"Did you hear that?"
"Yes. Loud and clear."
#01: Charizard and #13: Armaldo stand on the edge of a drop overlooking the ocean. They discuss the recent announcement that had been made over the loudspeakers. It sounded as though there was some struggle on the other end of the line. There was also the all too familiar blast of a firearm, which presumably ended the speaker's life. But why?
" 'Congrats to you all for making it this far,' " Armaldo recites. " 'But it seems there is still quite a lot of you. That is unacceptable.' Then he seemed to have noticed something strange."
"The owner of the feminine voice appeared at that moment. Then she shot him. 'Stop the killing,' " Charizard, too, role-plays along with Armaldo. " 'Don't kill anymore. I'm coming to get you, wait.' Did I hear that correctly? Whoever she is, she's coming to...get us?"
Armaldo seems to consider it, but soon after shakes his head dismissively. "She must've been mistaken," he says in disappointment. "Besides, if I recall correctly, I heard a different voice afterwards, saying something like, 'Holy...crap, what did you do, Natalie?' suggesting that this 'Natalie' was caught by another."
"Natalie. Do you know that name? I feel like I've heard it somewhere." Charizard scratches his snout thoughtfully.
"It's a name of a human and not an animal, confirming that these, uh, game makers must be humans, I guess."
"But haven't you heard that name from somewhere?" Charizard asks, beginning to pace to and fro, speaking the name over and over again quietly. "That woman in the photo."
Armaldo tilts his head at Charizard. "Oh!" He clumsily shuffles through his partly eaten bag and finds the photo. He kneels down and peers into the bag, squinting at the woman smiling at the camera. Could it have been her voice? "Stop killing," Armaldo whispers to himself, trying to match the voice with the visual of this woman. "Stop killing, don't kill anymore. Stop killing, don't kill anymore." He feels his head clear up a little. "Stop killing, don't kill anymore. I'm coming to get you. Stop, stop killing, don't kill anymore. I-I'm, I'm coming to-to-to get you." He stares at Charizard. "Natalie, or more commonly known as Nat, was one of the two humans who cared for us at the animal...animal—"
"Animal sanctuary," Charizard gasps, finally remembering how all twenty animals grew up at this sanctuary. "A-and the male! His name was—"
"Jack!" Armaldo exclaims, excited. "And both of us were friends, and we were friends with Alakazam!"
"A-a-and u-us three had authority next in line to Nat and Jack!"
"Because, we were the oldest."
"And, from the photograph, Lucario and Braviary..."
"Uh huh! Uh huh!" Armaldo nods rapidly. "And Sceptile and Absol—"
Charizard gasps loudly. "Sceptile! And Absol!" By now, both animals are screaming at each other like overexcitable teenagers over gossip.
"They were all so amiable that there was this mutual kinship among everybody; we were a family. And Drifblim, Umbreon, Gengar..."
Charizard lets out another gasp. "The dark and ghost-types. They were the nicest things on the planet. And, we...banished them without a second thought." The flame animal slumps down in despair.
"But Charizard, us three, you and me and Alakazam, we were inseparable in our early days. We were a family."
Charizard looks up, tears glistening in his eyes. "Good heavens...we were," he chokes out.
Armaldo, too, has tears streaming from his eyestalks. "Y-You think Nat will come to get us? Do you think we'll be saved?"
"Don't get hopeful over false alarms."
The two animals turn to look at Lucario. They immediately stiffen up and simultaneously emote hatred for the one that had singlehandedly dispatched about half the animals on the island.
"I mean, you heard the guy at the end," Lucario states in her usual stoic disposition. "The female was caught by someone. Obviously." She paces slowly towards them, trapping them between her own menace and the cliff. "Don't think this game is finished."
"After you saw that photo, I thought you had changed," says Charizard angrily.
"A photograph's not gonna change the fact that only one of us is getting off this island alive." She's merely meters away from them now. "Also, the only reason I spared you was because I ran out of ammunition," she puts frankly.
With apprehension, Charizard dares to ask, "Then what do you have now...?"
"Simply the will to survive...and flash grenades." Lucario reveals from behind her back the weapons of her former "partner," originally Sceptile's. She pitches it towards the flame animal. The object makes contact at the base of his left wing while discharging a bright light, singeing his scales and burning holes through the fine, leathery tissue making up his wings. Disoriented, Charizard shakes slightly before losing balance. He falls backward off the cliff but manages to compose himself midair. He rights himself and soars unsteadily for a moment before falling into the ocean.
