His mission had gone from liberating to nearly unbearable over the past few days. What had begun as an intriguing scientific mystery had, in the two days since he'd arrived, become a fetid, rotting, seeping mess on the lab's foyer floors, in the hallways; the otherwise preserved bodies, now touched by new air and circulation since 005 broke the seal, had quickly started rotting.
The sight of dead Pokémorphs was not something 005 found particularly troublesome: his father's experiments often went wrong, and he had spent enough time in the crematorium to be desensitized to dead flesh. Still, the sight of his brethren just lying there had touched him, and he had taken a few hours that first night to try and do something for them.
He had read about the human custom of burying the dead, but the idea repulsed him. Storing carcasses underground seemed time consuming, useless, and disrespectful, so he eliminated that from his options straight away.
He then had tried to find this facility's crematorium, but found nothing but a boiler room and a kitchen, neither of which would serve his purposes. He then considered building a bonfire and burning all the bodies, but there had to be at least seventy dead researchers here, and the pyre required to accomplish this task quickly could potentially attract unwanted attention.
In the end, he settled for psychically shoving them all in a corner, piled on top of one another, and throwing sheets he found in living quarters overtop of them, and focusing on the task at hand. Callous, he knew, but his mission was more important than mourning strangers. Of course, two days later, he was regretting this decision, as the sagging, damp pile of dead flesh continued to decay and turn his stomach sour.
No, at the time, he was much more concerned about himself. Seeing that many dead Pokémorph, and stepping into the preserved environment that appeared to have killed them all instantaneously was more than disquieting to 005; it was the first time he could honestly attest to having felt fear. It was not until he discovered a video log several hours later, left by one of the scientists, that he finally relaxed.
They had called it Project Empathy. There had been a small movement, years ago, where ordinary humans (much to 005's surprise) had rallied together to support public awareness and the inclusion of Pokémorphs in their society. The movement had been hushed up quickly, but its core members refused to be silent. They gathered enough support to come here, to this island, with sympathetic researchers and scientist among the general humanitarians and press-aids, and set out to force the world to see their point of view.
To do this, they began to engineer a serum, dubbed the Hyperion Virus, that could be released in gaseous form. When it was perfected, this virus would latch on to the host's DNA and forcibly rewrite it, fusing the human code with that of a random Pokémon's, essentially turning the infected into a Pokémorph within a few days. It was designed to force the public to both see their fellow sentient creatures as the people they were, and to prove their existence to the world in a public spectacle. If so many were turned, how could the rest ignore them?
It was not difficult, then, to figure out what had happened to this lab. Evidently, one of the canisters of unperfected virus had ruptured, spread throughout the building, and transformed everyone quicker than their bodies could cope. This also meant that 005 was in no danger, as he was already a Morph, and thus the virus had no pure human DNA to latch onto.
005, having thus solved the mystery of the lab, was then keenly interested on obtaining all the information on the virus and securing samples of the product to take home. This, however, was not going easily for him.
"You goddamn stupid piece of-" 005 muttered. His clothes were filthy from crawling around in service tubes trying to override the emergency lockdown protocols. He hated being dirty; at home, he was always as clean as his pristine white surroundings, but now his face, his hair, and his fur were all covered in disgusting grease and grime as he wriggled from zone to zone. So far, he had succeeded in getting to the servers and downloading the data, but the lab containment facility was proving immune to his charms.
He leaned his head against the wall, banging on the metal doorframe with a frustrated fist. He was not used to failure.
"Please," he mumbled. He had tried cursing at it, tried sweet talking the wiring, bargaining, and screaming; now he was trying begging. He was a student of biology, not programming, and he was frustrated with his ineptitude.
The smell was making him gag. He put up a psychic barrier around it, but the smell had already penetrated anything porous, including his filthy clothes, so he dropped it and slumped into a sitting position.
He needed his sister here. Badly. They had been designed as a sort of yin and yang of the sciences: him, the sciences of the living, including sociology, genetics, and psychology, and her the sciences of the inanimate: engineering, electronics, programming, and mechanics. 004 was the techie; if his sister was here, she would have been through days ago. She had been made before him, implanted with technical knowledge before she was tube-birthed, but she had…flaws.
Latias: sensitive to the emotions of people, as a Pokédex would say. Father, concerned more with imparting data onto a blank brain, had failed to see her neural pathways develop until it was too late to fix her. She felt everything, to the point of not being able to feel her own emotions unless absolutely alone for miles around. Her coping mechanism had developed in two ways: to either feel only what a single person was feeling (for this reason, she stayed around 003, whose emotions were almost always positive), or to cut off emotion completely, and sever herself from everyone. Both caused her daily migraines, and 005 felt for her, and was quietly bitter at his father's poor attention during her development.
He, on the other hand…Latios: Intelligent, illusionist, faster than sound…A tender Pokémon that dislikes fighting…
That last one, not so much. Not in this Latios morph, anyway.
