End of A Reality
by Blue9Tiger/title and story by DarkMutatedBrock/La Cidiana
A/N: Another month, another chapter. ^^: I now have pretty much this thing roughly planned out to the halfway point, (roughly being the key word), the ending worked out in bits and pieces, and to sum up, I think the whole fic can be fit in less than 50 chapters. Hopefully. OO Anyway, enough of this pointless drivel, on with the fic!
*~*~*
8 Main Street
Vermillion, Kanto 987321
To the esteemed President of Silph Corporation:
In a condensed maxim, reptuation is everything. This company's only defense against public slander and over-zealous individuals is our reputation. When those with rebellious attitudes are disposed of, there is nothing that will prevent the swaying of the masses. All it takes is persuasion and a pinch of muscle. Then the city is in your hand.
Rufus Shin-Ra, President of Shin-Ra Electric Company
*~*~*
Chapter 16: On The Edge of Despair
When Cid woke up the only thing he knew was that he hurt like hke hell. He didn't know why or how, but there was something drawn hard and tight on his neck and the back of his knees and on his shoulders. And he couldn't move.The ugly reality pieced itself together as alarm bells rang out in his head. He was..
Strapped. Cid got that queasy feeling in his stomach. Suddenly he felt like throwing up everything he ate in the past two days. Plus the stomach.
The dank foul air permeated his bare back..waitaminute, bare?! God, so they took his shirt and his gloves. Not even letting have THAT shred of dignity. What, were they gonna dissect him alive? HAAH...not "they". Cid thought with his gaze stiffening harder than the table he was strapped to. There was only ONE man...if his twisted green carcass had the RIGHT to be lumped in with the rest of them normal people.
"Goddamn bastard," growled Cid under his breath that came rougher in his prone state.. Hojo probably put him that way on purpose. To make it uncomfortable as possible. Forget uncomfortable. Painful was more like it. Damn, it hurt down there, too. Why was he HERE, anyway? Sick psycho only experimented on freaks. With something "special" about them. "Special" just another word for "wrong." And except for the cancer in his lungs that the doctors said was supposed to have killed him years ago, there was nothing "wrong" about him.
"Gotta be lookin' to retire real soon, thinkin' I'm one of them freaks," Cid mused while grimacing at the floor. He was positioned so that his head hung off the edge of the table. It took that much more of an effort to move his head, much less looke up. Damn little fuck.. getting so old that he didn't know normal from unormal. Just to think that senile son of a bitch would mistake HIM, Cid Highwind, one of the few Mako and Jenova-free in AVALANCHE, for the thousands of royally screwed-up and over weirdos on this Planet, made the corners of his mouth curve slightly upwards." Ha, that's rich.." Maybe there were chemicals floating around in the air that set him off or maybe it really was that hilarious because of its ridiculousness, but whatever the cause, Cid started laughing and laughing hard. Between hard-taken breaths between laughing he forced out some words. "I.....bet he thinks I got wings---" Laugh. and a tail--" Laugh. "---and was a test-tube baby-" Laugh. "---or some crazy shit like that."
How close to right he was.
"Not quite.."
The laughter died in that instant. Hojo pushed opened the door that bumped lightly against the wall, breaking a mat of cobwebs. He closed the door and locked it with a key in one hand. As he was turned around, a sterilized instrument in Hojo's other hand flashed in Cid's direction, but he couldn't damn well see it because of how he was positioned. But he could hear him. Hell, he could hear him, alright. Slimy oily voice more slick than a used car dealer. Only worse. A beat-up old piece of crap wouldn't hurt you. This old man fucked up Goth-boy in ways he couldn't..wouldn't imagine.
. "However, your self-assesment is rather accurate..." Slowly, dangerously, he moved from one end of the room to another. As he moved towards Cid, his arm and hand appeared, the one that was holding the instrument. NOW Cid could see it. FUCKING SHIT. "..surprising for an intellect of that caliber." He shifted it to his dominant hand, raising it, the limb like a viper rearing back before delivering the deathblow. He began muttering to another person that was not Cid, ignoring that he was even there. "This is the subject's offspring...I was unable to acquire its parents. I suppose what is known about this race will be acquired from studying Draconis Rex."
"Who the fuck're ya talkin' to?!" shouted Cid with a manic and wld tone, his body stiff and immobile but his mind in chaos and his soul in dread. Hojo left him without the explanation the blonde man was dying for, and approached him from the side, linking him to the heart monitor set up near the table. Cid's face flushed violet with rage and curses flew unchecked from his mouth. This did not alarm the scientist. Rather, he was elated by this discovery, and he voiced with a tinge of mirth in his observation,
"Retained vicious temperment.." he muttered through the wave of words that would shame the filthiest of dumps. The scientist turned his attention to a batch of chemicals next to the instrument tray. His spidery fingers were want to grab them, but...no, not yet. There was something yet to be done. "In one treatment with this formula the process would be complete..."
Process. He wasn't joking, was he? He really WAS going to do it.
. "But...recent tests have proved that these chemicals do not realign the vertebrae." The dangerous glow in Hojo's eyes grew lethal as he again lifted the instrument, its sharp edge reflecting the Mako glow. "I'm afraid I'll have to remedy this problem..." Like a dagger, he raised it and traced it across the air level with his eyes, the instrument glimpsing the poor pilot's face locked in total terror.. "..the old- fashioned way.."
He pushed the blade into Cid's flesh and drowned his victim's screams with apathy.
*~*~*
A hand desperately wanting sunlight moved fidgeting from pocket to brow, mopping its owner's head with a handkerchief. He crammed it into his shirt, disgusted with himself for this uneeded alarm. True, his doctor had been prescribing stronger medication for those irritating headaches, and his close friends warned him time and again that he was working too hard on the proposal to use a meager five percent of the company's funds to restoring Midgar, and not enough time thinking about that upcoming vacation. Shin-Ra won't spend a gil on a dump where no more military forces could be extracted, they said to him time and time again. But like a cat waiting for the right time to swipe the meat when the butcher's not looking, Reeve was set on this proposal....though if he knew Rufus' "rule with fear, not money" policy, he knew that his first priorities would be rebuilding the army, not Midgar. He could start counting his blessings if he could squeeze even one percent for the reconstruction. But maybe, he thought, there were other reasons besides military: Reeve was a true Midgarian: he was bound not only to the land by loyalty but also, in a distant, indirect way, its people. Rufus wasn't.
Loyalty...hmph. Reeve knew the story behind this alliance, this merger...Rufus was toying with the old fool, taking advantage of Silph's diminishing profits and the hearing aid of its president.
In name only, they were equals. Beneath the surface was where the reality lay: Shin-Ra owned Silph.
Reeve found himself fidgeting again..that medecine was really wracking his nerves..he searched for something that would soothe...found it. A filled bookshelf with all sorts of texts on both his line of work, some that he had written himself, mostly diagrams that spanned hundreds of pages from which he derived the Midgar model, and heavier books on his favorite topic of leisure.
Running a finger along the shelf, he chose one where an inch-thick layer of dust had accumulated over years of neglect. It was wedged in the back between two he read more frequently, but the sight of it jogged his memory and he opened A Complete Guide to Cats.
Reeve sat down in his office chair and began reading, digesting the subject that his affinity for was made so apparent by Cait Sith. He looked longingly at the rather uninteresting heap of machinery next to the door, aware that arriving to this new location locked the machinery and ultimately cut him off from Cait Sith and Gaia.
The man flipped through the pages of the paperback, obsolete and inaccurate since more research had been done since then, but for Reeve, it tapered this induced anxiety. Besides, his fondness towards cats wasn't a scientific preoccupation. It didn't bother him in the least if one specie had been classified wrong or if a new breed was actually an old breed with different markings.
Diagrams of an anomaly were a different story.
What the hell--? he thought when he turned the page. There were a series of pages that were bound differently than the rest of the book...crudely, rushed with primitive adhesives, as if whoever placed it there was in a turmoil of mind. But the way it had been bound didn't perturb him as much as the diagram of a mix of many different felines, mostly of the wild variety, with the glaring characteristics of a man...A caricature of felinity and humanity intertwined, seamless melding with the boundary between man and beast undetectable. This isn't your ordinary kitty, he thought humorlessly as he flipped to the next page with hesitancy. There, sets of diagrams, the same cat-man from all points of view showing internal organs and the outside form. Above it was scrawled what looked like formulas and notes, the kind of thing that..that..Hojo presented at his lectures---Shaken, he turned the page. Bending his eyes downward he made out the hastily-written script.
"Unlike the other subjects, that must be enhanced with surgical procedures, this subject attains full potential through chemical treatment alone. No doubt that S- 010 had reverted to human form: it was restored to consciousness before I could adminster the final chemicals. The effects are permanent and I can record this gradual change. However, I don't believe I can witness the full process in a lifetime without a sufficient catalyst. Securing him kng enough to administer the chemicals will be the real difficulty. However, the change also can be activated by an adventitious exposure to the formula-----" Reeve paused, closed the book in resentful irritation and put it down on the desk. "How did science research end up in my books?" he asked himself rather grudgingly. If anyone should be retaliating for lack of funds, it should be the Space Exploration Department or his own, not the Science Department. It was until only recently that an excessively large amount of gil was going into Weapons Development alone. Or...it could be someone's idea of a sick practical joke.
Not just anyone's, Reeve thought semi-bitterly as he opened up the book again to that perturbing page. He almost blew us all sky high along with Midgar. Reeve frowned and reached for his handkerchief again, but pulled away. . Why does Rufus keep him on his staff, anyway? He's not any more loyal to Shin-Ra Inc. than I am.
The dark-bearded Shin-Ra executive put the book open-faced on the desk, checked his wristwatch, and reached for a capped bottle at the corner. He unscrewed the cap, retrieved a granola bar from his trouser's pocket, and stuck the medecine in the granola bar, absently observing the diagram of the cat's eye that studied him from the paper. The more he looked at it, the more it bothered him..He turned to a photo of a cat, one whose eyes emanated an unearthly glow when the light struck them the right way. He was no stranger to this, as he'd seen many felines on the one trip to Wutai he took. That alone didn't bother him. But...He cleared his throat, leaned back in his chair, looked at the cat's eyes again, like two golden moons suspended side-by-side. Like a tornado it came to him. Whatever ills the medicine was designed to prevent broke through its defenses, and his head rained sweat and he was shaking all over and he had this godawful headache and it was all because...
.. Because he'd seen that glow..on a human, a man...Before Diamond Weapon, before he came to power.....
Suddenly his phone rang. Reeve collected himself enough to lift it off the reciever and put it to his ear and gave a quick and embarassing reply as the granola bar lodged in his throat, and he choked out a mousy "yes, President," in response to the "piss me off and I'll kill you" type of irritability ringing loudly on the other line. Reeve quickly hung up and sat there, mopping up his flooded head and staring bug-eyed at the phone. It might have been the bad reception, but that last word and a snarl of a bobcat were not that different. He looked again at the book. and turned to the diagrams, each individual finger shaking so hard it took all of his mental faculties to focus and reach that page. Those insinuating images seemed to grin at him with the knowledge of some ugly truth...
Reeve swallowed another tablet before rushing out the door.
*~*~*
The ebony dragon glided on an invisible current of air, beating its wings in time with its pain, mechanically, nothing majestic in this creature that had been revered and feared because of its supremacy. But that was of legend. This was reality. This was a product of the ambitions of men, not the will of nature. The greed of corporate kings spawned this creature, the madness of a disfigured quest for knowledge, these irreversible errors of the proud beast known as humans mothered this broken animal with an indifferent and brutal hand.
Misty held her bad arm with her good one, laughably insignificant in size, a mere grain of dust blowing in the shadow of a mountain.
The agonized creature let out a roar that made the wind tremble and bow, in tenuous command of the elements themselves, or at least one of them. Night was absolute around it; the darkness was king. As Misty followed the black shape, she felt the darkness growing around her, enveloping the ground she half-walked, half-stumbled over, the chains of trees, the shadows themselves, encompassed by the darkness. The Moon hid behind the black curtain. The dragon soared with crushed spirits into the steel sky. Where at that point, it halted in mid-air. A voice came, the hatred directed against itself like many blades dissolved, dripping away to reveal the true form of the black dragon.
Night without day. This is the the gruesome reality of now. Imagine day.....The Moon returned....without night?
"Aghhh!!" Misty screamed as a flood of light cascaded into her open eyes. Her reflexes weren't quick enough, and light as blinding as the Sun invaded her sight, and she fell backwards from its sheer force, that dispersed the blackness and immersed it in white, white light. "What's---going on?" she groaned, clamping both hands over her face, the pain of jerking that arm up minimal compared to this skull-splitting light. "Where'd the dragon go?" At least, in the darkness, she could move, but this light, nothing like the warm sunlight in the morning, but a relentless, brutal ice sun mulitplied and magnified by a thousand, stiffening the muscles, paralyzing the nerves, and numbing the mind. "Wh--what's that?!"
Now the black dragon and its aura of torment was gone: in its place was the spawn of eagle and lion of myth and legend in terrible resplendence, bathed in this pure whte light. Misty couldn't see it turn around, but felt the wind rush past her face as it headed towards her, its thoughts resonating through her mind, a foreign tongue she could neither understand nor wanted to. This day without night approaches. Follow me and the night will end.
Light and shadow displaced the white suns, This unending night. and the Moon again appeared amidst the darkness, . the shadows on the ground and the light from the stars The day will begin with the storm.. manifesting the balance between the contrasting forces of nature. The rain.. Misty teetered unsteadily, When the rain falls they will fall.. the world spinning round and round, The masses will then rise.her location, The rest... what had just happened, Will die. individual shapes registering in her brain, the false illusions of the black dragon----before it all stopped, and dazed, she stumbled again over a root and regained her balance, swaying on unsteady legs in the light of the white griffin. The beacon didn't wait. She followed it using as much speed her humanity lent her..
