End of A Reality

by Blue9Tiger/DarkMutatedBrock/La Cidiana, title by La Cidiana

*~*~*

The busted clock that read a bizarre time contrary to the natural order of Gaia's rotation. That didn't come as any surprise...the clock was on its last legs when they took.....

....him....

The minute hand hit 3. A dying bird popped out of the clock and crowed the hour and fell silent. The baby started crying. A fuse blew. The lights flickered and shut off. Drops of tap water from the faucet added to its ever-deepening pool that came of a clogged sink.

He could fix all this...

The baby cried louder, the dog started barking, the blaring roar of whirling chopper blades blew away the few trees that dared to grow.

Come back to me. She clenched at the folds of her worn apron, stained with food she used to cook for him. Goddamnit...the dog started to whine and the baby wailed louder. In some burst of blind rage, she yelled at the shrieking child,

"Shut up!!!! Don't you know your brother's going to die?!!" she yelled in the dark, her face shading a livid violet. A whine and a thud as the dog flew across the room into the wall. She collapsed on the rotting chair, sobbing into her hands roughened and calloused by taking on her husband's job at the so-called Plate. "Goddamn inebriate!!" she drove a fist on her eyes and rubbed off the tears that plagued her nights more than ever now. The accident in the crib started to cry again.

Official-sounding footfalls came from outside, the kind that marched in time, disciplined, taught to bear no regret.

And the tread of another, light on the decaying sidewalk as the stalking predator.

The woman angrily stuffed a pacifier into the kid's mouth and headed towards the door to answer the heavy knock on the door. It MUST be the Shin-Ra.... With her boy, it had to be..they told her, they would bring him back if they could save him..if everything went okay.....she unlocked the door and opened it a crack. The stern face of men garbed in a plain aqua stared at her from behind a mask. .She turned to the now silent baby and shouted with wild hope, "It's your brother!!"

She slid the chain off the door and opened it, letting the SOLDIERs and another man in white, different from the man who she had talked to after the accident, after the car crash and the prognosis and everything, the man who would perform the procedure that would save her boy's life.....that man had been somewhat empathic, understanding, but not this one, obviously younger than the person she'd talked to before. This one looked sinister.. even cruel.....the kind that was tied to no one, thus cared for no one. Not even himself, judging from his tangle hair that fell about his narrow face.

With his left hand he made an odd motion of pushing his glasses onto the bridge of his nose and began speaking.

"I have news that will ease the anxiety that has undoubtedly been making your existence unbearable."

"You're not Dr. Gast.....!"

"No, I am not," he answered, somewhat irritated. "But that is completely unrelated to the matter at hand. Your son has survived the procedure..."

"Where is he?! I have to see him....!!" she bubbled with ecstasy, running towards the baby she had silenced just moments earlier, her foul mood erased. She started for the door, escorted by one of the SOLDIERs. The man in white stopped her.

"You may drop the child...I will hold onto it while you visit the patient.."

The labcoated man held the infant with spidery fingers as he stared into the sapphire eyes of, unbeknowngst to him, his future superior.

The family cat stalked out of the shadows and hissed at the child, that spat the pacifier from its mouth and cried again. The cat yowled and peered from the darkness, its nose quaking at the unfamiliar scent. The baby ceased to cry and brushed its fingers along the cat's nose. The cat bit him. The baby cried agian.

"You are...hurt...by the very thing that you admire..." The dark eyes darkened. "Then you come to despise it....." They narrowed in a hate that churned within the bowels of his soul.

...In any event, you would make an excellent feline...Now... what is taking them so long with...?" Gunfire exploded outside. A thud of a body crashing on the sidewalk. "....It was taking them long enough.." he started for the door. "Perhaps its body cannot handle the procedure quite yet..else it ends up as a failure like Zero-X...that was far too young of a subject......though.... Sephiroth was quite younger...indeed, he had entered the experiment before birth...and this infant's brother is far away from reaching maturity." He chuckled slowly as he opened the door to the dark house and walked past the SOLDIERs that dragged the mother's body into a bush. "Why does it give cause for debate? It is a known fact that children should develop an firsthand appreciation for science..."

*~*~*

Chapter 23: Redemption and Retribution

*~*~*

A bloodstained dawn bloomed with feverish intensity that shone its coarse rays on the smoldering collection of brick, plaster, and corpses that wrapped around the smoking and charred remains of Gaia's underworld.

Amongst the ruin that now blocked entry into Mt. Nibel, three shapes navigated through a misty haze that hovered in the thick air. They had gotten out while they still could, escaped the death-demon's teeth by a mere thousandth of a millimeter. They could only watch from a distance, paralyzed with the pinnacle of revulsion and imperceptible threads of an unguarded terror that the minute presence of which could only be unlocked by something such as this. And as the Turks and the scientist watched the unceasing carnage that shot shrieks and wails of the utmost despair through the sky clouded with endless death, Sebastian knew that the right hand of Hades had now been released.

Or perhaps it WAS Hades himself...

IT, not him.....IT was not man to begin with.

Hell had gone on its bloody path and left its masterpiece to be consumed by decomposers that made life out of death, sending the rot to the sick land that absorbed the nutrients and produced thin layers of better soil that desperately attempted to survive through the reign of the Mako Reactors.

Sebastian's razor-thin eyebrows knit in contemplation, that scouring the demolished town was a pointless venture. He doubted there were any survivors, and he presumed the thing's co-creator

was destroyed first...there might not be anything of the body left to find. If the hellspawn wasn't moved to slaughter Elm elsewhere, he would still be in the basement. Still, some insatiable curiosity binding scientists of his breed prompted him to return.

"Professor Elm?" Sebastian called, in more than a bit of digust. "Careless fool..." he shut his calculating eyes and frowned in disapprobation. "I_did warn you, didn't I? That what comes of placing a youth in charge of-----"

Then he saw the corpse. "Oh.." He staggered away from the ripped limbs that clustered around the body, the head of which remained not even a fraction intact. "Mother of mercy....." he muttered, slipping backwards on the trail of extricated arteries and severed ligaments that lay in a pool of liquid Mako. He cautiously sidestepped it, his profaned eyes unable to shut out the defiled body. The Turks stood behind him, silent as the corpse that forever wrote itself in his memory with the ink of blood. "There are..no survivors," Sebastian factually stated with dropped composure, his pallid skin now a phantom white. He turned away from the grisly scene and walked past the immobile Turks into the swarm of ghostly mist that lingered at the sprawling grave, that encompassed beyond Nibelheim, forever silencing the howl of the wolves whose corpses littered the gore-soaked plains that obscured the frenzied prints made of those who had deserted the doomed town when they still could, before things got worse.

They deserted it at nearly inhuman speeds, pushed on by the clinging terror that the two-headed freak still lurked behind them. They crossed the field where the light spat them out, now free of the rains that plagued them earlier, and they barged past their starting point unmindful that a big white hole was SUPPOSED to be there but it wasn't. Adrenaline and perhaps something else that lay buried beneath an unaltered phenotype that fooled the eyes into accepting a visible normalcy, at least for Jessie, pushed her on and on through the fields into the frowning canyons..and when she couldn't run a step further, she reached civilization.

"Cosmo Canyon..?" she read the somewhat crude writing on the board that formed a crude semblance of an arch. "Ugh, welcome to the Stone Age is more like it." she scoffed, brushing past the man that stood in the arch. "Who would want to live in THIS dump?" and venturing in, the aroma of food drawing her towards the huge clay building--why CLAY?-- where people gaudily dressed in atrocious animal skins gathered around a bright fire on a stone slab slightly elevated from the ground. Jessie walked by them, still drawn by the smell of food, she gravitated towards the ugly clay building and the outrageously-dressed people holding a bowl of the most awful assortment of mush that smelled like heaven. An annoying little voice in her head asked if James and Meowth were alright, but at this moment, starved half to death and having just run God knows how long from the monster-infested freakhouse, she really didn't care.

