The Remembering

Story by MisterStallion on SoFurry

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This is a commission from kaleemmcintyre! This was very interesting, and the structure and how it all played out took some turns that I really didn't expect. Turned out very well! I hope you love it!


He couldn't remember when it happened. Or why. Only the flashes remained. Just... hints that haunted him in scattered moments, bursting out of the blackness of his mind as he waited, like flowers that bloomed and faded in seconds. He more clearly remembered his first fight. The fear that pumped through his veins, the power that surged in his limbs. The sudden realization that he could feel intents, emotions, and movements before they happened. And he remembered what he had said to the man whose beasts he had beaten, the first and only word he had ever said, shouted out of his mind and boring it into the thoughts of the other:

Run.

He was Lucario. And yet... not.

*****

A blinding flash shattered the blackness, and he stood with his feet finally on solid ground. He opened his eyes.

He stood in the arena. A massive, circular room with high, slate-grey walls to prevent escape. Brilliant stadium lights hanging from the ceiling illuminated the pristine, lab-white flooring. It was just as he remembered. No doors, no windows. He had never seen anyone enter or exit.

Far on the other side of the room stood a young man, stance wide, eyes resolute, a Poké Ball in his right hand.

He waited for the young man to move. Knowing he would sense it beforehand.

"Fight!" A robotic voice shouted over the intercom.

Nothing happened for a moment.

His eyes narrowed, resigned to the inevitable.

A subtle flicker... he felt it.

They moved together, the young man throwing his Poké ball as he simultaneously leaped toward them, soaring dozens of feet. The Poké ball opened with a pop and a stream of white light. He raised a fist and it burst into a nimbus of blue fire. He let out a yell and before it even had a chance to react to being released from its prison he punched the Kadabra in the face.

The Kadabra flew backwards and slammed against the wall, its left cheek charred and blackened. It slumped to the floor, stunned for a moment. Lucario touched down lightly on the balls of his feet, raising his hands, waiting, giving his opponents as much time as he could. He didn't know what to do - the last time he had told the trainer to leave, to try to escape this trap, they had somehow heard him and punished him with randomized electroshocks for a solid week.

"Do it now," the trainer called quietly.

Lucario frowned. Odd. They usually shouted attack names.

Kadabra moved, flashing out right hand and pointing a silver spoon at Lucario's face.

An invisible, penetrating force shot through his mind. He closed his eyes and put his head in his hands, leaning over and grimacing, his defenses temporarily broken. He felt the Kadabra rifling through his thoughts, and fought him like an invader - but the enemy mind moved lithe and quick, evading his every attempt and pushing through his memories.

Suddenly the flashes erupted in his mind.

The same arena. But he himself wasn't fighting. He was... shouting, from the side.

...The Entei...... he had only seen one briefly before, but this one.... something... didn't look right about it....

He won.

They brought him into another room. A snap. Then darkness.

Wires...tubes... equipment....

Fire in his blood...

He screamed...

The invasion ceased. Rage erupted as he opened his eyes, and flames burned in his hands as he raised them again, ready to annihilate the Kadabra. But the Kadabra wasn't looking at him. It had lowered its weapons and turned to look at its trainer. It nodded.

The trainer nodded in return.

Lucario frowned.

The trainer lifted his arm and spoke into his watch.

"Clear to engage."

BOOM!

The entire building shook. Lucario lost his balance. The trainer suddenly threw out everything he had - Poké Ball after Poké ball. Brilliant blasts of light flashed in his eyes, blinding him. Charizard. Gengar. Ampharos. Steelix.

Lucario backed up as fast as he could, panic flooding him. The massive Pokemon filled half of the arena - and the absolutely enormous Steelix towered over them all. He couldn't deal with all of these at once.

But then they did something completely unexpected: they all turned away from him and attacked the walls. The steelix swung its mighty tail and blasted through a portion of the wall in one swoop. A dozen men poured through the opening, unleashing their own Pokemon to stop him. Charizard let loose a wave of blazing flame that engulfed the new Pokemon in a single moment.

Lucario stared at the chaos unfolding before him, completely at a loss of what he should do. The Steelix swung its tail again and opened up a hole in the other side of the arena, and suddenly an entirely different group of trainers burst forth into the fray - unlike the scientists he was used to seeing, all of them wore different, distinctive clothes; some were young, some even elderly - and with a cacophony of pops and flashes their Pokémon joined the melee. Not even the trainers were exempt from battle, he could see - the newcomers had brought weapons of their own, and an all-out brawl of Pokemon and trainers commenced.

