End of a Reality

by Blue9TigerDarkMutatedBrock

A co-written fic of enormous proportions, concocted by the devilish minds of two psychopaths. Pokémon crossed with FFVII. Mutations galore. Glorifies Brock, Giovanni, and Hojo. Scared? Then go ahead and read. We dare you. Chapter 28 up!

19. Rough Winds

End of A Reality

by Blue9Tiger/story by DarkMutatedBrock/La Cidiana

A/N: Hi! Enjoy. ^^

*~*~*

This is the third week this outrage has been going on. Every day my husband frustrates himself and the household more and more. I have about had it. He's deluded with the dream that he will one day have an heir. An accident made him sterile.. I think it was one of those horrid attack dogs that escaped from the cellar.. Ever since then he seeks a worthy heir, one that shares his devotion to the young company. He has become sadly desperate. I think it madness, searching among the most destitute areas with stubborn belief that he will find his heir. I have not seen a day when the Public Safety Maintenance Department does not introduce a vulgar, low-born street urchin through the gate. At best the little filth stays for a half hour before my husband loses his temper and has the Public Safety Maintence Department expel them from the grounds. They, being what they are, have no interest in cultivation: they are rotten weeds that will grow into the poison of society. This one is scarcely no better. He is vulgar like the rest of them, his family has barely a thousand gil to their name, he has not the slightest concept of etiquette, and he sputters these fanciful desires of become an aviator like his brother, who might I add, does not resemble him in the least. They are all bastard children, if you ask my opinion, but my husband persists in instructing them to be like him. I do not understand.....

The dirty creature looks hardly respectable though he has been given a proper bath and wears pressed shirts and trousers when before he was prancing about the estate half-naked. Oh, the horror..this is what becomes of opening the gate to let the lower class infiltrate your fortress. He dares to glare at me with eyes that have seen so many obscenities. They are like his brother's, filled with silly fantasies and all traits of children that must be destroyed as quickly as possible.

Am I conceding to such foolishness? He cannot learn...he will never learn. This urchin will never land more than a menial job in the company. And furthermore, he will never replace my husband. He will never become a Shin-Ra.

--An early diary entry entered by Mrs. Shin-Ra. Found by historians and displayed in the demolished Midgar museum.

*~*~*

Chapter 19: Rough Winds

How does one resist the current of a river? If its will is to drown, a man is powerless. Brock was powerless against this river. Though he was not a man anymore. Now it was his choice. He let himself be drowned, dead, dead to the pain of an inescapable reality. And as he felt himself flow with this river, this myriad of light, an aura of total tranquility penetrated the crumbled escarpments of his soul.

And it wasn't right. It wasn't right because it couldn't be real. It wasn't real because he was an escaped lab specimen and the threat of capture lurked behind him and kept him bound to the shadows so they couldn't find him, so they couldn't lock him in that damn glass cube and torture him just because they defined that as his purpose in life. That was the truth, and this lie of liberation was ready to entrap him.

Brock outstretched an arm into the layers of light. The burning blaze bore through them but they didn't burn back. Nothing was ablaze..it should be....his vision should be smoldering in the light..he should be blind...

He touched the light. It was warm...Warm..light?

It's not REAL..Brock found himself saying in his head which echoed through the entire light river like an empty cavern. He hurtled through this river of devious falsities fashioned by those who only wanted to see this crawling, crushed being drink the sand when he thought it was water. It wouldn't work. Such sanctuary wasn't his to have.

Get me out of here.

With an agonized growl he raked the steel edges of the sword-like claws against the light. Trickles of black energy ran across the surface, but it hardly bled its jeering, taunting white blood.

"HHHHHHGHRRROAAAAAARGHHHH..." GET ME OUT.

A primal roar distorted the river and melded it together in a chaos of winding light beams. A deep crack split through the light into pre-dawn darkness. Brock flew to it, desperate for a raw and brtual familiarity. The instant the tips of his claws grazed the light, the wound healed and the tides pushed him into the uniform ocean of white. He consciously swam against it, but why does one resist what helps it, gives it comfort? His inner desire conquered him and the darker depths swallowed him in its vortex of continuous motion that hurled him deeper into the trap.

But he struggled..against the false hope, against his desire to be drawn into it, and be conquered. Why...why didn't he accept it, embrace it? Instead he resisted it, tried to escape it..Wasn't it in the natural order of the universe to seek the light that grew slim patches out of the abundant darkness? Because light exposed all and darkness concealed all, wouldn't one desire the known as opposed to the unknown?

The angel despised rebellion.

How little faith you have in the light.

The wave fed on its momentum and bore Brock swifter than ever. He clawed the flowing river only to find there was no effect.

In this dimension the element is absolute. The power of the soul is magnified and physical senses are eliminated. Another claw swipe that barely scraped the light. The angel's voice tolled in his brain. You are powerless here. Empty music from the belfry played false elegies to shrivelled souls.

That shrivelled even more. Gemini looked at his clawed hands which the light bled through between his disfigured fingers. Powerless...he growled with gnawing guilt and a rawness that bit his throat, Sure, I'm powerless NOW.....

But not when he threw his brother against the tree. When his bones crunched against the bark. He wasn't powerless then. The double-edged nature of this power would haunt him until his dying day.

All of a sudden the white sea froze, its homogenous parts paralyzed and the inertia hurling the demon into the solidifed wall of light. There was a resonating thud but no pain, and he lay on his side, heaving himself up with one leathery elbow and staring at his hands on which new blood didn't burst from under the skin. He swerved his inflamed gaze towards the source of the angel's voice, traversing the tunnel that seemed considerably narrower than when it was moving. In fact, it was like the walls were closing in..

And there in the opposite corner, the archangel appeared swathed in the heavenly glow. Brock moved toward him, ever-wary, his clawed feet covering the groundless space beneath in a cautious shuffle. The angel observed him in a critical manner too worldly for the supernatural being he mirrored. But even so, he mirrored it well.

"What do you fear, friend? I have not spoken falsely to you. You will be the instruments of your own salvation, as well as every Pokémon on this planet. You will no longer be victims of human oppression." A knowing smile creased his white lips. "Angelon gives you his word."

Why should I trust you? Brock snarled, turning away. I've been through hell and back just because the flower smelled nice and the house needed me to keep it from falling apart. He shook his head ruefully. Then HE-----A raspy snarl brimming with pure loathing. --made me his personal slave. But she didn't feel like sharing, did she, Gio? .He twisted the asymetrical facial muscles into a melting smirk at the lizard, who retaliated with an outraged roar that barely pricked the cause of this humiliation. But the relish emptied and his focus was once again on Angelon, whose shallow frown was increasingly deepening. Your word doesn't mean a pint to me.

"But it will, my friend." He slowly lifted his hands, his white eyes flaring calmly behind the cracks of his fingers. He took his right arm and scraped the wall of light away with his nails. An unborn dawn bore grey light into the White Dimension. But it wasn't the sensation of the cold air nor the dismay at the ease in which Angelon carved the window, but it was the piercing scream of a girl that blasted through the tunnel. Ice coated Brock's veins and he lunged at the wall, scraping futilely at the barrier, screaming his friend's name in overwhelming fear,

"MREGGGHSTIE!!!!!!!"

"Understand that I am not a killer. But what is one human life in comparison with the dignity of hundreds of thousands of Pokémon?"

Brock's squeezed his fists, righteous, burning anger torching his arteries and igniting his black heart in rage. But in mid-charge, an inviisble force pushed him back, perverting the orders of his brain to his incensed muscles and sending him back into the wall. The lack of a blow on his back bruised by so many other collisions outside of the white tunnel tugged him into the crushing realization that he wouldn't feel the blood-hot burn of his claws anyway. Instead he felt his throat dry up, and he stared in renewed helplessness at the angel. In final concession he fell on his chest and clutched the light, gorged with deceit and betrayal and every characteristic that seemed to surround the dark. But all this was in the light, too. With eyes moist with tears of anguished hatred, he growled, "DRHOGN'T HRRHGUHRT HRERGH. HHGRHI'RGH'LL DRHO RHHGHIT."

His mouth brought comfort while his mind brought the message of an apocalyptic disaster..

"You have" sealed the fate of all humans "gained deliverance of all Pokémon."

I have no choice. The hate-choked voice clashed with this matter-of-fact one, this one that could smile sweetly with the knowledge that it would not be refused. "That is the truth. The truth also is that this is not your task alone." Again he raised his hand, projecting the image of the Vermillion docks in their brains. It plunged deep underwater beneath the steel hull of a docked ship, revealing a massive hulk in the gloom of the murky saltwater. "The humans protect this by using machines and our own brethen. Retrieve what they guard, and I will unseal them. In it lies your salvation."

Angelon began to fade, the energy radiating off of him cutting through the light as a sword slices through skin, his voice diminishing to a mental whisper that collided with another faceless scream that froze the breath in Brock's black lungs and reminding him the consequences of failure or desertion. So he.....they wouldn't fail.

Brock knew he was back to reality when he felt an ill-placed glass shard dig into his shoulderblade as he connected with the asphalt. No sooner did his skull stop clattering when Giovanni landed side-first on the rough asphalt, the shockwave bouncing the other's head vertically on the same piece of glass. Wasn't sharp enough to draw blood, but it caused him pain enough to make him think the bastard planned that like everything else he did. He shot him a glare that would crack a diamond and rose to a squatting position, rubbing the rough back of his head and scanning their surroundings. Three walls bearing anti-merger protests that long ago became effectless, an open dumpster exhaling its pungent malodor...oh, yeah...and Team Rocket.