Or know.....that her partners were at this moment in the path of Chaos.

"Still not dry..." James moaned, letting the damp material of his shirt bend to gravity. The still-wet shirt clung to his skin and radiated chills through his blood. It was scarcely warmer than the coffin room or the coffins themselves. Frustrated, he plopped himself onto a place where the already short grass began to thin out and patches of bare rock showed through, signalling an end to any hope of finding those awful half-eaten berries that Meowth was earlier shovelling in his mouth.

"Meowth, we've been in the middle of nowhere for hours and I can't see signs of intelligent life anywhere...!"

"'Dat's cause yah only seein' yahself, Jimmy-boy," Meowth groaned, curled against Persian's side, about the only thing that was remotely warm--everything else was as cold as the coffin room. "We saw plenty 'a intelligent life---" Meowth laughed half-nervously and half with a crawling terror of what hopefully they were very, very far away from. He looked into the morning shadows and turned his oval-shaped head towards James and confirmed with his paws folded over on his furred chest, "---dey just ain't human! Ya know, dat's prob'ly why we can't find..." The small cat suddenly shivered, "...da boss nowheres. I bet dis charm-" He tapped the now scratched and dirty object with a paw, "--dat da freaky needle guy caught 'im and's gonna use 'im in experiments---" The larger cat yowled fearfully, shaking its head back and forth in protest, leaning its head in between its paws that were beginning to grow some of the fur it lost. Meowth sat one paw on Persian's side and motioned with other, "Sorry pal, but dat's da truth." He leaned against the body, now shuddering considerably, and closed his eyes with semi-haughtiness, inflating pride with his inhumanity. " Ya see...if youse humans didn't think yahselves so high up dere dere wouldn't be no difference between you an' me."

Out of nowhere, on a whim out of thin air, Meowth sat up and looked at James with his wide blue eyes, not conniving and scheming as they usually narrowed at a target. This carried a pure air, almost of a child asking a bizzare question, cataclysmic in what it meant but with no mailintent, something Meowth usually embraced..

"Wouldn't dat be a great woyld, no humans and all Pokémon?"

At first James started to laugh out loud, getting Meowth's glare on him but oblivious. The idea seemed so preposterous, so far-flung he pointed a finger at the cat and asked, through bursts of uncontrolled laughter,

"Where did you get such a notion, Meowth?...! I can't believe your head is so far in the clouds, to think that Pokémon would ever...." The laughing minimized to a nervous chuckle that abated as James thought of the boss. In one night the HQ was destroyed. Somewhere in the very back of his mind he culdn't help thinking that might not be the first time. But the point was, a human ceased to be human.

He shuddered. What WOULD that be like? He could almost imagine it...he shivered even more and buried his chin on huddled knees. Why did Meowth have to get philosophical right NOW? That oversized mouth, spouting out everything in his cat brain..sometimes he wished they had a regular Meowth that didn't occasionally ask thought-intensive questions that made his brain hurt.

On second thought.....

He pressed a gloved finger on his cheek thoughtfully and spoke aloud,

"I wonder what it would be like if Jessie was a Flareon? Or if I were a....." He started to say something, but the very thought depressed him...stupid Botch and Cassidy's fake fortune telling book...He let out a wistful sigh. Then the REAL book said he was a..it was too shameful to say aloud. Not long after he re-assmed a skeptical attitude about the whole thing of fate and destiny.

"Speaking of Jessie, where is she? Eeeep..." James whimpered as he stood up from the ground, his hand on the ice-cold PokéBall that held his still-frozen Victreebel. It wasn't warm enough so he could un-freeze it...and he certainly wouldn't let Jessie smash the ice block that encased it to free it, him having a much softer spot for Pokémon than she did.

James gave a wistful sigh as he lamented the weather. If there was only some sun...and not that unfriendly black raincloud moving across the sky.

He started to walk, Meowth's screechy yell clearly indicating he didn't want to be left behind...especially with all those freaks running around. Persian slowly trailed, its paws quietly forming tracks in the dirt. It raised its nose to the air to catch a strange smell.

Not the master, it forlornly meowed, following James and Meowth with lowered shoulders that ached as they moved, It had walked a long way..perhaps longer than it ever had in its life where it had been spoiled to dirt, where the farthest it had to walk was across its master's office to drink from the bowl of milk it guarded jealously, not now, where it had to summon what was left of its animal endurance and walk for miles. How much it wanted to curl up on the ground and sleep..it wasn't the master's bed...but it hungered for sleep....yet a greatly blunted instinct whispered in a feeble voice, "Don't stop."

The feline complied. Its scraped paws fell on the thinning grass as it trailed behind the rest, unaware of how close it escaped death.

Chaos swept through the clearing without warning, its vicious claws stained in rings of human blood flashing in the early dawn star obscured by its demon form. Its wings fell and rose, partially curled around its body, a bat prepared to take flight for its nightly feed, waves of air currents melding with its monstrous breathing and its unearthly growl. Blood dripped from the fangs that rose and fell with each gravelly breath that poured the odor of fresh death into the unpoisoned air. Bare hatred spilled out of its eyes that burned with the white light in the distance. With a roar that reverberated among the cliffs and canyons it hovered above, the winged demon shot at the white ball of energy, only to careen straight through it.

Silence reigned the mist-heavy morning.

*~*~*.

The TV still blared even if there was no audience to watch it.

"---if you call now, you'll get a free extra FOUR slots with 2 monthly payments of 1300 gil---"

The image of the bouncy salesman making outrageous hand gestures in front of the Shin-Ra/Silph logo abruptly ended with a white bar of light that sliced the black-grey screen as Mrs. Ketchum hit the "off" button. With an exasperated sigh she picked up Ash's leftover dishes and walked to the kitchen.

She seemed more worried about him than his chronic irresponsibility. "Where did he go in such a hurry with that broken leg?" A clatter of a spoon and chopsticks hit the sink and rolled into the drain. Delia placed her hands on her hips and stared at the door, slightly ajar. "He knows he's not supposed to be walking around..!" She marched towards the source of howling wind, pulling the knob and pushing her head out, getting a headful of rain and the furious roar of the maelstrom threatening to shove her back inside the house.

"Ash..!! Ash!! Young man, you come back here this instant..!" she called in a tone marked by worry...perhaps fear. With that...thing she wouldn't even CALL a Pokémon running around, and this heavy rain which he could catch cold in, and the wind that raged a furious god,..it wasn't safe outside. She pulled her head back in, covered with her reddish-brown hair in piles of disarray, and closed the door. He HAD gone out..that much was obvious from the muddy footprints that led to the door from the yellow-upholstered couch. She scanned the floor disdainfully, partially covered with chairs that had been knocked over in haste. The whole HOUSE was a mess, what with those people that promised to guard it. But they were gone, too..she was the only one in the house, save for Mimie who hadn't been sleeping too well. For that matter, she hadn't, either.

She started to walk upstairs. On the second step she froze at the scuffling and scraping on the door outside. She eased back down the steps, walking towards the door wondering who would scratch at the door instead of knock. Perhaps a Growlithe from the next-door neighbor? Maybe someone who could explain that tremendous crash that woke her up that morning?

She opened the door and wasn't prepared for what stood in the doorway. WHAT..because it was a monster. It almost..ALMOST....looked like a Pokémon, but she didn't keep the door open long enough to confirm whether it was true or not. With a terrified yell she slammed the door and bolted it.

What terrified her even more was that she thought she recognized who it was...as a person she knew.

