LOVE AND SACRIFICE
Love and Sacrifice: Welcome to Hell
Blade ripped apart the white sheet that had once covered his rock
hard mattress, complimentary of Zentai. Each movement hurt, but if he
didn't bind his wounds, he would not be alive to feel the pain.
Sitting on the cold floor, he worked meticulously, devoting all his
attention to tearing the sheets with his blades and then tying them
tightly around his arms and legs to stop the blood from flowing too
much. Barely able to see where the wounds were, for he was covered
with so much blood and ash, he wet a piece of cloth with his spit and
tried to clean off a bit.
"Blood stains are so stubborn..." He muttered, realizing
that there was no way he could clean off enough this way. "And
it's so fucking hard to tie your own bandages on your arms!" He
stood from his position on the floor and limped over to his bed. So
much pain...
Again, he took up a strip of cloth and laid it over his upper right
arm. Holding it horizontally hurt so much, and he wished he had
something to numb the pain, but they had stripped him of his supplies
before throwing him in there. He tied the cloth around the arm
loosely, then using his teeth, pulled it tighter. "Fuck!"
He yelled, clenching his teeth after.
Finally done doing as much as he could, Blade collapsed onto the
floor, not having enough strength to haul his body back onto the
mattress. It was as hard as the floor, anyway. He tried to clear his
mind of the events of barely an hour ago, but he could not. Swift...
Swift was gone, wasn't he? Blade screamed, unable to hold in the
emotional and physical pain. Swift was gone, so was Sahn, and Shadow
might be too. The war had gone to the growlithes, and Zentai had good
as won.
Cutting off his tortured cry, Blade played with the idea of ending
his own life right then and there. The other hybrids would not rescue
him. They could not risk that. He had to kill himself now, save them
the trouble of worrying whether he might spill any information to
Zentai.
He raised his right blade to his throat and pressed it against the
skin. He started to cut in, he started to draw blood, but he passed
out before he could finish.
--------------
"Shadow, I need to talk to you briefly." Siana peered
out of her room and said to the dark hybrid as he was passing by her
door.
He stopped, looked at her, and then waited for her to speak.
"Privately," she added.
He entered her room, and she shut the door behind him. "The
steel hybrid is an empath."
Shadow blinked, a little surprised that the steel hybrid had slightly
psychic capabilities. But why was Siana telling him? He looked at her
with raised eyebrows.
Siana looked directly at him, wishing that she was able to read him
more clearly, but being a dark type, he was immune to her mental
probing. "His being an empath could be used against him very
easily if he were to be captured. If that is ever to happen, I trust
you to kill him."
Slowly, he nodded.
"Thank you." She reached out and placed a hand on his
shoulder briefly. "I trust you to do the right thing."
Light. Bright light. Shapes. Blurry shapes.
Shadow's eyes opened slowly, taking a while to adjust and figure out
wherever he was. His ears twitched, trying to pick up any sounds that
might clue him in to his location. He could hear footsteps, and he
carefully turned his head to look, ignoring the pain that flooded
through his body.
"Ah, you're awake!"
Squinting, he could make out the outline of what he supposed was some
sort of scientist, for he wore a lab coat. Judging by the Y design on
the left of the coat, he had been captured.
"And you're another quiet one."
Another quiet one? Did that mean they had another hybrid? Shadow
turned his head back to its original position, and, attempting to sit
up, discovered that they had him strapped down. Automatically, he
uttered a low growl, and tried to struggle against the constraints.
"No good doing that. You're stuck where you are." The
scientist walked into Shadow's line of now clear vision, and smirked
slightly. "You're our new pet umbreon."
Memories flooded back into Shadow's mind, memories of being tortured
and abused, assaulted in a way that he wished on no one. He
unsheathed his claws and started struggling violently, thrashing
around as much as he could and not caring that the metal constraints
were cutting off his circulation, not caring that he was opening up
his many wounds and causing himself more harm than good. Right now he
was driven by fear of the past and nothing mattered to him.
"You're one vicious eeveelution, aren't you?" The scientist
remarked, picking up a syringe full of tranquilizer and injecting it
directly into one of Shadow's veins. "Well, we'll fix that,
CXIII, we'll fix that."
Against the hybrid's will, his body started to relax, and all he
could think of was that the scientist reminded him of Gareth, the one
that had led his torturing sessions.
--------------
"B*stard!" Erian yelled as she was shoved into a new cell.
She ran to the bars, shaking them hard. "Let me out!"
"That ain't gonna help ya."
She whipped around, her eyes widening. "Xeth?"
"The one and only. They got you too, huh?" He sat up from
his bed and looked at her, his head titled slightly to one side. She
looked horrible, and he wondered how she got taken down.
"I got caught back in Farica... Joseph got killed..." She
trailed off, raising one of her hands to wipe her nose.
"Get your ass over her," Xeth said, gesturing with one arm.
If there was one thing he hated, it was watching people cry.
She complied and sat down next to him, resting her head on his left
shoulder. "He shouldn't have come along..."
"Shh." Xeth placed his left hand on her knee and gently
stroked her lightly furred cheek with his right hand. "It wasn't
your fault."