Brock exchanged glares with them and the wall. There's no way we can get there on the open road. Even in the dead of night.

Zero-X snorted obstinately out his jaws ridden with the burning acid that coated his tongue. He growled a remark biting in its ignorance.

I do not see why Team Rocket must participate in such nonsense. That girl means nothing to me.

No sooner than he thought this Gemini's claws were lodged in his throat. The vital weak point. One push and he'd die. And Brock was about to do it, too, with or without that careless, heartless remark, his face contorted in a mask of unbound rage.

"That girl" The forked tongue stung like a whip on the hide of his throat as well as his brain.. ..means YOUR life, Gio. With a shameful growl the other agreed with buried reluctance and Brock released his death grip, again facing the vulgar writing on the plain assortment of bricks. He growled a curt order. You're a lizard. Climb the wall.

Seething anger boiled over Giovanni. That boy.....that child...had the gall to tell HIM what to do. His fangs groaned against each other as he growled in the demon's face, pitting his will against the other's. And before it could form into a roar Brock ripped a few strips of hide from the reptile's snout, and with it, the remaining tatters of the Rocket leader's authority. Because it was controlled...it had greater power than blind rage... Control took reason....reason was a mark of intelligence..the fiery rage of the soul had quieted to the tempered fury of the brain, manifesting an emerging dominance over a primitive brute...and the proof, the justification was right there. Brock knew HE was a monster.. but true animals were branded.

Zero-X rooted one set of claws into the shadow-immersed bricks, clinging to the wall with spread limbs the same as any of his...non-Pokémon relatives would. They covered the distance quickly. But for them, size was not an issue. Ivy had planned...this as well. The gargantuan weight..as a human he walked with poise, now he lumbered...so suited for a chain to be wrapped around his neck and led as a beast of burden. And now that boy was holding that chain, invisible, but no less degrading than the real.

He brought each set of claws up at a horrendously slow rate, heaving the huge weight of his body upward after his claws found another place to embed, fighting the gravity that seemed to exert more force on him than his minions. His minions..yes...his loyal subordinates. They would hear his command and would follow him without hesitation, and at least he would know he had some pride left. Laboriously he scaled the wall, a wall he could just as easily smash to rubble with a drill of the horn that projected from his head, still reddened with his sister's blood.

But smashing was easier. Climbing required thought combined with coordination. To smash was to charge with no thought, empty-headed and stupid.

A rush of air and a brush of scales forced the lizard to tilt his massive head sideways. There was the self-righteous demon scurrying up the nonexistent footholds in the bricks, occasionally using the ledges of windows to speed up the climb. And to his dismay, the ridged ball of flesh tailed the gliding bat-fox along the gutter on the side of the edifice.

An innocuous croak demeaned him and made him sink low.

Step on it, boss. It's just you, Cass, and the kid when the sun rises.

For the longest time Zero-X clung to the same bit of brick, pondering the lost meaning of that address. That empty title that once carried the eminence that was godlike in nature with the fear and obedience it commanded. And now..a boy gave the orders. Averting his peripheral gaze away from the sight of the lettering he couldn't read, both on the brick and his monstrous arm, he gave an abysmal growl that offered a pitiful resistance to his plight, and reached the edge of the building, the absence of anyone on the roof telling him that they had already pushed ahead.

The lab had taught him to submit. Bit by bit, the will that had nearly annhilated Mewtwo was broken in accord with his brain. But that was in the lab. But even here...free of the chain, wire, hook, and glass tube, the remains of his will to dominate was being ground up by the wheels of a machine that he never controlled.

*~*~*

Brock landed on the pavement as a phantom alights on the mist. They'd reached the end of the row of buildings, and now were assaulted with the salt-soaked air of Vermillion harbor. His next step faltered, and he fell on the ground, pangs of thirst driving into his parched throat. He found himself panting heavily, biting his lip so that maybe he could be satiated on his own blood instead of killing for it. Ha. The one who really needed killing just made an elephantine landing that split a crack through the asphalt.

Shit. Nice going, Goliath, Brock snarled with murder in his face, doubling over with the raging desire for blood in his system. As the SOLDIERs approached, their guns, which for all he knew might've been tranquilizers, unshouldered and trained on them, Brock stumbled foward on three of his legs and realized this time he would have no choice. Unable to chain his thirst any longer, he lunged for the throat, and the SOLDIER screamed as the demon ripped it out and threw his face full in the blood, sucking the twitching corpse dry. He flung the dead man down and Zero-X devoured it, crunching the bones and ligaments between his acid-covered fangs, layers of muscle hanging out of his open jaws. Through the gloom Butch and Cassidy heard the kid's mental voice giving them...them...a curt command. Get out of here, Brock hissed, the edge of his forked tongue catching the human's flalling blood. We'll---He snarled hatefully at the feeding monster---Cover you until you hit the water.

Take orders from the brat? No matter how badly their pride was wounded, like hell they wouldn't.

We're dead meat the rest of the way, Butch croaked testily. Cassidy's cruel remark followed in succession.

Can't even swim, can you? Brock let another carcass drop with a thud and his arm shot through the shadows, and he clutched a charging SOLDIER by the neck and snapped it with a tight squeeze.

Look. Your fucking boss put me through hell and I really wouldn't mind snapping your necks like I did here. He thrusted the stunned corpse in Butch's face. So if you don't want to be dead meat right now---His claw made a clean cut straight through the throat and he turned away to drink. Get GOING.

They dodged the claw swipe and then the tissue rain from Zero-X's maw, weaving around the scaled trunks of his legs, a shield from the humans..alive or dead, for now. The dead ones were just as dangerous, crashing to the ground on either side of Zero-X and threatening to crush Butch. That is, if their insides weren't already eaten. The faster Cassidy glided and the faster Butch leaped, pushing way beyond their limits if it meant they'd get away from this nightmarish slaughter. It wasn't any easier for them to stand it just because it was a twerp and their boss killing and eating and drinking. The vague trust they once put in the boss was diminishing rapidly. But the command he gave them, however simplistic, kept the dim flame of faith in the other Pokémon from extinguishing completely.

Go. I cannot afford to lose the rest of the organization.

Butch gave a croak of assent and leaped out from under Zero-X, latching onto Cassidy's hind paws, scrambling up her leg, and reaching her back. The bat-fox fled the carnage, her frequent wing beats sending them through the vanishing moonlight and towards the anchored mamooth on the ocean's surface. Below her the waves tumbled over each other and churned in her vulpine ears. It grew steadily louder as Butch signalled her to descend. This must be where it was. Unconscious of the fact, she wrapped her wings around her chest and plunged into the waves.

And they put her at their mercy. Too late she remembered that foxes swam, not bats. Too late she remembered that anything she could do as a human was void as a Pokémon. Her remark bounced off the intended target and bit her in the ass. That kid would laugh at her floating corpse. Unless she did something and did it now.

Butch. Grab my tail and swim.

Check.

He leaped off his flailing partner into the current, gripping her tail in his mouth and pulling her downward, straining his leg muscles to surge into the abyss. The electric lights below reflected off his yellow eyes and pierced the gloom. Panicked bubbles seeped from his mouth. Cassidy was limp behind him. Did she run out of air already? Probably holding her breath. But it wouldn't kill him to make sure. Cass, still with me?

You worry about finding it and getting us there.

I found it, but I ain't a fish, Cass.

A pause. The wake of something farther underwater crashed into him and threatened to send them off course. That bothered Butch. The instincts were going haywire again. It was an enemy. The bubbles from his mouth obscured the water in front of his eyes. Technically, they were two blind Pokémon in the darker depths where the light didn't dare to reach...Where larger, far more aggressive Pokémon than the surface dwellers roamed. The wake grew stronger. This was one long Pokémon.....but wait a damn second...the only Water Pokémon that was THAT long was...Holy. fuck.Cass, we're gonna get there REAL soon or we're Gyarados lunch.

Butch summoned all the strength in his legs and fought against the stubborn current and the impending fear that the Gyarados was straight ahead of them and they'd swim into its open mouth. But that couldn't be, 'cause he suddenly felt a heavy breath behind him. Butch didn't need to look back to know what it was. Cassidy's head missed its head by one stroke. The roar rang doom in his ears, and he swam until he felt like his legs would explode, but didn't give a shit, because it was feeding time and Gyarados had them in its sights. Cass...No answer. I got your tail. Swim. Silence save for Gyarados' roar meancingly amplified by the sea. Cass? An unspeakable terror slowed him down Gyarados lunged foward and caught them in its mouth and was about to deliver the crushing blow with its fangs when it gave a pained snarl, and its blood sprayed into its own eyes and it writhed in fury. Its attacker snatched them from the creature's mouth and lifting its hands up, formed an orb of crackling energy. He lowered his head and his glowing eyes beamed a light on the wasted frog. The thought-voice was an enemy's.

Move right before you hit the wall. It crushes on impact.

