Story Notes:
This is the "other" Runaways story, the long one with more characters, plot, and some other stuff too.Okay, *clears throat* I do not own pokemon, or any of those characters. the events and characters of this story are all fictional and any resemblance to persons live or dead is purely coincidental, and not meant to be insulting.Also, the inclusion of Lucario and wave guidance is all Felix's fault. Go read "Luca"... it's good and it inspired some of this story.Also, categories will be updated as necessary. They will changeAlso, I will be changing the categories as they need to be changed. the main characters are all a bit young at this point for sex, but it will probably show up in some form or another later.Also, if you can guess what the title is talking about I'll give you a cookie! (And maybe a story request, if you want)
Ch 5: Behind masks of Blind Sight
A Twisting Ladder to Heaven 5
Behind Masks of Blind Sight
I wake up to find a pachirisu sleeping on my head with its tail hanging down over my face. That and I am
up in a tree. I do not remember climbing this tree. That means Gin has pulled yet another prank on me.
This was probably for my filling his canteen full of cheri berry juice last night, or it might just be our
ongoing prank wars have hit a new high. Literally.
Whether the pachirisu is part of the prank or not, it is a nice touch, since I can't get down unless the
pachirisu wakes up and gets off me on its own. Gin and I tried waking one up once when we had been
tasked with finding a specific pachirisu. They are very jumpy when they first wake up. It was not pretty.
My left arm wouldn't stop twitching for three days and Gin's tail kept spazzing out and smacking him
upside the head with random iron tails for the rest of the day. Rogue had been far enough away to avoid
being caught in the flurry of thunderbolts so she got to laugh at us the entire time.
Anyway, I have no idea what this guy is going to do if I wake him up, so my best course of action would
be to - "Hey Danny! You up yet?" Aw crap.
Gin laughs, "Get it? You're up in a, aw, never mind."
When he gets no reply he starts shouting louder, "Hey wake up lazy! IT's time to gather berries and
junk!" he pauses and the pachirisu tail twitches, tickling my nose. Oh for Arceus sake! Not that!
Gin starts jabbing the tree trunk and I can feel the vibrations traveling up to jar me slightly. The tail
twitches a couple more times and I can feel a tingle in my sinuses. I screw up my face, fighting back the
urge to sneeze. I try pinching my nose, careful to not pinch any tail hairs in the process. Suddenlythe
entire tree seems to come alive and starts shaking wildly, it feels like I'm sitting on a jackhammer for
Cresselia's sake! At this point I consider not waking the pachirisu a lost cause, and I throw myself
forward off the branch, sneezing as I tumble out of the upper boughs and try not to break my neck as I
bounce from branch to branch in a barely controlled tumble. Above me I hear the pachirisu shriek in
terror as it wakes up in free fall. It lands safely, I think as it stops screaming.
I hit the ground and fall into a crouch, and then transfer my momentum into a roll. I come to a stop on
my back, gasping for breath and more than a little sore from the rough descent. Gin looks at me with a
smirk, "Geez, I would have expected you to have woken up by now."
I glare up at him, "Gin, little brother, there was a pachirisu sleeping on my head."
Gin laughs at me and I growl, rolling over and lunging at him in one smooth motion. I manage to get the
lucario in a headlock and start giving him a noogie, grinding my knuckles against the top of his head.
"You could have gotten me killed!"
Gin yelps and starts swatting at me with his paws, "Sorry Sorry Sorry!"
I let him go and we both dust ourselves off. I look back up into the tree, noticing an angry looking
pachirisu near the top shaking its paw at me. I chuckle quietly, "How the hell did you get me up there
anyway? I know I'm a pretty heavy sleeper but that is just ridiculous."
Gin grins at me, "Mew teleported you up there when she came by to drop off your new clothes."
I whirl on Gin, "Mew came by and you didn't wake me up?!"
Not waking the others up when a guest arrives is a grave offense in our little group, and it was Mew for
Pete's sake! I loved listening to her gossip about the other legendaries, especially Darkrai. From the way
Mew talked about him, I think we would get along well. But apparently he doesn't get out much,
especially after his own run in with the people with the uniforms that had the DNA Helix on it a little
over a decade and half ago. I still can't place where I've seen that logo before though.
Gin raises his hands in a placating manner, "She told me not to. She did however tell me to give
you this when you woke up."
Gin tosses me a necklace of teeth with a quick claw in the center. "She put that together real quick while
you were sleeping."
I hold up the necklace, examining it closely, "This is my quick claw, and some feraligator teeth. Cool."
I put the necklace on and stretch. I yawn at the peak of my stretch, then slap Gin upside the head,
"You're it!" and take off using extreme speed. I shut my eyes and go into wave sight, side stepping Gin
as he lunges from above, then leaping to a tree limb and launching myself into the air. I open my eyes,
and marvel briefly at how far I can see from way up hear above the trees. Hopefully I can landon a
relatively high branch, because at this height gravity is enough to make the landing painful. Actually it is
Gin that reaches me first, with a force palm to the chest. "You're it!" I rocket backwards, the wind
knocked out of me. I curl up briefly, flipping over once before my feet connect with a solid tree trunk. I
reach out and grab hold of a pair of branches, then smile. This is the tree over our cave and I have new
clothes waiting for me!
I scramble down as fast as I can without falling and crawl inside our cave. It is getting a lot snugger now
that we have packed it with a full grown mightyena, a lucario, and me along with all our stuff. I've grown
a lot since coming out here. I was shorter than Gin as a lucario when I first arrived, but now I tower over
him by about a foot and I'm still growing. My hair did grow back after a while, thank Arceus, and it is
pulled back in a tight braid that reaches down to the middle of my back. I still have those huge scars on
my chest, they don't seem eager to fade at all. It's spring now, which means Mew is delivering my
summer clothes.
It's pretty amazing really what she can do with those little paws of hers and a bit of material. I pick up
the light brown tunic, one of three, which Mew has left for me. Light weight and sleeveless, it is perfect
for summer, and matches the brown trousers quite well. The knees of the trousers have a thicker patch
of leather over them, which is always nice.
"Sleep well?" Rogue asks from next to the storage area. One side of the cave is completely taken by a
long sack full of stuff. Potions, elixirs, antidotes, rations, clothing, pokémon items, you name it, we got it.
Except for pokéballs, we don't keep any of those around here.
I give her a look, but then smile, "Actually, yes, I did. At least until I woke up with a pachirisu on my
head."
Rogue laughs then walks over to where I am looking at something very different from the normal
pokémon skin clothing. She tilts her head to the side, "Is that... armor?"
I hold up the strange garments made from a thicker, tougher leathery material. These garments are
fairly solid except at the joints which are made of a tough but flexible plant based fabric. They are a pair
of trousers and a torso piece with one arm with armor like plates sewn into them, probably bone
judging from the weight. Too light to be metal. Also, the feraligatr skull is attached to the outside of the
left arm of the torso piece, but there is no right sleeve. "I think so."
Gin pope his head in and sees what we are looking at, "Pretty cool no?"
