.
It is now or
never, Omega. Delilah thought. "Ash, you said that you
understood the reason why I have hidden... you know what."
"Yes. I do
understand, Mom."
"Okay,"
Delilah said. She sighed, crossed her legs and looked at her
child with a serious expression. "Then I think that you will
understand why I will ask you this. Ash, I don't want you to tell
your friends about my condition. Not Brock, not Tracey and
not even Misty." Especially not Misty, she added
silently.
Ash frowned deeply
and leaned back. "Mom," he protested after a moment,
"I trust them. They would never do anything to hurt
you."
Delilah sighed.
"I'm sure that you do trust them, darling," she said.
"But you remember how you reacted when you first
found out?" Ash grimaced, remembering his wild run through
the woods. "Can you really be sure they wouldn't panic when
they found out?"
Ash sighed gently. He
hated the thought of hiding anything from his friends. On the
other hand, he understood her reasons. "Ok. I won't tell
them anything." He declared. "I mean... I know that the
others might not understand that being 'different' does not
automatically mean that you are a danger to them." Ash
subconsciously moved the comic books piled up next to him.
On the front cover of
a reprint of a sixty-year-old X-Men story, four Prime
Sentinel cyborgs were ripping the roof off the heroes' Blackbird
aircraft and the title "Operation: Zero Tolerance"
blared out of the cover. Yes, there were many people whose
hatred, and fear, of the unknown made them contemplate
extreme measures.
"Anyway,"
Ash continued after his moment of introspection, "we really
can't spread this news about much anyway. Considering your
powers, there are a lot of organisations that would love to get
some kind of control over you... maybe the UN Defence Forces or
Team Rocket..."
Delilah reacted with
alarm at hearing that name spoken in this context.
"Why did you mention Team Rocket?" she asked, a little
too sharply.
Ash didn't understand
her fright. "Huh...? Well, because Team Rocket is the
largest terrorist organisation in the world! They would love to
put their dirty hands on you..." Ash suddenly fell silent as
his admittedly slow wits finally caught up with the situation. He
jumped to his feet in excitement. "IT'S THAT, ISN'T
IT?" he shouted. "You're afraid that Team Rocket would
capture you, aren't you?"
You can't even
imagine how much, Delilah thought, smiling weakly in
embarrassment. "Yes, you're right." she said.
Ash smiled at his
mother and stood a little straighter and prouder. "Don't
worry, Mom. Pikachu and I will protect you! Right, Pikachu?"
The electric mouse
nodded, sweat-dropping with nervousness.
"Thank you,
Ash." She smiled, sweat-dropping at the very thought. She knew
that her son meant that with all his heart and soul...
After a few minutes
of listening to her son's reassurances, Delilah left him to plot
defensive strategies with Pikachu, Chikorita, Cyndaquil and
Totodile. "My God! How does he do that?" she
thought, stunned. When he told her that he would protect her from
Team Rocket, he had been in a heroic pose, which in any other
person would seem ridiculous, but that was perfect for
him. She didn't understand why that should be. It was as if Ash
had vocation to be a hero or something like that. I
don't know who he inherited that from, she thought. Because
I know that he didn't inherit it from me.
She concluded that being only too aware of who and what
she had been in the past...
********
James Morgan didn't
understand what he was doing here, in a deep, dark hole
in the Earth. Jessie Gibson and he had been suddenly recalled to
the Team Rocket base, near Viridian City, where they received
orders directly from the Boss himself to investigate every cubic
metre of the interior of the Pallet-Viridian Fault... in search
of what?
"A very special
Ditto," Domino, the most deadly of Team Rocket's agents had
said in a dry, ironic tone of voice.
So there he was,
hanging from a high-tensile steel cable about 1½ miles below the
surface of the earth, clutching a thermal imaging camera and a
parabolic microphone like an idiot. This deep below the surface
of the earth not a hint of the twilight above penetrated. The
geothermal processes occurring another three miles below him made
the interior of the fault uncomfortably warm, and all the
Ampharos in the world could light up the space around him. It was
so bad, that James was sure that he wouldn't even know if he were
hanging upside down.
