End of A Reality

by Blue9Tiger/DarkMutatedBrock/La Cidiana

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A/N: Hello! Here's chapter 25. ^_^ And no intro, unfortunately. ;_;

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Chapter 25: One Head is Better than Two

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The coarse-scaled heap of dangling limbs locked in disbelief of what it had just witnessed. On it latched doubt, stopping its cold blood so it stooped unmoving on the slippery edge fringed with smears of the fluid that settled in stagnation behind and beyond it, a static nothingness that offered its grim silence...a chilly quietude which from dubious growls that escaped her betrayed her dread..Scared her more than the screams, because the silence dried her throat and made the growls weak whispers that choked in a tangle of cracked hoarseness. A groaning breath came with wrenching effort and in faint bursts, an unseen weight crushing against her chest.

These sparse signals of (sorrow?)..... Only another sign that a week before she had her orange-red hair and her skin wasn't grey mottled with green on the chest and the ends on the tail that wasn't there before---

The point was she still remembered. Once you forgot, it was easier, then you confused in your mind the day of the Change--all the human aspirations crumbled into debris and there was nothing left but the animal that never was man---it was too soon for Misty. She hadn't repelled her human instincts--- --screw instinct, it was familial love, no matter how much they teased her, made fun of her---they were still sisters.

That bated the resentment building up in her all those times..she didn't feel for her the way siblings were meant to. Their relationship was forever conditional. Do this and we'll help you. Do that and we'll help you. Do this 'cause we told you. It pissed her off, that they took advantage of her, but they were still family.

That made her ask the sleeping gulf.

This is just another joke, isn't it, Lily? Misty questioned in the mental voice that she couldn't hear, involuntarily coupling it with incohrent growls that she couldn't understand. Too bad that Misty forgot about the barrier between monster and man.... It was near impenetrable. Or maybe she didn't..she just didn't want to acknowledge that it was there, that it existed...didn't want to accept that the same bar that had kept her apart from Brock now kept apart her from her own kin.

She growled with a flicker of frustration at the white shape sprawled against infinity.

"Grrrrrrarrrghhh.....?!" Lily! Stop pulling my leg!

This isn't funny, you know! The snarl of half-hearted annoyance morphed into one of redoubled doubt when silence's murmur answered her coarse growls. Lily..?

She plunged into the murk of the unhampered obscurity and submerged herself under the penetrating film, Brock's repeated attempts to make her understand the grim truth she scrambled. The mental telepathy failed to reach its mark, failing to permeate a clouded mind racked with denial clashing with hope.

A harmless threat that fear spawns.

You'll be sorry, Lily!! Stop faking!!

Not going to carry it out, only the fiercer way of expressing concern that hides a warmheartedness under a slim crust of hostility. The mark of a hothead with a large heart.

She crawled along the bottom, not swam, through the distressingly unfamiliar waters of the gym pool that a short time ago would've been something near home, feeling through a collecting cloud of darkness that spread from the surface.

Maybe she was pulling a trick. They were like that, her sisters. They liked to tease her, sometimes trick or use her if they needed a favor...in her mind that was enough to make her believe that Lily was only pretending to be....dead?

Her body shook with a violent roar of denial that scared her with its ferocity.

Don't THINK like that!!

She didn't notice. She was mired in her optimism. It likes to console with lies. So they'll be calm. They won't fear 'cause they'll believe it. Kids are optimistic. They believe lies. Misty was really only a kid.

A mutated Gyarados that used to be a girl, but still a kid.The ugly head of the child emerged from the surface at the wall, made more hideous with the rivulets carving on her face, indented with hollow channels below monstrous eyes that glided searchingly along the surface that it should've been able to traverse with ease. But it wasn't like that. Like a creature owned by neither land nor sea but in between. What Gyarados was never supposed to be: in transition. It mastered the ocean and easily traversed the shore, while its head walked abreast with the clouds. But this one was clumsy on land, in the water, rapid with some vague semblance to dexterity only with head at the earth. Maybe she mastered the mud.

But she was stubborn. Limitations? Obstacles? She was the ocean at its stormiest. They were the shoreline in her way. What do you MEAN I can't swim?

I was BORN to swim! Don't tell me I can't, she growled at herself, at that part of her sinking into the hideous shadow.

Sinking in the shadow and sinking in the murk. And as she let go of the wall and thrashed to keep herself from sinking, the farther the white shape floated, leaving her moored in her frustration, treading water like a drowning man, hurling the roughened roar that didn't help any more than flailing.

It's no use.

. Faintly she felt Brock's gaze on her scales immersed in the coating liquid. She'd seen the look before, not often, but enough to recognize it,, a somber respect for the dea-----stop staring like that, Brock..The unaccepting gaze through the wall of bounding droplets soared in its adamancy. You know how she is---she's faking it all---she's trying to trick me---!

He hated to say it like this. God knew how hard it was for him to bear it, for weeks now, can't stand to look into a fire because he'd see Cindy and Tommy and everyone in his head dying over and over again. He didn't want to tell his friend.... But Lily was dead as could be. He knew it. She knew it. No use denying it anymore. No use risking life and limb to "swim" to the deepest part of the pool to check if a dead body's dead. He gripped the cement with waiting claws, then drew back.

Let her know for herself, he coaxed himself, crouched at the poolside, half-squatting, prepared to lunge in case that damned scientist had anticipated this and overpowered the powerhouse. He'd seen it before. It happened to him, for Christ's sakes. A few words and he'd be cowering, bastard could find a way to bleed a heart until it was parched as Azalea. Could worm his way out of anything.

The ends of the fangs glistened with crimson, staining the air in iron.

Misty burrowed across the water, calling out the white shape's name, and was unanswered. Foot after painful foot ripped a wider wound in doubt. When she caught the edge of the floating block, avariciously swallowing lungfuls of lost air, she grabbed the woman with unintended roughness with the grimy pocket of her animal hand and gripped the arm harder than she would've wanted to, shaking the faced-up body watching the gigantic tear in the ceiling.

Lily!! The game's up!!! Say something!!

Her nerves sent her the weight of a lightened arm---it was all there and everything, but something was missing. That something made her blood freeze. Blood. That was it. Her skin paled to concrete-grey at the light arm---it was so white---like a..ghost..Her fears took a downward course. No longer doubt, she couldn't argue with it. She didn't have to look at those two holes in the neck to know where all the blood went.. She saw them, but with passing glance, removed, it didn't register. Her eyes were fixed on the demon hand clamped underneath Lily's elbow. That hand led to an arm connected with a chest below a neck under a head with mouth that had bloodied fangs. No doubt where the blood ended up. It was still dripping. Leaving globs of vermillion on Lily's shirt that the demon probably tore in its zeal.

Misty's teal eyes flared with disbelief that hatred slowly overtook, the fire in the water, the magma melding with the ocean. That was a Gyarados' wrath. Not only branded Atrocious because of their hideousness, Gyarados were of vicious temperament. They were vengeful, had a high chance of going berserk, and were quick to hatred. How much more this monstrosity?

So it was no surprise that the demonic shape stood completely unmoved while holding the white corpse, intently observing the building rage in the Gyarados' quaking body. The amount of blood at last quelling his need, he began to assume his own, indifferent persona... Quite easy when he had control of himself, when he actually felt that he remembered who he was..Elm had made it difficult, indeed...plaguing him with his specimen's behavioral patterns...nutritional requirements...Now more in control of his functions, Observing an affirmed discovery, typical behavior of one of his specimens...he began to think the whole ordeal was transient.. he almost..ALMOST...felt like he was human again.

Now.....what is this?

The clawed hands clasped habitually behind his back and he regarded the other monster with an analytical air, the grin of sadism twisting across his disfigured face as he watched the eyes hot with stone tears.