I shrug, "It looks bulky." I slip out of my pants and into the armored trousers, and then struggle into the
other part. It's snug, but it moves easy, very naturally. But the real test of armor is in combat and I look
at Gin, he nods and darts back outside. I follow him and he takes off through the woods.
I chase after him, but he manages to stay just ahead of me for a little over a mile until we reach the
river. There Gin turns and leaps, launching an aura sphere back at me. I dive to the side and nimbly
dodge the glowing blue sphere. I spring out of the dive and kick off a tree, meeting Gin over the river
with a force palm. Gin rolls with the blow and spins away from me, landing gracefully on the other side. I
land a little heavier in a crouch.
Gin sprints forward and throws a punch which I block with the skull. The blow is both softened and
deflected by the dense bone and the thick material underneath. I throw my arm out and Gin sails
backwards, while I dash forwards attacking with a flurry of strikes. Gin manages to deflect or block most
of the blows, but a few make it through and my greater reach is keeping him from countering
effectively. I pull back for a moment to try and charge a focus punch but gin is not about to let that go.
He lunges and headbutts me in the gut. I fly backwards a short ways to land on my rear while Gin tries to
keep his balance.
"Oh my head." He groans clutching his head as he wobbles then falls on his own rear. I chuckle as I stand
up.
"Hardly felt that." I say with a grin, walking over to help Gin back to his feet, "Though I don't think the
same could be said for you."
"No kidding." Gin says shaking his head fiercely and nearly losing his balance. "Damnit, what is that
made off?"
I reach out a hand to steady him, "Take it easy. Your skull may be steel but your brain isn't. as for what
this stuff is, I don't know, and I'm not sure I want to know."
"Hey! I hear somebody over here!" a girls voice exclaims loudly somewhere behind me in the
underbrush.
"Hey wait!" a male voice calls out.
Gin and I both leap into the tree tops, hiding ourselves in the thick foliage. Before long, a young girl with
a pokéball runs out of the forest to stand on the river bank looking around for me. She straightens her
green shirt when she doesn't see anyone and sighs. I hear a crashing in the undergrowth and an older
boy, probably around my own age, steps out. "Geez Darcia, don't run off like that! These woods are
dangerous."
Darcia gives the older boy a stubborn look, "I can take care of myself. Besides I've got Fergy with me."
she looks around again, "I know I heard somebody over here. It sounded like a boy. I wanted to battle
him."
"All the more reason not to run off the path!" the boy exclaims, "Haven't you heard about these woods
at all?!"
"We just moved here, G." the girl says rolling her eyes. "What is so special about these woods that has
got you all jumpy?"
G grabs her and starts dragging her back towards the beaten path, "There is a crazy out here with a
shiny lucario. They say he wears pokémon skin clothing and talks to pokémon."
"Really?" the girl asks excitedly, "That is so cool!"
G looks at her incredulously, "Do you want to have Fergy stolen from you?"
Daria's eyes widen, "What?"
I slowly creep out of the tree and start following the pair just out of sight. Gin sneaks along behind me,
hissing, "What the hell are you doing?!"
I grin back at him, whispering back, "I wanna know what they say about us!"
Gin sighs quietly and follows me closely. G had been talking during all this and apparently just finished
telling a story. Daria was clearly impressed. "That is so cool!"
G seems to disagree, "He stole the girl's ralts and all her potions, and then got away with it! What is cool
about that?"
The girl shakes her head, "Not that. He can talk to pokémon and he has pokémon abilities too!" she jabs
the older boy in the arm, "Besides, he returned the ralts to its family, which is not the same as stealing
the ralts for himself."
"Well," the boy rubs his arm with a sigh, "I guess, but the police think he might be involved in the mask
murders."
Gin and I look at each other, this didn't sound good. We had been careful not to seriously hurt anybody,
working on the assumption that as long as we didn't hurt anyone and always just released the pokémon
we were tasked with rescuing the police would focus on bigger problems. "How could he be the Mask if
he lives in these woods though?"
G shrugs, "I'm not really sure, but there are a lot of similarities." He starts counting on his fingers, "In
both cases, it is an individual with a shiny lucario. Both are reported to have a blade weapon of some
kind. Also, they both have supernatural abilities. Between the odds of both having shiny lucario and the
supernatural abilities, the odds are pretty high that if they aren't the same person they are related
somehow."
I start to straighten up and declare my innocence, not the brightest decision, but I am not a murderer!
Then Gin grabs my hand. I look back at Gin and notice he is shaking, his eyes wide with terror. "Can you
feel that?"
I frown, "Feel what?"
"Something bad is coming. Something is hunting. We need to get out of here now!" he finishes loudly,
hopping to his feet and starting to run. The trainers on the path whirl around to see Gin running away.
"Look a shiny lucario!" Daria exclaims, pulling a pokéball from her belt.
I stand up and wave at the trainers. I can feel it now too. An aura, a twisted aura, is approaching quickly
with malevolent intent. "Something's coming!" I shout, "You need to run!"
The two trainers stare at me in shock. Then they appear.
A black clad man appears behind the girl and a long blade bursts through her chest. Simultaneously, a
shiny lucario appears next to the older trainer spinning to backhand one of its paw spikes into his chest
and then throws him to the ground. Both the man and the lucario are wearing plain white masks.
I can only stare as the man kicks the girl off the end of his weapon. He laughs, rolling her body over as
she clutches at her stomach, still alive, her mouth moving wordlessly as she stares up at the man. The
man lifts his left hand up and then plunges his fingers into the girl's eyes, gouging deep and scooping
them out. The girl suddenly finds her voice and begins screaming. During this time the lucario had
hopped on the less injured boy's chest and stabbed her spikes into his eyes, demolishing them, and then
stabbing her left paw spike into the boy's carotid artery. The boy is dead in seconds, the spikes having
pierced his heart and brain and also spurting blood out of his carotid. The man lifts his swordlike
weapon and stabs in up through the belly button so that the tip comes out the side of her throat. Her
screams are instantly cut short.
Then both the man and the lucario turn to me. Their masks have no eye holes. I take a shaking step
backwards as the man laughs, squeezing the eyes in his hand until they burst. I had always thought that
the expression, 'to make one's blood run cold' was just a figure of speech, but I feel like ice has been
injected into my veins when I look at this man laughing as blood and whatever the viscous crap that fills
our eyeballs is running through his fingers.
"Enjoy the show boy?" the man asks shaking his hand so that the remains of the eyeballs and their juices
are flung to the ground.
"Why?" I hear myself ask, unaware that I could even think through the fear clogging my mind, maybe I
can't think, because I keep talking, "Why did you do that?"
"Justice, kid. It was for justice." The man says, his voice sounding hollow and infinitely more frightening
behind his mask, "Those who refuse to see don't deserve to have eyes."
"See what?!" I exclaim, taking another trembling step back.
"I know that you see. The stories they tell of you are proof enough." The man says, and I can hear his
smile, I can picture it, a leering face with a broad toothy grin. The smile of a predator. "Pokémon are our
equals, if not superior in almost every way. We are fools to treat them as anything less."