"So Jessie? Has
anything appeared?" He asked through the radio.
One-and-a-half miles
above, Jessie was sitting by a bank of monitors (showing visual
and thermal images from James' camera) and listening to a pair of
headphones (that were relaying the sounds from the parabolic
mike). "Nothing." She informed her partner, feeling
bored. "Of course, it would help if we knew what we
were looking for." They had been at this for hours and
Jessie was getting tired of looking at rock walls and listening
to the sound of geological processes that sounded too much like
her empty stomach...
"Jessie! I'm
hungry!" James whined, the edge of his irritating voice
only made worse by the static on the radio link.
"Meowth! Me
too!" the third member of the team shot in.
"Shut up, both
of you!" Jessie snapped. "Remember that the Boss
ordered us to search that hole completely!" At that moment,
Jessie's stomach suddenly growled like a tractor engine.
"Well..." she said with a blush of embarrassment.
"Maybe we can take some time off for a quick snack."
"I agree
whole-heartedly!" James said through the radio. "Mmm
donuts"
Jessie rolled her
eyes at her partner's culinary obsessions. She hit the switch
that would winch James back up to ground level. It should only
take about thirty minutes for him to reach the surface
again "No donuts, I'm afraid James," she replied.
"I'll fix us something from our field rations."
"Uh, no offense,
but I'd rather you didn't Jessie," Meowth said with a groan.
"Da last time you cooked sometin' up, I lost one of Meowth's
nine lives!"
Jessie scowled at
that hideously old crack about that disastrous Foundation Day
dinner (the Indigo equivalent of the Fourth of July) she had
cooked for them five years ago. She told them time and
time again that the goose must have been rotten or
something "Okay," she sighed. "We'll steal
someone else's food then."
"Yeah!"
James replied enthusiastically. "But where?"
"Hey, the
Twerp's house is near here..." Jessie remembered the
delicious food that Ash's mother had prepared for the farewell
dinner, when he gone to the Johto League, and that they
had eaten in his place...
"Meowth! Let's
go!"
"Wait for
me!" James implored. Jessie sighed and pressed the
'emergency turbo' button on the winch. The machine started making
a noise like a tortured Beedrill and Jessie and Meowth could only
watch in amazement as James was yanked out of the fault. His
harness broke under the sudden acceleration and he was launched
into the air.
"Hey, James can
blast off wid out da Twoip's Pikachu shockin' 'im!" Meowth
commented as James soared up with a despairing wail of fear.
Jessie nodded.
"He isn't any more graceful this way," she added as
James landed by the Jeep, and a very surprised Mondo, with a loud
'thump.'
**********
Later, they were
outside of the Ketchum's house, at the hour in that Delilah
served dinner. The smell of the food was driving them crazy! Even
through her roaring appetite, Jessie noticed that the Twerp's
mother was wearing a black raincoat that made her look like a spy
or something. Weird! Shrugging it off, Jessie began to
tell James and Meowth her plan.
Delilah and Ash were
eating in silence. Delilah was still thinking of the chat that
she had with him when she heard a noise, one so faint that only
she could hear. Her eyes flashed brightly and turned green.
"What was that?"
"What was
what?" Ash asked confused.
Suddenly the window
broke and a smoke grenade detonated in the middle of the table.
"What the
hell?" Delilah snapped as visibility dropped to
zero.
"James, grab the
food!" They heard a woman's voice say.
"Team
Rocket?" Ash exclaimed, his voice touched with fear. He
caught a Pokéball. "Pidgeotto, I choose you!" The
flying-type Pokémon appeared in a flash of red light.
"Tornado Attack!" Ash commanded.