"No!" Armaldo cries out.
Charizard flails around in the water, holding his tail up to his face. "Armaldo!" he screams. He pauses a moment before howling, "End her goddamned life!" He loses grip on his tail which falls into the waves, extinguishing the fire. He sinks under and disappears.
Armaldo turns around to face Lucario. His eyes are bloodshot. He lets out a short sob before being interrupted.
"Are you gonna save him or end my life?" Lucario asks.
Armaldo sobs again and lifts his claws pathetically. He can't swim. Besides, there's no way he'd be able to scale Charizard and himself back up the precipice, and there's no place to rest at the bottom. The face of the cliff immediately meets with the water.
"So be it," Lucario murmurs, preparing another flash grenade.
Armaldo looks at something behind her. She cautiously looks around and sees a very distressed Manectric. Images of Alakazam's head blowing into pieces flash in his mind. "Y-you blew him up!" he screeches.
"Huh?"
In a fury, Manectric kicks off towards Lucario at full speed. He tackles her, activating the grenade in her paw. Several shell fragments implant themselves superficially in her head, causing her to yowl in pain as she collides with the ground. She growls and reaches for Manectric's head. She grabs ahold of it and begins twisting it around. Manectric struggles and pushes his head into her chest, barely missing the steel spike. He clamps down on her left breast and beings tearing fur and skin off, sending an array of blood rivulets across the ground.
Lucario is, by now, very annoyed. With all her strength, she sits up, keeping her paws glued to the canine's head. However, Manectric snarls, spitting out skin from his maw, and rams Lucario back into the ground, activating more grenades from within the bag affixed to her back. Metal shards burn through the leather of the bag and into her skin, making her back arch outward. She forcefully twists the canine's head again. His neck releases a popping noise as he becomes somewhat disfigured. With tears stinging his eyes, he bites down again, this time on Lucario's neck. Lucario panics and scrambles to get up with the canine still clinging onto her. With his own neck in immense pain, Manectric pushes Lucario, his hind legs pushing away from the ground.
Now desperate, Lucario squeezes Manetric's body closer to her own, pressing her bloodstained chest spike into his stomach. With what little strength she has left, she thrusts his body completely against hers, successfully impaling him against the spike. He regurgitates blood and chewed leather that had been sitting in his stomach onto Lucario's neck.
Armaldo stares in horror. He then realizes the two animals are nearing the edge of the cliff. He can't say anything to warn him though. Manectric gives him a warm glance as a sign of parting before kicking off with his hind legs one last time. The two animals fall over the edge and crash into the water below. They don't resurface.
Armaldo is understandably shaken up, but he doesn't show much emotion. Instead, he leaves the cliff and walks heavily into the forest where he travels in circles for a few desultory minutes until he hears something coming from the sky. It's one of those helichopper things, he thinks. He climbs to the top of a hill where he can see it hovering over the center of the isle. That must be Nat, he thinks. He starts heading over towards the center.
The other survivors have noticed the vehicle too. When Armaldo arrives at the clearing where everyone started out, he sees the others gathering around, looking confused. The kids followed the sound and are staring at the sky in the clearing. Umbreon and Gengar are there as well. So is Sableye, who apparently never left the site since the battle that morning.
Satisfied that they're all there, Nat lowers the aircraft and lands it in the clearing, making all the grass sway and leaves blow away from the propellers. She slides the door open and calls out, "Let's go!"
The animals comply but show no signs of nervousness in doing so. In fact, they show nothing.
Nat sighs and returns to the pilot seat. "Let's leave this island." She looks at the collar monitor, making sure she hasn't forgotten any animals with beating hearts. Then, the aircraft begins to ascend.
"Nat," Armaldo stammers, "Where's Jack?"
"Hold on," she replies before fiddling with something in her ear. Without turning from the controls, she tells Armaldo to repeat himself.
"Where's Jack?"
"So the amnesia wore off, did it? Well, Jack decided that his job is more important than all of your lives," she says disdainfully. Before they can fully take off, something hits the aircraft and it wobbles to the side. The animals scream. Nat curses under her breath. She steers the aircraft around to see who's responsible. It's another one of those helichoppers. It's firing at them. Their aircraft's tail explodes in a plume of smoke and the entire thing starts to spiral down. It lands in the trees, luckily not doing much harm to the animals. They frantically crawl out of the dented aircraft. Nat looks disheartened as she scans the sky. "Well..."