I nod, pokémon are often superior to humans biologically and sometimes mentally, "But why did they
have to die!? Why did you have to mutilate them?!" I yell, rage suddenly flaring up within me. Who does
this guy think he is? Arceus?!
"It is a metaphor." The man says calmly gesturing with his free hand as he pulls his blade free from the
girl. Her body slides off the blade with a quiet grinding of bone on steel followed by a wet thud as her
body falls back into a muddy pool of its blood. The man continues talking as he wipes his blade clean on
the boy's sweater, his tone is prideful and condescending, "It was their stubborn metaphysical blindness
that led them to deserve death in the first place, so in death I have taken their eyes. What is so hard to
understand? What is man that he should have dominion over Arceus' greater creations? It is a
perversion of the natural and must not go unpunished."
I shake my head as my disgust begins to grow stronger than my fear, "I know that for many pokémon,
the trainer becomes one of their closest companions after being caught. Killing the trainer means taking
away a part of the pokémon's new family."
"Then you can't see either." The man says, and that overwhelming sense of malevolence returns. I shut
my eyes, going into wave sight as I start backpedalling quickly. The man lunges forward using extreme
speed and swings the blade down on me. I throw up my left arm reflexively and the blade crunches
through the bone. I stare in shock as the skull shatters, practically exploding. Time seems to slow down
as my gaze moves from the skull, bits of it seeming to float in the air, to the plain white mask over the
man's face.
I dive to the side, time snapping back into normal speed. I don't escape completely untouched though,
the impact having stunned my arm and cut through the thick leather to put a thin gash in my forearm. I
roll to my feet and keep sprinting to the side away from the man as he turns and follows, swing his blade
wildly whenever he gets within reach. My focus is so firmly placed on the man and his sword that I
completely forget about the lucario. That is until she slams her paw spike into my gut.
The armor mew made blocks the point of the spike, but not the force of the blow. I tumble, rolling to a
stop with my back against a tree trunk. I see stars as my head knocks against the solid wood, briefly
falling out of wave sight. But even without wave sight I can see the man pulling back the blade for a kill
swing.
I drop to the ground and the blade buries itself deep in the tree trunk at about the height my neck had
been at. I scramble away from the man as he grunts and tries to yank the blade out of the tree, which is
being held tightly by the weight of the tree itself. I grunt as the lucario lands another blow, this time into
my kidney. I cry out in pain and spin, whipping out my broken machete to parry another spike thrust. I
step back and the lucario whirls like a top, knocking my machete to the side, not out of my hand but
enough to open my guard for a split second, before firing an aura sphere into my chest.
Already off balance I am thrown off my feet entirely. Sliding backwards in the dirt of the path I cross my
arms over my chest, surrounding myself in a green bubble. Another blue aura sphere explodes against
the bubble before it vanishes. Protect? When did I learn protect? I extend my hand and fire an aura
sphere at the lucario. She nimbly flips over it, but her being airborne and facing away from me gives me
a chance to jump back to my feet and ready a focus punch.
I attack just as she lands, my fist connects with her chest, right beneath her chest spike. She shoots
backwards with a yelp of pain. I hear an explosion and I turn to see the tree behind the man toppling
over, broken in half by the man's attack. The sword is free of the tree trunk now and the man lunges
after me again with renewed rage. "How dare you hurt my Eroca!"
"I wouldn't have hurt her if she weren't trying to kill me!" I exclaim "Self-preservation is kinda
instinctive!" sidestepping and deflecting the man's reckless downward swing. The force of the blow
nearly knocks the machete out of my hand. I am hopelessly out classed when it comes to power here! I
need time to come up with a plan!
I kick out and catch the man I the gut, slowing him enough for me to turn tail and run like hell down the
path. Come on! Think! You only have a few moments before either the man or the lucario catches up
then your times up!
I need to isolate one of them, because I definitely am not strong enough to take them both on at the
same time. On strength alone the man has me beat, and the lucario is definitely faster than me. She's
only a couple seconds from catching up even after that focus punch to the chest! I need more time! I
leap to the side and grab a thick branch, flipping up onto the branch and kicking off straight back the
way I came, passing over the lucario. She hits the brakes and starts sliding, trying to switch directions,
then a barrage of aura spheres drops out of the sky and explode all around her. None of them hit her
directly, but the lucario dropping down just behind them does. She is thrown to the ground by the force
of Gin's special move, 'the gin hammer', and gasps, the wind being knocked out of her.
I now have the time I need, and I can now isolate the man. Speaking of which, here he comes. He pulls
back and lunges at full speed, blade raised high overhead, trying to cut me in two. It isn't hard to slip
past the man's reckless swinging. It is obvious he is not used to fighting with someone who has similar
abilities. Nida the marowak would say his guard is wide open. The problem is that his longer arms and
blade give him a reach that makes getting inside even his guard suicidal at best. Like a ten year
old attacking a feraligatr. That's it!
The man turns and slides along the path, legs already pumping trying to throwing himself after me as I
turn and stop completely with my arms going out parallel to the ground. Head falling against my chest, I
quietly say, "You win."
The man laughs, his shoes finally getting traction and rocketing him forward again. Blade outstretched
to impale me through the stomach. Time seems to slow again as a fresh wave of adrenaline bursts
through my veins. I have to time this just right.
The tip of the man's blade is only a foot and a half away when I bring my own blade down. Steel scrapes
against steel and I can feel the blade biting into my side, piercing clean through the armor as if it weren't
even there. I quickly bring my blade around and step into the man's lunge. The jagged end of my broken
machete sinks into the man's chest. Then we collide and everything flashes into real time again.
We tumble over and over in the dirt, limbs tangled as someone screams. I separate from the man and
slide in the dirt clutching at my side. When I pull my hands away they are red with my blood. I glance
over at the man, he isn't moving, and my machete is buried to the hilt in his chest. He is definitely dead.
The man's blade is several yards from his body. And still someone is screaming, but now there are words
to the scream.
"NO! JAMES! NOOOO!"
I look back up the path to where gin is standing over the other lucario as she screams, crawling on all
fours as if blind back towards me and the man. Gin looks at me and I shrug. I crawl over to the man's
body and pull the blade out of his chest with a grunt then scoot backwards away from the lucario as she
reaches the corpse. She falls across it, sobbing. Gin makes his way over to me and gets down on one
knee next to me, "What happened? She just suddenly dropped and started screaming."
I shake my head, "I killed him."
At the sound of our voices the lucario looks over in our direction, "Please, child of Darkrai, kill me too."
"Why?" I ask in bewilderment, "Why should you die with that monster?"
The lucario sniffs, "He was a monster, yes, but I loved him still." She starts sobbing again, "He was the
only one who would love me, and he was... a true mate."
Gin and I are both stunned into speechlessness. Mate? After a long silence with nothing but the lucario's
sobs I finally find my voice. "How?"
