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!

20. Rain, Rain, Go Away

End of A Reality

by Blue9Tiger/DarkMutatedBrock/La Cidiana

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A/N: Ladies and gents, we're at the halfway point! ^^ Nursery rhymes used are not mine.

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Chapter 20: Rain, Rain, Go Away

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The bats never left the basement that never saw sunlight. They stitched their shroud in intricate patterns across the cavern walls, weaving shadows that clothed the faint lavender shade of the rock in robes of night.

But they avoided the door. The door with the strange markings. The door that guarded the chamber where Team Rocket unwittingly found refuge in. In the open coffins, where they could hide underneath the eternal darkness, where they could only feel, not see, the bones that clasped around them, that rattled against their damp flesh near enviously, vying the thing it could never regain.

The rotting coffin lid grinded protestingly against an equally decrepit rim and raked the naked bones which this casket held. Perhaps that same soul that had decayed until only its skeleton was left was trying to free itself from this prison, forsaken by the Lifestream by the poisoned contents of its blood and condemned to remain on a planet as dead as itself.

A muted groan sifted through the coffin lid, followed by chunks of ice breaking in jagged pieces against the wood. A panicked squeal, a dulled crash, and the lid overturned, the bones hitting the coffin rim with a pronounced clack. A body rose, not quite as skinless as the skeleton, but with bone just as cold from fear alone. Colder still with the icy dread from the ice shards embedded in the coffin that weren't there before.

"Eeeeeep..." James squeaked timidly, fear-struck eyes peering through the heavy shroud of darkness. "J--jessie? M--Meowth? P--Persian?" he stammered with teeth chattering out of the sudden cold. He heard the same muffled banging from inside. They hadn't died on him yet. That was a good sign. First one today...he sighed miserably, approaching the coffin and grabbing the lid with both hands, and yanking on its edges. He caught sight of the nail heads...firmly rooted in the wood. It was sealed. Panic surged over him. They can't get out...!! D...don't panic... there must be some way out of..His emerald eyes dropped to his belt. Relief displaced panic and he pulled one of his PokéBalls, ice in his hands, and, too cold to move far, dropped it on the cobwebs. The Ball opened, a shriek of hunger piercing the coffin room, its narrowed eyes screaming with hunger. "No..not agaaaaain..!..!" Ignoring the ineffectual protests, the vicious plant hurled itself towards its master, but froze in mid-air, instantly encased in ice. The ice block uselessly crashed to the ground, James peeking up in time to barely dodge another volley that sailed overhead and crashed into the other coffins, breaking their hold on the other Rockets.

They crashed through the weakened wood, the boards clattering on the rocky earth, the double effect of cold and terror freezing their already frozen veins. .They hadn't dried off either from the deluge outside, their clothes damp and clinging to wet skin. Chills swept their insides and a fit of coughing racked their lungs. And all the while, it steadily grew colder than a subzero night at the acme of winter.

But the cold was the last thing the small cat had his mind on.

"Is...d---da freak gone?" Meowth managed to stammer, shaking harder than he'd ever have in his long, lonely life. Not even as a kitten had he been this scared, when the butcher was after him, ready to beat that little thief black and blue. Not then...then he knew what was coming..a good beating and denial to the food, maybe a blow to his pride, but the grease-covered man who wielded the needles...there was no telling WHAT could happen. They could wind up dead...they could wind up like that human getting...tortured on the table.

James searched through the darkness, praying to God that the predator was gone. And for awhile his mind was clear and he didn't worry that there was something breathing down their necks. There was nothing..... Nothing but cobwebs, the coffins, the skeletons, the purple tint on the wall, that shed lurid light on the two-headed creature in the corner with claws on its hands and feet and hollow eyes that glowed a faint red and the right head shooting an ice storm straight at his head......

OHMYGOD.

He froze. The ice shard smashed its broad side on his forehead. He stumbled on his heels with a squeak and crashed to the floor next to the frozen Victreebel. Jessie couldn't even turn around to yell at him, transfixed by the horror of the creature with two heads, armed with long claws that dangled from an arm attatched to a shrivelled shoulder, attatched to a a torso that carried a neck that carried a head that rotated in such a way that no human could imitate and not snap his neck, which bended backwards with the spine at an abnormal, painful-looking angle, straightening only partially as if half its backbone got sliced off so it couldn't straighten all the way, then falling into this freakish contortion again and again, drunk in thoughts...if it HAD thoughts. Such a creature couldn't think...it couldn't be...POSSIBLE for a THING like that to think..

Persian managed to state the unnecessary obvious as its nose quivered at the unfamiliar smell, filling it with sadness instead of the fear that unyieldingly gripped the other Rockets by their throats.

"Mrrrrreeeeeowwwwww....." That isn't the master...

"I tink we know dat, Persian...!" Meowth squeaked, backing into Jessie's shaking leg. What had saved them from rot could easily kill them. It looked dangerous enough. The huge chunks of ice it hurled from the tips of its claws was testimony of a powerful creature they dared not even THINK of capturing. But what they didn't know was that the creature was far more than simply a danger: they were faced with the deadliest creature that haunted the Shin-Ra Mansion basement: Yin-Yang.

Truly, whatever had created this, nature or man, had a sick mind. Yin-Yang, the female, darkness and earth, the male, light and heavens, were necessary for balance. When both existed, there was balance. But this monster.....when both existed, there was only havoc. And nature has an order to its chaos, so it could only have been the twisted hand of man that had sculpted this gruesome parody, for there was only chaos of the lowest kind that left the mutilated bodies of mauled victims in its wake.

No doubt it itself looked gruesome to anyone but its creator. Two heads instead of one, claws instead of nails, the body---and as Jessie looked closer, bodies, hideously out of proportion...so completely...inhuman...

But that's what disturbed her the most. It was ugly. It was an eyesore. It was hideous. If so......

Why did it look so human?

They, not it. Whatever. They weren't human, so it didn't matter what you called them.

A flying bolt that sizzled the dank air forced her, Meowth, and Persian to move closer. James and Victreebel still were unconscious and frozen in the danger zone, but they'd wait it out..and hope James didn't get hit with the volley.

She looked up from behind one of the open coffins. God, now she could see their ribs through their skin. Gross. Disgusting. The muscle through the skin. The veins through the skin. The needlemarks.....oh, great. A monster on drugs. No wonder it couldn't see straight when it leaped out of the doorway and raised a claw to strike her partner dead.

Damn it, James! Snap out of it already!

Chucking all sense out the window, Jessie grabbed Meowth and Persian and dashed through the doorway, not noting that the door was still intact. The monster had to get in SOME how...they didn't walk through walls. What need had they for pushing open a door? Wouldn't a true beast rush the door, knowing no other way?

This was NOT the time to spend on logic......

"Arbok-----" Jessie flung the cold metal globe into the rock, releasing her cobra in a flash of light. It had its mouth on its wounded tail, staring at its master rather listlessly. "Wrap!" The heavy snake slithered towards Yin-Yang, its menacing nature propelling it towards the target......until Yin-Yang turned around. Arbok's hiss turned into a sorry hack in its throat, too paralyzed with terror at the hideous visage to coil itself around its wiry body. Arbok retreated, meeting Jessie's furious glare and the red light that sucked it back into the Ball. "What's WRONG with you---?!......" Jessie started to demand, but found Yin-Yang advancing for them, hatred in their eyes as electricity crackled within one hand. Like a Thundershock or Thunderbolt... Nothing they weren't hit with before, but.....

Her gut feeling told her that this electricity would be much...MUCH...stronger.

"Meowth, get you and that cat out of here right now----!"

"Aye-aye, sir...!" Meowth shook his head so hard it rattled, grabbed Persian by the tail and took off at maddening speed, leaving Jessie alone with Yin- Yang. She swallowed the terror in her saliva and lunged for the door, narrowly escaping the electric bolts that superheated the air behind her. She landed on her chest, the deformed, sickly hand of the creature embedding in the rock where her head was. Forget the hair...she told herself, shoving away her vanity and rolling across the ground, each miss a closer shave than the one before it. She outstretched a hand, grabbed James' PokéBall, and recalled the frozen plant. Yin-Yang was right above her. Their breath clung cold to her neck. Her other hand shot out through the cobwebs, grabbing her partner's icy hand and they sprinted for their lives.

The Rockets moved rapidly despite the heavy darkness, the bats in half- force merely adding to the shadows that crawled lightning-quick across the rock formations. Meowth lagged behind, his weight much less than Persian's, and Jessie had already dragged James on the first step. His ears caught Yin-Yang's groan through his own straining, and he hauled Persian's tail on his shoulder, finally reaching the flight of stairs that looked longer now that they needed to get the hell out of there.