Finally, through the fog of his brain after the telepathic assault, he understood: they were here to rescue him.

He began to charge forward, swirling flames forming in his palms.

"NONCOMPLIANCE!" A voice screeched in his ear.

Servos ground behind him. He whirled. A gigantic robotic arm, holding a black Poké ball with red markings, descended from the ceiling and stopped right in front of him. Before he could move, the ball opened.

Flash!

Blackness.

Confined.

Alone.

After the battle was over, the laboratory lay in a smoking heap, the ceiling caved in; all that remained was a pile of smoking debris. No one bothered to clean up the wreckage, preferring to leave it as a warning against others thinking of attempting the same things. But there, buried under a pile of broken concrete and twisted steel, the black Ball lay unopened, waiting.

*****

Kyano picked his way through the decades-old rubble, feet crunching on the debris as he tried not to disturb anything. Piles of mangled concrete and mangled girders lay all around him, forcing him to wind his way through to avoid climbing over the piles and risk getting impaled on something, or worse, causing a landslide.

And for what he was doing, he needed things to be quiet and still.

Soon he found the center. There was nothing particularly distinctive about it, he could simply feel it - as always. He stopped walking, and waited for silence. An errant breeze ran its fingers through his long, jet-black hair. and the thin fabric of his dark jacket. He closed his eyes and dismissed the motion of his thoughts until only the ripples of the outside world remained.

He gently seized upon them, grasping them like strings lining the surface of the ocean, and upon each one he touched he felt a memory - an echo stained upon the stones.

Panic. Pain. What's happening to me? What are you doing to me?No.....

Images flickered through his mind at high speed like an old film.

A chair with metal restraints, three computer monitors lining it on each side.

Row upon row of Poké balls unlike any he'd ever seen before - black, with red markings like jagged fangs - sitting neatly in containers like cartons of eggs on a shelf.

Screams. Human, at first, then morphing into animalistic roars of anguish.

A beast moving in the shadows, its eyes aflame.

Kyano opened his eyes. So it was true. It all had happened, just as they had said, all these years ago. But something still pulled at him, in this place. There was something about it that felt... unfinished. Something here that felt... expectant. As though waiting.

His eyes widened as he understood.

Waiting to be found.

He whirled, eyes searching the rubble. Nothing out of the ordinary that he could see. But the feeling grew. And he had long learned to trust feelings like this. He grasped this thread with his mind and the feeling intensified. He followed it, striding through the piles of debris letting it pull him where it would and not caring what he had to step or climb over.

After dodging around a dangerously sharp looking bar of steel jutting from another pile, the feeling grew to an almost implacable level, with a strong sense of finality. He was here. He was right in front of it.

And the only thing in front of him was a pile of rubble. He sighed, then crouched and began to work at moving it.

Kyano dug into the pile of broken stone and jagged metal for an hour, carefully putting the pieces aside in another pile a few feet away, careful not to cause an avalanche by taking a piece that was supporting other elements in the rubble. Only when he neared the center of it did he have to resort to using his powers. A large concrete slab, far too big for him to lift normally, lay in the way of further digging; but he touched his hand to it and concentrated, and with a grinding of rock on rock the stone lifted into the air. He flicked his hand and tossed it to the side, where it landed with a crash and sent up a cloud of dust.

He paused, looking down at his feet. For there, covered in a thick pile of dust, lay what he knew had to be his prize. Scuffed and dented, but unmistakable - a final remaining black Poké ball, the jagged red lines still visible on its surface.

Kyano narrowed his eyes, considering it, then reached for his belt and selected a ball from his right hip. He depressed the button, and with a pop and a flash his Alakazam stood by his side.

Be ready, He whispered in his thoughts.

Always, the Alakazam answered.

A ripple.

Kyano started as he felt the consciousness of the creature in the Poké ball shift instantaneously at their nonverbal exchange.

It's psychic, he said. Put up a barrier.

Without a word, the Kadabra narrowed its eyes and held up its twin silver spoons. An invisible wall appeared between them and the ball, shielding their minds from any outside influence. Kyano crouched and stretched out a hand beyond the wall, reaching for the button to release whatever was inside the ball. His index finger touched against the scarred surface of the button, and after a long moment, he pressed it.