He wandered over to the pile of corpses and started digging through name badges. On a flickering pad held in his left hand, he scrolled through the names of the administrators. He found their chief techie, one George Wilson, and studied his picture. A few squelching minutes later, he found the badge, and its adjoining person, a purple skinned man with a grotesque bulbous tail and giant ears.
"Aipom," 005 said in disgust. The rotting tail-hand looked about to burst; he contained it in a bubble and severed it, so that it wouldn't interfere with his plans.
He studied the bloated face. The eyelids were purple, puffy and shut; he carefully telepathically removed them, praying that the eyes and hands would be unchanged. The eyes beneath them were a green-brown, which seemed to match his photo on file.
He levitated the corpse over to the console, stepping over the other bodies and cursing himself for having not thought of that before. He was the biological one, not the techie one, and he should have remembered that from the start, instead of trying to be something he wasn't.
He left the corpse floating there in its little bubble while he sat down and went through the commands again. After a bit of tinkering, he managed to get the override lockdown screen up, which required an admin's thumbprint, voice print, and eye scan.
As he floated the corpse in front of the scanner, holding it steady as he could, he flipped through the audio logs until he found one by the dead man. It was some sentimental piece about his daughter's birthday, but it would do. Holding the datapad up to the mic, he played it and pressed the corpse's thumb to the print scanner.
The click of the doors beginning their unlock sequence was one of the sweetest sounds 005 had ever heard in his short life.
Admiral Bradley Aries stood on the deck of the HNS Destiny, admiring the way his Pelipper gracefully landed in the water near the ship. His smiling was involuntary and genuine as he watched her preen herself and call to the wild Wingulls soaring above her.
He ran a hand through his short, dark brown hair and leaned straightened his uniform. He was turning 40 this Sunday; he was sure that Ashley was busily planning his "surprise" party, gathering streamers, going through cake recipes, inviting his civilian friends and devising ways of inviting his fellow military officers without alerting him to their plans. The smile on his weatherbeaten face widened, and he scratched a bit of stubbly cheek.
"Unusual to see you so cheerful," came a smug voice from his left. His real smile immediately became a forced one, and he turned to face John Hanson, a fellow Admiral; his visits, in Brad's eyes, could never be short enough.
"What were you thinking about?" Hanson asked, and, for once, he simply sounded curious. Brad tried to shrug off the prickly feeling he gave him, and answered him politely.
"I was thinking about Ashley," he said, and his smile regained a bit of its sincerity. "I'm scheduled two weeks shore leave, starting tomorrow."
"How is she doing?" Brad was again surprised by his longtime rival being so friendly, and he was not going to reject him unprovoked.
"Fine, last I heard. Ashley was writing a piece for the Johto Times on keeping Remoraid and Mantyke in the same tank without provoking evolution. Some kind of behavioral training."
"And Alice?"
Brad tensed. He doubted Hanson was ignorant to the fact that his daughter had run away eight months ago with that...boy, if you could call him that. He didn't delude himself that his admiralty status exempted him from rumors below decks, but there was no way to call him on it without breeching professional courtesy.
"Her last letter said she was...well settled." He hoped his terseness would cue Hanson to leave. Luckily, it worked, and with a vague shrug, he went belowdecks.
Or, at least, he tried to. At the same time he opened the door, a young officer tumbled out onto the deck. Hanson laughed and tried to skirt past him, but the officer stuttered an urgent "W-W-Wait!" and scrambled to his feet. He stared Brad in the face, and he saw the boy's eyes were terrified.
"What happened?" he asked, urgently.
"It's..." He choked up.
"Spit it out, man!" Hanson said, rounding on him.
"L-Lilycove," he said.
"Yes?" Brad pressed, a dark feeling settling in his stomach.
"It's...gone."
"What do you mean, gone," Hanson said, skeptically.
"A-Airstrike," he managed. "At least, we think. Fires everywhere. Huge causalities. We don't know-"
John Hanson ran belowdecks; Brad knew it was to call his own ships to immediately move to Lilycove. He started to move to give that order himself, but the officer stopped him.
"Sir - You've been ordered not to go to Lilycove."
"Why?" Brad snapped, turning around. The officer turned his holo-pad around to show him a map of Kanto, with a blinking red spot flashing off the south coast.
"Um, it's above my clearance level. Something about an explosion on an island around Cinnebar. You better call-"
But Brad was already pushing past him, heading to the com station. His mind was reeling.
Ashley. Ashley. Oh, please, Ashely, be alright.
005's day was just getting better and better. He had found a sealed bag of lab uniforms (almost in his size!) and taken them, the data pads, and the 36 undamaged vials of serum he had discovered in the vault. Now, after securing the vials and electronics in his pack, he was enjoying a cleansing bath in the sea.