The globe of energy shot from their savior's hand, and it wasn't until Butch made out the vague outline of a devil's tail that he knew who to thank for this. But no time for that now. He turned his head around. The ball was fast and so was the wall. Before it connected he swam away from it and the metal surface, ducking the metallic shards that floated rapidly from the explosion. He darted through the hole and up the ledge, not looking back at the rushing water that was collecting in a flood: and threatening to wash them back into the sea. It burst forth, the wall of rushing water charging its one-way course. Butch leaped as fast as Cassidy's weight let him. In his brain, he pleaded for her to wake up, but in the farther recesses of his mind, he pleaded for her to be alive. But it wouldn't matter if the flood drowned both of them. But the door was there. Closing to respond to the break in the outer wall. One shot...The whir of the mechanism in the door seemed to hasten as they approached the door. To get this right. He leaped for the narrow gap in between the two halves and shut his eyes. If I don't.....The creak of gears grating against each other swallowed his ears and filled his mind. ...sorry, Cass.

*~*~*

The rush of water raged against the sealed door. Butch opened his eyes to discover that they weren't lodged between it or dead on the other side. Even though, his croak remained tense. For all he knew, his partner had drowned already. Butch overturned the body with his webbed claws. The eyeless face stared at an approaching oblivion. Unable to communicate much else, he faced away from her and answered her earlier remark. Yeah, he can swim...he told her drenched form ruefully. If only she wasn't a bat.. If she was just a fox, she could swim. She'd have fricking eyes. That snake's gonna get it, he swore to himself, wrapping his mouth around Cassidy's limp tail and dragging her across the riveted metallic plates that constructed the floor. He felt uncomfortably small in this enormous chamber, tanks of something or other bolted to the ceiling, vacant lifts that stood at each far corner, the roaring water blocking the way out if something else backfired and he had to back out.

Which it looked like would be a good time to do.

Six SOLDIERS armed with machine guns and Houndoom burst through the door directly across from the monster. They let the dogs loose first, their savage barks freezing the bubbling acid in Butch's throat and forcing him to escape. He bounded for the lift, the hot saliva of the Houndoom dripping on his back. He let out a croak of terror: he wasn't nearly as fast on land as he was in the water, and the weight of Cassidy was dragging him down, shortening his leaps, making him tired...had to stop... . The hellish breath of the Houndoom invaded the air behind him as their teeth grew closer and closer.

Then his partner's body squirmed, and he heard the splatter of water on the floor. The closest Houndoom slipped nad crashed on its side, halting the whole line that collided in a heap of hot fur and boiling claws that stabbed the floor and regained their balance faster than they lost it, the whole pack lunging in one, blood-mad mass...

The ebony tail in Butch's mouth suddenly jerked. The cacophony that broke the dogs' eardrums shrivelled the air and made the SOLDIER's shout in pain. A low-hanging shadow covered his own, and the collected voice of his partner pervaded his brain.

We have a heist to pull.

Butch stared up to see the sightless visage half-smile, more of a smirk than anything. With leashed elation, Butch leaped onto his partner's soggy back and swept across the room, the recoveriing SOLDIERs cocking their weapons and pummeling the lift the very second that the Rockets squeezed through the shaft and headed into

the blackness.

The leathery part of Cassidy's wings beat noiselessly on the grating. Two walls closed them in: better go foward, she decided. She sent waves of supersonic straight ahead, but her surroundings were unclear. Butch squinted to see what was ahead and gave a croak of alarm.

It looks like a sensor. They neared it quickly though she was still flying lopsidedly trying to get her bearings. Butch jumped to Cassidy's neck and saw it too late. Cass, stop..!

She arrested herself in midair, but not soon enough to keep her snout from tripping the sensor. Red light exploded into Butch's eyes and the alarm shrieked through his ears as Cassidy hurled them both foward, past the humiliatingly familiar sound of flying electric bolts. She half-flipped, giving whatever was attacking them a smaller target. Butch clung onto her neck, digging his claws so far into the fur that he cut the skin and drew a globe of grey blood. He scrunched his amphibian lips and looked away. The loony was a sculptor. He took people and remolded them into hideous travesties of their former selves. As the bolts zapped the air above his head, he wondered if these inhuman forms were reflections of the vices in their human souls.. Were they just being punished for their thefts and indifferent cruelty to what was now their kind?

Whoa...Maybe he was thinking too hard about this. Better lay off thinking for a while. His brain didn't work the way it used to. Besides, they had a job to finish.

They burst out of the electricity-heavy tunnel, the flashing red light and the siren leaving a pack of crimson-garbed SOLDIERs instead of the blue- unifromed ones. They were all the same to the Rockets, but no one just ran into a 2nd class SOLDIER and expected to evade him that easily. They were trained to destroy for a few gil more than the bottom-dwellers. They weren't about to screw their job up and risk getting demoted to 3rd class where their life was cheaper than it already was.

With the flashing light Butch's own vision was hindered and they were flying blind again. One of the SOLDIERs pounced onto the grating and leaped for the pair with his sword drawn. Cassidy felt air rush by her tail and heard a clang as the SOLDIER found his sword wedged between the floor plating.

The other SOLDIERs swarmed the wall, scaling it with their heavy swords slung over their backs. Butch paled and dug into Cassidy's fur. One of the SOLDIERs whipped out his sword from behind him and suddenly leaped to a dizzying height, raising his sword above his head. The bat/fox swerved from the crashing blade, and he didn't regain balance and connected with the floor below with a nauseating crunch of bones. They pulled up and flew up another lift shaft, again immersed in the darkness for a scant few seconds before exiting the shaft and flying straight into the broad end of a sword.

Their flight ended abruptly: The fanged Politoed tumbled off of his partner's back and bounced across the floor, and the Ninetales/Zubat fell with a crash. She regained her wits quick enough to barely dodge the hacking swing of the blade. She scrambled on all fours off the ledge as the human took off a wedge of metal from the edge that plunged through the red light flooding the chamber which she couldn't see. Cassidy caught the air and flapped frantically, panic shooting over her ears as the clanging didn't stop and she heard a scuffle of claws as her partner attempted to dodge the blade. Again and again the sword fell, a sickening clash of steel on steel making her blood sprint.

That's it. It's payback.

She zeroed in on the target, feeling burning breath welling in her jaws from the back of her throat. The fire resting dormant within her grew violently, eating at her raw mouth and charring her teeth. An orb of black flame shot from her mouth and into the SOLDIER's back, burning a hole through his spine into his heart and out the other side, melting off a layer of the metallic wall. The SOLDIER fell dead, the sword clattering with the point dangerously near the frog. He sat there, dazed, trying to keep his composure but miserably failing, the terror in his wide yellow eyes all too apparent from such a close encounter with death....and the more immediate fear of the deadly power contained released inside her.

That was too damn close. He jumped onto the body, squirming at the hole in the SOLDIER. If she could see this...maybe it was better if she didn't. He looked up. The lean monster covered him again with her shadow. The siren still blaring, she briskly searched the SOLDIER's corpse with her nose, stripping him of uniform and his weapon. Butch edged away with a short jump, suspicion elevating as Cassidy gripped the giant sword by the hilt. C.Cass...what're you doin' with that??

You don't want any---human to find this, do you? She transfered it from her mouth to her paws and laid it on her back.. Besides... She pushed the belt and SOLDIER's uniform over to him, motioning to strap the clothes and sword to her. A man without clothes is the LAST thing I want to see, she stated dryly. Butch took her meaning, and witheld whatever reply to make to that. There wasn't time for small talk. No more obstacles answered the alarm, but he had a feeling if they didn't move their asses soon, they'd have more company. He hastily took the sweaty belt and shoved it through the loop and secured the bundle, climbing onto the heap and they sped off towards the enormous door at the end of the chamber that loomed far above their heads.

*~*~*

What the?

As they approached the door, it opened automatically, the two halves sliding away from each other leaving a generous gap. You'd think a place this covert would have a locked door.

The door shut with a heavy clang behind them that reverberated through the gargantuan chamber that spanned farther than Butch's eyes reached..

But now he wished his eyes were gone, too. He managed a weak, faint croak that rasped in her ears. His partner felt her claws tighten on her back in heightened anxiety. What's the matter? Cassidy growled, her wing muscles tensing. The other fell silent a long moment. What is it? Spit it out.

You're lucky you're blind, was all he had to say.

A dismal growl cracked the air as a loafer tearing at the seams fell heavily on the floor. At first glance, it was a human until you saw the hole in the shoe that revealed coarse fur. Then you looked up and saw the face, the mark of animals..Pokémon, but mutated. Like them..but they still had faded remnants of clothing, which proved the thing that unnerved him the most:

They all used to be human.

. The clouded memory of the dead Grunts burst from the murk and hit him like silver bullets in the heart and he stumbled off of Cassidy's back, landing on his chest. His wart-ridden eyelids snapped shut and then open, bulging and stunned, meeting the hollow, hopeless features of...his kind. He couldn't see the other side of his face, hidden by a shadow cast by the giant barrel it clutched near its fur-laden chest that quivered under the crushing weight.

That was just one that passed by. There were others. Many more others.. that hauled the same barrels, some so exhausted they resorted to shoving them across the floor, straining under the effort. Some of the weaker ones lay on the floor, their tongues hanging out and dragging on the abusive plates. For the longest time he watched this sick nightmare play out, all the while wondering why the hell hadn't they escaped yet if the door was---

Locked. It's a trap...he groaned, scraping at the metal with his short claws. He hit it with an acid blast, but the only thing he got for it was a bad taste in his throat and the creatures' hollow, emaciated gaze on him, as if to say, "don't bother, there's no way." Come to think of it, not once did he hear their thoughts in his head.

