29.
To the Shocking End (Part II)
*highly recommended you listen to Waterflame's "Glorious Thunderzone" while reading this one. :)
I can walk on water, I can fly
I will keep on fighting 'til I die
"FLINT! FLINT!"
The Rotom Phone lay with a cracked screen on the street outside the Sakuragi Institute, its symbiont shrinking to a jiggle and a flicker of blue. There'd been an explosion, or a lightning strike, or a burst of adrenaline — something that made memories phase and blur, and those inside escaped shortly before the solar panels slithered up the mansion's old stone walls.
Stars flashed eerily as auroras streaked through the sky, charged up by radiation already in the atmosphere. The agitated howling of Electric-Type Pokémon haunted Vermilion Bay. Pillars of lightning shot up from the mountains and forests. Buzzing storms of Magnemite condensed together and evolved into iron thunderheads over the ocean. A black cloud was gathering in the east. And still, the streetlights were locked in shuddering cycles of demolition and reconstruction. Disfigured bodies transformed into glittering beacons of the future.
"I think he's still breathing," said Chrysa, though she couldn't check for a pulse. Flint lay in the middle of the six-lane silver-chrome stroad, centered amidst a pile of blackened and petrified couch stuffing. Claws of plasma clutched around his middle, squeezing so hard the ribs glowed blue like blacklights. Above him the Man Rotom materialized. Electricity crackled along its spine. Fangs came out, ready to puncture. Prey was dazed and paralyzed — motionless save for jittery spasms of muscle.
And Visquez stumbled forward off the curb, totally transfixed.
"Don't," Ren hissed, throat parched and breath ragged. In an impulse, he'd taken her by the hand and was jerking her back.
"Oh, I'm going to," she snapped back.
"No, run, Kezzie—"
"That monster insulted me in my own city. He thinks I'm unworthy."
"Well, right now he's pretty focused on fact-checking Flint, so—"
"He's afraid of me," she said, ripping her hand away. Cold static rushed up her legs beneath the breeches as she stepped toward the nightmare. "Weren't you? That's why you came to Vermilion City. That's why you burned down my gym. You saw me as a threat. I'm sure you see Flint as a threat too. You got him on the ground the same way you had me."
"He can't hear you, Kezzie! Get away from him!"
Visquez swung up her left hand in the same flat, sweeping motion Volkner used to crush his opponents, then clenched it hard into a fist.
"ELECTIVIRE! USE DUAL IRON TAIL ON THE MAN ROTOM!"
The yellow ape roared, two tails sparking and fists lighting up until the fur all stood on end. Lightning shot across the sky above, and the stars were dyed a vibrant indigo. But instead of attacking, Electivire scraped its clawed feet against the sidewalk and remained heavily in place behind her, beady red eyes trained on the Man Rotom with the focus of a guardian.
"HIT HIM!" cried Visquez, shaking her fist. "HE'S NOT YOUR TRAINER ANYMORE! HE'S GONE!"
"Visquez," Dr. Sakuragi warned, "You realize Volkner may not even be in control of his own body right now—"
The Gym Leader seized the professor by the arms and rattled him, tears brimming up in her eyes and all her muscles tense.
"Does it really matter if Volkner dies now from a whack in the head, or an hour from now when that parasite finishes eating his brain!? He should've known better. That's the lesson here."
That statement seemed to set off the ape. Electivire's tails strengthened and brightened until they changed fully into metal. It bore its blocky teeth, grinding them harshly above the Gym Leader's logic. With a ferocious growl, it wound back one sparking fist, grasping a tail in its furred fingers and aiming straight for its new trainer's head. The knuckles charged up, buzzed, shot forward in the night with the sound of a whirring dynamo.
"HYAAA-GAAAH!"
Visquez dropped the professor. Eyes burning, she screamed louder than the crackling of the Man-Rotom and caught the massive fist with both forearms raised. Sparks choked and scattered when they hit her skin, furred gloves flaring and fingers twitching at the heat. Not that she had the strength to stop the blow entirely, but her will alone was enough to challenge the flickering beast and cause it to withdraw.