But they had to. There was no room for failure.

Their frantic steps grew fainter and fainter on the stairs, until the crashes of the bookcase echoed through the basement, as the intruders slipped through the opening and escaped the nightmare of the basement.

Whether they made it to the mansion's exit, though.....

Silence ensued once more, broken by the flurries of squealing bats Again it was a tomb undisturbed by the truly alive, its dead left to writhe and suffer alone.

But there were other profaners of the crypt, of the kind who lost one of their own to the center coffin in the chamber plagued with death, and of the kind whose hands were dipped in the blood of the sacrifice.

They were not stealthy as the others had been: they had no intention of keeping their presence secret. One was bound by Kanto and Jouto law, but now he was under the protection of Shin-Ra, who overlooked the most inhuman atrocities as long as their loyalties remained with the company.....

Two Turks flanked the scientist on either side. It was stock knowledge that Turks didn't question scientists to their face. Turks didn't live long anyways with all that booze; they didn't want to make their lifespan shorter than it already was. So they didn't ask why the dude with the pink rock sent them back to Gaia with the geezer with square glasses. Just Elena's luck that her boss and her got split up...some dogshit about "keeping the Earth gate open" or some crap like that. Yet as desperately in love with her superior as she was, she stayed professional for the sake of both their hides. They were following an escaped CON, for Odin's sakes.

A real prick, if you asked him. Why couldn't he push this eyesore that weighed at least six tons himself? HE was the one with the goose egg the size of Corel Desert, why should he do more work than he was paid to do? Damn, people with brains get it so easy, the Turk grumbled mentally.
Even on wheels, pushing the load was a bitch, especially with those bats brushing past his neck. One of them swooped on his skin that jumped at the stiff fur and he slugged the thing with his rod. A spark of electricity crawled down the iron stick as the bat fell with a halted screech. He kicked it out of the way and suddenly found the scientist's needle-thin eyes on him with that perpetual coy look. Annoying more than unnerving. Which would've been a good thing if he didn't coerce them into lugging this "essential equipment" that this guy...Sebashen or Sebastien or something like that refused to tell him what it did even though they were the ones that were transporting it. There's scientists for ya. He didn't doubt that when they got to where they were going he'd kick them out and they'd never see what hapless guinea pig'd suffer today.

Not that they really wanted to, but...even if he let them witness today's, they wouldn't be able to get inside the lab.

No sooner had they rounded the rough outer section of the stone wall, Elena froze and stopped pushing. Directly in front of them was Yin-Yang, incensed by the appearance of more humans..they moaned in hate-filled desperation... what more could he do to them? What more could he take from them? On that day, he took everything in the name of the sadistic god of science. Their hair, teeth..bones...he was in no way accurate...the infusion itself destroyed half their body. He didn't even hear their cries of agony.

Then they were smashed together, "adjusted" to fit because the stitches wouldn't stay any other way. He sliced off whole limbs...stuffed them back in the maimed bodies so no one would find the chopped-off arms and legs..the Mako would dissolve it anyway.

No one except him knew why they wandered the basement searching for humans to kill. And as this hated scientist drew a handheld device from the side of his belt and aimed it at the deformed monster, no one ever will.

"Leave this disposal to me," ordered the scientist curtly, the glint of Reno's electrically-charged rod catching on his square spectacles. Electricity.....hm.... That was his developed point, his forté. It was an excellent time to test his miniaturized version of the Evolution Inducement Wave on this animal.

He raised it in the direction of the hideous monster. and turned the dial until it couldn't turn farther, rays of electricity radiating from the center of the machine in silent but deadly pulses.

It was designed for Pokémon. To make the process of evolution premature and push foward their biological clock. The sickness the wave caused was even deadly for them if under its persistent grip for too long. But for a Gaian monster.....

Yin-Yang clutched almost human-like at their chest, wavered, shook under the force that ripped through their body, wresting a tortured moan from its lips as the wave stopped what remained of its blood, and it crumpled to the ground, motionless as Professor Sebastian rolled the body out of the way with a light kick. Unwittingly he put their tormented souls to rest. Even if in Sebastian's mind, it was an animal, not unlike the organism he expected that he and another Jouto scientist would use for experimentation. He hadn't seen the animal yet...supposedly it underwent a total "Mako" infusion. Professor Elm planned to extract it, though he failed to tell him how exactly the process worked. In fact, he did not tell him much at all. Surely the younger scientist wouldn't hide these details from his senior. Of course, he'd never been to Gaia, and was inexperienced with this new chemical. Until now, he used the standard mixture, codenamed "Black Rain" to enhance specific abilities of Pokémon. As far as Mako went, his expertise was very limited.

It promised to be quite the variation in his career. Team Rocket scientists

rarely collaborated with the so-called respectables. This would be quite interesting...perhaps when they started, the disapproving leer would fade from his features as he stepped into what resembled a disaster area...... The broken door lay flat at the entrance...archaic instruments, uncleaned from the gold liquid that coated them, lay helter-skelter on a tray dropped carelessly on a table with a missing leg. Dents from claw-marks stood in the liquid that dried over older blood that streaked the floor cracked in some places, the fractures made obvious in the yellow light of he bulbs that hadn't blown out yet..... books scattered in one corner, overturned microscopes with broken eyepieces, and glowing green tubes..containment structures of some kind, and.....in the center.. .."Of all the peculiarities that still exist....." he exhaled a perturbed breath, stepping on the floor that whimpered from the atrocities it witnessed and could not eradicate the ugly memory soaked in brutal patterns of blood.

The table was not much different. He walked in the direction of the blood-encrusted object and looked upon its surface. Something had destroyed the straps. In rage, probably. An animal that had this ferocious tendency had to be subdued, but.....He alternated a glance between the floor and the rusted scalpel. Maybe that was an animal's blood...to actually break the skin in the process? Even he, the most efficient and, consequently, cruelest Team Rocket scientist in history deemed it quite excessive.

Too excessive, Sebastian grimaced as he examined the room more closely. Shackles, branding irons, a pillory, a rawhide whip stared him in the face. He found himself reeling slightly, edging back until he bumped into the machine the Turks were pushing across the whimpering floor. More than slightly unnerved, he absently gripped the tarp with his fingers and disgustedly muttered, "This is not a laboratory, it's a torture chamber."

Reno managed to stutter a gaggle of random letters not fully joined to make a coherent word. Admittedly, he was scared shitless. Elena the same. I mean, how in all hell did their WONDERFUL president overlook THIS? People, 'specially crazies, didn't change so easy. When Shin-Ra moved from Nibelheim to Midgar didn't the prez SEE any of this? No one gave a damn about labrats anyway, that was their problem, but sweet SHIVA, this wasn't no standard surgery. It seriously looked like someone died on the wall. Heck with that, it looked more than just one person. Hundreds.....THOUSANDS could've painted and re-painted the walls with their blood.

Wonder if this's what happened to 'old Valentine' Lena keeps on talking about, A sordid thought bowled through his mind and struck the back of his brain with a gut-piercing blow.

Sebastian stood pensively. His long and lucrative career seemed downgraded and debased...for a space of a quarter of a millisecond, he felt guilty on the basis of the requirements of his profession. "Only an animal," he reassured himself. "Only an animal....." As if that word suddenly struck something in his short-term memory, he turned to Elena and Reno snappishly and ordered, "You've done your task, now leave. I won't have unnecessary witnesses."

Witnesses...even the SCIENTIST thought it was a crime. Too bad they couldn't arrest him themselves. But they had a job and they weren't about to put it in jeopardy even if it meant some worthless life got wasted. No way. As atrocious, barbaric, and downright sick the lab was, they wouldn't run to the cops, squeal, put braniac back in jail 'cause they knew what'd happen.

Pretty soon they'll be askin' questions. It'll go straight up the ladder until they get to the top. The prez'll get off easy with his 30 dozen lawyers and we'll be in a heap of crap when he finds out--Reno walked ten times faster while staring over his shoulder at the dim light that crawled out from the..."lab". This didn't even try and hide it like the lab at Vermillion HQ did with its sterilizings and vague cover-ups on what was happening behind the door----like when the caged animal dropped dead from the poison it didn't seem so bad, but this outright shrieked all its warped purposes real loud.....so what if it happened to animals but that table was HUMAN-SIZED...and that was human blood spattering the walls.....