You'd think they'd be more vocal about this crap, Butch thought, stretching his pensive gaze to the suffering beasts. But I ain't hearing anything. He climbed onto Cassidy's shoulders, feeling the wind rush over his skin as she beat her leatherlike wings.

Maybe they CAN'T think, she replied. Dead silence. So not only their bodies and their wills were wiped out, but so were their minds. As Butch looked around more, the sadistic nature of this torment manifested itself in stark, blatant terms. A sign bolted to the wall that adjoined the gigantic door. It bore the picture of an animal skull and crossbones and bold, large lettering. Obnoxiously large. Even a person who...who...A person. That was it. There were no people here. He could read it...with difficulty,

since he had to spell out each letter and think about..he had to think about what the word actually meant. It was no longer automatic, but way more than they could do.

Pull handle to open.

It was cake..for a human. So simple....

. Whoever's runnin' this operation's got Pokémon like---He paused, his wounded pride taking a stab at him again and cutting through his sprit. -----them locked up in here.

We don't have much time left, she answered in a yap. Lets get them out of here and split-----

Both of them heard the deep bang of metal on metal. Butch reached the ledge and looked farther across the room. It was the steel drums again, the load that would break a man's back but a load that broke an animal's back just as easily. And the more he watched them, how some of them gazed despairingly at the barrels as if it was the cause of their...condition, the deeper the sinking feeling he got in his gut.

Somethin' isn't right about this..

You're telling me, Butch. I trust that Angelon creep less than I trust the cops.

Cassidy took flight, the irregular beat of her wings sending them flying overhead the toiling beasts, a few of them groaning bneath the immovable weight, others voiceless and submissive in their plight, any sort of protest killed by the years.

A few of them stared hollowly at the tops of the cylinders they were perpetually moving. They looked at their paws and hooves and wings or whatever used to be human hands, struck the drum, and continued to push it into the stack in the center that

climbed ever higher towards what looked like a huge suction protruding from the ceiling that sucked up the drums. The machine attatched to the transparent floor above them. He saw the shadows of humans...maybe that floor was transparent so they could look down and jeer and the monsters could look up and get tormented more, knowing that they were no longer the humans that strode confidently above their heads drowned in sweat.

Beyond the massive suction, several of them stood bent over a vat of black liquid expelling tangled vapors of that formed a black mist that spread across the ceiling with grasping hands. They had flasks in their inhuman limbs, but the very basic of instruments. Nothing that had numbering or lettering, nothing that they could read...maybe to prevent that barrier in their brains to crumble and remember that once in their lifetime, they did read. And they must've read a lot.... Looked like scientists or lab technicians from the old labcoats they wore. They, Butch noted, were the worst deformed. A couple had more than one head growing out of places where heads didn't grow out of, tentacles---a lot of them had tentacles. As Cassidy descended and they got closer to the vat, the machine that they were shoving the drums in, and the monsters themselves, Butch thought he could see stitches running up and down on one or two of them, like those monsters from a book he read when he was a tyke: it was about monsters that were parts of corpses that were sewn up and electrocuted and came back to life.

Had they been dead? Nah...that couldn't happen.

Yet..what human survives after getting split in half?

Butch jerked suddenly at his partner's voice in his head that cut through the bubble of the black liquid and the snarls and shrieks of the freaks that were still vibrant. Humans. He saw her ears turn upwards at the language that wasn't yet unfamiliar, and she shot in the same direction, her uncovered wings flapping constantly to keep herself going upward. Something she had done for her entire life.....until it all ended on Valencia.

The other latched tightly to the bundle of clothes, scrambling to keep his grip on it as Cassidy reached an obstruction, her nose pressing against a solid object. By now the voices were completely coherent, and the Rockets' mental voices rang in each other's heads simultaneously in recognition of the loud, rather unpleasant voice of the scientist that headed the failed attempt to capture Lugia. Professor Nanba.

Upset as usual.

"..mans do NOT serve humans!"

He was a hot-headed believer in anthropocentrism.

"They're not humans anymore. Are they, Professor?"

A brilliant mind that pomposity and oversight that came of inflated ego made indolent.

"They WERE, and that's ALL that MATTERS!"

He could never argue something without shouting and shouting it loud. Like the fire element.

"Professor, you're working with Shin-Ra now. Throw away your human-centered ideals. We prefer to work in harmony, not hatred."

He lost his impatience easily. He constantly roared. Like an Arcanine.

"What is there to be HARMONIOUS about?!?! It's absolute INJUSTICE, making humans make this Black Rain--look at them, they've all mutated from exposure to the vapors alone----in my expert opinion, it is too dangerous to use in the first place! What if someone opened the seal on those canisters?! The gas would leak out, condense and form clouds, rain and MUTATE ALL HUMAN LIFE

ON THE PLANET!!!"

Butch and Cassidy became stiller than a crypt in that instant. The monsters..that was it..that was the same stuff that got used on them, that turned them into this..

Liquid was bad enough. It could be neatly packed in those syringes, those death needles...a gas...... It could expand..it would...end the world...destroy all the humans...

"Humans? No. Not humans. There's a hidden monster in all of us. That monster comes out in the DNA of a great many people...many more than you envision right now. They're not actually people. They look like people, but they're actually 'Pokémon'. Or our Planet's breed That's the experiment. To release the hidden monster...to remove "humans" from their self-proclaimed "throne" and force them to integrate with what we usually call the 'animal kingdom'." He paused, letting it all sink in but adding some consolation before Nanba's heartbeat stopped from the sheer...repulsion of it all. This...DISGUSTING idea of practically causing the EXTINCTION of the HUMAN RACE....

MADNESS.

"If it's anything to you, it's a lot of bull, but I work for Professor Hojo. This is his goal, not mine."

"Hrmph! If I knew there was such a crackpot in charge of this atrocity I would've never joined the Order!" They heard his loud tread grumbling on the floor above them. Flesh on metal: he was grabbing something. A lever? "I'm shutting all Black Rain production down!" He began to crank it, the high whine of the suction dying to a low roar. The canisters continued to clatter across the floor, partially drowned out by Nanba's furious shouting.

"You'll produce and ship chemicals to test on POKéMON, not HUMANS!"

"Really, Professor, I don't want to do this...You'd be better off in jail for being this unco-operative but then you'd be with "human" sympathizers like Demoni and Hale-" He motioned with his index finger to a 2nd class SOLDIER standing with his hand on the hilt of his sword, a fitting executioner of the disloyal, as he did his job and didn't ask questions.. "---you."

"Yes, sir."

"Take Professor Nanba to the production room---"

"WHAT?! You can't be serious!!!"

"Right away, sir."

He laid a soft hand on the lever and yanked it to its original position, the vacuum re-activating and invading the Rockets' ears with the pernicious whine.

"Sorry, Professor. It's either my humanity or yours. Besides, I'm looking for a position in the Order. They're not looking to keep anyone who would betray the cause."

The scientist's pleading turned to begging. It wasn't long before Nanba was on his knees, somehow willing that Shin-Ra was more magnanimous than Team Rocket.. But the answer proved that wasn't so. Brutal irony that he'd meet his demise at the hands of a respected, law-abiding company rather than an organization of crimainls. But who couldn't say that Shin-Ra were all crooks? And these crooks had a witness which they were dying to get rid of.

His executioner shot him a smug smile. "Why so worried, Professor? IF you're an actual human the Black Rain won't effect you."

"B---but....."

The lab assistant tired of his protesting and ordered the SOLDIER to get him out of there. Nanba's protests faded as he was dragged through the door, clutching the floor with his fingernails, which would very soon become claws.

"Rage brings out a Pokémon's true power," Butch mumbled, too shocked to avert his eyes from the spot where Nanba had been begging for his humanity a scant few moments earlier. Didn't matter now how far he made it in the Team Rocket researcher's ranks...he'd soon be one of them, stripped of identity and speech and literacy and everything that set him apart from that Lugia and its kid they relentlessly sought to capture.

So now they knew the truth. The truth that got buried by all of Angelon's mincing words and sugarcoating...he called it "salvation". Heh. Some salvation. Cassidy dove towards the high pile of canisters, narrowly avoiding the blaring suction at the center of the chamber. He wants the drums, not the Pokémon, Butch stated tensely, staring down at the hundreds upon thousands of barrels...

So he can make more, Cassidy growled, thoroughly disillusioned as she nosed the thick canisters. She could almost taste the chemical locked inside..that was her blood, that was bitter in her mouth. Basic in taste and contrived by base people that wanted to make everyone base like them.

Man....no wonder he said that humans wouldn't oppress us anymore.

There won't be any humans to oppress...Her snarl blended with a bleak whimper...if there ARE any left, they won't last long swamped by Pokémon.

A silence broken only by the hollow sound of the moving canisters ensued. They were charged with stealing them, weren't they? And now they knew WHY. He used them. No one.. used Butch and Cassidy. For a while their pride swelled and they felt like the most ruthless Rocket agents again, following no orders but the boss', loyal to no one but the organization, having no second thoughts about backstabbing....

But if they returned empty-handed...