"Sshghhhrrrrraaurrr......" It growled, scraping at the wood. What was happening? Why didn't she let him in? "Shhghhraaaurrr!!" it growled again, sliding up the door on its stumpy front legs and scratching again, letting out a whine as the arms started to hurt..like his bones didn't fit together or something and it was always grinding on his skin colored green and yellow and brown. He could see it 'cause the budding flower that grew on its back sparked with an orb of electricity that shot voltage through his back. It hurt...he didn't know why it hurt...it wasn't meant to hurt..... Pokémon weren't meant to feel pain, were they? They couldn't.. he knew......he remembered that time he took the recipe for seeing through a Pokémon's eyes..

It was Pikachu.

That memory stung his eyes with forming tears. In something closer to agony he took his legs off the door and nursed his sorrow with a growl. "Shgghraaaaaurrrr...--Rrr... Prrgheeeekrrarggghh--!!" Not that it helped him one bit. What was the worth of remembering it when he couldn't even SAY the name of his Pokémon...his best friend?..! Why say it at all? He tried again and it came out garbled. "Kraaarrghhhhh!!!"

That time when he turned into a Pikachu for a brief time..... Then that was something else. Then he could actually TALK. His mom might get worried a bit, but she would let him in. She wouldn't lock him out, think he was a...

A monster? People called him a lot of things...twerp, brat, loser, dumb, stupid, but never monster.

Those days were over.

It wouldn't hurt as bad if it wasn't his MOM that thought he was a...

"Prghhheee..kraaghhhhh...shhgghhhraaauurrrhh!!!" he cried, now pounding on the door, squeaking and growling at the top of his lungs that hurt with the electricity shooting through it. Too.. much...every pulse induced a Thunderbolt that shocked his insides over and over and over...

The door opened, but not wide enough to let the mutant in. It cried and whined, shoving its head through the small space in the door that a fearful eye peered through.

The chemicals were strong.

"I don't..believe it..."

The fear remained but dulled next to an uncertain realization drove by a parental instinct.

The genetic rearrangement had carried through one-hundred percent.

"....Ash.....?.....?"

Moments before it threatened to break a familial bond. And now it stretched infinitely, held together only by a slim thread of hope that this was still her boy. But even as she held the creature with Pikachu ears and the face of what she guessed might be an Ivysaur, so many were its deformities, next to her in distant realization, the shadow of doubt entered her mind.

Did she only want this to be Ash?

She squeezed the thing to her chest, small jolts of electricity sparking through her skin as she laid her hands on the rough, overlapping scales that cut her fingers, drawing pain in its red form that leaked from the skin.

If it was.....what right..had she to doubt it? What right had she to even think of abandoning him when she already knew what that was like...to one day wake up and find everything changed.

He left all of a sudden...left her with all the bills and her son and the broken heart that never really mended behind a facade of enduring cheerfulness.

She closed the door and buried reluctance and apprehension, bringing her son out of the cold rain, trying to forget that there now was a gorge between them that neither mother nor son could ever truly bridge.

*~*~*

Shouldn'tve drank, Brock beat himself in his brain while Misty gripped him tightly by the arms. The white blood took its own vengeance and burned at his heart, the black muscle about to be burst by the gleaming point of the lizard's horn. The Ninetales/Zubat and the Politoed surrounded it on either side, death tripled charging towards Brock, ground shaking and mud flying beneath Zero-X's massive claws.

Gemini chained the dread and fear flooding his scarred features that were supposed to forbid any human emotion. Well guess what, Ivy? he hissed, the primal sound edged with defiant bitterness. You failed. I'm scared. A mangled inhale ripped through his scarred chest as he heard the roaring bellow. Zero-X came at him like a tank, a slow tank, but a tank out-of-control and broken controls. And with...Mis...with the Gyarados with a steel grip on his arms, and now around his neck because he was struggling too much, there was no hope...

Except within utter Disorder.

A flash of light from behind tore at the lizard's eyes and it lost balance, plowing sidelong into the mud, a giant wave of earth leaping into the rain and tumbling to the earth again, splattering liquid soil rendering him sightless. A winged form exploded from the white light and torpedoed through the bat/fox and the frog, a mangled whine and bellow chopping through the night. The bleeding bodies landed somewhere, limp from the impact. Holy..Jesus...Brock struggled even more desperately now, watching as the fanged storm struck the giant mound of mud-drenched hide, a

sea of black blood spurting from a titanic wound and a scream of the same volume wrenched from its throat.

If he knew how to count, he was next.

Brock jerked his head back with imploring eyes, feeling the sting of the white light that crawled into his retinas. Not so far away he heard the ripping and tearing of a massive hide and the agonized roar that followed each gaping wound the winged demon tore. A sudden jump in temperature..a weakened flamethrower shot through the mud. Its answer broiled the air. Brock sweat cold blood in the heat. He braced for an impact that might smash his body into pieces. Just thinking about how bad the flying demon would tear him up..tear MISTY up..his heartbeat quickened, his mind focused on that one fear, and as he heard the tearing and crunching sounds of one-sided struggle, Brock didn't react to the jagged ache as a crimson light spilled out of his throbbing head and encased him and the Gyarados that gripped him with solid grasp.

The lacerated body of Zero-X fell into the tremendous sea of mud and there was a loud flap of wings and a body shooting through a column of air, and that's all Brock heard before he heard the snap of his bones as the monster flew directly into his chest. Gyarados howled awakened agony as the impact launched them into the earth. The demon hovered over the twitching bodies and spread its wings, casting the shadow of doom on the lesser demon whose transient energy shield dissipated...

When the toneless voice of a human stayed the fire storm.

"Stop."

Chaos reared its despicable head, a chunk of lizard meat hanging from between its fangs black with the blood. It sensed itself locked inside of the human that stood on the hill of muck, the dog next to him backing away, sensing something as well. The way Vincent stood there.....rigid as ever.. the calm before the storm. He knew it...then hell snapped its chains and there would no longer be Vincent, but a berserk creature that could only be imagined in the sickest and sadistic of minds. The slow trot became something like a mad dash to safety as Vincent held a fist on his chest as his breathing grew more rapid, grew less controlled, the leftovers of the constant struggle with his soul that he had long ago lost.

He allowed an impassioned rage dead and buried to engulf his very being, to devour his nonexistent soul, to take everything but his mind, to give himself wholly and completely to a monster that he once had no control over. Even now..it was difficult to master the demon that was designed to dominate him.. The red eyes churned with eons of hate he spent years of his abysmal life to channel emotions, actions, decisions through his intent and not Chaos'. Wings burst through his back that stood rigid through the transformation, no longer affected by the pain, the unnatural feeling that it brought having ceased to torment his mind.

I shall free the soul you infested, Chaos. An ear-bleeding roar erupted from the demon that rose above the other, its eyes burning in leashed fury.

Do you want to kill? Chaos unfolded its arms and let them drop. Come. Destroy me. The other Chaos shot towards the other demon and was as easily arrested with a blow that tore one eye out, blinding it halfway with the torn remnants of the fluid that crawled into the wound that opened its face down to the lower jaw. The Chaos that Vincent assumed then lunged, a tornado of fire and fang, merciless, unforgiving, and brutal. Blood rain mixed with Black Rain as Vincent's Chaos struck the second, attacking with unimaginable fury, tearing it to literal shreds that rained with the rain, splattering lifeless on the earth.

The other Chaos reverted to the laconic man that dropped bloodless while standing in mid-air. He landed almost silently, imperceptible breathing floating through his lungs that so recently had been demonic. A bark shot sharply behind him as Red ran through the sludge again, shaking his drenched coat and emitting a questioning growl at the assorted jumble of oozing body parts.

"What IS that?"