The Poké ball popped open with a searing snap, an arc of lightning blasting from within it. Kyano stepped backwards, fully behind the psychic shield. Kadabra pressed his thoughts forward, doubling the wall's power, as they waited for the light to dim.

A blue and grey lucario stood on the heap of stone in a crouch. It raised its head, its eyes flashing. Kyano watched it, tracing his eyes over its shape - something was very different about it. Its legs were too muscular, its torso and arms too thick. And it became evident, as it rose to its full height, that it was too tall as well. It fixed him with a piercing gaze.

The psychic wall shivered.

He's trying to break through, Alakazam warned.

Will it hold?

Yes.

Kyano thought for a moment.

Let the barrier down.

What?

Let it down. If we let him read us he'll know we don't want to harm him.

Alakazam gave him a doubtful glance.

We'll see.

He lowered his hands. The barrier fell.

Immediately the Lucario speared through their defenses. Kyano let it in. He felt it blaze through his mind with all the care of a thief. He focused on keeping everything in its proper place, to prevent it from misplacing memories or removing them entirely. But after a few seconds the probing began to slow, sifting through the memories carefully as though looking for something and not finding it.

The probe retreated. With a few blinks Kyano restored his usual shield on his mind. The Lucario watched him for a long time, then turned to Alakazam.

He's probing me now.

Let him.

Kyano watched as the Lucario and Alakazam stared at each other for a few seconds. Then the Lucario looked away from them.

What did he do?

He was looking for something - he didn't find it.

He did the same to me, Kyano answered. He turned his attention to the Lucario again.

Who are you? he asked.

The Lucario glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, but didn't answer.

*****

After a long while Kyano convinced the Lucario to follow him back to Saffron city. The sun was beginning to set, but even so the city bustled with rushing cars, and the passers-by clogged the sidewalks. After their initial encounter Kyano expected the Lucario to be jittery and fearful of the crowd and the noise in the city. But to his surprise the Lucario seemed almost at ease. He walked at his side, and moved through the jostling people as though he had done it before.

Together they made their way through the brightly lit streets until they arrived at Saffron Gym, a massive building in the center of the city park with sweeping rooflines like interconnected canopies and guarded by a towering double doorway in its middle.

The Lucario lost his relaxed bearing slightly upon entering. Kyano took the lead, stepping on the nearby teleport square. He took them through room after room in perfect sequence - he knew it well - until they arrived in the final room - an enormous arena, with rectangular court in its center for Pokémon battling. On the opposite side of the room stood a chair, like a throne. Today, however, it stood empty.

"Who's there?" Came a voice that seemed to emanate from everywhere at once as it echoed off of the stone floor and the vaulted ceiling.

"You know, pretending you're not psychic doesn't really make sense," Kyano called.

"I wasn't talking about you," Sabrina answered. She entered from a side door, watching the Lucario with a wary eye. She wore her usual scarlet battle jacket with a double row of golden buttons and tight-fitting jet black pants and boots. Her sweeping jet black hair hung free down her back.

"Hi mom," Kyano muttered.

"Hi," she replied as she approached, not taking her gaze from the Lucario standing next to him. "What's going on?"

"I was exploring the ruins of the old laboratory," Kyano answered. Sabrina raised an eyebrow at him. "I found an old Poké ball under the rubble."

"A...Lucario?" She asked looking at the Pokémon askance. Lucario met her gaze squarely, unflinching.

"That's what I thought, too," Kyano agreed. "I... well, I don't think... that he started out as one."

"You mean...?" Sabrina questioned sharply.

"Yes," Kyano nodded.

Sabrina shook her head with a sigh of disgust.

"I was part of the raid that destroyed that place. I thought that we'd got all of them."

"What happened to them?" Kyano asked quietly. Sabrina blinked.

"They died."

Nobody said anything for a moment.

"What are you planning to do with him?" She asked.

"I'm... not really sure," Kyano admitted, glancing at the Lucario. "He doesn't seem to remember much. I'd like to help him, if I can. Is there any way to reverse what happened?"

Sabrina smiled sadly.

"You already know the answer to that," she murmured.

Kyano nodded.

"How can I help him, then?"

Sabrina considered for a moment.

"His thoughts feel... confused. Muted," she said quietly. "How much does he remember?"