I see you briefly exhibited a common human reaction...grieving like that...His deformed features twisted further in the grip of intense thought. Stained claws held his chin in narrow scrutiny, while the creature's building rage disappeared in sorrow and she sobbed on the bloodless arm, mournful, saddened, but to the untrained ear the language of menace....Perhaps...but it was plain to see, it felt sorrow ...Quite normal behavior for a Pokémon...ah, but aggressive Pokémon such as yourself recover quite quickly. The object of grievance within a few minutes enters the digestive tract...then it miraculously turns from a sibling into sustenance. I'm afraid I've left such a light meal for you...He gestured to the sprawled-over corpse, nudging it with a clawed foot.

The tears hung at the base of the neck and multiplied no more. The brief moment of sorrow crawled into the recesses and paled next to the predominant reaction.

"Grrrrr.....Raaaghhhhhh...!!!!!" I'd never eat Lily!!! she roared with indignance and shock that lightened her scales a shade more pallid: the shock of feeling her tongue across her broad underlip as she ripped a hungry gaze from the body. You're crazy!!!!!

Mm? Perhaps, he agreed with the most pointed insincerity. We all must feed off one another to ensure survival...except for the autotrophs, of course. He narrowed a stare of malignant evil at the Pokémon, hit by a million forces at once, and leaving her too stunned to react to these carefully planned assaults.

Only a matter of time before memory weakens, the bonds loosen.....Hojo unclasped his claws from the body and let it drop. Its fingers dangled void of life in the dark water that lapped over the ends. Primarily to hide the identity. The blood was taken, better forget about the victim before it etches itself in the brain.....there were never any regrets, no such thing.....

The lapse broke this unseen barrier around Misty's emotions. No longer was there any hint of sorrow, true to his expectations-----her eyes instead bore anger, hatred...but rather than the instinctual hatred of Gyarados, it was another, more driven hatred.

You_killed_Lily.....!!!

He ran his sight over the perversion of nails, gleaming with drops and smears. Caught literally red-clawed. He bore a malicious smile into the creature's soul. You'll find it is no great loss to you in the end...don't you feel a sudden sensation.....of primal compulsions....that removes the familial connection? Don't you feel a desire for......A thin smirk divided his lower jaw. ...'Dinner'?

I feel....The teal hue burst into a roaring blaze that threatened to explode from their sockets. Mad.... I'm MAD.....Why'd you have to kill her?..!! What sort of freak are you, drinking blood like that, making OTHER people drink blood---She whirled her tremoring body to gaze at Brock, silent, with a deadly air about him. ---Now you want me to EAT her?!

Hojo had ignored the words and their meaning entirely, listening instead for the expected tone... yes...it was hateful...it was enraged...at him, that was somewhat unfortunate, but his predictions had been entirely correct. Satiated, he craned the demonic head towards the rage, lava about to spurt from a volcano's lip.

Exactly according to previous studies..The fangs that Lily's blood coated in a bubbling film mocked, teased her more than her sisters ever would've done. And that she could forgive. It was annoying, she didn't like it, but it was about silly things, they manipulated and twisted things around, but they never hurt anyone, she'd forget it in the end. But the taunt before her eyes now, blood--her sister's blood---it was no joke. It made her hate. The nerves caught flame, the muscles unlocked, the perpetually agape jaw filled with an unbroken roar, seething with vile loathing.

Yes, I see you despise me...

I_HATE_you...

Murder in the eyes. The wrath of Gyarados engulfed her purpose. Had she still been human, she would hate, but never desire to kill. She was wrathful, she was violent, but...take the bastard's life?

It didn't matter, because Gyarados would.

Hojo didn't have a chance to dodge the carnivorous fury of scales that smashed headlong into his shoulder with such force that it didn't matter that the spikes ripped through the flailing arm: it had ceased to feel it. No more screams of frantic hatred, as if Gyarados had stifled the one named Misty. Just the Gyarados' pure aggression, tremendous, unsparing, its roaring without thought, without care, its claws ripping apart the layer of dark scales with ablaze loathing.

It didn't matter if the thing it was shredding looked like Brock. It knew, whatever it was, it was a monster..From the voice in ITS head, from ITS actions, IT wasn't Brock. Brock was a "him", a "one", not a "thing." Not a monster. A monster, that hurt him, her, and now its sister.

You.....

Forget hurt.

....killed her..

The dark shape thrashed in futility as the other monster hurled downward, smashing them both into the surface with a roaring crash. Whether by instinct, emotion, or cold logic, she embedded her claws into his shoulder blades, held his body down as both of them sank with weight, with rage enough to kill another, to drown him...so he'd die... he wouldn't kill any more of her sisters...

The Black Rain was designed to unlock the cage that trapped the true essence. By alteration, return to the unaltered state.

Pure......

.....Untainted...

....Unspoiled....

Thus Hojo witnessed the complete result of the Order's experiment. The gained strength did nothing to protect him from the Gyarados' wrath. Thrash, Hyper Beam, Crunch, Slash, the two latter boosted forms of weak, ineffectual modes of defense and negligible means of attack. Oh, but how they had developed....he could attest to that. Black blood flowed freely with the rain that continued to weaken. A dying peal of thunder above the surface was lost amongst the roaring calamity.

All the while, the two remaining women watched, hiding terrified in the bleachers-of both the thirsting monster and the enraged Gyarados that had disappeared in the water that rocked and tumbled with their struggle. And off at the side, Brock waited. An instinctual dread coiled itself around his muscles, tensed them, in animal vigilance.

Gyarados battered the enemy mercilessly, each renewed wake coupled with a rending with a blood-drawing rake, maddening her with the flecks of crimson that hadn't been absorbed into the night river.

. Murderer...!!!!

The accusation was hate. It spewed out of her eyeballs, that could barely be called that, more of riptides and whirpools in the livid ocean. The livid ocean trying to devour a pesitlence in the earth, distanced from the shore, isolated and unchecked.

Murderer, am I? came its hiss, choked with the dispersing liquid that cascaded in its mouth, the mad Gyarados unknowingly making it drink its own blood..... victory tasted rather bitter. Quite possible...these are my specimens' instincts... I have been punished with them...what more do you expect...?

How sickeningly familiar...Had not another one of his specimens gone on its rampage at Pewter, slaughtered Gemini's brood, and was nearly destroyed by its avenger?

Brock's clouded memory was a blur growing into a defined shape. He knew he didn't change at random. Something brought it on. Memory.....Getting reminded of a wretched labrat buried in the tangle of webs in his mind...... But which one?

That rang the alarms in both his mind and Hojo's. The former... it was a vague alarm..that bane loomed....but what.....who...it was so hard to think. The damn Teleport...took every ounce of his ability..

The other's was far more pronounced, clear because it triggered physical changes in his body, reaching as far as the genes. Results of the...."Improvements" that his former 'colleague' had made...murder, yes.....a rage induced by murder...He went down again......of family members.... The source of nourishment lingered on the surface.....the murder caused by predatory instincts.....survival.....feed....He had deprived her of life.....parallel to drink...His own rejuvenation rendered him the culprit...the nutrients from the blood.. Blood...of...subject's...family..drunk...akin...to murder...in.. ...victim's...view...Murder? Merely survival. In the perception of self. Survival of the fittest? She called it murder. Preposterous..... Murderer....he was only a predator because he was heteretrophic. Yes....a predator...no different than a murder...then, it was fact.....he was a murderer, he was a predator, he was...

An enraged roar from the striking Gyarados and a wild roar from a waking beast coincided. The attacker missed and the target, on the point of drowning, ripped by the monster and emerged, choking and gasping in stifled hisses, reaching for the concrete edge, coated in the suffocating fluid. The points of his claws slipped and scraped.