"Not what..." Vincent intoned, approaching the mauled pieces of this other Chaos that unreadily reformed into a twisting mass of reshaping hide that released a final growl as the demon reverted to its host. "Who....I shall soon see whose Chaos this.." The wings and fangs and claws vanished, leaving the disarming sight of a man shrouded in a vermillion cape buried in the mud. "...was." Vincent tilted his chin downards, tangled hair whipping across his red eyes that narrowed. Now his senses were unobstructed. And there was no doubt as to the identity of the masquerader.

"He wishes to make a mockery of my plight. To castigate me further."

Red eyes partially hidden with a coarse headband his tormentors laced around his head to complete a haunting reflection of a soured justice gazed up at the cadaverous man, his waxen lips parting and exposing his own vampiric fangs. He clutched at the saturated air with trembing fingers, his face contorting as he felt his brain sending unfamiliar signals, as he stared into the one eye of.....another specimen. The ferocious one. The one he had considered breeding with the Cetra...

His warping eyes, one of which began to deteriorate and melt like solids when they were exposed to extreme temperatures, bore into his creation's. "You are...wrong, Valentine." He outstretched Vincent's brass claw that gradually began to vanish and reform as his melting features gazed upon the inhuman limb and as the corners of his mouth dropped into the reshaping mass of flesh and bone, "I am the one being punished....."

Memories that weren't his, that were of another's, poured into his brain. He crawled on Vincent's melting form, mud, blood, and rain dripping down his neck. They began to fluctuate, to go this way and that way, until Valentine's memories vanished altogether, and those implanted images, those transplanted tribulations of...Red XIII devoured his brain."..Your birthname was Nanaki..." The skin grew red fur that engulfed the body. "..your species was charged with protecting your tribe..." An animal limb sprouted from the shoulder where the claw had vanished. "....it was difficult..you lost your vision in one eye.." The whites of the eyes yellowed. "..you fought countless battles...then the humans came...they dragged you..." The snout protruded from a head taking on wolfish features. "...me.." The tangled nest of hair the shade of a crow lightened to a ruddy red-brown that were the beginnings of a lion's mane. "..away....from the tribe..the canyon.....stop!!" The voice once again changed, gaining some degree of refinement that Valentine didn't have. A tail burst from his flank as Hojo bounded with the youth of the creature he now assumed the form of the dog, swimming in mire."...I have to protect...them...from..the..Gi......" An anguished howl sprang from the animal's throat which died promptly as he saw his..test subjects staring at Red through the falling rain. Without the feather, bangles, scars, or tattoo, but otherwise a flawless replication of the wolf/lion down to the very last strand of DNA. And Hojo knew it. Knew it and loathed it. The red fur bristled as he blinked both eyes and growled belligerently. He shirked away from the eyes of scrutiny, snarled at them.."Why...why are you looking at me that way?" He short of demanded, with lionlike teeth clenched in set jaws. Hostility unshrouded with any sort of subtlety freed itself as he snapped his jaws, his dry tongue sweeping the Black Rain off his nose that felt uncomfortably sensitive. After a few moments of silence he advanced, fur dripping with the liquid compounds. The facial muscles of this new form, at the very least, it offered him the freedom to scowl.

"I suppose you can laugh now, hm?" he inquired, bringing his back leg up to his neck and scratching at a microscopic organism that made him squirm. " Your own 'justice'---" He suddenly snapped at the site of irritation with his jaws, his hind leg still planted to his side. "---has been fulfilled?" The parasite finally migrated to another part of his body. Overcome with frustration, he threw himself on the sopping mud, the liquid soaking into his fur and drowning the source of the itch. He stood up on his haunches, shaking the muddy fur in the manner of dogs and other mammals, and sneered at his labrats, his mannerisms, whether it was a side-effect of the procedure or if it was a conscious decision, made him seem less human than they were. "That is an ill-chosen word.....for that would insinuate that I have committed some offense, some crime....." he growled defensively as his specimens simply stood there, one bewildered, the other unmoved. "That is where you are wrong....it was to preserve an endangered species...a purely conservational effort.."

The dog, having had enough of his captor's self-righteousness and justifications, walked towards him, carrying himself with almost noble grace and a quiet bitterness.

"That's all well and good, Hojo, but..." Red pulled his foreleg out of the mud. A brief flash of lightning illuminated the thin lines of the black tattoo. "That wasn't necessary."

"'Wasn't..necessary..?" echoed the exact same voice with no differences except for the mind and the will that constructed the words. "It was an indispensable necessity, Red XIII," he protested with a rational tone. "For purposes of identification....."

"Identification?" Red asked, standing the same height as the enemy, but in some strange way, exceeding him. "I told you my name. My name is Nanaki. You said it yourself---" His head rolled back and he squinted. The silver flash. The dragon. Cid. "Wait, that's--" Nanaki howled into the pressing storm as he ran past Hojo, reminded of an urgent situation that had brought them here to begin with. Vincent began to follow, then stopped at the vitriolic growl. He faced his tormentor, the scarlet cape that hung around his shoulders blending with the ebony liquid as he approached this animal far more a monster than his specimen.

"I do not believe you know the extent of the damage you have engendered.." A brief pause that brandished a knife meant to plunge into the soul. "...Edward Valentine."

A hastily-buried container of radioactive strontium leaked from the depths of unravelling emotions. He spun on all fours and growled, barked, the true ferocity in the form of the ferocious specimen magnifying all the more the appearance of unfettered resent. "Do..NOT..call me that.....we broke all contact after mother's funeral, do you remember? Ah...of course not..the only thing you can remember are your nightmares..."

"'What significance do they have when compared to all else? It is trivial,'" Vincent listlessly mimicked, an action that pushed Hojo over his limit. Had not he DESTROYED anything resembling a sense for wit and satiric humor when he destroyed HIM? Apparently not. He snarled and lunged, fur flying as the brass claw emotionlessly raked against his face. The dog fell into the growing mess, even in a different FORM, his hateful sibling turning the table of irony onto him and crushing a certainty of vengeful victory that now seemed insubstantial. And all he could do to offer a pitiful retaliation, whimper and rub at the stinging wound with the red paw. He growled menacingly, foaming at the mouth. Vincent stayed him with the the toe of the brass boot, pressing lightly on his ribs with the taunting metal, with enough pressure to make a whine that was small payback from the times Hojo had made his own kin scream in agony...

Perhaps I deserved it. It was retaliation for the spiders, for father disowning him....

The whine grew to a sharp howl as he rubbed the point of the brass in Hojo's ribs. He had taken his revenge doubly, triply on him. What sadistic need did he have to make the whole world his laboratory?

Despite all his sins, Vincent's words burned with a condemning justice. "Feel the rage, Edward. Feel the agony of the millions you have destroyed." He disappeared into the unrelenting wall. "Now it is you who will be sacrificed to the god of revenge. Fare well."

Hojo slipped on the mud as he vapidly stood on his filth-layered limbs, and winced at the spot his infinitely generous brother had practically kicked, noting that was also the location where the flea had been not minutes earlier. It became a lesser source of agitation, however, ruminating on the phrase Valentine had left him with that reminded him of the reality of this.."castigation."

"Feel their 'agony'?" he inquired with a rapidly-dropping surety. "That must have been what that...Elm character had hoped to accomplish in this hideous mockery of science......make me feel the pain I have inflicted on my subjects.." A low whine came from him in those massive implications. "If that is correct.....Two down...only a minor...." His voice slowed as the awareness of a grim truth entrapped him. ...."...fifty-six million, five-hundred seventy thousand, three-hundred thirty-two and twenty-seven tenths.....to.....go.."

Here came number three.

A clawed hand burst out from the wall and grasped at his throat. He yelped and fell on his back, twisting and turning as eyes of hell burned into his skull.The claws drew blood from his neck, the blood of Red XIII, unaltered, useless, normal blood that now threatened to burst from his throat, the steel hold inescapable and without mercy.

