Chapter
6 - First Strike
Delilah Ketchum was cleaning up
the mess that was in her dining room after her fight with those
two Team Rocket Agents. She was doing that alone, because she had
ordered Ash go to his bed after she had bound his head (and,
Delilah recalled with a smile, he obviously didn't like hearing that
one bit...). The fact that he was not bleeding didn't matter: he had
been hurt, and that was already more than enough for
her.
It was already late at night when
she finished that task, but she was not very tired. One of the
little good things in having been transformed into Omega was that
she had very little need for sleep... She went to her bedroom and
lay on the bed, but she didn't sleep immediately. There was
something that bothered her. Firstly, her own reaction: she
didn't need to reveal her power to Jessie and James, but the
moment that they hurt Ash, those two... Flatscans had
touched the most savage part of her nature... a part that only
Omega could reach...
Secondly, there was that
red-haired Team Rocket agent: Delilah had the annoying feeling
that she had known that woman... Of course, she had known of
Jessie Gibson for three years now. She and her partner, James
Morgan, had been stalking Ash virtually since he started his
Journey, but having been so close to the woman having touched
her, allowing her powers to sample the woman's DNA and
bio-electric field... Delilah got the impression that she knew
the fiery redhead, indeed that she had always known
her
Trying to forget the subject, she
began to sleep.
== == == == ==
A loud sound in her ears and
Delilah woke up inside of a Containment Chamber. What in the
hell was she doing there? Filled with fear, she broke the
glass with a single punch. The Chamber broke open and the
colourless fluid within flooded out into the corridor. She looked
at the clothing that she wore: it was her blue uniform! Looking
around, she recognised the place where she was: you don't forget
Hell when you had lived there once. She was in Team Rocket's main
R&D Laboratories.
Delilah grabbed her head in her
hands, desperately trying to understand what was happening, when
she heard a horrible, frightening scream. A scream of fear of a
voice that she would recognise anywhere: it was Ash!
She ran through the corridors of
the damned place, searching for her son.
She arrived at a window, which
showed a laboratory. There, a scientist, the same one that had
transformed Delilah into Omega, operated a control panel,
connected to another containment chamber. A 14 year-old boy
floated inside of it, his eyes filled with fear and pain.
"Ash!" she screamed,
trying to break the glass of the window.
"Began the
Reconstruction." The scientist ordered.
An electric current began to pass
through Ash's body.
"NOOOOOOOO!!!!!"
== == == == ==
Ash woke up. He heard a scream
coming from his mother's bedroom. In seconds, he was beside her.
She writhed in her bed in the grip of a nightmare.
"Mom! Mom! Wake up!"
Ash shouted, shaking his mother hard in his efforts.
Suddenly, his mother's right arm
flowed like liquid into one of the deadly claws of a Scyther.
With an inhumanly fast blur of motion she lunged forward at him.
Then, Delilah woke up and she opened her eyes.
The "blade" was stuck in
the wall... just a centimetre from the head of her son.
"Ash, I..." Delilah
gasped in horror. What have I done?
He opened and closed his mouth,
but the utter terror he felt robbed him of the power of speech.
His knees buckled and he collapsed at the base of the wall, his
eyes blank and staring.
Delilah hugged him. "Oh Ash,
please, forgive me!" she implored the terrified
boy. "God, please, please, please"
== == == == ==
Three days after that incident,
Delilah began to reinforce the security of her house. The natural
isolation of their home protected them from casual onlookers, but
not from a planned assault of the kind that Team Rocket would
use. Now, the knowledge she had acquired to break
security systems, plus a little reverse engineering, helped her
turn her home into a fortress.
Ash was outside, training his
Pokémon in defence strategies. At least, that was the reason
that he had given her. In her opinion, he was still afraid of
her, whether he wanted to admit that or not...
"Are you ready, Mr.
Mime?" She asked her Pokémon.
"Mi-mi, Mime-Mime!"
[Yes, Delie!]
She held back a laugh. Mr. Mime
had never got her name right!
