Liberate
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.
Graying Blood
Chapter 9: Liberate
***
Gideon jogged through the dimly lit passages to the armory. Pushing on the heavy metal door, he found it would not budge. With a growl, the nidoking stepped back as the air began to ionize around him, crackling before he extended a paw. A hyperbeam burned through the door with a crack and a blinding yellow flash; melted metal splattered on the concrete in the armory. The nidoking stepped through, tail swishing idly behind him.
Walking to a rack, he grabbed a rifle and several spare magazines, slinging the weapon over his shoulder by its strap. With that, he turned on a heel and began his hunt.
***
Crack! The aggron's thick, stony tail sent Rhombus sprawling back, landing on her back and skidding over broken glass, shards of shattered light bulbs digging into her back as she immediately sprung from her hand paws to get back to her feet.
The larger female right paw extended to catch a charging Alexei right by his face and a smack of the rifle in her other paw Slate reeling with just as much effort, the weapon's barrel crunching and bending under the sheer force. Not that she needed it for anything but a club and a little more reach.
Swinging wide, she smashed the absol male against the wall repeatedly, crunches of broken ribs filling the air as the last of his horn was at last shattered into shards which cut his cheek before clacking to the floor. Tossing him atop the stunned sandslash in a discarding manner, the aggron woman coldly eyed the panting arcanine.
Rhombus stepped in front of her crumpled subordinates, shielding them with her comparably large frame. "A bit hard on the boys there, don't you think?"
The aggron's answer came only in a charge. Her heavy steely paws crushed the floor beneath as she collided with the firedog, the pair rolling across the floor. The strong and sturdy body of the arcanine saved her from being crushed outright by the bulk of the aggron, footpaws pushed against that hard stone stomach.
Ending up with the steely stone type below her, Rhombus gave a snarl as she smashed a flaming fist right into that reenforced skull plating. The aggron growled as the metal turned red-hot, even deforming a little bit as the heat began to sear against the thinner rock hide underneath. A knee to the belly stopped the fiery onslaught as her now weakened metal helmet cooled back to a glinting silver.
The aggron rolled over the arcanine, pinning Rhombus roughly to the floor as she slammed her head against the concrete a couple of times.
***
Bloodquill stalked the halls of his compromised headquarters, ears perked up and back spines extended. He was spoiling for a fight with anything now, even his own troops for letting this lapse of security happen. No, no.
Who would do this? Many would. As he turned down a junction in the hall, it suddenly struck the nidoking.
Not a chance in hell! He broke into a sprint for his room. No one was going to take his Sophia away from him!
***
Rhombus gave a gargling gasp as that stone paw clamped down on her windpipe, the aggron's eyes flaring in glowing anger behind that steel mask. She just took her time, slowly strangling the life from the arcanine.
The firedog began to feel light headed, the already dim face of the aggron starting to blur and fade as her muscles burned from trying to force the giant half steel-type off of her.
"Should have just surrendered," the steely voice of the aggron rang, the tone furious as it distorted in the ears of the fainting arcanine female.
Just before she blacked out, the arcanine saw a red and white blur shoot past her vision, glowing in a matching crimson aura.
Abby collided with the aggron's head, her hidden fighting power channeling into her claws as the force of the blow plus her special power shoved the aggron off of Rhombus. Claws glowing a bloody, mottled red, she swiped them across the aggron's weakened face mask, shearing the front of it off with a metallic whine.
Before the aggron could grab the smaller normal-type atop her chest, she was hit with another strike of the zangoose's hidden power. Abigail gave an open palm strike right to the aggron's exposed face. With the crunch of a broken muzzle, she went limp beneath Abigail, breathing raggedly as the concussive, super effective blow laid her right out.
Rhombus gave a few heavy gasps for breath as she sat up to see Abby standing over the stunned aggron. The zangoose looked back at the collapsed Alexei and the slowly recovering Slate. "Carry Alexei," she said bluntly, fur still puffed up in agitation.
Without question, Rhombus felt over the beaten absol's neck before carefully slinging him over her shoulder as the three still standing morphs continued in their escape.
