Chapter
10 - The Polymorphic Demon
It was a few minutes since a
jet-black figure had flown over the Cascade Gym in Cerulean City.
Although it was the darkest hour of the night, Officer Jenny
Murdoch of the Security Police began to hammer on the closed main
entrance of the gym. Everybody in Cerulean City knew how nervous
Jenny always was, but the way that she hammered on the door would
have surprised even the most cynical of the people who knew her.
She seemed ready to knock the door of its' hinges from the way
she was pounding on it!
The policewoman's eyes abruptly
shone with green light and, without any warning she kicked the
entrance door violently, smashing it inwards and nearly tearing
it from its' frame. She entered the reception area and looked
around, unhindered by the pitch darkness of the night. She saw
Lilly immediately. The second youngest Williams sister was
sleeping at the reception table, her arms resting on the table as
if she had suddenly dropped into sleep while she was doing
something else.
"Officer Jenny's"
expression did not alter one micron as she touched Lilly's neck,
feeling for a pulse. While the girl was alive, the woman's other
senses confirmed that she had been heavily sedated. Without
bothering to waken Lilly, the woman turned away. As she did so,
her figure blurred into blue gel-like fluid. Her uniform turned
into a black blouse and a knee-length black skirt. Her hair grew
longer and changed from a grey-black, almost blue colour to flame
red. Delilah Ketchum Omega immediately began
to examine the gym thoroughly for clues to what had happened to
her missing son Ash.
Delilah decided that it was like a
scene from Sleeping Beauty, her favourite fairy tale as a child.
All the staff of the Gym had dropped in their tracks as if by
magic. She paused and sniffed. She immediately identified traces
of DQ tranquillising gas in the air. Someone had decided that
they wanted these people uncommunicable for a few days. Even the
Pokémon were asleep.
If Omega had ever believed that
Misty Williams had been involved, she discarded the thought when
she found Misty's Togepi asleep on her little bed in the girl's
private rooms. In all the years that Delilah had known Misty, she
had never abandoned the little baby Pokémon for one second.
Delilah sighed and put her head in her hands, trying to think
clearly.
Delilah decided that she already
knew what had happened. Major General Kent Williams, Misty's
father, was also the commander of the United Nations Defense
Forces in the Kanto region. It was clear that he had discovered
her secret. The man obviously had no scruples when it came to
involving his family in his work. Although Delilah didn't know
the actual details, it was clear that he had kidnapped Misty and
either coerced her to trap Ash or found a double that he could
use in the same way.
"Who Who are you?"
a woman's weak voice asked. A very disoriented Daisy had
woken up.
Omega didn't give Daisy any time
to get a look at her face. Acting on pure fighting instinct,
heightened by her fear for Ash, she whirled and kicked Daisy in
the face, knocking the Cascade Gym Leader out cold.
Deciding that the Gym could offer
her no more useful information about Ash's kidnap, Omega strode
out into the street. She immediately transformed into her
'battle' form, covered with exoskeletal armour. Dragonite's wings
spread from her back and the mutant woman launched herself into
the sky. A double 'boom' echoed across Cerulean City as Omega
broke the sound barrier, heading south for the Orange Archipelago
and Tangelo Island.
=========
Delilah Ketchum, or better, Omega,
dropped below the speed of sound about thirty miles due north of
Fort Schwartzkopf, the UNDF's base, on Tangelo Island. As soon as
she came within ten miles, she could sense the radar and other
detection apparatus on the base reach out and touch her. She
briefly considered using the abilities that she had acquired from
the Magnemite evolutionary chain to mask her approach, but
decided against it. Let them know I am coming, Omega
thought to herself with a dangerous smirk. Fear at my mode of
arrival can only serve my purposes.
Omega dropped vertically out of
the sky into the middle of the parade square of the base. UNDF
troopers scattered in every direction as they saw the creature
with chitinous black armour and graceful wings land in the middle
of their base. She looked around at the ill disciplined... flatscans
as they ran around in confusion. She waited until someone
restored some order to the area and the completely futile
attempts to either injure or kill her with positively stone-aged
projectile weapons ended. Finally, an armed and armoured officer
wearing the insignia of a Lieutenant in the UNDF edged towards
her, pointing his Beretta P92 service pistol at her head. Six
soldiers, all pointing their Eradicator rifles at the strange
invader backed up the terrified officer.
Omega absorbed her wings back into
her body. The graceful flow of her liquid-based body as she
absorbed the now-unnecessary wings made the 'brave' soldiers jump
back in terror. The part of the mutant woman that was Delilah
Ketchum had to smile at the results she was achieving without
even trying. Omega drew in a breath and spoke in a voice that
made glass rattle in their windowpanes. "I am Omega!"
she boomed. "I am here for Ash Ketchum! Take me to him now!"
The young lieutenant thought
furiously for a few seconds, but couldn't find anything to say
other than: "This way uh Ma'am"
Within minutes, the mutant woman
was taken to one of the base's administration blocks. Inside an
office, there was a bald-headed UNDF Ground Forces officer: Major
Gerald Nance according to his nametag. Nance stood and looked at
Omega uncertainly, taking in the biological armour and the deadly
claws on the end of her hands. "I am glad to see that you
decided to be reasonable, Agent Omega." he said.
Omega declined even to acknowledge
the man's visible sense of triumph. "Where is Ash
Ketchum?" she asked in a bored tone of voice.
