Small note: the song in this chapter is the ending song from the Gladiator soundtrack, and is also at the end of said movie. It begins at the… main theme of the song, where it gets all pretty-like. If you have no idea of what I speak, tell me in your review and I will give you a link to listen to it. It's really pretty.

Price for Freedom

Chapter 17

Sister

I don't know how long I was out. I guess it had been about a day -one of the shorter time lapses for my team. I woke up on a white hospital bed with a Nurse Joy looking over me. I had bandages all over me -I guessed I had been hurt worse than I thought. After the nurse deemed me well enough to walk, I ventured out and searched the hospital for my comrades.

While on my trek, I found out that this hospital was a joint one -it treated both pokemon and human patients. I was happy for that -then we wouldn't have to go back and forth between hospitals. The thought reminded me of Kaiyou, and I grew worried. Was he even alive after that final hit?

"Xena!" a male voice called. I looked behind me and saw Tai grinning like an idiot. I was about to retort, but then I saw his badly-hidden limp and a large bandage on his side, which was stained a dark red. The retort disappeared and then Tai frowned.

"What?" he asked, and then followed my stare to his bloody bandage. Then, he laughed. "Oh, that's nothing! I've had worse before -not much can bring me down!" He laughed again, and I snapped out of my stupor.

"Unfortunately…" I muttered, and then I began walking again. Tai laughed and then limped to my side. I slowed my pace so that he could keep up. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him take a look at our surroundings.

"This place sure is big…" he whispered. Then, his face grew worried. "I wonder if Shayla's okay… I don't know what I'd do if something happened to her. And I hope everyone else is all right -Shoko, Amburna and Kaiyou weren't looking too good before that big hit…" Then, his eyes got wide and he gasped. "Holy crap, Kaiyou! I remember him being really bloodied up…" He turned to me. "D'you think he's okay?" To this, I shrugged without comment and left it at that.

Tai took the hint that I didn't want to discuss the idea that Kaiyou could be dead, and then remained silent for a while. We wandered around aimlessly, and then found Shayla, (playing video games, actually,) Illauna, Shoko (still unconscious, but stable,) Amburna, (alive and well,) and Saji, who was mad at the fact that he couldn't beat Kuvai into a bloody pulp like he wanted to. For a few minutes, Tai and I visited with Saji, but then, I became distracted. I smelt Kaiyou not too far away.

I told Tai that I would be back in a while and then rushed out of the room to the room adjacent to Saji's -where Kaiyou's scent was coming from. I ran in, skidded on the tile floor, and then almost collapsed into tears.

I had never seen anything be so beaten and yet, still be alive. He was in human form, though I could barely recognize him through all of the cuts, bruises and gashes. I saw the translucent tubes of life support sticking out of him, and a machine was acting like an air pump beside him, apparently helping him breathe, since his chest went up and down along with it. The machine had a long tube from its side to a mask, which was covering his mouth and nose. There was another machine behind him, beeping along with what I guessed was his heart. There was a metal stand beside the air pump with a bag of blood in it, and then a similar stand with a bag of water in it. His left eye was covered by a white bandage, and he had a brace on his right arm. I took a step closer, but then I was yanked back by a human hand.

"You shouldn't be in here, little miss," said a feminine voice above me. I looked up at her and saw that she was a nurse -Kaiyou's, I assumed. "He's not fit for other people -or pokemon- to be visiting him. Sorry, girl, but you'll have to wait until he at least wakes up." She gently ushered me out of the room, and then closed the door as soon as I was out. I put a paw on the door, but I let it fall back to the floor. She wouldn't open it for me…

I heard the pitter patter of small feet and I turned to see Tai standing behind me, a somber look on his face. "…Is he alive?" he asked. I guessed that he meant Kaiyou, and I nodded.