***
Cassandra and her team burst through the door of Gideon's quarters, Brooke and Bernard checking the corners adjacent to the doors with the flashlights on their rifles before the kadabra joined them. Sophia was sitting there the entire time, her expression remaining all the same until Cassandra dashed up and gave the big pokemon anthro a hug.
"You're safe now," she whispered. "Let's go get Th--"
Just then, a series shot rang out from the open door behind her. Her crackling hexagonal blue protect barrier flared up, the bullets flattening against it before clattering to the floor. Just then, the lights flickered back on, the alarms now blaring.
More rounds deflected off the barrier as Cassandra gave a pained groan. Any moment, the anti-psychic field would reactivate. Closing her eyes, the shield expanded to block the doorway and keep Gideon outside as she focused hard. This was going to strain her for sure.
Before another round could strike the barrier, the four pokemon anthros vanished in a flash of white light.
A furious roar filled the air as Gideon emptied the rifle into the wall before throwing it down and crushing it underfoot. "Edward. You're a dead man," the nidoking muttered in a low growl, still grinding the gun flat into the floor.
***
Just a second before the anti-psychic fields reactivated, Cassandra and the rest of the rescue team along with Abigail winked into existence a mile away from Indigo Plateau on a back road. Cassie's paws flew to her head as she immediately sunk to her knees.
That far of a teleport with so many pushed her and she knew it. But there was more. This was different; she felt her whole sense of the world fundamentally shift. With a piercing scream, she was overcome with a radiant wave of shimmering golden light. It faded in just another second, leaving the kadabra sans a tail with a little longer of a mustache, her skull structure also different with her fatigues looking a little baggier on her now much slimmer form. An alakazam by any description.
Her hearing was still filled with a keen ringing as she saw Sophia dash over to her, afterimages of the nidoqueen sticking in her vision. The outside sun was almost unbearably bright as she felt a wave of nausea, rainbow auras surrounding everything.
The nidoqueen's voice was washed out and faint, she couldn't make out a word.
"No time. Sorry I couldn't save Theo," she muttered weakly. The last thing she saw was Rhombus pulling out a phone before collapsing in the cool dew of the morning grass.
Hours later, she slowly cracked her eyes open to see the familiar white acoustic tile ceiling of Kanto North's infirmary, vision still rippling and shifting with multi-hued shapes and patterns. A large blue shape at her side sharpened and revealed itself to be Sophia.
To her side, she could see Alexei on another bed, that horn now entirely missing with his upper head and midsection heavily bandaged.
The nidoqueen gently rubbed over the alakazam's head affectionately as she gave a few more blinks, the psychic type's vision flattening out and returning to normal as the over-amped buzz of her enhanced powers finally died down.
"How are you feeling?" the nidoqueen asked warmly, concern for herself fading as she looked over her true mate.
The alakazam took a good breath before answering. "Never felt worse," she groaned before sitting up in the bed. "Like I've filled a glass to half empty."
"Theo will have to save himself; And I know he will," Sophia said, trying to put some of that past strength behind her voice. "More importantly, no one died from your actions; that makes me happier than anything else."
"What about Alexei?" Cassandra asked, "How is he?"
The nidoqueen glanced over to the unconscious absol. "We have no idea if or when he'll wake up. He took a nasty blow to the head back there; brain looks okay from scans, but it was a bad shock."
The young alakazam looked over to her comatose childhood friends, the absol's breathing shallow as he rested.
***
Back at Gideon's headquarters, the nidoking was down in his own infirmary. The aggron's face plate looked like it had been welded back on, grafted with several other plates of metal that would smooth in and heal with time. Her jaw was wired shut as she wrote on a notepad for the base's Executive.
"Filthy traitors," he scowled. "So it was those four, huh? Abigail pay for it, don't worry." He patted the bedridden aggron on the shoulder before turning and pacing over to where Theodore was still lying.
"Your bitch is dead. Understood?"
The smaller nidoking, nodding gently on a morphine drip, just responded with a knowing little smile, his green eyes lidded and his ears droopy. A flicker of satisfaction hit his drug-addled mind at seeing Bloodquill sweat a little for once.
***
The comatose absol's eyes moved around wildly under their lids, his footpaws twitching slightly as he dreamed.
