Chapter 10: World Stolen By a Finger - Part 3
Still air isolated every moment; every instant, every second was a tight knot along a taut wire, dividing the world into dreadfully stable increments.
Each sigh from Sanaria's petite mouth grew in intensity. Her labored breathing was augmented by something Feyera could not understand from where he sat. The rush of adrenaline given to him via Sephiteos' horn barely lingered. Of course, it was still present; however, it was no longer crescendoing: a notable characteristic of a Gardevoir's emotion derived powers. They never remained stagnant, rather the liquid flux of emotion and energy would surge in unstoppable waves, cascading repeatedly over the mental essence, and embracing it in complete emotional ecstasy—binding body and mind closer together than a heart and its beat.
"Veh…Feyera…" whispered Sana through a series of tight gasps.
Chris Feyera leapt to his feet, surprised to find just how fast his body left the ground. He grappled on the air as his legs wobbled from the recent use of his psyonics. He stumbled, still unable to find balance in this world. The trainer felt like he had just left a very violently shaking ship and had been unable to conquer the sea legs. He fell down, with a "Plop!" as his knees hit the earth. Swearing, Feyera pushed off the ground again, desperately trying to orient his weak human body.
His balancing act was mildly aided by focusing on Sana; she was a figure of stability in an environment drenched in the colors of emotion. Dank blackness from recent fear contrasted the bight sunny day. He knew that color all too well. The way the black gaseous tar mixed with thick swampy indigo could only mean one thing: fear. But where was the fear coming from? The rockets were dead right? Was it residue from their deaths? How would that be possible? Weren't their minds shut off?
The thrill of the fight had not been able to negate the increasing agony from his right hand, about where the palm met the wrist. It was something he could not explain. It did not look any different, and the way that his skin retained its beige tone seemed to dismiss the possibility of his parasite overtaking more of his physical body. It was depressing enough to lose a part of his left forearm to the highly sensitive Gardevoir flesh. The bone chilling thought that something might be lurking deep within his epidermis frightened him, but not as much as the larger threat—the creeping commandeering emotions made over his rational mind. His passionate resistance only served to rally the sentimental take-over.
His tightly strapped boots stomped along the uneven machine trampled ground as he walked towards the wilted Gardevoir. As he approached her, his right hand felt as if it were burning—searing even. The feeling was all too familiar; it was the same heat that radiated in feverishly high pitches from his heart at times. He looked down, to see that his right hand was still just as human as ever. He also looked at his chest for good measure, but the tremendous heat from the Gardevoir horn there had been quelled ever since he had psychically bent the rocket's arm. It was a relatively simple action in hindsight; he didn't even need the cerebral dexterity to make the criminal pull the Nihil's trigger. All that needed to be done was force the rocket's upper muscles to contract, pointing the chaotic weapon at its operator. However, the action was not a mere mental force exerted by Feyera. It was a unified action. Edge had felt his own biceps, although weak, contract, swelling up, while his lower triceps muscles relaxed along with the rocket's. In the heat of the action, there was no way for the young man to tell the difference between the two right arms. It was completely simultaneous. The only difference between them was that Edge was not holding onto a higgledy-piggledy death machine spewing out silver like a slot machine's jackpot.
Indeed, the crossbow had a mind of its own; the mechanism was in fact still firing phantom rounds. "Thwip! Thwip!" went the black weapons; dropped from the hands of their dead wielders. Lying against the ground, their strings still pulled and released, thanks to the mechanized rotating arm oblivious to empty bolt hoppers. They made the only true periodic noise, keeping track of each passing moment. It was clockwork.
As he peered at the rather disturbing spectacle, he could not help but frantically wonder. Why repeater crossbows? Why not Pokemon? Why were these rockets not carrying the usual Gauntlet M-series revolvers he was so used to facing? Were they just weapons used here in the jungle? Or was there another reason for their employment? Were they being used for stealth? For their spray of fire? He thought about how the rain of bolts had given his psyonics zero focal points. Was this the reason? Were they being used to counter him? His psyonics? His logical mind needed to know. Its attributes, gradually merging, craved answers as much as it craved emotional stability. He wondered if he could find both.
Shaking his head, Feyera took his eyes off the scene and continued to cut through the darker mist his vision had cloaked the area in. Sana sat against the body of the blond haired rocket. The black uniformed man's face was contorted, as if his brain had been frozen mid-thought. As Edge approached the cleanly killed rocket, he began to say, "Well, guess that oughta teach 'em not to f—…!"
"*gasp* …Chris…huhhh…veh Feyera…" Sana wheezed as her arms slowly lowered from her chest.
His jaw dropped and his face went numb as he looked to the left of the deceased rocket at Sana. Aghast, he could not believe what he saw.
"SANA!" Feyera roared, feeling as though one of his own Pokemon had been attacked. He bolted away from the rocket's body and ran over to her. Edge placed his arm around her shivering body. He felt her body temperature had plummeted. Her arm was clammy and the core of her body no longer spread forth a comforting warmth. Besides the sharp sense of touch, his sight provided more than enough information to the young man. He saw the damage up close. No longer was she warm and vibrant. No longer did she have an expression of positive demeanor. There was only fear.
Feyera was unable to comprehend it as a sympathetic heart pulled him under an ocean of concern. It was awful to see, and even worse to feel.
One of the metal Nihil bolts had gone straight through the edge of her palm, creating a clean hole for warm blood to slip out of periodically and voluminously. It looked like her hand was weeping along with her ruby eyes.
"*Gasp*…! *whimper*…make it stop…*sniff*" Her sobs, shattered breaths, took him by surprise, for all the while she just looked at the wound, completely stunned, unable to act. It was as if she were frozen, staring at the terrible gash. Maybe she had thought it wasn't possible to be hit. Sana had looked so confident when she flew over a collapsed Feyera: Reflect shield raised, and Psychic lash in her right hand. All of that strength was gone. Perhaps she had never even faced a vicious weapon such as the Nihil automatic crossbow.
"Dammit!" Feyera swore in transit as he sat beside her. This was awful! It was all his fault for bringing her on this stupid roadway. He felt guilty now. Edge felt like he caused the whole thing to happen. The guilt was inescapable, its icy tendrils slipped through his mind's annexes. But altering the avenue of blame was not going to heal her.
Quickly, Edge surrounded her wounded right hand with his own, feeling the episodic pumping of blood pushing against his human skin. It felt different, the foreign feeling and pain in his right hand climaxed as he made tight contact with her injury. The rush of aching reached his mind and he arched his neck back and yelped in shock. "ARGH!" he swore and then clamped down on his lower lip. He looked at where their hands joined. For the time being, his frail hand seemed to remain normal. But the feeling of intense sensitivity was uncannily similar to when his left wrist had undergone a rapid mutation adjacent to the Mercury Relic's clutch.
"Sana…" he whispered as she continued to sob from a mixture of pain and psychological agony from being shot. He felt everything enter him through the blood pressing against his palm. The pain, the terror, the anxiety, and the Gardevoir's life. It was maddening.
"…Veh Feyera," she gasped holding onto his tattered bomber jacket desperately with her other hand.
"Yeah?" he asked, his own breaths growing arrhythmic. Feyera looked further down the path to make sure there were no more rockets coming. The two they encountered must have been a patrol or something he thought. A set of opponents that weak and Sanaria's life was in jeopardy. It was catastrophic. A wrecking ball had taken out all the confidence they once held as it conjoined to their anxiety in emotional harmonics. And Edge felt every ounce of it. He clamped down tighter on her hand saying, "Sh—"
"—Just…" Sana began to say before her rail thin frame further collapsed against his.
"Hey, stay with me!" Edge ordered, now aware that his sympathy extended directly to her. It was a powerful relay of empathetic consciousness. In a way, it was similar to how he felt when guiding his Pokemon in combat. Their pain became his pain.