Electivire groaned. It punched its fists together. It waved its tails like twin wires, then reached them out toward the glowing creature, as if hoping it would notice.
But it was too late now. All at once, from where Flint was pinned, there came an explosion of light and a loud, metallic scream.
It was the sound. Sound? More like a thunderous thought. The thought of a man — two men — gripping a live wire with bare hands and refusing to let go.
[WILD CHARGE!]
A veil of magenta erupted around the struggle, and now the voices mingled audibly in an imaginary wind. Noise and heat shot into the minds of the onlookers. It was like the stroad had suddenly turned to sand — then caught on fire.
[OVERHEAT!]
Flint squirmed and thrashed where he lay. His eyes opened fully, gray-dark and rippling like a tidepool clogged with pyroclastic ash. He reached his arms up, the shine of one obsidian bangle popping out of a melting uniform sleeve. Forks of static flickered beneath the skin of his neck. Red curls blackened. Oily cinders leaked from his lips. His teeth flashed, almost grinning despite the anguish. Like it felt good to have those long claws piercing his sides while he scraped his nails into the back of the creature's glowing neck.
It was fun to fight lightning with fire.
[PROTOCOL 1606: JETTY MECHANISM!]
Those lightning claws sharpened and sparked. Blue argon flowed thickly in the veins of Sunyshore's moving walkways. Black glass glittered in the mine yard, spitting hot sparks onto a pair of large, idle hands, and over the mountains of Kanto, a dense black cloud was forming, spitting thunderbolts down at the trees and setting a secret warehouse immediately ablaze.
[WHERE THERE'S SMOKE, THEY PINCH BACK!]
The two flipped over. Flint reeled back and landed a white-hot Fire Punch into the Man Rotom's stomach. Vermilion City flickered, power lines buzzing with the pulse of a racing arrhythmia before loosening and crumpling. A swarm of bike racks levitated, slamming into each other and dropping into the ocean to drown.
[LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE!]
With a buzzing roar, the Man Rotom finally lifted itself to its feet, wrenching Flint up with it. The claws were still fastened tight into his sides, stuck like prickles that sent quick jolts skittering through his muscles and locking his fingers in place. Wildly, Flint was shaken, then nearly throttled, as the creature fought to detach itself. But the static kept them connected. Caught and crackling. Electrical energy leeched from both human bodies in the form of purple threads, zipping straight into alien nerves and snapping like overheated wires.
[OH, OVERHEAT, ONE MORE TIME, BABY!]
Purely on reflex, in the space of a flicker, Flint gave the Man-Rotom a quick, sharp kick in the stomach. One clawed hand popped free from his ribs, and the two of them stumbled, barely catching themselves on the pavement.
[I can… feel again. I need… neEd… mOrE pOWer…]
The Man Rotom's solar eyes dimmed. Molten cobalt cooled to slate-blue, then azure, like bubbling ocean steam.
The creature convulsed as if sick, claws curling, breath coming out in a wheeze. Its limbs shuddered and snapped like an interrupted circuit, and it desperately bit its own lips, straining to speak through voice or thought.
"My heArT… hURTzZzZZz!]
Flint shook his head, wincing at the noise. He coughed, then pitched forward and threw up black sludge, muscles attempting to move through air that felt like thickening concrete. With his teeth, he tore back the sleeve, biting at the bangle's metal hinge until it fell and shattered beneath him. A free arm ripped the choker from his neck. He smashed it fast against the burning claws, and the magenta veil evaporated.
Face stained with sand and sweat and ash, the Elite flicked dark eyes to the Man Rotom, then to Visquez. Drained of power, yet lucid. Awake. Pleading.
"Get him off me."
Visquez nodded. The noise disappeared, save for her pulse. Her spark, Volkner would call it, if she'd ever met him. Some part of her wished she'd met him.
But she hadn't. And she never would.
She nodded once more to Flint, and felt the tingle of Electivire's power sizzling upon her back. Steeling her every nerve, Visquez closed her eyes and launched herself off the sidewalk. In a heartbeat, she landed and grappled around the Man Rotom's shoulders.