"So that's what this is all about," the absol took a sip of tea, sitting down on his knees on a picnic blanket in the middle of that grassy field on a wonderful day. Across from them was that large figure that looked like him, but not quite. One of it's million glowing arms also holding a tea cup as it hovered gently just over the picnic mat.
"Yes. You are my earthly guardian, Alexei," it boomed, those eyes looking directly into the very essence of the absol before it. "It is more vital than ever you remain cautious. Those who would see me dead and this creation of mine warped and perverted are stirring in the background. Trust not childhood friends, nor those of your own blood. The trials you will face will only grow from this point on."
The dreamer's mind had no problems with the gravity of the words it was receiving. "I accept," he said in response.
***
The roar of engines as the clatter of steely treads against grass and pavement greeted the dawn the next day outside of Mt. Moon. Columns of jet back T-90's rolled in and parked, followed by several matching covered trucks full of soldiers. They blockaded the entrance to the mountain a few kilometers away.
Inside, several soldiers headed by Fractal burst into the Executive's office. The ampharos threw a quick salute as the alakazam calmly watched the commotion from his desk. "Yes?" Edward asked.
"We have some unwelcome guests knocking on our door," the ampharos chirped sharply, his tone still carrying that normal sarcastic playfulness. "We're readying our own armor and defensive measures as I speak."
The middle-age alakazam stood up from his desk, waving a paw for the ampharos to follow him. "Let's go for a walk. I have something you need to see."
***
The clefable deep in the depths of the North Kanto Headquarters hovered over his game boards, giggling a little bit as he plucked up the remaining nidoqueen and zangoose in one paw as he slid the arcane and sandslash next to the alakazam figurine.
"Oh, that's right," he tapped the head of the kadabra game pieces with a single claw and it morphed into another alakazam. "That's better. Seems our heroes rescued the princess from the false king. But he brings a siege to the fortress of the heroes," he chittered before setting the gravid nidoqueen figure and zangoose on the opposing side to the king.
"So far so good. Soon, we will be free." he picked up the zangoose piece, glancing over it slowly. "I can't wait for us to play together." He set it back down with a content little smirk before giving that absol piece still sitting in the corner a nervous glance.
Graying Blood
Chapter 9: Liberate
***
Gideon jogged through the dimly lit passages to the armory. Pushing on the heavy metal door, he found it would not budge. With a growl, the nidoking stepped back as the air began to ionize around him, crackling before he extended a paw. A hyperbeam burned through the door with a crack and a blinding yellow flash; melted metal splattered on the concrete in the armory. The nidoking stepped through, tail swishing idly behind him.
Walking to a rack, he grabbed a rifle and several spare magazines, slinging the weapon over his shoulder by its strap. With that, he turned on a heel and began his hunt.
***
Crack! The aggron's thick, stony tail sent Rhombus sprawling back, landing on her back and skidding over broken glass, shards of shattered light bulbs digging into her back as she immediately sprung from her hand paws to get back to her feet.
The larger female right paw extended to catch a charging Alexei right by his face and a smack of the rifle in her other paw Slate reeling with just as much effort, the weapon's barrel crunching and bending under the sheer force. Not that she needed it for anything but a club and a little more reach.
Swinging wide, she smashed the absol male against the wall repeatedly, crunches of broken ribs filling the air as the last of his horn was at last shattered into shards which cut his cheek before clacking to the floor. Tossing him atop the stunned sandslash in a discarding manner, the aggron woman coldly eyed the panting arcanine.
Rhombus stepped in front of her crumpled subordinates, shielding them with her comparably large frame. "A bit hard on the boys there, don't you think?"
The aggron's answer came only in a charge. Her heavy steely paws crushed the floor beneath as she collided with the firedog, the pair rolling across the floor. The strong and sturdy body of the arcanine saved her from being crushed outright by the bulk of the aggron, footpaws pushed against that hard stone stomach.
Ending up with the steely stone type below her, Rhombus gave a snarl as she smashed a flaming fist right into that reenforced skull plating. The aggron growled as the metal turned red-hot, even deforming a little bit as the heat began to sear against the thinner rock hide underneath. A knee to the belly stopped the fiery onslaught as her now weakened metal helmet cooled back to a glinting silver.