"He is safe," Nance
said. He watched as the two UNDF soldiers who had escorted Omega
to his office snapped handcuffs to her wrists.
"Unlikely," Omega
replied. She looked around the office. It was obvious that this
was not Nance's office. There were some pictures of another
officer and companions decorating the walls and certificates of
merit, all for someone else, hung over the desk. "Major, I
assure you that you have no conception of the threat you
are facing. I strongly advise you to surrender my son and his
companion to me. If you do not do this within thirty seconds, I
will destroy your base piece-by-piece."
Nance sneered slightly as the two
troopers levelled their rifles at Omega's head. He pulled out a
walkie-talkie and pressed a button on it. Six more troops ran in
and the room became positively filled with armour and firepower.
"Now," he said. "Tell me, you freak. Do you expect
me to believe that you can escape your bindings, beat eight of my
best troops and escape this office to go on a rampage in just thirty
seconds?"
She looked at Nance levelly.
"No," she replied. "It is only fifteen seconds
now."
Nance began to sweat and Omega
noted that his legs seemed to have lost some of their strength.
"I I assure you that is not in your best
interests," Nance said, grinning humourlessly. "If you
want to see your son again"
Omega shook her head. "Major,
you are in no position to threaten me," she said.
"I, on the other hand, am definitely in a position to
threaten you. However, the time for such things is over.
Your time is up. You lose." There was a flash of
blue-white light and Omega teleported out of the office.
"What the Get her!"
Nance shouted. At that moment, the entire office seemed to
disintegrate around Nance and his eight soldiers. As the nine
UNDF personnel looked on in utter disbelief, Omega lifted the
entire administration block into the air and launched it across
the base as if it were a bit of balled-up wastepaper. The block
smashed into a garage building and both buildings collapsed like
a stack of card. "My God this can't be happening"
Nance blurted.
Omega waited until the last of the
Motor Pool staff had fled the garage before pointing her left arm
at it and discharging a Hyper Beam attack into the building. The
fuel tanks of several dozen vehicles exploded simultaneously,
sending a massive mushroom-shaped fireball up into the sky above
the base. Delilah re-created her wings and launched herself into
the air.
"Big Dog to Hounds,"
Nance shouted into his walkie-talkie. "The Fox is loose! I
say again: The Fox is loose!"
Immediately, every doorway and
every window sprouted the muzzles of guns. The doors of several
hanger buildings swung open and HMMVR vehicles with TOW missile
racks and Okerleon 20mm cannon raced out into the open. Several
RAH-66 Comanche attack helicopters rose out of cover, their
Hellfire and Stinger missiles seeking a target. It was a
well-planned ambush. Omega decided that it would be good to have...
a workout...
She dropped back to the ground and
used an Earthquake attack; one thousands of times more powerful
than that available to even the largest rock-type. The base's
buildings began to rock and the ground vehicles racing to form a
circle of guns around Omega started swerving as their drivers
fought for control.
Omega turned slightly and
unleashed a Thunder-Shock attack that engulfed the nearest
building. She heard the screams as the electric charge tore into
every soldier hiding within. Several guns dropped out of windows
and doorways. The first gunfire began to reach out towards Omega.
She wasn't really in danger from the solid projectiles, but it
was likely that the fools would injure each other in the
crossfire. There was still enough of Delilah Ketchum in her to
want to avoid that. She swivelled on one foot and Used Metronome.
The Earth-energy force field caught every bullet and sent them
bouncing around randomly. The flying energy then smashed every
window and cracked several walls.
A TOW anti-tank missile shot
towards Omega, who didn't even blink. She jumped over the
sub-sonic weapon as it raced in and grabbed the thin
control/guidance cables that attached it to the launcher on the
back of a HMMVR. Omega looped the cables around her hand and
yanked once, ripping the launcher off of the back of its' carrier
vehicle. Using the launcher as an ad-hoc flail, she began to spin
it around her head and smash it into the windshields of the
attacking vehicles. Several vehicles crashed and began to burn.
Twenty-millimetre HE bullets began
to strike Omega in the back. She softened her body and let the
bullets penetrate right through her. She turned and jumped onto
the bonnet of the HMMVR jeep behind her and bent the twin barrels
of the AAA gun double. She then ripped open the top of the
vehicle and pulled out the two troopers within, tossing them
aside. Taking the wheel, she steered the jeep right into another
and jumped clear as the two armoured vehicles reduced each other
to scrap.
Tiring of the ground battle, Omega
rose gracefully into the air. The four Comanches raced forward,
their cannon turrets spitting bullets. The lead Comanche fired
two Stinger AAMs at the flying mutant. Omega briefly considered
dodging the missiles, but decided that she could use them more
profitably. Moving slowly, so as not to avoid the gaze of their
heat-seeking sensors, she looped over the charging helicopters
and paused briefly behind them before teleporting away. The
Stingers bore in blindly towards the only heat source they could
still detect, the rear two helicopters. All though the missiles
could not destroy the two helicopters, it did seriously damage
them and force them to land.
"The bitch got Three and
Four," the lead Comanche pilot snarled to his wingman.
"Where the hell has she gone?"
That question was answered
dramatically when a Scyther's claw suddenly punched through the
floor of the cockpit. Omega cut off the front of the
hundred-million-dollar aircraft as if it were a can of soup she
was opening to make Ash a dinner. She grabbed the terrified pilot
and threw him to the ground. She then turned and threw it into
the single survivor. There was a massive explosion and both
helicopters were destroyed.