His fractious brain didn't hesitate to mimick his hands. And in this shift he wasn't quite aware that the mentality wasn't his own, that his own essence shrivelled in another's atmosphere.

A human...yes, there will never be doubt, I am a human...Elected through birth to dominate Pokémon that exist for profit alone..Humans are born to dominate. It is merely the way of the world.

Yelling bullshit, Brock observed with a half-snarl. But his drained mind wasn't long in remembering WHOSE bullshit that was. The black muscle in his chest beat coldly, chilled with a terror more acute in its familiarity.

Don't tell me.....

Damn it...Ivy...am I what you call me? A Pokémon? Is this my true name? But..it cannot be. I am the leader of Team Rocket---this CANNOT happen to ME-----

Brock felt a swift electrocution of rapid dread.

Sounds an awful lot like-----Jesus Christ...not HIM... Misty, STOP!

The warning went unheeded. The Gyarados emerged from the surface adjacent to the wall to breathe. Furious heat collected in her jaws, shooting in a crushing beam that fell short of the fleeing target, shoved backwards by the wake it produced close enough for the vengeful Pokémon to attack. In its lunge simultaneously clumsy and deadly, flung its entire body weight on the monster, sending him under the liquid once more, pushing it down with her claws curving downward through pregnant blood vessels that had her sister's LIFE in it, cutting into the bone, its anguished roar drowned in the basic taste of Black Rain sliding down its throat, that was steadily becoming more acidic...the poison element filling his system as the one ammino acid took the place of another.

The mess in the pool began to bubble as the twisting hulk of organic material began to increase in size, heaving the Gyarados closer to the surface, drowning its confused growls in the forming of layers and layers of hide and the anguished roars produced by the pain of muscles and bone reforming and expanding.The gurgling mass swelled from the center to half the pool's width, the reforming voice a burbling snarl that aggrandized into a full blown roar. A gargantuan tail lifted from the liquid that leaped in a wrecked wall, smashing into the bleachers and ripping a terrified roar from the Gyarados that only now realized that the rest of her family was hiding in them.

He's going for both of them...

Brock leaped nimbly up the bleachers shuddering from the force and grabbed Daisy and Violet, scared half to death by the scaled arms that wrapped them up tightly in an undefyable grip. It didn't help that the ferocious Gyarados, oozing with black grime that left a vibrating puddle on the metal, scaled the levels with a roar of panic easily confused for a hunger cry. She glanced at the demon, whose rapid rapid breathing signalling a dreading anxiety. He hadn't reached halfway down when the top of the back of the immense beast emerged from the dark film of fluid, and the acid in the jaws boiled in the heat that illuminated the beast's hideous muzzle..

Misty..GET OUT OF THE WAY!!!

The mental cry launched itself too late: a broiling fireball licked the surface of the Black Rain before colliding into Misty's spine, throwing her against the metal before she could dodge. The tremendous beast moved, the gleaming horn ascending with slow agony towards the clinging shape. Fearing the relentlessness of the monster she caught wind of the encroaching disaster and bolted lopsidedly from the bleachers to the slippery floor, the air surrounding her superheating as a Fire Blast burned into the cement.

Brock.....Daisy, Violet....?...! she called out, encased in sweat from the heat and from terror, searching, dodging, crawling away from the monstrous inferno that roared thunder in her ears.

It didn't stay a stagnant assault for long. The beast turned its head to the side, the greedy fire consuming the bleachers on one end. It wasn't until that it was halfway across the room in the fashion of a deadly pendulum that Brock leaped nimbly from the other end of the bleachers, landing in front of the flame small enough to jump..until he saw the fire stream move up, then down, catching the cement, the ceiling, moving unheeded though laboriously, in one unceasing wave that dazzled his eyes, blurred distances and it wasn't until it was directly above his head and already on its way down that he saw a safe gap. He could feel the fire bite at his shoulder as he leaped through the narrow space, tumbling out on the other side. Through the curtain of pouring sweat he saw a diagonal projectile renting the flame wall, thrusting itself where his head waa before he crouched quickly. The monster advanced, its tongue a crimson serpent emerging from the fire. Brock rolled on the free ground and bolted from the inferno, the two women under one arm, all drowned in sweat, wishing bitterly he didn't have this human weight on his claws..

He moved slowly, watching out for three, keeping every strand of hair free from the fire that threatened to close off the only exit in sight. He almost reached it...only a few more feet------Then he felt himself dragged down, ensnared by a tongue that shot piercing burns in his ankle.

So you're hungry already, Hojo.---that's your name, isn't it?..I see the resemblance already. So if I can put his lights out, I can do the same to---what?! A giant set of claws blocked his movement forward, slowly curving inward, a wall that pierced as well as crushed. Some vague hint at the difference, maybe, of the separation between a brute mind in a brute body and a misshapen mind in a brute body. Gio was more direct. If he was going to kill and eat, it was those stupid animal instincts------on the other hand, even in a different form Hojo made his cruelty known.

Brock felt three pointed shadows descend on his body. What a way to be mauled. Any struggle now would impale any of them-too late to act, too late to...

A blurred flash of black darted across the flames, bending its head downwards, a long projectile across it screaming a harsh whir over the flames' growl. It lunged with an infuriated neigh, a snap, a garbled roar of pained agony that silenced with the loss of half a tongue, a thud and the frantic scampering of claws, and the heightened roar of the flame as the lizard dealt out swift retaliation that encircled its attacker., its jaws aflame with the building blaze dripping between its fangs---all that served to block out its mental plea.

Don't!!

That sounded like a child's. A little girl. The Black Rain wouldn't spare the most innocent and untainted of souls, and instead transformed it to a bizarre perversion of a Rapidash, that now galloped full speed as the beast grabbed at its halved tongue in an agonized fury, foam of acid spilling over its gums and burning at the cement with unsatiable appetite. With a silent death cry it lunged, charging in its lumbering trample, smashing through the low doorway, the equine offender gaining distance away from it, and the crawling Gyarados, singed with burns, fled past its massive legs and plunged into the hallway, her friend and her family sounding repeatedly in her brain that wouldn't be calmed.

Meanwhile, the rapid gallop of the other creature carried the scientist's assailant far away from the inferno.

I'm coming! Wait for me!! cried the girl with sad excitement, the beat and scrape of its clawed hooves quiet on the floor from the rumbling inferno charging behind her. She began to pick up speed, the strange mane that crackled and growled on the back of her neck flaring out as if they were flames themselves. The smaller shape screamed across the entranceway, with the lower creature coming up fast behind her in a blind frenzy to escape, the collapsing debris falling about them and narrowing the caviing-in exit. A cascade of flame poured from between the fangs of hell, coursing towards both the monsters, that shot towards the closed door.

The glass liquified in the heat and both tumbled from the entrance, the fluid glass dripping down to the base of the door, searing down the lizard's head as its body broke through the concrete slabs that tumbled down its gigantic forelegs, crushed debris raining off its knees. It lurched foward, the front wall crumbling in a hail of plaster and cement as it forced its body through the building, its tumultous cry rocking the foundations of the building that cracked beneath its titanic girth.

The horse crawled awkwardly on four knees, meeting the demon's gaze, and then the Gyarados, who climbed up on its hind claws, heaving fatigued breaths with its burned arms hanging beside its legs. So...Brock and her sisters got out safely---but whatever relief she felt was preempted with a fear-driven rage, hers of defiance and his of regret at having lost what might've been saved.

You want to wreck Cerulean?

Not while we're here.

The ground trembled beneath leaden claws, scattering the lesser beasts sensing an imminent danger, catching Brock and Misty in a flood of raised fur that swarmed around them in a mad effort to flee, the stamp of their claws raking the quaking pavement that reddened in the blaze beam, flying smoke sweeping a curtain over the panicked wave of erect fur. Brock rolled out of reach, clutching the unconscious women under one arm, sweat beads streaming down the back of his neck onto the base of his shoulders that raised with growling breath.

