FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

As Glen stepped back with his body shuddering to breathe evenly, Ceres approached the loosely-packed soil by the banks of the river. Her pendulum hung heavy from her hand and seemed crushed by the weight of gravity as its thread coiled on the ground. She knelt to take the earth in her golden paw, then stood and spoke for the world to hear as she walked to the center of the gravesite, somehow keeping footprints from forming. While the words left her mouth, Allanon floated, seated in full-lotus position, to a point many feet above her head. She sang as she spoke. It was a harsh, mourning, and challenging sound, echoing out beyond what a muting forest should have allowed.

They were not words in any language. They were pure voice, rattling the souls rather than the ears of those who heard and keeping their welling eyes turned on her. In a broad and majestic motion, she held the pendulum and the earth pressed together between her palms, dropped to one knee, and mashed them heavily into the ground, then tossed both above her with a guttural cry. The brooch swung rapidly on her finger as the dirt sailed upward, spread out, and formed a dome over the site. Allanon's body flashed, making the dome shine with him while Ceres swung the pendulum, blessing the place.

Glen, Rachel, Ambrosia, and Heracles stood solemnly and witnessed it. Neither human could fully put their attention on the rites, though. The boy was thinking of the two men he had murdered in the alley, knowing that if he had treated his opponents with less cruelty, they would not have returned the favor against those he considered his charges and his friends. The girl was thinking of the microphones in her bag that she had destroyed while Glen grieved. She had thought she could find a way to get the rest of her payment, could give her parents the care they needed. And now, because she was a selfish child, two of their pokémon and others she had not taken the time to count were dead.

Neither, though, had to think twice about the next course of action. When the rites were complete, the party left the site in silence, a shimmering tribute behind them. Thunder rolled, and the earth shook the graves. Three were dead; their memories trembled in the roar of the night, and somewhere, a cold chill was sent down the spine of a man with a thin face, sitting at his fire. He raised an eyebrow at the flames, then went back to sipping his wine and perusing the photos of the deceased. But the night was colder.

A body fell down the stairs into the room in which Raiden Featherwite was enjoying his beer. Raiden Featherwite was not supposed to be enjoying beer at age twenty, but that had never stopped him, especially when he was treated to it by the older Rocketteers when they hit their Arget hide-out, below street level and disguised as a basement for the butchery upstairs. The smell wasn't great, no, but after three or four beers, the smell didn't matter so much.

Raiden was a gangly lad. With a blond buzz cut and bright, blue eyes, he was also quite the ladies' man, as evidenced by the pair exposing their breasts to him as flagrantly as was possible without actually removing their tops. Granted, these were the kind of ladies for whom "Do you have a mirror in your pocket?" was an acceptable pick-up line, but Raiden was not exactly on the look-out for a deep and meaningful relationship. This naturally irked the espeon lying under the table to no end, but she was content to let him live the way he did as long as he got her her jewels. At least six hundred dollars hung from her right ear alone.

The man's angular chin combined with his haircut would have made him look boyish if not for the scar slashing along the right side of his jaw. As it was, he was grinning at the pair of twins and perfectly happy with himself until, as was previously mentioned, a body fell down the stairs into the room.

It was a large body - possibly two hundred and fifty pounds of solid muscle. It was missing its head. For a short time, anyway; the staring eyes landed on its chest while the thick and noissome scent of his bowels' death throes diffused through the room, and then the ears, a few teeth, and finally the mutilated head. Then, a man in the most flambuoyant shirt Raiden had seen in years and a hat that marked him as an incurable narcissist calmly walked down a few steps, sat down on them, and opened a newspaper, refusing to look at the rest of the crowd. Hanging from one hand as he read was a bag of a deep scarlet color. That was at least what it appeared to be until he shifted and the scarlet color moved somewhat, revealing that it was a plastic bag full of... assorted somethings.

The noise in the room stopped. Originally, two men had been beating each other with old-fashioned beer steins while they argued over a woman who was busily licking sugar and vodka out of another woman's navel. The dim, yellow lights over the twenty-times waxed oaken surfaces and black barstools had provided plenty of illumination to see the sawdust covering puddles of variously-tinged bodily fluids. It was a decently-sized place, with mankeys up in the rafters to keep the cockroaches from being a problem. Maybe it held fifty people, comfortably, and a hundred for a night like this one. It was two in the morning, and a particular hit had gone down tonight, so Rocketteers everywhere were celebrating their assumed success and awaiting the two agents who had been involved, not one of them realizing that agents of that quality would be highly-paid enough to go somewhere more secluded than a filthy bar with hookers dancing over plates of burnt chicken wings.