"I'm not sure. Not very much, I don't think. He searched me for a memory, but didn't find it."

Sabrina nodded.

"But you know what will happen when you do this, right?" She asked.

Kyano frowned.

"What do you mean?"

"It goes both ways - if you delve into him, he must delve into you. You must be ready for that."

Kyano thought for a long moment, then glanced at Lucario. It was watching him with its piercing ice-blue eyes.

"I will try."

*****

"You understood everything, didn't you?"

Kyano sat down on his bed, watching Lucario's eyes. The Pokémon stared back at him, then sat down on the bed beside him. Kyano kept his room very spartan, preferring few distractions in his personal space. A simple, almost cotlike bed. A wooden desk. A bedside table and lamp, upon which his belt lined with Poké balls now hung.

After a moment of mental preparation he let out a deep breath, closing his eyes, and lifted his hands towards Lucario's face. Lucario didn't move - he felt the Pokémon's stillness. Kyano's heart began to pound, remembering what Sabrina had said. He had never done this before - was he sure he wanted to be... examined as deeply as he would need to do to this Lucario in order to uncover the truth about him?

His palms met the coarse fur on Lucario's cheeks. He bowed his head, and gently probed in.

A shred of resistance battled at him - the natural kind that takes practice to disable at will. When he pushed through it, a world of swirling galaxies of information, nebulous and vague, opened up before him like an infinite planetarium. He concentrated, casting his thoughts for one thing: the change. The event that would mark this... being's life. The point of great contrast.

The surge of the memory overtook him in an instant.

Colin strode into the huge circular arena, his feet tapping on the pristine white floor with a confident gait. Just one battle, and he'd be working as a real bodyguard. He lazily flicked his wrist as he came to a stop, trying to stay loose. Just breathe, he thought. A loud pop sounded from the opposite end of the room. He raised a hand against the standard flash, careful not to look at it so that it wouldn't burn his eyes and hinder him in the fight. When he lowered his arm he blinked, shocked.

Kyano took in a breath as the power flooded in the other direction, and suddenly he was inside another memory.

Kyano stood nervously in the mens' locker room, his shoulders tense and his stiff arms covering his midsection, looking around at all of the huge, fully-grown men towering over him, completely naked. He didn't know what to do - was he supposed to look? He liked looking at their penises and balls between their thighs as they changed. He felt so embarrassed to take off his own underwear, though. He was just a little kid. He didn't look nearly so... he didn't know the right word.

He became conscious that he had leaned towards Lucario on the bed. Their thighs were touching. He shivered.

Colin frowned. It was an Entei. He had only seen one briefly before, but this one.... something just didn't look right about it. The way the muscles in its forelegs looked so contorted and defined. And the hind legs.... were they bending the right way? The huge dog prowled opposite him in the arena, its eyes aflame, its deep growl resonating through the room.

Their faces touched, their breaths intermingling.

Kyano swallowed as he typed frantically on his keyboard, pausing every once in a while to put a hand down his pants to gently stroke his hard penis that strained against the inside of his underwear. It felt so messed up, but here he was, chatting about sex with an older man in a chat room. He sent the man a picture of his junk. The man liked it, and sent Kyano one in return. Kyano stared at it for a solid minute, stroking his dick furiously, drinking it in, burning it into his memory.

Kyano wrapped his arms around Colin's neck and waist, pulling him close, his breathing heavy, his heart pounding. Where had his shirt gone?

_No point in bothering about it now, Colin thought. He selected his first Pokemon from his belt. In a blinding flash, his stalwart Feraligatr appeared. Colin grinned, stepped to the side, and shouted for his Feraligatr to drench the Entei in a Hydro Pump. _

He felt his cock pressing against the front of his jeans, aching with tension. He reached between colin's leg and grasped Colin's similarly hard flesh jutting out from his soft fur between his thighs.

Another locker room, this time with his peers. He still didn't know how to act. Did the other boys find it so easy to ignore those cocks flopping everywhere as they shamelessly walked around, laughing and joking? He dared not say anything, knowing - for an absolute fact - that any mistake on his part would set them on him like a pack of wolves; he could feel it in their thoughts.

Kyano undid his zipper and stood, dropping his pants and his underwear to the floor, revealing his full body. He threw himself onto the bed again, climbing on top of Colin, pressing him into the sheets and looking down at him.

