End of a Reality

by Blue9TigerDarkMutatedBrock

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

27. Egress

End of A Reality

by Blue9Tiger/DarkMutatedBrock/La Cidiana

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A/N: Hello out there! One correction: Chapter 8, misspelling of eyes, it should be "eye". And, after several unsuccessful attempts, I think Barret's dialect is finally polished. ^^ Another change-scene-often-chapter. Bear with me. ^^

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"....Well?"

A voice with the lushness of amply-watered foliage disguising a bed of thorns posed this unantagonistic query. In the impregnable umbrage, none could discern human forms from the shadows: they might as well have been phantoms granted speech, and would disperse with the tide of air at tidings of dawn, if such ethereal spirits were confirmed to have existed in the first place. Light footfalls clearly established these specters as solid, and moreover, of the homo sapien specie, further ascertained by the whitish fingers delicately rolling over the stiff knob that hadn't been turned in ages devoured by apethetic cruelty..

With a click it faded out and then in, an archaic light source on its last hours. The flickering bulb emanated a dim, pallid light that was only sufficient to mark out the vague outlines of the objects locked in the tubes, equipped for all purposes: sometimes a Mako vessel, others what it was at that time: a dungeon for the gods.

At least, that's what the locals would say. The captors of these so- called deities knew better. "Sacred"? "Holy"? "Beyond understanding"? There was not a single question that was unanswerable. No mystery. Inquiries...always answers. Even if it took a lifetime or more- --there was always an answer. They removed the "un" from known, and the "in" from finite.

The ancient lamp swung as the pendulum does, in rythmic time as a searching bat flitted past it, flinging restless shadows over the table, rusted from neglect and draped in cobwebs and dust that shrouded the incriminating liquid from detection of the expiring bulb suspended above it. Each laborious swing, each effort tainted the near-silence, for it intruded on the low hum of rather anachronistic machinery that permeated the corner of the timeworn laboratory. The recently-built equipment was no more out of place than what the dying light marked as youths that stood in front of the semi-cyllindrical containers.

They say innocence is lost earlier with the passing generations.

Locals would say these glass prisons contained objects of worship and of scorn-----but, molded as they were, both labelled magnificently hideous, one less so than the other for certain.....traditionally despised traits, but beware the deception of appearances. These youths knew outsiders would form their perceptions based on that, and they alone would know the truth...in time they began to believe it themselves, or at least, that is what they stated publicly.

In their pursuit and application of knowledge, they found occasion to mock the other "truth".

Even so.....There were certain individuals that were a bit edgy, like the newcomers, those that didn't entirely reject a smidge of morality. The tall, light-haired man was one of these, peering through the pale tube with a loose ring-shaped mouth widened in disbelief. He pushed his head closer to the glass, gazing dumbfounded at the creature trapped inside.

"Is it really necessary for all this?" He had a sort of weak, feeble voice, quite mousy, some would say. For all of his height most people looked down at him-----particularly because he was young and inexperienced compared to his ancient superiors. But he was exasperatingly oblivious, and he'd chatter and prate, stoking the irascibility of his younger colleague, because the last thing she desired was a speech about the ethics of the work. And in the relatively brief time she knew Elm, she knew that once he opened his mouth it would take a thread and NEEDLE to shut him up.

The incessant squeaking of bats and other basement-dwellers were easier to tolerate that this constant blab: ."I mean---you have to nurture Pokémon in order for them to be worth anything on the battlefield. You can't just leave them in a tank--they'll remember that--Pokémon have good memories, you know---it was in Professor Oak's report in the Celadon Scientific Journal---the sample size was small, but ten Pokémon became great at combat, and the other ten refused to fight for their trainers and became very---" He fished for the words, his nerves unfailing under the poisonous stare of his cohort. Sometimes a thick skull is the best weapon. "....b-i-tter.....mmmpffhh---" The man found his mouth sealed when the female clapped her nimble, dexterous palm against his dry lips.

So this is the famous Professor Elm, blabbermouth extraordinaire.

"I think I hear a MOUSE in the lab...." she stated with a twang of irritation in her voice of toxic syrup. It was at times deceptively pleasant, a substance so sweet that it was difficult to feel the barbs underneath it...until they gouged right through your hand.

Her other hand creeped towards her pocket, hidden from view, was already fidgeting with the different components of her best friend, fitting them together with expert speed, and ready to wield with deadly accuracy. She had it raised above his head, the fluid bubbling with predatory tenacity, while Elm blubbered, unaware at the obvious hint for silence. The two shadows that fell across the floor under the table stayed her hand halfway on its speedy journey to his head. She released her grip over his mouth and concealed the locked-and-loaded weapon in her labcoat pocket, feigning innocence. Her intentions finally sunk in and the bewildered man gasped for air, losing his thought in the process. "G-good evening, Professors!" greeted the flustered man, while aiming a puzzled stare at Ivy, who was casually holding another syringe up to the light, viewing its contents with a smug look that read, 'What did I do?'

The broader of the shadows spoke, walking partially into the dim light that revealed rather ill-intentioned features. In one, stiff, large hand he gripped the creaking, iron handle of a local's lantern that he set down on the nearest table. One might say he wasn't lighting the way for himself---he ventured into the unlit space beyond the scant circle of illumination and navigated through through the pitch-black hall as if it were flooded with light. One might have said he had superior-- -unnaturally so---eyesight. Others might say he had been down there countless times---whichever the reason--he emerged from the black hall holding a clipboard and a ball-point pen. He set the clipboard down---the ink was red, no less. Ivy detested that color. Black ink would've been much more clear. She less than discreetly balanced the clipboard in one arm, reading the uintelligible scrawling of 'failure' under a blurred 'Z'. The rest was chicken-scratch. She bent her head sideways in an effort to read the rest of it, while the first shape--- the one with night-vision, answered Elm in a rather non-committal manner,

"If it were evening instead of daybreak, this subject-----" He pointed with a lightly-wrinkled finger towards the second tank to indicate the far less active of the two captives---the one that society found easier to despise. "--would be aware of its predicament." His voice was removed, perhaps not as much as the other one with the glasses, but enough to be hateful. When he spoke, it was with perturbing detatchment, even the warped ambition itself unimportant. What it was.....it was hard to tell. Some minds held cobwebs. His held obscurity that, once removed, tore away the disguise of an unspeakable hell. "It was, as you know, born with a more aggressive nature, but is strictly nocturnal. It cannot venture out in the daylight without inflicting pain to its optic nerves. The first, being what it is, is diurnal but the night holds no adverse affect for it. I made sure of that." The broad-shouldered man strode away from the tube, that seemed to contain another sort of pump---closer observation would give away the hue of the liquid inside this prison. Both of them---not the one directly adjacent to it, but the other on the far side of the dim laboratory. The man's heavy shadow passed across the decrepit flooring. He lightly tapped the glass of the containment tube.

"This is the mother of the inactive one--she put up quite the struggle, according to my colleague here." He paused to hear the siren-like wail of the third monstrosity, nature's reject sculpture---"As you can hear, the subject's aversion to light is inherited from its mother." He didn't so much as flinch as he took the lantern and dangled it directly in front of it. Its bound limbs flailed desperately to shrink away from the terrible light that burned hotter than flame. "She normally does not act this violent--- the transition from wilderness to captivity was quite difficult for her. If she does not acclimate within six months, I may have to make adjustments." The demonstration over and the other old man scrawling this preparatory data in the clipboard that Ivy had thrown on the table after taking a cursory glance, the large hand held up the lantern and shifted his gaze with unusual suspicion. He drew the lantern close to him....as if guarding the method in which he extinguished the fire. He opened the lantern, grabbed at the candle, and withdrew the thick hand without so much as an outcry of startlement or pain. The unblistered hand sunk into his labcoat pocket, and the figure turned to the other scientists. "Well, gentlemen..let us proceed."

The greener youth upturned his open-mouthed countenance towards his squat elder.

"Are you saying--o-one's a human and one's not? They look--alike---"

It wasn't until then when the ghastly pallid, oily man with the clipboard and protruding head and hunched gait decided to speak.

"I suppose you are insinuating that 'Satan' resembles 'God'..." He made a point to overstress the two names in pointed skepticism. "As for the subjects, yes-----that was human--that is Pokémon. Remarkable, is it not?" he questioned with the slightest of grins, his slight exhale pouring an alien toxin into the already-poisoned laboratory. He lightly fingered the signature weapon in one hand, playing nature's game with alarming indifference. "You see, genetics is no longer a game of chance.....or that ever-popular notion----- Fate. It does not exist anymore...." The glowing turbulence of the vibrant fluid stormed inside its glass casing as the older man lifted his head, covered thinly by a dilapidated ruin of hair that obscured the two green areas that leered at the word."----.it never did. But now its non-existence has been proven...."

Well..here's my initiation.....gulped the young man, fingering the strange--almost cryptic emblem pinned on his---and his colleague's labcoats. He hadn't really analyzed the plaque until now, easily immersed in one pursuit, hardly two at once. Now this gave him occasion to examine it.

It was pentagonal in shape, emblazoned with a globe. The fingers of a hand that grew more monstrous as it proceeded from fifth to first finger clutched the sphere.A green substance split the planet...the locals referred to it more than once as "Mako" As for the human fingers, they were cut and bleeding. It didn't occur to him then..that the emblem signified the eventual goal of the amoralistic society. All he knew was that the symbol was unnerving in its high-minded eccentricity. He looked up from the badge, more than a little rattled. He was beginning to wonder if Professor Oak had introduced him to the most upstanding of people here.

As for the gorgon, she remained fixated on the more---rugged-looking creature, the one they had to use a specialized PokéBall to capture---and even then, had to sedate him multiple times. The wrath of hell smoldered in its eyes that sluggishly wandered the hollow tube and the world outside---sometimes it cried for its mother, who grew increasingly inimicable at her offspring's distress....him floating in the opposite tube, barred by glass walls, trussed in wires and cords that connected to machines that were designed to analyze brainwaves, rate of respiration, pulse, and other vital functions, a perfunctory tool for the monsters that had captured her and her son.

All she knew was that it inflicted and undeserved paind and hurt. A full- blown roar warped the greenish liquid in the tube, eliciting a subdued, half-formed, undeveloped growl from the offspring. No doubt that these would intensify once the sun set. When hell's children came into their element...or so the old folktakes went, lying about the truth that insisted it was merely the natural design of the genes.

How...cute, she mused, running her gaze up and down the container. She could have sworn that that defenseless freak of nature recoiled under her stare, sensing one far more disfigured in her soul. Ivy cocked her head slowly, grinning like the devil. The devil....The aforementioned spun on one heel, her gleaming eyes of venom piercing the hunched form of Professor Demoni's former assistant--now his equal--his junior by ten-odd years. She took an immediate disliking to him. Because of her general hatred of the Gaians and her superiors, and because he reeked of Mako that he was OBVIOUSLY infusing into himself, and that he was a bleeding hypocrite since the Planetouched was aware of who aided in the creation of the famed one- winged angel, she exploited every opportunity for insult.

"Hmf. You'd think an outspoken ATHEIST like yourself woudln't be so hypocritcal as to imitate mythical creatures, much less MENTION the possibility of a deity," Ivy commented with a smug, flat frown. She didn't expect that the wiry man would be so observant: she judged all men as unobservant and thick-skulled, and if the spineless wimp with too much empathy and not enough vision and plain common sense was any indication...

The grease-filmed scientist retaliated rather promptly.

"First...a 'mockery' would be a more appropriate term. That lifeform is evolution's doing. It is only fitting to create a mimicry of its opposite since nature has not made that available to the project...." His unemotional tone developed an undercurrent of acerb that betrayed he wasn't entirely uninvolved in this verbal exchange.

"Secondly....my religion...or lack, thereof, is irrelevant to the experiments...Thirdly,.. I do not believe it is your place to criticize, especially since you have no useful blood to donate to the Order..." He shuffled closer to his challenger, lowering his voice so Demoni's aging ears wouldn't hear the portion of their conversation that was more....confidential. "So, my dear...find a method of being useful.....or I will find our own use for you that will be purely parisitical....." he warned with ruthless detatchment. Ivy, grudging behind a perfectly placid mask, gave a smooth salute and listened loathesomely for the carnivorous steps to die away.

You'll get yours. Wait a while and we'll see who's on top.