If she was drained she didn't show it. Her ignited eyes fixated on Daisy and Violet. She wasn't going to lose them in this fight. Brock had them, Brock could get them to safety.

Get them out of here!

He met obstinacy with equal obstinacy. Not without reason. Brock stood a fighting chance against his nemesis...Misty was green. She never fought...anyone, forget Zero-X. And there was no way he was going to lose her.

You can't take him alone.

I can't gamble with my family's life, Brock, the animal answered with weakened growls, its jaw set, adamancy wedged between crouched shoulders, nearer to the ground than to the sky, barring her from the feared and respected species, something it seemed she was growing to accept. Besides...I'm not a person anymore. An asserting roar despite it being racked with tired air rivalled the fire's hiss and its engulfing threat.

You'd better stay alive, was the blunt answer. The yearning in it didn't manifest itself in the feral hiss, cold because of man's nature, venemous because of the creature's intentionally flawed design. It saw it couldn't argue, so it fled, conscious that he could be giving her up.

She wanted her sisters safe. He knew he couldn't live with himself if they died and it made her hate all the more. It would only stain his claws another shade of red.

The condeming burst of flame sounded its fierce roar. He vanished into the night with the humans under his arm, a broken wing, as Misty faced the hellish reptile, resigned to her duty as this was her hometown.

A pulsing jet of water burst from her perpetually open jaws, tearing through the tapestry of hungering flames and hitting the beast in the eyes. One of the claws sunk into the hide around the abused organ, the drops of water dripping in rapid streams.

It removed its claw and glared with one eye that raged a bloody vermillion, the remnant of the other, which consisted of a tangle of retinas, the blast enough to force the mental train of Hojo to resurface.

Strong, heavily concentrated alkaline dihydrogen monoxide...it seems as if Zero-X's defenses are null past the epidermal layer. An untimely coinidence that the precipitation is subsiding...It stared into the sky, thin of moisture.

It lurched directly for Misty, thrusting a nonexistent snarl through rows of tightened fangs. The blast of basic water pulsed in an unswerving line for its other eye, but it collided with the protective lid and drained harmlessly down the side of its head. How naive.....do you believe I would allow my other eye to deteriorate? These impulses of Zero-X...they cannot be resisted...I must feed....perhaps the transformation eliminated the ability to rationalize.....tell me....are you incapapable of comprehending?

YOU'RE the one who doesn't understand---this is my home and I'm going to protect it!! Misty roared with red-hot defiance at the poisonous volcano.

Such unexpected sentiments of one that preys on its unevolved form not quite long after it has evolved...the Gyarados collaborate for two common aims: protection..... ...and aggression. After evolution, all familial ties are broken..a secondary reason they were labelled "atrocious".. This is why I am...intrigued by the grief over your sister's death....grief is chiefly a human emotion...it is the creatures of unnatural nervous complexity...who grieve...certainly not Gyarados....

Stop it..Shut up...SHUT UP!!!

The grey form clawed through the smoke, catching Hojo unprepared, ribbons of the glowing organ falling away as she slashed apart the remaining eye, leaving two hollow gaps that gazed through the smoke, magnifying his hideousness as the eyeless beast roared with--if it hadn't been completely mute, ---enough immensity to collapse the city. It lunged blindly, spouting flame in all directions, foregoing use of logic, of rationality-----it slipped into the limitless confines of unchecked rage, and it lunged for its prey, its meal, the sentries of fire racing wildly on the asphalt, narrowly engulfing Misty's tail. She backed away, fighting against the fear that taking out its eyes made things worse.....

Another blast of water poured from her mouth, drilling through the spout of flame and into the creature's bubbling jaws. With nothing but a silenced hiss to warn what was coming, neutral water came gushing from the lizard's maw, splattering over Misty. A panic came over her...she was..a Gyarados..Gyarados were Water types.. Why then.....did it burn? She glanced down at her scales, the retreating drops leaving trails of burns that bit into her rough hide. But she didn't have time to think about why......the mind was re-emerging, shackling unfettered rage.

It seems as if you are the the one keeping me from feeding..believe me, my dear...I do not enjoy this...it is a simply a....forced necessity...yes.....do you think I derive delight by being compelled to act as an animal....? I assure you, I would much rather be back at my lab.....

Its nostrils dilated, causing its entire head to quiver. It turned its massive body to its left, smelled the air again, and grasped with its foreclaws for an airborne creature tardy in escaping. Misty grabbed her advantage and assaulted with the pulsating energy of the Hyper Beam, that smashed into the hollow eyesockets and battered the muscles behind it. It cringed and shoved its snout between its forelegs, taking the creature and rubbing its claws without much dexterity along its skin for expression of anguish that he no longer could give a semblance of a voice to.

Its rough and brisk cry was enough to tell Misty who exactly that cretaure was. Staryu...!!!!!! she called with a roar that was riddled in joy and came out all wrong, like a challenge or a threat.

This she wasn't aware of. Misty dove for the ground, for Staryu...though without a face to speak of, one she could call friendly...but to a shock overtaken by pain, the Staryu attacked, expelling a Hydro Pump directly at her, assaulting her with a burning bite that left her barely moving on the ground.

I warned you not to prevent me from feeding...it would be detrimental to your health as well as mine...

Staryu.....Misty growled, pressing her tail against the asphalt to lift her up but finding it limp and infirm. It was through a cascade of dripping flame that she saw Staryu swallowed. Give it back!!! she shouted,. in this troubled wave of anger falling to irrationality. An enraged Hyper Beam coursed into the scientist's weak point, smoke from the explosion pouring out of the miserable socket.

Oh? You want it returned? I fail to see your desire to see it partially digested..It creates quite a putrid odor. You are liable to regurgitate.

She had enough. With a roar new with blasting rage, she charged him on all fours, teeth glistening with basic saliva, eyes hellfire of a different hue.....but the water sapped enough energy. It did its damage.

The Pokémon collapsed on her chest as a pulsing sea of fire collected in the death maw.

From a faraway road Brock saw the whole thing. It left him panicked and alarmed, and he bounded towards the building sea of inferno, screaming Misty's name in his monstrous growl, forgetting that he held her sisters' lives under his arms, forgetting that their blood would be on his claws if he didn't get them out alive.

The ocean of flame obscured the other Pokémon from view, last time he saw her she was facing the fire---what if it killed her?! What if---what if---

It stormed for the surface and exited, filling Brock's whole field of view with the blinding light that coursed past his head, nearly alive, living only to consume and devour, and to leave death in its ashes.

When the pulses stopped Brock saw nothing but fire. The scientist built towers from rubble in moments, the height had doubled and fed off wood in houses, sending them smoldering as they magnified and doubled their threat. But the physical danger waned as the fire waxed. The emergence of the broiling flame ate at his memory, not at him. Not at the humans under his arm.

He saw Pewter burn all over again.

Fire.....

Cindy.....

I can't get you out...it's burning..too fast.....

Stop burning...

Give them back...

A few more seconds. That's all I needed. He fixed the cold pits of red fire at the devouring enemy. That's all I need.

No, he couldn't save the town. But he could salvage these two lives. He bounded over the barrier of flame, hurtled the blazing wall, searching desperately for hell's gate.

But he only found he was heading deeper into the core, all while holding humans far more easily burned than he...that were showing their weight on his sagging body...the heat was getting to him...for all his defenses against thrown rocks, the attacks of normal Pokémon---the heat was making him sick with fear...

Maybe I can't find her because there's nothing to find. The devestating thought grabbed at his stomach and twisted it in hideous contortions.