On the ground, the surviving
HMMVRs equipped with Okerleon guns had lined up and were trying
to shoot Omega down. The mutant woman turned slightly and
unleashed a Supersonic attack that blew every vehicle on the side
and exploded the eardrums of every unfortunate trooper in the
attack's cone of effect. The buildings in the cone of effect
collapsed, already weakened by her earlier Earthquake attack.
Delilah's super-enhanced hearing heard several soldiers scream as
the buildings collapsed around them.
Tiring of the prolonged battle,
Omega drew in on her reserves of power and unleashed the most
powerful Thunder attack ever recorded. Every trooper outside of a
building was electrocuted unconscious and every vehicle in the
base had its' ignition and electrical system fused solid.
A few guns still fired from the
backs of some HMMVRs. Delilah dropped down and used her strength
to smash those weapons. A few soldiers tried to tackle her, but a
sudden hail of razor leaves and a judicious use of Terror sent
them fleeing for their lives.
Several rifles fired from a window
near Omega. She turned towards the attack and raised an arm. She
fired off a single hyper-beam that demolished the building,
entombing those foolish enough to dare to fight her.
Realising that more soldiers must be hidden in the buildings, and
that Ash might possibly be inside one too, Delilah decided that
she must use less... dramatic methods.
Strengthening her exoskeleton and
honing the claws on all four of her arms to razor sharpness, she
ducked into the nearest standing barracks block... and began
to hunt.
The first victims were a pair of
infantrymen who ducked out of a side office to see what the hell
was going on. Omega didn't even pause. She lashed out with Poison
Dart and sent them both into unconsciousness. She looked into a
nearby door and saw a soldier diving for cover. She blew him
against the filing cabinets with an almost-dismissive Water Gun
attack and moved on. Inside the second office, from which the
first two soldiers had emerged, an officer was just getting into
cover behind his desk. He got a Poison Dart in the back and fell
unconscious.
At the end of the corridor, a
single soldier was firing his rifle at Omega as she marched
towards him. Seeing that the .22"-calibre bullets from his
rifle were having no effect, he dived into cover. Omega tracked
his likely arc of motion and fired a Hyper Beam at the
appropriate bit of wall. The blast smashed through the wall and
blew the soldier against the far wall with a crunch of shattering
ribs.
==========
"Sir, she's gone into the
Barracks blocks," a terrified voice reported.
Nance looked around at the ruins
of his carefully planned ambush and seemed a bit crestfallen. It
had taken that freak just two-and-a-half minutes to
reduce thirty HMMVR jeeps and four attack helicopters to about a
hundred dollars of scrap metal. About two hundred soldiers were
either trapped under fallen buildings, unconscious from some kind
of assault or dead. He raised his walkie-talkie.
"Issue heavy weapons,"
he commanded. "Grenade launchers, heavy rockets, anything!
Just bring that bitch down!"
===========
Within the main utility room of
the Barracks section of the base, Omega calmly ripped a
25,000-volt cable out of its' mounting as 12-guage shotgun and
.22"-calibre rifle bullets slammed uselessly through her
liquid body. Without changing expression, she stuck the cable
into the main fuse-box and all the lights in the barracks
quadrant exploded.
=========
"Holy shit," Nance's
number two remarked as he pulled an M-79 grenade launcher from
the main armoury. "What is that thing,
Major?"
"She's a terrorist,
Captain," Nance replied. "That's all you need to know.
Now let's get moving."
=========
Omega was now prowling through the
darkened buildings, systematically pacifying every room in on the
base one-by-one. She would kick the door down and then use either
electric- or psychic-type attacks to neutralise the soldiers
within. If the door was locked, she would blow it off its' hinges
with a single well-placed Mega-Punch attack. Where the enemy was
close enough, a Slash attack or a Venom Claw attack sufficed.
She reached what looked like an
office area with several cubicles and a lot of open space. It was
almost painfully predictable when every cubicle and doorway
sprouted a soldier who began firing at her. At last, they
begin to learn, Omega thought in grudging admiration. They
were now all using High Explosive ammunition and that had raised
the effect of their bullets from 'inconsequential' to
'inconvenient.' Omega extended her arms and launched a
Thunder-shock that rendered all but one unconscious. He stood up
again and began to fire his shotgun at her. She staggered from
the power of the impact. Sensing a medal-winning victory, the
soldier racked the reload slide on his shotgun and fired again.
The shot went wide, smashing a window next to where Omega was
standing. She simply looked at the man. Before he could reload
again, a Kinesis attack lifted him from his feet and threw him
against the back wall with bone-crushing force.
Omega passed through a burning
part of the building, stepping over several unconscious or
semi-conscious soldiers. Those who could were groaning in pain,
but Omega had no time for them. She was systematically scanning
the buildings for any sign of Ash and Misty.
As she walked down a corridor, a
soldier stepped out of a doorway and began to fire his Eradicator
rifle at her. Omega didn't even blink. She simply knocked him
down with Poison Dart. Suddenly something lower-velocity struck
her in the back. There was a massive explosion and Omega seemed
to disappear.