Was dying really worth it? Maybe it would hurt less if Angelon killed them, but if he made good on his threat and killed the girl, the demon would rip their guts out.

But was that really such a bad thing?

Should we do it?

If we do, we're dooming the world.

If we don't...

Butch felt a tingling in his muscles and a haze in his memory. The tension in his voice latched to Cassidy's mind as if he dug right through her skull. It's almost morning. We gotta choose now.

Save the human world from the Pokémon or save the Pokémon world from the human. If they backed out of this they would suffer forevermore while the rest lived in ignorance of the monsters they harbored. And the angel would ice the girl and Brock would tear them apart afterwards. If they fulfilled the mission Brock would tear them up anyway for spreading the pain to people who didn't deserve it and all that ethical junk. . Either way, they were dead meat.

The Grunts...their death was by humans. So the humans would die by them. They don't deserve mercy, Cassidy resolved, the hatred in her from that un- erasable sight they both witnessed of human evil. The transformation shamed them, but didn't make them pitiful wretches searching for redemption. They still returned worse for bad. It was their nature. Shoot, she ordered, knowing full well their decision was irrevocable.

A blast of acid fountained from Butch's mouth at the signal. It hungrily devoured the the ceiling and splattered on the flooring, unsatiated and undernourished. It gnawed through the outer wall. The fast-moving spray of water that burst through the holes from behind signalled the threatening invasion of ocean. One more shot would break through the entire wall. One more shot would send them on a path that, once on it, wouldn't get off it. A one-way street.

This is it. No going back.

Finish it, Butch.

Butch bounded for the quivering bolts that barely clung to the convulsing section of wall, and spat the burning substance onto the plate. It burned in its appetite, the ocean rumbling against the weakened chunk that fell away and opened the gate to the sea.

It rumbled in fury, tumbling into the jagged tear and it flooded the short hallway, shorting out the vacuum and crashing through the hole in the transparent floor. It cascaded into the production chamber, whisking the canisters in its turbulent arms and pulling them out towards the sea. Butch latched onto Cassidy's tail with one claw and caught the barrel with his other one, spinning out of the tear in the wall and back at the mercy of the ocean.

Butch felt the dawn creeping up on his mind and his body. Soon he wouldn't remember how they got out of Pallet, why they were on this mission, and soon he'd lose the strength in his legs and trade the frog stroke for the dog paddle....soon the current would change and they wouldn't reach the surface in time.

But Angelon had other plans. Butch opened his eyes in time for the salt to sting his retinas and to see a pale white light entangling claws that were quickly reforming into fingers, immersed in white light as he, Cassidy, and the canisters vanished, the panicked bubbles from their lungs rising to the surface as the light receded.

The blood-painted docks were likewise empty. The residue of white light still sparked through the red streaks.

The surface achieved its morning tranquility. The sun's early blaze sketched its faded caricature on the rumbling surface. The elements co-existed in chaotic calmness. Such was nature. But the blur of scales that gouged the dew-heavy air made sure this calm was transient.

The reptillian wind crashed across the waves, parting the ocean and raising walls of foam that spilled over the scaled body, abusing the tumbing ocean with every wing beat that fueled the natural chaos of Posideon and fused with an ancient wrath.

Destruction waited on the dawn's shoulders. Foam churned with a boiling roar as the dragon stormed towards the strip. A pillar of wind streaked over his scales that made him one with the sky. At last..his liberation would be forever, outliving the universe itself.

If not for Highwind.

A crack shot through his left wing and jerked him roughly backwards. The wind around him died. Hot rage transformed his glowing eyes into two converging hurricanes.

You recover too quickly for a human, he snarled, staying aloft with one wing as the imbalance threw him on his side. He whipped his ridged neck to see his defunct wing get twisted at the joint. He roared at the shot of pain that his other half managed to cause him..him..who could rip out his smoke-clogged lungs if he wished...if they weren't connected like this...!

Draconis Rex plunged in altitude and crashed across the ocean's surface.

The human's voice burned weak from the Mako poison that racked the vessels in his brain, but growling with vengeful desperation.

Snap..Fucking..wing......

"HRRREEEEERRGHHHHHHHHH....."

He wrenched the joint from inside, the threat of it cracking breaking the dragon's course and sending him beneath the waves. His eyes shot open and saliva blew through his clamped fangs that turned into a menacing grin. Trying to drown him. How idiotic...he'd be in control before Highwind could swim three strokes in this current. But he couldn't fly if that ungrateful human broke one of his wings.

I'm warning you, Highwind, if you break my wings, you buy them.

The wrenching motion stopped, but the grip stayed tight and crushing.

It's your funeral, dragon-breath. You can't fly with broke wings..!

Draconis Rex thrashed less and less as the water gushed into his lungs and drove him closer to unconsicousness. The grin spread broad and cruel across his reptillian face.

Neither can you, Highwind.

The grip loosened. You can't fly to get away from the authorities...they'll mistake you for me.

What authorities? Cid scoffed, not realizing his grip had loosened still, not realizing the dragon was playing with him like a toy.

Oh, you don't know? That's right, you were unconscious when I killed those humans.

A squeeze toy.

F--fucking hell?!?

Could be squeezed until all the stuffing fell out.

They'll know a dragon did it. They'll hunt for you.

The toy can't do anything about it.

No...I don't look nothin' like you...

It's not the one in control.

If you break my wings, no one will tell us apart. We'll be brothers. You never had brothers. Wouldn't you like a brother, Highwind?

It's not the one doing the squeezing.

JUST...FUCKING..SHUT...UP...!!!!

Cid let go. But not soon enough. The dragon gave a wave-garbled roar as he folded up and his limp body floated to the surface. As

Cid found himself control once again in the turbulent waves, his tormentor burned a mocking thought in his hurting brain as he was thrown up by the current and parching salt water burst into his nose and mouth,

I hope you can swim.

*~*~*

With bloodshot eyes Rufus stared at the saucer of milk he had unwittingly ordered.

"Glass," he growled irritatedly. "I said GLASS of milk. How difficult can a simple-----" He banged on his desk with what happened to be his bandaged hand, his lips parting and releasing a feline snarl as a shock of pain cracked through it. "...order---" "When I say GLASS, I want a GLASS..!" Here he was, Rufus Shin-Ra, fretful and querulous over the milk like a spoiled child. And...he noted angrily, not without price. He felt the dried bandages loosen around his hand. Sweat dripped from the peak of his forehead down his temple. The hated fur.....was pushing between the bandages and growing more visible..He pressed his face on the flat surface, the coldness of it attacking his skin and making the fur sprout faster than he could cover it up so no one would see..."Damn you, Ivy.." he growled. "DAMN you."

A crack of the phone shook him off the desk and semi-upright.Perhaps it was the demoness herself. He ripped the phone from the cradle and shot up, his other hand slamming on the desk and the sudden jerk of his elbow scattering the usually orderly stack of paperwork that hadn't been looked at and the untouched Magikarp next to the saucer. He ignored the ringing in his skull as he smashed the phone to his ear. "What?!" he roared at the other end, growing all the more furious when he heard the drunken laugh of one of his executives. "What, Heidegger?!" The intoxicated slur stocked wood in an already impatient flame. It wasn't enough that Hojo accused them of corruption...with HIS monetary resources, nonetheless, but now he had the GALL to waste himself while he was paying him tens of thousands of gil by the month?! He didn't notice the fur sprout and hide the bandages as he snarled into the phone, commanding him to be intelligible, but the slurred drone failed to cease. Yet...through his drunkenness, he could hear..what?..someone..found... dead...a woman..a scientist...

Ivy.

Impaled, he said...Not on a sword or spear..the wound..there was an autopsy..a hole in her chest...too large for a Nidoking or Rhyhorn..could only have been made by a monster.

The monster. One of the monstrosities in the lab, the escape of which cost the company...him..... a fraction of his vast and extensive fortune. Rufus let the phone slide off his ear, clattering on the desk as he seated himself on his chair..his throne, and fingered the raw Magikarp thoughtlessly. If not for the fur growing out of his skin and one of his hands on his throbbing head, one might think he returned to normal. "A fitting death...killed by her own creation." He grudgingly gripped the saucer of milk and sipped it, catlike eyes piercing the opposite end of the office. "Now Shin-Ra will be unhampered by the-- questionable activities of these scientific malefactors." Rufus held the saucer to his lips again, which tumbled out of his hands as he heard a tremendous sonicboom that shredded the clouds beyond the window. He twisted on his chair, his rattled gaze zeroing on the moving object, a bowing tornado, streaking across the sky. He fell towards the window with his pulsing head and glared at the thing. It wasn't a tornado..it looked like an animal...a dragon??

"This is your parting gift, Ivy?" Rufus stalked back to his desk, falling heavily on the seat of the chair and pounding the saucer of milk, which overturned and left his hand a cold and reeking mess. He took it away and held it there as he delved in his pocket for a handkerchief, and wiped the---fur-covered limb. He held it to his face and bit down on his lower lip in frozen terror. The skin on his hand wasn't even visible, now, all covered in that tangled .fur. Brownish orange......like the cat he owned as a boy--how Ivy could haunt him by bringing back a childhood memory, leaving this horror behind before she went to the grave---how could he have been so blind?..!! That Ivy would also make him fodder for the lab---The orbs of ice snapped open. Something was not logical in this.....something he had overlooked...He found that fact and confronted it in his crowded mind. "How could a foreigner, young besides, have known that I owned a household pet?"he questioned, wringing his pounding wit for an explanation.

