Chapter Fifty-One
Peter was at his desk, sipping black coffee and filling out the pages of a Sudoku book. Four other books were in the garbage bin next to his chair.
As he ticked off three nines, a door slammed. The rustling of robes announced a Lucario, and the booming voice belonged to Elder Bayron.
"Where is the Commissioner?" he shouted.
Peter pointed at a conference room. "In a board meeting with a Sage, so don't-"
He was cut off when the Elder raced towards the door and threw it open. Ten seconds later, the Commissioner sprinted out.
"Get everyone moving, we've found the Rocket base! Hurry!"
The book fell from Peter's fingers and landed in his lap. When he bolted out of his chair, the book landed pages-first onto the garbage can lid, hung there for a moment, and slid in.
Peter rushed up to the Elder and grabbed him by a sleeve. "You found Bruno?"
The Elder's eyes darkened when he looked at Peter. "It is too late," he said. "His aura has infested many others and continues to grow." He pulled his sleeve out of Peter's grasp and said, "The only thing we can do for him now is to give him a clean death."
"It's that kind of thinking that drove him away," Peter said. "I know I can help him."
The Elder gave no reply as he turned and ran into another room. Before Peter could start after him, a fellow officer patted him on the shoulder.
"Get geared up, we're moving."
Peter followed him into the armory. He strapped on a Kevlar vest, a helmet, and an assault rifle with spare clips. Armored vans idled outside. Each van held seats for twenty and had two Lucario in the rear. Sirens wailed as they barreled through the streets. The Lucarios' ears twitched, and they glanced over their shoulders, muttering to themselves in soft barks. Men checked their weapons, adjusted straps on their vests, and made light, nervous conversation.
Peter reached into his pocket, but it was empty. Sweat crept down his neck, and his hands shook as he gripped his weapon.
The Commissioner's voice came through the radio in his helmet.
"We got intel from our moles in the Rocket organization that they have disguised their agents as White Knights at the facility where they're keeping Bruno. We have had no contact from the White Knights and do not expect their presence on the scene. Your orders are to shoot everyone on sight. Is that clear?"
With the rest of the officers, Peter pressed a button on the inside of his helmet and said, "Yes sir!"
The van stopped. When the back door opened, Peter leapt out, gun raised. Around him was an abandoned city neighborhood, with boarded-up shops and cracked streets. The officers milled in a circle behind a wall of vans, with the Commissioner and forty Lucario gathered off to one side. Peter pushed his way through the crowd towards them.
"You're sure it's down there?" Commissioner Mason asked.
"We can feel it," Elder Bayron answered.
"There's all sorts of tunnels down there, but there's no telling which one we need to take. We'll have to split up our forces and send them down the sewers, subway lines, and maintenance tunnels.
"That will take too long. Allow us to make a path down there."
The Lucario formed a circle. The air shifted in between them, refracting light in nauseating swirls. A shudder ran through the ground. The pavement opened up, as though invisible hands pulled it apart. Like a gaping mouth, the chasm roared with the sound of grinding stone and screeching metal. As the rift widened, the bottom portion flattened itself into stairs, stretching down into darkness.
When the Lucario parted, Peter ran first down the steps. Echoes of footfalls behind him pounded like drums. The darkness stretched forever, leaving the light behind him a mere pinprick, until he passed a layer of torn metal into a lit hallway.
Down his left stretched a hallway with dozens of doors on either side, all of them closed. To his right was a pile of bodies, four white-clad men and a zangoose. Two men had their throats clawed out, the third had his guts spilled on the floor, and the fourth had its head sliced off, while the zangoose had bullet wounds all over its chest and arms.
He hadn't realized that he had stopped until Elder Bayron passed him. The Lucario shook his head at the bodies.
"This will only get worse. Go right, and take the first left."
Peter gripped his weapon hard enough to make the plastic groan. "This is Bruno's doing?"
"It is." The Elder looked down at him and asked, "Do you still think he can be saved?"
Peter stepped over the bodies. Blood smeared his boots, leaving crimson prints on the floor.
"I have to try."
The Elder matched him stride for stride, giving directions through the labyrinth of hallways. They passed more corpses, some piles of Pokémon perforated by assault rifles, others of human corpses, frozen, turned to ash, dismembered, dissolved into pale, squishy lumps. One man, with blood trickling past his lips and a thorn in his liver, begged them for water as they passed.
A few minutes later, the Commissioner's voice came through over the radio.
"I've been updated on the situation. You are to hold fire against any Rockets you see and concentrate on eradicating the Pokémon. We can deal with them later."
After a quarter mile of jogging, Peter heard the sound of fighting, a cacophonous jumble of gunshots mixed with the roars of Pokémon. He sprinted forward, weapon pointed down the hall. Elder Bayron fell behind until a few layers of officers ran ahead of him.
Peter sprinted around a corner and skidded to a stop within feet of a white-clad firing line. Five machine guns mounted in the middle of the hallway fired down another hall, and around two dozen men fired assault rifles down the same path. A half-empty box of clips stood behind them, and a clutter of empties lay around their feet.