He sighed in what seemed like relief. "Good. D'you know how long it'll take until he gets better?" I shook my head and then he frowned a little. He shuffled his feet, and then said, "Just now, Shayla called Professor Oak to check on Kazu and everyone else." I turned fully to him and then sat on the floor. He looked... distressed… "The Professor says that Kuvai's already completely destroyed Mossdeep… Shayla's uncle got out and is now living with everyone in Pallet… But the Professor said that Kuvai's moving to Lilycove, and then maybe to Fortree…" He looked up to see my reaction. "Just thought… I'd let you know…"

My gaze fell to the floor. My family had no idea what kind of monster was about to head towards them… Surly, they'd feel it. Surly they'd be able to sense his power and lust for destruction, and they'd be able to get away… Maybe…

I felt a poke in my side and looked up at Tai. He smiled in a reassuring way, and then said softly, "I'm sure they'll be all right. They're not stupid. They'll know, and then get away." I felt my face smile a little, and then Tai's rare, sweet smile turned into a goofy grin. "Hey, we better get back! Illauna and Shayla are fighting it out on Super Smash Bros. Melee, and I don't wanna miss it! Come on!"

I watched as he limped and ran at the same time, occasionally slipping and knocking something over, and then I followed, trying to force the image of Kaiyou lying in that sterile hospital bed half-dead out of my mind.

-

That night, I couldn't sleep. I was sleeping in the little pallet that the nurses made for me in my room, (which I was sharing with Amburna and Shayla), and even though it was really comfy, I couldn't sleep. I sighed and then decided to walk around a bit, to clear my head.

Much later, I found myself at Kaiyou's door in the ICU. I saw that the door was slightly open, so I decided to let myself in. Once I did, however, I heard soft, beautiful, mournful singing from inside. Confused, I looked in carefully and saw a woman sitting at Kaiyou's bedside, crying and singing simultaneously. My mouth opened slightly, and I tried to understand the words she was singing. However, it was in a language I didn't understand.

"Inji sei shadin

Ini so lad uun

honto teij lal mei…

…iite

"Hondo iej isa

Iite lal mei

Hano mej lal mei…

Iite…"

I had come out of the doorway and the only thing left holding it open was my left rear foot. I pulled it forward, but then the door closed and sent a shock through me and I yelped softly. I tried to hide from the woman's view, but, she gasped and turned to me suddenly, fear in her eyes. When she saw me, however, her tear-stained face relaxed into a sad smile.

"Well, hello there," she called gently. "I thought you were a human nurse, but I guess not. It would be bad for one of them to find me here now -it's way too late for visiting hours…" she mused. "But, I can't seem to be able to visit him when it is visiting time, so I snuck in…" She sighed and let her head rest against the bed rail.

I took a good look at her. I guessed her hair was a dirty-blonde from the light I had. Her complexion was pale, and her eyes were a bright, emerald green. She wore a green kimono decorated on the shoulders with little yellow flowers. She wore a dark blue cloth around her middle, and a light, blue kimono underneath the flowery one. She wore white obi and sandals, and I noticed she looked a bit younger than Kaiyou. And then, I took a whiff of her scent and paused. She smelled familiar…

My musing was broken when she began to move again. She sat up on her knees and looked over at Kaiyou's broken body and then, I saw more tears welling up in her eyes. My brow furrowed. What was Kaiyou to this woman?

"Oh Kaiyou," she whispered. "I… I'm so sorry… I… I should have done something… I tried to protect the Tomb, but… but each time I tried to stop the humans from undoing the locks, they… they held up your pelt… Your pelt… It was stained with blood -they never cleaned it… and… I… I couldn't stand to look at it and smell your dry blood and the scent of death all over it…" She reached down with her left hand and took Kaiyou's right. "I'm so sorry… But… how are you here? I saw… I saw them kill you all those years ago… How are you here now, lying in this bed struggling to survive? Ho-Oh couldn't possibly…"

"It wasn't Ho-Oh," I found myself saying. She turned to me, surprised. I guessed she had forgotten I was even there. "Team Magma took his remains, and then cloned him, so that he could awaken Groudon…" The woman's face contorted into one of angry sadness.

"Groudon and Kyogre would be much better than Anubo rampaging around the land," she spat. "He'll destroy everything -even move out of the Pokemon Regions and onto the other continents."

"Wait," I said. Did she just say "Anubo"? "Kuvai… He's the one killing everything… Who are you talking about?"