Major Nance's second-in-command
stepped out of a doorway and casually reloaded his M-79. Had he
destroyed the enemy? In the darkened corridors, the smoke from
the detonation of the 40mm grenade made it impossible to see
anything. Suddenly, something slashed through the air, something
that looked like a sword, which cut the M-79 in half. The smoke
cleared and the Captain saw Omega close-up for the first time,
her eyes burning with a green light as her right hand changed
from a Scizor's claw back to a clawed humanoid hand.
"Goodbye," Omega said
and used Mega-Punch to dispatch the young man into
unconsciousness. Another soldier jumped out carrying a MINIMI
machinegun and began to fire. Delilah fired a Hyper Beam from her
left hand and a Thunderbolt from her left hand and launched the
soldier down the length of the corridor.
Omega paused and listened
carefully, filtering through the sounds her genetically enhanced
hearing could detect. There was the crackle of fast-spreading
fires, the blare of alarms in distant parts of the base and the
pain-filled groans of still-conscious UNDF soldiers. Apart from
that, there was no other sound No what was
that?
==========
An Onyx exploded from the centre
of the parade ground and morphed mid-air into Omega's battle
shape. As she rose into the air on Dragonite's wings, Delilah saw
four massive machines lumber into the square on triple-jointed
legs. The machines had massive missile batteries and huge gun
emplacements filled their 'arms.'
Battlemechs? Delilah
thought in surprise, recognising the machines immediately. I
thought they were just things made up for that computer game Ash
loves so much! Well, they won't last very long.
Omega landed in the very centre of the square and watched as the
four Mechs, she recognised them as 'Persuader' heavy assault
Mechs, lumber to a halt, one ahead, one behind and one to each
side. "Let's have your best, gentlemen," Omega called
out loudly.
"Agent Omega,"
boomed an amplified voice from the Persuader on her left. "If
you do not surrender immediately, we are authorised to use
whatever force necessary to restrain you. This includes lethal
force."
The mutant woman raised her
eyebrows underneath her head armour, amused by the Mech
Commander's incredible arrogance. What have those other
soldiers been using then, she asked herself, feather
dusters? "Be my guest," she replied aloud, bracing
herself for the attack that she knew was coming.
Simultaneously, twelve 60MW Clan
Pulse Lasers, four Lightning Guns and four Heavy Flamers fired.
Omega disappeared in a massive fireball, which mounted up even
further as nearly 100 Slammer anti-tank missiles shot out of the
Persuaders' missile launchers and into the conflagration.
For a long moment, there was
silence. Suddenly, a blazing figure emerged from the pyre in the
centre of the parade ground. It quickly resolved itself into the
figure of Omega, who shot up to the lead Persuader. Her hands
morphed into a Kingler's claws and she used Crab Hammer to smash
open the armoured canopy. She then reached in, pulled the pilot
out of his chair, and threw him to the ground.
"Fire!" ordered
a Mech pilot. The Persuaders' Laser Cannon fired again, followed
a second later by the Lightning Guns. However, Omega assembled an
Aurora Shield, which deflected the energy-based attacks easily.
She dropped agilely to the ground, grabbed the pilot-less Mech by
one foot and lifted it into the air as if it were a child's toy.
She threw the Battlemech into the one on the opposite side of the
parade ground, knocking both down and disabling her target. Then,
she rose into the air on Scyther's wings.
Omega hovered in between the two
surviving Mechs and looked right into the eyes of one of the
pilots. She used Terror to force the pilot to do something he
would normally never do and fire when one of his colleagues was
in the line of fire. The hail of energy, laser and missile
strikes made the other Persuader shudder. Omega saw the
blue-white electricity crackling across its' body shell and
launched herself as high and as fast as she could. Both surviving
pilots ejected before the damaged Mech's miniaturised nuclear
power core exploded, destroying both machines.
Omega hovered over the burning
wreckage and laughed at the ease of her victory. She drew on her
reserves of power again, intending to finish the battle now.
A massive Ultimate Metronome attack smashed the roof from every
building on the base and collapsed the more fragile buildings in
on themselves. All hint of resistance had ceased and an eerie
silence descended on the ruins of Fort Schwartzkopf.
Delilah, a little proud and more
than a little amazed by the damage she had just caused, scanned
with her full range of senses and decided that Ash truly was not
here.
However, there was one familiar
scent here. Major Nance was in that HMMVR racing away from the
smouldering ruins.
=========
Nance was terrified. He was no
coward, but the training he received at West Point and Sandhurst
didn't prepare him for fighting a creature that wasn't even human
but was instead some kind of living weapon!
Suddenly, the jeep lurched to a
halt. "Damn it, man, have you fallen asleep or
something?" Nance asked his driver. Both men listened for a
moment to the howl of the vehicle's diesel engines for a moment
before they both came to the same realisation. They looked in the
rear view mirror and saw Omega casually holding the HMMVR's rear
bumper, holding the armoured jeep immobile without any visible
effort. The driver grabbed his Uzi sub-machinegun and jumped out
of his door. Omega was standing there, smiling warmly. There was
a flash of light and a razor-sharp Scyther's claw slashed through
cloth, Kevlar and flesh with equal ease, nearly cutting the man
in half.
Nance ran as fast as he could,
when suddenly a net dropped over him. The man tried to struggle,
but the net was made of incredibly strong material and seemed to
be covered with some kind of adhesive. The more that he
struggled, the more that he became hopelessly ensnared.