The attack dispersed
most of the smoke, revealing Jessie and Meowth, carrying two
sacks full of food and James, holding Pikachu, prisoner in a
plastic cage. After so many years of painful experience, Jessie
had learnt that action was more important that posturing.
"Arbok, tail
whip!"
The Poison-type
Pokémon's attack struck Ash on the head, throwing him against
the wall. He slumped to the ground, unconscious and bleeding from
his nose and a deep cut on his temple. "Great work,
Arbok," Jessie cried in excitement and disbelief.
"Meowth, grab his other Pokémon, quickly!" In their
excitement, all three had ignored Delilah. This was a great
mistake, and in the seconds that followed, it almost became a fatal
mistake.
Meowth ran towards
the unconscious Ash, but he didn't get even half way across the
room before an utterly inhuman voice screamed "STAY AWAY
FROM HIM!"
Jessie and James both
looked up, just in time to see a female humanoid form rendered in
blue gel-like fluid launch itself over the dinner table towards
them. What caught their attention were the creature's eyes.
They were green and slitted like an Arbok's and they glowed
from within with an unholy power that froze their minds and
bodies.
Driven by her
protective maternal instincts, combined with the powers and
training that made the name 'Omega' a feared one in Team Rocket
two decades ago, Delilah launched herself at the three intruders,
who were paralysed with terror. She grabbed the light fitting
over the table and caught Jessie and James around the throat with
her feet. She used her momentum to slam the two humans'
heads against the ceiling and then smash them into the floor. She
then somersaulted off of the light fitting, bounced off of the
far wall, and sent Meowth tumbling across the room with a flying
drop kick.
Stunned, but still
conscious, Jessie and James finally reacted to this sudden
terrifying apparition.
"Weezing, use
Smokescreen!"
"Arbok, use
Venom Dart!"
Visibility in the
room dropped down to zero again and Arbok reared up, launching a
hail of venom-laced darts from her mouth at the creature that
attacked her Trainer and her Trainer's special friends. In the
smog, all Jessie saw was a bright blue-white flash as the Venom
Darts hit a Thunder Shield defence and disintegrated. Then
something like nothing she had ever seen before darted through
the smog towards Arbok. It looked like a Raichu but it had
the wings of a Golbat and a tongue of flame, like that of a
Charmander, burned at the tip of its' lightning-bolt-shaped tail.
The hybrid Pokémon
launched a Lightning Bolt attack that sent Arbok reeling back,
then landed before the stunned Arbok and fired a Thunder-shock
attack that knocked the snake-like Poison-type unconscious.
Jessie and James
grabbed the food and made to retreat. "Weezing, help
Arbok," James shouted over his shoulder.
Weezing swept
forward, firing a Sludge attack at the monstrous hybrid Pokémon
before him. The creature didn't turn; rather it flowed
like a liquid sculpture, reversing its' position by sending its'
front flowing through its' back, and then it was facing
him. It spat a fireball that evaporated his attack and then
launched a Firestorm attack that nearly knocked him out.
Jessie, James and
Meowth, meanwhile, were halfway to the door when something
suddenly grabbed them, something like vine whips, but rendered in
blue gel-like fluid. The impossibly strong tentacles threw them
back across the room and into the rear wall.
As they watched,
Arbok and Weezing bravely charged the liquid blue female humanoid
figure standing in the center of the room, but it was futile. The
figure waggled her finger, as if in reproof, and then a Metronome
attack blew both Pokémon across the room, so badly hurt that it
would take a full day's rejuvenation to recover from their
injuries.
James helped Jessie
get up. She grabbed the case containing the stunned Pikachu. They
were about to run when the creature looked at them and opened her
mouth. The Super-sonic attack blew out all the surviving windows
in the room, shattered every glass fitting, shattered the case
containing Pikachu and blew Jessie and James against the wall,
hard enough to crack the plaster.