She nodded softly and gave a long exhale. Her hair, wet from humidity and exertion, brushed against Edge's glossy and sweaty neck. The fine follicles would have tickled him if not for all his thoughts traveling the pathways of worry and concern.
Feyera bent his neck down and sternly said to her ear, "What do you need? I promise you everything is going to be…"
"No. No! Everything is not going to be fine, I—I'm really scared," she said shaking uncontrollably.
Edge could not even muster a response as her anxiety pushed on top of his own, wedging him deeper into a well of thought. Would they ever even stand a chance to get off this forsaken island alive? He had fought so hard, pushed himself to the extreme, and they had barely survived against a mere two grunts out of possibly hundreds in the Evercrest facility. His unbroken silence and tense expression answered her. She knew he was just as frightened.
"What—what happened?" Sana asked, clearly mortified by her deep wound. Her ruby eyes looked back and forth, from Feyera's eyes to their interlocked hands as she began to panic crying out, "Veh Feyera…! What happened!?"
He didn't tell her. "Sana, we gotta stop your bleeding," Edge insisted, knowing that she would lose consciousness at the rate she was losing the precious life liquid. Even with his hand firmly bandaging hers, he knew he could not stay forever and the scab would need to form naturally. And still, her shivering caused him to tremble. First in his hand touching hers, and then possessively throughout his whole body.
"Veh…" she moaned, unable to say her caresser's name, only the cultural name she had given him. He felt his own fears and anxieties begin to return to him as they transitioned through her diminished stature.
Mister Feyera knew this was going nowhere but downhill. Experience with a prior feedback fall told him this. As much as he would like to have a rational for it, Edge could not explain it only sense its ominous presence on the horizon. He cursed and then began to remove his large protective jacket. Upon getting it off to his right sleeve, and realizing their bodies were connected there hand-in-hand, he vied, "Sana, we gotta break! Gotta split our hands. Just for a second!"
"Wait…!" she hollered. But he gave her no time. In a jolt, he attempted to pull his hand away from hers, but her fingers eagerly clutched at his escaping hand. Sana wailed, "No! D—Don't! Don't you leave!"
Feyera struggled with her. Soon his fingers were uncontrollably interlocking with her own as her eyes glowed in shades of scarlet. His eyes too began to gain a faint glow, obstructing vision in crimson, mirroring the Gardevoir's ocular Psychic aura. He began to panic, knowing just how simple it would be to slip into a fall when his sentiments blended with hers during the exertion of psyonics. Despite the danger, overcoming the rush of touch proved insurmountable.
Their hands were dovetailing to the point of unintended and united tussle. He drew away, but her Psychic grip kept his hand anchored in hers, mimicking her own hand motions. The stinging pain, still in his right hand, only grew as he fought to release his hand from Sana's grab. "Sana! Listen to me! I just need to take my jacket off! I'm not leaving!"
"No, no, no!" she cried, senselessly buried in fear. She looked at his beat-up piece of clothing now only covering one of Mister Feyera's sleeves. Her cherry eyes traveled along the mostly removed outerwear. Edge followed her eyes quivering uncontrollably in tears. He saw the bomber jacket was punctured in at least two different places. The bolts had torn straight through the coat and their narrow holes expanded, tearing further as he struggled to take it off. For once, he was glad the burly jacket was slightly oversized since his personal body frame was not damaged. If he had been fitting the big jacket, the bolts would have hit him at least twice in crucial areas: through the shoulder blade and in his gut right above the liver.
"Sanaria! Please…STOP! Here use my jacket's sleeve to…" Feyera insisted, hoping to bandage the wound with some artificial pressure.
"I can't…! NO!" the Gardevoir belted.
"You gotta splint the hole in your hand Sana!" Feyera shouted. "You're hurt! That's a fact!" He was no medical doctor or physician, but he knew how injuries like this went. Plus the risk of Sanaria contracting infection was much greater now that his dirty hand had been pressed into her cut. She needed something synthetic to hold the blood in. He couldn't bear the screaming pain from her body. "Use my coat and wrap it…"
"N—no! I need to heal and not be scarred forever," she said in a panic.
"W—what?" said Feyera with a look of worry on his face. The wound was pretty bad, but did Gardevoir lack the ability to heal? Judging by Sana's pristine figure devoid of scars, he thought for sure their bodies recovered.
"Your human garments can't help me!" her shrill voice dug into his mind, as her clipped ear cartilage touched his smooth neckline.
"You don't have a choice! There are no Pokemon centers for miles; did you forget?" Edge said frantically, "We're on a desolate island!"
"H—hold it for me," the Gardevoir insisted.
"Sana, you can't use my hand; it's not clean, it'll infect you," Feyera bluntly told her.
"N—no…" She bit her lip and then braced her free hand against her clothing's base. Hastily she said, "Hold my skirt's waistline!"
"Sana…?" Edge asked in confusion. He wasn't even sure what the fabric would feel like. He had only had felt it against his clothes, and even then it was mostly mental extrapolation concerning how it felt. It was strange like that, just by looking at the garment's delicate fibers, he could feel it against his skin. But now that she mentioned it, his mind became completely focused on the mysterious linen.
"J—just do it!" she commanded. Though she could slightly manipulate his body into doing the same thing as hers, like their joining of hands, commanding Edge had its limits. If there was no emotion to latch onto, she was helpless. And that was exactly how Feyera felt when he was told to touch her garment. Helpless.
He used his free hand to reach out and touch the fabric. Contact with his skin caused the trainer to gasp in surprise, it was finer than silk, or any other material he knew about. When his mind focused upon it, the tingling it gave his wrist as he ran his left hand against the satin fineness simply made him gawk at the ludicracy he possessed to actually listen to Sana and place his hand against her skirt's waist.
She forced an incredibly fake laugh at his expression. Still sniffling, she took her left hand and tightly gripped the rim of her short skirt's base. Tearing gently, she tore about a three-inch palm's width section from the bottom of the skirt, making it even shorter than before. She was able to split the material effortlessly and perfectly straight, barely making any noise as she did so. Some blood began to drip onto the once pristine garment in numerous spherical wine colored beads.
"Hold this…please," she said to an Edge whose face was astonished. He simply could not believe it. Based on the way Sana treated her clothing as an extension of herself, he always thought Gardevoir treasured their garments nearly as much as their hearts. But this action had revealed that at the end of the day, it was just fabric. Although it was undoubtedly a precious fabric. He held the strand of ivory linen in a quivering hand. It was so soft and so light, he felt like it would flow out of his hands like running water if he did not hold on tightly to it. Maybe it was a special type of fabric the brain had a preference for.
In any event, Feyera had never felt a material quite like this, nor had his focus ever been so tightly honed in on a seemingly inanimate object. It reminded him of the time he had played with quicksilver as a small boy in the science laboratory back at the Pokemon Academy that one time. Same exact texture and looseness. It was amazing. Holding it in his hand made him feel free and alive. The bloodstained section quickly allowed for the droplets of crimson to run off it, as they did not become absorbed by the material.
She saw him gawking at the section of her torn off garment, squinting in anticipation. Sana then pressed her free head against his right wrist, and with a soft moan, she pulled her wounded hand away from his. "Mmmm…ugh…*sniffle*" she gurgled in the fracture of their flesh.
"…Mmmm…ow…" Feyera said in tandem. The trainer shuddered as the pain in his own hand came back to replicating the sensation hers. It mirrored it in every way save for the actual wound itself. No longer was the connection physical, but the mental bond remained.
Sana quickly clutched the lash of her garment and deftly wrapped it around her hand numerous times. Edge watched. Over and around she went, at least five times, giving her a white fabric glove that resembled that of a boxer. In fact, it reminded him of what Hitmonchan wore when not wearing their signature combat gloves. This connection made him feel bizarrely lighthearted; at least he tried not to laugh about it amid all the mutual pain. Sana kept all of her focus honed in on the bloody mess running down her and Edge's forearms. Surprisingly, the linen material did not stain from the flow, nor did any of the blood run through the cloth. Edge was fascinated by it and held his mouth open in wonder.