"He's right, Professor Ivy," the eldest man took her revengeful fantasies and crushed them without ceremony. His beaded, dagger-sharp eyes were reminiscint of a man she despised...a man currently 'earning' thousands---millions off of his dishonest inheritance----- She could see the resemblance. Like son, like father, she mused raging to herself as their leader finished his lecture.

"You will do well to know your place in the Order." Ivy boiled underneath the lying mask while Demoni curtly changed his tone from admonishing back to neutral and typical, erasing all sign of a conflict. "Now...wake the subject," he gave the frank order. "I want to observe its response to this stmulus." He strode to the table chock-full of empty vials, microscopes, and unfamiliar apparatus. There was some oddly-shaped glassware that the man's tan, leathery fist, much like a reptile's hide, grasped not unlike the half-human hand that gripped the world on their insignia.. He held up the glass, brimming with this ever-twisting aqua energy that spun and wove, threadlike. You know what this is.."

"Psychic energy," Elm squeaked in astonishment. Ivy raised an eyebrow. It had taken a full twenty seconds to make that observation. "How did you--?"

"In its raw state," Demoni replied with practiced ease. "By tracing the origin of the Psybeam and various psychic attacks, I made a curious discovery.....that energy originates as matter. Psychic Pokémon---including this one--contain an extra component in their brain that generates this secretion which is released as energy. After analysis of the reactions, I have found that the process is artificially reversible..raw psychic energy can be converted to.....for our purposes,"---He took a receptacle of identical size and held the other arm up, "--liquid..." He strode to the electronic hulk, lifted open a compartment on its side, and poured the 5 liters or so of fluid, dyed a blinding white. He closed the compartment with a shove of his weighty hand and stood up, aiming a parasitical gaze at the uneasy creature through the glass."The subject, being formerly human, has been administered the altering chemical without any abilities specific to a Pokémon. It must be infused separately." He waited rigidly, without turning to the woman seated at the other panel, her eyes, marked by a lazy droop that she never heard the end of, sprinting agilely across the spans of readouts and output. "Professor Ivy...what is the condition of the subject?"

"Respiration, normal," Someday, "brainwaves," you

"pulse steady at," old activity---" codgers. "--normal."

Demoni raised a commanding forefinger at the youth, still peeking through the glass, watching the trapped human-turned-Pokémon yell and cry.

"Um..I don't think it wants to be here..." he concluded. Demoni first ignored it, as if he hadn't said anything at all, but soon glared at him so imperiously that the younger scientist zipped his mouth and walked away from the tube. The crying grew louder at this lost salvation, this last barricde to torture removed and the awful torment yawning before him.

Elm squirmed uneasily in front of the man, shorter than him in stature, but managing to be freakishly terrifying. Was he standing in front of a fellow human or a Pokémon like those imprisoned in the tubes? A Pokémon wearing a genetic disguise that made it doubly hideous. A Pokémon that may have fooled the top researchers--But----whether that surmise was right or not, he submitted without any more dispute.

"You..initiate the pump. Read the internal concentration level."

For the first time, Elm could detect actual words from the pleading monster---"help me", "don't do it," a thousand other expressions that cried for mercy. Elm gave a sympathetic look to the hideous creature, its eyes slanting diagonally in fearful sorrow. Elm trampled his conscience and twisted the knob that activated the device, the central button on the panel radiating a blinking light and a faint humming generated from the cylindrical casing. Elm pulled down the far left switch, and the device warmed up. The numbers "000" and "%" flashed red on the hollow screen.

He bit his lip and pulled down the final switch. The numbers ascended. The pump sent the pulses of fluid through the transparent wiring, penetrating the creature's skin, thousands of pinpricks stabbing into its hide made less resiliant just because it wasn't broken in yet, so it hurt more---worse than a shot at the doctor's office, because those were transient and didn't hurt as much as if a needle was jabbed in and stuck there just to make the person feel as much pain that could be squeezed out of such an action. And though for some of them this wasn't the main objective, it was certainly an acceptable, even encourageable by-product.

A piercing scream ripped out of the creature's mouth, chilling the consciences that had not yet been completely immersed in cold blood.

"10..20..."

"Annghh...what're you doing? That hurts!!!!!" the creature cried with a human voice, punished with a gush of the suspension chemical that poured down his throat and choked his screams, strangling the cries that strived to be plain and clear..

"30..40..50--sh-should I keep going?" Elm stammered, the nightmarish numbers ever-ascending, pumping more of that liquid against the natural balance that normal genes had provided, force-feeding him Psychic energy-----some humans, specifically Saffronians, could hone their mind to achieve and develop that ability, but there was a set limit to theirs---only a Pokémon could posess the ability in such amounts it was destructive on a massive scale...

"Someone---please-----!!!!"

"60---70---Professor, it's more than half-saturated-----!" the youth protested, his whole body shivering. He couldn't read straight. It might be 70-it might be 700. Either way, all of it was wrong.

"It......hurts....."

"80, 90, 91, 92, 93, 9-94-----" he faltered, sweating, hot, sick----- he let his head fall in his arms, eliciting a "you're a pathetic sot" glare from Ivy. How much she wanted to throw Elm from the controls and speed up the process tenfold, to prove that she was good enough for the Order.

She waited, a vulture's anticipation, following a weary traveller that was sure to expire.

"Over-saturate it." The order was less severe, equally imperious in its own right, quiet and restrained.

"95, 96, 9---what?! I-I'm all for strong Pokémon b-but---" stuttered Elm, his eyes broadening in feeble objection behind his thin-lensed glasses. Again, Hojo lowered his voice. The slight green mist clouding his eyes gleamed in quiet menace, and he threatened in a hushed voice, further muted by the Pokémon's human scream.

"Do you see that table? It has fallen into disuse ever since that day...I long for it to be occupied.."

Elm gave in miserably, and with no will counted past 100---the unfortunate thing probably was ready to explode. Its arms and legs were swelling, bulging from the excess amounts of chemical that pounded through its body that couldn't be more than_five years of age...

The suffering man knocked his head on the unsympathetic panel and peeked out from over it, mentally defeated.

"105...110...Profes-----"

Elm looked pleadingly at Demoni, his final recourse, detatched and unaffected. The elder scientist's fists clenched loosely at his sides, and once or twice he imperceptibly bit his lip. His eyes read, "Do as you were told" , his conscience with enough pure remnants that he was AWARE this was amoral abuse, but far too tainted with his first ---subject that he did nothing to end the torturous process.

The count dragged on, and the screams grew more shrill and higher- pitched, eventually changing into a shriek that lanced the stoniest of wills with spears draped in guilt. But there are those with more resilience, with a tainted conscience, some with none at all. These were the subhumans that stood unimpassioned with guilt. Guilt didn't exist.

"130..."

"HELP---"

"140..."

"STOP---"

"170....."

AGHHHHHHHH!HHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

"200......"

The numbers kept climbing while the wires snapped in two, shocking the innards of the creature without mercy, the frying power so potent that it ended the creature's agony.....at least for now. It fell on its knees at the tube's metallic bottom, knocked unconscious from the violent shock.

Elm with a clammy, sweat-soaked hand switched the awful device off and breathed unevenly, still hearing the pain of the monster expressed in such plain language that his captors did not understand, for they were the subhumans. The boy was still young. He could only bear it for now... unaware that he and his red-eyed companion who awaited similar torture when the sun submerged would eventually posess the strength to hold the world at mercy.

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Chapter 27: Egress

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It didn't rain much in Corel. Not that anyone who lived there expected a lot of rain. Depending on who you asked, practial Corelians with their feet on the ground said 'cause it was on the leeward side of the mountain, and the ones that ever went out to Wutai insisted that Leviathan was pissed at them. Whichever side they took it ended up being dusty and dry for more of the year, and no amount of offerings to the marine creature was going to bring any more rain. It wasn't as parched as the desert a couple miles south---that was hell in your backyard, and the big storms lasted longer in the town, just enough water for the land to get by. If they were short on rainwater one year, they'd get their water fresh from the Gongaga River. It wasn't a big deal long as there was coal to mine. Nothing was a big deal unitl the Shin-Ra. Nothing was a big deal until Corel got turned into a scorched dump.

"Drowned dump ain't much betta," Barret noted, his creased, squarish forehead streaming in Black Rain that bled down his thick neck and plunged into his broad shoulders, stabbing like frozen blades through the hardy, calloused layers of skin, icing his muscles cold. And it wasn't 'cause he was from Corel--he hadn't been back home in a long time, and was by now acclimated to Midgar's rancorous wind. But even Midgar, the place to be for bad weather, didn't dump torrents like this.

"So damn hawd t'see," Barret groaned through a bossy gale and another throatful of the battering liquid. The howling wasn't distant anymore. The freaks were waitin', sharpening their claws and advancing in invisible droves---hiding in their artificial cloak. Not that it wasn't a fair fight. The hordes were unarmed. His gun-arm was loaded, and he didn't have any regrets gunning down nameless monsters that were out for his hide. "Awright...c'mawn, gimme all yuh got!" Barret challenged, not sure if he was soaked in his own sweat 'cuz he was shaking underneath all that human muscle. But ready or not, here they came.

One of 'em weaved serpentine around his mud-immersed boot that planted the weighty man firm in the turbulent soil. Another came at him from behind, tanklike in its plowing, another dropped out of the sky, swooping overhead. Barret whipped the gun at the closest pair of glowing embers that alone pierced through the induced night, arrows of flame that crackled obstinately before the death machine.

But they still held their shield. The swollen cumulonimbus guarded its offspring tenaciously. That was its purpose. How it was designed correlated with its fuction. The inorganic weapons..... even non-combative machines, vehicles, engines, motors, the substance was manufactured to reduce them. What would it care if the human was well-meaning? It couldn't distinguish what technology was used for what purpose. It was as cold and indiscriminate as its architects.

The bullets rattled out of the gun and snuffed out the closest fires, dragging out yelps and howls from the fleeing monsters. "Shoulda known...dey ain't gonna die wit' jes' one roun'," the man realized. "Goddamn it, Tifa, why'd yuh get yo'self lawst?!" he bellowed hotly, sending a second pulse of bullets out at the swarm. "Yo, L-Dawg!!" Barret bellowed into the abyss, the twisted flames giving him answer, circling and leaping like a pack of Headhunters.

For every one that crept back, two of them advanced. Either they'd get the message and stay the hell away from him or he'd be out of bullets first. Or it could be...neither? The AVALANCHE leader didn't count on getting disarmed by the rain ITSELF...until the stump of his arm got lighter than it was supposed to be with its heavyweight armaments...'till he heard hissing as the rain seared through the gun, shells, eveything, the liquid pouring in a melting glob before it disintregated. The few pieces of Materia he had lodged in it landed in the ground, giving off a grinning glow.

"Ah get it...dey're levellin' da playin' field bah takin' mah arm---" he growled, clumsily forcing open his other--temporary weapon: the broken umbrella. It was real pitiful, but it kept 'em off his back, the wind turning it inside out and jabbing the other points of the umbrella into the more agressive ones. He wasn't no swordsman, but blind thrashing was gonna have to do for now. "Can't do shit widdis awm---" He flailed the stub angrily, hurling the umbrella foward in a rage. "Smooth, Wallace," Barret berated with grinding teeth. He dove for the umbrella, grabbing for the slimy handle with his one good arm. One with eyes tumbling and crashing like landslides bit the other side, ripping through the flimsy material and chomping on the other end of the handle, baring its teeth and thrashing its head menacingly."Yo, whatta yuh doin'?!" he yelled, yanking on his only defense against the scores of freaks ready to knock him dead. It didn't back down easy, fighting for the umbrella like a dog battles for a bone, dragging Barret off his feet. He plunged his back foot into the earth, trying to resist the monster's perisstent grip, but he kept getting yanked foward. Didn't help he was going at it one-armed. With a frustrated shout he kicked the mud in its eyes, the glow vanishing and a sibilant cry slithered through his ears.

"Gsssssaaaaaaaaaa......"

Barret was a powerhouse but knew when to act fast when he needed to. He grabbed the umbrella out of its clenched jaws and swung it straight for its head. The aggressor yelped at the impact. "Dat ain't enough foh yuh?" he yelled, dropping the umbrella and plunging his good hand into the mud where the bits of Materia dispersed slowly as they sank and flung them. The chunk of Materia lodged into its eye, and he gave it a solid right hook in the head, sending it a couple inches back as well as awakening its demand for retribution. "Dat wasn't da best move, Wallace---now dey godda reason fo' killin'----"

It lunged and he bolted as fast as he could, pouring oaths in the sticky air as he slipped and glued himself in the churning terrain.In his scare he almost forgot why he was out in this crazy storm to begin with. "Mebbe Tifa wen' back t'd' Ketchm's," he reasoned. Didn't hafta look behind his back to know that those fireballs and landslides were chasing him. Their stamp as they traversed the mud with far more ease than he, their vengeful growls...he already knew. The one with Earth in its eye pursued perfectly well with its vision obscured, out-running the rest.