The braniac couldn'tve said it better, really. A torture chamber. They had the gods to thank...they didn't want to see the next victim, the next poor idiot that would die in that room.

*~*~*

Who.....

Are.....

you?

Cid brought a scarred hand up before his face, gazing into nothingness that squeezed between the cracks of his fingers. Fingers connected to hand he thought he knew so well.

Key: thought. Now he questioned..he who had such a sure sense of himself, of who he was, what he was meant for..He couldn't help a forced laugh run though his tar-eaten lungs. Strife used to go through this shit.....now it's me that's askin' it...ha..ha.....

The trapped dragon rose from the confines of the other half's mind and outstretched his wings smeared with gold and ebony blood. It was wounded. Cid had his spear. He could kill the nightmare right now, plunge the blade through his lungs. They were now separated. Now was the perfect time. No more voices in the head...no more fucking dragon screwing with his life...

That's it. He'd do it. Sweat rolling down his hate-creased brow, he grasped the spear's handle with his ungloved hands and pulled.

What the fuck-----?! He tightened his hold on the spear, pulling with all his might. The weapon was so...damn...heavy...how'd it get this----- He bent down at his knees and strained, face reddening from the pure........effort. Frustration turned to panic and panic became terror. He hurled ever oath he could think of at the weapon, getting the dragon's cruel laugh as an answer.

You're more intelligent than that, Highwind. You need me to survive. Always remember that.

I don't need no one! Cid rebuked hotly, on his knees now, desperately trying to lift that weapon he could easily toss up in his gloved hands and fly into battle---Fly---- the dragon gave him the desire to---to------

That was when Cid realized the truth. He took quaking hands off the spear and stood up in desolate defeat.

He's right....I ain't anybody without the stupid fucker. He stared at the dragon's grinning face. Jesus, he wanted so bad to stab that grin right off his face. But wait...he was smiling...that's just...that's what he WANTED him to think. Fucking idiot..he WAS somebody, goddamn it! He was Cid Highwind! He was...was..... Deteriorating??

We are two halves of a whole. Though I'm far stronger than you.....

Cid felt a queasy feeling rip through half his stomach as one whole side of his body fell off and landed on the ground with a clunk. He fell apart so easily..weak...the dragon was tryin to make him feel weak. He wasn't gonna fall for that one.

Don't gimme that bullshit, Cid growled with one half of his mouth. He glared at the other half of his body lying limp in the darkness, that melted into the form of half the dragon. He began to crawl towards him, the single useless wing hanging broken and mangled at his side.

Let me come out, he whispered almost imploringly. If Cid didn't know the little bastard he might've believed him. Might've believed him and gave in and before he knew it he'd be wrecking the world.

Like I'm gonna trust you, Cid snorted. The dragon's breathing filled the whole space, self-assured and confident. He knew he'd win. Humans were soft. Every one of them was an Achilles.

If he couldn't have control, he would bring misery to his host.

Who DO you trust? Your friends? A laugh, long and low, haughty, scoffing, evil in its cruelty. I'll tell you something now, Highwind. Your "friends" have your hands tied to a bedpost. They didn't heal your wounds...they want you to bleed to death. Once they saw me they were scared. All humans are. Scared of us...see? I'm the only one who you can trust.

A stubborn silence fell in the space.

You still don't believe me, Highwind? The dragon's half revreted back to human, picking itself up and joining it with the other half. The moment they fused, the dragon roared a dictatorial command in his mind. Awake.

Cid found himself unconsciously obeying as he sprang out of the haunted sleep and yanked his vexed eyes open. The blurred surroundings slowly became clear, a window bolted shut, the door locked, and.....what the friggin hell? He pulled himself foward so he could get the fuck out of this bed that wasn't his and get some answers fast.

And to great irony found his wrists bound with rope.

"This some kinda late April fool's?!" the pilot growled as he tugged hard, clonking the back of his head with the heel of his hands, still covered in dried blood. A spent Restore Materia lay dropped in haste on the floor. "So you're yellow, huh?!" shouted Cid at the top of his lungs. "'Fraid of yer own pilot?! That he's gonna bite ya when he can't even eat a stale bagel?!" His blue eyes bulged out of his sockets with incensed craze that gripped him by the neck and made him wheeze so hard he was almost unintelligble. "Don't think I don't hear ya talkin' when we're gonna fight Sephiroth----- 'All's we got is a stale bagel. Poor old man doesn't get it 'cause it'll break his teeth! Oh, yeah, I'll bite ya for sure------I'LL BREAK YOUR LEGS!!!!" he howled, pulling on the bonds with all his might, the rope pushing into his wrists and making them rawer than they already were. It wasn't until he felt that warm blood drop onto the sheets that he dropped his arms in wasted defeat. He watched his chest rise and rattle, and fall the same way. A chronic cough aggravated his throat sore from yelling. Should'tve yelled so much... The more they'll think I'm like the dragon......He let his eyes close and tried to think about anything but the the rawness in his wrists and throat, the big fat ache in his spine 'cause it got twisted every which way but the right, and the loneliness..A lotta times he looked foward to days where it wouldn't be anyone but him and his airship. But now, more than ever, he wanted company..Any company, really. Even if it meant Tifa smacking him across the face for being a regular son of a bitch.

But as the hours trudged by, he realized they wouldn't even give him that.

Barret heard something like a sob from behind the door. Very brief like the sun's rays through perpetual storm clouds, but it was one of those things that made him wish he didn't have to do this. Especially at gunpoint. Fine if it was the Shin-Ra, but his old chess buddy? Damn, it really got to him. Really made a mess of things 'specially if the dragon popped up. Turn his gun on Cid Highwind? It ain't natural, man...

It'd be a helluva lot easier if he didn't have a soul like the man guarding the window. No emotions...quick shot...painless for the heart 'cause Valentine don't have no heart, Barret thought with a heavy frown and a heavy sigh. He don't know what a heart is so he can kill Highwind quick if he gotta.

The voice of Barret's comrade forced him off his mental train lost on a distant track.

"How is he?" Tifa asked flatly, turning her head towards the door and sliding her glove on it absent-mindedly. She still couldn't come to terms with this...the truth...and to think that Red and Barret were responsible...she couldn't look either of them in the eyes. It was negligence on their part, pure carelessness.

But deep in her heart, she knew she started this.

Blaming them again, Tifa chided herself hotly. Barret's booming voice separated her thoughts.

"He jes' got up," Barret heaved a sigh that attempted to be unconcerned but failed, the same "softness" that he once accused Tifa of nudging at his soul. "He's cryin', Tifa. Neva heard him cry befo'." The gravity in his booming voice weighed his giant form down." Cid ain't no sissy boy."

Tifa read him tensely. Read the twitching in his muscle-bound arm. The gods knew he'd try and open that door. She turned her sweltering gaze on him and warned sternly,

"Neither are you, Barret. Don't you dare open that door except to feed him. You know what would've happened if the dragon divebombed this place."

How could he forget the Mako Reactor? It would haunt him forever, a ghost drifting among the ruins.

"Jes' like Secta 1," Barret answered. Tifa toughened up again at the worst times. She got soft around Cloud, but a while not around him and she was hot stuff. Not that he couldn't see she felt guilty about it, too. But it looked like there wasn't no choice. Cid could really be in a worse predicament than he was now. That lady could just as easily say no as she said yes, then Cid could be lyin' out in the dirt. She was polite-like and let a complete stranger in her house and her guest bed.

But this hospitality wasn't meant for all.

Red stood tensely at the front door, ears attuned to the slightest intake of breath, instincts honed to their highest sensitivities to detect the dragon that was hiding in Cid. Or that WAS Cid... The wolf/lion felt the beginnings of a shudder run down his neck. He'd battled countless monsters before, but the dragon..Cid...he knew him...he warred at his side

It was hard to kill him if he had to.

That was the other thing.

Would we be able to? Short of Chaos, he never saw a monster that destructive, that willing to destroy what nature built, take its victims and crush the blood out of their bodies. Already he heard isolated wailing and shouting pricking through the late morning air when they discovered their neighbors didn't get up for work because they were smashed underneath the broken pieces of their houses.

There were others shouting..but it wasn't about the disaster. It was over the demon's motionless body forming a pool of night-hued blood in the road.

"I won't believe that's Brock, Misty. He died in the Pewter City fire. You have to accept that," Mrs. Ketchum coaxed tiredly, closing her eyes against the sun that seemed too warm for a day like this. And Misty's anger was only making it worse. "I can't just take in strays like this...!" she finally threw up her hands and molded an explanation that in Misty's eyes, was a flimsy excuse.