Light.
Static.
The bite of hot espresso.
Green paint and gears.
And gears.
And gears.
And—g—eA—r—S…
"Let's go," Flint said, like this is the ending of something. And I admit, on the outside, I probably look half-dead, but I feel immortal. I feel high-voltage and powerful. I want to kick off the ground and launch myself into space and slash a meteorite over and over again until it splinters into metal I can use to build that purple tower I keep seeing in my dreams.
And then I think, why? What purpose does it hold, except to satiate my endless boredom?
It's like trying to draw a circle when you're half asleep, and you'd really rather be drawing a triangle. Because you keep thinking about the triangle, and your muscles say triangle, but you already wrote circle on the top of the plotter paper, because about five minutes ago you thought that was a better idea, and when you scrape the other end of the pencil against it there's no eraser. Just a little black hardened piece of rubber and the metal part just ripped the paper and I was supposed to be at the gym three hours ago to wait for a challenger or something, so I slap myself and dunk my head under the cold shower and open the curtains and it's pitch-black outside because I've lost all sense of time.
But I wasted the time I did have. Only to stare at a blank piece of paper, and I go outside and I rip up another bike rack.
I forget my time has never been linear. I'm not human, right? I'm a spark. I'm a thunderbolt. Or some part of me is, and my brain can't tell which, because my brain's just a slow and primitive machine, currently under renovation.
Condemned, a voice in my head tells me. It's my own. My shoulders stiffen. My spine makes another bad cracking sound.
I can't feel anything, but I'm connected to every breaker in the city.
I gnash my teeth, and the power goes out.
Better.
Not better. Because I can't see. The things I do see don't make sense, and there's something incredibly powerful pulsing in the atmosphere. A storm is rolling in over Vermilion. Sunyshore, too. And there's a presence in it. A big spark, beckoning me closer.
My vision flashes red. These human retinas sting.
Po[wer. I'm losing… it… it…]
We can't be merged for much longer, Volkner. Your biological voltage is too low to sustain me, and you taste like used oil.
Did I just flinch?
It's not a brilliant way to die, I know, but... I'll be try to be happy for you…
Rotom tells me we're dying in my own shaking human voice. Like it's more me than me. Like it's hard-wired into my neurons and knows how I think. Knows how I feel. Knows how I'd be moving this body if I could, because as far as I know I'm paralyzed. I remember the past few hours like they're years, all shoved into my brain at once. A human couldn't build a city in one night. A human can build a solar generator in three days, on coffee and sugar, then fall down on the bed and sleepwalk building the rest out of silverware.
Is this what it feels like to be human?
I feel so bad for them.
So empty… so weak… so cold… so sTUpiD.]
I suck in that breath, and I cough it out again — so hard my chest throbs and collapses. My hands are ice. My elbows are so hot they itch. I'm definitely feeling, or at least, I'm starting to feel, because I don't think my heart has ever gone this fast before, and it's making me so excited I'm screaming and my voice is a busted speaker with all the wires exposed. Just popping. Popping. My head is expanding. I'm like a balloon stuck to a bare sheetrock wall.
Flint shows me a face that says Breathe, Jerk, and I slash at him, tasting his pathetic pulse again. He's lacking iron and potassium. What did they feed him before he blew up in that tower?
Don't bother. You stop his heart and we'd eat his spark in seconds.
A spark. I need a spark. What's a spark? A spark is…
Flint is telling you goodbye.
I know. I can still hear his thoughts. I can hear them better now that the pavement is covered in bits of black glass.
Do you want to say something back?
I try, but my throat is raw, and my tongue is stiff. Even my Psychic power is failing as my mind malfunctions. I try to think something to Flint, but he doesn't receive it. The currents don't connect. It's all one big blank synapse and frayed copper and popping air between us and I'm talking to myself in chirps and crackles.
Whatever hit me is lying in a lump near Flint, out cold, frost crystals collecting on its skin and hair. Finally my claws are free of that human sludge. I stand up, then forget I weigh anything. My cells flicker, lining up with the poles. I float on the earth's magnetic field and rise up above my beautiful neon streets.