The two brawlers soon realized they were the only ones making noise, and when the man who had arrived loudly cleared his throat, they finally pulled away from one another and asked for refills in the bloody beer steins. The guest started reading out loud from his paper. "'Rocketteers implicated in arsonist strike on local PokéSpa. Three attendants suffered bullet wounds. One is in critical condition; the other two were declared DOA. Multiple pokémon lost their lives in the fire. Suspicions turned to Pokénomics when pieces of a new, ether-based military machine were found on site, but a spokesperson has already reported a recent theft. No Rocketteer uniforms were found, but witnesses say that a black van with the recognizable "R" logo was seen fleeing the scene as the fire department battled the flames.'" The man folded the paper. "So you all did a pretty damn good job."

The place had gone silent as he entered, but Raiden erupted into a wild cheer at the last line. The populace joined him. Somewhere in the back of his beer-soaked mind, it occurred to Raiden that this strike had no way of being in the newspapers, yet. It also clicked that the hat and the smile he was observing were more familiar than he wanted them to be, from wanted adds in the various hide-outs. He ignored that part of his mind, though, even as Gheist perked her bejewelled ears up and started watching the newcomer intently with her black eyes.

That's Glen Terrian, she told him.

Raiden tried not to shit himself. His mouth found itself making a silent 'o.' Others were noticing by now; uncomfortable glances bounced around the room. If that was Glen, the mission had probably not gone according to plan. Unless Codename Raven (Glen) had suddenly developed superhuman strength, it was Codename Kitsune who had ripped off Benji's head.

"Wait, you didn't let me finish; there's more!" After a renewed round of cheering and beer-slugging that seemed to dispel the fears of those who knew he who addressed them, the place settled down. The body was no longer an issue. "'Team Rocket spokesman Shit Fucker...'" This did not amuse the uniformed mass, primarily because it confused the hell out of them. Raiden was paying better attention, now, anyway, and gave a little chuckle. Glen smiled at him in response before continuing. That look chilled Raiden to the bone. Glen Terrian's smile was not a pleasant thing to witness. It was as though the skulls of the dead rested in his teeth. The boy's voice lost more and more control as it went on. "'... reported that his team had successfully recovered all but two of the Rocketteers sent in for the job. He did not mention that every one of them was dead, nor that those two bodies would be found missing their fingers and toes and strapped to burning crosses later that night.'"

The bag of 'somethings' suddenly took on new significance.

Glen was no longer even pretending to quote the newspaper as he trembled with rage and locked eyes with his audience. "Those two expressed their desire to give back to the community shortly before their deaths. So here." He opened the bag, then flung the bloody contents out at the patrons, who shouted in horror as the fingers and toes of agents Nightmare and Deathswitch were scattered among them.

"Your people murdered fourteen innocents in addition to two of the greatest pokémon who ever blessed this earth. Enya, a comrade of yours whom you probably don't even know, was shot by your own people just yesterday. Almost twelve hours ago, in fact. You may have recently met a man bearing her name on his chest and missing a brother. He was probably executed before he could get to you, though. Two days ago, five other Rocketteers were sent not to murder me, but to wear me down for the agent Pokénomics hired to finish the job. Not one of them is alive; they are rotting corpses in a field. You people are cannon fodder, being used to-" He suddenly cut himself off as a gunshot split the air. A trembling, young recruit was holding his pistol in both hands and wetting himself as the bullet he had just fired spun slowly in the air, hovering a foot away from Glen.

Glen picked it up, considered it for a moment, and then threw it back at him. As it moved, it steadied itself, picked up speed, and went through the recruit's skull, making an ugly exit wound before the poor boy fell to the ground, his eyes staring and lifeless. Glen swung his twisted gaze across the room. "Also, I'm bulletproof.