*~*~*
The agents of Team Rocket were many and one, individuals and a team, separated in thought and action and unified in one soul. Right now that soul was a pulverized remnant of pride and ambition. Every single one of them had been unstoppable: they knew they would beat the odds, conquer the world, take every last free or owned Pokémon for themselves and spread chaos across the lands.
All that was gone. They knew they were powerless. The HQ was the HQ. If it burns, so what? But HOW it burned...how their comrades burned...scorched in the breath of that monster, left them dreamless. The Rockets that were barely daunted left. The vast majority whose pride was a pile of desolate ashes sat, stood, or lay clustered around the remains, a people who discovered their god wasn't immortal.
The team became individuals, lost, wandering individuals, who travelled an path obscured by doubt. It could only grow more doubtful when the night was flooded in day.
The griffin clouded the ruins in white shadow. Terrified Rockets gazed up into the blaze in fearful awe. Some of them clapped their gloved hands over their heads and fell on their knees shivering like an Ekans' rattle, others retreated into their tents, and others unclipped their PokéBalls and got ready to fight the intruder. The boss was gone, Team Rocket was finished, what had they to lose?
But it didn't attack. It glided but didn't dive, leaving a heavenly aura in its wake behind its lion-like tail. It opened its sharp beak and released another cry, this blend of the eagle's call and the lion's bellow parting the clouds which trembled at this manifestation of power this creature posessed. .
Somewhere near the ruins but distanced from the black and purple and grey-clad people directly under this harbringer of a false heaven Ash still lay unconscious. This mobile dawn was far-reaching. It stretched its pale fingers across to the boy, extending itself through the darkenss. The haunting light danced on Ash's eyelids. It lingered only until the weary eyes that had seen so many things in the past few days showed themselves to the darkness.
The call pierced and rattled his ears.
"KKKHHHHHGGGHHHHHRRRRRRRRROOOARRGHHH..."
Follow me and the night will end.
"H--huh.?!" Trying to ignore that his whole body was sore and his arm stung from the clawing and he was hungry enough to eat a Slowking, he listened for the cry again. It didn't come. All there was was the coo of some nocturnal Pidgey and the squeak of Mankey and a really loud, shrill call that sounded an awful lot like..."Misty?"
"Ash!" The shrillness was reduced to a drained pant. The girl came into view jogging away the last bit of her stamina, coming to a tired stop in front of him. From what Ash could see, she hadn't gotten off any better than he had. She was likewise a wreck and tired and upset and confused and...it looked like Brock got to her, too. But somewhere along the way the wound opened and it was bleeding again. Ash sat gaping at the wound, then Misty slapped her palm onto it and pressed, hoping to stop the bleeding. Neither of them were saying anything, but they knew, on the outside and inside, they were hurt.The inside would take longer to heal, but Misty knew, that if they reached Pallet, they could at least fix the outside. "We've got to get going."
Ash nodded and struggled to to stand. His usually unalterable determination broke each time he fell. Somehow his vigor, energy...was all gone. The fourth or fifth time he fell on his rump Misty grabbed his good arm with her good hand, pulled him up, and leaned him over her shoulder. Brathing in deeply trying to catch some of that lost air, she started towards Pallet Town. The griffin...she guessed...would have to wait..
"H--hey, Misty, where're we goin'?!" Ash questioned frantically with voice hoarse from a dry throat. Last time he had something to drink was in the Team Rocket dungeons---tasted nasty, too. But that wasn't what he was worried about.
"Pallet Town so we can---ngh," she grunted as she stared at the bright red streaks on her arm. Too deep...it was no use, just holding a hand on it wouldn't make it stop. If Ash's opened up too they would really be in trouble. "---rest up, then I'm going to," she picked up and put down her feet slightly faster, some of her breath returning, and some of the glisten returning to her dullened eyes as she finally finished what she had to say,"follow that Pokémon!"
The boy's voice was fraught with cracks of worry and concern. He had friends he had left behind. How with the destruction of their enemy's base could he lose those companions?
"But what's gonna happen to Pikachu---and Bayleef and Cyndaquil and Totodile and Noctowl?"
Misty stopped walking, her expression freezing to ice as cold tears formed. They fell silently without sobs, the silence of one mourning for the dead. After a pause she found hard to break, the orange-haired girl poured the truth.
"Ash, don't you think I would've LOOKED for Togepi if it was going to live?"
Another stretch of silence. "So you're sayin'...you think our Pokémon're dead?" the boy asked, his voice growing increasingly more fearful. Misty nodded solemnly. Ash ripped away from Misty's grip, falling on one knee in his failing effort to balance. This wasn't happening..you could feel things in nightmares, right? This was just another nightmare. Soon Pikachu would hit him with a Thunderbolt and he'd be awake and they'd continue their journey together and they would get badges and meet new friends and fight new enemies.....
C'mon, Pikachu. Gimme a Thunderbolt!
Any moment now he'd feel those tingling bolts across his spine. He'd be dizzy from the shock, stars in his eyes, wobbly, close to fainting......
He drew his fist out of the ground and it shook with pain. So this is how it all ended, huh? No encouraging words, no good-byes? To think that it ever was a perfect day. With all his energy, he stood up on one leg and screamed out to the ruins,
. "PIKACHU!!!"
The silence was eternal.
"Come on, Ash," Misty urged more gently than she had in a long time. But Ash would've barely noticed the difference. Eyes flooded in tears he let Misty pull him up and away. The call, that beckoning call of the griffin split the clouds again. She resisted it's compelling command. Their solemn path was towards Pallet.
*~*~*
As the Dodrio crowed at dawn, the Murkrow cawed at dusk.
But it was interrupted. For then, dawn arrived prematurely in all its brutal terror. In unyielding and remorseless light it bathed Murkrow, and it reeled back on its perch of bark, the blinding brilliance driving it off the branch. It plunged from the twig, reacting just in time before it painted the ground in its blood and feathers. Its short wings propelled it through the black heavens, where the light was a minority and the darkness ruled indomitably.
A clawed hand erupted from the sea of white light like the dead reach out of the ground, grasping freedom they are denied in their caskets. Gemini plunged from the portal, landing squarely on his haunches. Like a liberated prisoner he rooted his claws in the dirt and scooped it up in his hands, each grain slipping down the scales and the scars. It was dirt and not metal, the cold, cruel metal of the cube....yes, this was soil. The outdoors. Freedom. And yet..something was horribly, horribly wrong..
Houses. Houses meant humans.
The surrounding land populated with humans was foreign, alien.....forbidden territory. Upon demand of instinct, he reeled back on four legs, shaking in cowardice with his hands over his demonic visage, the point of his fangs visible through the greyish-black curtain. He shouldn't ..shouldn't BE here..he didn't BELONG here....This was where HUMANS lived..wait..he could scent it, the air, the unpaved dirt roads, civilization in the countryside, where young boys' dreams began on a high and hopeful note...
High and hopeful. For aspiring Pokémon TRAINERS.
He drew back further in fear of this civilized human place, curling into almost a ball out of which his twisting tail poked out of. "PRHAGHRRET TROWHGGNG..." he growled a cracked cry of despair. Oh, God, what if someone saw him? Tracey...Professor Oak..Mrs. Ketchum..Christ, they'd LOATHE him..they'd--- they'd---
And who should speak but HIM. In the middle of the portal he'd changed, shedding his monstrous form and taking on this one, no less monstrous in the soul, but HUMAN in physical shape. As proud as before, with his henchman whose confidence was thinner, you could see the rigid shame in her eyes, yet radiating that proud Rocket air as if nothing had happened to sink the battleship. Perhaps it was a facade. But whatever it was, it was masked by human superiority..
"Indeed it is." The beady black eyes connected with the crimson slits of the demon. ." Another supply of blood to last you throughout the night."
That comment might have been matter-of-fact, but Brock could read its undertones. The blaze of Gemini's tortured eyes ignited into torches of the underworld. He elevated himself with one fist in the dirt, fury and menace radiating from his very body in invisible waves of a terrible blackness of the mind.
His threat of a swift death burned in his voice.
I won't miss this time, Gio.
"Take your worst shot, boy," taunted the man, completely bare, that damned brand exposed as well as everything else, caked in sweat and ashen black from the smoke, but the shame a man like him would have felt was masked by his humanity.
With the roar of an enraged Nidoking Gemini shot at Giovanni's throat like a bullet. Seconds away from tearing through the throat, something exploded inside of him. He groaned, fell on his knees, looking up in devestation at the five scratch lines he left on his enemy. What the-?!?!
The finishing blow was never delivered. He sat on his knees, confused and upset as he watched his arm and his hand lose scales, and the claws, the lethal tools of Giovanni's desired demise, blunt into nails he hadn't clipped since before this whole nightmare, but not sharp enough to even make the man bleed...
He doubled over in pain as the malformities of organs changed into normalcy, but at the wrong time...the COMPLETELY wrong time...
He groaned as he fell to the ground, drained from the transformation. He lay in the dirt with revenge kicking him in the face. Any other time he would have given ANYTHING to be human. But at that point, where Giovanni was a man and Brock was a Pokémon, he HAD the upper claw...he would have cut him down...but no..the mutations were controlled by chemicals....Tears of anguish formed in his closed eyes. CHEMICALS..you couldn't rely on or trust. But what was there to trust besides yourself?
"You..you KNEW that was coming...bastard."
That smile that Brock had come to abominate sat plastered on the man's proud face."Unlike you, boy," he replied haughtily, "I am more--- " The vowel was lost on him, and he slackened his normally rigid jaw as the word fell ungraciously out of his mouth.
Fortune would have it that the four red letters on his arm that now defined him were tangled in the corner of his eye.The facade began to peel away as he stared perplexed and befuddled at the letters. He couldn't...read them.
Once Brock deduced this, he wasn't hesitant to tear it right off.
"You're more what?" Brock parted his mouth in a caustic grin. "Human?" At this point Brock gave way to laughter, too manic to be genuine and perhaps a little insane. But it didn't matter right now. He had his nemesis where he wantedhim. He pointed an accusatory finger at the "man" and took a biting stab. "So...the secret's out, huh, Gio? It says HOJO. Didn't get that?" The grin was almost sadistic as he over-pronounced the syllables. "HHHHOOOOOOJJJJJOO." With that he kept verbally kicking him, and with a razor-edged statement, he got him in the balls.
"Just this once, I'm MORE human than you."
In his assaulted brain Giovanni searched for words to counterattack. Cassidy bailed him out. "Ha...that's where you're wrong, kid." The remark oozed rueful bitterness. She tilted her chin down. It was so much more distressing to look at the ground. You could see what crap you were walking in, what was crawling up to bite you---you didn't see those kind of things in the sky. The ground forced her to see reality.
. Strange that she would say this, as she was one of the more confident and anthroprocentric agents. But she and Butch.....Team Rocket.....had their golden age. There was nowhere else to go now.....but down. With a quivering lip, she choked on the truth. "None of us are human anymore."
A margled croak disturbed the melancholy that inevitably followed. Cassidy was like some knife that shaved off a part of his brain and the words with it. A fragile silence swelled between Brock and Giovanni. The tension beneath it cracked through the pause but didn't shatter it. Still, it was only a matter of time before one would challenge the other again. Perhaps next time it wouldn't be with words and perhaps next time it wouldn't be one-sided.
Cassidy bent down eye level with Butch, instinctively wrapping her arms around her chest to cover that area. Another croak stumbled thorugh the air, in so many different chords that she wasn't sure where one began and one ended. For some inexplicable reason, she knew that it was talking to her. But...she wouldn't know what it was..not ever, because he would forget.....all that he'd seen and heard during the night. With the dawn's first beams of light penetrating the walls of night his memories would be effaced. Goddammit...she thought with granitic hatred that lay crushingly on her eyes.. Why did the geezer have to be RIGHT? She veered her head away from the lumpy, deformed face and plugged the double wells set in her eye sockets. So.....she would never know.
It was then she heard a voice. Pleasant. Naive. Saccharine sweet. She still hasn't left Candyland, Cassidy pondered with a cracked smile. But it quickly dropped into a curve. The woman fast approaching wasn't one of them, but an outsider... Pointless as the prattling was, if anyone saw them...bedlam was imminent.
"You can cut the awkward silence, we're going to have company REALLY soon," Cassidy informed her superior.. inferior...which was it? She numbed that thought and tucked it away for later. The human grew closer and her irritating voice grew louder with the shortened distance. Perhaps subconsciously, Cassidy dropped the formalities of "boss" or "sir". "Quick, into the bushes!" she whispered, taking Butch and literally diving into the foliage, a crash of branches and crunch of leaves escaping the detection of the woman.
"What?! Christ.." Brock exhaled a tightened breath. That was..that was.....Ash's mom. He broke for the dense cover of the thick bushes and rolled into it, a few leaves scattering on the shadowed ground. The woman closed the gap. She was coming up over the hill with steady gait and decision in where she was going: straight up. For some inexplicable reason, Giovanni hesitated. His rectangular eyes stretched wide and the tiny pupils dilated in fear...fear that locked him in place. That voice...that sweet, gentle voice.. It floated from the base of the hill, closer, nearer, as she walked up the hill. Still he didn't move. And if she saw him.....in this state, questions would arise. The truth would come out. Burying his indecision, he finally ripped his foot from the ground, ran, and crawled into the foliage, pulling his leg in before the woman reached the spot where they previously had been.