"Gemini...?!" he gasped hoarsely, his hind paws scraping along the clinging piles of earth that were now all but wedged in them.

The demon slammed one hand, covered in a slew of scars that would have been mortal wounds had it not been a combination of the rain that fell harder than ever and his own, debilitating psychic power, on the dog's forehead and withdrew the other claw to expose the throat. His mind craved for a meal he wouldn't regret, that wouldn't compound guilt and anguish in his ruptured soul.

There would be no remorse for this one.

"GHRGHHI HGHHREARRGHD THRGHE GHWHORGHE THRRINGHRGH....." One of the claws sank into the flesh and traced a slit from the base of the throat to the animal's lower jaw.. those small wounds that hurt the most, that are barely visible but they sting....like hell, to put it bluntly. Perhaps a mere fraction of the agony that Gemini wanted to burn into this bastard's smoking corpse.

You killed Suzie and made me drink her blood. Now I'll kill you the exact same way.

He pressed his lips to the wound and drank the red blood as Hojo writhed, the blood draining from his system, making him weak, the robust red color in his face paling. He snapped wildly with his jaws, ineffectual squirming only hastening the drainage for Gemini had no mercy. Hojo panted in an a lethargy that spread to every sinew of Red...Nanaki's..body, his tongue protrudging between separated teeth. "That is.....utter...nonsense..Gemini...it was your basic nature as a vampiric lifeform..I merely..provided a catalyst....."

No. You MURDERED her, that's what you did. I don't want any of your self-serving excuses. By the way, my name is BROCK, not Gemini.

"Brock...yes....that was the human name given to you after....." The body went limp, the blood still in his body trickling down the side of his neck in scant streams as his head rolled backwards. A head that held a skull that held a brain that was again recieving foreign signals that merged with Nanaki's memories and gradually began to convert it to solely the memories of yet another.....

"HHGRHRAGGHFFGHTERGJH.....HGHHRARRGHFGHTERGHH WRRGAAGHHT?" the scaled demon roared in desperate fury. What DID he know about...Grabbing at the withered throat, he shook the almost-corpse in wild fury, rattling the near-emptied blood vessels.

Brock threw him down hard enough to kill him and roared in the sullen eyes, the soul within plagued with an emerging disease. "SGGHRAGHEE SHHGHROMETHRRINGHH......!!!!"

"....you...bitch...DON'T..touch me..." the faint voice growled. Brock growled as well, suddenly startled, backing away from the dog, his devil-shaped tail twitching with the unending rythym of the tumbling chemicals. The dog's nearly-drained body shuddered, some power razing the would-be victim of the demon fangs whose red form was visible as his mouth dropped half-open from an uneasy astonishment."Leave.....me..ALONE....stop...you're not going to cut me open...NO.. STOP...it..." The red beast howled in Brock's ears as the fur began to warp again, scales growing in place of the fur, black as the rain that fell to the point he could barely see the twisting outline, that rolled on the drowned ground in tormented agony, of Brock's own memories assaulting what used to be a scientist from every imaginable angle, these memories following sickly in time with the physical transformation that was as torturous as his own.

But he felt no pity. Maybe it was because this was still Hojo, still the bastard that killed Suzie. That doubled the anguish that lashed at his soul..Suzie's murderer now a taunting reflection of him....the nauseating sensation made his skin pale to a greyish hue as he watched the scientist rise on his deformed claws, peering at him with his crimson eyes, covering his head in his shame and loathing that had..... HIS..HAIR..ON..IT..

That's...MY hair, Brock let out a growl of anguished bitterness. You took EVERYTHING. My clothes...my hair..my friend...my name...my FREEDOM...

"Frghheerghdroghhm?" Hojo repeated, oblivious to the fact that he was hardly coherent, that it was but a series of grunts and growls that barely formed intelligible words. "Yrhhgrough ghharrghh ghragh shhrghpeshhghimegghn..whghroghse ghronghrree prrurghpoghse ghhrrisgh frogh shhrghienntifghrik rrghhheshharrcghh."

No...no...scientific RESEARCH, not that..incomprehensible... ..primal communication...! A roar of disbelieving agony aimed at the silent dead rent the sound of the torrential flood. "HUUUOAOOARGHHHH!!!!!!" What have you....done to me...?!

Whoever did this to you deserves a medal. If I could still hold things without BREAKING them APART---he raised his muscled arm and squeezed his fist so hard that the very atoms in the handful of rain threatened to break apart in fission-----I'd hand it to him myself.

A weak growl made his boiling thoughts turn to the beast behind him, plodding with her body half-bent, weakened from Chaos' blow that had totally destroyed the white light in her eyes. Brock turned partially away from his nemesis, and the gruff tone softened if only in intention and meaning and not its nature.

"MRGGGHHESSSTIE?" The newly created Gyarados said nothing, and could only manage the desolate growl of someone lost, suddenly taken from the unfamiliar and the known and banishing her from that realm. The white glow in her eyes void of iris and pupil was gone. Mindless obedience ousted by shock that reached the very core of her heart.

Brock...I'm a Gyarados, aren't I?

He nodded flatly with eyes that closed for a long moment, shrouding him with darkness, the crimson light solely visible in this stage of the deluge. That and the two fangs reddened with blood, all else engulfed in shadow. Brock's thoughts burned through his guilt-ridden mind. Loathing broke out in what had earlier been nerves unyoked by the burden of being responsible....he'd heaped it all on Angelon, but if he hadn't listened to to him in the FIRST place...

But he didn't have a choice. Angelon threatened Misty with death. He killed her anyway. With the help of his enemies. . The points of his fangs drilled into jet-black gums and he hissed in enraged remorse. Yeah, you are a Gyarados, Misty. There's no going back. The mental speech flooding her mind paralyzed her. There was nothing she could think..or do. But I'll avenge you, Misty. I swear to God. His blood pupils gored into Hojo's deformed body. Don't think you're off the hook, science guy. You're lucky I've got another score to even with my "master."

He hissed with unpent vehemence and glided past Hojo on rapid claws, deadly silent as the hairless outline of what used to be a young man, a boy, dashed across the enveloping mud to where the recovering bodies of Team Rocket groaned in indisputable defeat. So immersed in the trauma that they didn't hear the lethal silence that darted across the nothingness.

*~*~*

"Humans have so many limits."

Draconis Rex's scaly lip curled in disgust at the partially human hand attatched to a partially human arm connected to a partially human torso..."If you were not covered with scales...I would rip you off," he growled at the hand. sinking the claws into the other one in bitter contempt at the sign of humanity he absolutely despised. To make it worse, the gold blood barely wept three drops before the rain made it clot and close the self-inflicted wound. He began to laugh, but this time it was edged with pure bitterness, and not a threatening triumph imbued with the cruelty of his hateful nature. About the only consolation that kept his features as tranquil as they could get was that the dark rain didn't take away the scars he had gouged out on these despicable hands, depriving them of any human "perfection" those clothed apes claimed to have.

And speaking of the brutes...Draconis Rex slowed his flight, the constant din of his wings growing frequent as he kept Cid's body stationary in midair, the clouds pouring their tribulations through the drawn-out rythym.

How he could FOOL them...which had been child's play..wallowing in that victory was enough to lessen his revulsion at this human form, and his sides shook with unrestrained laughter, the laughter that . the anguished human side had come to hate, even to dread, and he retaliated with a vengeance. He emerged with cyclonic rage in his eyes as he balled his fist and socked he and the dragon in the lower jaw, oblivious to the blow he struck his own chin with as whatever pain the injury could produce sank in a roar as aggressive and belligerent as the dragon's, and to all outside ears, the same.