"You're afraid of him, aren't you?..!" Misty retorted with hot anger burning in her clenched fists. Rejection after rejection..this time from the one who was always the least cruel. But in her own subtle way, she shot him down like a marksman yanking a bird out of the sky.

"Yes," she answered, folding her arms authoratively across her chest. "Just look at---at---it, Misty. I understand if it's a Pokémon, but it's a--"

"Monster," the girl finished the sentence with clenched teeth, finally dropping her head on her chest in crushed resignation. When she looked at Mrs. Ketchum again, her eyes trickled tears that spread across her face and down her neck. "Give me a PokéBall," she was shy of pleading. Brock, for all his strength, wouldn't last long. God, there was so much blood...didn't she see how much there was? Pokémon died from blood loss too. It wasn't just humans.

But she didn't see it, did she?

Mrs. Ketchum reluctantly honored her request. The Ball seemed reluctant too, rolling off Brock's contorted body several times before it trapped him inside its metallic walls, landing in the blood and sending ripples that travelled towards the edge, an eerie disturbance in the silence. Misty plunged her hand in the ice-cold liquid and picked up the Ball.

She grew as cold as the metal and the creature inside it, turning away from Ash and his mom and taking off, her own wounds not so painful anymore because she held a life in her hands. "Hang on," she managed to choke out as she headed northward. "You'll make it."

As if she could actually believe that herself. She tried to keep from staring at her hand smeared in black blood. It would slow her down..make her doubt. She had to keep going, because...maybe she was carrying a corpse in that PokéBall.

*~*~*

Battered forests fell with the mindless train of creatures. With no control over their minds there was no need for advanced brain activity that would enable dexterous movements: with no brain came unstoppable strength.

With this strength the whole system suffered. The giant reptillian tail snapped the trunks of the trees that crashed down on the Mankey and the Pidgey and made the Spearow riot and scatter where they would normally strike in vengeance. All reason they once posessed died: A sword struck through the air at random points, chopping the fleeing Spearow into many pieces that could contain what the master ordreed them to find. But they didn't.

As the trees fell with deafening crashes so did the Mankey, maimed by the teeth of the airborne Ninetales casting the death shadow on the terrified creatures that got caught by the leg and pulled into the jaws that snapped closed, then spit them out a mangled corpse cut to ribbons. Other Mankey fled over the dying's bodies, all forms of camraderie traded for self-preservation and the pure drive to survive.

Their drive wasn't strong enough. The feral roar warned them too late...when they saw the beast's eyes, it saw them.

. The pathetic stumps that Draconis Rex left in his wake were slowly reduced to mulch as Team Rocket scoured the woods, destroyed them by their own selves..instead of the machines they once used to destroy. THEY were the machines, now. Angelon's machines....programmed to seek out and kill ANYTHING that stood between them and their command.

Obey.

Their brains now squeezed and rolled up to a tight ball so limited in capacity managed to form those four letters that spelled unchecked carnage in carved bone and tissue.

Viridian was destroyed. Pewter was demolished. Pallet's north forest was annhialated.

All for what would annhialate the entire globe.

If Zero-X FELT anything without a brain to tell it to feel something, it felt the wind blow the dirt in the cracks in his reptillian hide. The obliterated trees cried from the vast grave. They were silenced as its claws dug into their ground-up forms, releasing a massive roar as it moved foward with the armed human and the winged death tailing him, their mark on the land cruelly obvious with the wind stirring up bald dirt that leapt obediently and collapsed lifeless into the earth.

Kanto had been scratched harder. Right?

*~*~*

Team Rocket Headquarters was as scorched as Pewter. The latter was shrouded in ashes, the former was shrouded in corpses.

The boss of Team Rocket didn't recognize his own hideout he destroyed himself. Had he been aware, his already gored pride would simply shrivel up and die. But Angelon was more merciful than Ivy..he would keep them his mindless drudges.....until it stopped being convenient.

A witless growl grew from the misshapen vocal chords of the huge beast, penetrating the air heavy with rot. A pile of bodies lay static across the clearing. To them, without mind, those bodies were obstacles to be destroyed. They threw them, tore them in half, and the more obviously animal weren't above making a meal of their search.

Activities that required no deliberation they found simple. Because it was instinct. The primal craving to ingest other beings in order to survive. Herbivores preyed on plants, omnivores preyed on both, carnivores preyed on solely the meat of others.

And what a benefit for Angelon...no guilt unless they ever returned to this specific point. Guilt was such a hinderance to moving foward....so he simply vanquished it.

He felt faint in his stark white limbs. A mental sensation. The image connected itself in his brain, pulsing with light that persisted in draping his body with the robe of heaven. His hand slipped from its side and pressed lightly on his forehead. A smile of the purest sincerity spread across his lips.

They have found it.

That seal of this infant apocalypse swirled calmly within his mind as he himself rescinded the white shroud and vanished not so differently than a Kadabra uses Teleport.

He covered miles in moments. The white light exploded in front of Butch who was kneeing one of the corpses in the abdomen, both hands wrapped around the glint of smooth metal. His eyes were aflame with hypnotized gaze that spilled in white falls out of his eyes blocking out his earthy pupils.. and any sign of mental autonomy. He blankly stared up at his master that nodded approvingly, sending appraisal through his empty mind as a human rewards his dog.

"Good boy," he told him, taking the canister from him and transferring it from the human's hands to his. He ran his blunt claws over the surface. "However, that address will no longer fit you when everlasting night falls upon your head." The other canisters began to rise from the heap of corpses wrapped around the concrete and plaster, moving the mass of mutilated bodies with its tremendous weight. Nothing but stupid silence from the Pokémon when at any other time the hatred of hell would stir them to slay the angel for forcing them to mangle the corpses still hungering for the shred of peace that death promised them.

Angelon now stood atop this altar of bodies, his claws pushing into their broken skin. His fur-covered tail brushed their open eyes in subtle malice...here you lie dead, now I soil your corpses with my soiled self...lower than you am I now? I think not. He lifted the steel cylinders, their lids shaking in fear as the light swarmed them and attacked the seal. The light penetrated, gripping the lid and the rim and separating them, a crack barely visible through the massive light flood. Angelon's white eyes closed, raising his curved claws to the heavens, as if invoking some holy energy as well as channeling the psychic energy that coursed through him in endless currents. His eyes opened again. The light flowed around the lid, white-hot light disintegrating the deceptively indestructible adhesive

A steady growl emitted from the cover, the substance within clamoring against the door that was finally about to be unlocked. The growl chorused the others, shuddering as the light dissolved the thing that sealed the storm.

The angel let his eyes open. "Witness and behold..." The cover snapped and clattered on the ground and the bodies. The bubbling liquid that heat and pressure evaporated into a gas poured out in vengeful columns, fleeing from its prison and enveloping the creatures rooted so near it. Something withered in their trapped souls. The animal slayed the human and burned its corpse.

But only one of them felt it.

Butch doubled over with his nails digging in his gut. The gas engulfed him, and cast an infinite moon that would control him. No longer would the sun command his destiny...it would be the moon alone.

The transformation tangled the strings. The Rocket fell to his knees and dropped the sword, his cry hoarse and near inaudible.

"God damn......" he croaked, the white glow in his eyes fading to brown. He clutched the ground, sweat pouring in droplets that choked the earth. He brought one knee foward and stumbled, landing on his side with the gas overtaking him more rapidly than he could flee. It forced the moon though the sun shone furiously bright in the heavens, made Celine forever in hs gaze.

And it was at that moment, as he shrunk down to a wart-infested pipsqueak, the human in him dead as the gas razed his spirit and he somehow knew the same thing happened to the others, all because of the chemical that they now had set loose on the world, when he realized how big a mistake they made.

The temporary freedom came from the break in Butch's mind. He succumbed to the psychic power and control of his thoughts crumbled filling it with the one command of obey.

The gas rose and pushed for the ignorant clouds.

*~*~*

The monsters rendered a hot day an inferno.

Chilled sweat ran down the PokéBall in Misty's blood-covered hands. The black blood hardened on her skin like water freezing to ice, but far colder, far bleaker than the frozen mountains of Kanto. As inhospitable and unforgiving as death itself. A death that wasn't far from the demon.

