Chapter 7: Nightmares
The end of things. A pokemon fanfic by Rocko Wallaby
DISCLAIMER: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
Chapter 7: Nightmares.
I started my search for the cause of the disturbance heading north, following the edge of the forest. The route was tough, weaving past boulders and screed, and crossing both icy cold streams and loose gravel slips that threatened to slide out from under me with every step.
As the morning progressed towards noon, the sun disappeared, bringing the threat of rain. Soon enough, the heavens opened, and I was more than happy to have with me my heavy jacket, that had felt so stifling earlier in the day.
With the rain came a brisk wind that began to make the day significantly more unpleasant. Hunching my shoulders within my hood, with my arms hugging my sides to keep them warm, I kept up my momentum, eating up the miles while the cold ate into my soul.
Typical mountain weather. Beautiful one moment, miserable the next.
The trail I was following, if you could justify calling it that, continued to meander around the upper peaks, and I began to wonder if I'd even discover anything unusual in the area.
That was until I came across the carcass of the charizard.
It was the smell that first alerted me. The overwhelming reek of carrion stench. I located the source behind a rocky outcrop, where it had clearly crashed heavily before sliding into an untidy heap on the rocks below.
At first, I had to assume the death was natural, as nothing obvious as to the cause of death was evident, although I continued to examine the remains looking for anything suspicious. Finally, my search was rewarded. Behind the right ear, caked in gore, was an entry hole for a large calibre rifle round. Across the neck and chest, and especially around the muzzle area, were lacerations consistent with rope or wire burn. Wire, I reasoned, given the smaller diameter of the slices, and the depth they had penetrated.
The accuracy of the rifle shot suggested the creature had been shot at reasonably close range, likely within 15-20 meters. The creature had also been airborne when shot, given the impact area and shattered wings.
But where was the wire? The creature had been bound before death, and the area it lay in did not show the extent of blood pooling you'd see if it had bled out here. There was also no way it could have removed the wire itself, as the area of its flesh covered with injury was extensive.
So, it had been tied up with wire, and muzzled, had somehow managed to escape, and been shot while in the air from close range.
One thing became very clear.
Someone had really fucked up this charizard in a big way and, even more worrying, I'd heard of something uncomfortably similar to this before...
_________________________________________________________________
I woke in our room the next morning with the hangover from hell, and a warm, furry arm draped across my chest. I could feel Storms slow breathing with the rising and falling of his chest where he rested against my back, warm and comforting.
I hadn't remembered him climbing into the bed with me, not that it troubled me at all. We'd been friends too long to be concerned about things like that.
Then again, I hadn't remembered climbing into the bed myself.
While I'm sure many would have frowned upon it, we'd never troubled ourselves with their opinion and, while his presence in my bed became less frequent as we got older, occasionally I woke up with the big bed warmer snuggled against me, particularly if he'd suffered troubling dreams during the night.
Certainly, he beat any electric blanket I'd ever used hands down.
Urk. What a night! Rangers sure know how throw a wild party and, after what had happened and how it ended, it couldn't have gotten any wilder.
Turning over carefully, I searched Storm's face, seeing he was unlikely to be waking up any time soon. I gently removed the arm over me, placing it beside him, and he muttered something incomprehensible before turning over onto his other side, allowing me to escape the sheets. After getting up, I stretched, working the kinks out of my back and neck, then pulled the linen back over him to keep him warm Reaching across the desk at the foot of my bed, I snagged the boil switch on the coffee pot, and set about brewing up some breakfast.
Even then, I was a caffeine addict.
After pouring a cup, the smell of freshly brewed coffee in the small room obviously overcame Storm's sleeping senses, as he woke with a snort, pushing the sheets back while sitting up against the bed head. Rubbing his eyes, which were even redder than usual, he reached for my half empty cup which I handed over, chuckling, before pouring myself another.
I wasn't the only one needing a quick fix that morning, it seemed.