Suddenly two feet dropped into his
field of vision. Two feet enclosed in insect-like exoskeletal
armour and tipped with claws. Nance looked up into Omega's
glowing green eyes and swallowed a scream of terror.
"Now," Omega said in a quiet and reasonable tone of
voice. "Where is my son?"
"I'll never talk!" Nance
shouted.
Omega rolled her eyes and grabbed
the man, dragging him off the ground. She extruded an arm based
on that of a Sandslash and curved the vicious venom-laced claws
across his fleshy red face. "Now, now, darling," she
laughed. "Let's not be too hasty, hmm? I still haven't
decided what revenge I'll take on you for your part in this. Tell
me, what do you think I should do? A tooth for a tooth?"
Omega pulled up the man's upper lip and ran her claw across his
upper front teeth. "Or maybe an eye for an eye?" Omega
traced around the edge of the man's right eyeball, making him
whimper in terror.
She liberally used Terror and
Confusion to increase the man's disorientation. When that didn't
work, she began to tighten her grip on his arms until it reached
bone-crushing force. "He isn't here!" Nance screamed.
"I don't know where we are keeping him! This was just a trap
to capture you. The General knew that you would fight
and didn't want the prisoners anywhere near you!"
Omega glared at the man. She
genuinely considered killing him for a second before using
Hypnosis to knock him out.
She turned away from the
unconscious major and started to think hard. I'm a stupid
fool! Delilah thought to herself. They would never have
let Ash be so easy to find! What I do now?
The inner voice of Omega answered:
They never will give your son back. He is their prize. The
only way that you could make them willingly tell you where they
have hidden him is when they are on their knees before you
Begging for mercy!
Delilah silently considered that.
She looked towards the next island in the Orange Archipelago:
Mandarin Island. Her eyes narrowed. "Let's do it!" she
said firmly. Then Omega, the demon of vengeance and destruction,
launched herself towards her next target...
============
Brigadier General Alex McNamara,
of the Mandarin Island UNDF Base, didn't know what to do. First,
he had received orders to ignore any communications or strange
happenings coming from Tangelo Island base and transfer his
treasured Battlemechs there. Then, through his binoculars, he saw
that something was happening there and definitely was not
something good.
McNamara lowered his binoculars
and decided to contact the regional headquarters on Pumello
Island and let them know what was happening. At that moment, his
second-in-command ran into the Command Center.
"General, something is
coming! It is only the size of a person, but it is travelling at
over 2,000 miles an hour. What...?"
The captain could not finish his
sentence. A Supersonic Attack had exploded every window, skylight
and monitor screen in the base. While he tried to recover and to
stop the flow of blood from his ears, Alex McNamara saw an image
that would haunt his nightmares for the rest of his life. A
demon had just flown into the control room! The creature
seemed to be a woman, protected by a kind of black armour, with
the wings of a Scyther.
Before he could think in
something, the creature stretched out an arm in his direction and
struck him down with a Thunder Shock, making him fall
unconscious...
==========
Somewhere, a woman slept, unaware
of the destruction that was happening in the Orange Archipelago.
The insistent ringing of her telephone awakened her. "Who is
it?" she asked in a tired, disoriented tone of voice. The
voice she heard and the face that appeared on the monitor made
her wake up far faster than she could ever have thought possible.
"Hello, Madeleine." A
man in the shadows greeted her, as he stroked his elegant
Persian's head. The tone of his voice would seem friendly to
most, but the woman knew the darkness that hid under that
pleasant exterior. She knew that all too well.
"Giovanni? Why are
you telephoning me?"
"Because you were not
completely honest with us about the last project you undertook
for Team Rocket."
"What do you mean?"
"You assured my mother, 15
years ago, that Omega would not survive if she escaped from us.
You told us that she would die, probably within a month, if she
did not receive your special serum. Assuming that you really
believed that was true, how do you explain this?"
The image switched to a satellite video view. A being protected
by an organic-looking black armour used a Kinesis Attack to throw
a Battlemech on a group of assault jeeps. The caption on the
image told the watcher that this was a live image of what was
happening at the UNDF base on Trovita Island. As the woman
watched, the being transformed its' body into a facsimile of a
Tauros and began to knock armoured vehicles over with a series of
furious charges.
A chill ran down the woman's
spine. She couldn't believe what she was seeing!
"This is impossible! She can't be alive!"
"But she is, as our
colleagues of the UNDF would be only too glad to testify."
Giovanni's voice was icily smooth now. He made no effort to hide
the scorn he felt for the petty sadist who he was addressing, the
woman who had once been Team Rocket's foremost research
geneticist. "I will be awaiting your return to Black Island
within the next 5 hours."
"But... I am not part of Team
Rocket anymore!"
Giovanni laughed. "My dear
Madeleine, you are Team Rocket body and soul. You proved that
when you so ably managed the Greek Alphabet Program on my
mother's behalf, mutilating countless innocents to create the
ultimate weapon. Of course if you prefer not to return to your
lab... the entire Kanto Region will know about your past as Team
Rocket's answer to Dr. Frankenstein."
She swallowed dryly before that
threat. It would ruin her entire career! Worse, she would spend
the rest of her life in prison!