All because of that dragon. If the dragon didn't attack, Brock's life wouldn't be in that PokéBall she clutched with acrid, vitriolic grasp. She wouldn't be heading through bare territory with no trees in sight to act as landmark, with the sun hanging in the middle of the sky and grinning in malice at her and the wounded demon. The muggy air that told of coming rains only made it worse. The metal of the Ball glued to her skin, fueling and fueled by the heat that made the black blood and the red blood hot. And she was running....stopped...caught her breath, ran again over bare land that stretched into the distance.

"Stupid.....dragon..." Her breath came in hoarse pants, and she let herself drop, succumbing to human weakness. After all, that's what she was, right? Just a human.....just the weak product of her weak parents who were born of their weak parents whose moms and dads were weak and it continued down the family tree. "Why her, of all people?" Misty asked herself in short ragged breaths, one hand cupped on a knee, the other pressing the cold Ball into her leg. She stared up with the bitter nostalgia that comes from falling victim to a false illusion. "You were the one who helped him.... You found him in the field..." She cast her gaze at the ground, blurred by the sweat that ran down her forehead. "Right here..." No grass. Maybe that's why it was so unbearably hot....why each step drained her of her already limited stamina. She inhaled the sultry air, pointing at the ground semi-wistfully, that hardened to anger as she couldn't find it because it was gone. So was the field of reckless adventures that used to end in lighthearted goodbyes.

If she didn't keep running, this one would kill her if heatstroke and blood loss failed to. Dizziness ate at her with frenzied appetite. She barely noticed the shadow that overtook hers. The skid of bike tires coughed dust in the broiled air. Misty walked a scant few steps before collapsing into the dust, the PokéBall still stuck to her limp hand.

"You'd never make it anyway..Viridian City's too far," the older girl shook her head regretfully and boarded Misty on her bike, whisking some of the hair out of her eyes to witness the hint of silver in the clouds. "One more rain before the angel ends the world," May murmured The hot stagnancy before the warm fronts and cold fronts, the dropping barometric pressure..yep, there'd be a storm.

She clutched at her chest, the leftover ache stirring her memory. "'..The end of this world will be brought by a flood..'" She craned her neck and stared at the sky heavy witb grey clouds.....no different from any other storm. It can't be the apocalypse....no way.

The angel was cruel, she knew that well enough. But to destroy the world with rain that enabled plants to photosynthesize and Pokémon and people to drink and that relieved the burden of the sun....that was evil.

Besides, one blast in the chest wouldn't turn her into an evangelical nut, warning a skeptical audience about the end of the world.. When pain lifted fear could as well. She wheeled her bike with the unconscious girl slumped over the handlebars, the heat a parasite to its host.

*~*~*

"...And now for the weather...highs in the upper 80s with lows in the mid 60s...10 % chance of scattered showers in the Kanto region..."

The TV droned while people and a Pokémon there wasn't any data in his PokéDex for that tried to kill Brock marched in front of the guest room upstairs and a man that turned into a dragon----

Huh?

Piece by piece that perfect day slipped into hellish chaos. He really ddin't know what was what anymore and why was why, where was why and when was where and especially.....

Who was what and what was who.

Ash switched off the TV and sat up, idlely spooning some food in his mouth. It tasted good but there was none to share that good with. He wanted to give some to Pikachu but it was dead. He wanted to shout "this is great!", always full of life and energy of youth and determination, but Misty was gone and so was Brock and he didn't know where his mom was and he couldn't walk because Misty broke his leg. Oh yeah... LOTS to shout joyfully about. TONS.

The clouds darkened to a grey-black. Oh, look. They lied.

*~*~* . The bike tires made long tracks in the boiled dirt as the pedals and gears and chains moved under human power. It swerved and bowed, May forced to run at the bike's side and push it from there. How much easier it would be if she could get on the seat like she usually did and race into a wind that would blow freer than it was right now, allowing burned air to reign and exhaust her, too. When it was hot, that was one thing, and when it was humid, that was another. Hard to move when hot, hard to breathe when humid. There was something about it that choked, strangled, cut the air flow and left a person begging for the skies to open their locked doors.

Approaching noon when the heat budget was a surplus, the sun donned its most brutal mask and paraded wildly, flailing a whip of fire.

May rubbed sweat off her brow with her knuckles and steered the bike through the obliterated forest. Forest...there WAS a forest here. What happened to it.....? Did the angel..? She aimed her head down and saw footprints and clawprints carved in the dirt.The light in the sky was gone. The angel wouldn't be coming back.....but the fear tugged at the back of her brain that they were somehow going the wrong way...that maybe she took one wrong turn and was actually heading....

The girl slowed and stopped her bike, the spin of the wheels broken by the sudden pause. "'You will be the first to fall...'" She looked up at the low-hanging clouds that gathered militantly over her head. The wheels marked their tracks again as she headed for the ever-darkening distance.

Though the sky was silent it roared in its own way, as the parts of the beast became functional and it stood ferocious and hate-filled, as the ebony gas rose higher into the depths of the sky, where the individual particles cooled, condensed...

Just another thunderstorm. Go inside and you'll be okay.

Go inside and hide from your neighbors you deprive of sustenance.

Don't you dare drink this rain.

It WILL kill you.

*~*~*

Night came in its noble ebony cloak of enormity. The forecast hadn't changed, the weather cooled down, the moon rose, chased by the bloated storm clouds that felt sick from the contaminants that mixed with the millions of water droplets that readied to precipitate and quench the screaming land. The baby asks for water and the parent contemplated if they would mix poison in it when it wasn't looking.

Something was wrong. May should've reached Viridian by now, but...All there was was a giant pile of ruin and the monsters and....the angel. She shuddered in leashed terror, fearful, but knowing he couldn't see her. If he couldn't see her, he couldn't hurt her. But there was something..not the angel himself, but what was AROUND him that gripped her gaze and forced her to witness the fall.

Surrounding the perpetual light were pillars of gas that swirled into one giant chimney of what looked like smoke that piled into the clouds pregnant with rain. A low rumble of thunder reverberated in her ears. "Rain clouds don't look like that....." the girl observed with suspicion brimming from her voice. She stared into the clouds as a lightning bolt raced through the sky and illuminated the outline of the tumbling chaos.

The first droplets tore loose and plunged into the ground inches away from May's foot. She lifted a shocked gaze and got hit in the eye with a raindrop. "Aghhhhhhhh........" Her vision melted and reformed and she ran towards Misty, the black drops landing on her head and snaking down her hair. She grabbed the other girl's shoulder, taken by panic, and shook her roughly. "Hey..wake up.....there's something really wrong with this rain-- we've got to--" The drops fell faster, landing on her scalp. She instinctively brought up her arm to shield herself, but a few drops smacked her arm. Oh, God..... This wasn't rain. She'd stood out in the rain before and she knew what rain felt like. This wasn't it. In fact..as she felt more of it fall against her skin, leaving black drops rolling down its sides, sticky in texture.....she could have sworn it was blood.

But it couldn't be blood. Blood didn't fall from the sky. Not by human nor divine will did blood rain. Blood if it wasn't yours wasn't painful. It didn't make every bone and muscle and sinew twist and writhe in anguish. It didn't change your skin into different colors.....wait...a....minute....??

Rain, rain, go away.

She screamed her lungs out and fell into the dirt transforming to mud. The same way....she was..changing.....She stared into the rain-immersed sky. Now it was a deluge. "I---don't believe it," May gasped for breath, and got rain in her mouth instead, the liquid spurting out of her mouth as she closed her fists on the earth. She shut her eyes against the merciless rain, trying to believe she could ignore what was happening so she wouldn't feel it as much.

Come again another day.

Misty entered consciousness with the sight of the hairy jointed leg of a Beedrill plunge into the mud next to her head. Her eyes shot open and she bolted upright, her chest heaving. The rumble of the storm roared in her ears, and she backed up on one hand, ignorant of what was happening to her OWN body, unaware that the rain coursed down her arm lacing it with the ravaging chemical......at least not until a vine shot from the wall of liquid and lashed at the mud. Misty fell over backwards and toppled on her side, at that moment glancing down at where the vine had struck and then saw her leg.

"Wh--what the---?.!!" She looked at it. It was...scaling over...it was..She felt her leg. Rock-hard scales that made her cringe from the pain of formation. But it wasn't nearly as painful...as it was terrifying. This is what she'd woken up to...what glared her in the face and laughed raucously at her sudden demise. "What's going on here...!??!" Misty demanded the creature, that leaped into her terrified view, some hideous mixture of what LOOKED like a Victreebel growing out of the back of a wingless Beedrill. LOOKED like...maybe it wasn't: that was the extent of its deformities. Couldn't even tell for sure...but one thing she knew: it was a meat-eater, the way it stared at her with its crimson eyes that bulged from the side of its misshapen head. "Don't look at me like that---" She backed up, unaware that her lower jaw locked as the Black Rain flowed down it. The Victreedrill's eyes burned into hers. It wanted food and no one was going to stop it from getting it.