I sat back down on the foot of the bed, and let him take a few sips, before he let out a sigh and simply sat there, breathing in the aroma, and avoiding my questioning gaze.
"So, do you want to tell me about it?" I asked him.
He looked at me for a few seconds, before looking away, taking another swig from the cup and replying "Not really. But you won't let up on it if I don't, will you? Not after yesterday"
He knew me better than I knew myself.
He was right, of course. I wouldn't have.
He let out another deep sigh, and rested his head against the wall, staring up at the ceiling before speaking.
"When I was very young, and still a cyndaquil, my parents and I were living on the banks of Lake Wahoe, near the southern border. There were cliffs near the water, and they had melted a cavern into the rock big enough for us all to live in."
"It was great there," he reminisced. "There was heaps of food, especially lum berries which I loved the best of all"
He sighed again, and looked into his cooling coffee, idly rotating the cup in his paws.
"My parents were both typhlosions", he said, "which I know is a little unusual. I don't remember much about them now, but I remember my dad was really big, and mum always hugged me a lot. Other than that, I don't remember them much"
He rubbed his face again, before continuing.
"The strangers came to the lake just after the first winters snow had begun to fall. I realise now they used the tracks my parents had made when gathering food to follow them back to the den."
His voice became rough, as he grasped the cup in a grip that, for a moment, looked like it might shatter it.
"They killed my father first. He'd heard them coming, and had charged out to challenge them. When he left the den, they shot him, almost point blank, in the chest and the head. He never stood a chance. My mother tried protecting me, hiding me behind her, but she couldn't shield both of us from them. Next I knew, she had slumped against me, and while I tried to get her to run away with me, even though her eyes were open, she wouldn't move"
He put the cup on the dresser, and wiped his nose with his arm, letting out a choking sniff in the process.
"They wanted me, of course. They needed young ones, especially unevolved ones, for the tests they ran. One of them had crawled into the den, with a big brown thing in his hand. At the time, I had no idea what a bag was, but it was stuffed over my head, before they dragged me out of the den. I screamed and screamed, and they hit me, over and over, until I didn't scream anymore"
"I don't remember being taken to the facility, but when I woke, I was in a big metal cage, and Jameson was there, examining me through the bars. He was always there, telling the others what to do, and how to hurt me. I hated him so much!"
I reached out and gripped his arm, giving it a squeeze while he collected himself before continuing.
"They did things to me there. Things that hurt me. I was put on a table, with my arms and legs strapped down, and they stuck things in me; in my head and chest. Sometimes in my eyes and down my throat. Shit, it hurt so much. They fed me things too. Some things they gave me made me smarter. I began, slowly, to start to understand what they were saying. Soon, they were forcing me to try the words myself. If I didn't get it right, they hurt me some more, shocking me with hand held devices they carried with them. After a time, I was taking fluently, and was able to hold long conversations with them. They seemed to like that, and when they liked something, the hurting stopped for a while. That made me talk a lot more, so they began teaching me to read, giving me primers at first, and then more advanced books to read. I didn't mind that either. It was better than the alternative"
He looked at me again, eyes redder than before.
"Something else they gave me stopped my flame, too. After a while, it just didn't work anymore. They got pretty excited about this as well, and put me through even more tests, taking blood and sticking needles in my heat patches. They didn't care that it hurt; even when I screamed they kept going. What I wanted just didn't matter. I was just an animal to them"
He absently straightened the sheets covering his waist, smoothing the folds with his paws.
"They had a lot of other pokemon there, too. All sorts, and all young. They hurt them a lot too, and many of them just died. When this happened, they brought in a big blue plastic bin on wheels, and just dumped them in it. No one cared, and no one looked. If you didn't look, it wasn't happening. If you looked, you might be next".
"I was there a long, long time. I don't know how long, but one day during their tests, the pain was too much, and I evolved there and then on the bench. They hated that. It turns out they were trying to perfect a method for controlling pokemon evolution, and I had just invalidated their research."
He clenched the sheets in anger.