The AVALANCHE leader made the rain-stained door and banged on it wildly. "Yo, Mz. Ketch'm!!" The voice had more than a degree of urgency. It sweltered with--panic? Even Barret Wallace got yellow once in a while. The horde lost him, but the freak chewing apart his umbrella had him in earshot. He heard it coming up real fast...Not even he could blame himself for getting scared. "Open da door!!" After all...he was only human.

"Gsaaaaaaaa.....!!!" The monster attacked from behind, a claw swipe away from him. From this close, he could feel its breathing on him, seeping through his clothes, like it was shoving him under quicksand by the feet----when the door opened part of the ways, wide enough for the timid gaze to peek through and see Mr. Wallace gripped by hysteria. So they didn't all leave, the people that guarded the house...

She hastily removed the chain and pulled open the door, the big man stumbling through and with him a cascade of Black Rain. He barely planted one foot on the floor when the woman already started to close the door, shutting it, bolting and double- locking it, keeping her hand on the lock until the solid thwack of the pursuer's head against the door rocked the firm wood.

Barret leaned against the wall, sweating heavily, his pulse fast, out-of- breath, standing in a lake of Black Rain that poured from his body on the floor..was pretty damn lucky that the lady had a good memory or he might've been mincemeat ...With a tense breath, he walked away from the wall, the liquid leaving a blotchy man-sized print on it. ..He didn't know the woman well but from the ruckus she first made over the mud they tracked all over the house when they first came in he'd say she was particular about those kinda things....but she didn't say nothing this time. She stood, her hand on her cheek with the saddest look in her eyes, dropped with sorrow.....when he saw that she was gazing at this green shit crackling with voltage like a cut wire---

"Mz. Ketch'm, one 'a 'dem got inta yo' house!" Barret shouted in livid alarm. He lumbered to the first thing that he could find and ues as a weapon and held it above his head with his one arm. The woman responded promptly and grabbed it, the wooden chair teetering precariously in his fist, darkening the freak's malformed head as the chair's shadow rocked threateningly over it.

"Don't you DARE hurt my Ash," she warned with her maternal concern--- calm water with ripples of fear disturbing its quietude. It was strangely dutiful, said without emphasis--almost-----nearly--reluctant.

The bearded, burly man gaped at her in disbelief.

"'Dat freak's godda name?!"

"For your information, he's my son," she answered in the same tenor of voice, a somber biterness lacerating her galling words. Her eyes wavered but produced no tears, parched and wasted of any sort of moisture. She gazed with these desert eyes sadly towards it, called its name. It was an unconscious error-- how could she know that her tone was the common kind of voice humans use with their pets. If she knew, would she recoil at herself? Did Ash notice that he wasn't truly her son any longer? However it went, it advanced awkardly, one time reeling backwards because its body was getting pulled two ways. One wanted to go faster but the other was a plodder. Every conflict they had it hurt, his bones cracking and muscles pulling as one lagged behind. There were Pokémon with more than one element. He met them all the time. And they were okay. They were natural. His wasn't meant to be... normal..working like clockwork. He was broken.

The halved creature zigzagged like one inebriated towards his mother, at every step sending electricity through its body as regular as he breathed. She gently and guardedly stretched out her hands to recieve the electric Ivysaur, now clean of Black Rain, the towel wrapped around its legs, and it advanced towards her in lumpish steps. She aimed her head at the floor. "You don't believe me, do you?" she asked, stroking the mottled head, becoming oblivious to the new blood that trickled from the surface.

Both of them could tell. She was saying these things, but they weren't really true. He backed away, tears staining his scales. It only hurt more when the next shock, routine and expected, intensified with the presence of water. The Pokémon tears that hurt instead of healed. Delia made a dutiful move to console the creature convulsing from the worsened shock, light burns etching further deformities on the rumpled hide. A low, raspy perversion of "Pika" scraped the air like pointed bits of gravel."YOU don't believe me, either?"

"Kkkkkkkraghhhhhh," it returned dejectedly, its head sunk down on its forelegs, the sharp scales chipping the floor. His rodent ears twitched ploddingly to the direction of the robust voice of the big man, an undertone of sarcasm raging underneath.

"Yeah. Shore, I believe yuh. 'Dat's how a motha an' son relate," Barret shook his chiselled head, rock-jawed and cynical. So the freak had some parents. He could buy that. That either of 'em believed it? "Don't g'wan an' take me foh a jackass."

"Well, Mr. Wallace-----" Delia started, her head still facing down at the floor that didn't hear what she was saying. Her hand clenched slightly in a removed despair. When her head came up again the desert had its first sprinkle.... but it was an envenomed rainfall. "YOUR child didn't go off on his own for months at a time, worry his mother sick, and when he finally comes home for a visit----" She made a toxic gesture and drove a finger at the misshape, that was so far away from it, but it was the distance that made the invisible wound hurt more than if she went right up to him and kicked him across the room. It was the distance that were sharper than a Scyther's blades---that and the WORDS. "And he doesn't make it home."

What are you SAYING, mom?

I'm right here.....!!

Right under you!!

Here!!

Right.....here.

"You can't BLAME me, Mr. Wallace. You wouldn't KNOW what it's LIKE to ----"

It opened up an old wound and the firey whirlwind stirred up in the big man and he slammed his heavy boot on the floor.

"Lemme tell YUH sumthin', Mz. Ketch'm," Barret burst with explosive tension. He was fearless in the tide of the Shin-Ra, so driven by hate that desire to free the planet and protect his daughter. As the AVALANCHE leader, though it was the rebellion, more egalitarian than Shin-Ra would ever be, Barret liked to think that when he called the shots, they'd listen, and when it didn't happen if some cocky jackass joined them to make a couple thousand gil, it pissed him off real bad. He hated challenge in his own ranks just as much as the next leader. And this was definitely an affront. In a different way, that sharpened the blow tenfold. And he came back with a retort caught on fire:

"Don' talk t'me none 'bout my Mahwlene. When the Plate came down awn Secta 7---" The sinews in his working hand convulsed as he drew it tight into an enraged fist. The memory played itself over in his mind like some horror flick, the support beams tumbling like..avalanches. Half of him sunk away into Midgar and the plate, collapsing and crumbling, onto Biggs.....Wedge...Jessie...his voice lost some of its toughness. "-- yuh had no idea how scared ah was. jes' 'bout gave up everythin'." The pieces of the Plate formed a permanent barrier to Sector 7--Later he found out it wasn't going to be rebuilt. The bodies wouldn't ever get a burial or nothin' like that. They'd just rot with the metal. Marlene wasn't among the victims, but in this journey to stop Sephiroth, there was no way he'd see her anytime soon. The man's voice roughened again "Ah still didn't see uh aftuh Metea fell.. Ah gotta go on someone's goddamn WORD 'dat she's okay. Ah dunno 'dat fa mahself---" He shook his functional arm at the offending woman, the sinews going from convulsing and unsteady to stiff with angry resolution. "--so don' yuh tell me 'dat ah don' know shit!"

"It's so easy for you to say," she replied, the words tumbling off of her tongue like flame. However Barret retorted, the other chose not to listen this time. She signalled sadly to the clown-like Pokémon that waddled out of the kitchen, tired and haggard. "Come on, Mimie. We're going to get Ash to Professor Oak and find how to get him back to normal," she resolved, tilting her head towards the disfigured Pikachu----- Ivysaur...whatever. She couldn't...take this. There HAD to be a way to reverse it---Professor Oak would HAVE to know how---no way around it. She couldn't keep him like this, reluctantly call him her son---for Ash's sake, she wanted him human again.

With her eyes closed she heard Mimie's broom stroke against the floor groggily, with a drowsy grin that was more reflective of its facial structure than its current mood. "Why don't you fix some rice balls?" she coazed, her hands wringing imperceptively in her lap. The Mr. Mime could tell from the tone that this wasn't a suggestion or an implication, and it hurried back into the kitchen, dropping the broom with a clumsy clatter of wood on wood. She turned back to Barret, the already-thin crust barring his exposive anger disintegrating as resentment welled up in his emotions. But before he could say a word, Mrs. Ketchum beat him to it. The voice was worn-out "That's terrible about Marlene...but she isn't a Pokémon.There's no confusion--we can't talk to each other any more---I don't know what he's saying---I don't know if he KNOWS what I'm saying...."

"Kraaaghhh..." The Pikachu's ears flattened on Ivysaur's muddled head, that crackled with paining ribbons of electricity. It stood up on its back legs, pounding on his mother's leg in a vain effort to make himself be understood---a word of acknowledgement was all he wanted, and that spoke itself in mangled growls. "Kragh! Prreghheee!"

"Yo' goddamn SCARED 'a yuh own KID," Barret accused without yield, steady and hard-voiced.

Her answer was equally biting. "I didn't try to throw a chair at him." Her grief-leadened steps sounded on the wood as she wove around the banister, and disappeared up the stairs, her son calling out unintelligibly after her. Barret bit his lip. He looked down at the creature, its crackling tail twiching irregularly, its jagged scales scraping the floor as it tipped on its side.

The AVALANCHE leader watched it squirm, volts of electricity shortening its hapless cries. If he didn't know that it was someone's kid he would've killed it by now. He'd fought so many back home the reaction was instantaneous.

Ain't no diff'rent from da monstas on da Planet, he figured. Somewhere in the house a mechanical warble signalled the change of hours. The flump of a backpack on the floor and a plop of wrapped rice balls. The wind prolonged its brutal reign outside. The glass panes rattled in submission.

Barret pondered this awhile, creasing the hide on his forehead in hypothetical thought. Mebbe'f Mahwlene wuz one 'a 'dem ah wouldn' know it wuz.....His beady eyes stopped on the high-voltage lump. He wandered away from Marlene and looked for the other female. He'd been searching a long time now--she split after the storm. His ears rolled outside. The windows weren't soundproof. The monsters were still wailing and howling, prob'ly like this one-----a kid turned into a freak. That must've meant that...

The thunder muttered outside and Barret jammed the pieces together. With an under-breath "shit" he was out the door, back into the grasp of the howling wind and the roaring rain. His bane and the creatures' haven. With no gun. He stomped off the porch and felt breathing on his back."Awright, punk. Gimme yo' best shot," Barret coaxed, turning and ramming into the aggressor head-on. It smacked into the side of the house, entering half-view in the light rays pouring out from the house. "Zemene," he marked it, ducking the closed fist that hurled at his head lightning-quick. Barret might've been strong for a human, but what he had in strength he lost in speed. The other's fist sprang out from nowhere and clocked him straight in the jawbone. The impact stretched his neck in the wrong way and put him more on the alert, and he barely dodged the rush, its cord-like tail whisking against the drowning bulk of his pant leg. The monster landed another hit, this time rubber instead of metal. That was a direct kick, and the man went reeling into the house's wall. The two hits it landed---somethin' wasn't right 'bout either of 'em. That punch was harder than if it'd been bare. It had bits of metal covering 'em, like it was wearing armor that melted during the storm-----what kinda monster needs to wear armor unless-----

Ah seen a lotta punks 'dat wear brass knuckles and dat otha shit but 'dey don' wear a whole metal GLOVE on 'dere hands.

The big man tore himself from the wall, narrowly avoiding a right hook as a solid thwack sounded right next to him. The bits of metal stuck in the wall, and he tackled it, denying that it could be Tifa. He mowed it into the mud with one pound of his good fist, crushing the creature's chest. But the rain still fell. The bones reformed beneath the liquid, and it retaliated swiftly, graspring the burly man around his chest and waist, securing him in such a way that it was impossible to struggle, and was about to drive him into the ground when the light caught his form. Its unshakable grip loosened, and it inexplicably let Barret slide out of its hands, and eased the big man onto the wall. He didn't wonder why it didn't Meteodrive him-he got up and barrelled towards the creature, until he looked at the freak in the light and saw what he didn't want to see. Eyes are cruel enough to open when you least wanna see something, and he saw that the monster with the angry-earth eyes that had the shreds of the busted umbrella in its teeth wore what used to be a white tanktop, brown shorts, and oversized workboots apart at the seams, not 'cause of wear but 'cause of claws that didn't fit in the shoe. Its arms hung loosely swaying from badly-placed shoulders that was on either side squeezing it like a vice. "L-dawg?" Barret blanched, taking a step back on the porch. He wanted to hear "Who'd you think it was?" or "Of course"--maybe a "yeah"---but this was all he heard.