"I was discarded three times over before he found me." The lucario reaches back behind her head and
undoes the masks bindings so that the mask falls away. She has no eyes. "Even if you have a unique fur,
no one wants a pokémon that can't see."
"But James never saw me for what I could do for him and loved me just the same." She says, "He was all
I had. So please, child of Darkrai, kill me."
She then lays back on James's chest and pulls his arms around herself, nuzzling her head up under his
chin. I slowly slide over next to the lucario and her dead mate, wary that this could be a trap. I lift the
machete over her chest, and then lower it slowly until it is nearly parallel with her stomach. With one
quick thrust I bury it under her rib cage. The blade slides up into her chest cavity, and I can feel her body
spasm once as it cuts into her heart and then she is still. I scoot back slowly, looking at them. Gin walks
past me and slides the man and lucario over to a tree trunk, setting them up into a sitting position. Then
he takes the man's mask off. He steps back, staring at the man's milky grey eyes. "I guess he was blind
too."
I wincingly climb to my feet and walk over to pick up the man's blade. "Yeah." I take a deep breath and
grimace as the blood starts to soak into the waist of my pants, "I think I need to get this cleaned and
wrapped."
Gin turns to look at me and his eyes widen, "You're bleeding!"
I chuckle, as I start walking slowly back towards our cave. "Yeah, that tends to happen when someone
barely misses running you through."
Suddenly a wave of dizziness washes over me and my knees buckle. "Shit." I mutter as my knees hit the
ground and I fall forward onto all fours. Gin picks me up in his arms, and I growl, "Damn it Gin, I'm hurt,
but I'm not an invalid."
"Shut up." He growls back, "I'm not wasting time letting you bleed to death because of your damned
ego."
I hold on tight to the blade as Gin carries me back to the cave at a blinding pace. Then we spend the next
hour with Rogue both chewing us out and doting on us at the same time as we clean the wound with
antiseptic and wrap me up in gauze. I lay back against the fur cushion and sigh, then glance over at Gin
with a frown, "Why did she call me 'child of Darkrai'?"
Gin glances at me with surprised expression, "You don't know?"
I shake my head, "Know what?"
"Your aura, it makes you look like a pale inverse of Darkrai." Gin says then gestures over his head, "You
have that floaty hair deal and even a light blue collar thing. It's sort of superimposed over your body.
Kind of creepy really."
I shake my head again, "Never paid that much attention to my own aura. I would have expected you to
have said something about it when you first mastered wave sight five years ago."
Gin shrugs, "You mastered wave sight first so I thought you knew."
I close my eyes, "I guess I should have, but I didn't."
-0-
I'm nine years old again, and I'm sprinting through the hospital corridors. She can't be dead! She
promised!
I blow past a pair of chansey and into a hospital room. There on the bed is a thin, fragile looking woman.
The chemo took her hair over a year ago, and now the life sign monitors show nothing but flat lines.
"NO!" I scream throwing myself over her lap, sobbing into the hospital sheets. "You promised! You
promised to make it to my birthday!"
I sob wordlessly, pressing my head against her bony chest. After a moment I whimper, "You promised."
Then I feel a cold bony hand on the back of my head, and a pained voice saying my name, "Dante?"
I look up in surprise then recoil in horror.
"Dante? Where are my eyes?" my dead mother asks, her eyes only ragged bloody holes in her face with
trickling trails of blood running out of them over her pale face. Her voice grows louder, but not stronger,
"Where have they taken my eyes!?"
I take a frightened step backwards and fall over a ledge. The hospital room quickly becomes a small
patch of rapidly shrinking white light as I fall through a hole in the floor into darkness. Then even that
little light vanishes as I splash down into warm liquid.
I open my eyes, and the liquid burns, but I see nothing. I struggle to the surface, gasping as my head
breaks through. I taste the bitter coppery taste of blood on my lips and there is suddenly soft ground
under my feet and I open my eyes again. I am surrounded by blood.
"Danny!" I hear Rogue's voice calling to me from somewhere up ahead. "Danny help!"
I slog forward through the waist deep blood towards her cries, "I'm coming! Just hold on!"
My breath is coming ragged gasps as I finally emerge from the blood and onto marshy ground. I stumble
forward towards rogue's voice, now just whimpers. Suddenly she is right in front of me. Her fur is
drenched in blood from countless gashes all over her body, and my stomach twists when I see that her
hindquarters are just gone completely. "OH Arceus, no." I moan falling on my knees next to her.
Her eyes lift to gaze at me. "You promised." She whimpers, "You promised Danny."
I sob, "I'm sorry!"
I watch as her gaze goes blank, the light going out from her eyes. I lay my forehead against her side,
quietly crying, my strength just gone completely.
Something falls on the ground next to me with a wet splat. I look back over my shoulder to see a plain
white mask with a crack shot through it. Then I hear a deep, unfamiliar voice, "Give them back."
I look up in front of me and my heart pounds like it is about to explode out of my chest. Standing over
me is a massive feraligator, its flesh bloated and the skin is stretched and cracking looks down at me
with bloody holes where its eyes should be and roars, "GIVE ME BACK MY EYES!"
-0-
I bolt upright, heart thumping in my throat like a locomotive and a sharp pain in my side. I can't see
anything and I panic for a moment, but then I remember where I am. I'm in our cave, and it's night time.
Of course I can't see anything. I hear someone else stir then Rogue's voice asks, "Is everything alright?"
I take a deep breath to calm my nerves, slipping into wave sight, noticing that Gin isn't here before I
nod, "Yeah, I... just need to step out for a moment to deal with some business."
I crawl out of the cave and stand up slowly, focusing on gin's aura. my sphere of sight shifts off to my
heart and stops about a hundred meters to my right where gin is sitting in a tree. I walk slowly in that
direction, stopping directly underneath Gin. "Can't sleep?"
Gin looks down at me, "No."
I slowly start climbing up to where Gin is sitting on a thick bough. "Something the matter?"
Gin shrugs, "Just thinking."
I sit down heavily next to him, "About what?"
"What do you think?" He asks solemnly, "We killed a lucario and her mate today."
"No you didn't." I reply slowly, "I did, and I thought that the lucario would have wanted to kill me, not
have it the other way around."
Gin nods, "Yeah, me too. I would have wanted vengeance"
We sit in silence for a bit, then Gin speaks up, "I think her wave guidance abilities vanished the moment
her mate died."
I pause, digesting that slowly before slowly agreeing, "Yeah, that makes sense. Since Riolu evolve based
on their bond with their human partner, it makes sense that maybe there could be other abilities tied to
that bond."
We sit in silence then an idea worms its way into my mind, I open my mouth and pause, "Gin, would you
kill someone if I asked you to?"
Gin glances at me briefly, "Probably, if they were threatening or hurting you, then yeah, I would. I trust
you, you aren't like that guy. You wouldn't ask me to kill if there wasn't a good reason. Would you do
the same for me?"
I look Gin in the eye, "In a heartbeat. You and rogue are all I have. If anyone hurts either one of you, I
don't care if an entire army stood in my way, that person will die."