The aggron rolled over the arcanine, pinning Rhombus roughly to the floor as she slammed her head against the concrete a couple of times.
***
Bloodquill stalked the halls of his compromised headquarters, ears perked up and back spines extended. He was spoiling for a fight with anything now, even his own troops for letting this lapse of security happen. No, no.
Who would do this? Many would. As he turned down a junction in the hall, it suddenly struck the nidoking.
Not a chance in hell! He broke into a sprint for his room. No one was going to take his Sophia away from him!
***
Rhombus gave a gargling gasp as that stone paw clamped down on her windpipe, the aggron's eyes flaring in glowing anger behind that steel mask. She just took her time, slowly strangling the life from the arcanine.
The firedog began to feel light headed, the already dim face of the aggron starting to blur and fade as her muscles burned from trying to force the giant half steel-type off of her.
"Should have just surrendered," the steely voice of the aggron rang, the tone furious as it distorted in the ears of the fainting arcanine female.
Just before she blacked out, the arcanine saw a red and white blur shoot past her vision, glowing in a matching crimson aura.
Abby collided with the aggron's head, her hidden fighting power channeling into her claws as the force of the blow plus her special power shoved the aggron off of Rhombus. Claws glowing a bloody, mottled red, she swiped them across the aggron's weakened face mask, shearing the front of it off with a metallic whine.
Before the aggron could grab the smaller normal-type atop her chest, she was hit with another strike of the zangoose's hidden power. Abigail gave an open palm strike right to the aggron's exposed face. With the crunch of a broken muzzle, she went limp beneath Abigail, breathing raggedly as the concussive, super effective blow laid her right out.
Rhombus gave a few heavy gasps for breath as she sat up to see Abby standing over the stunned aggron. The zangoose looked back at the collapsed Alexei and the slowly recovering Slate. "Carry Alexei," she said bluntly, fur still puffed up in agitation.
Without question, Rhombus felt over the beaten absol's neck before carefully slinging him over her shoulder as the three still standing morphs continued in their escape.
***
Cassandra and her team burst through the door of Gideon's quarters, Brooke and Bernard checking the corners adjacent to the doors with the flashlights on their rifles before the kadabra joined them. Sophia was sitting there the entire time, her expression remaining all the same until Cassandra dashed up and gave the big pokemon anthro a hug.
"You're safe now," she whispered. "Let's go get Th--"
Just then, a series shot rang out from the open door behind her. Her crackling hexagonal blue protect barrier flared up, the bullets flattening against it before clattering to the floor. Just then, the lights flickered back on, the alarms now blaring.
More rounds deflected off the barrier as Cassandra gave a pained groan. Any moment, the anti-psychic field would reactivate. Closing her eyes, the shield expanded to block the doorway and keep Gideon outside as she focused hard. This was going to strain her for sure.
Before another round could strike the barrier, the four pokemon anthros vanished in a flash of white light.
A furious roar filled the air as Gideon emptied the rifle into the wall before throwing it down and crushing it underfoot. "Edward. You're a dead man," the nidoking muttered in a low growl, still grinding the gun flat into the floor.
***
Just a second before the anti-psychic fields reactivated, Cassandra and the rest of the rescue team along with Abigail winked into existence a mile away from Indigo Plateau on a back road. Cassie's paws flew to her head as she immediately sunk to her knees.
That far of a teleport with so many pushed her and she knew it. But there was more. This was different; she felt her whole sense of the world fundamentally shift. With a piercing scream, she was overcome with a radiant wave of shimmering golden light. It faded in just another second, leaving the kadabra sans a tail with a little longer of a mustache, her skull structure also different with her fatigues looking a little baggier on her now much slimmer form. An alakazam by any description.
Her hearing was still filled with a keen ringing as she saw Sophia dash over to her, afterimages of the nidoqueen sticking in her vision. The outside sun was almost unbearably bright as she felt a wave of nausea, rainbow auras surrounding everything.
The nidoqueen's voice was washed out and faint, she couldn't make out a word.
"No time. Sorry I couldn't save Theo," she muttered weakly. The last thing she saw was Rhombus pulling out a phone before collapsing in the cool dew of the morning grass.