His logic fragmented by the pain in his head provided only one solution: Ivy was not responsible. And if she wasn't responsible for his---freakish appearance, then another was culpable for that dragon that sped into the west, taking the deafening din of its presence with it and extinguishing any immediate threat. That was one more headache he was spared..he did not need ANOTHER problem on top of the fur and the headache and the lacerated hand which he dare not step into a hospital to get examined, the way he looked right now....

Then there was that dragon that appeared to make things more chaotic than they already were..This appearance couldn't have been accidental. It was not a Weapon, but an animal. Animals did not roam densely populated areas on their own whim. A human had to command and control it.

.Who would have enough years behind him, a mind sick and warped enough, an ambition great enough to do this to him? He, Rufus Shin-Ra?

He grabbed the crown of his head with his fur-covered hands and tore through the chasms of his brain, teeth that were getting a little sharper at the ends clamped together in a frustrated snarl of trying to remember..

And all of a sudden it came to him. He took his hands off his head and began to laugh. A slow, acrid laugh that was broken by feral growls.

There was no need to say the name out loud. It burned in his soul and left its mark on his body..

*~*~*

Tifa got to thinking how much easier this would be if Shera lived on the same continent. If there wasn't a whole sea, a living thing in itself, a living being not unlike the beasts that roamed Gaia. But while they wree freaks of man, the ocean was a freak of nature. While the life forms could be and often were, killed, the ocean in its vastness was invincible, impervious to those weapons fashioned by its enemy: mankind.

If you walked across the ocean, you drowned. If you used a Chocobo...

She found herself trudging with half-laced boots a bit past a moonless midnight armed with her Platinum Fist and a weak-beam flashlight in search of the Black Chocobo they left dangerously close to the Midgar ruins. This was their last hope of getting to Rocket Town. If that Chocobo died when Meteor fell, they could pretty much abandon any hope of finding Red XIII, Barret, and Cid.

The wind was dead that night. The dying grasses felt no relief from the stagnancy of the static gloom. Tifa's tread further abused them, crunching them beneath the ridged, rubber soles, one of the cheap brown laces snaking across their vulnerable heads. Of course, the closer you got to Midgar, the rarer the grass became, until there was nothing but the barest of stone, a wasteland where no human lived.

The Mako was heavier here, too. A pungent musk attacked her lungs. God...it got so much worse after Meteor fell. The Reactors exploded and left that toxin hanging in the air and pouring more poison in the already sick and weary skies.

Shin-Ra left us a dead world to inherit, Tifa reflected as she shone the flashlight's low beam on the lifeless earth. It showed no signs of being alive, it lay there, an immense corpse that the living walked upon.

But to say that something actually lived on the wasteland was a lie. Tifa wasn't used to being surrounded by so much deadness. At least in the Train Graveyard, or the Cave of the Gi, there were monsters that attacked them, but here, nothing. Without the rustle of the wind, it was beyond nothing. She walked through a void through there was ground beneath her, and even then the sound of her boots didn't make that much noise. And when it did, it aggrandized the uncertainty instead of ameliorating it.

The batteries were getting low..it was best to keep going, blindly as it was, as the flashlight's bulb flickered faintly before it finally turned off.

Tifa felt a chill ceep up her spine. It wans't so much the total darkness as the sound..it wasn't her walking, or her breathing, or her heartbeat that suddenly got louder. It was a scrape of something sharp...like claws...on the rock. She broke into a fighting stance and put up her fists, spinning in the darkness to pinpoint the scratching...it was getting persistent..there was a coarse warble, like a.....Tifa kept her guard up and sniffed the Mako-drenched air. The extra effort clapped her glove to her mouth and nose and she gasped for actual air, tripping over her laces and bumping her forehead on a hard bill. The warble shot to a shrill call and Tifa squinted up. She could see nothing, but the ruffling of hard, roughened feathers told her she found it very much alive.

*~*~*

Dawn found it taxing to pierce through the Mako haze of Midgar and its territory. It wasn't worth the effort. The sun that shone on Gaia was tired and aged. Its youth was ended with the coming of the Mako Reactors.

The sun still gave enough light this side of the world so people could see what they were doing, for the most part. So when the sun came up, it brought to Tifa disappointment that they hadn't bothered to breed a Chocobo that could cross the ocean.

She rode it out of the Mako haze as quickly as possible, and managed to reach the Highwind at daybreak. She dismounted the bird, landing at its side, upon which she noticed something about the Chocobo...it was a Black one, able to cross rivers, shallow water, and the steepest mountain, but avoided the deeper waters.

"Great........this is a big help.."

Tifa eyed the beast dubiously with crossed arms over her plentiful bosom.

The black-feathered fowl snorted in disgust, both at the human and her disinterest in it because of its shortcomings. Here come the feather-less monsters getting on its back and riding it wherever they pleased. And they STILL have the balls to look at them like THEY'RE not good enough enough when humans would take months to cross mountains while they could do it in the space of a few minutes. She approached it, pressing the knuckles of her unarmed fist against her chin and tapping the index finger on her cheek in contemplation. "If I go over the mountains to Junon, I can rip off a Shin-Ra aircraft and make it to Rocket Town before anyone notices.."

She started to get a leg up on the Chocobo's sable back, and froze with one leg still slung over the bird and the other foot on the ground. There was the sound of defnite breathing, belonging to what might as well have been an ephemereal being, but unfortunately, was real as the victims he left behind whenever his Limit broke. What would follow then, she dreamt about it when he mangled the corpses after killing them, waking up with chills every time, the memory of the shrunken, drained corpses too hard to forget..

"You would not take such a risk yourself," he interjected, melting into sight without any indication that he was there before. Tifa hid her fear with a shiver from the induced cold, and she mounted the Chocobo's back, swinging her leg over its side and resting her gloves on its neck. It sqawked in visible irritation, clawing the ground with its talons restlessly, crowing and cawing "wark" with relentless persistence. "It is best to travel in companies of three," the pallid man advised, the glint of his incisors freaking her out even more, because they were a bit sharper than his other teeth, and she dug her boots in the Chocobo's side. It screeched and refused to move.

Damn it.....

"Fine, Vincent, get on," Tifa sighed exasperatedly. He complied, sluggishly boarding the bird, that grumbled underneath the added weight. It wasn't much, but every little bit added up and put a worse strain on its back that had been free for some time.

Bite my neck and I'll put a stake in your heart, Tifa warned the man in her mind. Now there was a shadow over her. A lean, gaunt shadow, but imposing nonethless. Who knows, maybe any second his limit would break for no reason and he'd transform into Hellmasker or even worse, Chaos. Then I'll be in trouble, she sighed, brushing her brown hair from her muddy eyes. With a last look at the Highwind, she hoped Cloud got her note that she'd be out for awhile and to not expect her back in a few days..they already wasted enough time deciding whether to brave the portal or not.

Besides, she got the bad feeling that Cid somehow had landed himself in trouble.."ass-deep in shit", as he liked to say. Ha...they wouldn't even be going out looking for him, Red, and Barret, if she hadn't wrecked the Highwind in the first place.

Don't think about that now...

She shoved it in the back of her mind and steadied the bird again and dug shivering heels into the bird's ribs. It reared up with a shrill cry, ruffled its madly flapping wings, and took off in a sprint.

But as fast as the Chocobo sprinted, they would never reach Rocket Town. The gate to the other world was about to swing open and invite them to pass with a beckoning hand.

The jet-black talons marked a trail in the vegetation, stunted by bad soil and bad minerals and bad air and bad everything. The testimony of Shin-Ra's power. Nothing flourished or thrived in the Midgar area. It struggled to exist. That was all.

So the light tripled its strength when it broke through the stumps of grass that clung to infertile soil. It radiated from a wry grin above ground and poured its light in a continuous spiral that swallowed their eyes.

Blind.

"WARRRRRK!"

The Chocobo reared on its talons, spilling both riders onto the ground with a heavy crash, so taken with fear that it went mad with it. Tifa looked dizzily up into the blaze of light with her hand pressed against her eyeballs, in danger of getting broiled with its terrible brilliance. She flipped over on her back and watched it melt her vision, slowly consuming it with its pernicious force...that somehow seemed...That was it.....wait...the light....not the same closed hole, but nevertheless, a light...

"It's open! Vincent, lets go!" Tifa yelled, shutting her eyes and hurtling herself into the hole. Haste out of fear. Fear that the door would lock and their crew might be lost for good that time. So she leapt without looking first..without giving regard to the danger that might lurk beyond.

"Haste...makes waste..." Vincent murmured, remembering his own rashness, the rashness of youth, the rashness of youth that destroyed his life forever. So, if that was so, what need of caution had he?

So he plunged into the opened mouth of uncertainty.

*~*~*

It vomited them roughly in the dirt, the dawn's sunlight replacing the pure white hell they'd run blindly through. Tifa swept the dirt with her chin, refocusing her stabbed vision and trying to make sense of wherever they got dumped. She stood up and wiped the dirt off her face with a dirty glove and looked around.