Lightning ripped a white wound across the blackness. Misty stopped edging backwards, rooting herself to the spot. The Black Rain continued to pour in its tremendous masses, changing the mind as well as the body. The scales barely began to run up her elbow when Victreedrill lunged for its prey.....

A frightening power shot through Misty and she struck the creature between the mandibles, that collapsed in the mud on its backs with its legs circling in the air, its vines quickly covered by the mud that the storm raised up...and it retreated before the more powerful force that now emerged from the human.

"Whas rong weh may?" Misty asked herself... something was wrong with that...how come she couldn't...close.. her.....stupid...mouth...arghh...! She took her hands and pushed on her lower jaw, finding it held fast....and..that was covered in...scales..... too.....holy...holy God almighty, what was HAPPENING to her??? Scales.....hard granitic scales like an Onix except of a fish...a sea-dweller..... like a.....

The vocal chords tightened and forbade words.

"GRAAAAARGHHHHH!!!!!!"

The travesty of what researchers labelled the Atrocious Pokémon emerged from the girl, a tremendous roar clashing with the thunder. It raised its claws that glinted in the lightning flash, the PokéBall slipping loose from its grip and dropping into the dark mud, activating the mechanism that expelled the white light that had the demon sprawled weakly out in the earth, his form of midnight indistinguishable from the deepening pools of rain as the liquid poured.

And as it poured it traded his wounds for his latent humanity.

Where's that coming from?

"HHUOOARRGHHH?"

He heard the roar. It sounded..like him... Gemini pushed himself upright with his elbows and jumped into a squat, his wiry tail sweeping the mud behind him. His vision started to come back into focus, the black rivers of rain streamed down his face as he gazed into the angry heavens, bloodied fangs lit up by a brief flash of lightning. He heard the roar again. Wait...the demon drove scale-covered knuckles against his forehead, trying to remember through the distracting thunder and persistent rain.

Now he remembered. He turned into a demonic dragon, in the literal sense of the world...he stopped the other dragon..not before...it flew through Pallet..bastard...Ash and Misty were the only thing he had left...the ONLY thing.....

Misty?! Brock growled in his unintelligible voice, answered by a roar twice as incoherent and plagued with a rage that equalled his. He snapped his head over his shoulder, his forked tongue instinctively rattling between his fangs. He raked the mud with his steel-like claws and landed in front of the owner of that garbled roar...and found himself losing all feeling in his muscles as he fell on the back of his legs, shocked to the very core of his soul.

The white flash in the sky brought the hideous creature to light for a split second. It was a Gyarados. Grey scales instead of aqua, grown a few limbs that flailed viciously, the roar that communicated a terrible command.

DIE.

No remnant of humanity except the tatters of...a yellow midrift that the beast tore away, hate burning in its eyes hard as slate and thrice as cold. Gemini saw it.....HER.....growl, and outstretched his own claws that the Black Rain couldn't clean the blood off of, and edged foward on his knees. No WONDER the rain alleviated his pain and healed his wounds...it was evil...like him...and now the evil rain buried his friend in the Pit.

His chest and lungs were racked with rueful sobs that twisted into bitternes as he rolled towards the creature and clamped his claws as gently as this brutal form allowed on her flailing arm. It...WAS a her, right? Was it that hard to tell?

Gemini gripped her...ITS...other arm, tried to cradle it, hold it, SOMETHING to make it feel better, to stop the hatred that the hateful, abominable rain ingrained in it.

"GRAAAGHHHHH....!!!!"

Slash.

Brock backed away from the raging monster. He lifted his claw to his cheek. It was wet...he couldn't tell if he bled or it was the rain. Damnit...so hard to tell..He gazed enraged at the sky that laughed with its thunder. Because it's raining blood.....He closed his deformed fists, the claws piercing the palm. His blood was the hue of midnight. The rain was the same. He could rip himself limb from limb and it WOULDN'T MATTER... Yeah...why don't I do that right now...? he resolved in crazed desperation. He brought up a shaking claw, and tore through the place where the shoulder connects to the torso, mad with pain..pain that disappeared a moment later. He saw the wound mend before his eyes. No.....he growled dismally, taking the claw away. Suicide was stupid. With the damn rain..he couldn't kill himself. Why was he doing it? Stupid. Irrational. Like the monster he was.

Gemini stared longingly at the disappearing form of his friend. Rejection... This one tore his soul in half. This was his closest friend. Dead. Hostile to him like she NEVER knew him. But.....he was the same way, right? When he was getting used to.....conforming to...the instincts...So the table of misfortune turned and trapped her underneath..

He could...BRING her back, right? If not...not to her human form...then at LEAST her senses.

Who was he kidding? He KNEW that once the chemical was introduced, there was no fully going back.

But he could save her mind.

Gemini plunged through the massive sheets hammering with the weight of boulders shattering on his shoulders as he pursued the grey form through the deluge.

*~*~*

Rufus had had enough headache for one night. He was going to go down the elevator, get in his white limo, drive straight home, and go into bed and forget this was even happening.

"I work my tail off for Shin-Ra /Silph Inc---" He curled the fingers of his hand masked in that tangled...fur around a pen. A growl cracked through the secretive smile as he couldn't maintain a hold on that...CONFOUNDED pen...it defeated the purpose and made the correction unsavoury in his hair-matted lips. "SHIN-RA Inc. I think I deserve a vacation," he snarled shortly, slamming the pen down on his desk and rising briskly from his chair, boring his ice gaze into the opposite wall that seemed to writhe underneath it.

A rumble of thunder rolled across the sky and made Rufus yelp. It wasn't until he'd knocked over the ceramic plate of fried karp on the floor that it registered in his brain that he was standing on ALL FOURS on the table. He let himself down and stared at the mess. Whatever. He wasn't going to clean that up. As he headed for the door with his nails digging in his temples, he growled in evident frustration, "I KNOW I deserve a vacation."

Rufus got the hint that if he was in a hurry, the elevator would descend its slowest in order to infuriate him further. Not that everything in the past few days hadn't already DONE that...

38.

37.

36.

35.

Rufus found himself pushing the Lobby button repeatedly though he knew very well that wouldn't make this damned machine descend any faster. The sooner he reached his car, which was not difficult to find, as he was the only citizen who owned an automobile of ANY type in this backwards city, the sooner he would forget that the executive in charge of the science department was responsible for this, the sooner he could arm his thoughts and fashion the means of removing him from the Shin-Ra hiearchy after, of course, he located and re-captured the four creatures, and the sooner he could find and have that infernal dragon destroyed.

34.

33.

32.

31.

The dragon....a brief smile of an adult laughing at his infantile self crept over his lips covered in an orange-brown hair. He used to like dragons. He found majesty in their flight, the higih reaches of the universe he thought were achievable. They were something he envied. But now...hah.. It was a childhood fancy, nothing more. He knew he could never reach space, and laughed at and scorned those who still thought it possible. Especially the pilot of the Shin-Ra 026. If he ever saw a fool, that would be him. Imagine...wasting ten years of his life lamenting a dream. First man in space. Ah-hahha...right.

33.

32.

31.

30.

The Space Program was worthless as his father said it was, representing the farfetched dreams of a negligible minority that did not support big business anyway. Palmer himself was from a backwoods community that leaped off the gutters believing that they would fly if they caught the wind at a precise angle. You see how long that village survived.

29.

28.

27.

26.

Aviation was an impractical pursuit. If you cannot keep your feet on the ground, and look ahead instead of up where humans are not designed to reach, what is the point of it? No answer? That is because there is no use for it.

25.

24.

23.

22.

Besides, Rufus Shin-Ra was a man of power, prestige, and money. And the money was here on the ground, not raining from the clouds.

21.

20.

19.

18.

And on the subject of rain...there was another burst of thunder. He loathed that noise. His ears could detect more. Thunder never previously bothered him, but now it had become intolerable. He clutched the side of the elevator, beads of perspiration entangled in the fur. All of this fur......

17.

16.

15.

14.

The headache did not strip him of ALL logic, at least. He still knew that one plus one equalled three and that it---no, that wasn't right. Perhaps it was four? Maybe five?

13.

12.

11.

10.