The Entei seemed oddly resistant to water attacks - more than he had thought normal for a fire type - but after a ferocious battle full of bites, scratches, blasts of water and gouts of flame and steam, the Entei lay unconscious and bleeding on the water-soaked white floor. A scattered handful of applause greeted his ears. He bowed to everyone dramatically.

Kyano felt lost in the moment, lost in the memories as he rubbed their shafts together, humping against Colin's furry balls and hard pink shaft, the bed creaking with his movements.

It was his first time. He was on his hands and knees on the bed, grimacing as a muscular man with a big, hairy gut knelt behind him, slapping filling the air as the man pistoned his penis back and forth inside him. I don't like this, Kyano thought to himself. I can't be gay - I really don't like this at all. But he gritted his teeth and closed his eyes, and let the man keep pounding away, trying to enjoy it, the man's thick cock pushing in and out of him so deeply and powerfully his senses back there were overwhelmed. But he stayed quiet - he knew he would hurt the man's feelings if he asked him to stop.

He pressed forward, his penis pressing against Colin's entrance. A low grunt escaped Colin's canine mouth as the entrance gave way and his flesh slipped into Colin's warmth. Kyano closed his eyes - it felt so good. So smooth and accepting, so hot around his cock, his partner's pleasurable grunts adding to his zeal as he pulled out again and began to gently hump into him.

The head scientists, wearing the cliche white lab coats, led him into a back room. A table with a single chair sat before him, with a piece of paper and a pen waiting for him. He grinned, almost laughing to himself. It's an employment contract! He strode over to the table and eagerly sat down, taking up the pen and preparing to sign...

WHAM.

Kyano began to hump in earnest, savoring the feeling of his penis slipping in and out through Colin's non-human entrance, nose to nose as he pushed with his hips, listening to the sound of his balls slapping Colin's backside. Colin's eyes were closed, swept back and forth in the sensation and their conjoined thoughts.

"Hey there, fag!"

"I'm not! Leave me alone!"

"Yeah, that's what you said... to her!"

Kyano grunted, closing his eyes, emotion overcoming him as surely as the approaching orgasm he felt building within his loins.

When Colin awoke, he was strapped in a metal chair, cold restraints locking his arms and legs in place at the elbows, wrists, knees, ankles, and neck. He felt the sting of IV's in the crook of his elbow, and the telltale beep of a heart monitor pulsed nearby. He called out, but no one answered. Suddenly a machine turned on, and he saw fluid sliding through the IV tubes. Fire burned in his blood.

A tear slipped down the side of Colin's cheek, moistening the fur, his eyes still closed as the mattress squeaked, the pair of them grunting with the power soaring within them.

He sat curled in his room, alone, loneliness finally overcoming him after months of solitude in a cloud of others' friendship.

Another tear joined the one on Colin's cheek, dripping from Kyano's nose like a single raindrop. He could feel it between his legs - the pleasure and the emotion both building, about to burst out like water from a shattering dam. Colin's drawn-out moans joined his own grunts as he pistoned into Colin's backside.

The agony of being burned alive was a soothing salve compared to the fire that surged through every vein of his body. He screamed until his voice broke, even in torment understanding what was happening as he felt fur sprout from his skin, his legs shorten, his skull crack and his nose and mouth lengthen.

Kyano clenched his eyes shut. One more thrust and it would come.

The resolute moment when he swore off the idea of ever letting anyone in again.

The world opened like a wound in his brain - something he should not feel - and then the bright light came. And so did the incalculable dark of the waiting void.

Kyano opened his eyes, letting out a breath. His orgasm faded into a pleasant tingle as Colin clenched briefly on the base of his cock. They huffed together on the bed for a long time, and as they did the connection between their minds dimmed until they were each themselves again.

An awkward feeling of silliness crept into Kyano's chest as he realized what had just happened - what he'd just done. He pulled back slowly, letting his softening penis slip out of Colin, and crawled backwards on the bed, pulling away. Colin... Lucario.... sat up, watching him.

"I...." Kyano tried, but he couldn't think of anything to say. There were no words. Suddenly he realized that the Lucario had nodded. He stared, not daring to believe it just yet. But there - behind his eyes - he could see. Something was different in their light. Something that looked out at him with full vision and met him with its own strength.

I remember, Colin whispered.

*****

How was that? Thanks so much for reading! If you enjoyed, please leave a comment! I love them!! :D