Sana looked down at her handiwork and gasped. At the very least, she had stopped the bloodshed. Clearly exhausted, her rail thin body fell backwards into his arms, and her mint green hair brushed into his mouth unexpectedly.
"Mumph!" Feyera grunted as he moved back, spitting out a few of her long green hair strands. He arched his neck back and used his forearm to remove some of the Gardevoir's hairs that stuck thanks to the tropical humidity.
"Veh Feyera," she whispered, unaware that her balmy hair had just unexpectedly splashed straight into his gapping mouth.
"Sana." Edge's fists shook, "Listen we're gonna make them all pay."
Sana wedged the back of her head against his chest, on the trainers left side. Her smooth hair against his heart shard tingled.
He looked over at the blots littering the pathway. He imagined the pain of being pierced with one of them like Sana had over and over. "They're—they're monsters…"
"That…doesn't matter. These two…the ones who hurt us…are dead," she sighed motioning with her resting head. "Marrying …*sigh* embracing frustration at this point…it won't help, it will only blind you…us."
"I can't believe they shot you! What about your Reflect shield?!" Edge angrily said. He was more upset by the fact that he could not do anything rather than the fact that Sana had been shot. If only he hadn't been so bad at protecting her. She was fine on her own. He knew that she had stretched herself thin by protecting him in addition to herself. The Nihil's barrage was too much even for her. "Why couldn't you stop the bolt from hitting you?!"
She bent her head around slightly and looked at him. When he looked into her deep nebulous eyes, he felt as if he were scolding one of his Pokemon, telling them they didn't try hard enough, when he knew that deep down it was only his fault. He was the one to blame, but it did not stop the frustration from needing a direction to be sent in. Feyera knew he was the weak link in their tag-team. It was just like when he siphoned his Pokemon. He always took more than he gave. And while, according to what Sana said earlier, his relation with her as a fellow Gardevoir did not let him siphon from her, he still somehow managed to screw up and place her in harm's way. His psyonics were just not good enough. They weren't his. They shouldn't have been. And he told himself that is why they were weak.
She continued to stare at him without blinking, a few tearing rivers had all but dried up along her white wheat face, slightly tanned beige from all the sun.
The inadequacy began to feed into hypotheticals. If only he had made the gravity well as large as he had before back in Cerulean City. Maybe then it would have pulled all the flying metal shards away from them and into the bottomless pit of mental energy somehow imposed onto the physical world. Edge didn't care how bad that ruined him, he told himself that physically he could deal with the consequences of lethargy. What was worse than the exhaustion from employing psyonics was feeling inadequacy such as this. He was extremely angry that his fear of spiders had gotten them into this mess. Sana had warned him about the possibility of running into patrols, and he let stupid pride get in the way. It would have been better to have just gone into the forest and deal with the Ariados. Anything was better than this.
Sana studied his racing green haloed eyes. The way they shifted back and forth meant he was deep in thought. "It was a good shield. While it lasted," she said melodically whilst fingering her skirt's new clean edge.
As moods and feelings overcame him like a typhoon, Feyera belted, "I screwed up Sana; you shouldn't have had to defend me. You didn't need to get hurt because of me! Dammit. I'm not even your trainer."
"No, you're not veh Feyera. Don't blame yourself. They're the bad people, not you," she said whilst raising her injured hand and practicing pointing. Luckily, the tendons were not hit, and she could bend each finger perfectly well. Making a fist would be difficulty though. First, she pointed at the stilled bodies of the Team Rocket members, turning her back to Feyera once more. They had each been taken out in a state of insurmountable fear. One by Edge's acute manipulation, and the other from Sana's Psychic lash. Feyera wondered what move Sana even used to end the blond rocket. He knew that somehow what he had done to the other rocket was different. It felt like the natural progression of his psyonics. First he was manipulating guards in Vermilion's harbor to let him onto the S. S. Anne by projecting emotion, second he had learned how to adequately read experience through the emotions of Celadon's Gym custodian, this was the next stage: using the emotions of others to unify physical actions. Although crude, it worked with something as specific as automatic weaponry.
It was not something he was proud about, but it did make him feel good. He wouldn't have had it any other way. Those men were evil people and deserved to die. There could have been no other way, Feyera told himself. Strangely, he was feeling guilty, but not from causing all of this. It was a different type of circumstantial guilt. Edge rationalized that the guilt was from using powers that weren't his and might wind up damaging him, playing off his defensive structure of: "not deserving what occurred to him".
Sana watched as Edge lifted his left arm around her body and brought it to his face, slightly gracing her forehead as he did so. The mutation was still there. It might have even spread a millimeter but being a good scientist Feyera couldn't tell without a proper measuring device. How would they damage him though? Would they do so by simply imparting more of Seph's features? Or was there something darker and unseen in their adulteration of the man?
"Sigh…" "Sigh…" Then the two of them sighed simultaneously, causing them to jump at each other's synchronized action. Feyera grunted and Sana huffed, trying to play it off as a coincidental oddity.
Feyera's thoughts came to a screeching halt when he noticed Sana's wounded hand pointing right at his heart. Though she was facing away from it, and could not see it, she knew exactly where it was on his chest. "Remember that…you're *cough!* different. Not like them anymore…"
"Not…anymore…?" Edge looked over at the fallen members of Team Rocket. What truly separated him from them? His stupid Gardevoir shard? Was that it? The blasted simplicity was impossible to swallow. Yet it was so true. He knew if Operation Semblance hadn't happened, he was just as likely to have wound up in one of their shoes, ordered to kill for a paycheck. He wasn't thankful to have the Gardevoir he had killed anchored into his body—in fact it was very disturbing—, but he did not fight the relief that he hadn't been "just another lackey in Team Rocket".
Still, why him? What did he do to deserve everything? All the good, all the bad, everything in between? He didn't do anything to have this put upon him. He wondered if he would make the same choices if he were born into another life. Would he have just complied with orders like the two dead men in front of him? If anything, he was worse than them. They only followed orders, Feyera made his own rules. It was the one part of logic he never seemed to be able to follow all the way through. He could dogmatically follow any given method or recipe, but when it came to himself, he found he was typically making up his own standards. This might have begun in boarding school, but it was impossible for him to ever grow out of. Undoubtedly such a mentality played a part in his involvement with Progenitor and the Evercrest Programme as a whole.
"Sana…how do you know…?" he asked.
"You know you are different."
"It's this isn't it?" he pointed at the Gardevoir horn.
"That…has a lot to do with it, but—" Sana said groaning.
"—Listen if that's all you care about then—" Edge began.
"You didn't let me finish!" Sana squeaked after being interrupted.
"S—sorry," Edge said feeling apologetic. Here he was being rude to a Gardevoir that had just taken a bullet for him. "Go ahead."
She rotated her wrist gently. "I was trying to say that the reason why you are different isn't because you have this—" she motioned to her own, "—but because you know how it feels."
Feyera shook his head saying, "Sensitive."
She nodded, "I know…" The Gardevoir held off on telling him that he'd get used to it. She knew at times even she could not bear it. But at the same time, it was all she knew. Being consigned to emotions and their constituents is what made her who she was: a Gardevoir. If Edge had any idea of what that was like she wouldn't want to deter him from eventually embracing his own emotions and consequently her own. "Trust me when I say that I know."
"Yeah…hah!" Edge laughed nervously while scratching the back of his neck. "Look at me trying to explain how something feels to you, a Gardevoir. Ha…"
Sana tilted her head pressing it against his chest horn. "I…me?" she asked.
Feyera nodded. "Yeah. You. I don't see anyone else who capable of perceiving emotion like you, can you?"
Sana forced a lighthearted laugh. At least Feyera was not outright denying the fact that his psyonics stemmed from emotional components. She thought about pointing this out to him, but figured he had already done enough in terms of progressing by her standards. "You don't need to explain it veh Feyera. I can feel it just fine."