At any rate, it rained during a thunderstorm. When he left his cat in the rain, it smelled. Wet fur...the very thought made himc ringe in revulsion. Wet fur..It produced a rank odor that rivalled the fish still stuck between his teeth. The solution was a toothpick.

9.

8.

7.

6.

Forget it, he would only drop it.

5.

4.

3.

2.

It would only heighten his fury.

1.

Rufus stepped out of the elevator with as much dignity and poise as he could manage, which at this stage, was not much. He neared the door with awkward tread, stumbling and tripping as if from a bad hangover. From milk and fish, he snarled acidly as he neared the glass doors, hammered by the rain. At least it would cloak his unsavory form. No one would see him.

The president of Shin-Ra/Silph pushed the handle of the glass doors and emerged at the entrance, finding himself being confronted by giant, foaming dogs in SOLDIER uniforms, their pupil-less eyes glowing a fierce crimson visible through the face masks that hid their identity... as well as this rain...no...ORDINARY rain...that eliminated their identities.

Any and all trace of it.

Rufus, overcome by panic, threw himself foward and was pummelled by the rain. Pain shot through his body, and the bark and snarl of the dogs burned in his ears that sharpened to hear it echo a thousand times louder and he roared in anguish, the liquid rolling off his body that transformed, that grew unmistakably feline fur, that covered every inch of his once clean-shaven form, and his knees rammed against the pavement, pressing his hands that enlargened into...paws against his face, that suddenly protruded outwards in a feline snout covered by more whiskers. A tail shot from behind that lashed uncontrollably, a moving target for the dogs. One of their jaws clamped on the tail and he roared..the roar of a beast...of a leopard or a lion.....As his jaws sprang open to punish the offending lowlife, his teeth broke through the walls of his gums and he turned on both of the dogs, sinking his teeth into their sides. They howled, quickly healed by the Black

Rain but another slash of claws proved the cat's mastery, and the dogs turned tail.....for now, at least.

"RRRGHRR...RGHRR..RHGHRRGH.RGHHRRRRR.." That proves who is the head of this company.

The Black Rain roared in laughter.

Rufus realized he was the butt of the joke. The cruel, sadistic joke.

He gripped his throat with the paw, the scrape of claws drawing a sick orange blood that disappeared as the globs of rain smothered it. "RGGHRRRRRR..." That was supposed to be a WORD. But it wasn't. It didn't mean...ANYTHING. He looked down at himself, only half-hidden by the Black Rain. Still bipedal, not like those ANIMALS that had the AUDACITY to attack their president, but...he had...bitten them...he had returned the attack.

With of all things, a bite.

He raised a paw distractedly, in a strangling shock to run his fingers through his hair until he realized he didn't have hair and he didn't have fingers. Nothing to make a million choice gestures to express his horror, his absolute revulsion, but could only roar his hate.

The roar matched the thunder and sent his fury across the city.

*~*~*

It had only been a matter of time before there was leakage. With the rate of production, there was bound to be an...."accident." The effects would most likely be limited, however, Kanto being an island. Perhaps global assimilation would never be realized, but they had to start somewhere, was not that right?

Hojo moved inaudibly through the piling sludge born of the unreceding flood, hands clasped behind his bent back as usual, ignoring the slight pang in one or two muscles that Mako failed to penetrate. Hahaa.....of course, that did little to prove his humanity. With his blood saturated with that..other mixture, there was nothing for the Black Rain to change.

As for the "lucky" ones in this venture..."Blood type O negative, was it?" he snickered, removing his glasses with his left hand and cleaning them on his labcoat, stained a deep black as the storm raged on. It was a useless effort and they returned to the bridge of his nose smudged and impossible to see clearly through. But so taken was he by this utter euphoria that the man hardly noticed that he could not see at all, blinded by toxic glee as well as the rain. "Only they are immune...how 'unfortunate' their position in the food web has so dramatically changed..... " A bolt of lightning lit the quiet malice of his tightly-drawn smile."A perplexing transition from predator to prey..." He stood on the crest of a hill that hadn't been levelled yet by the merciless onslaught of beasts, soaking in the streaming cascades as if it was like any other storm, leaning an ear to hear the bestial conversation that suddenly replaced intelligible words....."We will soon see their ability to adapt to new...rather....uncomfortable...circumstances." The quiet malice discarded its subtle cloak and he shook in a fit of pure delight, disgusting and sickening in its presence, the type of warped elation that shocks the mourners at a grave.

He stroked his narrow chin with spidery fingers, all relish dissipating with the blinking monitor clutched in his other hand. A thin frown creased his lower jaw as he lowered his head and peered at the device's screen partially obscured by the black liquid. "Draconis Rex has been static for precisely thirteen hours and thirty-two minutes at these exact coordinates..it can only mean that the 'human' has regained influence..." He looked ahead with narrowed eyes into the chemical flood that cloaked Kanto in darkness. The reduced visibility may pose a problem...But..... it was nothing of importance. He would reach his destination before long. as the portal occured not too far from that location. This was quite convenient.....yes...very soon the obstreperous dragon would return to captivity.

An advantageous situation without defect had it not been for the rather irritating voice of an inexperienced member of the Order.

"Lovely weather, isn't it, Professor?" a man---or perhaps a mouse--he could not seem to determine its identity from the squeak it made--- asked from behind the opaque wall of tumbling rain.

"Yes.....the May flowers are in bloom," he laughed, resolving to humor the other scientist. If Draconis Rex had been inactive for this long, it would be unlikely that it would emerge before he intercepted it. Its other half was substantially formidable.....for a human, anyway.

Blasts of light alternated with the quake of thunder as Hojo half-turned to intercept a passing wind. " Of course, being that a high percentage of plants are autotrophic, that would be a highly inacurate statement..." A smile of disdain flashed through the light that tore above their heads."....unless I am incorrect in labelling the Kanto sample a society of predators that are dependent on those...Pokémon for mental survival. How pitiful...some even extend this predation to parasitism...how fitting for them to become carnivores."

Elm's low-volume reply aimed at the Turks on his left side was lost through the thunder that warned of an impending treachery that was veiled under nervousness and anxiety.

"Uh...shouldn't we t-talk about this inside? It's not safe to be out in the rain like this. We could get electrocuted!"

"Safe?" the old man repeated, his mouth curving into a smirk. "If safety was your priority, you never would have applied to the Order in the first place. Now then..." Hojo leaned foward and craned his neck. What was this? Ah..... A product of the Black Rain, no doubt.. He scented animal fur amidst the chemical-heavy air. "I presume you will begin testing on that one quite soon..."

The hiatus in the thunder allowed an agitated growl to slip through the din and stab through the hammering rain. It betrayed more than a shred of fear that swallowed years of restraint and rationality. A rationality that now he desperately fought the feral instincts of a creature he could never...ever...admit was himself. Feral instincts that would force him against any and all will in his very human mind to.....eat his fellow Turk, whose fists guarded his throat as if untrusting of his own leader-----

That was no surprise. Rude was ready to charge.. There was no... suspicion. Rude remained unquestionably faithful for years..why should there be distrust in that soul he forever concealed behind those sunglasses that was particularly useless in Hades' storm.

It was.....nothing to fret over, really. Now he wouldn't have to be haunted by the fact he walked from the grave when he was supposed to be doing his job.

But for the love of Christ, his body STILL wasn't any warmer than when he died. The thick coat of coarse Sandslash fur didn't remove the chill of the corpse-cold blood that that sped through his arteries.

You superior's orders are your first priority, Tseng reminded himself in his head, undexterously positioning his gun with both claws. This would take adjusting to... what he could handle so easily now took extra effort...what was done with aplomb and finesse was clumsy and awkward. But he would adjust. He always did in the end. It was his duty to adapt so he could fulfill his duty. And he would adjust to those instincts and ignore them.. the Turk could still speak half-intelligibly..he wasn't a beast. He had no reason to succumb to the commands of nature, only to the commands of man as he'd done for his entire life.

Another blast of thunder punctuated the drowned air. Elm had moved closer to the elder scientist, his frivolous grin somewhat visible through the opaque sheet. He uplifted his head which he shook as a negative, still that happy light in his eyes of a pretended ignorance."Oh, no, Professor. I don't have any intention in studying Black Rain victims!"

"Victims?" Hojo repeated with an arch of an eyebrow. He repositioned his spectacles pushed down his narrow nose from the force of the falling deluge, the bright glow of Mako boring through the solid wall.. "You know what you are insinuating, Elm...that the experiment is indeed a criminal activity?" He nearly laughed outright at the hilarity, raised a hand to stifle it without much success, then slipped the hand behind his back again, straightening slightly as his gaze penetrated the core of the heavens. "Why, this is for the betterment of society..." He let an arm slip from their eternal clasped position, making a subtle gesture with it while staring at the other scientist in agitation.