Gin smiles and holds out a paw, "To hell and back?"
I nod and grasp his paw firmly, "To the depths of hell and all the way to the heavens."Chapter End Notes:Okay, even though they were one-shot characters, I still feel I didn't do James and Eroca justice here. Almost every character I make has some sort of backstory for why they are... and I really feel I shafted these two.
Anyway, Reviews are loved as usual, and critical constructives are always invited
Behind Masks of Blind Sight
I wake up to find a pachirisu sleeping on my head with its tail hanging down over my face. That and I am
up in a tree. I do not remember climbing this tree. That means Gin has pulled yet another prank on me.
This was probably for my filling his canteen full of cheri berry juice last night, or it might just be our
ongoing prank wars have hit a new high. Literally.
Whether the pachirisu is part of the prank or not, it is a nice touch, since I can't get down unless the
pachirisu wakes up and gets off me on its own. Gin and I tried waking one up once when we had been
tasked with finding a specific pachirisu. They are very jumpy when they first wake up. It was not pretty.
My left arm wouldn't stop twitching for three days and Gin's tail kept spazzing out and smacking him
upside the head with random iron tails for the rest of the day. Rogue had been far enough away to avoid
being caught in the flurry of thunderbolts so she got to laugh at us the entire time.
Anyway, I have no idea what this guy is going to do if I wake him up, so my best course of action would
be to - "Hey Danny! You up yet?" Aw crap.
Gin laughs, "Get it? You're up in a, aw, never mind."
When he gets no reply he starts shouting louder, "Hey wake up lazy! IT's time to gather berries and
junk!" he pauses and the pachirisu tail twitches, tickling my nose. Oh for Arceus sake! Not that!
Gin starts jabbing the tree trunk and I can feel the vibrations traveling up to jar me slightly. The tail
twitches a couple more times and I can feel a tingle in my sinuses. I screw up my face, fighting back the
urge to sneeze. I try pinching my nose, careful to not pinch any tail hairs in the process. Suddenlythe
entire tree seems to come alive and starts shaking wildly, it feels like I'm sitting on a jackhammer for
Cresselia's sake! At this point I consider not waking the pachirisu a lost cause, and I throw myself
forward off the branch, sneezing as I tumble out of the upper boughs and try not to break my neck as I
bounce from branch to branch in a barely controlled tumble. Above me I hear the pachirisu shriek in
terror as it wakes up in free fall. It lands safely, I think as it stops screaming.
I hit the ground and fall into a crouch, and then transfer my momentum into a roll. I come to a stop on
my back, gasping for breath and more than a little sore from the rough descent. Gin looks at me with a
smirk, "Geez, I would have expected you to have woken up by now."
I glare up at him, "Gin, little brother, there was a pachirisu sleeping on my head."
Gin laughs at me and I growl, rolling over and lunging at him in one smooth motion. I manage to get the
lucario in a headlock and start giving him a noogie, grinding my knuckles against the top of his head.
"You could have gotten me killed!"
Gin yelps and starts swatting at me with his paws, "Sorry Sorry Sorry!"
I let him go and we both dust ourselves off. I look back up into the tree, noticing an angry looking
pachirisu near the top shaking its paw at me. I chuckle quietly, "How the hell did you get me up there
anyway? I know I'm a pretty heavy sleeper but that is just ridiculous."
Gin grins at me, "Mew teleported you up there when she came by to drop off your new clothes."
I whirl on Gin, "Mew came by and you didn't wake me up?!"
Not waking the others up when a guest arrives is a grave offense in our little group, and it was Mew for
Pete's sake! I loved listening to her gossip about the other legendaries, especially Darkrai. From the way
Mew talked about him, I think we would get along well. But apparently he doesn't get out much,
especially after his own run in with the people with the uniforms that had the DNA Helix on it a little
over a decade and half ago. I still can't place where I've seen that logo before though.
Gin raises his hands in a placating manner, "She told me not to. She did however tell me to give
you this when you woke up."
Gin tosses me a necklace of teeth with a quick claw in the center. "She put that together real quick while
you were sleeping."
I hold up the necklace, examining it closely, "This is my quick claw, and some feraligator teeth. Cool."
I put the necklace on and stretch. I yawn at the peak of my stretch, then slap Gin upside the head,
"You're it!" and take off using extreme speed. I shut my eyes and go into wave sight, side stepping Gin
as he lunges from above, then leaping to a tree limb and launching myself into the air. I open my eyes,
and marvel briefly at how far I can see from way up hear above the trees. Hopefully I can landon a
relatively high branch, because at this height gravity is enough to make the landing painful. Actually it is
Gin that reaches me first, with a force palm to the chest. "You're it!" I rocket backwards, the wind
knocked out of me. I curl up briefly, flipping over once before my feet connect with a solid tree trunk. I
reach out and grab hold of a pair of branches, then smile. This is the tree over our cave and I have new
clothes waiting for me!
I scramble down as fast as I can without falling and crawl inside our cave. It is getting a lot snugger now
that we have packed it with a full grown mightyena, a lucario, and me along with all our stuff. I've grown
a lot since coming out here. I was shorter than Gin as a lucario when I first arrived, but now I tower over
him by about a foot and I'm still growing. My hair did grow back after a while, thank Arceus, and it is
pulled back in a tight braid that reaches down to the middle of my back. I still have those huge scars on
my chest, they don't seem eager to fade at all. It's spring now, which means Mew is delivering my
summer clothes.
It's pretty amazing really what she can do with those little paws of hers and a bit of material. I pick up
the light brown tunic, one of three, which Mew has left for me. Light weight and sleeveless, it is perfect
for summer, and matches the brown trousers quite well. The knees of the trousers have a thicker patch
of leather over them, which is always nice.
"Sleep well?" Rogue asks from next to the storage area. One side of the cave is completely taken by a
long sack full of stuff. Potions, elixirs, antidotes, rations, clothing, pokémon items, you name it, we got it.
Except for pokéballs, we don't keep any of those around here.
I give her a look, but then smile, "Actually, yes, I did. At least until I woke up with a pachirisu on my
head."
Rogue laughs then walks over to where I am looking at something very different from the normal
pokémon skin clothing. She tilts her head to the side, "Is that... armor?"
I hold up the strange garments made from a thicker, tougher leathery material. These garments are
fairly solid except at the joints which are made of a tough but flexible plant based fabric. They are a pair
of trousers and a torso piece with one arm with armor like plates sewn into them, probably bone
judging from the weight. Too light to be metal. Also, the feraligatr skull is attached to the outside of the
left arm of the torso piece, but there is no right sleeve. "I think so."
Gin pope his head in and sees what we are looking at, "Pretty cool no?"
I shrug, "It looks bulky." I slip out of my pants and into the armored trousers, and then struggle into the
other part. It's snug, but it moves easy, very naturally. But the real test of armor is in combat and I look
at Gin, he nods and darts back outside. I follow him and he takes off through the woods.