The woman blinked, and then said, "Kuvai wouldn't destroy anything… It's Anubo…" Her head went down and she receded into the folds of Kaiyou's blanket. "Kuvai wouldn't do this to Kaiyou… He wouldn't…"

I growled. "Look lady," I snapped, "I saw it with my own eyes. Kuvai did most of this to Kaiyou. I saw him blast Kaiyou into unconsciousness. And then, he grew into this huge monster and then sent a huge ball of power to kill us all, and Kaiyou took the brunt of it." The woman stared at me, confused. "I saw it. I was there."

The woman shook her head again. "No… that's not possible… Kuvai… he's not very big… You're talking about-"

Suddenly, the door flew open and a plump nurse barged in and interrupted the woman at Kaiyou's bedside. "What are you doing in here!" she whispered harshly. "Get out of here! Get out!" She took me roughly by the scruff and tossed me in the hall, and then went back inside for the woman. I heard a gasp and then looked back in the room, where there was no woman to be found. She had completely disappeared.

-

The following morning, I discussed the matter with Amburna and Tai. We were sitting in the courtyard under a sakura tree, completely alone. After I told them what happened with the woman, Amburna sat up a little to attract attention.

"I do not know of this 'Anubo'…" the dragonair commented airily, "but this woman, you said you recognized her scent? Do you not recall her name?"

I shook my head. "No, not at all. It's like it's on the tip of my tongue, but I can't say it. I know I've never seen her before, but I've smelled her scent before."

Tai shook his head. "Scents in this hospital can mess with your head, Demi," he said solemnly. "You could have been mistaken, or just taking in Kaiyou's scent along with the woman's, and you got the two confused. It's easy to do that here, what with all of the stinking medicines and sterilizers. Why, I did it yesterday. I thought I was going to the cafeteria and I ended up out here, staring at a squirrel."

Amburna rolled her eyes. "Tai, your nose doesn't count. It's far too sensitive for here, to be an example for Demi's nose. Hers isn't as good as yours." She shook her head again. "No, for Demi to notice another scent with the scents of Kaiyou, blood, medicine and sterilizers, it had to be strong, and coming from a different source. The woman's scent was her own, not Kaiyou's."

I sighed. I thought that discussing it with the others might help me in figuring something out, but it was only making myself more confused. I stood up. "Sorry, but I want to go and check on Kaiyou. See ya." I turned to walk back to the white hospital, but Tai's voice made me pause.

"Wait, won't they shoo you away?" he asked. "I mean, that's what happened the last two times, wasn't it?"

I shrugged. "Maybe he woke up."

-

I looked up at Kaiyou's closed door in agitation. Why didn't they have doggie doors on these things? I frowned and looked about me for any kind of tool that I could use to open the door without completely destroying it. The nurses would see me if I tried that. Seeing nothing that would be of great use, I turned back to the door and an idea sprung to my head.

I could see the little metal piece that was keeping the door in its place and figured that if I angled my aerial ace attack correctly, I could slice the thing in two and then open the door without a quarrel. And, as a perk, the door would look unharmed.

I grinned and then looked about me again, to make sure no one was watching. I angled my scythe towards the metal piece and then flung an aerial ace at it, and the metal piece was cut in half. Triumphantly, I stood on my hindquarters and pulled on the door with my forelegs and walked in. Fortunately, there was no nurse in the room with me, so I had Kaiyou all to myself. I walked to his bed and stood to see over the black, plastic railing.

He looked better -his facial wounds had healed a bit, and he didn't look as pale as before. However, all of the tubes, wires and the mask were all still attached to him. I sighed and then leapt onto his bed and sat by his side. I looked to the head of his bed, where the beepy machine was sitting. I saw little mountains of green lines go up at every beep, and then went flat for a little while, then the mountains appeared again. It made no sense to me, so I dismissed it as human nonsense and then lay down. Sighing, I let myself drift into a half-sleep for a little while.

I don't really know how long I dozed, but my eyes snapped open when I heard footsteps leading to the room. I leapt off of the bed and then went into the Void, but not too far so I could see what was happening. (Why it didn't occur to me to use the Void before is completely beside the point.) I saw the world through a black veil -like heavy tinting on a car window, or looking out through a light black cloth. It was muddled, but I saw two young, giggling nurses walk in with clipboards and charts. They looked at Kaiyou and began to talk.