The figure flashed
forward with inhuman speed and wrapped a hand around both
Rockets' throats. She effortlessly hoisted them off of the ground
and slammed them against the wall hard. "You had
better pray that my son isn't badly hurt, Flatscans,"
she hissed. At that point, James suddenly recognised the face
before him. It might have green serpentine eyes and be made
entirely from blue fluid, but it was Delilah Ketchum.
As they watched, an
extra pair of arms extruded themselves from the Twerp's mother's
sides. The arms lengthened and sharpened until they were the
unmistakable, cruel hooked sabres of a Kabutops. The razor-sharp
arms reached forward until they were touching the Rockets'
chests, right over their hearts. "You see, if he is
badly hurt, then I will finally get a chance to taste a
human," Delilah announced, smiling carnivorously.
James screamed in
utter terror, flailing wildly at the monster in front of him in
an attempt to escape. "Meowth! Help us!" Jessie
screamed in utter panic.
Meowth pulled himself
to his feet and launched himself at the nightmare holding his two
friends. Delilah barely seemed to notice, but a pair of vine
whips suddenly extruded from her shoulders and caught him
mid-air.
"Bad
pussy-cat," Delilah said in a serious tone of voice, without
looking at him. She slammed Meowth's head against the ceiling,
reversed her hold on him and banged his head against the floor
until his body went limp. Then she threw him against the comatose
Arbok and Weezing before turning back to Jessie and James. The
two sabre-arms were pressing forwards. Although neither could
feel any pain, they could feel the blood running down their chest
from the shallow puncture wounds. Delilah glared at them.
"Now, where were we?" she asked gently.
Jessie saw her death
in the monster's eyes and began to scream. James was
crying; he lost control of his bladder and was close to fainting
from utter terror. Meowth was still conscious, but he was so
terrified of the creature (that he was certain was about to kill
Jessie and James) that he couldn't move or speak. He could only
lie against the unconscious forms of Arbok and Weezing, trembling
in anticipation of what that thing would do to him after
it finished off his friends.
"Uh
Mom?" Ash said groggily. Delilah's head snapped around and
saw her son trying to rise. His nosebleed had stopped.
Hearing Ash's voice
seemed to trigger a response in Delilah's head. She suddenly
remembered who she was and was horrified when she realised that
she had nearly killed the hapless pair of field agents before
her. What was I thinking? she thought in horror. Delilah
retracted her extra 'arms' and released her stranglehold on
Jessie and James, letting them fall to the floor.
She walked over to
Ash, shifting to her 'human' form as she did so. She knelt before
Ash and, much to her relief, saw that he was utterly uninjured,
even though his shirt was covered in blood. She stood again and
let her eyes return to their serpentine green form. "Run
away," she said to Jessie and James in a blood-freezing tone
of voice. "Start running now and don't ever stop;
because if you do, I will be standing at your shoulder ready to
finish what we began tonight. Now GO!"
That was the final
straw for Jessie, James and Meowth. Barely waiting long enough to
recall Arbok and Weezing, they ran into the night, screaming like
lost souls. They cared about nothing other than getting as far
away from that thing in the form of a woman as they
could.
"Mom you
can't let them go" he said, sounding a little
concussed. "They'll tell Team Rocket about you"
Delilah hugged her
child close. "Don't worry about that now," she said in
a reassuring tone of voice. She held Ash as close as she could,
determined to protect him from every threat, especially those he
had to face because of her. Held tightly to his mother's
bosom, Ash couldn't see the way her eyes narrowed dangerously,
but he could feel the icy chill in her voice as she said,
"Don't ever worry about that"
************
Later, Jessie and
James were in the hospital ward of Team Rocket's Viridian City
Base, being constantly watched by the stunned doctors. The head
doctor, Dr. MacCarron, was forced to sedate them and restrain
them in strait-jackets to stop them from hurting themselves in
their desperate attempts to keep running away from the thing that
had so terrified them, whatever that was.
Meowth was in another
ward, hooked up to a rejuvenation machine, but he was also
sedated and strapped down.