I chase after him, but he manages to stay just ahead of me for a little over a mile until we reach the
river. There Gin turns and leaps, launching an aura sphere back at me. I dive to the side and nimbly
dodge the glowing blue sphere. I spring out of the dive and kick off a tree, meeting Gin over the river
with a force palm. Gin rolls with the blow and spins away from me, landing gracefully on the other side. I
land a little heavier in a crouch.
Gin sprints forward and throws a punch which I block with the skull. The blow is both softened and
deflected by the dense bone and the thick material underneath. I throw my arm out and Gin sails
backwards, while I dash forwards attacking with a flurry of strikes. Gin manages to deflect or block most
of the blows, but a few make it through and my greater reach is keeping him from countering
effectively. I pull back for a moment to try and charge a focus punch but gin is not about to let that go.
He lunges and headbutts me in the gut. I fly backwards a short ways to land on my rear while Gin tries to
keep his balance.
"Oh my head." He groans clutching his head as he wobbles then falls on his own rear. I chuckle as I stand
up.
"Hardly felt that." I say with a grin, walking over to help Gin back to his feet, "Though I don't think the
same could be said for you."
"No kidding." Gin says shaking his head fiercely and nearly losing his balance. "Damnit, what is that
made off?"
I reach out a hand to steady him, "Take it easy. Your skull may be steel but your brain isn't. as for what
this stuff is, I don't know, and I'm not sure I want to know."
"Hey! I hear somebody over here!" a girls voice exclaims loudly somewhere behind me in the
underbrush.
"Hey wait!" a male voice calls out.
Gin and I both leap into the tree tops, hiding ourselves in the thick foliage. Before long, a young girl with
a pokéball runs out of the forest to stand on the river bank looking around for me. She straightens her
green shirt when she doesn't see anyone and sighs. I hear a crashing in the undergrowth and an older
boy, probably around my own age, steps out. "Geez Darcia, don't run off like that! These woods are
dangerous."
Darcia gives the older boy a stubborn look, "I can take care of myself. Besides I've got Fergy with me."
she looks around again, "I know I heard somebody over here. It sounded like a boy. I wanted to battle
him."
"All the more reason not to run off the path!" the boy exclaims, "Haven't you heard about these woods
at all?!"
"We just moved here, G." the girl says rolling her eyes. "What is so special about these woods that has
got you all jumpy?"
G grabs her and starts dragging her back towards the beaten path, "There is a crazy out here with a
shiny lucario. They say he wears pokémon skin clothing and talks to pokémon."
"Really?" the girl asks excitedly, "That is so cool!"
G looks at her incredulously, "Do you want to have Fergy stolen from you?"
Daria's eyes widen, "What?"
I slowly creep out of the tree and start following the pair just out of sight. Gin sneaks along behind me,
hissing, "What the hell are you doing?!"
I grin back at him, whispering back, "I wanna know what they say about us!"
Gin sighs quietly and follows me closely. G had been talking during all this and apparently just finished
telling a story. Daria was clearly impressed. "That is so cool!"
G seems to disagree, "He stole the girl's ralts and all her potions, and then got away with it! What is cool
about that?"
The girl shakes her head, "Not that. He can talk to pokémon and he has pokémon abilities too!" she jabs
the older boy in the arm, "Besides, he returned the ralts to its family, which is not the same as stealing
the ralts for himself."
"Well," the boy rubs his arm with a sigh, "I guess, but the police think he might be involved in the mask
murders."
Gin and I look at each other, this didn't sound good. We had been careful not to seriously hurt anybody,
working on the assumption that as long as we didn't hurt anyone and always just released the pokémon
we were tasked with rescuing the police would focus on bigger problems. "How could he be the Mask if
he lives in these woods though?"
G shrugs, "I'm not really sure, but there are a lot of similarities." He starts counting on his fingers, "In
both cases, it is an individual with a shiny lucario. Both are reported to have a blade weapon of some
kind. Also, they both have supernatural abilities. Between the odds of both having shiny lucario and the
supernatural abilities, the odds are pretty high that if they aren't the same person they are related
somehow."
I start to straighten up and declare my innocence, not the brightest decision, but I am not a murderer!
Then Gin grabs my hand. I look back at Gin and notice he is shaking, his eyes wide with terror. "Can you
feel that?"
I frown, "Feel what?"
"Something bad is coming. Something is hunting. We need to get out of here now!" he finishes loudly,
hopping to his feet and starting to run. The trainers on the path whirl around to see Gin running away.
"Look a shiny lucario!" Daria exclaims, pulling a pokéball from her belt.
I stand up and wave at the trainers. I can feel it now too. An aura, a twisted aura, is approaching quickly
with malevolent intent. "Something's coming!" I shout, "You need to run!"
The two trainers stare at me in shock. Then they appear.
A black clad man appears behind the girl and a long blade bursts through her chest. Simultaneously, a
shiny lucario appears next to the older trainer spinning to backhand one of its paw spikes into his chest
and then throws him to the ground. Both the man and the lucario are wearing plain white masks.
I can only stare as the man kicks the girl off the end of his weapon. He laughs, rolling her body over as
she clutches at her stomach, still alive, her mouth moving wordlessly as she stares up at the man. The
man lifts his left hand up and then plunges his fingers into the girl's eyes, gouging deep and scooping
them out. The girl suddenly finds her voice and begins screaming. During this time the lucario had
hopped on the less injured boy's chest and stabbed her spikes into his eyes, demolishing them, and then
stabbing her left paw spike into the boy's carotid artery. The boy is dead in seconds, the spikes having
pierced his heart and brain and also spurting blood out of his carotid. The man lifts his swordlike
weapon and stabs in up through the belly button so that the tip comes out the side of her throat. Her
screams are instantly cut short.
Then both the man and the lucario turn to me. Their masks have no eye holes. I take a shaking step
backwards as the man laughs, squeezing the eyes in his hand until they burst. I had always thought that
the expression, 'to make one's blood run cold' was just a figure of speech, but I feel like ice has been
injected into my veins when I look at this man laughing as blood and whatever the viscous crap that fills
our eyeballs is running through his fingers.
"Enjoy the show boy?" the man asks shaking his hand so that the remains of the eyeballs and their juices
are flung to the ground.
"Why?" I hear myself ask, unaware that I could even think through the fear clogging my mind, maybe I
can't think, because I keep talking, "Why did you do that?"
"Justice, kid. It was for justice." The man says, his voice sounding hollow and infinitely more frightening
behind his mask, "Those who refuse to see don't deserve to have eyes."
"See what?!" I exclaim, taking another trembling step back.
"I know that you see. The stories they tell of you are proof enough." The man says, and I can hear his
smile, I can picture it, a leering face with a broad toothy grin. The smile of a predator. "Pokémon are our
equals, if not superior in almost every way. We are fools to treat them as anything less."
I nod, pokémon are often superior to humans biologically and sometimes mentally, "But why did they
have to die!? Why did you have to mutilate them?!" I yell, rage suddenly flaring up within me. Who does
this guy think he is? Arceus?!