"Things got bad then. Really bad. They started beating me, as well as stopped feeding me. When they didn't think I could hear, they began talking about "Losing their research grants" and "Closing the facility". I began getting sick, and some of my cuts and bruises wouldn't heal, which just seemed to make them angrier"
"Then they brought in a really, really big pokemon. A charizard. They chained it up at the back of the facility they kept us in, with a large muzzle to stop it breathing fire. I overheard them saying they were proceeding to "the next phase", involving dissection of the charizard, and that the first phase subjects were to be terminated."
"I knew what that meant. I had heard them use it each time one of us was taken away in the blue bin. They were going to kill us"
"I had worked out how the locks on the cages worked long before and, that night when the attendant brought us fresh water, I slipped his key card from his belt clip when he wasn't looking, Since you only needed the card to get into our area, he didn't notice it was missing. Later that night, I used the card to open the cage door, and crept over to the charizard, who had been kept bound the entire day. I told him what they were planning, and he indicated his willingness to help us escape with a violent nod of his head. I tried coaxing the others, but they wouldn't respond. It's like they were already dead inside"
He looked up at me, with a glint of anger in his eyes.
"We killed 4 of them on the way out. The charizard cremated 3 with his heat blast, and I slashed the throat of one of them with my claws. He was the one who had beaten me after the last tests, and when he saw us trying to escape, he tried stabbing me with a knife he pulled from his pocket. He missed, mostly. That's how I got the ear". He gingerly rubbed the place where the chunk was missing from his earlobe.
"When he stopped moving, and we managed to make it outside to the fenced compound, someone must have sounded an alarm, because all hell broke loose then. The sirens started, and someone began shining a spot light around, with the beam catching the charizard in full. I remember many shots being fired, and being grabbed in his claws when he took off, and his roar as he lurched violently in the air as the bullets tore into him."
He looked at his paws again, and sighed. "No, I'll never forget that. Ever".
Looking at me again, he paused for a minute, before continuing. "As we cleared the wall, the spotlight followed us as we passed the main tower, and I saw the name of the laboratory stencilled in huge letters on the wall. CERT. Combined Eradication and Research Team."
He dropped his head into his paws, and was obviously having trouble holding back his tears.
"We made it a long way further than I thought we would, before the charizard couldn't fly anymore. I heard his struggling breath wheezing through some of the holes in his chest, which had clearly penetrated a lung, and I was soon covered in the hot, dark blood pouring from his wounds. When he realised he couldn't go any further, he must have tried to land, but didn't make it. We crashed into the forest not that far from where you found me that day, the branches in the trees ripping at us as we fell to the ground. The landing knocked me unconscious, and it was hours before I came to, crawling over to the charizard where he lay shattered on the ground nearby. He was dead, though. His final act had been to try and protect me as we fell"
"I never even knew his name. He saved me, and I never knew his name"
He hiccupped softly, with tears streaming down his face. I reached over and threw my arms around him, cradling him to me while he cried into my shoulder.
Shit. I had thought it was bad, but not like this.
When his sobs subsided, and he calmed down a bit, he gave me another hug, and sat back before sniffing a few times, continuing his story.
"Then you found me. I was so scared. You were there, standing over me, and I couldn't think to do anything but run. But I hurt too much, and I passed out, and when I came to, you were carrying me so gently. It still hurt, but I knew, somehow, you were only helping me"
He looked at me in a way I'd never seen before. My throat was so tight, I couldn't ask why.
"Thanks to you, my life has been perfect. I'm so happy now, and I thought I was going to live like this forever."
"Then THEY showed up today, and I wanted to die again."
I gave him another quick hug, and he relaxed against me.
I breathed into his fur, before leaning back and catching his eyes with mine.
"Mate, I give you my word, nothing bad will ever happen to you again. I promise you that."
We held each other a long time after that. I think we both needed it.
If I only knew then that some promises could never be kept, thinks may have turned out differently...
Continued in Chapter 8: Beasts.