Mrs. Ketchum wasn't her usually cheery self. The cloud of puzzlement and confusion rained worry on her head and quieted her as she stopped. Where was Sam? He hadn't been here for the longest time...he told her he was out at some researcher's convention in Vermillion, but he should've been back by now. It had been too long. She had good reason to worry, considering the events broadcasted on the news...Viridian and Pewter...the horror stories of the survivors.... Tracey hadn't come home either: he had followed Sam, true, that boy went wherever Sam went, but he could call home. Vermillion had no limits to their vid-phones or telephones for that matter.
And why was it so bright over here, particularly at the big white circle a few feet above the middle of the road? One of her eyes closed to block the light and she edged towards the white hole, hearing voices, both rough around the edges, one less refined with the language he used. She stepped up to it, gazing into the intense light, and the two shapes beyond. It wasn't much larger than her, and it was shrinking every minute. A shout echoed through the white hole, and the two shapes came running faster, faster, dashing towards an ever- shrinking light. Mrs. Ketchum moved out of the way just in time.....for a burly toughman with a gun for an arm and a one-eyed dog tumbled through the portal, both layered in thick smoke, as the white sliver sealed itself with a thin flash.
"That was a close one," huffed Red as he turned around to look at the now-empty space. "This gate was open for a long time...but the one we first came through closed--" He raised one of his paws to scratch away a bug. "--like that." He began to sway his muzzle across the perimeter of their surroundings, scouting the area for enemies. "There has to be something keeping these things open." The wolf/lion leaped down the hill then came back. Scents were hitting his nose hard, but none seemed gearing to attack.
Barret didn't say anything. He was unusually quiet. In fact, the whole place was unusually quiet. It would be about now that Cid would be swearing about the Highwind, but....shit...were they short one? He counted in his head that smoke and sweat clung to mercilessly. One, two...two. Well, there was a third one there, but no chick didn't come with them through the portal. The pilot was gone.
"Yo, brotha...Highwind ain't here," Barret exhaled. Red could tell by his comrade's gravelly upset tone put a noticeable break in his usually firm voice. The solid AVALANCHE leader let his fist quake, a mountain succumbing to the shifting of the crustal plates. Finally it crumbled, and he lowered his head somberly. But it was a fleeting emotion. Hot, magma-like anger boiled and erupted from the wounds in the earth and exploded into a fiery rain of curses. .
"Dat fire musta got 'im, goddamnit!" he bellowed with his teeth on edge and his fist in the air. "Death's 'jes waitin' fo' us. First dat girl an' now Highwind." With a blazing fit of fury he crushed the Gaian belief and blew up its remains. "Hell wi' da Lifestream! Dey're dead! And dat ain't gonna help nobody!"
Cid could very well be dead. Red thought it wasn't likely. If Cid got left behind, Hojo was right behind him, a jackal behind its kill. Though he couldn't think for the life of him what Hojo would want with a dirty-mouthed pilot, there was a chance that he was alive...
"If the fire didn't get him," Red stared off into the night with bleak fears taking pictoral shape in his brain. Ugly, gruesome shape. "..Hojo did."
"Dat quack?!" Barret burst out, the rage spiralling into detectable fear, then smashing to the bottom with grim hopelessness in this realization: "He'd be betta off dead."
"Exactly." Red set his forepaws on the edge of the hill, his short claws piercing the top of the dusty incline. He surveyed the houses bunched up together, a far cry from the gargantuan skyscraper in the center of the city. No doubt they were days away from the city. With a defeated sigh the dog came to a bleak conclusion, "It might be too late even if we find out where Shin-Ra is."
It was then that the invisible woman spoke up.
"Shin-Ra?" she repeated with a touch of confusion, but it soon left her: Mrs. Ketchum had especial reason to keep up with the news, not knowing where her boy was constantly, having to worry about him lest he end up in some danger. It was no surprise, then, that she knew about Silph's fateful decision.. "Oh, you mean that company that merged with Silph?"
"You know where it is?" Red inquired evenly, voice lined with the most minute speck of hope. The genial woman nodded, and she smiled thinly, though the untrained eye would percieve it as a ditzy, flighty smile.
"Why yes, it's in Vermillion City, but--" The fake show of sunshine melted and fell with the expression of doubt and worry that now darkened her face, and she crossed her arms over her breast, flattening the pink shirt she perenially wore. Her tone was laced with motherly concern that was not unfounded. "I don't know why you would want to travel at this time of night."
"Yo hun, dat ain't none a yo' business!" Barret tried to push her away, but the insistence in Mrs. Ketchum's voice was hard to get rid of, and she answered in indignance,
"Hmph..you DID say you needed directions. I insist you stay the night." What?! Cid's a goner for sure. "Besides, I'm not letting you go ANYWHERE with that burn." Unfolding her arms she reached out with her hand and had her palm on the violently protesting man's shoulder. She squeezed a big bunch of flesh in both palms and started to lead him into the house. Somehow, Barret's iron muscles changed into jelly and turning purple from humiliation, he let himself be walked. Red followed them into the welcoming light, figuring it wouldn't be wise for him to depart without Barret. It wasn't in his character to leave a friend in need, especially at the mercy of a stranger. And other than that, he could use a rest, too.
A heavy thud came from behind the house.
May stumbled by, drooping, limping, falling, bleeding, with the words of the angel heavy and resonating in her mind. All was normal, the ground was still ground, the houses were still houses, the bushes were still bushes and the trees were still trees, and the sky... Her face fell, her lower lip trembled. The sky...was still engulfed by darkness...but.. She took a step back, rubbed the murkiness from her eyes, and beheld......a white, heavenly light dim but present on the horizon. Day was approaching. The angel would return.
*~*~*
Persian's blackened paws sank into the earth, forming a staggered trail that wound serpentine through the hard-packed dirt. It stumbled slump- shouldered across the rough terrain: the scattered stones cut the padding on its paws and made blood leak out of them in globules. It dragged its tail, it shuffled its gait, it walked brokenly amongst the shadows. It could pick up no scent: its sense of smell all but eliminated by a luxurious lifestyle. It searched unguided, unsure of where it was going, knowing only by an irrevocable instinct that its master was out there and that it must find him.
Behind it, the one being that once couldn't stand the sight of its evolution followed it tirelessly. Even further behind, an irritable Jessie and an exhausted James followed them, more out of obligation than choice. With the mind-blowing events etched permanently in their memory, there was no way they were staying alone, out in the open, colorful targets for any other freak that lurked in the shadows. Their best bet was to stick with Meowth and Persian.
But they didn't know how long they could keep it up.
"Meowth," Jessie began with a fake placid tone that rose to indignance and disgust, "We're following a BLIND cat!!! How is THAT going to help us find the boss?!?!"
The cat answered with his gaze fixed on the other feline, "Persian sticks ta da boss like glue." Meowth winked. "'Sides, he ain't gonna make it solo. Jas lookat 'im!!" Meowth turned to his comrades, pointing out the sorry state of Persian. In their own worn-out condition, the humans could find only a tinge of pity for it, and they collectively groaned as the smaller cat justified himself. "Meowth godda make sure he don't get hurt no more," he concluded dutifully, clenching a paw with a serious look on his face. And then he marched on. James whimpered, sighed, and bowed his head, his blue-violet hair following its movement. The tone in hs voice was listless and yearned for rest.
"I miss when they didn't like each other."
The other member of their team appeared, breaking through the two halves of Jessie's PokéBall and from a white mass of light formed a light-colored blob with not much more shape to it. Its bent arm was at its head, saluting anything and everything in its hoarse, scratchy cry,
"Wobbbbb--uffffet!!!!!!"
Jessie glared murder at the squinty-eyed blob.
"Get BACK in your ball------"
Flash. Pain.
"WOB?"
Jessie, now fed up, stopped dragging herself along, stood, and detatched Wobbufet's PokéBall. She threw it with more force than usual, but Wobbufet ducked the incoming object, screamed, and waddled away from Jessie and James with both hands over its squinted eyes. The sounds of his partners' screaming halted Meowth for a secnd and he turned his oval head back to see the humans chasing it down..
"Wobbufet, come back!!!" James implored.
"Get BACK HERE!!" Jessie commanded, magma seeming to bubble in her dark azure eyes. She was already out of breath, and the run that slowed to a jog and to a walk wasn't getting her any closer to the fleeing blob. Frustrated, she flung her PokéBall half the distance that she had thrown it earlier, which whizzed through the shadows and, barely reaching its target, bounced onto the back of it's head. It was soon back in the ball, and Jessie retrieved it, glaring at it in all her fury. James tilted his head while gasping for new air and asked between pants,
"I wonder what would---make Wobbufet run-----off like that...it's never done that before..."
Jessie growled in agitation as the rage cooled to anger. "It's acting the same way it always does!!" She angrily pocketed the Ball and grit her teeth, irritation creasing her forehead. "Brainless and-----"
Jessie's rant was cut short when a sliver of white light rent the sky, turning night into day. "Arghhhhh!!" she screamed, falling onto the ground hard on her back. Up ahead, Meowth saw the light, too. Shiny..what was that?.He turned his paw in the other direction, drawn to the light.
"You-----you were saying?" James asked, shielding his eyes with both hands and an arm. "No wonder Wobbufet ran away...it doesn't like light." .The wound in the sky opened and widened. The shine was scatching to the retinas..it burned so bright they curled their heads against their chest, but their eyes were penetrated there as well. The sun if it rose at night.....
But this wasn't the sun. As they neared closer to it it began to pull them. An invisible suction swallowing them. James grabbed onto the ground onto some stray tufts of grass as he felt the gravity of the light pulling onto him. He screamed. Jessie grasped onto his wrist but felt herself being sucked in, too.. Persian slipped into it without knowing what was happening, Meowth falling it near-willingly. All throughout this, no dread mechanical noise, no violent winds, no grim hand reaching out to grasp them from within the light. Only this white hole in the sky, acting like a black hole, pulling, yanking, ripping them away from the grass blades that began to get pulled as well. They could only shriek in terror.....as they were crammed through the gate to that other world...
Gaia.
*~*~*
Persian squirmed under the fall of rain it found itself under. The drops fell heavy on its ratty fur, chilling its bones and making it call for the master It stood up in something wet and squishy, Meowth smashed under its bedraggled paw. It stumbled off of the tiny cat, who in turn peeled himself off of Jessie and James and landed in the mud..the mud? Meowth lifted a hind paw out of the mud, taking a wet chunk of it with his paw with a gross sucking noise. He cringed at it in distaste and looked up. No trees. Raining. Raining hard. While Meowth observed the lack of trees and the bad weather, James crawled out from under Jessie, who stood up soon after, and inquired amidst shivers and sneezes,
"Meowth..where are we?"
"Dunno, but..." The residue of the white hole scurried across the rain-plagued sky. He pointed a drenched paw at it and stated, "I'd say dat white ting has sumting ta do wit it." By now the only source of light was the late lightning that streaked across the blackness, illuminating the surroundings even if it was only for a split second. A sprawling field. During a lightning storm. And lean brown forms growling in the distance. In the breaks in the thunder, Persian's ears picked up the loud growling. Something wasn't right.
"Mreoww..." Did you hear that?
"Wha?"
A primal snarl, a blur of flying teeth and claws that bounded in front of them, and James sealed his mouth, too scared to even whimper.The creature rushed at them with a fury they hadn't seen before, with the mad rage of one whose territory has been invaded. "EEEEEE!!!!!" James screamed as he dove to avoid a swift leap and a clash of teeth. He had his hands over the top of his head, shivering in terror. "Lets get out of here!"
"Don't be a baby!!" his partner growled, enlargening one of her PokéBalls amidst a bolt of lightning that carved faults in the heavens. The deluge clattering on the metal PokéBall, Jessie flung it, her loud shout colliding with a quaking thunder. "Arbok, pulverize this persistent pup!!!"
The Ball whizzed by the snarling animal's head, and it dove for the creature that emerged out of the Ball, menacing, with arched back and jaws open, it hissed at the smaller, but swifter wolf. "Arbok, Bi---" Arbok lunged, but the wolf rammed its full body weight into Arbok's midsection, and it bashed onto the rolling grass as the beast lunged for its tail, clamping its teeth onto the limb with unshakable tightness. "Arbok?!" The cobra hissed in fright and pain, and the Ball bounced off its hide and pulled Arbok in, leaving the wolf gnawing on air.
"Jessie...!!!!!" James whimpered. Jessie gave in with a frustrated growl and they bolted off. The animal's eyes flared an augmented rage, and it charged for Meowth, who sped off like the lightning bolt that broke the clouds at that instant away from the snapping teeth.
In one of those random glances to see what blood-stopping horror was behind you, Meowth looked back to see Persian: they had left it behind.
"WAAAH!" The rain fell in lead torrents as he sped through the mud, hearing the wolf's breathing behind him. The mud swirled into his face as he ran, obscuring his view of the dirty cream-hued feline sitting there, oblivious to everything but the rain. Thunder cut the air and spurred him on faster. Relieved he felt his paws grasp Persian's leg, pulling the blind and near-lame cat out of the trap of the pointed fangs, and ran like hell, not caring that the wolf was no longer in pursuit of them, not caring that it was standing dormant, raising its soaked muzzle to the black heavens, loosing an aggressive howl from the depths of its throat, not caring that he should be running twenty times faster than he was: the whole pack had them in their sights.
It wasn't long before a good twenty gleaming fury-engulfed eyes stared at them throughout the dark sky. Lightning illuminated their lupine faces for a brief split second, shedding light on that one countenance of ferocity. They closed in from behind, the faster ones bounding ahead to overtake these invaders from the sides.