"He's cute," one said. She had distinctive black hair and wore glasses. "Do you know what happened to him?"

The other, prematurely grey-haired, nodded her head. "Yeah, he was hit by the thing that's going around and destroying cities and stuff. Hear it's an actual pokemon."

The first one scoffed and began to check the bags next to the air pump. "No way that thing's a pokemon. It's too big, too… evil. No pokemon's evil like that."

The other shrugged and then took notes on her clipboard. "I greatly disagree with you, Karla. Any kind of pokemon can be evil, like any person can be evil. I would guess that an intelligent pokemon could actually conceive the concept of world domination and try to strive for it." She scribbled a bit at her chart, then looked to the black-haired nurse. "Any change?"

The nurse, Karla, "Hmm"-ed, checked under the eye bandage, checked his arm cast, and then said, "His eye's healed. When he wakes up, he shouldn't have a problem seeing out of it." I sighed in relief, but then, the woman's tone of voice switched to more grave. "However, I think he's slipping into a coma. His neural chart is getting lower and lower… he's not quite there yet, but he's damn close." I gasped. A coma? Deities only know when someone's going to wake up from a coma! Even I knew that!

The grey-haired woman fixed a look of worry on her young face. "Too bad… There's nothing we can do, huh?" To my dismay, the black-haired nurse shook her head slowly.

"That's a shame, he really is cute," Karla commented, and then left the room with the grey-haired nurse following close behind. When they were gone, I tentatively stepped out of the protective Void and to Kaiyou's bedside. I took back my place at his side and then lay down with a heavy sigh.

What was I going to do?

-

I assumed that I had fallen asleep because the next thing I knew, moonlight streamed through the open windows, and darkness filled the room. I was still in the same place, on Kaiyou's left side lying on my belly with my head on my paws. I looked around me and spotted a clock that read "11:45 pm". I gulped. Shayla was probably worried sick about me…

I was about to head back to my room when I heard footsteps outside the door, and coming closer. I gasped and leapt under Kaiyou's bed and entered the Void. I looked back and watched the door to see who came in.

At the sight of her, I gasped. It was the woman from the night before! I sniffed her again to make sure I didn't get the scent wrong. It was the same as the night before, but now it was mingled with her own blood. I watched in anxiety as she slowly made her way to Kaiyou's bedside and knelt down.

"Kaiyou…" she whispered while simultaneously wiping the bangs from his face. "Kaiyou, come on, wake up. Please… I need for you to wake up… Anubo… he's just destroyed Fortree City. I tried to stop him, but… but I couldn't. Even with my power, he's far too powerful for me alone." She waited for some kind of movement from the Dark Legendary, but he did nothing but breathe. Her face formed an expression of mourning, and tears welled up in her emerald eyes. She let her head fall to Kaiyou's chest, and then muttered, "Brother, open your eyes." My mind clicked and I gasped. "Please, brother," she wailed, "open your eyes!"

Yasille! my mind cried. It must be her! I almost jumped out of the Void right then when I heard more footsteps from the hallway. I saw Yasille turn towards the door, fear written all over her face and scent, and I jumped out of the Void and took her hand gently in my jaws. She looked back at me in surprise, but let me take her into the safe darkness.

The nurse, who had probably heard Yasille crying for Kaiyou to wake up, opened the door with ferocity. But when she saw no one in the room other than Kaiyou, she frowned and then walked back out. I waited until her footsteps had disappeared, and then I leapt back into the real world with Yasille clinging to the scruff of my neck.

When we were out of the Void, Yasille collapsed behind me, panting hard. I turned to her in surprise. No one had acted like that after they went into the Void. And I expected her to be a Dark, like her brother. She looked up to me with a pale face, but a grateful pale face.

"Thank you, absol," she said in between heavy breaths. "If not for you, they would have caught me. Though, I'd rather not repeat the little adventure. You could say I'm… allergic… to the Void…" As I tried to figure out what that meant, Yasille stood and placed a small, fragile-looking hand on her brother's forehead.