Both raised a door made from
4-centimetres-thick metallic alloy. While her Pokémon held his
end of the heavy door with difficulty, Delilah didn't even break
sweat (not that she did that anymore, her body had far more
efficient methods of heat dissipation). They took the door to the
doorway that separated the garage from the kitchen. In that
moment, Mr. Mime fell from pure exhaustion. She smiled at her
little friend.
"That's ok, rest a little,
Mimey. I can take care of that door."
She lifted the door in one hand as
if she held a paper leaf and placed in the appropriate place.
Then, she morphed her left arm into an Electabuzz's arm. She
generated an electrical arc between her thumb and forefinger,
using it as a makeshift welder to attach the door to the doorway.
Now that her son knew about her "ability", she didn't
need use those stupid tools... Delilah admired her work for some
time, before moving on to install the next door.
But what she and Ash didn't know
was that they were being watched. A Rattata, with a camera
equipped with zoom lens installed on its backs, observed
everything that happened in the Ketchum's property; including
what could be viewed through the windows. The image was
transmitted to a truck four kilometres away. Officially, the
truck was from Integrated Communications, a communications
company that belonged to the Rockettech Corporation. Actually,
the vehicle was owned by Team Rocket.
Inside of the truck, a team of
three people observed everything.
"Inform the Boss that we have
visual confirmation." A blond woman ordered her
subordinates, a blond young woman and a green haired young man.
After Butch and Cassidy left to return to the driver's cabin,
Domino observed the images with a scornful smile.
"So, this was the why you
betrayed Team Rocket? To be a housewife?" she asked
in a murmur to the image of the red-haired woman's on the screen.
Domino remembered Omega, called
"The most powerful agent in Team Rocket."
She remembered when he had known
Omega, seventeen years ago. Domino was still a trainee when, with
her field team, she went to the basketball court in a Team Rocket
Base in the Orange Islands. She had found a tall red-haired
woman, wearing a strange blue uniform, shooting baskets all
alone.
Joey, a colleague of Domino, had
ordered that redhead to leave the court. After a long pause, the
blue-uniformed woman suggested that they should leave
the court because (and she said this in an incredibly
matter-of-fact tone of voice) "Pain tends to hurt a
lot." Angry, they tried to fight with her, but the woman
knocked all six of them down in seconds without even breaking a
sweat. When the terrified field agents went for their Pokéballs,
the communication screen suddenly lit up. It was the Madam Boss!
"Omega, come to my office... Now!"
"Yes, Madam." she said
in that strange, emotionless tone of voice.
The woman called Omega went in
direction of the exit, carrying a basketball. Then, just as she
reached the exit, without turn back, she threw the ball with an
idle toss across the court and into the far basket at an impossible
range. Then, Omega left, leaving a sextet of amazed young Rockets
behind her.
Later, Domino was informed that
Omega had died on an assignment, but there were rumours that
actually she had fled after murdering an Elite Rocket assigned to
her as a 'bodyguard.'
Meanwhile, Domino had risen in the
organisation until she was the best Rocket agent. But
she knew that they whispered in the corridors that she was nothing
compared to Agent Omega. That after all these years, the
Arch-traitor was still the best...
"Well, dear, now we will see who
is the best!" Domino thought.
== == == == ==
Mondo Treleaven, Jessie Gibson and
James Morgan's old assistant, looked at the ceiling of his room,
thinking of the visit that had made to his friends.
Finally, after nine days after the
incident in Pallet Town, they were in a condition to receive
visitors. Jessie still slept, although the nightmares were less
frequent now. Meanwhile, James was awake, with an expression of
extreme fatigue. Mondo got the impression that the
lavender-haired man didn't dare close his eyes at the moment, let
alone sleep.
"How are you, James?"
"Tired... Mondo, I'm sorry
about what happened the other night."
"That's all right, James,
but... James, what really happened?"
At that moment, Jessie began
tossing on her bed, murmuring: "Mommy, make it go away..."
James and Mondo changed glances.
She only mentioned her late mother when she was very, very
afraid. Without saying a word, Mondo went over to Jessie's
backpack that was leaning on the wall, took out a small rag-doll
and gave to the sleeping woman. Jessie hugged it tightly and her
sleep became more peaceful.