They happened to be the alpha of the pack, the strongest, fiercest, and deadliest of their clan. Within minutes they had caught up to Jessie and James, snarling like demons, and the rest, howling at the crashing thunder, closing in on the intruders. The terrified Rockets ran faster than they ever had before, forgetting that Meowth was far behind them, unmindful that they were human and could only run so far without getting tired, and unaware...they were headed towards Nibelheim. Which at that point, the wolves stopped. Meowth kept running, but slowed down when he heard the howling no longer. The alpha prowled feet away from the humans, then planted its paws in the mud, stared into the blurry horizon ahead, gave a compromising growl, as if honoring ancient laws of boundary and territory, and slinked off, the rest of its pack dashing off behind it.
Jessie and James stared at each other questioningly, then looked back at the last of the brown shapes dissolving into the dark brown-green fields that they had just crossed. Meowth came trudging in back of them, letting go of Persian's leg and panting in exhaustion.
"Wondah..what made em...take off?"
"Mreowww..." Who knows...
Day and night alternated as lightning flashed and thunder boomed. The Rockets found themselves in the presence of that cursed town, where you couldn't trust what you saw and where blood of the past still lay splattered on the floor, this wretched place that lay in the shadow of remorseless and unrepented sins.
"What is this place, Jessie?" James asked, shivering at the force of a steady north wind passing through the gate at which they stood. "It doesn't look anything like home.." he murmured, the barely distinguishable shapes melding together in one inscrutable blob.
"It looks like-----"
They ventured through the gate, walking under the arch. That fateful arch. Where certain men were led to their doom. They could turn back at the arch. It was a deadly mistake to enter Nibelheim. But they didn't know. "A town?" James looked up and blijnked. Indeed, there was a town, with slanted roofs which the rain pounded on mercilessly which cascaded into the gutters. The window panes rattled violently with the wind and the deserted town square radiated a negative aura.
The four Rockets wandered into the square, the raindrops hammering them relentlessly. If this was a town, they could find shelter. And what better shelter to seek, than that big mansion at the north of town?
It wasn't exactly inviting. There was one light that barely penetrated the sheets and sheets of water. The rest of the house was as pitch black as the sky when the lightning was dormant. It looked old and creaky and even a little...haunted. They stood out shivering, debating amongst themselves whether to go in or not. But as the rain was beginning to soak through the skin into the marrow in the bone, inside in this weather was better than outside.
They entered, drenched, torrents of water following them in before the weight of the door pulled it shut behind them. They didn't mind, though. It wasn't warm...in fact, it was damp and cold, but the rain wasn't pounding them. Besides, there was a light that flickered every now and then. Someone must have been here.
Their waterlogged boots squeaked as they dripped trails of water across the room, admiring the old furnishings, elaborate though layered in dust and cobwebs from disuse and neglect. Meowth was the first to speak.
"Dis stuff looks like it's worth a lodda money!" the cat exclaimed, wringing out his tail on the floor and scratching the cobwebs away from the banister. It was hard business, there was layer upon layer and he had to use his claws to rip through them, leaving the sticky webs wrapped around the digits of his paw. He was about to get a good look at it when something brushed against his leg. "WAAH!" he screamed, falling off the banister onto his back. "What was dat?!" He turned around in time to see James' face shade a freaked-out purple, and he pointed a shivering finger at Meowth.
"D-d-d-don't l-loook n-now, M-M-m-eowth..." he whimpered, Jessie was likewise shivering. If both of them were scared there MUST be something there..slowly, fearfully, he turned his blue eyes towards a balloon-shaped orange grin. Wait...not just one. Two, three, four, five.....Meowth felt his bones liquify. Sliding towards Persian, he kept his eyes on the multiplying monsters, popping out of the shadows and surrounding them from all posible sides. He squeezed his grip around Persian's limp tail, and yanked it. The cat gave an ugly screech, and the three of them screamed through the bloated mass of orange, blowing through them with little difficulty but attracting not only the ones on the lower floor, but the creatures on the upper floor. They hurdled towards them in their swelling numbers, spraying this glowing gas in their direction which by a miracle they evaded. They shot down the hallway and through the bedroom, the blood and dirt on the creaking floor going unnoticed through their clamor. In front of them the massive shadow of the mosnters loomed impending and inescapable on the opposite wall. It wasn't long before they reached a corner. Dead end. Dead men.
The Rockets cowered smashed against the dusty wall, clinging to each other in one pitiful mass. Jessie clasping James, James latching onto Jessie, Meowth holding Persian, and Persian..it sat there not knowing what was happening, ignorant of the certain death that had trapped them where they couldn't run.
Its search for the master was becoming fruitless. They had gone all this way and it couldn't sense him anywhere. Not that it would be able to if he wasn't right in front of it, because of its poor sense of smell, but.even so...It was growing hopeless. Immersed in its self-pity, it released an ungodly screech.
The noise warped the very air. The Rockets forgot they were terrified and covered their ears with their hands, screaming with pain. The awful sound spread amongst the monsters. Their hidden ears writhed and crumbled under the blast, slowly being driven away by the intolerable screech. The creatures floated back into the shadows, some of them backing against the bookcase in the corner. The force of their weight activated a mechanism that lifted up the bookcase with a slam, and as the weakened creatures retreated into the obscurity of darkness, another darkness presented itself in front of them. Not eager to run into the grinning balloons that would be upon them swifter in retaliation, they with ringing ears but acquiring a deal of respect for the other feline, they penetrated the blackness. They tread carefully, not wanting to disturb the perpetual night. Now they noticed the dirt and blood trail. It grew darker and blacker with the lengthening shadows. They had to watch their footing with more attention as they descended: a swrong step met death. They hugged the wall and edged foward on the stairs, inching farther and deeper into the unknown depths.
Jessie found the nerve to speak when they reached the bottom. She felt the wall. Rocky, dark, dank, full of bats that flitted past them with hungry eyes. She walked a little on ahead.
"What would a cave be doing in a basement--?" With the next step Jessie stopped dead cold. There were noises, shouts, screams. Too far away to hear them she coudln't tell if it was a person's or a monster's. All she knew was that it was loud. They followed the rocky wall and stopped at a corner. There they couldn't hear much: it was muffled by the metallic door from which a weak light filtered through the tiny rectangle of a window set in the door. As they approached it, they pulled back behind the rock wall with the animal-like, though clearly human voice that cried behind the door.
"GET THE FUCK AWAY.......YA AIN'T TOUCHIN' ME NO MORE, YA HEAR ME?!?"
A pause, an extended silence, then Meowth heard Jessie's sharp voice beckon him to move.
"Meowth, go listen in!"
"What da--?!!"
She clapped her gloved hand on the cat's mouth while he swiped without result at the human. "Get in there!!!" she hissed. She tossed him as if he were a ball at the door, and he shook his head, shook off the dust, and with a scowl aimed at both of them, he climbed to the doorknob and peered inside, stealth and secrecy serving as his guide. Persian slowly got off his haunches and walked past Jessie and James, and it reared up and rested its paws on the door, meowing and scratching. Meowth lifted one "finger" of his paw to his mouth, which quieted Persian, and he peered inside. His large blue eyes pressed against the window and saw something straight out of those sci-fi/horror flicks: racks of various equipment he didn't know the names but could guess the purpose well enough, giant tubes pushed into a corner filled with glowing liquid, the usually dormant straps of the table tightly strapped around the poor thing that was lying on it, with his back in a painful-looking arc, like he got back surgery except it was to bend the spine and not straighten it. "I'd hate to be dat guy," he whispered, following the whole thing with his eyes, watching the mad doctor that was sicker than his patient.
The aforementioned was standing, facing the bookshelves, with an instrument held vertically betewen forefinger and thumb. Inside, a liquid bubbled and frothed. The man on the table couldn't see what was behind it, but Meowth could see the liquid clear as day. The other man spoke.
"Intriguing...that this chemical itself..merely applied to the skin... will complete the process...."
The pained groans, shouts, threats...those were nothing but background noises. What he'd come to expect in this...occupation. He slid the test tube in its hole in the block that sat near the instrument tray, and he stared at the anguished form of his victim.
"..But it has no affect on the blood..." He stared at the floor, the blood, the old blood, the new blood, and felt his mind drifting....away... Hm? He overcame the mometary distraction and lifted two syringes from the rack. Cid snapped his head sideways, the stark pain on his face overshadowed by a resharpened terror. Holy..shit..needles..... One was empty and one was filled with a gold-hued liquid. Yes, there were safter methods...but those would take far too long. He approached the pilot, struggling against the straps, which to his surprise, Hojo had to tigthen. Strange...he had underestimated hte pilot's strength and resilience. But he wouldn't escape.....not before the process was completed. For that was Hojo's unspoken policy: Enter a man and exit a monster. Why should Draconis Rex be an exception?
He found the point on the man's arm, and started to drain the red blood and inject the other fluid in equal amounts. Risky..imperfect.....deadly to the subject, but he was confident---perhaps too confident, in his accuracy.
Cid cried out as he felt ice of the Gaea Cliffs slide through his arteries, the shock of it hitting his heart showing up as erratic peaks on the heart monitor, but for Cid, torture by Satan himself.
The other man was nearing the acme of the procedure, and he took the tube of liquid in his hand, the manic screams reaching a frightful climax as he stood directly over him, the drop of liquid trembling at the lip of the tube as he held it at a right angle. Cid strained every muscle in his neck to find out what the hell was being done to him, failing utterly. He let his chin drop and heard the chilling voice of the madman reach his burning ears. "Now...what sort of majesty and grandeur lies in this vulgar human?" Hojo inquired the liquid, turning the tube upside-down.
"Jesus CHRIST.....make it stop.....make it fucking STOP......" the pilot groaned as the stream of liquid trickled down his now-arched back.. The junk he poured on him...it was being absorbed through his rough skin, seeping into the nerves and muscles, his skull, into his brain...Holy fuck, he felt as if he was getting TORN APART--- or at the very LEAST, something was stretching his limbs, straining, PULLING the muscles of his arms and legs to make things larger than they were supposed to be. No amount of tongue lashing he gave Shera could equal this physical punishment. GOD...it HURT SO BAD..... "GODDAMN IT.....Why do ya fucking do this to---to----PEOPLE?!"
"Why?" he repeated thoughtfully. "You and many...many others have been chosen to participate in this single experiment with this purpose: to perhaps divert humans from their selfish desires, to integrate them with the rest of the animal---and plant kingdoms...monera, fungi, and protists possibly when we develop the technology.." He raised a finger to his glasses and pushed the lense up his face. He stared the strapped man down, disdain and a contrasting elated disappointment hanging off the tone in his deadly voice. "Ah...but you comprehend only the pain..."
"I COMPREHEND, alright...." Cid repeated acridly with the rough growl of a beast beginning to overtake his gruff, human voice. "that you're a REAL SICK FUCK.". Hojo didn't seem to hear, pacing around the laboratory with his steel gaze on Cid. The change was slow to happen. Perhaps it was the systems of the subject fighting the change, resisting. It would all be futile in the end. Though he didn't succumb to the chemicals immediately, each individual skin cell seeming to combat this foreign invasion of chemicals, he had perfected them with his own hand: they could not fail.
Unhindered pain wracked the pilot's body, immobile under the tightened straps, Hojo observing every change and recording it in the dark hemispheres of his brain, noticing everything.....except the pain of the subject. And all the while Cid stopped scremaing long enough to look his torturer in the eyes and threaten him with a voice that was steadily becoming less and less recognizable. "One day you're gonna be on this same table.." It started on his hands, first, the part he'd always kept covered with gloves. "...screamin' your throat out, beggin' for the pain to go away," At the base of his fingers a sapphire dot appeared, eliminating the burnt peach pigment. "---and that one frick that's sicker than you's gonna screw ya up so damn good so even YOU don't know who ya are.." Another skin cell succumbed to the chemicals. All the while, Meowth watched, wide-eyed in silent fear. The change went quicker for him, watching it from afar and not living through it, but not quick enough. Ironic that this little cat devoted to theft and scams to further his own position in life would emphathize with someone he didn't even know. But it would take no heart to not feel an iota of pity.
The hours wore on. The change slowed with every hour. Meowth kept his eyes open the entire time, watching, wanting to avert his gaze, but found his eyes nailed. Slowly, slowly, the silver-sapphire color consumed one quarter of the hand, then one half, then three quarters, then the whole hand. Meowth's eyes began to redden from the lack of sleep, and still were as wide as if someone had put miniature jacks between his eyelids. Then the other man moved in front of the victim, walling off his view of the horror. In disorientation from what he'd witnessed, and from sleep deprivation, he slipped off the doorknob, fell onto Persian's slumped back, and grasped it with his paws, and turned the brass knob to get a better look.....
"Meowth, what are you doing?!" Jessie hissed, emerging from behind the wall and grabbing the cat's paw. Meowth looked from his paw to the doorknob, and jerked it away in shock. He couldn't BELIEVE he just did that...he would blow their covers big time. But the more he thought about it, the more he caught an agonized word in the otherwise unintelligble shouts and screams, the more he wanted to help the guy. But at the same time he didn't want to be seen by the Devil Incarnate. He was torn between what to do when Jessie tossed him off his thought train.
"What are they saying?"
"Look for yahself," Meowth coaxed with fearful in his feline eyes, pulling back Persian to let Jessie peep through the window...Her face turned white. She had looked just in time to see the scientist move aside slightly, letting her catch a clear view of the scaly, clawed hand hanging off of the table.
*~*~*
A/N: I decided to slow it down a bit. Sorry to end it in a rather awkward spot. Oo; Next chapter: Cid Inadvertantly Lands himself In Deep Dog Crap---not literally. But it's guaranteed that more happy, fluffy, wonderful things will happen to Cid in chapter 17. BTW, I know I'm a hypocrite for constantly denouncing fics that portray Hojo as all evil, but it's necessary for-to--- well...you'll see. -_^ One more thing: I have nothing against wolves. ^^;
by Blue9Tiger/title and story by DarkMutatedBrock/La Cidiana
A/N: Another month, another chapter. ^^: I now have pretty much this thing roughly planned out to the halfway point, (roughly being the key word), the ending worked out in bits and pieces, and to sum up, I think the whole fic can be fit in less than 50 chapters. Hopefully. OO Anyway, enough of this pointless drivel, on with the fic!