"Gssssssa....."

Jes' a Zemene in her clothes, Barret accepted with a gruff sigh---until he saw it gesticulate-- wave its claws in distress. The way it gestured, like it was-almost talking. That didn't mean anything. It coulda been anyone---anyone---not just Tifa.

"C'mawn--talk t' me, girl!!" Barret commanded, wielding all his human authority That sibilant noise and more crude signs----The more signs it made, the less Barret understood it, the more he panicked, the more he grabbed the creature by one arm slimy from the rain and shook it to its nerves if it had any. His tone grew wildly frantic. "Tifa, it's dat yuh in 'dere, say somethin'!! Lemme know it ain't some nobody!"

The Zemene grew frantic. It lurched for Barret, landing its hands on his shoulder muscles, its mouth contorting in bizarre formations that coiled and stretched into the farthest thing from words, a uniform, homosyllabic sound of "gsssssssaa". "Lemme know.." Barret grunted as it tore out of his human grip, holding its hands in front of it, pointing, jabbing a random digit into its gene-emaciated chest. And all the while Barret begged for a word. And this miscreation couldn't give it to him.

This impossible exchange had a witness. A beam of yellow filtered out of the widening crack between the door and doorway. A brown eye roved, reflexively blinking to avoid the wind and liquid storm. The other abnormalities half-circled Barret and and their kind, the greater part of them drawn toward that light, whether welcoming or hostile, it acted as a magnet, exacting an inescapable pull on them.The leader made as far as the doorstep when a shrivelled vine wound through the crack and lashed it, the remnants of voltage crawling through its now-incapacitated form. A vengeful gale washed the bold one further out to sea, sparking from the residual shock. The door widened, the mime exiting first, immediately waving its hands in a fixed pattern, concentrating its brainpower to shape a mental Barrier against the advancing horde. The wind hurled them into the earth ocean. While the psychic barricades and electric vines swarmed around her, she caught wind of the raised voices of her house guest.

"It's not so easy, is it?" The solitary question failed to tame the storm---it devoured all. Barret's sweating head turned and saw the woman and the the two freaks. The crossbreed's eyes glowed sinsterly from in front of the woman who looked downwards, holding onto the malevolent wind as she inevitably fought for balance. "Don't listen with your ears," she murmured over the wind and lost. "You won't hear anything."

Before Barret could fight with the clamor and say he didn't hear what the hell she said, the three of them flowed with the brutal tide that would eventually throw them where there was no foliage to stay the merciless winds, or landmark to know where you were headed: to the endless ocean of mud.

The horde roved onwards, around the house, in search of an opened door, in search for food, for human comprehension, for their stolen voices. Barret stayed rooted to the turbulent surfacc and blinked his eyes, keeping them shut so for a moment he could see less than nothing.

"Rain fallin' too hawd t' hear anythin'. For a moment the man wondered...how long had he been here, searching for Tifa, telling N-dawg to go on ahead and he'd catch up later. Then he didn't wonder HOW later..depending on where Cid went, they could be anywhere on that ocean island.

Can't sit my ass here no longer, he decided, staring towards the opaque horizon that wasn't any different from the ground, which wasn't any different from the sea. He trudged through every part of the earth at once.

N-dawg and Valentine mus' be lawng gawn, he concluded with a heavy exhale. The mud sucked and clung to his boots as he headed out, not stopping to turn around to talk to the beast head-on.

"Lissuhn, don' know if yo' L-dawg or yuh ain't, but I ain't stickin' round here no mo'." He didn't stop to hear if the creature followed him or not, whether to devour him like it did to Tifa or if it WAS Tifa. Right now it didn't matter. Nanaki and Vincent were way ahead of them and the rain was only falling harder, turning more land to sea, turning more sky to earth blending all in an uninteeligible unity.

*~*~*

Massive clawprints carved guilt and fear into the grime. No....forget fear. Fear is distant, vague, but not impending. Not imminent. It hovers far away. It's not invasive. The line between dread and terror is near invisible, but there's a difference between relatively close in proximity and breathing down your neck, a quickened pulse and frying nerves, creeping slowly through hostile territory or running for your life.

Zero-X was doing the latter. He couldn't see the bat-fox and frog, nor could he smell their odor in his reptillian nostrils, nor could he hear them through the chaos that broke like waves against his hide, piling layers upon layers of earth on his backside, making him slower still, forcing his girth against the grith of the restless land. Massive sheets hammered him without mercy in this way. He could sense they were close. Not by physical senses, all but derailed with the perpetual storm, but by pure instinct. The hunters gained ground.

And WHY was he running from those who----not a month past, would risk their freedom and lives to further the organization--and a single, solitary error in his judgement----a failure to cover his tracks and ensure that there would be no internal retribution.....it had cost him dearly. The code of dishonor that so long stood as the foundation for that organization, revered by its members and reviled by the police, crumbled beneath him-----it was permissable to enact it against insipid trainers--but within the organization, there were limits to the amount and nature of lying that could be done: to lie about something of this magnitude to powerful, sagacious agents that somewhere along the way inexplicably gave birth to a conscience, however minute: it was not the most intelligent decision he had made, that was for certain.

The hulking landing-point for the mobile earth gave a vexed growl. The tattered stone of authority was in the process of collapsing.

In the process? What is it that you're thinking, you fool?! he self- berated with a low hiss. That action of opening his mouth was no less foolish: it allowed the muck to plaster his lizard tongue to the roof of his jaws. And that wasn't the only thing that was sticking. The titanic accumulations of earth acted as a sort of paste..he found it increasingly difficult to fight onwards. For a quicker being it would be easier, but the weather was as much of a trap as a PokéBall.

. Smaller...quicker...weaker. His mutinous ex-agents would find him, but they were no match for him in terms of sheer power. What had he to fear? They were but stinging flies. No...flies do not sting. They---they.....iHe could not think of an appropriate verb at the moment, but it meant little. The point was that he was a behemoth-----what thinking ability had been stripped from him he was granted horrifying strength in exchange. And if this would guard him against the traitors, then....why on earth was he fleeing?

Ridiculous...absurd...

To run from what were merely stinging flies.

He swung his massive bulk with laborious effort sideways, the vicious wind shattering on his mud-plastered hide, weighed down with the load that grew ever larger as he faced his attackers, a flicker of haughty expectation of invincibility.

This complete halt to his flight catalyzed their proximity, and the 'stinging flies' overtook him with menacing anticipation. How convenient for them to sting right into the red brand. Giovanni roared in agony as a distressingly accurate burst of black flame and boiling acid burned through the patch of thickened mud, that happened to be shielding the still-sensitive area of the uper arm. The hot acid scalded the already-etched part of hide that contorted in writhing folds, renewing the anguish of the first branding that had just started to stop irritating the limb. The leathery mass of scales smoked and burned, transforming the monstrous roar into a high whimper.

Ditching your agents so soon? Cassidy emphasized with a coat of venom. She glided above the mud-smeared arc, hovering over his arched back, and clenched her fangs in bold mutiny. Butch climbed on his snout and ripped the mud over the glowering pits of hell. The muzzle writhed the same as the arm, choppy roars unable to drive his former underling from pinpointing the state of his conscience and probing his soul.

Get off, he snarled threateningly, a wind-rattling roar hurling Butch from his muzzle. The frog recovered on the ground and scaled the lizard's body, latching onto the base of the broken horn. No amount of head-thrashing would loose this unwanted cargo. I have nothing to conceal.

You wouldn't be runnin' away unless you 've got somethin' to hide, Butch retorted with an accusatory croak. His overgrown fangs dipped into his vision. They appeared painful from this up close, but the rebellious tone of the goading shrivelled the speck of what used to be unbreakable pride. C'mon, fess up.

Don't think we're stupid, ZERO-X...Cassidy tore the psychological wound through, entombing his ego. The beast succumbed under power of suggestion, deprived of ambition and lust of power, too bound up with fetters of panic and guilt of this predetermined action, so trivial at the time, to accomodate much else. How much more now that Cassidy and Butch had unearthed this fiend in his mind, this diabolical act that he had paid for with his reputation, his imperious dignity......And now, his former agents had the GALL and AUDACITY to strip him of his NAME?!?!

"GROARRRRRRRGHHHHHHH!!!" You will NOT address me in that manner!!!! he protested, roaring with the force of his lost dignity, nearly blowing out Butch's eardrums. Man's deliberate mistake advanced with cumbrous tread, dashing the back of its head against its back. Movement of air seeped into his ear as the bat-fox located the left forearm with a shrill screech. The echolocation was accurate. She found the brands and spat fire into the opened hide until the thrashing stopped. It was then that the beast plunged on his chest, yearning for the constricting mud to soothe it. Ameliorating the physical pain left a wide opening for Cassidy to scourge his mind.

You don't_deserve to be called anything else, Cassidy spat with vehemence more acidic than the frog's. More of her fangs gleamed, assuming a smarmy and condescending air.# 43 of Team Rocket code: 'Silencing demoted agents: Get rid of them quickly. Torture is for non-agents. Break code on pain of demotion, permanent removal, or death', in your own words. And just in case you plead your case---she added, alighting on the monster's back, setting her clawed limbs atop his back. ---We know you knew, Zero-X. But since I'm so forgiving...She raised her wings with the purpose of blatant intimidation and growled, . Get the hell out of here. We'll go another way.If we ever meet up----The ebony blaze stirred in her opened jaws, which seared directly into the aged and fresh burns. But it wasn't a quick burst, it was one drawn-out chain of fire, burning into the mark in rapid succession. Butch clambered against the wind and reached the quaking limb, spilling acid onto the crackling flame. It ripped a third brand into the first and second, gouging so far into the hide, tissue, and bone below it that the mark ensured its permanence.The fire was aimed without eyes, but it was accurate enough, inflicting renewed agony in the red lettering. The ever-emptying skies healed the smoke-clouded imprint, the smoke dissipating but the scar remaining, obscured by the earth as the disgraced reptile sank into the grime.

Consider that a reminder, the frog croaked as he and the winged animal blurred into the obscurity of the storm, leaving the mortified reptile, head in the slime, swallowing mud, his abused forearm bearing a hate-embroiled symbol he couldn't read, but he didn't have to know that it was a letter to know how much it desecrated the inert corpse of his pride.

*~*~*

They finally could greet the dawn as a haggard fragment of the city. As for the remainder---they had no say in the matter. Somewhere a limping Wartortle spent the last of his reserves on the now- simpering flames. It finished its dreary task and reported with a few curt syllables that the threat was over. The other of its kind signalled with another bellow--it saw the petering threads of smoke that incriminated the scorching element. But even the ones with the hottest flame were spared accusation, because all had heard--if not SEEN with their own eyes---the bloodsucker and the fire lizard--which was no distant relative of Charizard. And as for the bloodsucker, the Ground types interrogated weakened Nidoran, dying Golbat and dead Arbok.

While the remaining Growlithe interrogated, the four or so Onix drove out. They targeted the strange-looking or sounding ones-----the speaking Magikarp and murmuring Poliwhirl with humanoid shape and a fur-covered human with fire spouting from its back and a girl with Umbreon's red-black eyes. Then there were the disfigured creatures that didn't resemble a Pokémon in the least, some with scraps of clothing clinging rumpled around them, or some that had shed the mark of humanity altogether. But no matter their true origin, the city didn't welcome them, and the Onix made sure of it. If their towering presence wasn't enough to stop their furtive advance, being wrapped up with a stone tail and thrown to the outskirts was sufficient to keep them on the outskirts.

They didn't feel the same dawn as the others. There were few that dared to bend towards the emergent sun: most shirked from it. The forms made indistincy by the morning haze and by the sheer number of monstrosities lay and squatted on the deformed protrusions formed not by creation but destruction, which molds its own sculptures out of crumbled remnants, clogged in Black Rain that no longer fell, that ended a stagnant sea that engulfed the ruins. Above, the sky dared to show its true face after the cumulonimbus had banished it, and a steel-grey morning, stealing into existence furtively after its exile.