"Oh…okay. Well I guess that means you must be feeling better," he said.
"A…more than you realize…." was her solemn response.
"Sana?"
"Yeah? I feel better because I'm not bleeding anymore, that's what I meant to say."
"Huh? No. I wasn't asking about that. I just needed to know, how did you…?" Feyera trailed off looking over at the rocket's bodies.
"Oh that…*phew*…It was my Psychic. It manifests itself in nearly any form the mind deems appropriate, embellished by how I feel."
"Wait…hold on…what?" Edge asked in confusion.
"Psychic. It is my most powerful combat ability," she said rather matter-of-factly.
"No I get that Sana. It's just how…?"
"You channel emotions."
"No I mean how did you make it…?" Edge stammered. "…L—lethal?"
Sana pulled her skirt down as she sat against Feyera saying, "I didn't mean to kill him. Only…he shot me, with his gun."
"But you shut his mind right off. Look," Edge said directing a finger at the blond haired rocket.
"I…didn't mean to."
"I'm not mad at you Sana! He was a bad man and deserved to die!"
"Bad man?" she asked childishly.
"Yeah! Don't you get it? These guys are hardened criminals."
"But Chris…you were a bad man…you just were given a chance to change…to become someone new…"
Feyera froze up because he knew she was right. He was a criminal at one point. Even worse, he committed crime not for some silly Team Rocket mission statement, but for his own personal gains.
He looked down at his chest. Working with the Rockets wasn't the only cruel thing he'd done. According to the memories awakened by Fredrick's Hypnosis Procedure, what he had done to Sephiteos here on this Island was so much worse than stealing a precious artifact from the Pokemon Sanctum two years ago. And somehow the two had been undeniably connected. The Mercury Relic, cause of all this madness now faithfully caressed his left wrist. The attributes of Sephiteos remained present in physical signs unique to Gardevoir anatomy. From his heart, to his arm, to his eyes, it was all the same type of different now.
He rose his right hand, which still stung for an unknown reason, and touched the tip of the red shard on his chest with a delicate finger. The smooth sensation flowed through him and he asked Sana, "You think because of this…?"
"Veh Feyera, you…you're—"
Edge pulled his hand away from the assimilated piece of Sana's species. "I tried. I really did. And now it has to end."
"End?" Sana asked mimicking the finality of a piano's bottom note.
"Look around Sana!" Edge said pointing. "You don't belong here and neither do I. I don't know why you and your mate came to this place, but it has done nothing but bring you harm. Why stay?"
"I—I don't want to stay…I just needed to…" she said softly.
Edge demanded, "Why did you have to stay?"
Sana pressed against his heart, "B—because!"
"Right…this thing," Feyera sighed. "Let me ask you something. If by some miracle I could remove it from my human body…err I mean…If I could remove it and give this back to you…"
"You can't!" said Sana in disbelief. She nudged her hair against it further, driving more sensations into Edge's brain.
"Sana…it can't stay here forever. I was willing to live with it as a battle scar from an Electrode. Hell, I didn't have much of a choice. But now that I have the culprit of all this—" Edge said lifting his left wrist up for her to see, "—I can undo it."
"Undo?!" she said aloud. This time her mouth was able to speak sharply and loudly. Usually it was just one or the other.
Feyera jumped a little, but Sana pressing down on him mitigated the involuntary recoil. "Yeah. Everything can be undone. That's how things work. Lavoisier's Principle. Matter cannot be created nor destroyed, only changed."
"What does that mean to you? Your emotions change right? But they are always there!"
"No Sana, this is different," Feyera said with a shrug. How could he possibly teach Sana? She was like a child grounded in her own whimsical thoughts on how the world worked. True he had to extrapolate a great deal to find a viable solution to his problem, but at least logically it made sense to him. Anything done to him, and—more importantly—his cells for that matter, had to be capable of being "undone". And he had the very piece of equipment that caused the problem in the first place in his clutches.
"How is it different?" asked Sana as her elbow nudged Edge's lower rib.
"Sana…I don't know how to explain it to you. You're too entrenched in emotion to get it."
"You aren't?"
"No I—" Feyera started to say but he could just feel Sanaria's glare though she was not looking at him. "I'm just using a different method than what you are used to seeing. We have different cultures remember?"
Sana huffed out, "Sure. We used to." At this point she wanted little more than companionship, but was unable to force something like that upon Edge unless he were to miraculously become what she assumed was buried deep down inside. Still, he had recently done her a great deed, and that warranted further emotional investigation on her end. Not to mention he revealed the possibility of consigning to her culture through feigned scientific interest.
Edge raised a brow; her statement seemed a little off almost as if she had been calculating during the last few syllables. He asked her with a polite gesture of his hand in the air, "What's that supposed to mean now?"
She braced her bandaged hand with her other palm. "Means everything changed when Seph and I left our home," she fibbed. Though this was true, it was not what Feyera was asking about at all. However, she successfully derailed the conversation. And amid her desire for companionship—dormant for two years—that was the necessary action. Her rational was that by the time he found out it would have to be too late. Edge Feyera and Sanaria now shared more than he was aware of by only being recently inducted into the realm of her emotional manifold. If it were her duty to tell him, she would need to subvert that responsibility in favor of preserving the possibility of a reincarnated lost love. Still, she was beginning to see cracks in this outlook. Feyera had undoubtedly done something only Sephiteos would do through his—probably instinctual—Gardevoir actions, and it confused her mind greatly. Who was he and what was he becoming? As miniscule as it may have been, it gave her a ray of hope, and this tantalized her mind with tickling feathers of excitement.
"Nothing good comes from this island, Sana…first me and now these guys," Feyera said, still unaware of Sana's slim grin.
"Nothing?" she asked. "You aren't nothing."
He looked at the two empty Nihils, which had turned off automatically. Probably from being on for a set amount of time. Everything mechanical was based on clockwork. Even computers used sequential electrical signals derived from the basic binary format. Every tick to a tock. These mechanized crossbows were no different. He extended a hand and grasped at the one the blond had used. He dared not lift it, but instead simply pointed it further away from Sana and himself. In doing this, he could not help but notice that the bows were not foreign, clearly Kanto made based upon the Latin phrase on their stocks. In small-embroidered script by the "NIHIL RXB" branding, he read "ex nihilo nihil fit".
"Nothing comes from nothing," he said in a whisper.
"What does that mean?" she weakly asked his focused mind.
He took his hand off the quiet crossbow. "All it means is well—" Feyera garbed her with his jacket, "—you cannot have things pop out of the blue."
"Out of the blue? Like out of sadness?"
"No," Feyera laughed, surmising she meant seeing blue based on seeing sadness, for he had done the same in the past, "heh not emotional blue. I'm talking about when things exist suddenly where they did not before."
"Chris veh Feyera…" Sana said soothingly.
"I know it probably doesn't seem normal to you, and I can understand that since I'm going through a lot of different things that do not seem normal to me," Feyera tugged the black jacket against her clammy frame, hoping that it would warm her, "Emotions for instance."
"But you…" Sana started, but held herself off from antagonizing him and pointing out just how deep-seated he was in emotion, especially for a human once priding himself on rationality.
Edge swiftly answered the silence, "I care. That's all. This has nothing to do with anything else."
In disbelief she wondered just how selfless he could be. What enticed her dreamy thoughts was how selfless he could become under the right circumstances. "Veh Feyera, you care?"
Edge grunted trying to make it sound less sympathetic, and more matter-of-fact. "Course I do Sana. That's just all in a day's work for a Pokemon trainer! Hey, come to think of it, you signed up for being part of my Pokemon gang, remember?" he teased.
Sana gently prodded him saying, "Well I'm sure there are plenty of things you didn't intend on signing up for either."
"Ha me?!" Edge said in feigned alarm. "My John Hancock isn't exactly on many bottom lines!"
"Your….what?" Sana asked.