He felt like throwing up...then all the acid would come up and eat at his fangs, make it harder for him to drink..maybe impossible. Maybe then he'd die of thirst, all because that acid threatening to spill up his gullet...

Nice going, Brock. If you die, who's going to protect humans? They may hate you, but they don't deserve to die. You'd better stay alive.

He hurtled another barrier of flame and squatted, the serpentine tongue smelling the air. God, what was that smell? A vague apprehension grasped him as he felt a sting encircle his waist. It grew sharper. A sting to him...to the humans, a burn...

Acid...

The leathery ring pushed into his skin. He felt a sudden jerk and toppled sideways, moving across the ground, with painful stops and starts. He pierced his eyes upward and saw the half of a lizard tongue drawing them slowly into the maw of venom and fire.

So, he was taking the direct approach this time.

That's pretty funny. You're going to eat your own specimen, laughed Brock with a coarse hiss, of rising anxiety entwining with an evident satisfaction. What's going to happen to all your research? Gone just because you're too damn hungry.

He felt the heat make him sicker and the frothing of boiling acid pop louder in his pointed ears. He continued to play, fighting the dread in his thoughts manifesting itself in the sweat that streamed over his entire body. So, go ahead, Eddie. Eat your research. Eat your tribute to science.

A scathing silence loosened the tongue. So Hojo was still there. Perhaps it would have dropped them altogether..but the same dark shape against the black-grey sky, continuously emptying trickles of rain from its clouds, charged towards the entrapping blaze, stopped, leaped across it like a thing of another world, and blew through the remainder of the tongue, snapping it in fourths and completing the delayed motor response.

The cry would have toppled the foundations of Cerulean had it not been entirely muted.

Brock lay on the chopped piece of tongue, its remains a squat jagged stub that writhed violently, the beast itself rearing on its hind legs, retreating into the flame barrier, the scientist returning to the hell it created, all the while noiseless save for its rumbling tread.

He freed himself and Misty's sisters from the tangle of tongue, clumsily ripping through the limp piece. The fire bit at his hand, making him aware...any movement would burn them...roast them...he could smell burning hair already. Flesh was next. He had to Teleport... Get the humans out...then worry about Misty and him. Damn it---Maybe if he hadn't lost focus, if he'd just gotten the hell out of there when he had the chance------ DAMN_IT_ALL...he growled with the weight of despair hanging on his heart. The fire spurted converging on that one spot barely 7 inches wide..He could feel the psychic energy engulf them, but not fast enough..

He felt the heat remain but the inferno wane, not distant enough to ease restless nerves, but not eating at his back. He felt the ground move slightly beside him in a quiet tremor, more of dirt piles and asphalt chunks more than entire streets and the buildings that boredered them.

I missed you.

The---strangely gentle snort served a wrenching jolt to his memory. He thought he heard it somewhere before. A claw came up to his head, bathed in sweat and grime, as if searching for a memory.

Was it..?!

Suzy...Suzy?! He whirled his head around, expecting to see the familiar squinting eyes and brown-purple hair, the rather stubborn face and her little hands and her dress that got torn again...

But there was no such image. There was only a dark horse, a horn in perpetual Horn Drill, lurching backward and catching Brock unawares on its back, leaping upward over the tower of flame, and landing on the free ground. The relentless flames roared nearby, but they were out of its stomach and in front of its starving jaws.

Brock stared, open-mouthed, brushing the back of his hand on his forehead, wiping off the sweat that he thought maybe blinded him, maybe was lying to him. That wasn't Suzy.... It couldn't be....Last time he saw her, she was a girl---a human....

I'll help, her thoughts flooded his mind, and she bounded over the flame pillar, tears of a mixed joy and sorrow of lonely, empty days spent roaming dripping from the eyes as red as his framed in reptillian scales. Bye-bye, Brock---tell daddy and Cindy and Tommy and Timmy and everyone I'm okay---I'm going to make the mean Pokémon go away..!

Brock's mouth opened to yell as his heart seemed to sprout joyous wings but the emotion deadened in him knowing that she too couldn't go back.

And then he realized what she meant to do.

Don't do it!!!! The desperate roar fell on faraway ears that quickly receded, going, leaving him again---the only member of his family he had left---don't leave----come back-----Suzy...SUZY!!!!!

Teleport responded to mental signals in the brain in a Psychic Pokémon. This intense concentration was said to forbid emotion, enabling Psychics to be ruthless in their combat. But, if it couldn't be controlled, then an onslaught of stress, of conflicting thoughts and sensations, could trigger the same reaction, and the process would begin on its own.

Brock reached for his sister that galloped farther and farther away with a hand that was red, immersed in eerie light, the aura that engulfed the teleported object. The more he wanted to stay, the quicker his brain channeled the energy in the process.

Both of them vanished, he into the sky, and she into the fire.

*~*~*

The polished surface of the recently used conference table served as a reminder that penetrated even he whose surety in his position and his identity was absolute.

He had passed his bathroom mirror hurriedly while pulling on an extra coat that differered from the first by lost buttons--a flaw disgruntling to him who liked to think of himself as impeccably dressed, and at the same time, he dared not skulk in public without a coat---skulk? WALK. Yes...walk with aplomb and sangfroid---with unflappable confidence in the surety of self.

Now he gazed upon the table, its surface plainly forcing him to grasp the enormity of his bestial shadow.

He briskly passed out of the conference room for that reason, exiting a different "man" than when he had entered. The certainty had waned... The slit pupils set in hideous narrows that flared a fire's orange dashed quickly, furtively, setting on one object before resting on another, a lion that has been hunted and fears the return of the long shape looming over the thicket which brings death.

But there was no hunter, no shotgun, no-one on this floor. Up here he could expect security---only the executives and those directly responsible to them prowled these halls-which, could be added, a single one of them he could not trust. But a familiar threat was easier to anticipate and avoid than an unknown menace.

If it comes to that...no qualms, Rufus forged a pact with himself, allowing a smile to twist the stern snarl. He regarded his built-in weapon. Convenient. His stigma was also his lifeline.

The claws retracted, concealing these knives inside relatively harmless paws. What power he now posessed--not the quite he thirsted for, but power that could be easily used to his advantage.

The price for this power? He did not expect one of Heidegger's secretaries to shriek on passing him---time away from his mirror bated the hideousness in which he viewed himself. A solid blow to his ego, and for one so vain, that only sharpened the instrument. However vain, though, he had an immense pride that made him almost unconquerable. He answered the secretary with his glare of ice, angry to be feared as an object as low as a beast, but content---for this device on his head made his thoughts known, and he left the secretary in pale bewilderment.

He soon reached the office door and let himself in, very much assured. He paced to the window that offered a nearly panoramic view of the city. The window that overlooked Vermillion was his eye to another world...and an eye to himself.

The compelling thirst to shatter the window reigned high in him, to destroy the bestial image, showing him the teeth-filled scowl at this mold of inhuman imperfection. But he restrained himself. The window wasn't entirely a mirror. It served a double function. The other purpose overshadowed the first, calmed him, almost to the point of forgetfulness.

The window showed the city overrun with beasts, the race of which he denied. He fixed a condescending eye on the inhuman pestilence. He was just as eager as his lesser executives to begin exterminating.

Heidegger should have been ready by now, the .feline stroked his furred chin with a shining black claw.

One ear snapped at the thundering voice on the intercom, the sobriety of which was a surprise to him.

"Ready for orders." The whiskers twitched slightly. He thought he detected some unsurety, maybe hesistancy in the voice. His teeth clamped in a ferocious growl, he commanded,

Deploy the troops.