"Now, do any of you pathetic..." He was interrupted again by the sounds of people reaching for pokéballs and machine guns. Putting his head in his palms exasperatedly, he roared, "How many of you want to die tonight? I will rip your bodies apart and feed them to your families as chili on hotdogs, you pathetic fuckers!" The animal quality of his voice silenced the room, as did the murder in his eyes as he looked back up. They were not dealing with a sane opponent. More importantly, it was clear to them that they were not dealing with a liar. In a marginally more controlled voice, Glen said, "As I was saying. Do any of you own an absol?"

"Why the fuck would that matter?" shouted a militaristic man with green hair and more scars than eyelashes. He threw a pokéball down, rather spitefully releasing an absol. "Shadow, kill this dipshit!" The bladed creature began rushing up the stairs.

Very suddenly, there was a blur, and then the pokémon was spewing blood from its neck and Glen had scooted himself over to the edge of the stairs. He reached out a foot and kicked the twitching corpse back down them. "Well, that's certainly a loss," he mused. "Probably not smart enough for what I want, anyway. I'll rephrase: does anyone here have an absol that the strict Rocketteer regimen of brain-numbing idiocy has not turned into a walking vegetable?"

"I'll give you vegetable!" One of the women involved in the navel-tasting released a bayleef into the fray. "Kill that son of a bitch!"

Glen raised his eyebrow. "Did you seriously just release a grass type to the mercy of a bug type?"

The woman sneered. "Hah! We know your pokémon, Raven. You only have three, and none of them are bug types!" The bayleef was confused at this point, not exactly sure whether or not to attack. It looked back and forth between its mistress and Glen.

The black-haired man rolled his eyes and fixed her with as sardonic a gaze as he could. "What, exactly, do you think slit Shadow's throat?" Her eyes widened as he seemed to address someone who wasn't there. "You know what? Whatever. Don't kill this one; it isn't her fault her mistress is a shithead."

In a flash, the leafy growths from around the grass-type's neck had been sliced off and awful sounds of pain were grating from the piteous thing's throat. This time, the image of a scyther descending the stairs had been clearer. The woman who had cast the wounded creature stared in shock for a few moments before retrieving it into a pokéball.

There was silence for a while. Had this been a group of heroes, shouts of "We can do this if we work together!" might have forced Glen to retreat. However, he was a cold-hearted killer approaching a group of irritable cowards with only a vague sense of pack loyalty to keep them from stabbing one another in the back, most of the time.

"So what I'm hearing is that no one here has the means to help me rescue a suffering child. That's great. Does anyone here at least have an umbreon? I see that espeon under the table, dude. I'm pretty sure Pokénomics came out with the right mood-altering drugs to devolve it and get me an umbreon. Really, I just need a dark type with enough brains and stealth to get me into the headquarters you idiots have whored yourselves out to."

Raiden took a moment to realize he was being addressed. He means you, Gheist informed him. Okay, so a moment and a mental tap on the shoulder. "Like hell can you have this beauty! Try that scyther shit with her, jackass!" He had been prepared to stay out of this. Gheist didn't like getting unnecessarily involved in things, anyway, and they had both known enough not to offer themselves up to someone that brutal. Now, though, the espeon had some idea as to what she was up against. She stood and walked out from under the table.

Glen stared hard at the man who had spoken, and harder at the pokémon. Then, he smiled. It seemed genuine. "Fine." As before, a blur of movement flashed down the stairs and towards the intended victim. This time, though, the scyther was frozen in place. A collective gasp rose up and started to break into applause as one of the creature's blades started bending. Eerily, it didn't make any noises of pain.

Raiden stood up and looked at his pokémon. "Gheist? What's up? Break it in half."

What the hell do you think I'm trying to do? she raged at him. The reports weren't kidding when they said this abra bastard was strong, and he's got a hypno helping him, too.

An abra, a scyther, and a hypno. He had heard talk of a girl walking around the base with a powerful drowzee. Very few pokémon had the brains to coordinate efforts like this, especially while hiding behind a wall and using a human as their eyes. That hypno had to belong to...