*~*~*
8 Main Street
Vermillion, Kanto 987321
To the esteemed President of Silph Corporation:
In a condensed maxim, reptuation is everything. This company's only defense against public slander and over-zealous individuals is our reputation. When those with rebellious attitudes are disposed of, there is nothing that will prevent the swaying of the masses. All it takes is persuasion and a pinch of muscle. Then the city is in your hand.
Rufus Shin-Ra, President of Shin-Ra Electric Company
*~*~*
Chapter 16: On The Edge of Despair
When Cid woke up the only thing he knew was that he hurt like hke hell. He didn't know why or how, but there was something drawn hard and tight on his neck and the back of his knees and on his shoulders. And he couldn't move.The ugly reality pieced itself together as alarm bells rang out in his head. He was..
Strapped. Cid got that queasy feeling in his stomach. Suddenly he felt like throwing up everything he ate in the past two days. Plus the stomach.
The dank foul air permeated his bare back..waitaminute, bare?! God, so they took his shirt and his gloves. Not even letting have THAT shred of dignity. What, were they gonna dissect him alive? HAAH...not "they". Cid thought with his gaze stiffening harder than the table he was strapped to. There was only ONE man...if his twisted green carcass had the RIGHT to be lumped in with the rest of them normal people.
"Goddamn bastard," growled Cid under his breath that came rougher in his prone state.. Hojo probably put him that way on purpose. To make it uncomfortable as possible. Forget uncomfortable. Painful was more like it. Damn, it hurt down there, too. Why was he HERE, anyway? Sick psycho only experimented on freaks. With something "special" about them. "Special" just another word for "wrong." And except for the cancer in his lungs that the doctors said was supposed to have killed him years ago, there was nothing "wrong" about him.
"Gotta be lookin' to retire real soon, thinkin' I'm one of them freaks," Cid mused while grimacing at the floor. He was positioned so that his head hung off the edge of the table. It took that much more of an effort to move his head, much less looke up. Damn little fuck.. getting so old that he didn't know normal from unormal. Just to think that senile son of a bitch would mistake HIM, Cid Highwind, one of the few Mako and Jenova-free in AVALANCHE, for the thousands of royally screwed-up and over weirdos on this Planet, made the corners of his mouth curve slightly upwards." Ha, that's rich.." Maybe there were chemicals floating around in the air that set him off or maybe it really was that hilarious because of its ridiculousness, but whatever the cause, Cid started laughing and laughing hard. Between hard-taken breaths between laughing he forced out some words. "I.....bet he thinks I got wings---" Laugh. and a tail--" Laugh. "---and was a test-tube baby-" Laugh. "---or some crazy shit like that."
How close to right he was.
"Not quite.."
The laughter died in that instant. Hojo pushed opened the door that bumped lightly against the wall, breaking a mat of cobwebs. He closed the door and locked it with a key in one hand. As he was turned around, a sterilized instrument in Hojo's other hand flashed in Cid's direction, but he couldn't damn well see it because of how he was positioned. But he could hear him. Hell, he could hear him, alright. Slimy oily voice more slick than a used car dealer. Only worse. A beat-up old piece of crap wouldn't hurt you. This old man fucked up Goth-boy in ways he couldn't..wouldn't imagine.
. "However, your self-assesment is rather accurate..." Slowly, dangerously, he moved from one end of the room to another. As he moved towards Cid, his arm and hand appeared, the one that was holding the instrument. NOW Cid could see it. FUCKING SHIT. "..surprising for an intellect of that caliber." He shifted it to his dominant hand, raising it, the limb like a viper rearing back before delivering the deathblow. He began muttering to another person that was not Cid, ignoring that he was even there. "This is the subject's offspring...I was unable to acquire its parents. I suppose what is known about this race will be acquired from studying Draconis Rex."
"Who the fuck're ya talkin' to?!" shouted Cid with a manic and wld tone, his body stiff and immobile but his mind in chaos and his soul in dread. Hojo left him without the explanation the blonde man was dying for, and approached him from the side, linking him to the heart monitor set up near the table. Cid's face flushed violet with rage and curses flew unchecked from his mouth. This did not alarm the scientist. Rather, he was elated by this discovery, and he voiced with a tinge of mirth in his observation,
"Retained vicious temperment.." he muttered through the wave of words that would shame the filthiest of dumps. The scientist turned his attention to a batch of chemicals next to the instrument tray. His spidery fingers were want to grab them, but...no, not yet. There was something yet to be done. "In one treatment with this formula the process would be complete..."
Process. He wasn't joking, was he? He really WAS going to do it.
. "But...recent tests have proved that these chemicals do not realign the vertebrae." The dangerous glow in Hojo's eyes grew lethal as he again lifted the instrument, its sharp edge reflecting the Mako glow. "I'm afraid I'll have to remedy this problem..." Like a dagger, he raised it and traced it across the air level with his eyes, the instrument glimpsing the poor pilot's face locked in total terror.. "..the old- fashioned way.."
He pushed the blade into Cid's flesh and drowned his victim's screams with apathy.
*~*~*
A hand desperately wanting sunlight moved fidgeting from pocket to brow, mopping its owner's head with a handkerchief. He crammed it into his shirt, disgusted with himself for this uneeded alarm. True, his doctor had been prescribing stronger medication for those irritating headaches, and his close friends warned him time and again that he was working too hard on the proposal to use a meager five percent of the company's funds to restoring Midgar, and not enough time thinking about that upcoming vacation. Shin-Ra won't spend a gil on a dump where no more military forces could be extracted, they said to him time and time again. But like a cat waiting for the right time to swipe the meat when the butcher's not looking, Reeve was set on this proposal....though if he knew Rufus' "rule with fear, not money" policy, he knew that his first priorities would be rebuilding the army, not Midgar. He could start counting his blessings if he could squeeze even one percent for the reconstruction. But maybe, he thought, there were other reasons besides military: Reeve was a true Midgarian: he was bound not only to the land by loyalty but also, in a distant, indirect way, its people. Rufus wasn't.
Loyalty...hmph. Reeve knew the story behind this alliance, this merger...Rufus was toying with the old fool, taking advantage of Silph's diminishing profits and the hearing aid of its president.
In name only, they were equals. Beneath the surface was where the reality lay: Shin-Ra owned Silph.
Reeve found himself fidgeting again..that medecine was really wracking his nerves..he searched for something that would soothe...found it. A filled bookshelf with all sorts of texts on both his line of work, some that he had written himself, mostly diagrams that spanned hundreds of pages from which he derived the Midgar model, and heavier books on his favorite topic of leisure.
Running a finger along the shelf, he chose one where an inch-thick layer of dust had accumulated over years of neglect. It was wedged in the back between two he read more frequently, but the sight of it jogged his memory and he opened A Complete Guide to Cats.
Reeve sat down in his office chair and began reading, digesting the subject that his affinity for was made so apparent by Cait Sith. He looked longingly at the rather uninteresting heap of machinery next to the door, aware that arriving to this new location locked the machinery and ultimately cut him off from Cait Sith and Gaia.
The man flipped through the pages of the paperback, obsolete and inaccurate since more research had been done since then, but for Reeve, it tapered this induced anxiety. Besides, his fondness towards cats wasn't a scientific preoccupation. It didn't bother him in the least if one specie had been classified wrong or if a new breed was actually an old breed with different markings.
Diagrams of an anomaly were a different story.
What the hell--? he thought when he turned the page. There were a series of pages that were bound differently than the rest of the book...crudely, rushed with primitive adhesives, as if whoever placed it there was in a turmoil of mind. But the way it had been bound didn't perturb him as much as the diagram of a mix of many different felines, mostly of the wild variety, with the glaring characteristics of a man...A caricature of felinity and humanity intertwined, seamless melding with the boundary between man and beast undetectable. This isn't your ordinary kitty, he thought humorlessly as he flipped to the next page with hesitancy. There, sets of diagrams, the same cat-man from all points of view showing internal organs and the outside form. Above it was scrawled what looked like formulas and notes, the kind of thing that..that..Hojo presented at his lectures---Shaken, he turned the page. Bending his eyes downward he made out the hastily-written script.
"Unlike the other subjects, that must be enhanced with surgical procedures, this subject attains full potential through chemical treatment alone. No doubt that S- 010 had reverted to human form: it was restored to consciousness before I could adminster the final chemicals. The effects are permanent and I can record this gradual change. However, I don't believe I can witness the full process in a lifetime without a sufficient catalyst. Securing him kng enough to administer the chemicals will be the real difficulty. However, the change also can be activated by an adventitious exposure to the formula-----" Reeve paused, closed the book in resentful irritation and put it down on the desk. "How did science research end up in my books?" he asked himself rather grudgingly. If anyone should be retaliating for lack of funds, it should be the Space Exploration Department or his own, not the Science Department. It was until only recently that an excessively large amount of gil was going into Weapons Development alone. Or...it could be someone's idea of a sick practical joke.
Not just anyone's, Reeve thought semi-bitterly as he opened up the book again to that perturbing page. He almost blew us all sky high along with Midgar. Reeve frowned and reached for his handkerchief again, but pulled away. . Why does Rufus keep him on his staff, anyway? He's not any more loyal to Shin-Ra Inc. than I am.
The dark-bearded Shin-Ra executive put the book open-faced on the desk, checked his wristwatch, and reached for a capped bottle at the corner. He unscrewed the cap, retrieved a granola bar from his trouser's pocket, and stuck the medecine in the granola bar, absently observing the diagram of the cat's eye that studied him from the paper. The more he looked at it, the more it bothered him..He turned to a photo of a cat, one whose eyes emanated an unearthly glow when the light struck them the right way. He was no stranger to this, as he'd seen many felines on the one trip to Wutai he took. That alone didn't bother him. But...He cleared his throat, leaned back in his chair, looked at the cat's eyes again, like two golden moons suspended side-by-side. Like a tornado it came to him. Whatever ills the medicine was designed to prevent broke through its defenses, and his head rained sweat and he was shaking all over and he had this godawful headache and it was all because...
.. Because he'd seen that glow..on a human, a man...Before Diamond Weapon, before he came to power.....
Suddenly his phone rang. Reeve collected himself enough to lift it off the reciever and put it to his ear and gave a quick and embarassing reply as the granola bar lodged in his throat, and he choked out a mousy "yes, President," in response to the "piss me off and I'll kill you" type of irritability ringing loudly on the other line. Reeve quickly hung up and sat there, mopping up his flooded head and staring bug-eyed at the phone. It might have been the bad reception, but that last word and a snarl of a bobcat were not that different. He looked again at the book. and turned to the diagrams, each individual finger shaking so hard it took all of his mental faculties to focus and reach that page. Those insinuating images seemed to grin at him with the knowledge of some ugly truth...
Reeve swallowed another tablet before rushing out the door.
*~*~*
The ebony dragon glided on an invisible current of air, beating its wings in time with its pain, mechanically, nothing majestic in this creature that had been revered and feared because of its supremacy. But that was of legend. This was reality. This was a product of the ambitions of men, not the will of nature. The greed of corporate kings spawned this creature, the madness of a disfigured quest for knowledge, these irreversible errors of the proud beast known as humans mothered this broken animal with an indifferent and brutal hand.
Misty held her bad arm with her good one, laughably insignificant in size, a mere grain of dust blowing in the shadow of a mountain.
The agonized creature let out a roar that made the wind tremble and bow, in tenuous command of the elements themselves, or at least one of them. Night was absolute around it; the darkness was king. As Misty followed the black shape, she felt the darkness growing around her, enveloping the ground she half-walked, half-stumbled over, the chains of trees, the shadows themselves, encompassed by the darkness. The Moon hid behind the black curtain. The dragon soared with crushed spirits into the steel sky. Where at that point, it halted in mid-air. A voice came, the hatred directed against itself like many blades dissolved, dripping away to reveal the true form of the black dragon.
Night without day. This is the the gruesome reality of now. Imagine day.....The Moon returned....without night?
"Aghhh!!" Misty screamed as a flood of light cascaded into her open eyes. Her reflexes weren't quick enough, and light as blinding as the Sun invaded her sight, and she fell backwards from its sheer force, that dispersed the blackness and immersed it in white, white light. "What's---going on?" she groaned, clamping both hands over her face, the pain of jerking that arm up minimal compared to this skull-splitting light. "Where'd the dragon go?" At least, in the darkness, she could move, but this light, nothing like the warm sunlight in the morning, but a relentless, brutal ice sun mulitplied and magnified by a thousand, stiffening the muscles, paralyzing the nerves, and numbing the mind. "Wh--what's that?!"
Now the black dragon and its aura of torment was gone: in its place was the spawn of eagle and lion of myth and legend in terrible resplendence, bathed in this pure whte light. Misty couldn't see it turn around, but felt the wind rush past her face as it headed towards her, its thoughts resonating through her mind, a foreign tongue she could neither understand nor wanted to. This day without night approaches. Follow me and the night will end.
Light and shadow displaced the white suns, This unending night. and the Moon again appeared amidst the darkness, . the shadows on the ground and the light from the stars The day will begin with the storm.. manifesting the balance between the contrasting forces of nature. The rain.. Misty teetered unsteadily, When the rain falls they will fall.. the world spinning round and round, The masses will then rise.her location, The rest... what had just happened, Will die. individual shapes registering in her brain, the false illusions of the black dragon----before it all stopped, and dazed, she stumbled again over a root and regained her balance, swaying on unsteady legs in the light of the white griffin. The beacon didn't wait. She followed it using as much speed her humanity lent her..