"It is a metaphor." The man says calmly gesturing with his free hand as he pulls his blade free from the
girl. Her body slides off the blade with a quiet grinding of bone on steel followed by a wet thud as her
body falls back into a muddy pool of its blood. The man continues talking as he wipes his blade clean on
the boy's sweater, his tone is prideful and condescending, "It was their stubborn metaphysical blindness
that led them to deserve death in the first place, so in death I have taken their eyes. What is so hard to
understand? What is man that he should have dominion over Arceus' greater creations? It is a
perversion of the natural and must not go unpunished."
I shake my head as my disgust begins to grow stronger than my fear, "I know that for many pokémon,
the trainer becomes one of their closest companions after being caught. Killing the trainer means taking
away a part of the pokémon's new family."
"Then you can't see either." The man says, and that overwhelming sense of malevolence returns. I shut
my eyes, going into wave sight as I start backpedalling quickly. The man lunges forward using extreme
speed and swings the blade down on me. I throw up my left arm reflexively and the blade crunches
through the bone. I stare in shock as the skull shatters, practically exploding. Time seems to slow down
as my gaze moves from the skull, bits of it seeming to float in the air, to the plain white mask over the
man's face.
I dive to the side, time snapping back into normal speed. I don't escape completely untouched though,
the impact having stunned my arm and cut through the thick leather to put a thin gash in my forearm. I
roll to my feet and keep sprinting to the side away from the man as he turns and follows, swing his blade
wildly whenever he gets within reach. My focus is so firmly placed on the man and his sword that I
completely forget about the lucario. That is until she slams her paw spike into my gut.
The armor mew made blocks the point of the spike, but not the force of the blow. I tumble, rolling to a
stop with my back against a tree trunk. I see stars as my head knocks against the solid wood, briefly
falling out of wave sight. But even without wave sight I can see the man pulling back the blade for a kill
swing.
I drop to the ground and the blade buries itself deep in the tree trunk at about the height my neck had
been at. I scramble away from the man as he grunts and tries to yank the blade out of the tree, which is
being held tightly by the weight of the tree itself. I grunt as the lucario lands another blow, this time into
my kidney. I cry out in pain and spin, whipping out my broken machete to parry another spike thrust. I
step back and the lucario whirls like a top, knocking my machete to the side, not out of my hand but
enough to open my guard for a split second, before firing an aura sphere into my chest.
Already off balance I am thrown off my feet entirely. Sliding backwards in the dirt of the path I cross my
arms over my chest, surrounding myself in a green bubble. Another blue aura sphere explodes against
the bubble before it vanishes. Protect? When did I learn protect? I extend my hand and fire an aura
sphere at the lucario. She nimbly flips over it, but her being airborne and facing away from me gives me
a chance to jump back to my feet and ready a focus punch.
I attack just as she lands, my fist connects with her chest, right beneath her chest spike. She shoots
backwards with a yelp of pain. I hear an explosion and I turn to see the tree behind the man toppling
over, broken in half by the man's attack. The sword is free of the tree trunk now and the man lunges
after me again with renewed rage. "How dare you hurt my Eroca!"
"I wouldn't have hurt her if she weren't trying to kill me!" I exclaim "Self-preservation is kinda
instinctive!" sidestepping and deflecting the man's reckless downward swing. The force of the blow
nearly knocks the machete out of my hand. I am hopelessly out classed when it comes to power here! I
need time to come up with a plan!
I kick out and catch the man I the gut, slowing him enough for me to turn tail and run like hell down the
path. Come on! Think! You only have a few moments before either the man or the lucario catches up
then your times up!
I need to isolate one of them, because I definitely am not strong enough to take them both on at the
same time. On strength alone the man has me beat, and the lucario is definitely faster than me. She's
only a couple seconds from catching up even after that focus punch to the chest! I need more time! I
leap to the side and grab a thick branch, flipping up onto the branch and kicking off straight back the
way I came, passing over the lucario. She hits the brakes and starts sliding, trying to switch directions,
then a barrage of aura spheres drops out of the sky and explode all around her. None of them hit her
directly, but the lucario dropping down just behind them does. She is thrown to the ground by the force
of Gin's special move, 'the gin hammer', and gasps, the wind being knocked out of her.
I now have the time I need, and I can now isolate the man. Speaking of which, here he comes. He pulls
back and lunges at full speed, blade raised high overhead, trying to cut me in two. It isn't hard to slip
past the man's reckless swinging. It is obvious he is not used to fighting with someone who has similar
abilities. Nida the marowak would say his guard is wide open. The problem is that his longer arms and
blade give him a reach that makes getting inside even his guard suicidal at best. Like a ten year
old attacking a feraligatr. That's it!
The man turns and slides along the path, legs already pumping trying to throwing himself after me as I
turn and stop completely with my arms going out parallel to the ground. Head falling against my chest, I
quietly say, "You win."
The man laughs, his shoes finally getting traction and rocketing him forward again. Blade outstretched
to impale me through the stomach. Time seems to slow again as a fresh wave of adrenaline bursts
through my veins. I have to time this just right.
The tip of the man's blade is only a foot and a half away when I bring my own blade down. Steel scrapes
against steel and I can feel the blade biting into my side, piercing clean through the armor as if it weren't
even there. I quickly bring my blade around and step into the man's lunge. The jagged end of my broken
machete sinks into the man's chest. Then we collide and everything flashes into real time again.
We tumble over and over in the dirt, limbs tangled as someone screams. I separate from the man and
slide in the dirt clutching at my side. When I pull my hands away they are red with my blood. I glance
over at the man, he isn't moving, and my machete is buried to the hilt in his chest. He is definitely dead.
The man's blade is several yards from his body. And still someone is screaming, but now there are words
to the scream.
"NO! JAMES! NOOOO!"
I look back up the path to where gin is standing over the other lucario as she screams, crawling on all
fours as if blind back towards me and the man. Gin looks at me and I shrug. I crawl over to the man's
body and pull the blade out of his chest with a grunt then scoot backwards away from the lucario as she
reaches the corpse. She falls across it, sobbing. Gin makes his way over to me and gets down on one
knee next to me, "What happened? She just suddenly dropped and started screaming."
I shake my head, "I killed him."
At the sound of our voices the lucario looks over in our direction, "Please, child of Darkrai, kill me too."
"Why?" I ask in bewilderment, "Why should you die with that monster?"
The lucario sniffs, "He was a monster, yes, but I loved him still." She starts sobbing again, "He was the
only one who would love me, and he was... a true mate."
Gin and I are both stunned into speechlessness. Mate? After a long silence with nothing but the lucario's
sobs I finally find my voice. "How?"
"I was discarded three times over before he found me." The lucario reaches back behind her head and
undoes the masks bindings so that the mask falls away. She has no eyes. "Even if you have a unique fur,
no one wants a pokémon that can't see."
"But James never saw me for what I could do for him and loved me just the same." She says, "He was all
I had. So please, child of Darkrai, kill me."