"What in all FUCK is such a riot?!! It's ENOUGH they're after me 'cause of you, but now you gotta go on and shoot Gothman and piss off nature boy with all that lyin' shit, and you think it's funny?!?" The humanoid dragon's bushy eyebrows furrowed on the tops of his eyes, the face lessening in fury as the other side took control.

"You're twisting things around, making it look like it was all_my fault," he growled, the face warping from one of rage to one of explication. " Those humans are neanderthals, Highwind. And that dog never grew up from a kitten. They're dull as Behemoths and twice as slow. You can't heap all the blame on me." It returned to fury again. "Ya think I can't? I'm head-high in shit right now and frankly, Drac---" A smirk cut through the face as it found a spear with a better blade.. Having only one body to lose had its advantages...maybe this could wake the prick up. "---you ain't dry either if Gothman gets it in his head to make it rain blood.."

The humanoid figure arrested flight in mid-air, a roar of wind crashing over it as it plunged fifty feet before a silver flash diced the darkness and it rode a downdraft. And all through it the dragon answered with an awkward silence. "Looks like ya finally HEARD me, Drac," Cid growled with mordant contempt, the sharpened teeth scraping against human teeth tar-encrusted and craving for something to rot them more. "It's about fuckin' time." An amused halt in the exchange of blazing words. "Me? Listen to you?" the dragon sneered in Cid's own voice, diving for a rapid current of air and breaking into swift glide. "There's more than one way to defeat a foe, Highwind. If Chaos wants to seek...." The sky roared as the dragon-man catapulted across the obscured horizon. "..I will hide."

*~*~*

When dawn arrived, no one knew it. It was only by their wristwatches and alarm clocks or the vague feeling that they should get up that they knew it was morning. Raining hard as it was last inght. Honey, it's a workday. A groan. One finally rolls out of bed, bringing the bedcovers with him. They drop off his shoulders, and he vapidly shuffles to the bathroom. The door slams. Clothes are shed. The shower curtain runs across the pole caked in mildew and other grime. A few minutes later the shower runs. The water is heavy. A loud noise, probably the faucet knob yanked from the wall. Call the repair man when he gets out. The husband breaks into a burst of shouting punctuated by curses the other never thought he knew. It is a confused yell...he's hurting himself in his confusion. There goes the towel rack. The toilet cracked open. What was confused yelling becomes a savage, wild sound. Pretty soon there is a hole in the door in the shape of what might be a Donphan, but it's much too hard to tell.

Then the kid walks in the parent's room and says there's something wrong with the water. But she doesn't say it, she snarls it, and that's not your daughter crashing into your room.

They try to ignore it. Everyone eats their own rushed breakfast, but the table's cracked and the food is spilled, the kitchen's a mess, the baby is crying, there's another door next to the old one, letting the dark water pour in from outside. She opens the original door to try and make sense of this and sees roughly 4,000 Pokémon crowding the streets, howling, screaming, some who still have their voices yell something but it's drowned in the bestial noise. Somewhere in the crowd there's a deteriorating squad car on which Officer Jenny is shouting instructions.

"OKAY...HERE'S THE DEAL! YOU'LL ALL BE CAPTURED AND TAKEN TO THE POKéMON CENTER UNTIL SOMEONE CLAIMS YOU. ANY..." There is a hesitant pause. There's a grimace on her face. It's clear that she's unsure what to address them as. "..ONE..." She forces the syllable out of her lips. It is barely heard. No one gives a skewered Raticate. ".....WHO RESISTS CAPTURE WILL BE ARRESTED. ANYONE WHO ATTEMPTS TO START A RIOT WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT, AM I CLEAR?!"

"Officer, pardon me, but I don't think this is the right way to go about this..."

She puts down the bullhorn and asks with an authorative air that her position and the state of the city warranted without dispute.

"Would you rather have us call the Shin-Ra boys in and have a citywide massacre? This IS the most humane way of dealing with it. Besides, I don't want another Viridian or Pewter. One of these Pokémon may go berserk and THEN who will we have to blame?" A compliant but grudging silence, then Jenny's voice through the megaphone. "FIRE THE BALL CANNON."

So begins the reign of calamity.

An explosion of sound broke through the street as an unbroken stream of PokéBalls shot from the mouth of a long barrel etched with the Shin-Ra/Silph logo, smacking into a random target and drawing them in. That, against Jenny's futile hopes, initiated a panic. The herd of mutated Pokémon scrambled to exit the city, to get away from the PokéBalls that shot at full force, crimson patches of light appearing and disappearing as the creatures submit to the spherical prisons. A chaotic roar carried through downtown, growing louder and stronger as the monsters packed next to them disappeared. A few burst out of their PokéBalls, and soon not only flashes of red and white careened through the air, but gold and black, blue and green, white, black, blue and red, and purple. Like so many of Shin-Ra/Silph's new innovations, they were programmed to perform its job efficiently and without defect. It was truly like nothing any of them..not the humans nor the mutations, had ever seen before. The user would merely have to aim. The built-in computer would run Sense on the target, pinpoint its type, and signal the cannon to fire the corresponding ball.

The mass-produced Master Ball it reserved for the deadliest-looking ones, the ones that looked most likely to kill, the ones that had Dark, Rock, Fire, or Poison properties. Which were quite a lot. The mass of violet and grey formed walls at a time, closing on the Pokémon.....which they really weren't. They were gruesome enhancements......mutants, undeserving of a fair chance to escape like in regular Pokémon battles. But this was no battle. There were no fair chances. Not even for the ones that were barely bestial, that still could talk, no impediments to clear speech whatsoever. They were taken down like the rest, for there was no distinction between bi and quadruped, hair or fur, gender and no gender, because in the end, all of them were freaks.

For their own good. If Pres Shin-Ra gets wind of this, he'll send Lightning American and Shin-Ra troops. They'll tear the place down just like Viridian and Pewter. Blood everywhere. I won't let it happen. If anyone's going to go easy on these freaks, it's the VPD, not those corporate Piloswine.

Four to three-thousand, two to one-thousand. By then the time on the watches belonging to the handful of humans advanced three hours. Some stood agitated, upset that the road wouldn't clear, others cowered behind buildings where they were hit with the horrifying shock of a fleeing freak crawling up their knee as blasts of scarlet light engulfed a row of them clawing through the curb.

By this time the squad car was reduced to a hulk of scrap and Jenny stood uneasily in the pools of Black Rain, slime-coated creatures surging from the sea of black liquid, wailing in disarrayed cries, dodging the incoming PokéBalls that bounced off the flooded pavement. "What's wrong with your aim?!" she demanded. Suddenly the red-eyed mask dimmed through the darkness. "We have to keep at this...I'm NOT letting the Shin-Ra handle this."

"I don't think you have that option, Officer..." informed the sillhouette of something she couldn't discern through the rain by now almost impossible to see through...someone could go blind just trying. She pulled herself out of the knee-high liquid and bent down, straining to identify the outline.

"Why don't we?"

She lifted her head to shout more orders to the men but at that moment she saw what whoever that was had meant: a silver blaze with tints of sapphire wove between buildings. Jenny whipped her head towards the others who had sighted a beast and raised the cannon to aim. "Save your fire. Wait 'till it gets within range!" The monstrous horned creature they previously aimed at fled into the night a whirling fireball, its hooves scorching the pavement as it broke into a stampede. The cannon groaned, tilting up towards the target. The mutant cries diminished and abated as the cannon fire ceased for a precious few moments the remaining few had to flee. The target soared closer to view. The sight scope locked on, a cross landing on the winged shape, spewing out a flash of violet and grey.