*~*~*

A second Midgar struggled deformed out of a diseased womb. This could not compare in size, nor amount of pollution, nor did it boast the Plate, but none could tell if it was day or night, the air thick and heavy with the enduring precipitation, marooning its people in total despair. These people weren't the hard-faced, rough-talking people of Midgar's sublevel. No. You couldn't tell who these people were. No one could recognize them. No one wanted to. Getting caught by the rain shut the doors in their kin's faces, never knowing who they were locking out, leaving them for the police to catch and hold at the Pokémon Center until they were claimed. The dragon's brief tornado didn't prevent them from their original strategy nor did it bar the Fuschians and Celadonites to swamp Vermillion, tearing through the police lines hastily erected to keep people out of the fissure, teeming with freak Pokémon. Great idea. Who'd claim them? Who wants a Squirtle draped in Grimer poison with an equally altered Charmander sprouting out of its shell?

Another batch of Growlithe rampaged the soaking street, howling and baying at climbing shadows. They flew an ignited wind that blew by the glass door, unclear from the tone whether they chased or were being hunted. They nearly ran down the lean lump that glided across the sidewalk, their discordant song an ache in his sharpened ears. He melted into an alleyway, running through the monster-ridden path.

"Joker," said the feline shape, tracking cautiously through the puddles that embraced the upper part of his forelegs, out of the alley and ending on another street, blocked off to humans by the laughably ineffectual yellow tape, torn in the middle and pocketing the rain. Freaks of every variety crawled out of the fissure like it was spawning a new race.

The cat paused, gave the humans in their rumpled, stained uniforms a curious glance, muttered to Jenny's back, "Every card's a Joker."

The hunger cries of the emerging mutants was the last thing he heard out of the main road, but by then he'd passed into a side street and away from the bullhorn, the humans, and the beasts. He found the indistinct sidewalk, the awnings growning heavy above his head and water-bound freaks wallowing in the black lakes. "You're a really sick man, Hojo, dragging people in a game and they don't want to play."

Reeve's paws printed disappearing marks in the drowned sidewalk, impressions that seemed as transient as this world's humanity.

He found some space to breathe and grabbed at it zealously, pouncing one of the free awnings and scaling the building, latching and climbing, hoping to escape the hostile creatures that yelled at him in grating tongues.

With distress he meowed, reaching for the sill and squeezing himself against the wet wood, his chest rolling with uneven breaths. The darkness flashed against the back of his eyes that glowed in the manner of cats. From the window he could see the Shin-Ra tower, cold and apathetic. "Looks like the President before he changed," Reeve mused, bringing a paw up to tongue and pressing the fur down. The distance between him and the freaks calmed him, and he almost appeared serene, tail hanging off the window sill, relaxed posture, staring off into the distance. towards the distant monster of steel. It once was a haven, but Hojo's game made it a pillar of volatile chaos. "Jump ship before it sinks," he advised, with vague attention noticing isolated clumps of twisting shapes scaling the supports. "Maybe it's started to already. Even if it isn't, no one will stand for a---" At recalling Rufus as he last saw him Reeve shuddered, almost balled himself up. Maybe Rufus wasn't nearly as hideous as the throng of genetic blasphemies he encountered, but he didn't know them, who they were before. They were nameless victims. But he knew Rufus. And knowing the man before he became a monster scared him more than the glimpse of limbs growing out of mouths filled with thorns for teeth protecting a sanguine eye that bled venom from its vulpine ears.

More of those passed by below, in a stampede, drilling their claws and hooves and feet across the treacherous pavement. "Damnit..he really knows how to screw up a working system," He shook his head, oblivious to his own cat-in-the rain malodor pervading the small space and the distant whir of choppers that circled the tower's perimeter.

He did hear, however, the squealing of a giant horned rat in army fatigue and a bandanna that scurried into his space, slamming the cat from the sill and onto the no-longer empty awning. He yelped and scrambled from the cascading pool and plunged into the street, catching the tumult of raised water, cries of confusion that waxed as he raced down the monstrous river. It rendered unfamiliar the familiar road with the howling and groaning of these four-legged tourists, trampling through the sidewalk and stampeding across the curb, rattling the sewer gratings and bashing against windows, and it was only by feel rather than sight that he knew he was approaching Vermillion's east gate.

All through the chaos he ran hastily through the black water, an unbroken trail of ripples visible behind him in the exploding store lights and crashing glass that reached into the darkness.

A shriek rent through the turmoil. The feline ears twitched, two open triangles with that noise--of agony, he thought it sounded like---bouncing across its corners. The shriek came through despite the animal clamor and the rain's thunder, its pleading tenor forcing Reeve to weave through the river of bodies and break from its grasp. He climbed up to another awning, narrowly avoiding a tumbling bird-bug that ripped a hole clean through it, summoning the black water to leap off the surface only to rain on the sidewalk through the gaping hole. In that time, he heard the shriek again, no plainer than it was before.A dull explosion in the sky fed his curiosity and the cat scurried to the sill, latching onto the protrustions, once more carrying himself away from the clamor of below.

There it was again. The shriek. Once on the roof it became clear. He stood with his claws hugging the concrete tightly--his fur raised in fear.

Fog? Hotter. Mist? Thicker. Smoke? Ebony. Fire.

"Demolition's started..." Reeve observed with a grimace one of the climbers go down in flame and blood. .The choppers wove a helix around the misshapen clumps, lurching as nameless men lobbed encased death at nameless beasts.

A cold sickness in his gut siezed him, disgust breeding in his expression. Reeve was close in his heart to the living things that didn't spit in your face or laugh at failures. He was expecting a bloodbath, but horrors in your mind's eye aren't as terrifying than when you actually see it.

"No Proud Clods, but the result's the same", Reeve decided morosely, feeling hs blood chill as flying creatures burst into flame, folded their wings in unwilling submission to death, and plummeted.

. "Sure that Heidegger and Scarlet would vote in favor for mass carnage," he murmured at the inflamed object. "Then they'll give the Silph workers mops and double their wages for as long as it takes them to clean up," Reeve muttered somewhat bitterly. "And no one'll know they're made out of Rufus' fur." He turned his snub muzzle towards the building. The smoke erupting from the sides of the building in his mind's eye became the smoke from a rushed and covert cremation.

A slight shudder racked his spine at the all-too-vivid speculation. It's not that he admired the man, was faithful to his employer, or anything of the sort. Their connection was one of semi-respectful formality, though he remembered, he had made plans to attend the funeral scheduled for the next year, only there wasn't one because some body-snatcher stole the corpse from the morgue. No one really asked why no more than months later Heidegger, Scarlet, and Rufus were reported to be recovering in the Mideel hospital. That was a surprise. AVALANCHE had killed Scarlet and Heidegger, but it took a few days to assert that Diamond Weapon's assault on Midgar did indeed kill Rufus.

For a time, anyway. But Reeve was sure that nothing would be spared. Any hint of abnormality...the president didn't have long to live.

"...If they didn't have him killed already," the cat meowed, turning away from the gory bath and dashing off the roof, a hideous cawing triggering wings of fear.

In this brief hurricane's eye, he'd forgotten that the freaks were EVERY--where. The very shadows lived. Driven by refreshed terror, the cat ran to the roof's edge, the wriggling shapes tracing a disjointed ring around the terrified feline. He leaped off the building, missing the awning and landing side-first on the crowd's back. "So much for 'cats always land on their feet'," he groaned, feeling his body shift backwards. It didn't take him long to realize that the surface he was clinging to by the ends of his claws was mobile.With a distressed yowl he raced up the jagged mountain and sprang off the wildly twisting spine only to find another back that quaked under him in fury. Behind him were eyes, hollow and hell-filled, and the entire river quickened, forcing Reeve to jump from that beast to another..

Like those treadmills they got the sense to eliminate in the current HQ. With the near-absence of cars, Shin-Ra employees could get more than enough exercise. But those treadmills had off buttons. This treadmill, alive, vibrant, savage, snaked in all directions and boiled at the creature that dared to ride the river instead of melding with it---one of them stopped out of sheer rage, halted altogether to throw the cat from its back. This random flight path smacked him on someone's head at the rear.