A twinge of crimson pricked through the air and disrupted the deathly calm, starting out as a faint point of light that brightened with the energy that repels instead of attracts. The creeping mutants retreated underneath the ebony bed, the apprehensive growled and barked, on the defense, and the stone-skinned snakes continued to slither their rumbling paths that streaked their rocky imprints through a sea of black that absorbed this crimson pigment, staining the air surrounding it the hue of the first beast's sustenance. The alert canines gazed on it with guarded apprehension---a brief whine whisked through the surrounding air, calm with the storm's departure, turbulent with the punctured sky. They weren't wrong to fear--the red light grew more intense to their sight, until it vanished altogether and took the shape of the diabolical exterminator.

Gravity would have dropped him on the city's remnants if a bristling shape didn't knock him from his feet. The black-and-orange form planted its paws on his chest, and he wao too shaken with the groaning mental image of scorched ruins and mauled bodies to protest the unprovoked attack. The hideous compound of repulsion's jaw fell, revealing the forked, serpentine tongue, vibrating uncontrollably.

Misty.....SUZY....Don't tell me I'm too LATE...His demonic head automatically lifted from one of the hard metal scraps, drained haze burning away to reveal an icy terror that coated his black veins. Where were they? WHERE WERE...they.....?

The unrestrained half of his body snapped up and grabbed the dog by its shoulderblades with his scarified hands. The canine lost all boldness and backed away, growling defensively, unwilling to show fear on merit of his breed, he showed hostile caution..

"Deevvrrruughhh......" Stay away...Neck-biter----

He knew what that name implied. So they knew. Word spreads fast on the grapevine, doesn't it? Brock snorted with trails of acreb entwining his thoughts, raising himself to a mockery of human posture. The pack backed away, not unified, some whining and others frothing, one disorganized mass of fur, flesh, and bone. Behind them the stone serpents roamed purposefully, seeking the outsiders.

Unaware that he was an intuder to begin with, the half-standing form lowered half his guard, crossing his scale-covered arms in adamancy---until the giant fgure of Onix slithered away, removing the barrier that interposed itself between his light-hating eyes and the cruel star.

I only take it when---I need it, Brock replied a deal more less convincingly, shrinking away from the light, covering his scrunched-up eyes with the backs of his rough hands that were insufficient to block out the faintest pricks of yellow and white that hurled him backwards, forcing him front-first on the standing liquid, his triangular tail twisting limp. The tail of their evolution.....but the atrocity he commited overruled marks of breed. They weren't as loyal to their pack as the Growlithe or Arcanine.They demanded compensation. And their source for that crawled away on his knees, scraping his head against the uneven shards that carved shallow ruts through his scales. He hissed, bubbles bursting next to his head but no sound that they could understand. I'm not going to hurt you----just please---TELL ME-----where they are.....

Oh, look----the blood-drinker wipes out our territory and now wants mercy. One of the incautious Houndour leered at the face-down monstrosity, clamping a paw on his tail which twitched with spasm. Grovel lower, you punk, he barked sardonically, his muzzle raised at a brazen height.

Try and save it and take the blame. It really hurt..that he tried, he got Misty's sisters to safety and came back in the faint hope that the city was still standing.

It hurt more that the same bastard who woke up the goddamned instincts was the same one that the Houndour should've wrought their justice on.

"WRghhhii craaaghht yroughh---" he gurgled through the vapid liquid, grabbing his vocal chords with a half-submerged limb in a vain effort to be coherent. "----- HRUGHHGRUGHSSHRAAGH mreegh...?...!!"

The garbled roar was meaningless. Why don't you do us a favor--- suggested one of the Houndour, shaking the clinging liquid off his coat, the sprayed drops flecking Brock's same-pigmented hide with someone else's burden. ------and get out. It's bad enough to know that your kind is lurking in the dark waiting to take over. But that's where we least see you. If you've GOT to exist, don't let us know you're there or we'll-- Heat built as the fire wrapped wormlike in their scowling jaws. ---take you down like a sick Stantler, get my drift?

Brock nodded dumbly, too fraught with disillusionment to protest his innocence further. His own element, his own type..... and not just once-humans, but POKéMON that were BORN Pokémon....now even THEY saw him as an outsider. And there was no way he'd make them see otherwise, because of that sickening realization that the Fire/Dark dogs didn't understand a word of his thought-speech--they were unaltered, normal--and they were Fire/Dark, not Psychic.....and that minute difference buried any comprehension.

He didn't hesitate in flight. The rains over Cerulean had ended. Any burn, scratch, or scrape wouldn't heal so quickly this time----. He fled in a stagger, half-crawling, half- running, his muscles weakened by his exhaustive 'ability'. He escaped drunkenly from the debilitating light and from his own unmitigated shock, the pack howling and baying.

Before the distant outside the Houndour stopped pursuit, and turned tail with haughty triumph, the tremendous Onix enforcing the demarcation line. Brock would've liked to think that one of the Onix was his, but even if it was......It wouldn't recognize me now..not like this, he growled ruefully, his hands still acting as an ineffective barrier against the crushing light.

But....screw vision. He didn't need his eyes with his nose and ears. He could smell the scorched buildings behind him and hear the altered survivors that maundered amongst the rubble. He raised his head skyward. Slate grey...a hazy morning. The sun was barely up but he felt the sharp burn on his body, grimy with the Black Rain that the ruins practically swam in. While pain shot through him as the sun flared across his bowed frame, he listened as best he could with the black goo blocking his ears. Dead silent except for his own breathing, loud in his ears, louder in his mind with the ice-fringed silence, their names reverberating over and over and OVER.....

He felt driven..he HAD_to keep looking in this limited space that fear of hot retaliation confined him to, even if he was searching for ashes, for the REMAINS-----. He clambered prone across the chemical sea, weak from the light and weak from the psychic exhaustion. He searched like the drowning fights for air, smearing the liquid in haphazard patterns, the ebony substance grabbing and hanging onto his wrists while the clatter of his claws sounded against the broken and mauled plaster, more often on the smoldered husks of buildings and Pokémon---some decrepit humans, but neither Misty nor Suzy.

He planted a leg in the mud. No patter or roar of the droplets, only the bestial jeer of the unaltered Pokémon, the muted moans of the mutants, the splorch of undried earth as it caked up to his thigh with so thick an adhesive, and his own tears tearing at his lungs.

He wasn't moving fast enough. Too slow no matter how fast he ran. Always too late.

His malformed knuckles tremored with squelching defeat--they sank into the ground's stained surface, leaving a hideous print of his fingers in the ground. The mark of a wretch, a joke of the humans, made more vile with this failure---in rage he punched the sticky substance---.It was already sunk in more than the rest, like someone had already...been...there. He bowed on his knees and felt the impression with the flat side of the scaled hand.

They're webbed.....Brock growled with presensation of that lingering illusion of hope. The unshakable burden on his heart was just starting to haltingly disintegrate when he edged up with one knee and raised one of his clawed hands, feeling for another set-----the shape of the track screamed human. One eye opened, the protruding hide around it writhing in hurt. He swallowed the pain and bent his head, gazing at the print---from a shoe or a boot. There wasn't any more doubt it was a human--but.....

An armed one-----it could be one of those uniformed ones with the guns--- Misty's in trouble, he growled in distress. The scarlet slits vanished and he felt for each print, as swift as his swallowed strength let him, smelling with nose and tongue, feeling with his limbs. He grew conscious of the waxing heat as the sun fired its rays at the earth, and he fought the light, searching for a tree's shade as well as the tracks---that soon..got blurred, ran into each other, like the creature that made them was faltering. It got to a point where the human and webbed tracks vanished, replaced by the four-legged gallop of a hooved creature---maybe a--Rapidash? Brock quickened his pace, running on the tracks, his own further deforming the prints previously etched, a single name spelling itself out in his head that hurt with the pang of uncertain relief.

Somewhere along the trail he halted, an expectant breath catching in his lungs and choking him with caustic sorrow. Those weren't Suzy's--they couldn't be. Her hooves were clawed. They weren't normal like these hooves. Maybe a Ponyta or a Rapidash---with white fur instead of black. Something that actually BELONGED on this earth...but not his sister.

No point, Brock gave a margled sigh, treading far more slowly, this observation crushing his mangled spirit further. He gazed into the blinding fire, his voice broken and unwilling to mend itself.

His mind told him to turn back, his gut told him to move on.

The tracks forked. The Pokémon hoofprints led to shade, and another set---It was zigzag, the clawed hooves went every way but straight. Suzy...he reached out a hand and foot to follow the other tracks, his black heart lifting in ineffable relief--- until he heard--a voice..human, because he could hear words. He put a hand shaking with a horror-shattered joy to his ear and advanced cautiously. As he found out with the Houndour, the gulf between Pokémon and mutant Pokémon was wider than he thought. It made the humans seem that much more superior. That much more...hateful.

The tracks took him around the sea of ruin and terminated at a stubborn clump of half-broken trees that refused to shatter at the recent stampede of wind, the testimony of their brutal struggle apparent in their bent and cracked forms. The one covered in scales rather than rotten bark crouched behind the rain-heavy foliage, bent halfway. He parted the branches with his hands, the twigs and leaves pouring a black cascade that blocked his view until the drainage stopped. As he tore each layer, the human voice grew more distinct, raising the fear-gripped snarl in the demon's voice. He forced his head between the last bars of branches and what should he see but a... human... not just ANY human--a mad roar broke through the cage of trees, drowned in vengeance. The white and grey uniform emblazoned with the telltale R was enough to justify an unexplained and swift carnage.

On impulse, he lunged through the net of branches, a crunch clearly audible as the split pieces of wood flew in haphazard directions and the creature of onyx scales toppling the Rocket and pinning him roughly to the earth, one hand raised to gouge out his throat. The squirming Rocket clutched a vial in his trembling hand, gloved in dark grey instead of the conventional white. Brock didn't get to see what the rest of his hateful victim looked like: a megaton crashed into the demonic shape and slammed him hard on the ground with a thrust of its bovine head. The base of his shoulder connected with jarring impact. He could feel the bruise swelling already, while the feral bull snorted through one dilating nostril, wearing the earth with its massive hoof. It charged with its head down, this time to pierce instead of smash, its eyes broadening as the demon gripped its horns and hefted it with ruthless force into the branches, twigs snapping as it crashed with a moan.

"What's the big idea?!" railed the Rocket, unhooking the spherical device from his belt. The demon recoiled at the mere sight of the globular prison, but it didn't fall on him, instead it ennared the knocked-out Tauros, lacerated with bloody scrapes and covered in broken twigs. "It got hurt really bad--and now I've got to fix up Tauros, too." Brock was unmoved, aware that the Rocket held the battered form of Misty with hands just as venom-stained as his. He sprang onto the human and raised the death-dealing claws again, casting a shadow over his eyes that were too childish to be a true Rocket. "I-is this y-your friend?," he stammered the question, the uncorked bottle loosing a drop of the tincture on the hide laden with a patchwork of burns and wounds.

Brock gave a stern nod, hostility brimming from each choked-off exhale. Mondo forced the glob of terror down his esophagus and said, a bit more clearly, "It's in r- really bad shape. I can help it i-if you don't kill me."

Since he was still alive it must've meant that the monster somehow understood him... Better make the most of the opportunity, he decided rather quickly. Mondo reached in his bag with nerves in a jumble, his hand slipping each time he found seemingly what he prodded the bag for. He pulled out a cloth, set it in front of him, and hastily poured the contents onto it. The tincture saturated the towel rather quickly, and with this dripping rag in his hand, he set to work, rubbing the mixture into the gorges, valleys, mountains--a volcano or two--and the rest of the grim topography that now mapped Misty's hide. He rubbed hard, causing an agonized groan to escape from the ever-open jaws. Brock opened his fist, ready to end the Rocket's existence, but---gradually, the open wounds sealed and partways and scarred. The Rocket rummaged through his bag again with a spray-bottle of a medicine familiar to Brock in the Rocket's mouth, and a roll of bandages in both hands. Burying his pride he allowed the Rocket---that social deformity---to bandage the half-open wounds, soothe the burn with the spray, do anything necessary to preserving her life---and he chained his burning resentment. He'd have to trust him, no matter if he was a human and a Rocket, two brands of deceit. Human without Rocket he only feared as strangers and superiors solely able to inflict pain, and Rocket without human--it's not something they could help..it wasn't their fault. But human_AND Rocket.....