The terrorist leader didn't give
the woman time to formulate an answer. "Remember: you have
just five hours." There was a long pause before Giovanni
continued, in a more thoughtful tone of voice. "I think that
you should be proud of your creation my dear Madeleine. My
intelligence analysts tell me that it will only take Omega, if
she stays at this pace, two weeks to eradicate the UNDF
completely. After that, I have no doubt she will start attacking
civilian targets, like Viridian City or Goldenrod City. Since she
can't be stopped, after all you created her to be that way, you
can go to your grave knowing that you are personally and solely
responsible for the extinction of the human race."
Giovanni hung up.
In the silence of her bedroom, the
surprise and consternation of Professor Madeleine Ivy became a
mortal mixture of hate and fear for the being that she had seen
on the screen. She remembered each punishment that she had
suffered after its had so impossibly escaped, and she felt mortal
terror as she found herself thinking of the fury that must exist
inside her finest and most powerful creation Omega.
===========
Major General Mercedes Sakura
Heisenberg, the commander of Pumello Island's UNDF base and the
commander for the Orange Archipelago, felt as if she were living
inside a nightmare. For the two hours, she had listened as eleven
UNDF facilities issued a mayday call, reporting that some kind
of... monster or demon was attacking them. One
by one, those bases had fallen silent and had not responded to
any communication since. Now her own base was being
attacked.
"General, Pumello City has
been completely evacuated!"
The blond woman watched Omega
transform into a Stellix and destroy several hangars with one
furious charge. She turned back to her executive officer.
"Evacuate the base! I am not going put my troops up against
that thing! Not unless the General Secretary authorises
the use of nuclear weapons!" She knew that her troops stood
no chance against whatever it was using only
conventional projectile and laser weapons.
At that moment, a squadron of
F-45C Fury attack fighters dived towards Omega and fired off a
hail of Hammer air-to-surface missiles. Omega didn't seem to
react, but an Aurora Shield materialised and the missiles
detonated uselessly against it. Omega turned to face the aircraft
and teleported away.
The squadron leader was stunned by
the sudden disappearance of his target. Then a wall of psychic
energy flashed over all twelve aircraft. Suddenly knowing
what was going to happen, the pilots ejected just as their
aircraft exploded into a spray of fire and shrapnel.
Omega laughed as she watched the
result of her Future Vision attack. She hovered in mid-air with
no visible means of support and reached out with her enhanced
senses. She noticed that there was a full-scale evacuation
underway, clearing the base of troops. "Could it be that
they have finally noticed what they are
facing?" she asked herself with a vicious smile.
Then she saw a blond woman in a
UNDF General uniform jump into a jeep and drive off.
A few minutes later, General
Heisenberg's jeep was travelling through the eerily deserted
Pumello City. Just as it passed in front of the Orange League's
Hall of Fame, it suddenly stopped and it rose into the air.
Heisenberg looked into the rear view mirror, and saw Omega, who
was raising the car with the powers of a Magneton. Then, with a
dismissive gesture, Omega threw the vehicle inside of the Orange
League building.
Mercedes Heisenberg crawled out of
her written-off car, lip and nose bleeding. She touched her side
and groaned, feeling the pain of a few broken ribs.
"Leaving so early?" A
voice of a woman, completely inhuman, asked. "We haven't
even had the chance to get to know each other!" There was an
edge of insanity and sadism in that voice. It paralysed
Heisenberg with utter terror for a long moment.
Finally, the General looked back.
Omega, resplendent in her shining black armour, was standing in
the door in a strangely seductive pose. The officer grabbed her
service pistol and shot several times at the mutant woman, who
walked in her direction seemingly not even inconvenienced by the
shots. Then Omega transformed her right arm in the blade of a
Scyther and cut the weapon in two. Before the woman could recover
of the fright, Omega grabbed her in her vine whips and threw her
hard against the wall.
The whole world turned into a
flash of pain. When Heisenberg could see again, she was tangled
up in a Spinarak's Web Net. Omega smiled evilly and walked over,
lengthening and honing the fingers of her right hand until they
were 30cm-long razor-sharp blades. "You seem like an
intelligent woman," Omega said in a curiously friendly tone
of voice. "Maybe you can help me. I like to consider myself
a student of the sciences, biology especially, and I was
wondering something: How much pain can a human woman
take before she either dies or goes completely insane? Maybe we
can answer this question together?" Omega began to laugh
coldly and Heisenberg began to scream and thrash against her
restraints, understanding very clearly what the monster
in front of her was planning to do.
Omega laughed scornfully and took
a few seconds to re-enforce the adhesive web covering the
soldier's body. Then she reached forward and, with a surgeon's
precision and care, she cut an inch-square patch of skin off the
woman's cheek, enjoying the agonised shrieks that echoed through
the room. Then she carefully cut away Heisenberg's uniform and
began to slice slowly into the skin on her right shoulder, gently
easing it off her victim's flesh. Omega was curious to see if she
could get the woman's skin off in one piece without killing her
in the process
Then, something got Omega's
attention. She was looking at the wall panel behind Heisenberg.
It was one of the concrete panels erected for the winners of the
Orange League Challenge. Heisenberg was too afraid to move but,
out of the corner of her eye, she saw that the fin-print of a
Lapras and the hoof-print of a Tauros were impressed in the
concrete slab.
Omega stepped away from her victim
and took a photograph down from the wall. She looked at it, her
expression utterly unreadable. Then, she ran a finger gently over
the photograph and, with infinite care, returned it to its' place
on the wall.
Omega walked over to Mercedes, her
head lowered and her expression dominated by gut-wrenching shame.