." ...do you not see the senseless strife that could be ended by eliminating humanity? Are you---"

The sermon met an abrupt demise as there was a terse signal of very changed intentions, interpreted quickly by Rude who stormed foward and caught the scientist's visible arm, wrenched it to the side, twisted it halfway and yanked it behind the man's curved back, ramming it roughly against the other wrist and securing him in a tight hold.

Hojo arched both eyebrows this time, turning his head to the side in mild surprise that slowly dispersed to dry amusement. So the youth had not yet lost their childishness. "I suggest you release me," he urged with quiet deadliness in his voice. "This is hardly the time for frivolous pranks...you must get to your work, I must get to mine." Hm...apparently that did not convince him, as Rude still had Hojo's hands in an unwavering hold. The other pursed irritated lips and bowed his head slightly, rain dripping from the tangled bangs that hung in front of his forehead. "I have a subject that is extremely volatile in its more mobile form..." if you will excuse me, I am obliged to intercept it----"

The other..ignored him. Hojo gave a slight cough of perturbation. For whatever reason, his own tendency towards indifference unnerved him somewhat when employed by others: Elm, of all possible reactions, started to sing...off-key, perhaps unaware he was tone deaf, but to his vexation it wasn't as much the song as it was the words.....that vexed him.

".....and the itsy bitsy spider went up the spout again," Elm concluded in his forceless, effectless tenor that betrayed something of the thinnest malice. He now walked in front of his aged superior, the former's eyes sparking with delight at the nonsensical song that centered on, of all the miserable organisms that inhabited the globe, a spider.

There was an..odd nod of approval from Elm at the nearly imperceptible stammer that followed.

"I--I see you persist in carrying on this tedious joke." The song's impact crumbled and he leaned foward his eyes piercing through the thick ebony tapestry that the wind swept in a southwestern path with a roaring whistle.

"But when it comes to its conclusion....."He twisted his limbs out of the grasp for the purpose of re-adjusting his glasses that had slipped off quite a ways, forgetting that Rude held them in a vice. " I suspect you will suffer." He lightly grinded his teeth in slight irascibility..However light his struggle, Rude closed the vice harder, tighter, until it nearly cut off the circulation of blood. " I am not a man who particularly enjoys games such as these..." he found himself growling the words, his normally unperturbed gaze showing a growing loss of patience. Lost patience yields anger plus irrationality. The perfect time to strike.

Elm stood still, slipping one of his hands into his pockets with a seemingly genuine laugh as of one amused at his folly. "I KNOW that, Professor! Games are fun---" He forced a facetious frown. "It saddens me that you don't like games." The manic tone suddenly changed....cast off the cloak of feigned frivolity unveiling the intentions underneath. "And I knew that, too. In fact..." His voice took on that far more serious tone...a tone of lost purity that came with the influence of chemicals and the demoness that posessed them. The pocket bulged from the hand squirming inside it... whatever he was looking for, it was small. But he was in no hurry. He had plenty of time.. Unlike this one...He looked up briefly from his search and grinned with the slighest slant in his eyebrows. "I know quite a bit more about you than you think.". He advanced a step foward, his brown eyes clashing with Hojo's green ones that flinched at his simple, matter-of-fact words. "You had a sibling.."

There was a pause. A long, awkward pause of uncomfortable deliberation. "I admit to having no family whatsoever."

"Don't be silly, Professor," Elm scoffed in that grave tone, flat, unaccompanied by the flightiness that comes from an overextended youth. A sudden birth of maturity that frankly..unnerved him. There was a dangerous element in the spontaneous and illogical.

" Everyone has to have parents-----" Elm started, sharpening the blade of his words, completely straightfaced, no shock or abhorrence, telling it as the simple, gruesome fact it was, until he thrust a spear into Hojo's long-buried conscience. . "--even sadistic bastards who killed their own brother."

"That is none of your concern..." Hojo answered rather briskly, the pool of rage that Cid had the misfortune to earlier incite charging to the surface again, opening the wide chasm where no reason existed and only emotion and passion reigned. Where even someone like the old man was prone to human folly. There he could expose this, to release it because therein lay the chained weakness.

"Your brother liked games before you killed him, didn't he?" asked Elm? He began that walk again. Youths...children...could never stay in one place. Always had to be moving, to expend that extra energy.....so aggravating.....

But the mention of...of HIM... Not merely irritation, but source of anger, of hatred, of isolated suffering he locked inside his soul and that when released, were the bane of his victims..

"Poker, Blackjack, Craps.." He returned him to the mental dungeons of his childhood. They were all erased..he had erased them...why was this presumptuous juvenille sketching it again, forming the accursed blueprint of his past...? "...using the Mus as footballs that he would only kick when he knew you were watching..." He tore it down..he took his knowledge and with it, destroyed him..."...and seeing how high the temperature would have to be until your pet mouse burned up..."

He...he who tormented him.. was DESTROYED. So what was past. He no longer pondered the consequences, as they unravelled of their own accord and were inconsequential in the end.

Elm sensed him buckling, cracking underneath though the old man seemed unaffected. He saw but a fragment of questioning in those green eyes...maybe wondering why he persisted, what was the purpose?

Whether it lacked a purpose or not didn't matter to Elm. Once absorbed, he could not be extracted from his work.

"He played games all his life, I read. I read a lot of those journals in the Nibelheim library. Interesting reading. One of those games he really shouldn't have played...it was with your wife, wasn't it?"

"He...he was mine...he was SUPPOSED to be.....mine..." Hojo found himself unknowingly admitting, leashing the rage but losing grip on it, his hold slipping on the restraint that bound a caged anger that never could be truly locked away proved by this current abuse.....of the creatures with their pillaged humanity. Yes, lust for knowledge, and the more distant goal of worldwide assimilation, but perhaps a potent hatred for the world..the roots of which gradually were unearthed.

. Inwardly he seethed, though logic reminded him that this had all been avenged more than three decades ago.....with that blade of justice...and that there was no longer any reason to harbor resentment.

If not for that other_sin.

Elm now was a nose away from Hojo's face. His arm wasn't moving anymore. It sat stationary in his pocket, fingers wrapped around something unseen and something hidden by the Black Rain that swirled in puddles around them.

"But the game he loved most.....that was making 'Eddie' scared of the ...." Elm brought the spider between his fingers, crushed by the falling rain. "...Itsy bitsy spider."

It didn't matter if the thing was dead. Elm dangled the arachnid in front of his eyes, pushing it towards his face with malicious glee. "What's the matter, Professor? Why are you so afraid of THIS little animal?"

"G.....get...that...despicable...a..animal a..way..." Hojo warned, putting more effort in his struggle, craning his neck behind him as if terrified by the very SIGHT of it, at which, of course, Elm shoved it directly in front of his face.

"How can you fear something so useful? As Professor Oak once said, our ecosystem would suffer without spiders to......" He left it on the bridge of the man's nose and edged backwards, leaving him to.....whimper and struggle all the more. Elm's hands once again delved into his pocket, elated grin spreading across his visage made terrible by the lightning flash. "...to catch the unneeded insects-----" He glared directly at Hojo. "--which they do with such genius----" He revealed the mesh of steel wire and unravelled it, the ends meeting the earth with menacing finality. "---by ensnaring them in a web---" With a devilish grin he flung the net onto the other scientist, which Rude released only to secure the tangle of steel wiring tautly around the captive whose pathetic efforts at struggle were smothered as he was hopelessly entangled in the trap. "And they never see it coming until it's too late to avoid it," the younger man finished with victory flooding his grin.

And Hojo didn't even notice..that one of the Order had captured him as if he was simply an experiment or that the Turks, one of them that could so easily be made a subject, dragged him through the piling mud that poured through the holes in the net and caked his body that slowly stopped flirting with futility and let himself be hauled towards a portal to Gaia....even that failed to register in his brain.

That too had utterly failed him for perhaps the first time in his life. And why?

Because of the dead spider that still clutched to his face, one of its legs dangling in front of his eyes that wouldn't close to spite him, to haunt him with the sordid past.

His future looked that way as well.

*~*~*

It looks like Hojo's finally going to get it. ^^;;;;; Stay tuned for chapter 21 and gruesome stuff. oO Don't worry, Erin, Cid will be in chapter 22, I promise. ^_^