Edge smiled. She might not know all the idioms, but at least she picked up fast on the ones he taught her. "My sign of approval. A signature to warrant a legally binding agreement under the constraints of a contract—"
Sana interrupted his ramblings, "Your mark?"
Edge grinned, happy to find Gardevoir had an idea of what he was describing. "Ah yes a mark."
She giggled, "Aw, you humans still do that? That's so cute!"
Feyera looked at her in alarm, "Huh? Uhh…umm, I don't understand…?"
Sana held Edge's removed coat close to her by tugging on the sleeves. "He he! You aren't making one of those silly jokes right?"
"Jokes? No," Edge said, pretty sure that Sana would have been able to tell if he was being sarcastic with her.
She balled a loose fist with her healthy hand and pretended to stamp her bent in right leg sheathe. "You really still do that?"
Feyera was very nervous now, "W—what? You don't?!"
"Why would we?" Sana asked the path ahead of them.
"How else do you have an ordered society?! No wonder you got attacked by Dark Types."
"I…that's different, veh Feyera."
"I'm failing to see how," Edge snorted. Puzzlingly, he was probably the last figure of authority when concerning rules. He rarely kept promises unless forced to, and even then, self-indulgence usually came first. Though when he signed a document, typically he meant it. If he even bothered to read it of course. Though this seemed like a natural excuse, Feyera had been particularly meticulous about learning all the regulations for being a licensed Pokemon trainer. The license was a big deal to him after all, it meant liberation from Prevoy's Coffee and a way to overcome his fears. He studied all the rules as if he were a twelve-year-old who had to take the junior trainer's test in order to even think about obtaining a Pokemon.
"We place our trust in each other. Not in paperwork," Sana said with a smile. "It used to be done the way that you still do it though."
"The way we still do it…? You make it sound like there is another way. If everyone could just do what they wanted to, then you would have people like the Rockets taking advantage of everyone's naivety."
"What does a piece of parchment do? Does it make you do the right thing?"
This hit close to home for Feyera. "Hmm…Sana it…"
"Gardevoir agree based on feelings. We form bonds, and those make just trust each other."
"You cannot get along with everyone!" Edge stammered in disbelief. The idea of having to for bonds with everyone nauseated him. He never had many friends, and the few connections he had made were by his volition alone, it would be traumatizing to be forced into bonding with everyone to form bridges of trust. Then again, his whole experience was traumatizing.
Sana shook her head delicately saying, "Of course you can't. Ha ha, did you think we were some kind of hive race like the bug types?"
Feyera shivered, bugs were the last thing he wanted to think about.
"Are you cold?" Sana asked innocently.
"N—no," Edge said.
"If you are scared it's okay—"
"Not scared!" Feyera retorted, unaware of what she was going to accuse him of being scared of.
She pressed both of her legs against his. "Veh Feyera, I just want you to understand about us…you said you were interested right?"
Edge realized that Sana did not really know about his aversion to Bug type Pokemon yet. He sighed in relief. "Yeah." He nodded, and then clarified with a soft twist of his neck, "Scientifically."
"So I'll teach you!" she said excitedly.
"I don't need to be taught Sana. My observational skillset is more than adequate to dissect your entire culture," Feyera boasted.
"But you wanted to…" Sana weakly insisted, worrying that what he had said and what he had meant were now becoming different things.
"I'm a researcher. I research things and I learn that way."
"You'll learn with experience," she said pawing her heart, and using her hair to nudge his own.
"Experience…it's an odd contraption," Feyera admitted, not so keen on admitting his own phenomenological experience. Those were rooted in emotion after all.
"It's beautiful. Only you can have it; and you choose who you wanna share it with. Just like your heart."
Edge thought about all the times where he had shared his emotions with his Pokemon. Most of the time it was unwillingly done, or done in order to satisfy a certain end such as winning an official Pokemon League Gym Battle. Did he have a choice in the matter? Perhaps. But was he losing that ability to choose now? He shrugged knowing that indulgence meant deteriorating his capability for rational thought. Those emotions already shifted his moods like the wind. He was finding out the hard way that his thoughts were contingent upon how he felt.
Sana played with their legs, tapping Feyera's leather-bound ankle as he sat in brief thought. She continued to rub her injured hand occasionally. "I think we need to go off together," Sana said as her desiring gaze traveled to the Mercury Relic.
"Now do you see why all this needs to end? We gotta get off this island," Edge said shaking his head as the Gardevoir rested on his left shoulder looking out at the pathway ahead of them. He was thin enough where her head covered the entire region of his body from Seph's shard to the edge of his shoulder. Then again, her hair was really bulky and rounded, but it did not change the fact that he had a narrow frame. "These guys are too dangerous. Never fought something like…like that," Edge said thinking about just how lucky he was not to be hit directly by the barrage. Those were some impossible odds. "Hell, I don't even know if we should be breaking into their stronghold."
She then said with determination, "We have to…for Brucie."
"There might be another way," Edge said lacking conviction. "We should have found the yacht…"
"This is the way, veh Feyera…we just made a wrong turn and hit a bump," she insisted. "You made a choice and I'm going to stick with it until you see it through."
"How can you be so calm at a time like this!" he shouted at her, realizing just how emotional the entire sequence of events had been. He wanted to meet with Ein one way or another, but this recent event had certainly dampened the arrogance he once held. He felt his moods shifting radically the more he thought about how his pathways to remove the Gardevoir attributes anchored to his body were becoming evermore thorny.
"Because," Sana insisted, "…because we're going to do this together. And when we do you'll…*cough* *cough*"
Feyera was unsure of where she was going with this. Together? What was the point? It seemed arbitrary for her to have latched onto his ideas so quickly following their falling out. Unless she secretly wanted to romance him again, he was not sure. Then again, Sana and he had been clear concerning that matter by somewhat talking it out. He didn't want to upset things further so he uncritically said, "I know but…"
As her finger hovered millimeters above his crimson shard's smooth ridge, she said with an insipid exhale, "Thank you, for taking some of the pain from me. Thanks for taking it upon yourself, that was…wonderful…I…"
Edge looked at his hand, absolutely stupefied. He never intended to take any of the pain away from Sana, and yet his body had once again done something without his permission. That or he had done it subconsciously. It was confusing. It was one of those things he would have done if asked to, seeing her hurt did force him to feel empathetic; it was strange to not even be questioned if that was what he wanted to do. He felt the dissonance, the control versus impulse separate his mind, cleaving it apart. Finally, Edge murmured, "Y—yeah…you would have done the same for me."
At this she laughed, "Ha…veh Feyera! I already have. You know that."
"Listen, we gotta get off this roadway. It's too dangerous to stay here," Edge motioned to the woods. "We—we'll take another way. These patrols are too tough to face head-on."
Happy to see Feyera's rational side agree with her initial plan, Sana bowed her head in quiet agreement.
"We have to stick close to the pathway though if we wanna—"
"There is another way."
"What's that Sana?" he asked her disturbingly still body.
"The doctors have a building spanning the bay. It has two entrances. Well three if you count where you came out of last time."
Feyera nervously grinned, unsure if 'you' meant him, Seph, or both of them.
She went on, oblivious to his apprehension caused by her choice of words, "Both are waterways. I dunno where this road goes, but it must be connecting to the larger harbor."
"So there are two harbors in one bay?" Edge asked, knowing his memory of the place's architecture had been wiped.
"I—I think…one of them is on the part with the land. I think that is where this road goes. And think about all these Pokemon they use," she said pointing at the roadway's various hooves and treadmarks.
"I don't think these are just Pokemon," Feyera said worriedly.
"Whatever they are, they need a big home!"
"Ha ha yeah," he chuckled at her rational. "They sure do."
"So we can try and sneak in the other way, closer to the water. The bay is shaped like a Ponyta's shoe, and the doctor building has two ways in."
"Wait hold up Sana," Edge said as she began to rise off him.
"Hmm?"