*~*~*
The agents of Team Rocket were many and one, individuals and a team, separated in thought and action and unified in one soul. Right now that soul was a pulverized remnant of pride and ambition. Every single one of them had been unstoppable: they knew they would beat the odds, conquer the world, take every last free or owned Pokémon for themselves and spread chaos across the lands.
All that was gone. They knew they were powerless. The HQ was the HQ. If it burns, so what? But HOW it burned...how their comrades burned...scorched in the breath of that monster, left them dreamless. The Rockets that were barely daunted left. The vast majority whose pride was a pile of desolate ashes sat, stood, or lay clustered around the remains, a people who discovered their god wasn't immortal.
The team became individuals, lost, wandering individuals, who travelled an path obscured by doubt. It could only grow more doubtful when the night was flooded in day.
The griffin clouded the ruins in white shadow. Terrified Rockets gazed up into the blaze in fearful awe. Some of them clapped their gloved hands over their heads and fell on their knees shivering like an Ekans' rattle, others retreated into their tents, and others unclipped their PokéBalls and got ready to fight the intruder. The boss was gone, Team Rocket was finished, what had they to lose?
But it didn't attack. It glided but didn't dive, leaving a heavenly aura in its wake behind its lion-like tail. It opened its sharp beak and released another cry, this blend of the eagle's call and the lion's bellow parting the clouds which trembled at this manifestation of power this creature posessed. .
Somewhere near the ruins but distanced from the black and purple and grey-clad people directly under this harbringer of a false heaven Ash still lay unconscious. This mobile dawn was far-reaching. It stretched its pale fingers across to the boy, extending itself through the darkenss. The haunting light danced on Ash's eyelids. It lingered only until the weary eyes that had seen so many things in the past few days showed themselves to the darkness.
The call pierced and rattled his ears.
"KKKHHHHHGGGHHHHHRRRRRRRRROOOARRGHHH..."
Follow me and the night will end.
"H--huh.?!" Trying to ignore that his whole body was sore and his arm stung from the clawing and he was hungry enough to eat a Slowking, he listened for the cry again. It didn't come. All there was was the coo of some nocturnal Pidgey and the squeak of Mankey and a really loud, shrill call that sounded an awful lot like..."Misty?"
"Ash!" The shrillness was reduced to a drained pant. The girl came into view jogging away the last bit of her stamina, coming to a tired stop in front of him. From what Ash could see, she hadn't gotten off any better than he had. She was likewise a wreck and tired and upset and confused and...it looked like Brock got to her, too. But somewhere along the way the wound opened and it was bleeding again. Ash sat gaping at the wound, then Misty slapped her palm onto it and pressed, hoping to stop the bleeding. Neither of them were saying anything, but they knew, on the outside and inside, they were hurt.The inside would take longer to heal, but Misty knew, that if they reached Pallet, they could at least fix the outside. "We've got to get going."
Ash nodded and struggled to to stand. His usually unalterable determination broke each time he fell. Somehow his vigor, energy...was all gone. The fourth or fifth time he fell on his rump Misty grabbed his good arm with her good hand, pulled him up, and leaned him over her shoulder. Brathing in deeply trying to catch some of that lost air, she started towards Pallet Town. The griffin...she guessed...would have to wait..
"H--hey, Misty, where're we goin'?!" Ash questioned frantically with voice hoarse from a dry throat. Last time he had something to drink was in the Team Rocket dungeons---tasted nasty, too. But that wasn't what he was worried about.
"Pallet Town so we can---ngh," she grunted as she stared at the bright red streaks on her arm. Too deep...it was no use, just holding a hand on it wouldn't make it stop. If Ash's opened up too they would really be in trouble. "---rest up, then I'm going to," she picked up and put down her feet slightly faster, some of her breath returning, and some of the glisten returning to her dullened eyes as she finally finished what she had to say,"follow that Pokémon!"
The boy's voice was fraught with cracks of worry and concern. He had friends he had left behind. How with the destruction of their enemy's base could he lose those companions?
"But what's gonna happen to Pikachu---and Bayleef and Cyndaquil and Totodile and Noctowl?"
Misty stopped walking, her expression freezing to ice as cold tears formed. They fell silently without sobs, the silence of one mourning for the dead. After a pause she found hard to break, the orange-haired girl poured the truth.
"Ash, don't you think I would've LOOKED for Togepi if it was going to live?"
Another stretch of silence. "So you're sayin'...you think our Pokémon're dead?" the boy asked, his voice growing increasingly more fearful. Misty nodded solemnly. Ash ripped away from Misty's grip, falling on one knee in his failing effort to balance. This wasn't happening..you could feel things in nightmares, right? This was just another nightmare. Soon Pikachu would hit him with a Thunderbolt and he'd be awake and they'd continue their journey together and they would get badges and meet new friends and fight new enemies.....
C'mon, Pikachu. Gimme a Thunderbolt!
Any moment now he'd feel those tingling bolts across his spine. He'd be dizzy from the shock, stars in his eyes, wobbly, close to fainting......
He drew his fist out of the ground and it shook with pain. So this is how it all ended, huh? No encouraging words, no good-byes? To think that it ever was a perfect day. With all his energy, he stood up on one leg and screamed out to the ruins,
. "PIKACHU!!!"
The silence was eternal.
"Come on, Ash," Misty urged more gently than she had in a long time. But Ash would've barely noticed the difference. Eyes flooded in tears he let Misty pull him up and away. The call, that beckoning call of the griffin split the clouds again. She resisted it's compelling command. Their solemn path was towards Pallet.
*~*~*
As the Dodrio crowed at dawn, the Murkrow cawed at dusk.
But it was interrupted. For then, dawn arrived prematurely in all its brutal terror. In unyielding and remorseless light it bathed Murkrow, and it reeled back on its perch of bark, the blinding brilliance driving it off the branch. It plunged from the twig, reacting just in time before it painted the ground in its blood and feathers. Its short wings propelled it through the black heavens, where the light was a minority and the darkness ruled indomitably.
A clawed hand erupted from the sea of white light like the dead reach out of the ground, grasping freedom they are denied in their caskets. Gemini plunged from the portal, landing squarely on his haunches. Like a liberated prisoner he rooted his claws in the dirt and scooped it up in his hands, each grain slipping down the scales and the scars. It was dirt and not metal, the cold, cruel metal of the cube....yes, this was soil. The outdoors. Freedom. And yet..something was horribly, horribly wrong..
Houses. Houses meant humans.
The surrounding land populated with humans was foreign, alien.....forbidden territory. Upon demand of instinct, he reeled back on four legs, shaking in cowardice with his hands over his demonic visage, the point of his fangs visible through the greyish-black curtain. He shouldn't ..shouldn't BE here..he didn't BELONG here....This was where HUMANS lived..wait..he could scent it, the air, the unpaved dirt roads, civilization in the countryside, where young boys' dreams began on a high and hopeful note...
High and hopeful. For aspiring Pokémon TRAINERS.
He drew back further in fear of this civilized human place, curling into almost a ball out of which his twisting tail poked out of. "PRHAGHRRET TROWHGGNG..." he growled a cracked cry of despair. Oh, God, what if someone saw him? Tracey...Professor Oak..Mrs. Ketchum..Christ, they'd LOATHE him..they'd--- they'd---
And who should speak but HIM. In the middle of the portal he'd changed, shedding his monstrous form and taking on this one, no less monstrous in the soul, but HUMAN in physical shape. As proud as before, with his henchman whose confidence was thinner, you could see the rigid shame in her eyes, yet radiating that proud Rocket air as if nothing had happened to sink the battleship. Perhaps it was a facade. But whatever it was, it was masked by human superiority..
"Indeed it is." The beady black eyes connected with the crimson slits of the demon. ." Another supply of blood to last you throughout the night."
That comment might have been matter-of-fact, but Brock could read its undertones. The blaze of Gemini's tortured eyes ignited into torches of the underworld. He elevated himself with one fist in the dirt, fury and menace radiating from his very body in invisible waves of a terrible blackness of the mind.
His threat of a swift death burned in his voice.
I won't miss this time, Gio.
"Take your worst shot, boy," taunted the man, completely bare, that damned brand exposed as well as everything else, caked in sweat and ashen black from the smoke, but the shame a man like him would have felt was masked by his humanity.
With the roar of an enraged Nidoking Gemini shot at Giovanni's throat like a bullet. Seconds away from tearing through the throat, something exploded inside of him. He groaned, fell on his knees, looking up in devestation at the five scratch lines he left on his enemy. What the-?!?!
The finishing blow was never delivered. He sat on his knees, confused and upset as he watched his arm and his hand lose scales, and the claws, the lethal tools of Giovanni's desired demise, blunt into nails he hadn't clipped since before this whole nightmare, but not sharp enough to even make the man bleed...
He doubled over in pain as the malformities of organs changed into normalcy, but at the wrong time...the COMPLETELY wrong time...
He groaned as he fell to the ground, drained from the transformation. He lay in the dirt with revenge kicking him in the face. Any other time he would have given ANYTHING to be human. But at that point, where Giovanni was a man and Brock was a Pokémon, he HAD the upper claw...he would have cut him down...but no..the mutations were controlled by chemicals....Tears of anguish formed in his closed eyes. CHEMICALS..you couldn't rely on or trust. But what was there to trust besides yourself?
"You..you KNEW that was coming...bastard."
That smile that Brock had come to abominate sat plastered on the man's proud face."Unlike you, boy," he replied haughtily, "I am more--- " The vowel was lost on him, and he slackened his normally rigid jaw as the word fell ungraciously out of his mouth.
Fortune would have it that the four red letters on his arm that now defined him were tangled in the corner of his eye.The facade began to peel away as he stared perplexed and befuddled at the letters. He couldn't...read them.
Once Brock deduced this, he wasn't hesitant to tear it right off.
"You're more what?" Brock parted his mouth in a caustic grin. "Human?" At this point Brock gave way to laughter, too manic to be genuine and perhaps a little insane. But it didn't matter right now. He had his nemesis where he wantedhim. He pointed an accusatory finger at the "man" and took a biting stab. "So...the secret's out, huh, Gio? It says HOJO. Didn't get that?" The grin was almost sadistic as he over-pronounced the syllables. "HHHHOOOOOOJJJJJOO." With that he kept verbally kicking him, and with a razor-edged statement, he got him in the balls.
"Just this once, I'm MORE human than you."
In his assaulted brain Giovanni searched for words to counterattack. Cassidy bailed him out. "Ha...that's where you're wrong, kid." The remark oozed rueful bitterness. She tilted her chin down. It was so much more distressing to look at the ground. You could see what crap you were walking in, what was crawling up to bite you---you didn't see those kind of things in the sky. The ground forced her to see reality.
. Strange that she would say this, as she was one of the more confident and anthroprocentric agents. But she and Butch.....Team Rocket.....had their golden age. There was nowhere else to go now.....but down. With a quivering lip, she choked on the truth. "None of us are human anymore."
A margled croak disturbed the melancholy that inevitably followed. Cassidy was like some knife that shaved off a part of his brain and the words with it. A fragile silence swelled between Brock and Giovanni. The tension beneath it cracked through the pause but didn't shatter it. Still, it was only a matter of time before one would challenge the other again. Perhaps next time it wouldn't be with words and perhaps next time it wouldn't be one-sided.
Cassidy bent down eye level with Butch, instinctively wrapping her arms around her chest to cover that area. Another croak stumbled thorugh the air, in so many different chords that she wasn't sure where one began and one ended. For some inexplicable reason, she knew that it was talking to her. But...she wouldn't know what it was..not ever, because he would forget.....all that he'd seen and heard during the night. With the dawn's first beams of light penetrating the walls of night his memories would be effaced. Goddammit...she thought with granitic hatred that lay crushingly on her eyes.. Why did the geezer have to be RIGHT? She veered her head away from the lumpy, deformed face and plugged the double wells set in her eye sockets. So.....she would never know.
It was then she heard a voice. Pleasant. Naive. Saccharine sweet. She still hasn't left Candyland, Cassidy pondered with a cracked smile. But it quickly dropped into a curve. The woman fast approaching wasn't one of them, but an outsider... Pointless as the prattling was, if anyone saw them...bedlam was imminent.
"You can cut the awkward silence, we're going to have company REALLY soon," Cassidy informed her superior.. inferior...which was it? She numbed that thought and tucked it away for later. The human grew closer and her irritating voice grew louder with the shortened distance. Perhaps subconsciously, Cassidy dropped the formalities of "boss" or "sir". "Quick, into the bushes!" she whispered, taking Butch and literally diving into the foliage, a crash of branches and crunch of leaves escaping the detection of the woman.
"What?! Christ.." Brock exhaled a tightened breath. That was..that was.....Ash's mom. He broke for the dense cover of the thick bushes and rolled into it, a few leaves scattering on the shadowed ground. The woman closed the gap. She was coming up over the hill with steady gait and decision in where she was going: straight up. For some inexplicable reason, Giovanni hesitated. His rectangular eyes stretched wide and the tiny pupils dilated in fear...fear that locked him in place. That voice...that sweet, gentle voice.. It floated from the base of the hill, closer, nearer, as she walked up the hill. Still he didn't move. And if she saw him.....in this state, questions would arise. The truth would come out. Burying his indecision, he finally ripped his foot from the ground, ran, and crawled into the foliage, pulling his leg in before the woman reached the spot where they previously had been.