I look north and east, but there's no purple tower. Just this huge black thunderhead with something powerful inside that's blocking off my quickest route back to Sinnoh. But I'm more powerful. I reshaped these cities. The Sunyshore Tower I tore up and turned into walkways. I uprooted an entire wind farm and planted it in Oreburgh. Smells less like exhaust now. More like ozone. Streaking along the remaining powerlines I flash to Oreburgh, where I perch on top of a streetlight that illuminates the earth despite the dust storm. There they all are. Staring at me. Asking me if they're choking on their own particulates.
Can the King of Hooligans even stand again? Can he be the strongest Elite? Can he pretend to be Elite?
Can he just enjoy a margarita on the beach with a monkey by his side?
I'm such a jerk.
Wind slices at my exposed skin. Plasma starts melting. I'm forgetting how to be in two places at once. It hurts to go that fast. Vermilion again and Flint's just lying there. On the street. On the glaring peak of black glass forming out of molten sand. In my world, his Magmortar shot a ball of magma right into my Electivire's stomach, and so we punched him in the stomach. Slashed at him. Together. But it only left me with a burn.
I squint through the dust in Oreburgh at my bare right hand. The static is fuzzy, almost bubbly. My knuckles look stiff and gray like they've been frozen.
Rotom's gone strangely quiet. Or maybe that's me. I've gone quiet. I got nothing left to say. Suddenly I can feel my guts churning again, and my whole body is wrenched sideways in the air as my body starts to crave that black thundercloud. I keep looking, dumbfounded, but hungry. Hungry for a spark.
I busy myself instead, flying to Sunyshore, where I watch my freezer-burnt hands quake as they twist a plastic cap over two very sharp copper wires. One of them jabs me. I pull back the sleeve to the elbow and see where the shock burn might've healed, were my skin not full of tiny red pinpricks where the currents flowed through insulating flesh.
Purple tower. Why do I keep thinking about a purple tower? Why can't I remember what a spark is? Why does the storm beckon me?
In my world, there's a purple tower where my gym was. It's as tall as Mount Coronet and brighter than the moon, and it's full of little windows and all you can see in them is whirring machines. Flint joked that it's my monument. I can't help but laugh, because I can't remember for the life of me why I built it. Rotom must have pieced it together out of my dreams.
It's ugly, I tell him.
I gotta stop sleepwalking like this.
I check my reflection in the mirror in the squad's hideout. My hair's white and floating. My eyes are still glittering. My skin's stained blue like veins. I take my jacket out of the microwave and put it on, hugging myself, trying to contain my own power. My heart shudders. My muscles tingle, then burn hot and cold, and I'm tasting saltwater.
One slash and the microwave's broken again. It's a whole mess of wires and melting plastic shards spitting hot plasma all over the furniture. A spark catches on my cheek. My face is numb, but I think I'm crying as I fix the machine again. Of boredom. Of genius.
I'm not a genius, I try thinking toward the people of Oreburgh, worshiping their "Ginty."
Sunyshore looks no different than it ever has. Half in light, half in shadow, hooligans storming the beach with their styrofoam cups and sunglasses at night. At least one member of the Elite Four running around with an entourage. Machines. A storm. A purple tower.
Home.
My ribs feel like they're shrinking. Threads of lightning flow over my hands in waves. I pull my palms close together, until the static shifts and a bolt of resistance shoots downward, striking the beach. The sand explodes, melting and freezing into a flower of obsidian as high as the solar boardwalk. Then my claws start loosening. They're getting shorter! The flames are receding! I'm falling out of my own body!
Flint pushes himself up onto his knees. He's grinning like he's supposed to.
I'm falling out of my own body.
Matori's there. Screaming. Kicking him. He laughs and tells her he already set my emotions free, and that her boss has given up on controlling either of us.
Did I have anything against him?
cRRrrRAAAcKKcKKk
Flint's looking up, shocked.
I'm Falling Out Of My Own Body.