Mondo knew what the monster sensed in him. Maybe even knew---Pokémon were just as sentient as they were: Meowth was living proof of that. But just because they were sentient didn't mean they were all benevolent. Like this one---he really wanted to help his Tauros first, but he sided with self-preservation as much as the next human, and tended to this one for the sake of his neck. And Brock knew this. He wasn't doing this because he was WORRIED...Rockets didn't live for anyone else but themselves. Everything they did, if it even ever got CLOSE to LOOKING like a good intention, it was for their own miserable skins. But if it was going to save Misty.....let the rat get away with his weasly trick to keep his life. Let him have it. He didn't want his dirty blood.

The deathly silence spread to the commiserable band of foliage, broken with the taut breaths of the demon and the human. By laggard degrees, what was fragile respiration earlier, regulated, and the parody of Gyarados sent a robust roar---cut off by her wounds, she ran her hand as gingerly as her build permitted her across her side, the scales recoiling at the abrasive touch.

And then...it all came back to her. The sorry excuse for a fight, burning in a Hydro Pump from her OWN Staryu, Cerulean scorching as some other monster whisked her away and dumped her outside the city, where she couldn't do a thing, where the flames were packed too close together for her to re-enter, and by then she'd blacked out. Stupid..couldn't DO anything. said you would and DIDN'T...

More of the dank branches snapped and hung lifeless as the Gyarados crunched through the foliage, tearing through already-dead stumps with a disoriented slashes, missing its mark but the combined abuses severing the trunk and landing in the wet mud that the sun hadn't yet baked, her weight plunging her underneath and retarding the little speed she posessed. Behind her,. she heard a whole tree snapped under the impact as Brock roared after her, growling in frantic tones and re-entering the sun's realm, haggard and bent, the roar twisted into a throttled snarl.

Wait------Misty----!! She answered him with a reproach that didn't need words to convey what it meant. The demon sped for her with redoubled fervor, sweat dribbling from his scales, yearning to avert humiliation, shame--his emotional plagues. They won't know who you are---!! His warning fell ears that the Black Rain and denial clogged. Do you hear me? Misty!! Brock ran faster on the muck's treacherous surface, the lashlike tail winding from the flank at the wind's mercy instead of under his own power, too absorbed in his dread of the grey beast's mortification. But it looked like he couldn't stop her. She still knows who she is......Brock thought mordantly, his intense red gaze locked on the inexorable Gyarados.

The drooping beast stood crushed at Cerulean's edge, barely concious of the bestial fleers as she staggered amidst the wreck of her home, unaware that the Wartortle fled in her wake, that the Houndour's jeering howls were directed against her, and that the tremendous rock snake barred her from advancing further.

"Errrrrouughhhhh......" the boulder serpent's jaws unhinged, releasing a gravelly roar. It raised cobra-like to its twenty-odd feet, carving out a shadow that stretched beyond the city's border. "Errrrghhh..." Leave.

Misty only dimly heard the Onix's roar, and even then it HAD to be distress at the destroyed city, the population, gone, but it soon became apparent. The Onix hefted its grantic segments as a blockade in front of her, its enormous head rising above its body, a horned shadow agianst the sun.

She knew it didn't want her to get past. The reason why.....it was lost to her. What she knew..a Pokémon barred the way to her home. And if she was going to stand for that, after unsuccessfully facing off against the hell lizard, then she'd be a coward. An oversized snake-----the oversized part was her bane--massive she didn't fear, nor did she fear the Onix that once belonged to Brock---so why should she cower at this one, that blocked HER way in HER hometown?

Onix were loud creatures on the basis of their stone-encased hide, and the target could dodge it because of its retarded speed. The crumble and crunch of the metal beneath its tail alerted Misty, and she avoided the incoming Bind, hearing rock scrape against rock as the coiled segments connected with a reverberating crash. Misty seethed with indignance and rage, hot energy fountaining in the wide jaws. The throbbing orb stretched into a beam that broke against the Onix's hide. The gouge ran so deep that it broke the rock-hard skin, drawing a sliver of blood from its stony layers. It retreated with a fearful groan, grinding its segmented body across the liquid-wrapped metal. As it moved from her view, she waded into the sea, fearstruck, her webbed claws clenched in front of her chest.

Empty. Gone. No more. The fire had come and escaped, taking the humans with it in an inescapable tide. Not of water but of a blaze that left what remained of the city scorched floating in this sea reaching to the knees. But not the sea she adored, the sea she grew up with.

In her mind she saw shadows of the townspeople and their Pokémon....in a grief-induced delirium she thought she saw them in front of her.....smiling and waving as the sea devoured them with greedy appetite---but they were only the three Onix incensed by the deformiy's very presence.

What letter of 'LEAVE' is beyond your understanding?! A giant tail bashed the rubble beside her, sending a confused mass of shredded concrete towering above her head. One Onix she could fight, but the numbers weighed against her. In panic she fled on her four limbs, to the lonesome border where Brock gazed to the grey horizon despondently, appearing with the terrible red slits closed to the distant eye a shadow, an intangible tracing of a palbable being. But shadows couddn't feel any sort of pain, and he was plagued with it...because he could sense Misty's dejection. The Black Rain rolled out her ears, rolling down the atrocious visage. The echo of his warnings threaded clear in her ears, and she realized the futility of ever setting foot in her hometown again Her eyes on the immersed rubble, she and the fiend headed in a direction that would circumvent the no-longer familiar terrain.

*~*~*

The usually amicable innkeeper examined the small coins his outlandishly long-haired guest shoved on the table, an impetuous "what are you waiting for?" glower on her face, flushed with, not her own blood amassing in her head, but the daily Canyon twilight that cast all it fell on into a vermillion light. The innkeeper stood there with a vacant crease for a mouth, holding the metal pieces up to the firelight, probably astonished at the holes in the coins. To the customer, this wasn't a welcome countenance, and she didn't hesitate to express her volcanic displeasure.

"My money isn't good enough for you?! It better be top-of-the-line service, mister, or I'm not paying a thing!!!" the woman growled threateningly after the manner of irate beasts. The blob with the scrunched-up grimace affirmed with a grating cry as she threw one more of those drilled-through coins across the old wooden counter. They landed and twirled with a clink and got a long, puzzled stare. Just because there was a HOLE in them didn't mean they were worth any less, but----as if he KNEW the gil equivalent...

His thinking was soon disrupted. "Wahhh---buhfet!!" the light blue thing rejoined presumably the woman, tensing the innkeeper's nerves. He'd met dissatisfied customers before, and who usually travelled in companies. Solo travellers usually had guard dogs. He figured he shouldn't argue with this amazon, or else meet the wrath of her and her angry-looking creature.

"Just remember, lady---they'd never do this over in Midgar---" He warned under his breath, placing a plate of the Canyon special and setting a glass of some undefinable beverage in front of her. Jessie attacked the steaming roast and shoved the food in her mouth hoggishly, getting disgusted sideglances from the innkeeper. If he knew she escaped from the Shin-Ra mansion, maybe he would've understood her irascibility. She and Wobbufet ate ravenously, complimenting the chef through a crammed mouth. The innkeeper only shrugged the accolades off and went to help the next customer, flipping a bit of gil with his thumb. The noiseful eaters next to him fell oblivious to everything else, including the weathered, muscular man whose granite jaw hung with curious uncertainty.

"What can I get you?" he asked, wiping his head with a dishrag, trying his best to extend the Canyon hospitality to anyone that took the trouble to make the long journey way out here.

"I want a Sahagin foot---your old lore says it keeps devils away---" mumbled the customer, a little nervous and---a heavily-armed man, probably a Corelian or a Midgarian, definitely not a local. Probably Corelian from his sunburns, about the only weather condition above Midgar was acid rain. But-----wait a MINUTE.... The innkeeper gave his customer an insulted look, and cut him off.

"It's not lore. Sahagin feet secretes a chemical that deters others from attacking it. It was their first form of defense, before they learned how to use partisans," he explained, a bit indignant. The muscled man blinked, leaned his head over his sweating, meaty elbows, and said,

"Whatever---hear this---" He grabbed the innkeeper by the animal skin sleeve and looked behind him both ways, afraid that the walls had ears. "There's devils that're out there.--- quit laughin' at me, man---I SAW 'em--one were these two BIG GAS BALLS spittin' acid and a man- eating plant and---"

The Cosmo native drew away from the heavy grip, dumping his dishrag out of his pocket and bending towards a rack of mugs. He looked over his aproned shoulder, incredulous and unbelieving.

"You're from Corel? The Elders have already sent a few of our youth there so you can teach them what we can't: to fight...." He replaced the mugs with a clatter, adding to the din of the sonorous eaters---"---and you're afraid of a Ho-Chu---" he twisted his head disbelievingly at the huge man, scarred from battle and blazing with a plethora of tattoos. It was laughable. The Corelian people were known to "kill first", and since there was this perceived difference between monster and human, the feral fruits of the Planet ususally went quicker.

"It wasn't a Ho-Chu. It was fast as hell. It spat ACID and tried t' choke me to death! You try fighting it---!" he raved thunderously, pounding a thick fist on the old-fashioned counter. The innkeeper stuffed his rag in the apron again, set the Sahagin foot on the counter. Gil exchanged hands and he blundered off the stool and out the door with his machine gun and ammunition belt and superstitions. The innkeeper sighed, shook his head in a removed fashion, and turned to his other customer. The plate was river-clean. He reached an arm across the counter to pick it up, when the appearance of a shadow and the quivering of feathers startled him. The plate clattered as he let go of it and rattled a bit before stopping. Jessie gulped the last bite down and turned her head. A feline-shape shadow lay on the floor below the clay entranceway, its lean tail curling and uncurling lazily.

"Meowth..?!" she exclaimed, sliding off the stool and towards the cat's shadow. Wobbufet followed her in a rackety manner and saluted its comrade with one of its arms. The woman pushed past it and scowled. "It's about time you got here!!" Jessie reprimanded, walking haughtily towards the coiled-up cat. She didn't notice until she was uncomfortably close in proximity to it that it didn't walk like Meowth at all---theirs walked on 2 legs like they did, not on 4---it was Persian-like in the way it poised itself, with majestic deadliness. But that didn't stop her from chiding him.

It seemed that the cat didn't take kindly to criticism. The Meowth snarled in feral tenacity, bounding off the clay floor with its hind paws, baring its front claws like daggers as it pounced.

Neither Jessie nor James thought much of alley cats. They were puny, punkish, and foes they could handle. No doubt Jessie's untamable ego distended, and she threw her blob in the fray with a cocky smirk.

"Meowth wants to play? Wobbufet, Counter!!"

The glob radiated its psychic energy with unchanged mug, throwing its rounded-off body foward, driving its weight into the cat. Jessie knew this was one attack she could count on---it never failed, and it was another excuse not to ditch the loudmouth Pokémon that got them into trouble more times than one. But there's a first time for everything. The Meowth didn't even feel it. It mowed right through Wobbufet's defense and with one slash of its ivory claws and Wobbufet wasn't only out, knocking down the stool as it toppled, but bleeding. Jessie gaped. No run- of-the-mill alley Meowth was strong enough to draw that much blood in one scratch.

This one must've been out of her league... not fightable, much less catchable....."Return---" she said, more than a little disillusioned as the red-streaked Pokémon vanished in light of the same hue.

"This is serious...I must warn the Elders..." murmured the innkeeper, walking out from behind the counter only to find the killer cat staring at him hungrily. It reached for his throat when a wave of thick goo spilled on the cat, stretching over its eyes in twisting grey-black globs and blinding it with a sludge mask. Three Weezing barged and jostled each other between the clay walls. One of them inflated, toxic gases building in its jaws. "These must be the devils....." he hacked, hand clamped over his nose as the Weezing expelled their Smokescreen into the inn and swelled his lungs with toxins.

"Glare, Arbok!!" Jessie ordered, unsurprised that the smoke didn't poison her lungs when she was just as susceptible to it as anyone else. The cobra's slit eyes locked so tightly with the Weezing's that both heads were sure it glowed with some kind of paranormal light. No matter how much experience a Pokémon had, the evil eye was one attack hard to steel itself for. And with Weezing...they had two separate brains controlling two separate heads, but in action they were linked. If one of them didn't look away, both succumbed to paralysis. The first Weezing froze, its toxic vapors caught in the coarse protrusions on its body, while the two other Weezing barged through. Jessie bolted from the inn, Arbok charging in a headbutt. Its divided tongue clattered as it came head-on against their rough hide, and it coiled its tail protectively around the rest of its body, the appendage still sore from the earlier wolf bite. It slithered out into the glaring red blaze from a sinking sun, and collided into a flurry of stiff feathers. She followed, her breath snagging in her lungs as fire and black clouds erupted from the doorway. The broken Weezing showered in pieces on the clay groundwork.