Hours later, she slowly cracked her eyes open to see the familiar white acoustic tile ceiling of Kanto North's infirmary, vision still rippling and shifting with multi-hued shapes and patterns. A large blue shape at her side sharpened and revealed itself to be Sophia.
To her side, she could see Alexei on another bed, that horn now entirely missing with his upper head and midsection heavily bandaged.
The nidoqueen gently rubbed over the alakazam's head affectionately as she gave a few more blinks, the psychic type's vision flattening out and returning to normal as the over-amped buzz of her enhanced powers finally died down.
"How are you feeling?" the nidoqueen asked warmly, concern for herself fading as she looked over her true mate.
The alakazam took a good breath before answering. "Never felt worse," she groaned before sitting up in the bed. "Like I've filled a glass to half empty."
"Theo will have to save himself; And I know he will," Sophia said, trying to put some of that past strength behind her voice. "More importantly, no one died from your actions; that makes me happier than anything else."
"What about Alexei?" Cassandra asked, "How is he?"
The nidoqueen glanced over to the unconscious absol. "We have no idea if or when he'll wake up. He took a nasty blow to the head back there; brain looks okay from scans, but it was a bad shock."
The young alakazam looked over to her comatose childhood friends, the absol's breathing shallow as he rested.
***
Back at Gideon's headquarters, the nidoking was down in his own infirmary. The aggron's face plate looked like it had been welded back on, grafted with several other plates of metal that would smooth in and heal with time. Her jaw was wired shut as she wrote on a notepad for the base's Executive.
"Filthy traitors," he scowled. "So it was those four, huh? Abigail pay for it, don't worry." He patted the bedridden aggron on the shoulder before turning and pacing over to where Theodore was still lying.
"Your bitch is dead. Understood?"
The smaller nidoking, nodding gently on a morphine drip, just responded with a knowing little smile, his green eyes lidded and his ears droopy. A flicker of satisfaction hit his drug-addled mind at seeing Bloodquill sweat a little for once.
***
The comatose absol's eyes moved around wildly under their lids, his footpaws twitching slightly as he dreamed.
"So that's what this is all about," the absol took a sip of tea, sitting down on his knees on a picnic blanket in the middle of that grassy field on a wonderful day. Across from them was that large figure that looked like him, but not quite. One of it's million glowing arms also holding a tea cup as it hovered gently just over the picnic mat.
"Yes. You are my earthly guardian, Alexei," it boomed, those eyes looking directly into the very essence of the absol before it. "It is more vital than ever you remain cautious. Those who would see me dead and this creation of mine warped and perverted are stirring in the background. Trust not childhood friends, nor those of your own blood. The trials you will face will only grow from this point on."
The dreamer's mind had no problems with the gravity of the words it was receiving. "I accept," he said in response.
***
The roar of engines as the clatter of steely treads against grass and pavement greeted the dawn the next day outside of Mt. Moon. Columns of jet back T-90's rolled in and parked, followed by several matching covered trucks full of soldiers. They blockaded the entrance to the mountain a few kilometers away.
Inside, several soldiers headed by Fractal burst into the Executive's office. The ampharos threw a quick salute as the alakazam calmly watched the commotion from his desk. "Yes?" Edward asked.
"We have some unwelcome guests knocking on our door," the ampharos chirped sharply, his tone still carrying that normal sarcastic playfulness. "We're readying our own armor and defensive measures as I speak."
The middle-age alakazam stood up from his desk, waving a paw for the ampharos to follow him. "Let's go for a walk. I have something you need to see."
***
The clefable deep in the depths of the North Kanto Headquarters hovered over his game boards, giggling a little bit as he plucked up the remaining nidoqueen and zangoose in one paw as he slid the arcane and sandslash next to the alakazam figurine.
"Oh, that's right," he tapped the head of the kadabra game pieces with a single claw and it morphed into another alakazam. "That's better. Seems our heroes rescued the princess from the false king. But he brings a siege to the fortress of the heroes," he chittered before setting the gravid nidoqueen figure and zangoose on the opposing side to the king.
"So far so good. Soon, we will be free." he picked up the zangoose piece, glancing over it slowly. "I can't wait for us to play together." He set it back down with a content little smirk before giving that absol piece still sitting in the corner a nervous glance.