James looked in Mondo's eyes.
"You asked me what happened. Well, you don't want to know,
old friend." The look in James' eyes was that of a man who
had nearly lost his soul. He continued in a whisper. "You don't
want to know."
Mondo closed the eyes, ready to
sleep, when his communicator buzzed. Curious, he accepted the
call. A voice that he didn't know said something that left his
eyes wide and staring.
=============
At the side of the truck of
Integrated Communications, several Black Rockets, disguised as
the company employees, awaited the permission to begin the
mission. Meanwhile, Domino talked with the base, trying to
understand the instructions from her Boss.
"But, sir, if we catch the
boy, she..."
"She would destroy you
immediately!" Giovanni said, coldly. "There noting more
dangerous than an angry mother," he continued in a sarcastic
voice, "especially one with genes from a Kangashan spliced
into her DNA. You will keep to the original plan, do you
understand?"
"Yes, sir!"
"You have permission to
continue. And remember, Omega should be captured alive."
Giovanni cut the communication. In the silence of his office, he
observed two photos. One was his photo with Delilah, at that time
in that she was a Team Rocket Agent. The other was a photo taken
in the end of the Johto League of 2062, when Ash Ketchum had won,
and it showed Ash and Delilah hugging. The expression in the face
of the Leader of Team Rocket was completely indecipherable.
==========
An orange-haired girl pedalled for
the Route 3 in direction Pallet Town. She closed the blue denim
jacket that she wore, due to the cold. The small egg-like
Pokémon, which was in her backpack, woke up.
"Togi-togi-priii-priii!"
"Shh, Togepi. We'll stop for
a rest soon enough."
Her trip from Cerulean City to
Viridian City had been delayed more than she had expected. A
landslide had forced her to take a detour through the Route North
3, instead of the Viridian Highway. Now already it was late in
the night.
Misty closed the eyes. She didn't
want to have to camp again! Not in the woods with the cold and
the bugs! Even the thought made a finger of phobic
terror run down her spine. Then she remembered that Ash's house
was close of there, in a few used bypass of the Route 3...
Perhaps Mrs. Ketchum didn't mind if she appeared, even so late of
the night.
The Cerulean City Trainer didn't
notice the truck with the blue and gold logotype of IC, parked in
the highway.
=========
Delilah heard the sound
immediately. She reacted immediately and she rose before five
Team Rocket fighters, known as "Dan'in" appeared,
breaking through the window of her bedroom. Next time, put in
the bullet-proof glass first, Delilah told herself. At least
four men in charcoal-grey uniforms were trying to hold her down
while an identically dressed woman tried to place a mask on her
face.
"Hold her so that I can
anaesthetise her!"
Before they had the chance,
Delilah flowed under them and reformed her body
on the other side of the room, assuming her default form. The
sight of her doing that they froze the five terrorist fighters on
the spot. They didn't move again until Delilah spat out a Water
Gun attack that flushed them all out of the window like the
toilet waste they were.
Hearing the voices of more Rockets
that were coming from the ground floor, she ran for her son's
bedroom. He was just opening the door, when Delilah closed the
door with a single backhanded blow. "Mom!" Ash shouted
in protest.
"Ash, whatever you do, don't
leave your bedroom!" She implored, in a tone that
didn't invite debate.
When she saw the Rockets coming up
the stairway, she ran down the corridor, jumped, held onto the
light fixture on the ceiling, and kicked the first Rocket in the
chest. The impact flung the man backward into his partner in
crime and sent them tumbling down the stairs. Neither of them saw
what had struck them.
The younger of them looked up at
the top of the stairway and he saw an alien monster
land with a cat-like grace on the first floor landing and stare
down at him. It was completely made of clear blue gel and 'her'
snake-like eyes were shining with an elemental rage. He fumbled
his semi-automatic pistol out of its holster and fired. Then he
fired again. He kept on shooting as Omega walked down the stairs,
her pace unhurried and untroubled. A series of blue impacts
appeared on her chest, but she didn't even blink.