"I…" he wanted to ask her why she called the scientists of Cipher 'doctors'. Most of them weren't. Even still, how did she even know what a medical doctor was? "Why doctors?"
Sana made a sour face, "I don't know, that's what they wanted to be…you should know—"
"No I mean why are you calling them all 'doctors'? Most of them are scientists and researchers. Like me. They aren't your hospital docs," Feyera said thinking about Doctor Fuji. Though he had worked at Evercrest, he was an actual physician. It must have been a shame to lose him. No wonder the compassion of the Evercrest Programme had left with him.
She turned her slender body to face him, resting on her knees and hands. "That's what Seph told me you were when you escaped. That's the name they gave you in there, veh Feyera."
"Well…I'm not a doctor. Having a doctorate doesn't make you a doctor Sana," Edge said. He could only imagine how that identity would get tacked onto him. Probably some intern's idea of a joke. Maybe even a nickname. The possibilities were endless. It could have been something as silly as him having surgeon-like hands. Who knows? The interesting thing was that Sephiteos was perceptive enough to pick up on little things like that amid all the torture of Progenitor. "The fellas in there aren't doctors either. They aren't helping anyone I assure you." Still in the back of his mind, Feyera wondered if they could help him.
"Okay. It doesn't matter. I think you would be a great doctor."
"Listen Sana, I'm not a physician. Doctors have medical degrees! I only had a doctorate in genetics, but even that's gone!" Edge shouted, barely able to hold back blaming Sana yet again for his numerous problems.
"Whatever," she said, "'Mister' Feyera."
"Humph," Edge grunted as he slowly lifted himself off the ground. He wobbled quite a lot, and found himself expending more energy to just mentally keep his balance. As the sunlight continued to warm his body he sighed. He was definitely going to wind up burnt.
Sana watched him from the ground, and wrapped the coat around her body.
He reached out a hand to Sana, and she clutched at it enthusiastically. She rose up to approximately his height. "There you go—" Edge started to say before being pulled down unexpectedly by her tugging as they fell down.
"Ouch!" cried Sana as she hit the ground.
"Oof. What the heck?" Feyera asked her.
She grew flushed, "Sorry. I just fell down. My body doesn't have enough strength."
"Yeah sure! You took me down with you. That's more than enough strength," Feyera lied, knowing how physically weak he was. He felt like even a child could topple him. Although Sana was not a child, she did not weigh much more than one hundred or so pounds. He weighed marginally more than that, but only because of dominant human characteristics. Still, for him to tip a scale above one thirty would be something else. Skinniness came with weakness.
"I didn't mean to hurt you," Sana admitted.
"Hey that didn't hurt, it was just unexpected," Feyera retorted. It did hurt him. The sensation of falling onto the ground being relayed to his mind multiple times made the sensation so much worse. He could even slightly feel what Sana felt when she fell down. Everything dealing with sensation was integrated seamlessly into the manifold of Feyera's unstable consciousness.
"Heh. I forgot how tough you were," Sana joked, recalling how much of a rage he had gone into when she revealed to him that he was in fact delicate.
Much to his displeasure, he could not believe her sardonic words, and instead played along with the lie, seeking consolation in humor. "Yeah better watch out since I arm wrestle Machoke in my spare time."
"Arm wrestle?" she asked him.
"Yeah, like this—" he said gripping her healthy hand and swinging it side to side.
"It's a new handshake!" She smiled.
"Not really, heh. You see who is stronger by fighting the other arm back and pushing it onto the ground."
"So like this?" she asked as her thin arm pressed against his entirely. She didn't realize that you were only supposed to connect hands, not rub arms against each other.
He nudged hers back, "Err kinda, I think you got it."
Then her eyes glowed as she said playfully, "I think I know how to win then."
"Wait don't!" Feyera cut her off as she mentally forged their arms together in a unified action to bring his to the dirt first.
"I win," she said smugly.
Feyera shook his head, "No you can't use your psyonics, that's cheating!"
She giggled and rubbed her eyes, visualizing the absurd picture: a lanky human challenging a creature of ninety percent muscle to a battle of strength without any mental provisions. "Hehe, my! My, veh Feyera, you never cease to surprise!" she remarked girlishly.
"Well yeah. I'm surprising myself all the time," Feyera admitted. Sure these 'surprises' were not the nicest, but they were usually shocking. Especially when considering the current attributes overtaking his body. What had happened to his arm all of a sudden? He needed a microscope to see what the cells there had undergone, but at the same time, he was able to simply feel the difference. This greatly puzzled the young man.
"I know. And that is a part of growing up. I went through that, I still am," she said quietly.
"Heh well at least we have that in common," Feyera said, consoled by her words but not by their implied meaning.
"Oh yes. That is important."
Feyera twisted his mouth at that judgment. "Okay. Sure."
She got to her feet and lifted off her knee with a slight wobble; quickly, she tightened her grip on Feyera's hand.
He nodded, "Okay, so let's get up together then."
The both got up carefully. They stood in the sunlight as the day shimmered off their faces in countless rays. She smiled politely at him, happy to feel his cooperation.
"That wasn't—whoa!—" he said stumbling a little, but catching himself in the nick of time by looking at up Sana's distraught face. "Heh, not so bad." He could not help but feel as though their shared weakness was being ping-ponged between the two of them. Much like Sana's injury, it traveled through them. Speaking of the injury, his right hand was now feeling a lot better ever since she had wrapped her palm in Gardevoir fabric.
"Thanks for helping me again," Sana said.
As Feyera looked over at the rockets to his right, he thought of an idea. "Sana. We can use their uniforms to sneak in to Evercrest!"
"Their vile clothes?!" she asked, clearly repulsed. It wasn't a bad idea, but the thought made her squeamish.
"Yeah! Simple. They would normally see you if you were wearing what you have on now. Pastels and whites are sure to make em double-take!"
"I…they'll be distracted by my colors?"
"Come on Sanaria, I'm not saying it's a perfect plan."
"Mmm…" she pouted.
"All you have to do is put the shirt and pants on top of what you're wearing. No big deal, you are thin enough where it'll fit," Feyera said denoting her rail figure with his tracing eyes.
Edge walked over to the blond rocket and began taking off the man's outerwear, leaving him only in his undergarments.
Sana waved a hand in front of her nose, "But…but…it smells bad!"
Feyera knew it did, the sweat gave it an odor. "Sana, I'll have to wear one of these too. If you don't, then we won't be able to sneak in."
"I…" she said knowing how much she wanted to travel with him and be with him for every step of the progressive unlocking of his potential. "Fine…" Sana clutched the garments and quickly began putting them over her clothes. First, she slipped her leg guarded feet into the baggy pants. As she put the rest of the uniform on, Feyera bounded over to the other rocket's body and began to strip that one as well.
When he had finished removing the uniform from the brown haired rocket that he had killed, he sighed. The last time he had worn a Team Rocket uniform, he had been a crook. Its price was embedded in his chest, locking itself in as a perpetual reminder of the cost of evil.
He put his narrow legs through the uniform, but realized that his jeans became caught in the fabric. Seemed like he would have to take those off. He turned around and looked over at Sana. What he saw made his jaw drop.
"Something the matter?" she asked innocently.
"Sana, you're…" Feyera started to say but he could not find the words. Though the fabric was somewhat saggy, the fact that she had a short skirt on underneath it made the sight impressive.
She was coated in the ebony blackness of the uniform, and its dark accents matched her pale mint green tone. Even her Gardevoir horn seemed to naturally project out of the straight vertical line in the letter "R" emblazed on the top's center.
"Chris veh Feyera?" she asked. "Did I do it wrong?"
"N—no. You just look so natural…how did you…?"
"I look natural in this vile piece of attire?! What the heck are you trying to say mister?!" she ordered.
"Sana, I'm not trying to say that you look bad, it is that you look good in anything, even this," Feyera said quickly covering his bases. Secretly he liked seeing Sana dressed in something darker such as this. It made her look much more like an angel of death. But he promptly dismissed this minor fascination. "I think you pull it off really well."
