Chapter 46 - Transitions

"You're Mister Nice Guy?"

I looked up from the shirts I was scrubbing, not without some confusion. "Depends who's asking, really. And why."

The person who had spoken to me looked like one of the typical punks I'd see running around the slum on a typical day. A little thin, quite unwashed, and very raggedy on the clothes. Surprisingly, he'd come rather close to me, despite apparently knowing who he was approaching.

He even had the nerve to give me a disbelieving look. "Sure don't look like a hired killer to me."

"Hah!" Muriel cackled, from where she was soaking up some sun next to me. "This one's got balls, NiceGuy. Let's not kill him for now, shall we not?"

I patted her on her side. "There, there. Indiscriminate killing is just not my style, you know that. So, whoever you are, mind stating your business before I ask my friend the victreebel here to chomp on you?"

Then he seemed to realise just how close he was standing to a carnivorous plant just slightly taller than he was. His face went a little pale, but other than that, he shrugged it off well enough. "Well, everyone says you're Mister Nice Guy, but... I didn't think so."

"Oh?" I offered him a raised eyebrow, as I wrung out a shirt. Yup, the stain had washed out nicely. "What makes you say so?"

"Well..." he stammered, noticing Muriel casting her predator's gaze in his direction. "You're washing your neighbour's laundry, for one. And you do this regularly!"

"So?"

"You walk a growlithe puppy for your other neighbours!"

"You mean Carlos? I'll have you know he's a real delight, and so is his mother. Rosa thinks him being hyperactive's a phase, really."

"All the store-keepers say you've got good credit with them."

"... And your point is?"

The poor dude appeared really confused by then. "Since when do hired killers do all these things?"

"Must have missed the memo, bro," I shrugged. "Anyway, nice meeting you, and the formal term would be 'assassin.'"

"Scram, punk!" Muriel snarled, sending him scampering. The two of us watched his retreating back until he vanished round a corner. "Hmph, insolent little shite. Can I kill him if he pops up again?"

I sighed, shaking my head. "He's a dumb kid, Muriel. Just like I was, not too long ago."

"Bah, humbug. And you're still pretty dumb in my book, sweetie."

"Humbug indeed, although I'd concede the dumb part. Mind spitting for me, again? This last stain's really stubborn."

xxx

The destruction of Sootopolis was the final nail in the government's coffin. Riots took place all over the world, resulting in over a million deaths within less than a week of Sootopolis. When you considered the pokemon and digimon deaths, the death toll easily exceeded four million individuals. Whatever was left of government infrastructure was torn apart, and only the military chain of command barely survived amidst the chaos.

Humans, pokemon, and digimon alike broke apart the concentration camps which had been built just months earlier. Military and government loyalists scrambled to maintain some semblance of order, but the best they could do was to consolidate their manpower as well as resources in the outskirts. Ruined cities and decimated towns were all but forbidden to anyone who still harboured sympathies for the military.

When they first came for me, I did try to warn them, and I frankly didn't give a fuck about the army any longer, anyway. They didn't care much for my opinion, either.

That time, I killed them, myself. It was quick.

xxx

I saw them before they saw me, which probably explains why they hadn't tried to abscond with their victim yet. Call it a hunch, but I really didn't want them to get away with this one.

"You there, pelipper! Halt!" I called out, holding up my hands to show them that I was unarmed. "Don't hurt the corphish, would you?"

"That's our lunch we're talking about here!" cawed the largest of the three pelican pokemon. "What's in it for us?"

"I'll trade you a couple of meals for it," I called back, keeping a careful eye on the corphish. "We could work it out."

The three of them seemed uncertain, and had a brief discussion among themselves - the corphish in question still helplessly trapped by the mid-sized pelipper - before finally coming to a decision.

"Three meals apiece, and it's a deal!" squawked the biggest pelipper.

"Done."

And that was how, for reasons barely known even to me, I ended up with a corphish.

xxx

The second time they came for me, I let Silas and Newton give me some assistance. We kept Marley out of it.

Most of the people passing by our little shack seemed to find that head on a spike to be unnerving, for all my team's reassurances that times were hard enough for people to find such things normal.

xxx

"So, Trainer, why is it you keep me around but do not train me?" Marley huffed, butting my knee with her head as I tried to mend my trousers with some horribly makeshift materials.

"It's because you are a worthless bottom-feeder piece of shit, that's why!" trilled Silas haughtily. "Trainer, I still say we ought to cook her."

I groaned, feeling my vertebrae popping as I straightened up and glowered at them. "No one is getting cooked. Silas, could you at least try to be polite? And for fuck's sake, Marley, why would you need training? You behave well enough given the current condition we live in."

Realisation hit me. "Hold on, where's Newton?"

Marley, despite being an over-sized lobster, nonetheless tried and failed to look clueless. "No idea."

Leaning over, I thumped Silas' shell. "Oi, you heard me. Where's your usual partner in crime?"

"... Remember that old fuck?"

"... Please, no."

"Oh, yes."

"It was their idea!" Marley, of course, could be counted on to safeguard her own interests.

I stood up, and stretched. "Well, that's a little mess I'll have to clean up, then. How long has he been gone?"

"Long enough, Trainer. Long enough."

xxx

"- and why is he always so sad? I've never seen a human so depressed!"

"He had so much going for him, and he took a lot of risks to get what he thought would make him happy. But in the end, he lost it all, really."

"Tell me another one, hah!"

The three of them thought I couldn't hear them, but I did. It was always the same: as soon as I started breathing slowly and heavily, they'd start talking. Sometimes Silas and Newton would help Marley with her training - training I'd refused to give her - and sometimes they'd just shoot the shit like a bunch of teenagers.