She then lays back on James's chest and pulls his arms around herself, nuzzling her head up under his
chin. I slowly slide over next to the lucario and her dead mate, wary that this could be a trap. I lift the
machete over her chest, and then lower it slowly until it is nearly parallel with her stomach. With one
quick thrust I bury it under her rib cage. The blade slides up into her chest cavity, and I can feel her body
spasm once as it cuts into her heart and then she is still. I scoot back slowly, looking at them. Gin walks
past me and slides the man and lucario over to a tree trunk, setting them up into a sitting position. Then
he takes the man's mask off. He steps back, staring at the man's milky grey eyes. "I guess he was blind
too."
I wincingly climb to my feet and walk over to pick up the man's blade. "Yeah." I take a deep breath and
grimace as the blood starts to soak into the waist of my pants, "I think I need to get this cleaned and
wrapped."
Gin turns to look at me and his eyes widen, "You're bleeding!"
I chuckle, as I start walking slowly back towards our cave. "Yeah, that tends to happen when someone
barely misses running you through."
Suddenly a wave of dizziness washes over me and my knees buckle. "Shit." I mutter as my knees hit the
ground and I fall forward onto all fours. Gin picks me up in his arms, and I growl, "Damn it Gin, I'm hurt,
but I'm not an invalid."
"Shut up." He growls back, "I'm not wasting time letting you bleed to death because of your damned
ego."
I hold on tight to the blade as Gin carries me back to the cave at a blinding pace. Then we spend the next
hour with Rogue both chewing us out and doting on us at the same time as we clean the wound with
antiseptic and wrap me up in gauze. I lay back against the fur cushion and sigh, then glance over at Gin
with a frown, "Why did she call me 'child of Darkrai'?"
Gin glances at me with surprised expression, "You don't know?"
I shake my head, "Know what?"
"Your aura, it makes you look like a pale inverse of Darkrai." Gin says then gestures over his head, "You
have that floaty hair deal and even a light blue collar thing. It's sort of superimposed over your body.
Kind of creepy really."
I shake my head again, "Never paid that much attention to my own aura. I would have expected you to
have said something about it when you first mastered wave sight five years ago."
Gin shrugs, "You mastered wave sight first so I thought you knew."
I close my eyes, "I guess I should have, but I didn't."
-0-
I'm nine years old again, and I'm sprinting through the hospital corridors. She can't be dead! She
promised!
I blow past a pair of chansey and into a hospital room. There on the bed is a thin, fragile looking woman.
The chemo took her hair over a year ago, and now the life sign monitors show nothing but flat lines.
"NO!" I scream throwing myself over her lap, sobbing into the hospital sheets. "You promised! You
promised to make it to my birthday!"
I sob wordlessly, pressing my head against her bony chest. After a moment I whimper, "You promised."
Then I feel a cold bony hand on the back of my head, and a pained voice saying my name, "Dante?"
I look up in surprise then recoil in horror.
"Dante? Where are my eyes?" my dead mother asks, her eyes only ragged bloody holes in her face with
trickling trails of blood running out of them over her pale face. Her voice grows louder, but not stronger,
"Where have they taken my eyes!?"
I take a frightened step backwards and fall over a ledge. The hospital room quickly becomes a small
patch of rapidly shrinking white light as I fall through a hole in the floor into darkness. Then even that
little light vanishes as I splash down into warm liquid.
I open my eyes, and the liquid burns, but I see nothing. I struggle to the surface, gasping as my head
breaks through. I taste the bitter coppery taste of blood on my lips and there is suddenly soft ground
under my feet and I open my eyes again. I am surrounded by blood.
"Danny!" I hear Rogue's voice calling to me from somewhere up ahead. "Danny help!"
I slog forward through the waist deep blood towards her cries, "I'm coming! Just hold on!"
My breath is coming ragged gasps as I finally emerge from the blood and onto marshy ground. I stumble
forward towards rogue's voice, now just whimpers. Suddenly she is right in front of me. Her fur is
drenched in blood from countless gashes all over her body, and my stomach twists when I see that her
hindquarters are just gone completely. "OH Arceus, no." I moan falling on my knees next to her.
Her eyes lift to gaze at me. "You promised." She whimpers, "You promised Danny."
I sob, "I'm sorry!"
I watch as her gaze goes blank, the light going out from her eyes. I lay my forehead against her side,
quietly crying, my strength just gone completely.
Something falls on the ground next to me with a wet splat. I look back over my shoulder to see a plain
white mask with a crack shot through it. Then I hear a deep, unfamiliar voice, "Give them back."
I look up in front of me and my heart pounds like it is about to explode out of my chest. Standing over
me is a massive feraligator, its flesh bloated and the skin is stretched and cracking looks down at me
with bloody holes where its eyes should be and roars, "GIVE ME BACK MY EYES!"
-0-
I bolt upright, heart thumping in my throat like a locomotive and a sharp pain in my side. I can't see
anything and I panic for a moment, but then I remember where I am. I'm in our cave, and it's night time.
Of course I can't see anything. I hear someone else stir then Rogue's voice asks, "Is everything alright?"
I take a deep breath to calm my nerves, slipping into wave sight, noticing that Gin isn't here before I
nod, "Yeah, I... just need to step out for a moment to deal with some business."
I crawl out of the cave and stand up slowly, focusing on gin's aura. my sphere of sight shifts off to my
heart and stops about a hundred meters to my right where gin is sitting in a tree. I walk slowly in that
direction, stopping directly underneath Gin. "Can't sleep?"
Gin looks down at me, "No."
I slowly start climbing up to where Gin is sitting on a thick bough. "Something the matter?"
Gin shrugs, "Just thinking."
I sit down heavily next to him, "About what?"
"What do you think?" He asks solemnly, "We killed a lucario and her mate today."
"No you didn't." I reply slowly, "I did, and I thought that the lucario would have wanted to kill me, not
have it the other way around."
Gin nods, "Yeah, me too. I would have wanted vengeance"
We sit in silence for a bit, then Gin speaks up, "I think her wave guidance abilities vanished the moment
her mate died."
I pause, digesting that slowly before slowly agreeing, "Yeah, that makes sense. Since Riolu evolve based
on their bond with their human partner, it makes sense that maybe there could be other abilities tied to
that bond."
We sit in silence then an idea worms its way into my mind, I open my mouth and pause, "Gin, would you
kill someone if I asked you to?"
Gin glances at me briefly, "Probably, if they were threatening or hurting you, then yeah, I would. I trust
you, you aren't like that guy. You wouldn't ask me to kill if there wasn't a good reason. Would you do
the same for me?"
I look Gin in the eye, "In a heartbeat. You and rogue are all I have. If anyone hurts either one of you, I
don't care if an entire army stood in my way, that person will die."
Gin smiles and holds out a paw, "To hell and back?"
I nod and grasp his paw firmly, "To the depths of hell and all the way to the heavens."Chapter End Notes:Okay, even though they were one-shot characters, I still feel I didn't do James and Eroca justice here. Almost every character I make has some sort of backstory for why they are... and I really feel I shafted these two.
Anyway, Reviews are loved as usual, and critical constructives are always invited