I'm falling…
I'm…
It was the greatest show anyone in Sunyshore City had ever seen. Pathetically their missing Gym Leader levitated above the beach, half-naked, glowing, and chittering to himself like one of his own broken-down maintenance bots. As dramatic as a magician, he spun around and lobbed a spinning ball of purple plasma straight at Buck Perilla, who only needed one casual step back to avoid a nasty shock.
Still, the sand exploded in a spectacular fashion, and a gaping black pool of molten glass bubbled and sank into itself like a bowl.
"Ceesus chips, man! All right! The jacket looks better on you!"
cRACckKKK!
"V… Volkner?"
The purple tower rumbled into Oreburgh City on tires stolen from pickup trucks and axles formed out of spraypaint cans packed with clay and coal dust. Its chrome exterior flickered, casting little rainbows upon the shattered black glass.
Meowth sat in the driver's seat on top, slitted eyes flashing, while his teammates stood smugly on either side.
Jessie placed her hands on her hips. Her lipstick was fresh and red, and her magenta hair was all shined up and slicked back with conditioner.
"Listen, is that a dying spark I hear?"
James crossed his arms, his face angled and shadowed dramatically under the spotlight.
"It's a breathy tenor, loud and clear."
"On the WIND!" Jessie shouted.
"Past the STARS!" James sang.
"IN YOUR EAR!" Meowth laughed, throwing his paws out and baring a full set of fangs.
"Bringing CHAOS at a breakneck pace!"
"Dashing all hope, putting FEAR in its place!"
The purple tower separated, opening up into three cylindrical platforms that spun on strobing neon green gears, each with a posing agent.
"A Rose by any other name is just as sweet!" Jessie purred, tossing a flower over dust and grime to her partner.
"When everything's worse, our work is complete!" James replied, catching the rose in his mouth and making an innocent V Sign with both hands.
"Jessie!"
"And James."
"Me-OWTH! Now that's a name!"
The cylinders finished spinning, now morphing and growing with the hissing punch of pistons into the shape of a massive capital R.
"Putting the Triple-S in his place," hummed Jessie.
"We're Team Rocket," declared James.
"And we're In. Your. Face."
Six V Signs and a pair of blue flippers were raised to the sky. With a perfect smirk, James raised his plasma rifle, catching the Man Rotom right in the crosshairs where it sat upon the streetlight. A lustrous black glob of rubber sealant was launched at the apparition with a split-second snap of the trigger.
SPLAT! Sticky sealant coated the chest. The limbs jerked. The legs kicked mechanically.
Then the glow of its body began to dim.
"Leave him alone, you," James cursed.
He raised the barrel again. Three cans of sealant were loaded.
There. An indigo mist peeling away from the physical body, yet still crudely holding the shape of a man. The merge had been severed. Now the apparition's skin changed from purple back to frozen gray-white. All color was stripped from the hair and nails. The eyes closed. The chest pulsed once, then flattened.
Another snap, and a second glob of sealant turned the roaming Rotom into an echo of a spark.
CRrAcKkKK!
"Wobbuffet!?"
Team Rocket looked on in horror.
No one in Vermilion City had been expecting it when the black cloud consumed the eastern sky, and out of it emerged an enormous yellow raptor, sparkling like the noonday sun and trilling low like a peal of spring thunder.
On its back, straddling hot feathers, with lightning coursing through his skin and hair, was Bob Surge, the Vermilion Gym Leader. He had ventured deep into the mountains of Kanto, where he fought a difficult raid battle against the legendary Zapdos, and ultimately earned the Thunderbird's respect. Now it carried him back to his home, through early morning skies and over shattered, glimmering streets.
He didn't panic when he saw the human struggling to levitate. No shock. No question. No fury, nor fear. Just a quick glance downward at his disfigured city, and his incapacitated charge, and the strongest member of Sinnoh's Elite Four bundling her up in his arms and holding her.
Surge nodded toward the human. "Strike him down, Zapdos."
The raptor opened its spear-like beak. In an instant, a long, thin bolt of lightning pierced Volkner's heart.
Crack.
~N~
Published by Syntax-N on FanFiction . Net April 9th, 2023. No reposting. Please review! One chapter left!