Since terror had completely paralysed the woman, Omega lashed out
with a forceful punch. The pain brought the soldier back to
reality and Omega spoke in a sibilant tone of voice that matched
the snake-like eyes that stared down at Mercedes through a
burning green light. "Tell your superiors that they have twenty-four
hours to release my son, Ash Ketchum. After that, I will
begin to kill systematically every person on the face of the
planet! ONE BY ONE!" There was a flash of a Teleport
and Omega was gone. In the darkened building, Mercedes Heisenberg
realised that she was going to live for now and began
to laugh and cry hysterically.
Three hours later, Mercedes
Heisenberg was found in the slowly disintegrating web by an
Emergency Rescue Force team. They were surprised that the woman's
first priority was to look at a photograph on the wall behind
her. It was a photograph of 2061's Orange League Challenge
winner, Ash Ketchum.
===========
Delilah teleported herself to an
isolated house close to Goldenrod City in Johto. She had acquired
this hideaway a week after Ash had discovered her true nature.
She hadn't known at the time if she needed the refuge. However,
in retrospect, she was right to be careful. Right now, she needed
a place to think.
The mutant woman paced around the
empty and unfurnished house. After 'visiting' twelve UN Defence
Forces bases, Delilah was convinced that Ash and Misty's
kidnappings were not an official mission undertaken by the UNDF.
If it was, they would have been prepared for some attack from her
Instead, her powers and her attack took them completely by
surprise.
Her black-slitted green eyes shone
weakly, while she thought. Delilah concentrated, using all her
experience as a Team Rocket terrorist to understand what was
going on.
Perhaps the kidnapping was a
rogue operation, she thought. It would not be the first
time...
Yes. It made sense: Williams had
decided that she would be his secret weapon and his
alone. He had kept what he knew about her real identity secret
from his colleagues and superiors and had attempted to capture
her. The rest of the UNDF command structure was probably entirely
in the dark.
If it was a rogue operation,
Delilah's only chance of finding Ash was to go directly to the
brain behind it: General Kent L. Williams.
===========
Meanwhile, somebody was watching
as Team Rocket agent Domino Pfaster used a computer terminal in
the organisation's base near Viridian City. After she shut down
the terminal, the observer ran through the ventilation system to
a room two levels below. There, Jessie, James and Mondo awaited
his return.
The observer left the pipe and
posed in triumph. "Meowth! I got her password!" Meowth
felt smug, and who could blame him!
"What is it?" Jessie
demanded. Their attempts of finding something about Project Omega
or about Agent Darkholme had not had success: the information was
top-secret. Only the highest levels of the organisation had
access to that information... people like Domino.
"It is
"iromotnemem," Mewoth replied.
"What?" Jessie asked in
annoyance. The last thing she needed right now was for the cat to
go completely mad on her.
"I-R-O-M-O-T-N-E-M-E-M."
the cat-like Pokémon spelled out.
"It is 'Memento Mori'
backwards." James commented, surprising his friends.
"It's a Latin expression. It means 'Remember that you will
die.'"
"Thank you for that useless
bit of information, James!" the redhead commented
sarcastically. "Now, it is your turn, Mondo!"
Jessie and James's assistant
reluctantly tried to invade Team Rocket's computer system again.
==========
The day after Omega's rampage, in
a high-security building in downtown Viridian City, four people
in the uniforms of UNDF Generals spoke directly to Alexandra
Faraday, the General Secretary of the United Nations, by means of
a satellite connection. "What in the hell is
happening?" the woman demanded of a tall black-haired man
sitting at the head of the table.
"Ms. General Secretary... we
don't know," confessed Major General Kent Lanning Williams,
commander of Vermilion City Base and the regional commander for
the Kanto Region. "The only thing that we are sure
is that the being that destroyed the facilities in Orange Area,
seemingly, has the powers of several types of Pokémon and that
it is searching for something."
"But what is it that this... monster
wants?"
Williams looked at Mercedes
Heisenberg, taking in the pro-skin dressing on her face and the
sterile dressing covering her savaged right arm. When she had
been brought to his base, Heisenberg had been nearly insane with
fear and Williams still didn't know if he could trust what the
woman continued to insist happened in the Orange League's Hall of
Fame. "We still are not sure, Mrs. Secretary," Williams
replied at last.
The 57 year-old woman in the video
sighed. "Very well, General. What precautions are you
taking?"
An oriental man, General Kenshin
Tetsuo Mitsuragi, Willaims counterpart for Johto, replied.
"We have placed all our the radars and detection systems on
Defcon-1 Alert, as well as all our surviving bases. We also
ordered regular patrols in the cities and towns in the region in
case this creature were to attack a population centre or
strategic target."
"Ms. General Secretary, I
believe that would be prudent if we declared a State of Emergency
and Martial Law in the Kanto Region." Williams looked
furiously at the man that had just spoken. He was Major General
Jeffrey Archer Straker, the regional commander of Sector Athena,
the UNDF's specialised anti-terrorist arm. Heisenberg and
Mitsuragi exchanged glances: they knew that the two men didn't
agree on anything from their favourite soccer team to
the UN Declaration of Human Rights!