The Master Ball exited from the cannon's mouth and hurtled through the sky towards the winged form that suddenly halted in midair. A clawed hand snapped open to recieve the incoming projectile. Draconis Rex's arm hurled slightly backwards with the impact, and he examined it with a frown, turning the sphere over in his scaled palm. "I despise catch," he growled, digging his claws into the painted metal. "Your human friends want to play, Highwind." Patches of teeth bent upwards in a mischievous grin appeared through the dark rain. He let himself drop onto the roof of a building directly below him and spread his wings. Cid snapped, his eyes blinking furiously at the purple object scratched up in his claws. He saw a similar-shaped device, only it was purple where the red was and mice and birds came out of it. Erasing the distraction he flung the shitball away and snarled at the wind that his other half made strong. "...I don't want any of yer lizardshit this time, Drac. What the frig are you doing?!"

"I'm playing....Twister," he answered, the massive wing beats growing more rapid, the winds around it circling in cyclonic fashion, the whirlwind concentrating into an artificial tornado that descended ifrom its source and tore through the awning of the building below, heading straight for the source of the projectile as it tore up the concrete and asphalt, vacuuming the thousands of metallic spheres and hoisting them up into the pouring skies, expelling massive tons of the balls from the tornado that began to die as it reached its source and shredded the machine in its destructive winds, narrowly avoiding the human targets that scrambled across the sidewalk for their lives.

It was with limited breath that Jenny unclipped her police radio from a pouch attatched to her belt and gasped with wide eyes, the dying winds of the immense whirlwind dying but assaulting her and her squad with mind-blowing winds that forced them to grab onto the slippery streetlamp. With her free hand she wedged the phone betewen shoulder and her lower jaw, barely managing a coherent order,

"All..units..be..on...the ...lookout..for...anything...out of...the ordinary..Notify..the PGM.....do not, I REPEAT, do NOT...inform..Shin-Ra...." she hacked the last order, letting go of the streetlamp that bent and wavered amidst the titanic wind that had ripped through an entire city block, leaving a a deep fissure in the asphalt. It looked like no one was hurt, but......

A chiding meow was heard on the torn awning a block away. The outline of a cat left the site of destruction. He wondered why the tornado diminished so quickly..

He blinked his slit eyes and focused on the empty air transformed from chaotic winds. His head tilted on the black fur of his shoulders as he observed the flying creature with caution.

The cat made a noise of nervous anxiety. if that was indeed one of Hojo's products of scientific progress, then they were in trouble. Shin-Ra itself was in trouble already... If there were humans left, they would want an immediate explanation....they would want it straight from the president himself..

"He's not here," the cat sighed inaudibly, jumping off the ripped awning and heading uptown towards the giant building in the distance...to his place of work. "I was right. If I had warned him, he could have taken precautions. This crisis should precipitate a board meeting. Sooner or later they'll find out about his condition. And if I know Heidegger," he added with a grimace of sharp teeth. "He'll build fifty Proud Clods just to squash anything to convince himself he's done something that makes him worthy of his rank." He walked through the flooded streets, his diminished size making the malodorous chemical much deeper than it would be if he was plain, old Reeve. Now he was his favorite animal, his eyes to the world without the Mog. Not that he minded it..he was in no ways deformed like the other ones. He could still speak, think, luxuries his genetic structure granted that reduced the Black Rain's emotional effects to nothing.

He ambled across the flooded sidewalk. It struck him with a slowness that carried to his gait, that stopped altogether. "Why am I going back? I have no need of money, now...a company ruled by the Weapons department doesn't need a city planner...with that kind of administration, Shin-Ra's doomed," he concluded with disdain as he turned around and started to head further downtown as a half-timid, half-determined smile that came rarely spread across his face as Cait Sith walked in a direction directly opposite of Shin-Ra headquarters, passing under the torn awning.

"Now's the perfect time to defect."

Directly above him two stories high, the silver figure on the rooftop roared in anguish. It had taken every ounce of muscle and will to freeze the bastard's wings, the effort leaving Cid breathing roughly and gripping the edge of the raised roof as he made the stupid things stiff enough so they couldn't move, couldn't stir up those killer whirlwinds. That jackass already killed enough people, people that he didn't really give a shit about but if he could keep that dragon from doing one less atrocity, he'd do it. Maybe it would make him sleep better at night. Or day. Or whenever.

"Not like anyone knows anymore with that friggin' rain," Cid growled, dropping onto the floor of the roof, doubting he could get even the cheapest of rooms with the gil he lost somewhere between that sleep dart in his back and winding up in hunchback's fucking bell tower. And the way HE looked... "Forget it," Cid resolved, dropping like a dead carcass in the spreading pool of Black Rain, his other side a plague in his dreams.

*~*~*

Rufus had long since passed by the center of commotion. Had he known it transpired, it would be no fur off of his muzzle..they were only living beings with no practical use for him. The ones that did...he was now in the same predicament as them, but...somehow it did not matter. For he was Rufus Shin-Ra. They were only weapons. He was the president of Shin-Ra/Silph Inc., as well as the posessor of a massive fortune and a grand mansion, one that his father did not grant him as inheritance, one that he could attest to truly being the first and rightful owner of.

But before he could let himself through the ornate doors, someone cleared his throat behind him. Rufus' head turned with suspicion flaring from the purely animal snarl.

"I would not enter that way if I were you, Mr. President."

Rufus felt a roar ready to burst through his ruined vocal chords. There was that man...the labcoated man with the aggravating energy field still glowing about him. In his hand sat the device. The man was annoyingly persevering..as it was, he desired three things: a soak in his jacuzzi, a glass of milk, and sleep. Whoever would prevent him from doing this would promptly be gored. With a furious growl that would make weaker souls flee, Rufus descended his lavish doorstep, made slippery and uneasily braved by the rain blown between corinthian pillars that supported the facade of the house. He descended the last step and appraoched the man, staring the one lesser in statue with eyes both haggard and vibrant with a killer instinct he did not pay mind to if it engulfed him.

What_do_you_want?! I have enough ailments to occupy me as it is. I did not ask for a prowler. Leave at once or suffer the consequences, he hissed, the muscles of his upper jaw stretching to form the ferocious look a jungle predator gets when it wants to intimidate an invader.

An infuriatingly PERSERVING one, at that.

"I detest bothering you, Mr. President, I was only going to offer my services that will greatly improve your condition."

LEAVE_MY_PROPERTY.

Rufus did not bare his teeth at him again. Had the man seen his face again, it would be directly eye to eye, the feline mauling the body of the interloper.

"Understood, Mr. President.. But I will be around....." A knowing smile as if he was knowledgable of similar situations before. How many, however....Rufus would probably never be aware of it. The trespasser faded into the night as ordered, a warning tone in his aged voice. "I do not think you will enjoy the same comfort once you enter your house."

The sheet of rain managed to run higher than the trimmed grass on the sprawling front lawn. With a feline hiss, Rufus upturned his nose pompously, characteristic of those who were so accustomed to copious wealth. He pressed his claw on the doorbell, seething as he scratched it. Without wondering how he managed this, he retracted the claws and waited with aggravation for the servants to open the door for him.

An eternity passed before a squeamish man peered through the eyehole and swung the door open. And early morning haziness led him to stare for a full minute as a giant cat wearing his employer's clothing, soaking with some horrible liquid that fell in sheets outside, trudged in through the doorway. It wasn't until he heard the cat's fierce snarl at the visible spot on the china plate that he dropped it. The dish shattered on the varnished hardwood floor and sent the cat snarling, startled at the noise which caused him to see not only the china broken but the glistening floor dented.

Clumsy fool. Clean_this_up.

That was not what escaped his mouth.

"RGGHHHRRRRRGHHH!!!!!!"