Good riddance, she growled in her head, a fowl's triple-voiced squall facing her foward in time to duck a diving clump of feathers, beaks, and talons. But Arbok had no chance of avoidance. The Murkrow dove in succession, each strike of their steel-like bill ripping gashes into the cobra's scales. Jessie, her face falling and cracking her fire wall with a bit of a whimper, stretched out her PokéBall and recalled the bleeding serpent.

The calm was over. In a vague sort of way she heard the fashion rejects in their animal skins and shell necklaces fending off the Murkrow horde with torches and rocks. Every once and a while the torch hit, charring feathers and fanning the flame of fury in the enemy.

"Here, brothers---" called one with a club that ran past Jessie, knocking her over. in his haste. Her eyes shifted to the sides of her head to watch the pitiful attack of--it looked like Earthquake on the Murkrow. Even she and James---who didn't give a Raticate about elemental weaknesses, knew that birds fly in the air and not in the ground. But the amateurs didn't know that. The turf beneath her quaked and erupted, sending her flying up and landing her with a smack on the rock. The Murkrow yawped in base laughter, divebombing one of the Elders that fell instantly, gore spurting through a frayed hole in his chest. The four Elders glanced up in shock, and attacked in full force, activating the Materia lodged in their primitive weapons. Lightning bolts coursed out of the Materia in sizzling wires at the turmoil of feathers, striking them dead in a heap of crumpled limbs.

But the onslaught still pursued. The Turks weren't towing Geodude without a reason. The Shin-Ra-trained Houndoom weren't mortiferous to even the altered beasts without a reason. The Pokémon freshly caught were sent to Gaia to survive the Kalm Fangs and Beachplugs. By then they were broken-in to the Shin-Ra way of combat. A few tangles separated the fittest from the feeble. They sent the survivors into the ruins of Midgar, where Mako concenrations were dangerously high. Breathing filled the lungs with it, but they were not infused. They were left there long enough to evolve to their more advanced stages, become implacable. Once the Mako levels maddened them into efficient killers, the SOLDIERs or Turks sent them back to Kanto to aggrandize the Shin-Ra ranks. But some occasionally got away, and there were too many transported to pay attention to the few escaped ones. They fled from Midgar, spread over the eastern continent, as far as the northern continent, Wutai----and the western continent.

Wherever they infested, they did it with Shin-Ra proficiency. Kill indiscriminately and without provocaiton.

The choleric Victreebel cut down the mechanic at the border, lashing out with their vines, some igniting near instantly while the others fought against the ineffectual lightning bolts and the even more useless cascades of ice that melted in the extreme heat. Over and again they hurled the Materia's power against the bestial onslaught. And as each of them fell, their torn-up bodies were unquestionable indication to the rest of the tribe to flee--by any available exit. The peacable settlement collapsed into chaos. Desperate youth hacked their way through the forbidden entrance with caches from the weapons shop. Familiar terrors were better than the bare unknown. They fled in droves through the main exit and in droves the Victreebel cut them down. They clambered over the cliffs themselves, clearing the top or perishing in the effort.

But one query of reason joined their minds through disaster and catastrophe.

Where is Nanaki?

Jessie stopped hearing the heavy thump of her heart as she charged up the stairs, her own harried footfalls as she blindly ran past fleeing locals. The food she so recently ate jostled in her stomach, but whatever physical effect that would have on a regular person she didn't seem to feel. Fear masked everything. They strapped her on that roller coaster of nightmares once again, adding killer Pokémon to the boss that torched the HQ, wolves, freezing in a basement, the bats, the monster, the OTHER monster, coffins, and that two-headed creature-----fueling turmoil and chaos in her brain that she stopped thinking. She ran outside into the scarlet blaze, hearing the Weezing swell and groan a floor below her, while the Murkrow careened past the silent generators, scrawling incoherent phrases in the red dusk. .She burst into the next enclosed area, not seeing the other paths, only the ladder, as if she had a blinder on, or was following a piece of meat dangling in front of her. She scaled the ladder out of terror and out of want--maybe not her, personally---what she wanted was to get the hell out of there, but-----

What was this something?

Another nightmare sprint around and something within her found the entrance, the Murkrow claiming the lower stories. Soon as she burst out she burst in on the lighted cave, finding herself in a crowded lair, hearing the flickering energy in the adjacent room. The artificial dawn engulfed her vision.

"It's that light----!!!"

Home. What else could it be? Home---out of this new nightmare and back into the old.....

She felt she could grasp it.

The Rocket----the woman---the curious girl ran through the white hall, light pulsing around her vanishing form as she passed through the light, the groan of Weezing and shriek of Victreebel and all immediately behind her muffled and blotted- --

The portal dumped her into the Vermillion downpour.

*~*~*

The sun made no plans on hiding that morning or the early afternoon. It reclaimed its stolen throne with a vengeance, and shone all the more resplendently, abusing Brock's night- thirsty eyes without relent. But Misty was okay. It didn't lessen the light-beating, for a second but knowing she was safe filled half the void. To fill the other...

Suzy.....

Brock crept along the path of his--remaining sister, stealing across the repeating pattern. If it continued straight-----as straight as her gait could get---it was that erratic--- it would head to Saffron. That's Hojo's next target, Brock inferred, raising the disfigured head slightly, bowed away from the fire in the sky. CAN'T let it happen again-----Misty?

He peered, eyes squinted, one hand over his eyes, the other on the drying mud that shook the yoke of the rain from its surface in gradual evaporation. The blazing sun catalyzed it, dawing a thicker blind over the creature's red eyes. The hazy form of his friend plodded listlessly, but kept onward. She was afraid to look back at her demolished home which she vowed to protect and failed, and for that, the survivors branded her an outsider.In the very place she was BORN in...denied her.....

She didn't need to hear their hostile mockery in her ears---she heard them well enough in her head.

It weighed a lead load in her mind but how long she could dwell on it...she forced herself to bury it anywhere but the front of her mind....waste any more time and the liz would reduce another city, someone ELSE's hometown, to rubble...Make that town like Cerulean...and Pewter that went before it.

She buried her sorrow for the time being under a thin layer of dread and ran alongside the trail, lagging far behind Brock. He was tracking his sister and the reptillian culprit--she had passed her own, freakish tracks and had reached the end of the Tauros prints. One looked much like the other--broad, flat, and pushed heavily in the surface. The ones ahead were lighter---much lighter. Like they weren't even there.

There were three marks, two footprints lightly carved in the ground...and a wiry tail---kind of like Brock's, but-- the arrow was reversed-----

"Graaaaaghhh!!!" Brock!! Someone besides Suzy's been here...The current urgency held all her faculties for now, and she gazed at the stranger's marks with a grunt that wandered to a growl edged with suspicion. There was no way they were Suzy's----- which were hoof-marks, and that sick nightmare, if it didn't mutate again, left giant pits in the ground. The ones here were almost human---if not for claws and a tail. And it was only there once, like it was a bird-man that landed, and then resumed flight.

A rapid succession of stamping alerted her and she readied to either combat or escape from the onrushing malformation. But the hoarse, craggy roar assured her it was Brock. He opened his jaws as if about to say something, but when he caught sight of the out-of-place track, all other thought slowed to a halt---he dropped on all fours, tears running from his eyes as the sun swelled to unbearable intensity. But between rays of pain he detected the faint outlines of an impression in the earth. Feet that appeared to be human but fell short a few mismatched nitrogenous bases. And the tail......exactly like his, but inverted in shade and direction.

Every one of the pores in his scaled skin started to bleed perspiration. No sound, human or bestial, could express the wakened dread freezing his black blood near to ice.

He snatched the fleeting moments and skirred the land at lightning pace. The complete silence, the madness in his flight, that was some indication to Misty that they wouldn't be able to waste a second, and both bombed across the barren land between Cerulean and Saffron, striking past crushed and struggling trees under the sun that beat with its whip of fire, no longer obstacles, no longer anything---the city was all that was in their sight.

*~*~*

The crude, hastily-formed tunnel ran close to the surface, but it served its purpose. If it suddenly gave way he could climb out---hopefully by then his fur would be black enough that they'd mistake him for part of the landscape. If he kept his yellow-red eyes shut--- everything else was thick with grime. So on he toiled, meeting the wall of earth, digging through it, dragging himself foward, tunneling, "walking'. The alternation was laborious. But it wasn't his slow progress that worsened the situation---it was only that the Planet birthed him to walk above ground, not tunnel below it.

Can't...breathe...he stopped for vital inhale, the musty space providing little fresh oxygen. Not unlike being underwater. Mud overhead, mud below, and that stifling space of bad air, shrinking as he tired and the earth churned foward to close the gap. Mud crashed against his sides, the drenched land moved as the ocean And for a terrestrial creature-----

The bad air finally failed him, and he clamped onto the mobile cascades and forced his nose into the wrathful wind. Both land and gale worked against gravity and flung him to the surface, landing the dog on his back--RIGHT_UNDER _THE TANK.

"Stupid error," Nanaki berated himself in a wheezing voice as he gazed directly up at the mammoth tank's base, hulking treads planted on either side of them. There was about two inches between his muzzle and the gargantuan surface.. If the tank sweved on its treads, he'd be a crushed dog. He gave a slight whimper, sorting out in his brain some way to sink in the ground when a splotch of silverish fluid landed on his nose. It expelled a malodorous gas as it shrank to viscid specks.

He detected rips in the metal, hissing as something--- slowly burned through the mammoth hulk. Could it be that---He rubbed his foreankle with the other front paw and felt only his matted and tangled fur instead of the bronze bangle. "It must react with metal..." he inferred, a robotic grinding freezing his nerves for a split-second as the metallic behemoth backed on its creaky treads, halting right next to his head. All the while it dripped parts of its deforming body in globs, that seeped into the ground around his lean frame. "Maybe I can speed it up....." he thought, rolling over on his back, shoving the piles of earth with his snout onto the mechanism. He covered it, taking out the wheels from the inside, as the holes ripped wounds in it, gas poured out, air escaped, quickening the demise of the tires. Nanaki worked quickly, piling more of that deadly mud onto the target, listening for that lethal hiss. The tank, stripped of one half its support, crashed on its side. Nanaki grasped the motile ground ahead of him and dragged himself out, raising his wolfish snout skyward, the furious storm threatening to drive him back. Behind him the second tread churned, its other side fully submerged in the merciless sea of earth. By chance he heard the monotone whir and gazed up...the cannon. They had to be aiming at..something... He shoved a paw on his left, whole eye, swiping the thick patch of mud out of it. The skies weren't obscured enough to block out the silver flash, and their target became clear. "Cid."

He waited as the disintegrating tanks loaded their cannons in exact unison with a heavy "chunk". "Whhhr" as they positioned themselves at precisely the same angle as all the rest, in militant rigidity. More holes ate into the first monstroity. It didn't matter. The cannons were going to fire anyways. Nanaki wondered who they were shooting for.. the dragon or the pilot. Maybe it was both. But------could he watch as Shin- Ra, their enemy, gunned down the pilot, even for revenge?

Leave revenge to its inventors, Nanaki resolved. Countering in a battle, that wasn't revenge. Revenge is designed to strike the one who's wronged you when he least expects it, in his weakest moment. It's base, ignoble. A stigma of man.

The dog resolutely leaped to his limit away from the behemoths, landing on his hind paws with the definite crunch of breaking b ones. He yelped as his legs failed under him, and he rolled a few more inches before ending up with his battered limbs in the air, the mud squeaking and slurping under his backside. More because of the incoming fire than the crunching pain in his innards he howled long and low, that sort of phantom-like noise that rang solitary in the night at Cosmo Canyon, carrying as far away to the Nibel Wolves, that acknowledged in their higher-pitched howls. The cry made his sides ache and sting, but the pilot should've gotten the message.

The airborne dragon-man changed his course, ascending with rapidity that the projectiles couldn't match. The tanks fired through Black-rain battered cannons, its blazing phlegm leaking out of one of the tanks, devouring oxygen and consuming the engine of the mechanical giant. It enveloped the fuel and it caught fire, the exposed spark plugs and ignited wires exploding into geysers of blaze and bane. That took out the entire back line. The remaining tanks far enough away rumbled to its aid, readying its fiery sneeze. Another howl broke from the an indefinable spot on the foliage-bare field, , low and mournful, solitary and stolid.