The General Secretary's face
indicated that she didn't like the suggestion. "General
Straker, you know that a State of Emergency can only be declared
in case of a direct attack against the civilian population!"
she sighed. "Thank God that this hasn't happened yet. Do
what is necessary to stop that monster," Faraday continued,
"but I will not tolerate any infringement of the freedoms
guaranteed by the Declaration of Rights at this time. Is that
clear?" The four generals nodded. "I want to hear it
from your lips, Jeff," she continued firmly.
Straker rolled his eyes.
"Yes, Ms. General Secretary. Athena Sector will comply with
your orders."
After the meeting, General
Williams walked out to his staff car, where his driver, Captain
Katherine Pryde of the UNDF Space Defense Forces, waited.
Normally, being assigned a driver would annoy Williams. He had
driven his HMMVR through minefields and massive artillery
bombardments, so he didn't need any help on a paved road.
However, he was grateful for the courtesy today. He needed the
time to think. "Morning, Kitty," he said, using his
personal nickname for the short brunette woman. "Viridian
City Airport, please."
Captain Pryde nodded, her head
lowered. She closed the door behind Williams, got into the
driver's seat and started the engine.
Kent Williams rubbed the bridge of
his nose. He didn't understand any of this! First, a
being that some described as a black-armoured woman and others
described as a humanoid Pokémon destroyed several UNDF
facilities in the Orange Archipelago. When it/she reached
Pumello, it/she went about capturing and menacing Mercedes,
giving every indication that it/she (he had to decide how to
think of this enemy) was going to torture her to death. Then it
stopped, demanded that the UNDF release her son to her and then
disappeared!
Now the most frightening fact:
Everything indicated that being thought that Ash Ketchum, the
Champion of this year's Global League, was her son!
Two concerns occupied Kent
Williams's mind. First: to supply protection for young Mr.
Ketchum and his mother, Delilah he remembered her name was. She
had quite caught his eye at Violet's wedding. It was obvious that
that being would go after them eventually. Second: ask his
youngest daughter, Misty, to keep far away from Ash for the time
being, if only for her own protection. From several comments
Daisy and Lilly had made over the last couple of weeks, it seemed
that Misty had started a relationship with the boy.
Of course, she won't listen to
me, Williams thought with a sigh. What reason has she
for doing so? He was very aware of how much his youngest
daughter hated him, and he couldn't blame her for that. He had
failed her as utterly as he had failed his beloved late wife.
Suddenly, Williams emerged from
his introspection. The staff car was parked in some kind of
underground car park. There was no sign of Captain Pryde.
Immediately, Williams cursed himself as a naïve fool. Kitty was never
quiet during a journey, as she had been today. If he hadn't been
so busy worrying about Misty His long experience as a
soldier kicked in and he reached for his favourite weapon, the
Pokéball containing Sunfire, his Flareon. At that moment, a
human arm seemingly rendered out of a blue gel-like fluid punched
through the bullet-proof glass window and dragged him out of the
car.
The arm slammed Williams against
the asphalt and the pain blinded him for a second. When he could
see again, he saw something that his instincts screamed was
impossible. A humanoid woman, completely rendered in blue gel,
even her hair, with glowing green snake-like eyes. The creature
smiled at him in a way that communicated bottomless scorn and
hatred. Williams had seen many horrors in war, but nothing had
the same effect as this creature did. Every drop of his blood
seemed to change to iced water.
Delilah decided to give the good
general a close-up look at the 'weapon' he coveted so much that
he was willing to use his daughter as a pawn in his games. She
waited for the man to stagger to his feet before knocking him
back with a single high kick to the face. As Williams went down,
he pressed the 'release' button on his Pokéball.
"Sunfire, use
Flame-thrower!" he shouted.
Omega shook her head. What an
idiot! Did he really think something as simplistic as a fire-type
attack could stop her or even hurt
her? With barely a motion, Omega somersaulted through the
air, easily avoiding the attack and landed behind the general.
She took a moment to blast the Flareon with a Hydro Pump attack,
knocking it out. Then she slammed her palms against the sides of
Williams' head, stunning him, and jumping over him to land in
front of him just as he fell to his knees.
She reached out with vine whips
that lashed from the sides of her chest and picked the man up.
There was a hum of electricity as she focussed a Thunder attack
down the vines into the man's body. She enjoyed watching him
thrash for a moment before he lost consciousness.
===========
General Kent Lanning Williams was
enjoying a dream where his wife was alive and he could live
happily with his family. Then he felt something cold and wet hit
his face. He awoke and realised that he had been bound tightly to
a chair. A woman stood before him, quite naked and rendered
entirely in blue gel-like fluid. Her eyes shone with green light
and the only illumination in the room was the moonlight that
filtered through her semi-transparent form. The patterns of
motion in the fluid that made up her entire body broke the
moonlight up into gentle patterns that made Williams think of the
sea that Rosemary loved so much
Suddenly, Williams recognised his
captor. It was Delilah Ketchum! He remembered her
face from the wedding, even if it was now in a terrifyingly alien
form. "Ah, you choose to rejoin me, General," Delilah
said emotionless.
The mutant woman stepped forward
and closed her right hand around his throat. Williams could feel
the cold, oily texture of her flesh and began to tremble
involuntarily, remembering what Mercedes said that this being
had threatened to do to her.
"I am sure you are wondering
who I am and what I want," Delilah said in a conversational
tone. "It is quite simple. I am your worst nightmare. And if
you do not surrender my son to me, this is a nightmare from which
you will never wake up!"
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Review!
To be continued...