She sniffed, trying to wipe away her tears. "Whoever's fault it
was, I've still lost all the family I ever had."
Xeth chose not to reply, and simply continued holding her, knowing
that right now, all she needed was a shoulder to cry on. Which was
exactly what she did, eventually crying herself to sleep. Carefully,
without waking her, he moved to the other bed in the cell and sat
awake, unable to sleep. His mind raced from thought to thought,
re-awakening memories he had thought had died. He tried to smile, but
he failed. Slowly, he lifted a hand to the gold angel that he wore on
a simple metal chain, and whispered, "I'm sorry Seph. I can't do
it anymore."
----------------
"Can't you teleport us out or something?" Kaor asked, eying
the psychic hybrid suspiciously, still curled up in his corner of the
cell on the floor. He had not bothered to move even when Siana had
joined him.
Without a word, the female hybrid rolled back the sleeves of her long
sleeved black dress, displaying thick crystal bangles on each wrist.
"They block your psychic abilities?" Kaor asked.
She nodded.
"How come you've been standing there the whole time?"
"I can't see anymore."
Kaor looked at her golden eyes. So she was blind... Probably
used her mind to sense her way around. Finally standing up, he dusted
himself off and approached her, lightly placing a hand on her arm.
She flinched as soon as their skin came in contact, and she turned
her head to where she supposed he would be. "What are you
doing?"
"I'm going to direct you to one of the beds," he replied,
noting the almost shocked look on her face. "What's wrong?"
"Psychics tend not to touch people much... It allows for easier
entry into one's mind and tends to be thought of as an affectionate
gesture."
For a moment, Kaor wondered if he should not have touched her, for
there could be the slight chance that he might poison her even
through the sleeve of her shirt. But he remembered that it was rare
now for him to accidentally secrete poison; he had learnt to control
the flow of the toxin through his body when he was twelve. Carefully,
he moved behind her and placed one hand on her arm, and another on
her shoulder, and guided her to the bed, where she sat down gently.
"Thank you," Siana said quietly, tucking a lock of her
light blonde hair behind an ear.
"No problem," Kaor answered, returning to his corner, bad
memories of labs flooding back into his mind. Why had Siana been put
in with him? Just what he needed. A blind hybrid that could not
defend herself. Sighing, he turned to face the wall so he could have
some sort of privacy.
Drawing her legs up onto the bed, Siana curled up in her corner,
wondering how the other hybrids that had been caught were doing...
She just hoped that they found a way out soon, for they were in the
hands of the Y-Faction, and only Mew knew what they planned on doing
with them...
--------------------------------------
/Layered plexi-glass.../ Shadow finished examining the glass walls of
the cylindrical container that he was in. He could barely move in it;
all he could do was stand or sit. He was clothed in nothing but a
pair of shorts, and that somewhat bothered him, for he knew there
were many still visible scars on his body where the fur had yet to
grow back.
Belatedly, he realized that his hair had come undone, and the hair
clasp that Donari had given him was missing... How could he have lost
it? For so long, he had managed to keep it with him, the only visual
reference to the family he once had, and now he had not only got
caught by the enemy, but he had lost his silver hair-tie.
Sighing, he sat down on the floor of the cylinder, his hair falling
over his shoulders and gathering around him. Taking on missions that
involved killing every and anyone that saw him, Shadow had never been
really captured before. Although a large part of his training had
been on survival of capture, he had no idea what to do now.
He sat there for a long time, his mind running in little circles,
trying to figure out how to escape. The cylinder started to fill with
a gas that would probably knock him out, and he desperately he tried
to hold his breath. Yet resistance was futile, and he had to start
breathing. The gas knocked him unconscious, and he curled into a
little ball.
----------------------------------------------
Love and Sacrifice: Alone
Disbelievingly, Merideth stared at the vid-screen that had just gone
off. Was this a bad dream? Was she going to wake up any moment from
now and find that it was naught but a nightmare? Swift was a fast,
acrobatic flyer. Swift was careful. Swift was her... her boyfriend.
Numbly, she got up from the chair she had been in, wrapping her
leathery dark blue wings around herself; she suddenly felt very cold
and alone. She needed Swift to be alive and with her... She needed to
be told that he was not dead, and she needed that now. Indenki
had not seen Swift self-destruct, so maybe he was wrong. Too overcome
by her emotions to deal with the complex ways of human thinking, she
instinctively turned into her dragon form, a small, dark blue pokemon
form that resembled a dragonite and charizard cross.
Merideth flew straight to her own private quarters, where she curled
up on her bed under her covers, somewhat comforted by the warmth and
darkness. Quietly, she cried hot dragon tears, wondering why she had
not listened to Blade when he had advised her not to fall in love
with Swift, at least, not during the war. But there were some things
that you just could not hold back... And love was something that
definitely could not be stopped on a whim.