That someone gave a piercing howl and shook its fur wildly, sending the screeching cat headlong into the pavement. A longish snout pinned him, the nose running with Black Rain dripping on his fur, sniffing the fur of this natural enemy---that was an enemy in the other sense, too---or used to be, before he defected entirely to their side.

"It's Cait Sith," the creature announced in a clear voice, backing away from the feline, the marked hostility in his coiled stance waning to respectful detatchment. The cat blinked and crawled out of the puddle, his sopping whiskers plasterd against his muzzle, his eyes dazed, reeling from dizziness. It took him a while to focus, to discern the lean dog, and to rocognize him as one of the AVALANCHE members. At that he smiled slightly, warring against nausea, and answered as steadily as the dizziness enabled him to,

"No, just Reeve. Cait Sith joined up with you a long time ago. His alter-ego wised up and decided to do the same," the cat responded in tones as clear and uninhibited as the dog's. The latter upturned his head towards the human-shaped shadow rigid in the darkness in the form of a silent question, pointedly obvious by drawn uncertainty.

If Vincent was inclined to give an answer, the words never formed. His strengthened senses detected a loud stamp behind them: he glided a circle and fixated a stare on the advancing uniforms.

"Your word is already tarnished. We have been ambushed."

The SOLDIERs advanced in one conforming wave, each component as deadly as the entirety. Their peril took slow hold of Nanaki, his teeth locked in anger, once again coiled.It was only with a narrow roll that Reeve saved his cat hide from a vicious mauling.

"Can't you trust me? I'm on your side, you know," Reeve stated evenly, aware that his word alone wasn't good enough to prove anything. A growled "no" was enough to settle that. The last bout of dizziness left him and he gripped his senses fully, wary that another attack would come swift and fierce. He licked his lower jaw in visible nervousness. Left Shin-Ra only to be labelled as a Shin-Ra. It started to dawn on him how stupid a move that was, and like an ill-planned building, it'd crumble on itself. But he'd lament later. It wasn't just his hide, but theirs, too. Setting his jaw in a feline hiss, he reminded the dog, "In case you haven't noticed, Red XIII, we have bigger problems to worry about."

With a grudging shake of the head Nanaki acknowledged that on that point, Reeve was right. Capacity for logic had been his savior more than once. It was his rationality was what won the rest of AVALANCHE's trust, all humans, that weren't animal lovers anyway. He bent his frame away from the believed enemy and toward the true opposition, readying for their fire. His single eyeball moved among the ranks. A deliberate scan of the enemy and their arsenal and he knew they were up against.

"They're armed to the teeth this time. Be careful," he warned the vampire-like man, who withdrew himself to a limp position, knowing once enough hate bubbled in his demonic veins that he would be fit for a position to fight.

"They do not know what their opposition is," Vincent answered with a crack of a smile barely lifting the corners of his mouth as if certain of the outcome. Perhaps too certain.

"Lets make this quick," growled the commander decked in a red uniform that clashed awkwardly against the cerulean pack. "Take 'em out!"

From the ordered chaos of SOLDIERs a row of blinding machines belched a flash of razing energy. It hit Vincent head-on, crumpling his seemingly frail body inward, leaving him slightly bent in an unvoiced pain. The mass of red fur charged, weaving through the deadly wood of energy beams that hacked open the asphalt cloaked in dust and fire, the stomp of the SOLDIERs waxing more threatening in their ears.

It didn't shock Nanaki that the black cat vanished.as the fire thickened.

"Coward," barked the dog with acrid resentment. He bounded into the dense mass of SOLDIERs, dodging the flashes of heat and light that sizzled the air and obscured all directions. Boiling with ire, Nanaki blindly leaped, catching a SOLDIER by his firing arm and clamping his teeth in the elbow. A shout from the bitten SOLDIER turned their aim, searching in vain for the attacking beast. There was a spray of bullets and one of them went down in the blackness.

Vincent lingered solid in the rear, stooping a little, the scarlet cape hurled this way and that with the tumult, waiting for his demon. He watched the fray with his deadened eyes, distant and removed, watching the dog, biting and raking without aim, and the cat, looping around the hydrant and back into the fray. There was a sudden yowl, a clang as if from a garbage can lid, a startled cry, and another one went down.

A shot seared through his organic arm, and Vincent stood on one narrow knee, his hair in the gulf. He could feel his demon emerging from his soul, clutching at his heart.

"It will not be long....." the granitic man assured himself without tone. He stood, feeling his arteries swell, close to bursting from the diabolical blood that coursed within it. But he had yet to feel the transformation, to hear his monotonous voice burst into a bestial roar that tore at his vocal chords. He felt nothing, and it fed a barely noticeable irritation. "Do not bait me, Chaos. I have but a single weapon."

"There's only two!" Vincent started at the human voice. "Are you blind?! Watch what you're shooting!"

The wave of fire burst upon Nanaki, panting and crouching to avoid the shots, returning their misses with hits growing sparser and weaker. Vincent stayed stonelike as ever, and Chaos froze dormant. As the pavement blew up around him, he receded, moving farther away from the tumult as he absorbed himself in pondering.

"The Shin-Ra's targets are not human. Then they must have.." His chest racked with hollow, empty laughter at the absurdity of their mistake. "...mistaken me for a man. How wrong they are. Their folly will be their grave." Close to him he sensed blood spilling. Nanaki was hit in one or more places, and it was only one foreleg that was clawing at the SOLDIERs, the other limp and desperately gripping a hold on the smoking asphalt. A bullet spray tore up the pavement, lodging a chunk into his hind leg. An angry howl leaped through the night, and the dog threw himself at a throat for the energy that was so rapidly draining. One of the rear SOLDIERs rushed on Nanaki, drawing back his sword for a lethal strike. The cat struck first, rolling a garbage can into the SOLDIER's path. To Reeve's horror the machine was swifter. It leaped the obstacle and drove in for Nanaki's neck, raising the sword above his armored shoulder.

The wolf bit on his teeth. Just like the fight with the Turks that day except...we don't have Materia. Nanaki felt his hind paws shuffling back, his rational mind contesting with his spirit of the warrior that fights even as the blood pulses for the last time.

The blade hacked into a wing that appeared from nowhere that hooked under the swinging arm and hurled the attacker on the pavement with a resounding crack. The SOLDIERs' fire instantaneously shifted away from Nanaki, who let out a bark of astonishment.

"It's him," he panted, hurling his lean body on the winged back that toseed violently, bringing the face, twisted with resentment and the hideousness of a dragon melded with a human being covered in days worth of Black Rain and accumulated dirt that painted the squarish head in feral stripes, level with Nanaki's.

"So that's how it is..:" snarled the dragon-man, dodging the sizzling beams of glowing heat. He bounded straight up, barely avoiding the thirsty blade's edge while Nanaki struggled furiously to bite the scale-covered skin. Cid threw him off with the wings from five feet high, the dog jumping as he fell hard on the pavement, his teeth grit in supressed pain. A malicious gust blew his short fur in the windward direction as a shadow streaked his vision and a voice yelled in his ear, "I save your canine ass---" He painfully rolled on his side and sprang to his paws, panting from exhaustion. Cid shot a wounded glare at the dog, who growled in return. "---And ya go all mental on me!!!"

"You're a serious threat," Nanaki answered in an attempt to be apathetic but betraying his reluctance at attacking what he wanted to believe was a fellow AVALANCHE member. But his current duty triumphed and he clawed the rough ground, regaining his attack stance and pouncing for the target once more.