With a simple motion, she pulled
the weapon out of the terrified Rocket's hand and then crushed
it into a ball of crumpled steel. As the terrorist looked, blue
gel-like fluid flowed into the impacts on her chest and, in
seconds, there was no indication he had fired a single shot.
Omega looked at him and said, in a cold and inhuman tone,
"Did you really think you could stop me with this child's
toy?"
She shook her index finger in
reproof, and a Metronome attack blew the Rocket hard against the
reinforced concrete wall and into unconsciousness.
=========
Domino saw everything
that happened through the miniaturised cameras that each Rocket
carried in their safety glasses. On the wall of monitors before
her, eight of the screens now showed only static. As she watched,
there was a terrified scream over the radio and last five active
cameras blinked off in quick succession. Just before the last
screen blinked out, Domino saw something that might have
been a Golem standing over three unconscious bodies, but just
before the signal was interrupted, it flowed like a liquid into a
Scyther and lunged towards the camera.
Domino slammed her
fist against the control panel in frustration. She now had to use
her special alternative, and damn the Boss's strange warnings
about vengeful mothers.
Through the radio
link, she said, "Butch, Cassidy, proceed with option B
immediately!"
== == == == ==
"Mom! Mom, open this door!
Please!" Ash rattled the reinforced door, desperate to help
his mother. He could hear the sound of the intense fight that was
taking place in the living room. Pikachu was trying to help him,
but without much success. The two friends were so focussed on
opening the door that they didn't hear when someone opened the
window.
Ash just had enough time to see a
shadow over him, before someone grabbed him from behind and
another lunged forward and punched him several times in the
abdomen. Pikachu threw several Thunder-shocks against his
friend's attackers, but as they were using a rubber uniform, its
attacks didn't have effect.
One of the invaders raised a
weapon and fired. A web, similar the one of a Spinarak, tangled
around the electric Pokémon. Pikachu was completely immobilised.
"Pikachu!" Ash screamed.
"Shut up!" The invader
that had fired the web gun at Pikachu ordered, punching Ash in
the face, and leaving a thin trail of blood trickling from his
mouth.
The two attackers removed their
helmets.
"I loved doing
that!" Cassidy exclaimed with a vicious smile.
"Don't enjoy it too
much," Butch snapped in reply. "Remember, he is the
bait that we need." Butch got Ash by the collar of his
pyjamas and lifted him from the floor. Cassidy pouted at Butch's
reproof and picked up Pikachu.
==============
Delilah heard her son's scream.
Running to his bedroom, she saw that it was empty and the window
was broken. She ran until the window, and she saw that a couple
of Black Team Rocket agents, Butch and Cassidy. They were kidnapping
Ash!
"ASH!" She screamed,
with a terror that she never felt before (if she still had an
organ that could be called a "heart", it would be
pumping at a completely off-scale rate now). She jumped through
the window, at the same time that the wings of a Fearow flowed
out of her back.
Delilah soared through the air and
landed right in front of the two field agents, her shadow falling
over them. Her scream echoed through the cold night. "LET
HIM GO RIGHT NOW, OR I WILL..."
"What you will do,
mutant?" Butch asked, holding the barrel of his Uzi
sub-machinegun below Ash's chin. "Will you risk the life of
your dear son?" A sadistic smile appeared on his lips. But
it was a fake. The smile hid the terrible fear that he and
Cassidy felt in facing this that... monster. He didn't
get to understand how a being like that was possible...
Rage and fear fought inside of
Delilah Ketchum. She had do to something, but she could not place
Ash in danger She could not place Ash in danger...
Meanwhile, three Rocket Dan'in
fighters, the only members of the assault force who were still in
a condition to fight or that had not fled, pointed an
experimental freeze-ray cannon at her.
"Well, Mrs. Ketchum,"
Cassidy said, a little fear entering her sneering tone, "we
have a deal for you. You go back to Team Rocket and we kindly
leave your pitiful son alive. What do you say, hmm?"
Go back to Team Rocket?
Ash thought in confusion through the pain in his stomach and
head.
"Mom... Run!"
he shouted.
"Shut up!" That was when
Cassidy made the biggest mistake that she could have made: she
hit Ash.