Gengar helps Umbreon and Armaldo out of the aircraft.
The animals follow Nat deeper into the forest. She cradles her head and becomes frustrated. That's when she hears a voice coming from the device at her waist. She lifts it up and looks over it, a ray of hopefulness appearing on her face.
"Nat! Are you alright? I saw you go down. Answer me!"
"You saw us go down?"
"Get the hell out of there. They're beginning to descend! I don't think they've noticed me. Make your way to the west shore and be quick, god dammit!"
Nat reattaches the device to her waist and looks at the animals. "Let's go." All of them run through the forest together. They run until they reach the beach where Jack waits with a boat. He's gesturing for them to hurry up. He helps them on board and runs to the wheel, preparing to take off.
"You came after all?" Nat asks.
Jack remains silent and starts the boat. As he does so, he hears voices in the distance. He turns to see several armed men running from the trees and towards the shore, shouting, "There's a boat, too!"
The boat roars and takes off along the water.
"Jack, the boundary line!" Nat screams.
Jack slows the boat, but as several bullets zoom overhead, he knows he has to speed up again. He grabs some contraption and throws it in the back.
"I've got one already," a distraught Nat says, pulling out a like device from her pocket. She grabs ahold of Pichu, who squeals and tries to wiggle free. "Don't worry, just wait." Then, the collar around Pichu's neck snaps off and falls to the floor of the boat. Pichu grabs her neck and looks around, shocked.
"Nat, it's coming up!" calls Jack.
"Slow down!" Nat screams back as she works on Eevee's collar. A bullet hits the side of the boat and dents it. Jack steers to the left, driving parallel to the beach. Finally... "Done!" she says as she takes off Umbreon's collar. Jack promptly steers to the boat to the right. Nat grabs all the collars at the bottom of the boat. She stands up, balancing herself against the wind, and hurls the seven collars high into the air. They begin to fall, but before they hit the water they explode brilliantly, emitting crackling sparks onto the waves. Panting, Nat sits down beside the animals.
Pichu, Eevee, and Whismur look back to the island. They are leaving. They are leaving behind the others. They are leaving Kangaskhan and Miltank...and Sceptile and Absol. They tear up and begin weeping. Umbreon joins them and so does Armaldo. Gengar tries to hold back the tears, but ends up failing. Even Sableye watches the island fade in the distance woefully.
Nat sighs. "How much fuel is there?"
"Enough to get us to Ki Soroszi. We'll get a plane there." He turns to the animals in the back. They will be surprised to find out they're really not the last of their kind after all. "How are you all doing?" Jack says before looking forward again...
"Sorry we're late..."
Things learned:
1. Subjects, for the most part, choose to resist killing one another post-injection.
2. Knowing they are the last of their species does not affect subjects' mentalities. It does not make them feel the need to uphold a legacy.
3. Like-minded subjects are usually drawn together, even after post-injection. This, however, did not apply for subjects L3-09 and L3-14 or subjects L3-18 and L3-20.
4. Subjects are prone to complete personality alteration post-injection.
5. Injection wears off after three weeks.
Subjects deceased (in order of death):
#16: Drifblim
#08: Miltank
#02: Alakazam
#20: Braviary
#17: Kecleon
#04: Kangaskhan
#15: Yanma
#19: Cryogonal
#09: Sceptile
#14: Absol
#01: Charizard
#12: Manectric
#18: Lucario
Surviving subject(s):
#03: Gengar
#05: Eevee
#06: Pichu
#07: Umbreon
#10: Whismur
#11: Sableye
#13: Armaldo
[LAST]
Acknowledgements
Thanks to those who've reviewed and who have helped keep this story alive (thanks RadioactiveSableye & DeepCrimson)
#05: Eevee submitted by DeepCrimson
#13: Sableye submitted by RadioactiveSableye
#17: Kecleon submitted by lurking247
Some changes had to be made to your submissions in order for them to fit the storyline. My apologies.
a/n: So, this particular story may be over. However, because I love the whole idea of Battle Royale/Hunger Games, I may add different stories with similar plots onto Last, making it one big anthology. That is, if you guys think that's a good idea. Oh, and thanks for reading, seriously. Please leave me your thoughts. -Cal