"Me? ME? I'm not the one that's a biter!!" he yelled back, grabbing one of the SOLDIERs by the arm and sinking the half-flat, half-sharp ends into the skin, drawing drops of blood that dripped from the vessels. The SOLDIERs returned with focused fire at the dragon that barrel-rolled past the dog unnerved with the total hypocrisy of his words.

At that he tightened his guard, twisted on his hind paws, and caught a glimpse of Cid's vicious eyes, washed with wild, fervent glaze. He rubbed the back of his neck with the back of his hand and shoved it in Nanaki's face, drops of gold blood shining in his eye. The dog looked up in time to see Cid's teeth divide, one half a grimace and the other a wide-open mouth as if two people in his brain were warring. But there was no way to know..."Bad dog...better get out the newspaper.." With a sudden whirl Cid lashed out with his tail and smacked the yelping dog. He flew into the concrete wall and connected with his side, crumpled and beaten. "Assfuck...you killed the mutt---hey- Red XIII!" he called, the asphalt chunks and the limp bodies dancing grimly in the gust. He landed and grabbed the red dog and shook him roughly. Never liked him and his tree-hugging, but all the same, he wasn't an animal. Goddamnit...no sign of movement, just that one eye closed and glaring behind the eyelid...which snapped open violently. The battered dog scraped himself off the wall, limping on three legs, drained, weakened, but alive and livid. "Don't know when he's beat, eh? Got me worried there a sec---"

The answer was expected. Giving a cracked howl, the limping beast rushed the enemy again. Draconis Rex struck with its claws, Cid fought, straining, sweating, fighting the dragon's unshakable will. "GOD--damnit-- I got NOTHIN' against the mutt, freak!! He's a bloodthirsty kitten. He'll bite us. I'll bite YOU, motherfucking---" Like one posessed, Cid lunged for his arm and rammed human and draconic teeth into the underside, hurling himself on the pavement, writhing with madness in his face. He foamed, blood and saliva shooting down his elbow in glistening rivulets. "Th--that'll teach ya..." He lay flat on the pavement next to the SOLDIER's bodies, some twitching, others goraning, most motionless, streaks of rain masking his body under the liquid film. He was wiped-out, his naked chest expanded with jagged lungfuls of air made unbreathable with the blood hanging in it.

An empty clank denoted the presence of the only being there that could hide his bestiality under a mask of humanity, and even then, it was pushing it. The mask was frail. You could sense the demon fangs through the holes.

The human demon hovered over the pathetic dragon-man. The falling rain obscured his sight and Cid started, fear of retribution in the form of the billowing cape that was starting to look like Chaos' black-red wings. "See, he's gonna shred both our sorry asses," the man managed a growl, his lips barely moving, eyes wild with paranoia, gazing far off into his head at the beast. Bet you're REAL proud, huh?"

Draconic Rex held his tongue and pursed Cid's lips. Close call that time. Youth was reckless. His 200 years was Highwind's 34. He knew he was intractable. He molded himself that way. His clan expected it of him. Now, looking through terrified eyes at the grim, frozen being who Highwind said was Chaos, who posessed power that could maybe crush him--he would've never believed that Valentine would be capable of destruction until he saw him on the brink of transformation, in transition between man and monster---close enough to becoming Chaos that the eyes were no longer eyes but hell pits and his skin flushed red with rage, he wrestled against that rebelliousness, that defiance towards man.

His life consisted of no compromise, never giving in to the human hand. Never admit their superority. And most of all, never admit dependency. He knew he'd failed when they locked him away, and when he found his freedom he swore to never give an inch again, but..it all seemed pointless if he wanted to see his 201st year.....

He picked Cid's body up and stared the statue-like man squarely, his teeth flashing with controlled malignance. "It's a dragon's pride. But it looks like you're correct. What happens to him happens to me. I loathe saying it," A feral growl forced out of his throat between the wedged teeth. "We share this---" He passed a disgusted glare at the human shape. "--body, but our minds are our own."

"That proves nothing," Vincent answered simply, indicating with a slight hand motion the wheezing animal. "Your demon still claims mastery over you. How will anyone know that the man is in control, that the demon uses one voice to goad his enemies into believing his lies?"

It was unsure whether the dragon or Cid crossed his arms over his chest in cold indignance.

"You don't believe us," Cid's gruff, tobacco-warped voice stated. "Then I'd wonder if your pet can be so sure that you have YOUR demon under control. From what Highwind tells me, Chaos is just as lethal...maybe more so." He grinned at tentative Chaos in expected victory. There was no need for a change in expression. It was enough for him to sense the faint tremor in the deadened eyes..

"It is a chance that must be taken. To exist among men once more without fear of waking next to their corpses. It is a difficult task, is it not?" he asked all and none, lifting his covered chin towards the horizon."..one which now I am not sure I have accomplished." He lifted his human hand sleeved in the black glove and held it stiff in front of his face. A traitor biding his time in his own body. He held the chain with a watchful hand but if it ever broke..

In a tone of indifferent surrender he murmured, "It seems, Red XIII, that we have found half our lost companion."

Nanaki nodded, fixing his untrusting eye on the dragon and Cid. So, Vincent said we can trust half of him? How much of Vincent can I trust? the dog asked warily. He held back against the enemy. Did he fear himself? That other time while fighting Hojo, he CHOSE to transform. What difference does it make if our enemy is the Shin-Ra or Cid? The crimson wolf/lion leaned with grit teeth on his haunches, wincing as he licked his swollen wounds with an equally swollen tongue. The threat of the pilot elevated his guard, and he raised his muzzle and pointed a slightly accusatory look at Cid that showed only a feeble spark of trust.

"We found what we're looking for," he stated with evident tension rendering his tone hostile, dragging his bruised tail through the deepened puddles, the fire at the end of it a waning candle. "We'd better find Barret and Tifa and a way home."

"Back to the Planet?" the shadow of the vanishing cat fell across the pavement, and the feline crawled out from under a SOLDIER's leg, the white fur on his stomach tangled and colored in someone else's blood. "It's more complicated than you'd think."

Nanaki was ready to snap with what little energy he had left to spend but remembered that the Shin-Ra employee fought the enemy, however ineffectual it was. Then it wasn't him that called the SOLDIERs. Maybe it was just an act. He couldn't be sure. His true loyalties were questionable, but so was Yuffie's. And besides...

He's not duplicitous...like Cid and Vincent. Cid that's practically two people and Chaos a perpetual threat, whether under Vincent's control or not. You could be sure that you were talking to one person and not two. Though the term "person" stretches it out of proportion.

The wolf/lion licked at his wounds again, the tongue collecting globes of blood as it flicked back into his jaws.

"Tell us what you know."

"It's not much," Reeve answered the direct, foward question matter-of-factually. Something compelling him to keep their presence covert, he suddenly lowered his voice.a few decibels, glancing at the fallen SOLDIERs. That was a mere handful of their troops. Rufus didn't exactly spend lightly on the military. It was massive, dwarfing the forces of Kanto, Jouto, and Houen combined. This unit might have been wiped out, but they could be sure another fresh one would replace them. SOLDIERs were easily cycled. "We'd better get out of the city, first," he advised, looking furtively over his shoulder down the emptied street that could fill with Shin-Ra artillery at any given moment. He felt agitation climbing up his nerves as he saw their set reluctance. He probably knew what they were thinking. An ex-Shin-Ra, liable to betray them. Weren't ready to trust him yet.

Then again, none of them trusted each other. AVALANCHE wasn't tightly-knit to begin with, more of a loose organization with different causes--and it was made looser still in that two of them were double-headed, the other never a man.

Though now it seemed rather tantalizing to be in the second state. Animals were whole while men were in pieces. How muhc more the broken pieces of a man contesting the will of a whole being?

TO BE CONTINUED..... *~*~*

A/N: ^^ Stay tuned for chapter 26!