--------------------------------
Curled up in his cell, Blade sat staring at his hands, concentrating
on the new pain he felt from the now missing sixth digits, his
blades, his main method of fighting... Some Zentai soldiers had
slowly, and painfully, heated his blades and broken them off,
returning him to his cell immediately after and letting him deal with
stopping the blood flow himself. They probably had not been expecting
him to bleed... But his blades were an extension of himself. They
grew like fingernails; they were a part of his body.
His mercury eyes were half shut as he concentrated on the pain,
enhancing it rather than ignoring it like he had been trained to do.
At that moment, Blade would rather deal with the physical pain he
felt, than the emotional turmoil within him. The Xero system had
messed his mind up, and he was still in a state of confusion. Was the
Y-Faction their only enemy now? Could they ally with who they chose?
What had he done to the towns he had gone through? He could not fully
remember.
Realizing his thoughts were wandering again, Blade returned his
attention to his hands, noticing that they had stopped bleeding
finally.
Alone in his cell, Blade did his best to deal with the painful
feelings he had, guilt being the most prevalent.
-----------------------------------------
Love and Sacrifice: Who are you?
"Charizard!" Spreading his great wings, Sacrifice stretched
his neck and let loose a massive fire-spin that shot into the sky,
the signal that strangers were heading for the base. He launched
himself into the air and flew as fast as he could back to the base.
"CHARIZARD!" He announced his arrival.
A faint cry reached the ears of Love, who was running to find someone
in charge. She had spotted the spiral of fire in the air a few
seconds earlier, and had immediately climbed to her feet and set off
to find Leah, or Donari.
"Love, where're you rushing to?"
Skidding to a stop, the persian realized that she had almost run
right by the young brunette that had been looking after her, or
rather, vice versa, for the last few weeks. "Persian! Persian
per per persian sian!"
"Someone's heading for the base? Where's Sacrifice?"
"Persian!" Looking up, the persian watched as the great
charizard swooped down and landed in the courtyard of their little
settlement, a sort of heavily guarded town.
Donari climbed onto Sacrifice, wrapping her arms tightly around his
orange neck. "Love, go find Leah!"
"Per." Right as she said that, the creamy coloured persian
pokemon set off to find Leah, the head of their camp.
"Let's go," Donari commanded.
For a moment, the charizard hesitated, swinging his head around to
look at Donari. "Char?"
"Yeah, I'm sure. I'm not a pampered little scientist's daughter,
Sacrif, I went through some training too, like all the other kids in
the base. Now let's go!"
Spreading out his wings again, Sacrifice flew into the air, heading
for the direction he had seen the two strange pokemon with human
riders coming in from. The intruders were not very far away from the
base by the time they found them. As a matter of fact, they had
probably been circling around and waiting for someone to come.
As they neared the four strangers, Donari identified them as a young
woman with short, reddish-brown hair, and a young man, probably the
same age as the woman, but with longer, and darker brown hair that
fell below his shoulders and over his eyes. The woman rode a scyther,
and he rode a zapdos.
Having spotted the young girl and the massive charizard, the two
stopped flying and swirled down to the un-explored forests below.
"What are they doing?" Donari wondered aloud, bracing
herself as Sacrifice followed.
The charizard back winged and landed softly onto the ground, folding
his wings against his body. Warily, he eyed the scyther and the
zapdos, a tiny flame trickling out of his nostrils.
"Who are you?" Donari asked, still on the charizard incase
she needed to escaped quickly. Her brown eyes were shining fiercely,
and he black hair hung just below her shoulders now.
"I'm your father's cousin," the man spoke, descending from
his zapdos.
"No you're not!" She yelled back defiantly, confidently. He
was lying. How stupid did he think she was? "You'd have green
eyes then! All the males in the Tavis family have green eyes! It's a
family trait."
Raising a hand to his face, the man touched each of his piercing blue
eyes, taking away the contacts that hid his true eye colour. When he
was done, Donari found herself staring at a pair of green eyes that
reminded her strongly of her father. "I am your father's
cousin."
"No..." Donari shook her head. "No!"
Tilting his head back, Sacrifice roared, silencing the girl and all
wildlife in the forest. He turned his head to look at Donari, then
nodded, confirming what the man had said.
"Then why did you never help us out? Couldn't you have done
something for parents? They're probably dead now!" She
practically screamed the last sentence, tears streaking down her
face. "I thought I was the last Tavis! I thought that Zentai had
wiped us out..." Burying her face against the charizards neck,
she started crying, letting everything out. She wanted to stop. She
wanted to appear capable to these new people. But her body betrayed
her. The tears would not cease.
Reix looked at Vaela, who shrugged, and then he walked over to
Donari, placing a caring hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry... I
was working for Zentai. I was trying to find some way to get them
from inside... They killed my parents when I was younger."
Looking up, Donari wiped away some of her tears with the sleeve of
her shirt. "What do you want now?" She asked, her voice
still trembling a little. Two tears trailed down her cheeks, falling
onto the charizard's neck. More tears followed, but they started to
decrease in number.
"I want to help you avenge your parents and destroy the
Y-Faction."
Donari frowned a little, then turned her attention to the charizard.
"Should we trust them?"
/Yes/ The charizard replied, his mental voice rich and deep, but
rusty from not being used.
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