Thirty conflagarations bloomed from the smoking nostrils, headed for the winged creature. Whether that was the dragon's doing or Cid's doing it was anyone's guess, but he suspended himself in the air, bending the intractable gales to the fluid air currents that coursed over his wings, molding it into cyclonic shape, that descended towards the fire, coiling and wrapping the blaze in its clutches, heading for the ground in a blazing tornado. It shredded through the tanks as if paper, crunching and tearing noises ringing out over blood-choked-screams. Nanaki floundered haplessly, shrapnel and the increased wind hurtling him closer to the edge of the maelstrom, while the surviving SOLDIERs that had enough wits to back up in their melting tanks before the wind-fire hit unleashed their automatics.

As an ex-SRAF, Cid knew to finish the kill, not leave the other guy alive to cut you down a moment later. But thanks to his permanent cargo, the dragon made him inadvertantly re-learn his way of thinking entirely--- lesson one still ached like shit.

You're still feelin' hungry, fuckin' pig?

I am satisfied. Are YOU still hungry?

Cid's gut and guilt mangled his senses and his will, and he backed away, haphazardly dodging the wave of bullets and speeding off past the dying tornado, billowing smoke and lacerated machines. The remnants of the body he devoured seemed to scream inside him. It was only his stomach and intestine, but in his mind it expanded to wailing shrieks that died to a innard-choked burble.

"Stop it...Leave me the hell alone!!" he yelled aloud, a whisper in the Black Rain's roar, an induced cramp incapacitating his left wing, bringing him down on the flooded sea. The rain fell hard enough to obscure everything, even the bits of gold blood from cuts and bruises from smashing through a plaster wall. But a grasping dementia minified the sensations of hurt or injury. The left wing twitched and flailed, the human losing control yet again. A bisected squirm etched on his worn visage and he dug his hands in his chest, raking them across his body in mad turmoil.

"I'll STARVE the next time ya pull that---" he avowed, dragging himself up by his scaled elbows. One half of his mouth was twisted in obstinacy-----which soon collapsed to mortification. It took him a hard look into his soul to make him see.....and when it became too loathesome to look any longer, the dragon didn't even need to speak for Cid to realize that the blame was misdirected. "---Don't help me," he acquiesced, with his claws crossed over his bent head, servile to not the dragon, but to a far more immediate foe.

The rumble of the remaining and collapsing tanks rumbled across the mud and barged through the dying wind-fire. Another howl brought half of him against the enemies outside of him---the ones that could take him down quicker. He grappled with the dragon, taking off lopsided with one wing, the blood collecting in his head as he tilted towards the racing ground, dropping him dizzy and inflamed at the dog's side.."The kitten doesn't always land on its feet, I see," remarked the dragon, flexing the strangled limb.

"Cid," addressed the lame dog in guarded voice.

"Bit off more than ya could chew, dog-breath?" Cid could afford to half- smirk, one less source of din in the storm: must've meant the Shin-Ra were out of tanks. The nearby blaze crackled without brush and grass for fuel, and it crackled stagnantly in a relative distance.

The bestial warrior growled under his breath, weaponless and lame, his fur unruly and hanging from either side of his body, twitching with stabs of pain that alternated with a hollow numbness.

"Between you and the Shin-Ra, I don't know which one to blame more," he answered coldly, his muzzle twisted in anger."It's difficult to fight with two broken legs." Cid didn't answer, his jaw set, sighting the former occupants of the disappeared tank hell-bent on some impersonal retribution. He clamped the dog's jaws shut with one hand and grabbed him under the chest with the other. He struggled fiercely with his unbroken legs, swiping and alashing with his short claws, but the dragon-man already took flight, entering the turbulent air currents whether his passenger liked it or not.

Nanaki fought like the wild dog he was, biting, squirming, howling--if his back legs weren't out he could kick, but they were limp and useless, and he could only fight with the upper portion of his body and his re-ignited tail, that searched for the dragon's stiff wings whose lift shrank the SOLDIER-dotted ground, stealing him from one threat only to submerge him into the next.

The pilot held him tighter, scowling with a half-bestial grimace, clamping one hand under his foaming jaw, saliva trickling down his scaled fist. His voice cut jagged tears in the maelstrom, heightened with the altitude. "Don't make me knock ya out just to get ya to keep still. I'm just repayin' the favor and the last thing I want is Drac here to throw ya down 'cause you don't trust us."

The eye of suspicion grew no duller. It froze in resentment, hating his judgement...how could he trust a half-dragon? Duplicitous, marked with ambiguity....no less than a liar. And even with his muffled objection, the dragon escalated in velocity and altitude, the fear of falling freezing him still, literally under Cid's leathery wing, the menacing shadow of which forcing him to let belligerence subside lest Highwind was being truthful.

He doubted it with every ounce of logic he posessed, but whether he kept his word or not, circumstances forced him to shut his mouth and assent. It was a long way down.

*~*~*

The mechanical ruins coughed their iron smoke into the ebony downpour, carrying high above the wasted remains of Shin-Ra's indomitable machines, past the dwarfish height of the swarm of Kanto-designed buildings, sailing above the most lofty point in the city.

A ferocious grimace of teeth formed on the vapor-clouded window. It caged a tongue, anxious for the nightly feast of fish and milk, a delight that this emergency prepared to postpone, streaking the slit pupils in a foul glaze. He stalked away from the infuriating sight of the tower of smoke and the faraway glow that burned at its base. Gil smoldering with it. The lion's tail curled and folded in wait. He planted his paw on the desk, on which laid a pen, slippery with his own saliva for being unable to hold the implement properly in his paws, so he was forced to grip it in his teeth. He flipped the book-worth of pages over, revolted at his own handwriting, resembling more of a child's scribble than a speech to be read to the Vermillion inhabitants after this ordeal had been dealt with.

Rufus filled his office, the appearance of which was a further abomination with clumps of his own FUR decking the chamber with products of his shedding--with the feral form of a domestic cat's meow. More recognizable, more aptly named as a seething roar. When it seemed that his conniving brain was overflowed with frustrated turmoil, Heidegger's beer-roughened voice crackled on the other end of the intercom. It did little to alleviate his fury-imbued mood, and resurgent migraines tended to be exacerbated more when one was given information---troubling information that he already was conscious of.

"Sir, the troops stationed on the east gate---"

Were defeated, Rufus finished, his tongue entangled amidst the sharp, puma-like teeth, that leaked out of the thought projection device a question unhampered by the brute sound. Do you think I'm unaware of that, Heidegger? I can see the smoke from my office. His tail wrapped and folded tensely, frigid fury mixed with unfaltering evenness with the relative tranquility. Now..would you care to EXPLAIN WHY they were defeated despite this generous allowance of eighty thousand men available in the Kanto region?

A bit of stammering, crackling of the intercom hid some incoherent bellowing and a close thud. Invariably it was Heidegger berserking at this slight reprimand. As usual, nothing to show but incompetence.

Speak, Heidegger. Do not bother giving me statistics on casualties.

There was slow respiring on the other end, as if he was out of breath from roughing up the only men he could: his subordinates. As if he had to get his anger out that very second or he would explode as a mine does. Rufus caught the tail end of his cursing out the legmen as he reported with flawed composure, "Civilians report a dog and dragon---"

A dragon, repeated Rufus, almost hearing the fluid in his veins boiling, steaming---- The OTHER creature in his fur------out of all the four-legged, tentacled, cross-bred---- aberration roving the city, it was the dragon that raised his fur, incensed his being. Perhaps because it was so evasive.....difficult to locate, difficult to destroy. What is the extent of the damage? growled the level inquiry. Do not tell me you have not procured the means of assessment----

They're working on it, sir.

While you are engaged in doing that...... Consider the possibility of dousing fire with fire, he half-suggested, half-hinted in a condescending manner, pushing back his head fur with a paw, still with that air of remoteness. Luckily Heidegger didn't detect this chide---- one less bruise for the nearest person whose only crime was being in close proximity to the berserker. Those miniatures from the harbor--have they been transported and evolved?

"1-20 are evolved and waiting entry."

What is delaying the other fifty? The irascible demand crackled across the intercom, made ferocious with the indistinguishable noise that engulfed it. A seemingly cool-headed tone countered the feline's snarl, a layer of ice over a bed of magma.

"Portal 008 is the faulty one, you know, the one where Shin-Ra deported this bumpkin that didn't pay his taxes and--" Rufus could almost see that protruding belly shake with the imbecile's unneeded guffaw. He swiftly interrupted him, the feline lips unveiling the saliva-coated gums in what was nearly a brutish snarl.

YES, I know that it is flawed----The even tone escalated in volume, freezing ice latching to the thought-voice. Why don't you lengthen your usefulness, cease that grating laugh of yours, and have the appropriate department REPAIR it...? He didn't wait for Heidegger's answer, and switched off the intercom with an agitated grunt. He strode past his paper-strewn desk towards the glass pane, watching the smoke obscure the black cape of night. He yowled as his paw impulsively leaned on his temple----the simultaneously infernal and face-saving thought-projector leaked an undercurrent of pain through his feline skull. Perhaps the resurgence of the headache was only a minor aggravation. The twenty Dragonite should be the decisive manuever in this crisis.

Then the insufferable dragon, the repulsive mutants, contradictory to his scheme... they would all be out of his bristling fur. Afterwards, the focus would be on reconstruction, and pacifying the surviving taxpayers, patrons, donors, and other revenue sources to defray the cost of the damages. Of course, there remained the problem of locating and re-acquiring the four labrats.... the more private issue of bringing the two traitors to justice.

He reached for a glass of milk that left a residual white ring on the exquisitely-furnished desk and poured it down in premature triumph. Repair budged to the forefront of his plotting brain. Retribution could idle for the moment.

As for the issue of reconstruction.....being the president of this electric/weapons manufacturing company, Rufus knew when to rely on his own resources and when to exploit others'. And what better resource there was than Silph? Yet, since the one-sided merge, Silph was virtually Shin-Ra property. And this was all within regulation, undoubtedly. The contract sealed it in black ink when the unsuspecting president penned his wobbling signature on the dotted line. So...Rufus was merely using his own asset.

It would be to my benefit if I contacted the fleecable old man.

He replaced the glass with a clink on the polished surface, and grasped for the office phone. He gripped the machine clumsily and, after it slipping from the unwieldy paws, he forced the phone up the side of his head onto his ear, the receiver clacking on the metal band that constricted his head.

After several perfunctory rings, he anticipated the Silph president's voice on the other line. That...voice..the very prospect of hearing it made him inwardly cringe. It was so.....jolly...naive... an old, benevolent, charismatic man on his way out. He didn't even have a successor in mind. A favorite with the people but a failure at big business which his own company exemplified to the highest degree. It would be so simple to publicly devour the local company once the dinosaur became extinct.

What he didn't expect was for it to die out so rapidly.

With much tiresome effort he succeeded in positioning the reciever on his ear. There was no jocular voice. It was replaced with a shrill shriek coiniciding with the perturbing crunch and gnash of tissue, bones and teeth, a hideous roaring---not of an animal but of an element---a conflagaration, he surmised. The predator finished its feast, and stalked away, the opposite phone's receiver baking at a considerably higher temperature catching the ponderous step of what presumably was the animal---sonorous even over the bawl of the flare.

Not unlike the lumbersome reptile.

His feline eyes glazed with power-lust. The smacked the phone onto its cradle, still grinning though it took several unsuccessful attempts to position it correctly. Rufus switched on the intercom and roared into it with matching ferocity,

Heidegger, divert all outgoing troops to Saffron. Use any method to capture the creature-- Under no circumstances will you allow it to escape.

He tapped the off button without waiting for an affirmative from the executive. A victorious expression siezed his feral features, and he guzzled without reserve the last drops of milk, assured of uncompromised triumph.

TO BE CONTINUED......

*~*~*

A/N: Another month, another chapter. ^^ Watch out for chapter 28.^^ If Giovanni is somewhere between TRHQ and Vermillion, he couldn't possibly in Saffron! So who could possibly be munching on Silph's president? And what about the ever-friendly Kuja-ripoff? What will befall Suzy? What will happen to Misty and Brock? Will Red and Cid fall hopelessly in love? Find out next time!