Mrs. Ketchum wasn't her usually cheery self. The cloud of puzzlement and confusion rained worry on her head and quieted her as she stopped. Where was Sam? He hadn't been here for the longest time...he told her he was out at some researcher's convention in Vermillion, but he should've been back by now. It had been too long. She had good reason to worry, considering the events broadcasted on the news...Viridian and Pewter...the horror stories of the survivors.... Tracey hadn't come home either: he had followed Sam, true, that boy went wherever Sam went, but he could call home. Vermillion had no limits to their vid-phones or telephones for that matter.
And why was it so bright over here, particularly at the big white circle a few feet above the middle of the road? One of her eyes closed to block the light and she edged towards the white hole, hearing voices, both rough around the edges, one less refined with the language he used. She stepped up to it, gazing into the intense light, and the two shapes beyond. It wasn't much larger than her, and it was shrinking every minute. A shout echoed through the white hole, and the two shapes came running faster, faster, dashing towards an ever- shrinking light. Mrs. Ketchum moved out of the way just in time.....for a burly toughman with a gun for an arm and a one-eyed dog tumbled through the portal, both layered in thick smoke, as the white sliver sealed itself with a thin flash.
"That was a close one," huffed Red as he turned around to look at the now-empty space. "This gate was open for a long time...but the one we first came through closed--" He raised one of his paws to scratch away a bug. "--like that." He began to sway his muzzle across the perimeter of their surroundings, scouting the area for enemies. "There has to be something keeping these things open." The wolf/lion leaped down the hill then came back. Scents were hitting his nose hard, but none seemed gearing to attack.
Barret didn't say anything. He was unusually quiet. In fact, the whole place was unusually quiet. It would be about now that Cid would be swearing about the Highwind, but....shit...were they short one? He counted in his head that smoke and sweat clung to mercilessly. One, two...two. Well, there was a third one there, but no chick didn't come with them through the portal. The pilot was gone.
"Yo, brotha...Highwind ain't here," Barret exhaled. Red could tell by his comrade's gravelly upset tone put a noticeable break in his usually firm voice. The solid AVALANCHE leader let his fist quake, a mountain succumbing to the shifting of the crustal plates. Finally it crumbled, and he lowered his head somberly. But it was a fleeting emotion. Hot, magma-like anger boiled and erupted from the wounds in the earth and exploded into a fiery rain of curses. .
"Dat fire musta got 'im, goddamnit!" he bellowed with his teeth on edge and his fist in the air. "Death's 'jes waitin' fo' us. First dat girl an' now Highwind." With a blazing fit of fury he crushed the Gaian belief and blew up its remains. "Hell wi' da Lifestream! Dey're dead! And dat ain't gonna help nobody!"
Cid could very well be dead. Red thought it wasn't likely. If Cid got left behind, Hojo was right behind him, a jackal behind its kill. Though he couldn't think for the life of him what Hojo would want with a dirty-mouthed pilot, there was a chance that he was alive...
"If the fire didn't get him," Red stared off into the night with bleak fears taking pictoral shape in his brain. Ugly, gruesome shape. "..Hojo did."
"Dat quack?!" Barret burst out, the rage spiralling into detectable fear, then smashing to the bottom with grim hopelessness in this realization: "He'd be betta off dead."
"Exactly." Red set his forepaws on the edge of the hill, his short claws piercing the top of the dusty incline. He surveyed the houses bunched up together, a far cry from the gargantuan skyscraper in the center of the city. No doubt they were days away from the city. With a defeated sigh the dog came to a bleak conclusion, "It might be too late even if we find out where Shin-Ra is."
It was then that the invisible woman spoke up.
"Shin-Ra?" she repeated with a touch of confusion, but it soon left her: Mrs. Ketchum had especial reason to keep up with the news, not knowing where her boy was constantly, having to worry about him lest he end up in some danger. It was no surprise, then, that she knew about Silph's fateful decision.. "Oh, you mean that company that merged with Silph?"
"You know where it is?" Red inquired evenly, voice lined with the most minute speck of hope. The genial woman nodded, and she smiled thinly, though the untrained eye would percieve it as a ditzy, flighty smile.
"Why yes, it's in Vermillion City, but--" The fake show of sunshine melted and fell with the expression of doubt and worry that now darkened her face, and she crossed her arms over her breast, flattening the pink shirt she perenially wore. Her tone was laced with motherly concern that was not unfounded. "I don't know why you would want to travel at this time of night."
"Yo hun, dat ain't none a yo' business!" Barret tried to push her away, but the insistence in Mrs. Ketchum's voice was hard to get rid of, and she answered in indignance,
"Hmph..you DID say you needed directions. I insist you stay the night." What?! Cid's a goner for sure. "Besides, I'm not letting you go ANYWHERE with that burn." Unfolding her arms she reached out with her hand and had her palm on the violently protesting man's shoulder. She squeezed a big bunch of flesh in both palms and started to lead him into the house. Somehow, Barret's iron muscles changed into jelly and turning purple from humiliation, he let himself be walked. Red followed them into the welcoming light, figuring it wouldn't be wise for him to depart without Barret. It wasn't in his character to leave a friend in need, especially at the mercy of a stranger. And other than that, he could use a rest, too.
A heavy thud came from behind the house.
May stumbled by, drooping, limping, falling, bleeding, with the words of the angel heavy and resonating in her mind. All was normal, the ground was still ground, the houses were still houses, the bushes were still bushes and the trees were still trees, and the sky... Her face fell, her lower lip trembled. The sky...was still engulfed by darkness...but.. She took a step back, rubbed the murkiness from her eyes, and beheld......a white, heavenly light dim but present on the horizon. Day was approaching. The angel would return.
*~*~*
Persian's blackened paws sank into the earth, forming a staggered trail that wound serpentine through the hard-packed dirt. It stumbled slump- shouldered across the rough terrain: the scattered stones cut the padding on its paws and made blood leak out of them in globules. It dragged its tail, it shuffled its gait, it walked brokenly amongst the shadows. It could pick up no scent: its sense of smell all but eliminated by a luxurious lifestyle. It searched unguided, unsure of where it was going, knowing only by an irrevocable instinct that its master was out there and that it must find him.
Behind it, the one being that once couldn't stand the sight of its evolution followed it tirelessly. Even further behind, an irritable Jessie and an exhausted James followed them, more out of obligation than choice. With the mind-blowing events etched permanently in their memory, there was no way they were staying alone, out in the open, colorful targets for any other freak that lurked in the shadows. Their best bet was to stick with Meowth and Persian.
But they didn't know how long they could keep it up.
"Meowth," Jessie began with a fake placid tone that rose to indignance and disgust, "We're following a BLIND cat!!! How is THAT going to help us find the boss?!?!"
The cat answered with his gaze fixed on the other feline, "Persian sticks ta da boss like glue." Meowth winked. "'Sides, he ain't gonna make it solo. Jas lookat 'im!!" Meowth turned to his comrades, pointing out the sorry state of Persian. In their own worn-out condition, the humans could find only a tinge of pity for it, and they collectively groaned as the smaller cat justified himself. "Meowth godda make sure he don't get hurt no more," he concluded dutifully, clenching a paw with a serious look on his face. And then he marched on. James whimpered, sighed, and bowed his head, his blue-violet hair following its movement. The tone in hs voice was listless and yearned for rest.
"I miss when they didn't like each other."
The other member of their team appeared, breaking through the two halves of Jessie's PokéBall and from a white mass of light formed a light-colored blob with not much more shape to it. Its bent arm was at its head, saluting anything and everything in its hoarse, scratchy cry,
"Wobbbbb--uffffet!!!!!!"
Jessie glared murder at the squinty-eyed blob.
"Get BACK in your ball------"
Flash. Pain.
"WOB?"
Jessie, now fed up, stopped dragging herself along, stood, and detatched Wobbufet's PokéBall. She threw it with more force than usual, but Wobbufet ducked the incoming object, screamed, and waddled away from Jessie and James with both hands over its squinted eyes. The sounds of his partners' screaming halted Meowth for a secnd and he turned his oval head back to see the humans chasing it down..
"Wobbufet, come back!!!" James implored.
"Get BACK HERE!!" Jessie commanded, magma seeming to bubble in her dark azure eyes. She was already out of breath, and the run that slowed to a jog and to a walk wasn't getting her any closer to the fleeing blob. Frustrated, she flung her PokéBall half the distance that she had thrown it earlier, which whizzed through the shadows and, barely reaching its target, bounced onto the back of it's head. It was soon back in the ball, and Jessie retrieved it, glaring at it in all her fury. James tilted his head while gasping for new air and asked between pants,
"I wonder what would---make Wobbufet run-----off like that...it's never done that before..."
Jessie growled in agitation as the rage cooled to anger. "It's acting the same way it always does!!" She angrily pocketed the Ball and grit her teeth, irritation creasing her forehead. "Brainless and-----"
Jessie's rant was cut short when a sliver of white light rent the sky, turning night into day. "Arghhhhh!!" she screamed, falling onto the ground hard on her back. Up ahead, Meowth saw the light, too. Shiny..what was that?.He turned his paw in the other direction, drawn to the light.
"You-----you were saying?" James asked, shielding his eyes with both hands and an arm. "No wonder Wobbufet ran away...it doesn't like light." .The wound in the sky opened and widened. The shine was scatching to the retinas..it burned so bright they curled their heads against their chest, but their eyes were penetrated there as well. The sun if it rose at night.....
But this wasn't the sun. As they neared closer to it it began to pull them. An invisible suction swallowing them. James grabbed onto the ground onto some stray tufts of grass as he felt the gravity of the light pulling onto him. He screamed. Jessie grasped onto his wrist but felt herself being sucked in, too.. Persian slipped into it without knowing what was happening, Meowth falling it near-willingly. All throughout this, no dread mechanical noise, no violent winds, no grim hand reaching out to grasp them from within the light. Only this white hole in the sky, acting like a black hole, pulling, yanking, ripping them away from the grass blades that began to get pulled as well. They could only shriek in terror.....as they were crammed through the gate to that other world...
Gaia.
*~*~*
Persian squirmed under the fall of rain it found itself under. The drops fell heavy on its ratty fur, chilling its bones and making it call for the master It stood up in something wet and squishy, Meowth smashed under its bedraggled paw. It stumbled off of the tiny cat, who in turn peeled himself off of Jessie and James and landed in the mud..the mud? Meowth lifted a hind paw out of the mud, taking a wet chunk of it with his paw with a gross sucking noise. He cringed at it in distaste and looked up. No trees. Raining. Raining hard. While Meowth observed the lack of trees and the bad weather, James crawled out from under Jessie, who stood up soon after, and inquired amidst shivers and sneezes,
"Meowth..where are we?"
"Dunno, but..." The residue of the white hole scurried across the rain-plagued sky. He pointed a drenched paw at it and stated, "I'd say dat white ting has sumting ta do wit it." By now the only source of light was the late lightning that streaked across the blackness, illuminating the surroundings even if it was only for a split second. A sprawling field. During a lightning storm. And lean brown forms growling in the distance. In the breaks in the thunder, Persian's ears picked up the loud growling. Something wasn't right.
"Mreoww..." Did you hear that?
"Wha?"
A primal snarl, a blur of flying teeth and claws that bounded in front of them, and James sealed his mouth, too scared to even whimper.The creature rushed at them with a fury they hadn't seen before, with the mad rage of one whose territory has been invaded. "EEEEEE!!!!!" James screamed as he dove to avoid a swift leap and a clash of teeth. He had his hands over the top of his head, shivering in terror. "Lets get out of here!"
"Don't be a baby!!" his partner growled, enlargening one of her PokéBalls amidst a bolt of lightning that carved faults in the heavens. The deluge clattering on the metal PokéBall, Jessie flung it, her loud shout colliding with a quaking thunder. "Arbok, pulverize this persistent pup!!!"
The Ball whizzed by the snarling animal's head, and it dove for the creature that emerged out of the Ball, menacing, with arched back and jaws open, it hissed at the smaller, but swifter wolf. "Arbok, Bi---" Arbok lunged, but the wolf rammed its full body weight into Arbok's midsection, and it bashed onto the rolling grass as the beast lunged for its tail, clamping its teeth onto the limb with unshakable tightness. "Arbok?!" The cobra hissed in fright and pain, and the Ball bounced off its hide and pulled Arbok in, leaving the wolf gnawing on air.
"Jessie...!!!!!" James whimpered. Jessie gave in with a frustrated growl and they bolted off. The animal's eyes flared an augmented rage, and it charged for Meowth, who sped off like the lightning bolt that broke the clouds at that instant away from the snapping teeth.
In one of those random glances to see what blood-stopping horror was behind you, Meowth looked back to see Persian: they had left it behind.
"WAAAH!" The rain fell in lead torrents as he sped through the mud, hearing the wolf's breathing behind him. The mud swirled into his face as he ran, obscuring his view of the dirty cream-hued feline sitting there, oblivious to everything but the rain. Thunder cut the air and spurred him on faster. Relieved he felt his paws grasp Persian's leg, pulling the blind and near-lame cat out of the trap of the pointed fangs, and ran like hell, not caring that the wolf was no longer in pursuit of them, not caring that it was standing dormant, raising its soaked muzzle to the black heavens, loosing an aggressive howl from the depths of its throat, not caring that he should be running twenty times faster than he was: the whole pack had them in their sights.
It wasn't long before a good twenty gleaming fury-engulfed eyes stared at them throughout the dark sky. Lightning illuminated their lupine faces for a brief split second, shedding light on that one countenance of ferocity. They closed in from behind, the faster ones bounding ahead to overtake these invaders from the sides.