A monstrous, strident sound that
was not from this world blasted their ears. Delilah
Ketchum had screamed in an inhuman anger and fear for
her offspring.
What happened next only became
clear after the technicians back at Team Rocket's headquarters
had edited the video footage from the various cameras into some
kind of order. There was a blur of motion and Delilah morphed
into an Onyx and slammed herself into the ground, burrowing into
the soft earth. Before anyone could even think, let alone react,
she exploded out of the ground directly underneath the two Black
Rockets, sending them and their prisoner sprawling on their
backs.
The 'Onyx' opened its' mouth and,
impossibly, used a Supersonic attack to blow the three surviving
Dan'in across the street and deep into the forest. Simultaneously
a forest of Vine Whips snatched Ash and dragged him away from
Butch and Cassidy before using a kind of Tail Whip attack to
smash the two terrorists away.
Butch and Cassidy flew up into the
air. "Looks like we're blasting off too!" they cried as
they vanished into the distance. A tiny sparkle of light shone
from some metal fitting on their uniforms and they were gone.
The 'Onyx' transformed back into
Delilah Ketchum. She hugged her son hard to her chest, feeling
her love and her care for him more deeply than she ever had
before. "I'm so sorry Ash," she murmured, holding the
boy tightly.
Not knowing what to say and
stunned by everything that happened, he said: "Thanks for
the rescue... Mom."
Delilah smiled, grateful. She
placed her son gently in the ground. Pikachu, who had finally
freed himself from the sticky web, ran over to him and jumped
into his arms. Ash found it strange that the blows that Butch and
Cassidy had inflicted on him didn't hurt any more. Delilah walked
into the living room and stared at the five unconscious Dan'in
lying around the room. Her eyes glowed a bright green and they
all vanished.
The young Pokémon Trainer's eyes
bulged out when he realised that his mother had used Teleport.
"Where are they?" he asked.
"In Viridian City's sewer
system." She looked seriously at Ash, morphing back in to
her human disguise. "That is the natural habitat
for Grimers, isn't it?"
Ash looked at his mother in
surprise and then felt the sides of his mouth twitching upwards.
Delilah desperately tried to keep her 'Omega' face on, but
failed. Within seconds, mother and son were laughing uproariously
at the appropriate destination and in relief at their narrow
escape.
Then, they heard a moan filled
with a truly painful terror from the direction of the garden
gate. The source of the moan was a 16 year-old girl... Misty.
Delilah was terrified and
concerned. Of all the people in the world, why had to be her?
the mutant woman thought in exasperation. By the expression on
the girl's face, she had seen everything. Delilah her
slowly and cautiously, as she would approach a terrified
thoroughbred Rapidash. "Misty, I know that you are afraid,
but..."
"STAY AWAY FROM ME!!!"
Misty screamed at the nightmare that her brain insisted
that was Ash's mother. She began to stagger backwards, forgetting
her bike, forgetting Togepi (who was wondering why 'Mommy' was
reacting like this to 'Grandma'). "DON'T TOUCH ME!!!,"
Misty said, waving her arms to knock Delilah's hands away from
her.
"Misty, let me
explain..." Ash tried to calm his friend, reaching out to
her. Misty's eyes focussed on Ash's hand, the hand of the monster's
son, her closest and most trusted friend. Now it was trying
to touch her maybe infect her as well with whatever alien
abomination that had mutated them Misty's terrified mind
broke under the strain of so many contradictory emotions. She
turned and ran screaming as fast as she could.
"Misty!" Ash
ran after her as fast as he could, Pikachu running to join him.
As soon as the boy and his
Pokémon were gone, Domino pulled herself out of the ditch where
she was hiding. She did not know how she had got so close without
Omega seeing her and terminating her as efficiently she had all
the others, but she thanked whatever gods or demons that watched
over her this night. Hidden behind a bush, she raised her TRX
sniper rifle, loaded with special chemical ammunition issued to
her by the Boss himself, trained the weapon on the figure
standing back-lit in the doorway of the house and fired a single
shot at such close range, she could not miss.
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To be continued...