But somehow, they usually ended up talking about me.

"Does he not have a mate?"

My heart skipped a beat when she asked them that question. Silas' and Newton's replies made it crack a little.

"He did not, but he had someone special. A dear friend that he... he was trying to save him, but he killed him. We think that they were mates, but he'll never admit to it."

Newton chimed in, "Trainer has this smile when he talks about Zachary, didn't you notice? He's all happy thanks to the memories, but his eyes are dark. And his voice is always far away."

That night, the shadows were there in my dreams, again. And, not for the first time, their eyes were blue. Such a haunting, mischievous shade of blue.

I woke up with them snuggled up against me.

xxx

She looked at me through bloodshot, pain-filled eyes. When she spoke, her voice was just past a whisper. "Please."

I held her hand, and with my other hand, reached behind her neck. Three seconds, and she was done for.

"That was faster than your usual, Trainer," Marley quipped. She was rapidly becoming the most talkative member of my team. "Are you alright?"

"She asked, politely," I said, gently closing the woman's eyes. "Wasn't that enough?"

xxx

I got into the shack I called home, and saw that I had visitors. They weren't unwelcome, but one of them had been conspicuously missing in action long enough that I knew he wasn't just here to chat.

"Hello, Mister Hew. And Fen," I nodded, hanging up my jacket and sitting down on the edge of my bed. "What brings you here?"

"Tiny here has some rather alarming news," Aloysius Hew replied, gesturing to the steel specialist that had been Zachary's closest human friend. "Go on, then."

Fen looked haggard, which given his generally lean features, pretty much gave him the appearance of a slightly animated corpse. "I'm just going to cut to the chase, then. What do you know about Coronet?"

Talk about interesting... "Not much, really, except they've definitely got something strange going on up there at the Spear Pillar. Coronet lights are getting brighter, that's for sure."

He nodded. "Well, those of us who went AWOL before... before Sootopolis. We figured it out.

"In simple terms, they've figured out a way to make our moon a source of the digimon's special radiation."

My disbelief must have been evident, since he went on. "The gist of it is that they've rigged an old military satellite called the Gunslinger as a sort of refocusing mechanism, and are going to transmit some heavy-duty radiation up to the moon from the Spear Pillar.

"From what we know, their radiation source is powered by the legendary orbs. Whatever they've got set up on the moon's surface would be activated by the transmission. Once it's online, the digimon would be able to survive on Earth without their specialised hibernation chambers."

"But they've been doing that already," I pointed out, "ever since the Coronet lights..."

My voice trailed off as I realised just what was going on. "Oh, man. That's not good."

Fen nodded, his expression grim. "Since human civilisation has all but collapsed, they're going to move in some real nasty stuff from their home planet, and pretty much enslave what's left of the human race. Pokemon too, of course.

"They call this, Operation Microwave."

"Catchy name," I shuddered. "And I presume you are telling me this since you want help in stopping it?"

"That would be correct," Aloysius Hew chimed in. "If we time it correctly, they'll have moved the bulk of their forces here in anticipation of the moon activation. Shutting it down permanently and disabling their ground facilities would be fatal to all digimon on the planet's surface within twenty hours."

I felt my blood running cold. "You're talking about genocide."

He looked me in the eye, his expression carefully neutral. "I know I am. And so was Sootopolis.

"Can we count on your cooperation?"

For a short while, I just sat there, staring at the two men who had come to my home to ask me if I'd assist in the culling of a species. Well, the culling of that species on Earth, but still. Either we killed them off, or they would enslave us.

Talk about crappy choices. "Why can't I get an easy choice for once, eh?"

"Join the club, mate," Fen replied, shrugging. "If it's any consolation... It will all be over, and that right soon. Should we fail, you get a fast death, if nothing else."

They stayed silent, waiting for my answer. But really, how did they expect me to make up my mind? My whole life, the world I'd grown up in, the people I'd made a living alongside, everything had been torn to shreds and scattered by the winds of change. All I had left was my team, and even they... made me scared.

Silas. Newton. Marley. Once, I would have been heartbroken if I'd lost any one of them. Now, I was more or less resigned to the fact that I would eventually lose one of them before their time was up.

Hopefully not, though.

"I need time," I said, barely able to hear my own voice, and barely believing that I was speaking those words.

Mister Hew nodded. "We'll be back tomorrow. Noon, sharp."

xxx

The three of them were silent once I'd explained things to them, and I couldn't blame them, really.

"So... What do you guys think?" I asked them, as I leaned back on the worn armchair I'd liberated from an abandoned house. "Honestly, if you ever wanted to leave and go about your own life, well... I wouldn't hold it against you at this point."

Newton was the first to speak up. "Where you go, I go, Trainer. What made you think I'd do otherwise?"

"You saved me from those goons!" snapped Marley, waving her pincers about in frustration. "I'm with him!"

That left one of them. "And you, Silas?"

He remained silent for a short while, before letting out one of his usual disgruntled whistling sounds. "It's been one Hell of a ride, but what would you do without us?

"I'll follow you to the end, Trainer. Yours or mine, whichever comes first."

Mister Hew and Fen came at noon, just as promised. And as agreed, I gave them my answer.

"Alright, I'm in. I take it we'll be getting right down to it?"

Fen nodded. "We leave once you get your stuff."

Three minutes later, Aloysius Hew released his shedinja to Shadow Sneak us to our mustering point. It hadn't taken long for me to gather my handful of weapons, and to give my team the one-sentence debrief. As Kathy braced herself to whisk us into our own shadows, some part of me quietly noted that this was probably going to be it.

Space and light folded around us. In near complete silence, what I hoped was the last major hurdle in the demented circus that my life had turned into, began.