"Aw you think so? I pull it off really well?" she aped.
"Yeah I would even say—" Edge started off, but her stern glare told him to stop revealing his twisted thoughts.
"Just put yours on mister."
"Um…okay," he said walking towards the woods.
"Where are you going!?" she ordered.
"Relax, I have to take my pants off and well I need privacy."
"Privacy?"
"Yes," Feyera blushed, "I don't want you to see me in my underwear."
"Your…? Oh!" she exclaimed connecting the dots at a Slugma's pace. She saw that he had already undone his belt holster.
"Yeah. Just hold up and wait for me then," Feyera said nervously rushing into the underbrush.
"Okay," he heard her say from behind.
Once a few paces under the cover of trees and bushes, he took his Alterieno leather boots off with a long sigh. Luckily, his feet were still as human as the rest of him. He sighed softly in relief. Then he removed his pants and exposed his skinny legs. They were thin, but not beyond what people would define as "having Torchic legs".
"Dammit," he cursed. Balling up his denim jeans, he threw them to the side. He then stuck a leg through the pants and proceeded to lift his other leg up as well.
Suddenly he felt something against his shoulder. He winced and turned around only to find it was a leaf.
Shrugging, he put on the pants and made an effort to tighten them securely with his original Pokemon trainer's belt holster. Feyera took off his button down shirt, revealing his core completely. It was merged with his flesh, and just as much a part of him as say a limb. The way that the Gardevoir heart snuggly melted into his body was testament to how it had emerged from within him.
"Gotta…gotta fix this," he impulsively said as he ran his fingers along the crimson shard's base.
Taking the uniform and pulling it over his head he fidgeted with it for a while, whilst walking back out towards Sana. He poked his head through and saw her in front of him.
"You don't look too bad yourself," she said mockingly.
Feyera continued to grapple with the fabric. "Well it is not working!" he shouted at the fabric which refused to take into account his Gardevoir horn.
"Hey, don't rip it!" Sana said with a faint smile.
He continued to struggle. Getting his head and arms through took little effort. Though the Mercury Relic was a tad bulky on his wrist, the artifact's overall exterior constitution was sleek enough to slide through the fabric. "GAH!" he shouted at the shard impeding the uniform.
"Veh Feyera, get over here!" Sana ordered as if speaking to a child.
"Nuhh…" he muttered, taking the garment and tugging downwards against his exposed heart. He felt the fabric slide against it and stretch, refusing to puncture.
She began to walk over to him. He still remained transfixed in his struggle. Usually he would cut holes into material that did not have buttons going all the way down.
Sana pointed in his face, taking his eyes off the uncooperative piece of cloth.
"W—what?!" Feyera demanded. He was as upset about being unable to wear a simple shirt as any man would be. It was humiliating.
"Look at my eyes," Sana said as he followed her finger to her face.
"Sana…it doesn't fit the stupid shard is in the way!"
She then tightly clutched his shard through the material and spoke to his panicked expression, "Relax, don't call it stupid."
"It's in the way!" Feyera said.
Sana sighed. "Just…just look at mine for a moment, okay?"
Though Edge was antagonistic to the idea at first, he did look down at hers. The way it split between the fibers of the Team Rocket uniform she now wore mesmerized the young man. It was all so perfect, so seamless. Even with her relatively flat chest, the shard managed to split out of the anatomically correct location, between her breasts and out of the central "R". As he watched the piece of their shared anatomy rise and fall, he could not help but feel its burning pulse.
She continued to watch him as her body came close to his. Her eyes glistened as a smooth red aura overtook their external region. Feyera had to look through this Psychic shielding window of hers in order to see her cherry irises. In astonishment, his own vision began to become coated in scarlet as his eyes adapted a similar external aura.
"Sana, I…!" Feyera said now aware of what she had been doing. She was linking their minds.
She nudged his heart with a fingertip. "Shh just relax. You're like a little Ralts…sheesh…"
"N—no!" he refused, but the sensation was too much, for even with the grunt's clothing separating her hand from his horn, he could not deny the sensitivity imposed there.
"Veh Feyera, relax!" she ordered, as one would command a child.
"I…urghhh…noooooo!" he moaned as his heart filled with heat. He desperately grasped at Sana's shoulders and brought his eyes away from her glowing heart, to look up at her shimmering ruby eyes. "Please no!" he gasped as the sensation of mental unification set in.
Sanaria sternly straightened her gaze as the surging mental waved collided, hers taking direction of his own. "Calm down."
"Don't—you'll never…!" Feyera shouted in agony as he felt his chest tighten in a mixture of fear and assurance. The paradoxical influx caused his mind to be sent off in many directions. Through this frenzy, he felt his body shake in emotional overload.
"For goodness sake, Chris veh Feyera, it's only a—" Sana said as he instinctually fidgeted with her worn uniform's shoulders, "—donning; stop your struggling!"
"Nehh…no!" he said as he felt the heat from his heart begin to split the fabric. Every fiber of the grimy, sweat infested rocket's uniform pressed against his Gardevoir horn. He looked down to see it splitting forth out of the fabric, reminiscent of his dream memory.
As the burning heart pierced through, splitting fiber from fiber, Edge could do little but gawk at the sight. He felt as if he were experiencing this emergence of a heart shard all over again.
"Good now—" Sana said, joyously seeing the fabric tearing along the heated rim's perimeter, "A little touch."
Feyera fervently attempted to pull away, however she was too quick in applying pressure upon both sides of his Gardevoir heart shard.
Edge muttered incomprehensively as the Gardevoir pressed both her palms against his lungs, pushing the fabric against him. He took in a deep inhalation as the rush of heat lulled when she removed her hands from his ribcage. Looking down, he saw the red horn projecting out of the rocket uniform's crimson "R". It was a perfectly clean incision. No rips or tears. He was used to using scissors to make room for the scar, but now that seemed archaic.
Sana watched his amazed expression. Her voice gently resounded, "So…what do you think?"
"This?!" Feyera touched the horn. "What did you do to me?!"
"Just a part of donning. Something adults do all the time. Don't you have similar rituals?"
Feyera thought about this. Maybe tying a tie. That was the closest example he could think of. Still, it was strange to have his body give off such acute heat to cleave fabric. "No!" he argued.
"Oh…well. I should have warned you."
"Why?!" he asked the shard on his chest. "Why does it do that?!"
Sana looked at his puzzled face, "That's the way it is veh Feyera. How else did you intend on fitting clothes?"
"Cutting them apart with a pair of scissors!"
"Scizor the Pokemon?" she asked with a faint grin.
Edge rocked his head back and forth in defiance. "N—no chopping the garment down the middle. Heck even Brucie could do it for me. Or wear things similar to what I wore before. My collared shirt had an opening."
"Oh. Well these 'Team Rocket' uniforms did not grant the both of us that luxury," Sana spoke plainly.
"Haa…I…" Edge gasped at his new attire. The way it fit against his horn was undeniably more appropriate than prior attempts to make it suitable.
"This was your idea of infiltrating the building right?" she asked, fighting back laughter.
He did not like what he was being put through, but the fact remained that they both at least resembled Team Rocket members from a distance. "Yeah but I didn't expect you to do this…!" he recoiled away from her and pulled on his new uniform's contours, tucking it into his waistline.
"Veh Feyera, you helped me out, now I'm going to help you."
"Well what if I don't want help Sana!"
She looked at his chest shard, "Your body wants help. Just like mine did when I was hit by the rocket's attack."
"You—you can't explain that to me. It is completely foreign," Edge insisted, whilst deep in denial.
"You can overcome it though, that's why we need to work together as a team."
Feyera growled at her logic, but realized it was sound. "Fine. Just promise me one thing."
"What?!" Sana asked surprised. She prayed that he hadn't discovered she was withholding information from him.
"The next time you show me your fancy Gardevoir…stuff, at least warn me."