Despite a level of
sedatives that would put a Gyarados into a coma, all three were
still experiencing terrifying continual nightmares, according to
the EKG monitors and their thrashing against their restraints.
Whatever they had seen had driven three being who, previously,
had been fairly normal to the point of insanity.
Meanwhile, their
assistant, Mondo Treleaven, was in the Control Center of the
base, being watched by Butch, Cassidy and the most deadly agent
in the organisation, Domino. The Boss himself was debriefing him
by an audio/video link from his office somewhere else in the
building.
"Okay, Mondo,
what the hell happened?" Giovanni snapped.
Mondo swallowed
dryly. "Uh, well, Boss I don't know!" he
admitted nervously.
The young man heard
the incredulous murmurs among the senior agents in the darkened
briefing room. Sweating, Mondo knew that he had to give these
assembled officers a very good explanation for what
happened, if he didn't want to face the consequences. He didn't
want to get his friends in trouble... but what choice did he
have?
"I... I... I
went to the base camp at the fault to see if Jessie and James had
anything to report," Mondo told them. "Jessie and James
weren't there. I was just about to start searching when they came
running towards me from the direction of the town. They were
screaming, all three of them. I've never heard them sounding so
terrified. They jumped into the jeep; James nearly threw me
out of the driver's seat Then he started driving like a
maniac, speeding through the forest at top speed without even
bothering to turn on the headlights. All the time, Jessie and
Meowth were screaming at him to go faster, that they had
to get away from there. They kept babbling the same things over
and over again"
"What kind of
things?" Giovanni demanded.
Mondo prayed to
whatever gods watched over terrorists' sidekicks. Here goes!
he thought. "Half of what they said made no sense,
sir," Mondo said. "Meowth kept on talking about some
kind of Pokémon that wasn't a Pokémon, but was a
combination of many different kinds, making it far more deadly.
Jessie and James kept on screaming that the Twerp's mother had
turned into a monster and threatened to eat them alive,
as if she was a werewolf or something."
"'The Twerp's
mother? Who are you talking about, boy?"
"Ash Ketchum's
mother, sir. Jessie and James calls him 'Twerp...'"
"Ash Ketchum?
The current Global Pokémon League Champion?"
"Yes, sir."
Domino, Butch and
Cassidy didn't bother to hide their contemptuous smiles. Ash's
mother, that ditzy woman, a werewolf? What a joke!
They always knew that Jessie and James were losers, but that was
stretching the power of the lame excuse too far even for them!
In his office,
Giovanni frowned thoughtfully, staring out at nothing. His
response was completely unexpected. It is unlikely that even
Mondo was more surprised than the three Black Rockets were at his
softly spoken comment. "Yes I expected something like
that. Thank you Mondo, you are dismissed."
"Sir?"
Mondo asked in disbelief. Did he say that he expected
this? Mondo thought in shock.
"What part of
'get out' don't you understand, boy," Giovanni snapped in an
annoyed tone. This time Mondo executed the order immediately.
"Domino,"
Giovanni continued gently, "come to my office immediately.
Cassidy and Butch, stay in the Briefing Room until Domino comes
back. I have a new assignment for you all."
"Yes, sir!"
the three Rockets said in unison.
Giovanni turned off
the intercom. He couldn't stop thinking about the irony of the
situation: the only time in that he hoped Jessie and
James would fail, those two idiots managed to
inadvertently stumble backwards to a success!
Giovanni leaned back
in his chair and began to plan his strategy, based on these new
facts.
What do you think? Read and
Review!
To be continued...
Note: If you are wondering,
the text that Delilah was reading at the beginning of the chapter
was the first stanza of a poem written by Luis of Camoes, a
famous Portuguese poet of the time of discovery of America. Here
is the translation to the English:
"Love is fire that
burns without seeing;
It is hurt that hurts and don't feels;
It is an unhappy happiness.
It is pain that act foolish without hurting."