They happened to be the alpha of the pack, the strongest, fiercest, and deadliest of their clan. Within minutes they had caught up to Jessie and James, snarling like demons, and the rest, howling at the crashing thunder, closing in on the intruders. The terrified Rockets ran faster than they ever had before, forgetting that Meowth was far behind them, unmindful that they were human and could only run so far without getting tired, and unaware...they were headed towards Nibelheim. Which at that point, the wolves stopped. Meowth kept running, but slowed down when he heard the howling no longer. The alpha prowled feet away from the humans, then planted its paws in the mud, stared into the blurry horizon ahead, gave a compromising growl, as if honoring ancient laws of boundary and territory, and slinked off, the rest of its pack dashing off behind it.
Jessie and James stared at each other questioningly, then looked back at the last of the brown shapes dissolving into the dark brown-green fields that they had just crossed. Meowth came trudging in back of them, letting go of Persian's leg and panting in exhaustion.
"Wondah..what made em...take off?"
"Mreowww..." Who knows...
Day and night alternated as lightning flashed and thunder boomed. The Rockets found themselves in the presence of that cursed town, where you couldn't trust what you saw and where blood of the past still lay splattered on the floor, this wretched place that lay in the shadow of remorseless and unrepented sins.
"What is this place, Jessie?" James asked, shivering at the force of a steady north wind passing through the gate at which they stood. "It doesn't look anything like home.." he murmured, the barely distinguishable shapes melding together in one inscrutable blob.
"It looks like-----"
They ventured through the gate, walking under the arch. That fateful arch. Where certain men were led to their doom. They could turn back at the arch. It was a deadly mistake to enter Nibelheim. But they didn't know. "A town?" James looked up and blijnked. Indeed, there was a town, with slanted roofs which the rain pounded on mercilessly which cascaded into the gutters. The window panes rattled violently with the wind and the deserted town square radiated a negative aura.
The four Rockets wandered into the square, the raindrops hammering them relentlessly. If this was a town, they could find shelter. And what better shelter to seek, than that big mansion at the north of town?
It wasn't exactly inviting. There was one light that barely penetrated the sheets and sheets of water. The rest of the house was as pitch black as the sky when the lightning was dormant. It looked old and creaky and even a little...haunted. They stood out shivering, debating amongst themselves whether to go in or not. But as the rain was beginning to soak through the skin into the marrow in the bone, inside in this weather was better than outside.
They entered, drenched, torrents of water following them in before the weight of the door pulled it shut behind them. They didn't mind, though. It wasn't warm...in fact, it was damp and cold, but the rain wasn't pounding them. Besides, there was a light that flickered every now and then. Someone must have been here.
Their waterlogged boots squeaked as they dripped trails of water across the room, admiring the old furnishings, elaborate though layered in dust and cobwebs from disuse and neglect. Meowth was the first to speak.
"Dis stuff looks like it's worth a lodda money!" the cat exclaimed, wringing out his tail on the floor and scratching the cobwebs away from the banister. It was hard business, there was layer upon layer and he had to use his claws to rip through them, leaving the sticky webs wrapped around the digits of his paw. He was about to get a good look at it when something brushed against his leg. "WAAH!" he screamed, falling off the banister onto his back. "What was dat?!" He turned around in time to see James' face shade a freaked-out purple, and he pointed a shivering finger at Meowth.
"D-d-d-don't l-loook n-now, M-M-m-eowth..." he whimpered, Jessie was likewise shivering. If both of them were scared there MUST be something there..slowly, fearfully, he turned his blue eyes towards a balloon-shaped orange grin. Wait...not just one. Two, three, four, five.....Meowth felt his bones liquify. Sliding towards Persian, he kept his eyes on the multiplying monsters, popping out of the shadows and surrounding them from all posible sides. He squeezed his grip around Persian's limp tail, and yanked it. The cat gave an ugly screech, and the three of them screamed through the bloated mass of orange, blowing through them with little difficulty but attracting not only the ones on the lower floor, but the creatures on the upper floor. They hurdled towards them in their swelling numbers, spraying this glowing gas in their direction which by a miracle they evaded. They shot down the hallway and through the bedroom, the blood and dirt on the creaking floor going unnoticed through their clamor. In front of them the massive shadow of the mosnters loomed impending and inescapable on the opposite wall. It wasn't long before they reached a corner. Dead end. Dead men.
The Rockets cowered smashed against the dusty wall, clinging to each other in one pitiful mass. Jessie clasping James, James latching onto Jessie, Meowth holding Persian, and Persian..it sat there not knowing what was happening, ignorant of the certain death that had trapped them where they couldn't run.
Its search for the master was becoming fruitless. They had gone all this way and it couldn't sense him anywhere. Not that it would be able to if he wasn't right in front of it, because of its poor sense of smell, but.even so...It was growing hopeless. Immersed in its self-pity, it released an ungodly screech.
The noise warped the very air. The Rockets forgot they were terrified and covered their ears with their hands, screaming with pain. The awful sound spread amongst the monsters. Their hidden ears writhed and crumbled under the blast, slowly being driven away by the intolerable screech. The creatures floated back into the shadows, some of them backing against the bookcase in the corner. The force of their weight activated a mechanism that lifted up the bookcase with a slam, and as the weakened creatures retreated into the obscurity of darkness, another darkness presented itself in front of them. Not eager to run into the grinning balloons that would be upon them swifter in retaliation, they with ringing ears but acquiring a deal of respect for the other feline, they penetrated the blackness. They tread carefully, not wanting to disturb the perpetual night. Now they noticed the dirt and blood trail. It grew darker and blacker with the lengthening shadows. They had to watch their footing with more attention as they descended: a swrong step met death. They hugged the wall and edged foward on the stairs, inching farther and deeper into the unknown depths.
Jessie found the nerve to speak when they reached the bottom. She felt the wall. Rocky, dark, dank, full of bats that flitted past them with hungry eyes. She walked a little on ahead.
"What would a cave be doing in a basement--?" With the next step Jessie stopped dead cold. There were noises, shouts, screams. Too far away to hear them she coudln't tell if it was a person's or a monster's. All she knew was that it was loud. They followed the rocky wall and stopped at a corner. There they couldn't hear much: it was muffled by the metallic door from which a weak light filtered through the tiny rectangle of a window set in the door. As they approached it, they pulled back behind the rock wall with the animal-like, though clearly human voice that cried behind the door.
"GET THE FUCK AWAY.......YA AIN'T TOUCHIN' ME NO MORE, YA HEAR ME?!?"
A pause, an extended silence, then Meowth heard Jessie's sharp voice beckon him to move.
"Meowth, go listen in!"
"What da--?!!"
She clapped her gloved hand on the cat's mouth while he swiped without result at the human. "Get in there!!!" she hissed. She tossed him as if he were a ball at the door, and he shook his head, shook off the dust, and with a scowl aimed at both of them, he climbed to the doorknob and peered inside, stealth and secrecy serving as his guide. Persian slowly got off his haunches and walked past Jessie and James, and it reared up and rested its paws on the door, meowing and scratching. Meowth lifted one "finger" of his paw to his mouth, which quieted Persian, and he peered inside. His large blue eyes pressed against the window and saw something straight out of those sci-fi/horror flicks: racks of various equipment he didn't know the names but could guess the purpose well enough, giant tubes pushed into a corner filled with glowing liquid, the usually dormant straps of the table tightly strapped around the poor thing that was lying on it, with his back in a painful-looking arc, like he got back surgery except it was to bend the spine and not straighten it. "I'd hate to be dat guy," he whispered, following the whole thing with his eyes, watching the mad doctor that was sicker than his patient.
The aforementioned was standing, facing the bookshelves, with an instrument held vertically betewen forefinger and thumb. Inside, a liquid bubbled and frothed. The man on the table couldn't see what was behind it, but Meowth could see the liquid clear as day. The other man spoke.
"Intriguing...that this chemical itself..merely applied to the skin... will complete the process...."
The pained groans, shouts, threats...those were nothing but background noises. What he'd come to expect in this...occupation. He slid the test tube in its hole in the block that sat near the instrument tray, and he stared at the anguished form of his victim.
"..But it has no affect on the blood..." He stared at the floor, the blood, the old blood, the new blood, and felt his mind drifting....away... Hm? He overcame the mometary distraction and lifted two syringes from the rack. Cid snapped his head sideways, the stark pain on his face overshadowed by a resharpened terror. Holy..shit..needles..... One was empty and one was filled with a gold-hued liquid. Yes, there were safter methods...but those would take far too long. He approached the pilot, struggling against the straps, which to his surprise, Hojo had to tigthen. Strange...he had underestimated hte pilot's strength and resilience. But he wouldn't escape.....not before the process was completed. For that was Hojo's unspoken policy: Enter a man and exit a monster. Why should Draconis Rex be an exception?
He found the point on the man's arm, and started to drain the red blood and inject the other fluid in equal amounts. Risky..imperfect.....deadly to the subject, but he was confident---perhaps too confident, in his accuracy.
Cid cried out as he felt ice of the Gaea Cliffs slide through his arteries, the shock of it hitting his heart showing up as erratic peaks on the heart monitor, but for Cid, torture by Satan himself.
The other man was nearing the acme of the procedure, and he took the tube of liquid in his hand, the manic screams reaching a frightful climax as he stood directly over him, the drop of liquid trembling at the lip of the tube as he held it at a right angle. Cid strained every muscle in his neck to find out what the hell was being done to him, failing utterly. He let his chin drop and heard the chilling voice of the madman reach his burning ears. "Now...what sort of majesty and grandeur lies in this vulgar human?" Hojo inquired the liquid, turning the tube upside-down.
"Jesus CHRIST.....make it stop.....make it fucking STOP......" the pilot groaned as the stream of liquid trickled down his now-arched back.. The junk he poured on him...it was being absorbed through his rough skin, seeping into the nerves and muscles, his skull, into his brain...Holy fuck, he felt as if he was getting TORN APART--- or at the very LEAST, something was stretching his limbs, straining, PULLING the muscles of his arms and legs to make things larger than they were supposed to be. No amount of tongue lashing he gave Shera could equal this physical punishment. GOD...it HURT SO BAD..... "GODDAMN IT.....Why do ya fucking do this to---to----PEOPLE?!"
"Why?" he repeated thoughtfully. "You and many...many others have been chosen to participate in this single experiment with this purpose: to perhaps divert humans from their selfish desires, to integrate them with the rest of the animal---and plant kingdoms...monera, fungi, and protists possibly when we develop the technology.." He raised a finger to his glasses and pushed the lense up his face. He stared the strapped man down, disdain and a contrasting elated disappointment hanging off the tone in his deadly voice. "Ah...but you comprehend only the pain..."
"I COMPREHEND, alright...." Cid repeated acridly with the rough growl of a beast beginning to overtake his gruff, human voice. "that you're a REAL SICK FUCK.". Hojo didn't seem to hear, pacing around the laboratory with his steel gaze on Cid. The change was slow to happen. Perhaps it was the systems of the subject fighting the change, resisting. It would all be futile in the end. Though he didn't succumb to the chemicals immediately, each individual skin cell seeming to combat this foreign invasion of chemicals, he had perfected them with his own hand: they could not fail.
Unhindered pain wracked the pilot's body, immobile under the tightened straps, Hojo observing every change and recording it in the dark hemispheres of his brain, noticing everything.....except the pain of the subject. And all the while Cid stopped scremaing long enough to look his torturer in the eyes and threaten him with a voice that was steadily becoming less and less recognizable. "One day you're gonna be on this same table.." It started on his hands, first, the part he'd always kept covered with gloves. "...screamin' your throat out, beggin' for the pain to go away," At the base of his fingers a sapphire dot appeared, eliminating the burnt peach pigment. "---and that one frick that's sicker than you's gonna screw ya up so damn good so even YOU don't know who ya are.." Another skin cell succumbed to the chemicals. All the while, Meowth watched, wide-eyed in silent fear. The change went quicker for him, watching it from afar and not living through it, but not quick enough. Ironic that this little cat devoted to theft and scams to further his own position in life would emphathize with someone he didn't even know. But it would take no heart to not feel an iota of pity.
The hours wore on. The change slowed with every hour. Meowth kept his eyes open the entire time, watching, wanting to avert his gaze, but found his eyes nailed. Slowly, slowly, the silver-sapphire color consumed one quarter of the hand, then one half, then three quarters, then the whole hand. Meowth's eyes began to redden from the lack of sleep, and still were as wide as if someone had put miniature jacks between his eyelids. Then the other man moved in front of the victim, walling off his view of the horror. In disorientation from what he'd witnessed, and from sleep deprivation, he slipped off the doorknob, fell onto Persian's slumped back, and grasped it with his paws, and turned the brass knob to get a better look.....
"Meowth, what are you doing?!" Jessie hissed, emerging from behind the wall and grabbing the cat's paw. Meowth looked from his paw to the doorknob, and jerked it away in shock. He couldn't BELIEVE he just did that...he would blow their covers big time. But the more he thought about it, the more he caught an agonized word in the otherwise unintelligble shouts and screams, the more he wanted to help the guy. But at the same time he didn't want to be seen by the Devil Incarnate. He was torn between what to do when Jessie tossed him off his thought train.
"What are they saying?"
"Look for yahself," Meowth coaxed with fearful in his feline eyes, pulling back Persian to let Jessie peep through the window...Her face turned white. She had looked just in time to see the scientist move aside slightly, letting her catch a clear view of the scaly, clawed hand hanging off of the table.
*~*~*
A/N: I decided to slow it down a bit. Sorry to end it in a rather awkward spot. Oo; Next chapter: Cid Inadvertantly Lands himself In Deep Dog Crap---not literally. But it's guaranteed that more happy, fluffy, wonderful things will happen to Cid in chapter 17. BTW, I know I'm a hypocrite for constantly denouncing fics that portray Hojo as all evil, but it's necessary for-to--- well...you'll see. -_^ One more thing: I have nothing against wolves. ^^;