"I…I can do that for you veh Feyera. I'm sorry for startling you just now."
Edge sighed. Despite all the turmoil, he was happy to find the rocket uniform snuggly fitting. He and Sana made quite a pair, and since rockets always traveled in groups of at least two outside of base, they were pretty much set.
He padded his uniform so that it lay smoothly against where the horn projected, a job Sanaria had only half completed. He said to her, "So, let's do this now…shall we?"
The Gardevoir smiled. "Yes. Let's. Follow me and take my hand," she said reaching out to him.
Feyera grasped it and they both walked into the jungle's thicket paralleling the artificial roadway.
Always keeping the clearing in sight, Feyera and Sana progressed quietly, his hand in hers as they approached a larger clearing. Two paths emerged, and Sana tugged him towards the one that was less trampled upon by machinery. If she was right, then there were at least two ways to sneak into the Evercrest facility.
As they wandered southwards, it became evident that humans were around. And quite honestly, this came as little surprise when in the distance, they could see two other members of Team Rocket. Behind them lay a much more interesting sight however.
A massive steel building, seemingly built into the land itself projected from the earth where the foliage stopped. Its gapping metal doors were barely guarded, yet maintained fortitude through the numerous cameras keeping sentry.
Feyera and Sana knelt down near a leafy plant on the edge of the forest. She braced his shoulder as they honed in on the rocket's conversation.
"Say, our shift over yet?" said the shorter rocket to his taller partner.
The taller man took a swift glance with his blue eyes down at his silver wristwatch. "No. Still a couple more minutes before shift change."
Feyera nudged Sana softly. She pressed her face against his nodding in agreement.
The shorter rocket kicked some dirt, "Ahh rats."
"Least we ain't doing anything but guard duty. Ya hear about that guy who tried to cross the Chief here?"
"Yeah, frickin' hell man, that stuff still gives me nightmares. I'd rather have been executed on the spot."
"Guess he wanted to make an example to the other scientists."
"Yeah but you gotta admit that was some f'd up shit man."
"Trust me, I once thought I'd seen it all too. Like I said before, least we are only guards. Half the time Chief pretends we don't even exist. And heck, I don't even understand half the words he says."
"Cha, guess it's an easy enough job. Stand around; take care of any Pokemon that get too close to the base. Pull the trigger, fer a nice quick pop, 'n one, two!" the shorter rocket exclaimed pointing his firearm at imaginary local Pokemon.
"Humph. I still haven't had to kill any of the blighters yet."
"That's cause you suck at shooting Will."
"Shut the hell up ya little turd."
"Easy pal, no need to get riled up just cause ya ain't a crack shot. Say what kinda nonsense is the new mandate?"
"You mean the one Chief just ordered?"
"Yeah treats us like dogs. The pay's good, but hell I can't wait for his 'new guest' to leave."
"Humph. You're right. We're not allowed to be seen until mister smarty-pants finishes his meeting with the so-called 'Ephemera'."
"Yeah what I wanna know is what kinda brain dead idiot comes all the way out to this island, sees all that's built here and not question the reason for it being here! Makes me wanna bash the little sucker's face in!"
"Well blimey, I don't know Will. Not everyone's as shrewd as us."
"Say yer new here right? Ta the organization 'n all."
"Yeah, thought I told you that last time we were on a shift together."
"Well yeah, you gotta understand I'm pretty new on the job too. Got transferred from Celadon after that incident."
"Freakin' Rockets oughta get their shit together with Cipher breathing down their necks and all. First two years ago and now that whole Kanto HQ bust."
Edge smiled, knowing he was the cause of both these problems. Sana looked over at him, ready to make a move based on his signal. He was the one who had actually done stuff like this before. She hoped that he would guide her safely; he had already shown that he was capable of protecting her from pain, but her anxiety persisted.
He gripped her hand and pointed a finger into the air signaling "Wait."
The two rocket guards continued to banter. "Well hopefully after our privileged guest leaves we get a transfer. The heat here on Penta is awful isn't it?."
"S'ain't just the heat, it's the humidity too."
"Kinda sinks down on you."
"Yeah pressing down, getting under your skin."
"Ugh is break nearly over? I can't take it any longer."
"Pfft…still got five minutes but what the hell, let's go inside a little early and get some AC."
"Heh, now there's a rocket that's going places, Terry, ya always got the good ideas," said Will as the two of them then turned and walked past the metal door. "They oughta make ya boss er somethin'…"
As the two rockets approached the facility, its metal door opened and then they walked inside with little problem. Neither of them even faced the facility's apparent cameras. Despite all the security, the door was motion sensing.
Seeing their inky black uniforms retreat into the confides of the building, Feyera jumped up and said, "Now's our chance!"
"O—okay!" Sana stammered in a rush to stay with him.
He ran out of the thicket towards the facility's gated metal doors, Sana close behind him. Their quick pace was augmented by seeing the vertically sliding door begin to slide close, clicking as the gears began to push it back. Deftly they dashed underneath it and took a quick breath as the metal sealed behind them.
"*Pant pant* That was much easier than I thought it would be," Edge said still out of breath. He had little stamina. Sana too shared this feature; he could tell from her worm face that rushing to the partially open door had taken much out of her. She held her mouth open in awe.
As cold air entered their lungs, the two peered at the enormous facility. From where they had entered, there were a few glass panels revealing various sections of the building's deeper annexes. There was a large empty warehouse structure to their right further down, and on the left appeared to be a dimly lit corridor.
"Where'd the baddies go?" Sana asked worriedly.
Edge looked around and then heard laughter coming from a nearby room labeled "Break Room". He grinned manically, "Bumbling idiots, taking time off! Everything is going in our favor Sana!"
"Everything?" she asked.
"Yeah, we're in like Flynn," Feyera replied. "Now just to find this Ein character…" he trailed off looking in both directions.
"Do you remember any of this veh Feyera?" Sana stressfully asked.
"No. But let's follow the main passageway," he said pointing left. Then he looked down at their outfits, "We look Rockety enough."
Sana feigned a laugh. They might have had the Team Rocket uniforms on, but that did little to stop the astute observer from noticing Sana's mint green hair. And both of their Gardevoir hearts for that matter. Though the crimson shards projected out from an equally red "R", anyone—even if they weren't colorblind—could tell that there was something off about their respective chest's anatomy.
As they pranced down the empty wide corridors, tapping their feet against the metal grated floors, there was little sign of any activity whatsoever. The place seemed vacated. It worried Feyera a great deal. This was Evercrest, the forefront of Pokemon study and genetic engineering.
The place where they now found themselves was an empty shell.
Edge turned to look at Sana as they reached the end of the corridor. An intimidating door loomed ahead; its partially obscured contents a mystery. It was at least twice their height, and its stiff rodded hinges would be difficult to open if it were not already left open ajar. As he looked at her determined face, Feyera could not help but feel déjà vu. She nodded affectionately at him, vigilantly keeping an eye out for any activity.
Together, Chris and Sana both pressed against it. The door shifted fully open with a squeak and light poured out from within. They carefully walked inside, unsure of what to find.
The dark facility was perfectly illuminated in this massively tall room. It was like a large warehouse, only completely empty. The high vaulted ceilings and metal walls made Edge question what kind of a place this really was. He looked over at the end of the room and saw that there was an indoor harbor there leading to Chrono Island's bay. The roofed docks were complete with small watercrafts and other vehicles for local use.
In disbelief, he simply held onto Sanaria's hand, hoping it was all real. However, he noticed that her hand had grown rather cold.
Feyera looked up at her face to see that she was no longer looking in the direction that he was. He could only see the back of her hair. His mind frantically considered what she would be looking back at.
Then suddenly a soft click snapped the silence, echoing in the huge room. It was the unmistakable notching of a firearm. Edge's blood ran cold when he heard a familiar voice whose tone was unrecognizable.
"Put your hands where I can see them! Mister Feyera, you're under arrest!"