His red eyes took in the mostly overcast sky, drawn to the few patches of blue peaking through. The smoke left a pretty trail at the edges of his vision, orange flicking up every once in a while to light the grey cloud. He kicked his legs and swam further from shore, the Tentacool avoiding this mysterious newcomer.
He flipped into a treading position, and beckoned one closer. She hesitated, but with a smile and a laugh (and a touch of telepathy), she floated towards him. Careful to avoid her tentacles, he stroked her head gently. It was barely different than touching water, the membrane was so thin, but as his fingertips moved along the gelatinous surface, she almost sang her name in joy. Apparently Tentacool like being petted.
005 liked being out in the sea, though he didn't often get to go outside. It was easy to forget the taste of salt water living in a lab in a forest, or the feel of sand and sun. He let the Tentacool drift away as he lay on his back again and looked up at the sky.
"Huh."
There were now distinct white lines in his overcast sky that hadn't been there before. His first thought was dammit, they'll see the smoke and call it in, but then he noticed a detail that chilled him in the warm water.
There hadn't been any sound.
He rocketed towards the shore, his eyes only flicking momentarily away from the sky. Military. It had to be military. Why had he set the whole place on fire? He had probably tripped an alarm on a surveillance satellite and beamed his location directly to the damned Hoenn command. He didn't bother with the new clothes, but grabbed his pack and kicked off hard from the ground.
He coated himself in a psionic shield and broke the sound barrier with a hard mental push. At the same time, he set up psychic mirrors to give him visibility behind him. He only hoped it would be enough.
As two sleek, black planes descended from the blanketing grey clouds, accompanied by a Crobat.
And a Swellow, but he didn't see that one, as it was already high above him. He felt it, however, when it dive-bombed sharply into his shield.
His concentration broke and he tumbled downward. His head was reeling from the combination of psychic break and being suddenly at the mercy of gravity. The Swellow dove again, its talons tearing into his naked side and leaving deep gashes.
The pain, however, was what he needed to focus, and in one swift motion, he grabbed the Swellow by the wing and snapped his hand back sharply. It screeched and plummeted.
005 reestablished his shield and mirrors, looking around to find the three other assailants. One of the planes was nowhere to be seen, and the Crobat had gone missing as well.
A thin smile crossed 005's face. The Swellow he would feel guilty about; the chances of it being able to Roost before it fell to its death in the ocean were slim, but humans?
Humans were target practice.
He held his hands a foot apart and began charging a beautiful ball of white light. It soon enveloped him, growing so intense, he'd bet, that the instruments on that plane would fail utterly. When faced with it, technology had nothing on the raw power of Pokémon or Pokémorphs.
His point seemed to be proven when he unleashed his Luster Purge and the ship's wing snapped as easily as the Swellow's had.
He didn't get to enjoy its fall, however, because the Crobat and the second ship suddenly reappeared from below. The Crobat's fangs sunk deep into his leg, and when 005 let out a cry and slapped it off with a psychic wave, it screeched so loudly that he heard it penetrate him even of the rush of wind.
His vision was a blur now. Up was down, he was falling and rising, and was the plane behind him, or above him? His muddled mind identified its own confusion, and his heart sank. He thought he saw the plane moving in to fire, but he could be hallucinating. His arm hurt now; had it fired, or was the Crobat biting that now instead? Grey sky and sea ran together, endless on both sides except for little dots of land or sky, and his head hurt so bad from trying to make it out.
I am going to get captured, part of his brain was screaming. Or die, and be recovered by the military. I cannot let that happen. I have to snap out of this.
It was no use; he fired a blast of psychic energy, but it didn't seem to hit anything. He was feeling faint. He think he could feel himself falling, fast; he certainly wasn't putting any energy into going up.
If I die to a Confuse Ray, he decided, I'm going out in style.
He opened his mouth wide, and a purple-blue energy welled inside it. Tendrils of smoke-like light spilled out, until he burst shock wave after another in every direction. He heard the Crobat cry and the pain in his arm stop.
His vision slowly cleared, and he righted himself. The plane had passed and was circling back towards him; a streak of purple was falling towards the open sea. 005 turned his eyes on the plane, and floated, naked with his pack still mercifully on his shoulders, waiting for it to come.
He stared it down as it approached quickly, but time seemed to slow to his eyes. He squinted a bit and held out his hand. Perhaps this wasn't the wisest tactic, but he was so tired and bleeding and had just had a string of shitty days in a rotting corpsefest building and dealt with stupid computers and -
He felt the pilot's fear and pain for a brief second as he closed his fist and psychically crushed the plane into a dense ball. Then he felt only his own glee as he watched it make a tremendous splash in the water below. Shifting the pack's straps more comfortably on his shoulders and taking a moment to Recover the damage done to his arm and legs, he cast his red eyes up at the patch of blue sky above him.
He really had to get out more.
—
For all my new readers, for Cal, and most of all, for you, Paul.
Questions, comments, critiques and messages always welcome!