The officers that joined Peter had their guns raised, but no one pulled the trigger. Most gunmen were looking down the hallway, but a man watching the flanks ran to get a commanding officer. When the white-clad figure walked up to them and removed his mask, Peter recognized the face of the WK Commander, the illusion covering blobby skin and patchy fur.
"These are actually White Knights?" Peter asked.
"Yes." Nine glanced at the Lucario standing back behind the crowd. "I'll take some wild guesses. You got some intelligence that this was a Rocket Base under disguise and that Bruno is here."
Elder Bayron stepped forward. Some of the Knights turned and raised their guns, but Nine told them to hold fire. They turned back to the hall with passing glances at the Lucario.
"Sorry about that, we're having an issue with our Pokémon, something I suspect the Rockets cooked up while they held Bruno."
"This was not their doing," the Elder said. "At least, not directly."
Elder Bayron looked down the hall, and Peter looked with him. A pile of corpses ground into blood-frosted paste by countless bullets piled up in front of the elevator doors, a stack high enough to touch the ceiling and stretched thirty feet. Tangles of blood-soaked feathers crowned the top like candles.
"He's coming up," the Elder said, "And he's bringing more with him. He knows we're here."
"Get the grenade launchers and flamethrowers ready," Nine ordered. "Bring the artillery over here too."
White-clad figures brought in crates of weapons, and six men rolled a giant cannon in front of the hallway. Police officers strapped bottles of fuel on their backs and strapped grenades to their chest, but Peter ignored the weapons and went up to Nine.
"You had him this whole time, didn't you?" he asked.
Nine grimaced. "Since that night, yes. I was hoping to find a way to counter their abilities, since I'm fairly sure the Sages or Giovanni will use them to eliminate me. If I had known this would come of it–"
Peter cut him off by pressing the barrel of his gun up into Nine's ribcage. He held the weapon so his body kept it from view of the officers and Knights behind him.
"I should kill you for what you did."
Nine shrugged. "Go ahead and try. It'd take a lot more than a few bullets to kill me."
Before Peter pressed down on the trigger, someone shouted, "The corpses moving!"
Peter drew his weapon away. The pile of bodies had been pushed up into a uniform wall, and it slid forward. Grenades and artillery rounds blew it apart, but more meat filled the gaps. Dozens of flamethrowers lit the corpses. Between the fires and the explosions, the wall vanished two thirds of the way down the hall. A shimmering blue barrier took its place, and behind it stood Bruno. Dozens more were behind him, a small flock of Chatot squawking overhead and ranks of bipedal Pokémon on the ground. Bullets, fire, and cannon shells alike glanced off the barrier like confetti against a steel wall.
The Elder and his retinue of Lucario pushed their way forward, but Peter beat them all to the hallway. The guns stopped. Silence filled the halls as Peter walked up to Bruno. He stopped two feet short of the barrier.
Peter reached for the Sudoku book and felt only emptiness. Words clung to his tongue, but after a deep breath, he spoke.
"I… I'm sorry I couldn't help you last time." His voice rang off the cold metal walls. "I tried to, but they got in the way." He turned towards the Lucario as he pointed at them. The Elder impassively looked on from behind the guns and made no move towards them.
Peter cleared his throat. "Just come home with me. It'll be just the two of us, getting coffee and donuts, watching movies, going for walks. I'll make sure they don't get involved."
The barrier vanished. Peter looked back at the guns and made sure he was between them and Bruno, but not a single shot rang out. They were held back by Elder Bayron.
A flicker of hope fluttered in his chest, a comforting tug like a Sudoku book in his pocket. He stayed where he was, but he spread out his arms.
"I missed you so much it hurt," Peter said. "You're my partner, and I wouldn't leave you for the world. So please, come here."
Tears streamed down Bruno's cheeks as he took hesitant steps forward. The Pokémon behind him stood still, and the Chatot perched from heads and shoulders.
Bruno wrapped his arms around him. Warmth seeped out of his fur and into Peter's chest, chasing away a chill he hadn't known was there. Tears came into Peter's eyes as he returned the embrace.
"That's it," Peter murmured into Bruno's shoulder. "Everything is going to be okay now. You're home."
The embrace grew tighter. Peter felt short of breath from the strength of Bruno's arms.
"Wow, you must've missed me as much as I did," he wheezed. "Mind easing up a bit?"
The embrace grew tighter. Peter's ribs creaked, and his lungs screamed in pain. Despite the urge to thrash about, Peter kept still.
"Please… stop…" His voice was a thin whisper.
The embrace grew tighter. A rib broke, and pain shot through his chest like a bullet. He lost control of his limbs, and they battered against the Lucario. More ribs broke. Blood trickled out of Peter's mouth, soaking Bruno's fur. He looked up at Bruno's face. Tears matted the fur beneath Bruno's eyes, and he stared up at the ceiling.
The embrace grew tighter. Pokémon roared, and gunshots cracked the air, but the last sound Peter ever heard was the snapping of his spine.
Changelog
12/26/2018 – minor edits