It didn't take long for her to affirm she was staring at a whole other world. A world she didn't know that didn't know her own. A world ignorant of her own wasted planet, suffering under a vanquished tyrant but too late to rebound and again fill its hollow self with the life it had before Shin-Ra came and slaughtered it.

It was so...different.

"This can't be Gaia..." she told the chemical-free sky that smiled gently upon the land. No Mako to poison it, no sickly green tint that built up over the years under Shin-Ra's dominance. She almost forgot what the sky actually looked like. She hadn't been to her hometown in so long, and even then that was tainted by the Nibel Reactor. Any beauty in the Nibel sky was probably chemically-induced. But here, all was pure, the land, the sky. She thought she saw a flower growing in front of one of the houses. A flower... Aeris would have liked this place..."It's beautiful.."

Vincent agreed with his unbroken silence. The impartial brass of his soles carved sin in sinless soil. Perhaps it was a mistake coming here. Yes...a mistake... That was why he could feel his sins multiply in his tainted soul and devour any pure fragments, that was why he could hear the howl of his demons that had been caged for too long-----

"Tifa, Vincent," a voice brimming with urgency broke the long howl into intelligble words. He wove around the dumbstruck children and clawed at the dirt in his run, the dire situation waiting in his breath. He raised his head to look at them, not daring to sit down. He couldn't really without feeling the pain, anyway...his shoulder ached too from the monster trying to Blood Fang him. He passed his tongue over it in the sudden ache and winced. Tifa got the hint and rummaged in her shorts pocket for a Cure Materia as she shot questions at the dog. The beauty of their surroundings diminished in the face of priority.

"Red XIII, where are we? Did Cid find you?"

The dog turned his head as he heard yelling and cussing. The howl was probably enough to wake Barret up. Surprised he hadn't woken up already... with that pestering white light in front of the house, but either way, he was awake. So now they were four strong. When the demon and the other monsters came back, they'd be ready.

He signalled Barret with the twisting of his crimson tail, the fireball clinging to its end visible in the waxing pre-dawn. Barret's heavy stomping tread came into earshot quickly, his yelling also growing from incoherent to comprehensible. His eyes were wide and bloodshot, and he looked pissed.

"Da hell ya didn't wake me up, Red?!?! Dere's dose two kids layin' out dere like dey's gonna pass out and dat goddamn Sephiroth sittin' his ass out on 'dere front lawn!!"

Before Tifa or Vincent could remark, Red broke in, flattening his ears and rubbing the light out of his single eye with his paw,

"I---really don't know who it is, but I get the feeling he's not good news." He shifted to face Tifa, again, who had located the Restore Materia and was trying to yank her gloves out of her pocket while Red faced her again with a wince, lowering his eye at the ground and answering tersely,

"Cid's gone. Hoj---" Red buried his eye in his paw as the white light appeared again with vengeance on their eyes and a low, eerie hum grated on their ears. The dog's scrunched eye widened in panic as his nose caught the scent of demon blood and wet fur. "--I can't explain now. They're back.." he warned, bounding towards the lizard, bat/fox, and the frog that somehow turned into a man, garbed in a SOLDIER uniform...and the demonic beast.. that spilled out of the white hole onto the ground, followed by a horrendous crash of metal drums. They clattered and rolled along the uneven dirt, stopping on their sides and some of them standing up, catching the sun's first rays that reflected in unintended malice towards those looking at it.

Red skidded in front of the hideous creatures, probably victims of Hojo, but dangerous...deadly nonetheless. He didn't need to explain to his comrades just how dangerous they were: actions spoke louder. The demon bore his fangs, stained in crimson blood. The blood of animals, he guessed...or maybe, even humans. A man-eater. And his comrades all were men. As they were the weaker species, he had a duty to protect them. He bore his own teeth and the spark of the wilderness imprinted on his one eye. A growl rose from his throat and snapped through his jaws in warning.

Gemini stayed wary as long as the red beast growled, but a darting glance made him beheld something far more important than the threat of an ambush. His inflamed crimson eyes fixated on Misty and Ash, still too weak to get up, but untouched by Angelon, unharmed by his threats. The twisted growl in his throat softened to a relieved whimper. They were..were alright..

"HHHGRHHALRIGHHT....." he growled with a genuine smile that to outsiders, was pure bloodlust, the smile of a killer about to stab the victim. A smile twisted only by the chemicals that had remolded him, creating the facade of hatred and ill will. But it was only a facade. A facade that Misty saw through, Ash seeing it less easily, but accepting it, not flinching as much when the creature with the blood-painted fangs crawled over to them with this awful grin..

AVALANCHE failed to see through the wall of inhuamnity.

Dese goddamn monstas...dey jes' don't die! Barret grumbled mentally as he levelled his gun-arm with the demon's head. Unbeknowgnst to him, the head..Gemini was engineered to be invincible, but as Zero-X's vulnerable point was the underbelly, Gemini's was the head. He could take a stone-throwing, but not a head-full of bullets.

The other AVALANCHE members took his lead. They were seasoned fighters.. this was another beast to clear the path, to keep themselves from getting killed. Once and a while, they would strike before the enemy did. They were doing it now.

Red crouched to pounce and rake, Tifa put up her armed fist, and Vincent drew his ancient gun from its holster. An imminent death... if caught off-guard they couldn't hit as hard, but if prepared, they were lethal. And all the while Gemini held Ash and Misty, sensing something horribly wrong but too blinded with tears of joy and relief to look up and see the danger, and if he did, maybe he wouldn't care...because he was with the only people who trusted him...and who he could trust....his friends whom he could still call friends..now his family now that he had none except Suzy...who was wandering...probably would wander forever.....

The warning shot through his mind.

Boy, they are aiming for your head. This endeavor will not be worth the blood. we took for it if your skull is not as thick as the rest of your body.

Wha---?!

Gemini looked up in time to see both barrels trained on his head, the dog fit to pounce, and the woman holding her fists aggressively towards him. He let go of Misty and Ash, withdrawing his quivering arms, the tears of joy overrun by tears of terrified shame, and he backed away, covering his naked head in his claws and sliding on his thin tail that wrapped guiltily around his ankles. Misty couldn't believe it. How much could someone take before shrivelling up and dying of agony just because no one trusted enough to give him a chance? She left Ash dazed and upset on the ground and stood up, dismay and anger casting some of the weakness away and hurling it to the ground as adrenaline forced her to get on her feet.

But she didn't get the chance to say anything to them, for the menacing star devoured the town in explosive light once more, and Angelon re-appeared in the midst of it. AVALANCHE feared the angel more than the demon, and the firing was stalled. too blinded with light to pull the trigger , shrinking away from it like the demon had done mere moments earlier.

"Is he..back?" Tifa asked the light, the tighteness of her poised fists fading as she thought she saw the sillouhette of the seraph. Something about him, when they confronted him, made her scared enough to piss in her shorts. Something about him made her want to drop her guard right then and there and succumb to death. Red felt similarly, though a seasoned warrior, the imperious angel struck fear in the bravest of souls, and reduced them with the pierce of his Mako gaze. Only the insane did not fear the one-winged angel.

"I would have felt it. It is not him," Vincent shook his head once to the side before straightening it again and shifting his arm so it was aimed at the angel. He hadn't lost the grip on his weapon. He never let any of his muscles go limp... not since his dying day..a personal goal he set for himself.. one less reminder of his sins.

Angelon smiled in amusement. He pointed his blunt-clawed finger at the humans and dog and answered them with the euphony of his soft, pacifying voice that squelched the fires of the cacaphony of a brutish railer.

"The gifted one is correct. Cast down your weapons." They found themselves obeying him, save Barret, who could not part with his arm. But the rest who were capable, did They who had slain Sephiroth. Not actually mesmerized, but compelled by the forcelessness of it..." As of now, you have no need of them." You will not have hands to use them.

The one who knew chose not to speak. She waited...wordlessly, thoughtlessly, for the angel to end the world. The boss didn't catch on. The kid didn't catch on. He knew something was wrong, but he didn't know what she, and when night came, they knew. They knew it all.

Angelon raised a slender hand through the dawn's rays, the psychic power he and Gemini had been cursed with lifting the canisters from the ground and gathering around him, shaking under his unseen power. White light enveloped the rim of each of the drums, floating eerily in midair, bowing to him as they hovered above the dirt. Bowing to he who would establish a new world order. One dominated by Pokémon as well as all classes of animals, monsters, mutations, freaks.

The energy countered the seal, rattling the lids and pronouncing the destruction of the human race.....

Venus hailed news for Earth, which saved its life and snapped its shoulder.

"HHHRERRGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!"

A shadow swallowed the light and a roaring windstorm hurtled into Angelon and the canisters, sending the still-glowing drums rocketing into the upper reaches of the atmosphere and sending Angelon into the solid bricks of a house that shook from the force of the gale. The wind stole the grass, burst through the weaker houses, leaving the rooftops scattered across the ground, carrying them on an unsteady hand only to smash them on cracked glass, that tumbled down the hillside and landed dangerously close to the humans. The stolen grass followed the creature as it screamed over the rooftops and it carried the grass that swirled chaotically behind him as it stretched its neck in the air and roared, a delinquent that enjoyed the bad thing it had done. It was a mere prank...he hadn't actually TRIED to break anything yet. He was just playing. It was an entertaining game for the youth.