"I feel his presence fading…" she said sadly. "Perhaps he won't awaken until after Anubo has completely destroyed the Hoenn region…" I looked up at her in confusion.

"You've called him Anubo before," I said, and she looked down at me. "What are you talking about? The thing rampaging around Hoenn… IS Kuvai, isn't? He responded to 'Kuvai' at the Tomb…"

Yasille blinked and then said, "Because he was Kuvai then. Now he's Anubo."

I blinked in utter confusion. "What?" I asked, and then Yasille giggled at my stupidity.

"I'm sorry, young darkling, but I'm not very good at explaining things. When my brother awakens, he can tell you much better than I can." With that, she smiled and then transformed into her true form, and then smiled down on me.

-I now know that I can leave my brother to you, absol- she said. -I won't have to worry about him. Please, inform my brother that I am still alive. He will be able to contact me, and then we can all work to bring Anubo down.- She then lifted her elegant cream and black head, and then said softly, -Now, young absol, you might want to go back to your trainer. She's worried.- At my hesitation, she smiled back down on me. -Do not worry for my brother. My premonition tells me he will awaken soon -when you visit him next, he will wake up.-

I looked up at her in surprise -just a few moments ago, she was crying her eyes out to try and wake him up. Perhaps she just had a vision or something? However, she told me nothing more, and then nodded at me. I nodded back to her, and then she disappeared into the light of the glare on the window. I blinked. How did she get into the Void in no shadow? I shook my head and then left Kaiyou's room, feeling confused a little distraught. I had no more energy for trying to figure her out just yet.

-

The next time that I made it to Kaiyou's room without being sidetracked or pulled away was four days after I last saw Yasille. I hadn't seen her since that night, but I really didn't expect to either. I went through the Void to Kaiyou's room, which was thankfully empty, and stepped onto the cold tile floor. At the sound of my footsteps, I saw Kaiyou's unbandaged head turn towards me, and then, smiled at me with his battered face. "Well, hello girl. Haven't seen you in a while."

My face broke out in a smile and I leapt up onto his bed and licked his face like my life was on the line. He laughed and then gently pushed me back, to which I obliged. He wiped his face with his arm and then said, "Man, girl. How long was I out to get a reception like that?"

I shrugged and made a conscious effort to stop my tail from wagging. "I don't know… About a week, I guess." At this, Kaiyou's eyebrow went up. "The nurses were worried that you were going into a coma for a while."

He chuckled lightly. "Well, I'm all right now." He looked around the room and then, when his gaze settled on the air pump machine, (now off) asked of me, "Where am I?"

"You're in a hospital in Mauville," I replied. "Everyone's had to recover here, from Kuvai's blast." Then, Yasille popped into my head. "Which reminds me," I said loftily, "Yasille wanted me to tell you she's alive. She said that if I told you, then you could come up with a way to defeat Kuvai."

At the sound of his sister's name, Kaiyou's head snapped from the air pump machine to me. "Yasille?" he asked softly, and, when I nodded, he sighed heavily and let his head roll up. "Oh, I had hoped she was still alive…" he muttered. "Without her… Anubo…"

My brow furrowed. There was that name again. "She kept on talking about this 'Anubo' guy. Who the hell is he? I thought the guy we were battling was Kuvai!"

Kaiyou looked back to me, a knowing smile on his face. I hated that smile. "Not now, girl. Later, when I'm not so tired, and when I'm back on my feet." He sighed happily. "Oh, how I have longed to see my sister…"

I put a paw on his good arm. "But Kaiyou," I pleaded, "please tell me now. You're not going to torture me like you did with the information about Kuvai, are you?" All I got was a mischievous smile and a request that I get out and let him rest.

I sighed angrily and then stomped out of room. I then regretted ever saying that his closed lips tortured me. Now, I would never know about Anubo…

-

Yay! Kaiyou's all right! I really thought about ending this chapter where Yasille entered for then second time, but I thought, "No, my readers deserve better than that!" and I kept on writing. :)

I have a major part of the next chapter already written, so it should be out kinda quickly.

Until then, ja!