The man was frozen in terror. He paled colorless and fainted as Rufus grabbed his employee by his shirt collar before he hit the broken china and the floor and roared in his face. "RRRGHHHHHRRRGHARGHH!!" NOW. No movement. Have you somehow gone deaf?! He began to shake the man more. In a rage he flung the man across the spacious room, a crack of bones alerting the maids and butlers who scurried into the parlor. They hurried to the body in distress. One of them turned the rumpled mass of clothes, flesh, and cracked bone and examined the face. Shouts of "He's dead!" "The monster killed him!" reverberated through the mansion, and through Rufus' cat ears as he heard every word, magnifying to devour a bruised pride, for these were humans who would become the dirt and filth to clog up the gutters had he not provided them with monetary sustenance... and these were the same humans who dared to yell at him, their faces marked with terror and outrage.

But if that did not unravel his normally composed nerves enough......

"GRR......ROWWWWRRRFFF."

Dark Nation heaved itself from the now-dented floor, eyes red from a terminated sleep, drool dripping from its gleaming teeth pressed in a ferocious snarl.

DOWN, Dark Nation.

The black dog pounced, a one-headed Cerberus, its lean but menacing form sailing through the air, other furniture, a painting, its deadly scope fixated at Rufus' jugular.

DOWN..

It was then he realized the old man was right. With an almost frantic dodge Rufus ducked, the dog responding to its senses and swiftly turning itself so its hind paws sprang from the door, bringing it a mere leap away from Rufus' tail. The cat blew up the lush carpet, Dark Nation's claws tearing through it and the floor beneath, its giant bark pulsing through Rufus' head, which at this moment, was blank, the only thought weaving through it was to escape the jaws of death ready to close on his flank. A growl tore through the halls of the mansion as Dark Nation caught the tail of his trenchcoat and ripped it clean off, shredding it to pieces.

He lunged for the flesh and the jaws, still occupied with the torn coat, snapped closed on air. With an infuriated growl, it snapped its neck backward in time to see its prey blow through the doors and slam them to make the entire edifice shake.

Rufus stumbled out of his mansion, fur dishevelled from running, lacking his pricey coat, with the shroud of disillusion tugging at a loose lower jaw.

"A bit less confident, Mr. President?" A listless hiss that once again ordered him to leave, but with far less conviction. "I thought as much. Now, same thing as before--" He wasn't surprised at the vicious struggle the cat offered as he continued to bite and snap and mentally threaten while the older man fixed a metallic headband around his thrashing head--perhaps used to this sort of thing, unruly and uncooperative patients-- From it dangled a small microphone that bent downward under the unceasing flood. Visibly unmindful of this fact, the older man tapped a button on the inside of the machine, and Rufus felt a piercing pain as long wires snaked from the device with hooks at the end...much like he had seen in the laboratory... and they dug through the fur, hide, and finally the skull, working their way in until they had attatched to his brain.

What...is this contraption..?..!

Rufus growled at the disarming sensation of hearing a voice through his ears, not simply inside his mind. What have you done?! Again, a voice, his own, clearly weaving through his ears without the damned growl to hamper it.

"I have made your condition a bit more bearable," the man answered, taking a step backwards to observe his accomplishment with satisfaction. He made a gesture with one of his rather large hands, in a tone that was amply friendly..perhaps a few degrees above what Rufus could deem a legitimate good nature.

"Feel free to test it. Re-enter your house..."

I will NOT go back into---

A blast of thunder set him hissing and screeching. His fur in disarray fell into disobedience and rebellion, and he was angrily aware he appeared to be groomed for the wilderness. With an irascible snarl, the president stalked to the front porch, kicking at the Black Rain that had accumulated there. The infernal liquid burbled in glee. The fluid that forbade him entrance into his OWN HOUSE...

I fail to see how this will solve my predicament---

In the middle of the skeptical statement, the doors burst open with a heavy slam and the dog struck down its prey in a black blur, pinning the cat down on the concrete where his head smashed onto with grinding force. For the first time since the transformation, the abominable headache spread through every inch of his skull, drawing a rattled roar. But that was the least of his concerns, at this point.. A snarl was its only warning before his former guard dog rushed in for the throat. By order of instinct alone, that demand of survival, before its maw opened and shut on the vital point, its owner's enraged reprimand blew through its ears.

Desist...can't you HEAR me, you witless mutt?!! Rufus roared, not the more aggressive sound but the recognizable voice alone... staying the beast. With a growling whimper it got off its master's chest, its teeth still grit, its coarse fur still bristling in pent ferocity. It ran its nose along the cat, the odor of feline pervading its nostrils and inflaming its killer instinct..it coiled its body, the only thing that kept it from lunging was the master's cultivated voice that could not shake off the remnant of a long-forgotten rootlessness..the voice that was .somehow coming from the cat..from the victim....from its meal.

But Dark Nation wasn't one to ponder over the why. It accepted the bizarre fact and stalked back through the doors, the servants wondering if the dog was sick. It was programmed to attack any intruder, a vicious guard dog that knew no mercy so gave no mercy.

Besides, it hadn't been fed today....

But it retreated, because of their employer's unmistakable command to do so. They allowed the dog inside and stared for the longest time at the feline monster in Rufus' violet turtleneck and starched trousers and brown leather shoes, all darkened considerably by the falling liquid. With heightened surety, now sensing more fear in them rather than revulsion, the cat strode towards the servants, pale with terror.

Whether it was of Rufus Shin-Ra or the feline that stood before them, it was difficult to tell....

But he was an opportunist. He always had been. The president siezed the moment of respect and growled with the authority he once more posessed,

What are you standing idly for? A towel to dry off this---He shook his fur in the manner of animals that had fur, the orange-brown coat bunching about his body, immediately running a paw thrugh his drenched head that diluted the shock-- disgusting filth would be VERY much appreciated.

One of the servants departed as briskly as humanly possible, fearing for his life more than his occupation. So what if he was taking orders from an animal, a monster? A monster that could snap his pathetic body in two? It was only because of their superior's voice that prompted them to obey. Without it he was only another beast.

But Rufus did not dare think of that. Prepare the bath..he snarled at one of the others that turned on his heel and started walking. .wait..on second thought, delay that. An involuntarily growl as the president caught sight of the labcoated man that hadn't moved. The order was curt. I will be carrying out a transaction with a client. The rest of you, depart.

The feline gave a growl of nowadays, a rare satiation at this instant compliance. His ego had swelled to its normal state. And who had he to thank for it but the scientist, two of which he undoubtedly abominated, two of which were traitors. With a curious gaze Rufus turned, descending the marble porch and assuming an almost affable air.

You...what is your name? he inquired, smoothing the fur on his head to a tolerable appearance...if not covered in the black fluid that clung to his fur, he would be...presentable. Armed with this assurance, he walked towards the man in the labcoat, who had his left hand in his pocket in the manner of which one of his 'patients' before it became what it currently was. A similar smile to that 'patient' now adorned his face hidden from Rufus' view, staring off into the drowning hedges that lined the immense lot. At the cat's words the man shuffled backwards and turned partially.

"I'm Professor Samuel Oak," he introduced himself. As Rufus processed the reply, the scientist volunteered an additional piece of information that was the key for his alias....back into influence and back into control of the organization HE founded. "I formerly held a position in the Shin-Ra science department."

Even the astute President Shin-Ra would not search through mountains of records to search for information on the employee Demoni, discharged for a trivial reason surely obscured by everything that had happened....

I beg to challenge that opinion, Rufus communicated in a stately manner that betrayed no hint of gratitude that without a doubt, fueled his decision. You are now the chief executive of the Science Department.

The scientist nodded his lower jaw, and Rufus leaned towards him, offering a paw soaked in Black Rain. The older man took it, the darkness alone concealing a smile of a carefully planned victory.

TO BE CONTINUED...

*~*~*

A/N: Next: Disaster strikes as another city bites the dust, and the remaining three Shin-Ra executives finally take action. Stay tuned. -_^