In one effortless sweep the houses in his way were beheaded and tried frantically to stay standing. The nearby crash of concrete and plaster and glass told them that one had failed. The unclothed ground trembled with the stolen grass as the wind rushed over it with relentlesness. And the roar, terrible and malicious as it was, added a gust to the wind that sent another house crumbling on itself, leaving its ruins on the ground and the corpses in between.

Gemini saw the gash the dragon made on the town...already people were dying or dead. In one huge gust that even he had trouble trying to hold onto something so he wouldn't fly away. Misty hadn't escaped either, a bloody gash on the ripped bandages where a flying board opened the wound further..Ash was lying on his back a full fifty feet away..he wanted to go help him, but something.....stronger.. kept him there.....clutching the dirt, glaring venemous murder at the monster. That queasy, awful feeling when he was forever changed on the table underneath Ivy's syringe...it was there again. Squeezing, twisting in his gut, causing him to double over. He held Misty and saw red blood. But no thirst grabbed at his throat. It was sickness that rolled in and out like a red tide that brought the deadly algae in its palms. Misty called to him but he didn't hear, sinking, with a voice that commanded him to release the raw animal that threatened to rip through the scant pieces of his broken humanity.

Angelon's anger raged more hellish than the demon's. He had pawns. Now was the time to use them. The center of his pale forehead glowed with psychic energy, still creating the facade of a heavenly aura, that reached for the weaker minds of what was formerly Team Rocket. They froze while crawling up from the debris that piled amidst them, struck by the manipulative beam that rendered them slave to their fellow Pokémon.

Go. Retrieve what has been lost.

A thunderous roar made Tifa and Barret's nerves squirm. Three of the monsters stormed out of view in a flurry of chaos, the largest one trampling over the debris under its claws, the one with wings gliding above it and a SOLDIER tailing them. Ash gazed at them with blinking eyes and a partly-opened mouth, still too hazy to say anything..to do anything..to nurse his broken leg, to wonder if Misty was okay......just lying there, while a big Pokémon hovered above his house and just flew away again. He had to tell his mom so she wouldn't get hurt..but Misty broke his leg, so he was stuck there, trying to get up, failing, and watching something happen to Brock. He looked sick...Brock helps sick Pokémon. Brock wasn't Brock anymore. But he didn't hurt Misty and me anymore. Ash rubbed his head. He didn't feel..himself. I used to...trust Pokémon, no matter how bad they hurt me. Why's it getting..ugh...He felt an ache rising from somewhere in his brain...so hard?

Draconis Rex hadn't had fun since he was a hatchling nearly a few centuries ago.

You can't say anything, can you, Highwind? he taunted, shooting into the stratosphere to give them a little time to defend their puny selves...from his raw power. Are you not worried about your brothers? Those humans I'm going to kill? Go ahead and say it, Highwind. Say how you hate me.

The pilot held his thoughts, trying to ignore the taunting long enough to focus his remaining strength and shut the dragon down. But it was so... ...difficult.....if Hojo didn't knock him out in the first place..goddamn him.....

Nothing? I'm not surprised. You ENJOY this, don't you?

That remark burned in him and fanned the fire. He expected no different. He wanted him to hate him, to be blinded by hate and lose his mind. Without mind to guide brute force, what would stop him?

Hell fuck no, you crazy bastard!!!

He squeezed Cid hard and hoped to crush him.

You don't want me to kill your human friends? The girl with the nice rack, the goth you never liked too much, dog-breath and homie-boy? If you cared for them would you call them by such names? A name means everything, Highwind. Look at your own name. It means you. I only want to destroy your enemies. The gods willed you to be a dragon, not a human....like them.

The target denied everything because none of it was true. It couldn't be....right?

They ain't my fuckin' enemies!!! You're just twistin' things aorund big time! And I..There he faltered. Second guessing...why did he doubt even for a second?! .I don't give a rat's ass what the gods think! I'm human, fuck it!!! The dragon laughed, folding his wings against his back and rendering himself a living meteorite. The dot that was the town grew larger. Cid's cry grew desperate. HUMAN, YA UNDERSTAND??!! The dragon's triumphant roar clashed with Cid's tormented scream. .

And it was then...the wind met the darkness.

"HRRRGGHHUUUUUUUOHHHHH!!!!!!!!"

A crushing wall of ebony scales smacked Draconis Rex full in the face, turning that call of triumph into one of pain. His scaled lids shut and snapped open in cyclonic fury, rushing at his attacker with opened jaws. It was a bigger dragon, hide armed with scales as black as his blood, a forked tongue like a serpent, the crown of the devil projecting from the back of his skull, and his eyes...filled with pure hate for the one who tried to destroy what was left of what he had to hold on to by the trembling edges of his claws.

Draconis Rex sank his fangs into the Black Dragon's neck. The roar shook the clouds into submission and with a twist of his head, the Black Dragon had his horns buried in the aggressor's shoulder. The flailing only ripped the wound wider, and gold blood spilled down his arms. The sight of his own blood maddened his ferocity, and he struck with all four sets of claws, ripping a gash straight through the chest. The enemy dropped, then stormed up again, trapping the other dragon's tail with his fangs and throwing him upward, and struck with the viper's speed, clamping on his leg in an effort to break it while trying to drag the other leg down. The wind heightened as Draconis Rex flapped for all it was worth, the winds cutting across the Black Dragon's face and nulling his vision as Draconis Rex freed one leg and scratched a bloody mark down the side of his head, and grabbed the chance to create a storm in the skies.

Down on the ground, Pallet watched the bloodbath. Misty stared almost vacantly at the spot where Brock had been, the same spot where he flew away from. Scared and worried..that's how both her and Ash were. This draconic form was the incarnation of Hell itself...destructive, a born killer.....But somewhere inside it was Brock. She had to keep believing that.....and believing that he'd be the victor in this clash. Or else the other dragon would kill them.

"Come on, Brock...come down..you can do it.."

The blood-eyed man melded her shadow with his. She and Ash stared up at the man with the claw for an arm with wide eyes. The toneless voice froze into icicles that hung in their mind.

"So..his vengeance reaches beyond the Planet," Vincent observed with rueful coldness in his words. He faced the other way, the gusts blowing through his tangled hair that whipped across his unflinching eyes. "All what derives from who," he stated, constructing a vague reassurance that this philosophy applied to himself as well.

Red pretended not to be bothered by it. The dragon..he couldn't help thinking that maybe this was their punishment for losing Cid to Hojo.

Barret was thinking the same thing. But..that flying freak show couldn't be the pilot. He wouldn't hurt nobody, he thought, staring into the warring skies. Blood seemed to rain from the wounded clouds.

The Black Dragon beat his wings against the windstorm that hammered and malleted his eyes. He flew blindly, the wind dragon waiting tauntingly at the top, smiling with blood painting his mocking grin. The other spread his wings and pushed through the winds, suddenly feeling a crack as Draconis Rex rammed his skull into his ribcage. The Black Dragon's snarl abated with the blow but he retaliated with the darkness, patches of night emanating from his wings and blinding the adversary. This time he went for the wings, gripping the joint and yanking it downwards. Both of them plummeted, plunging back into the troposphere, as Draconic Rex struggled to beat one wing and escape the death grip. Pallet once again came closer, but this time Draconic Rex wasn't in control.

And with the impact that rattled the town by its throat, he lost it once again.

"HUUUOAA...RRRRGHHH......"

Misty and Ash watched in muted distress as the dragon began to revert into its vaguely humanoid shape...into Brock, how he now was, how he'd been for a while. It was almost...welcoming, the bald demon...maybe because she'd gotten used to seeing him this way. Or maybe it was because that something that was shaped like a human, no matter how gruesome a travesty it was, that was easier to trust than an animal.

She heard the defeated thud as Brock landed on his knees then on his face on a part of a roof that had fallen off. Misty clutched the bloodied arm, the chill of his blood freezing her own. There was so much blood..how could she heal him....?..maybe.....a Pokémon Center? No, they woudn't want to touch him, She bit down on her lip and stood up. The Ketchum residence was still standing. Maybe..she could convince Ash's mom to see Brock as she and Ash were learning to see him. If not...Forget that. She would MAKE her see the boy inside the beast if she had to.

"HHHRRE....RRRGHHHHHH........" Enjoy it while you can.

The dragon's mocking roar faded to a weakened silence as scarred flesh of a human took the place of the scaled form of the dragon. The gold blood streaked down the pilot's returning body, collecting at his unshod feet. He wobbled a little, staring off into deep in his mind where he imprisoned the dragon once again. His hands shook as he gave a wry smile that the blood ran into and made hideous and terrifying as he started nodding viciously and stuttered with the distance and isolation of the insane marked on his face as he thought he glared the dragon in his cocky eyes though he was staring at his bloody reflection in a broken piece of glass,

"S--see? I--told--ya I was --h-human."

He dropped flat on the ground where the dragon so recently lay in a heap of its blood and the other dragon's. AVALANCHE couldn't bring themselves to say anything. Barret had the Restore Materia, but as he held out his gun-arm, he and the rest of them were reluctant to use it and knew it. Now it was a thing that could mean death instead of life. Its purpose, to heal, could actually hurt. No...more than that. It could kill.

Seconds elapsed and became minutes. The green bit of solidified Mako controlled the fate of Pallet.

*~*~* A/N: Stay tuned for chapter 20!^^