He backed away in fear as he figured it out. Spying around the base had been his best idea in years. Earned him a whipping, yes, but he had learned more than he wanted to know, and apparently exactly as much as he needed to. "Fuck! Glen, we give up- let my espeon go. Let us go. I'll leave you the fuck alone; I swear. Just tell Rachel to tell her hypno to let the fuck up." Gheist's eyes widened as she realized he was right. His words got an even bigger reaction from the crowd. People started putting furniture between themselves and the top of the stairs. The scyther's arm stopped trembling and it walked calmly back up those stairs while murmurs of fear broke out among the Rocketteers. Gheist retreated with her head down, but Raiden caught her chin in his hand. "Buck up," he said to her quietly. She purred weakly and nuzzled his palm.

Glen considered Raiden with a twinkle in his eyes. "You know, you sound like as much of a dick as everyone else here, but I think there's something more about you, Raiden." How the fuck did Glen know his name? Right, right... He tried to breathe easy. Rachel was informing the kid, somehow. Probably that god-damned hypno. "I think you've hated this organization ever since you lost your sister to it and now live Bohemian with it so you can take its members to the shed every now and then."

Glowering eyes were turned on him from all around the room. How had Glen known about Friday Fun Night? Once a week, he beat the living daylights out of another recruit; he beat them until they bled, until they cried, and then he left them alone, in the dark, with their pokéballs duct-taped shut in twenty layers, because it felt so good... he shook himself.

"Further, I think you have an excellent reason to abandon these people and come with me to save the little boy your superiors are most likely keeping in a cage somewhere. If you come, not only won't I have these psychic pokémon murder yours and paint you with her blood, but I'll even drop the subject of turning her into an umbreon. How's that sound?"

Better by the second. Please don't be a dick. Raiden, I can feel them. They're so angry, Raiden. They're going to kill me. They're going to kill me Raiden, please don't let me die! she shrieked into his mind. Her entire body was shaking as she cowered against his hand. He had never heard her this scared. He swallowed.

"It sounds fine," he growled through his teeth. He had just gotten shanghaied into working with the enemy, and it had taken five sentences and a little pressure. "But you keep an eye on me, Raven. I will stab you in the back the moment it is turned."

"Ah! Good to know we understand one another. I also really like that name; nevermore!" he shouted, giggling as the room flinched. The punk stood and turned his back. "Follow at your leisure." He walked back up the rest of the stairs and left.

Raiden appeared in front of the two other humans with a pop, his espeon at his feet. Both were firing deadly stares at their opponents while another shriek wracked the room they had all just exited. Glen grinned. "Glad you decided to actually join us. And I'll give you credit - you did try to stab me in the back. But I think you ended up stabbing the barkeep in the eye. Speaking of which, we should leave."

"Fuck you." The whirling blue lights of police cars and shouts of "Stop!" were growing near; they were by no means hidden.

"We still understand one another! Excellent." With one last pop, the trio and their pokémon vanished into thin air, leaving a Rocketteer jacket outside the den. Special forces would make short work of the hideout.

"Everyone's stocked up on their various strange weaponry?" Glen asked as the three of them stepped into the teleportation booth. He had demanded that Gheist be constrained to her pokéball for transport; he was not about to be ripped in two because of an errant thought. He had even put Allanon away, much to the abra's chagrin. The hypno was by far the most capable and trustworthy of the three psychic pokémon.

The other two nodded. Raiden was still glaring intensely. He had his arms strapped behind his back with rope in which Glen had embedded shards of glass. If he struggled to escape, he would slit his own wrists. Rachel had not been pleased to go along with the procedure. In her opinion, Glen was no longer mentally stable. She could understand, though: she was distraught enough over the loss of Demetre. How could she possibly understand how he felt after losing Synapse, Enya, and Zach? She might act that way if the Rocketteers ever took away her parents. The thought made her gut clench in cold fear. Every time she contacted Pokénomics, she was afraid they would threaten them, and she would be helpless.

It was true that they all had strange weapons. Raiden had an aluminum baseball bat strapped to his belt in addition to brass knuckles, three pocket knives, and a bolas. Glen once again had his bag full of odds and ends, including a brand new bone saw. Rachel was still uncertain as to where he had procured said instrument, but she had decided not to ask. She had discarded her pokédex; it was clear to her that attempting to reconcile with Pokénomics at this point, though they may have wanted it, was not an option. She had stolen Raiden's pistol and had a knife of her own in addition to the various poisons she had harvested from Demetre before she was buried; a bellsprout harbored plenty of toxins in its body, and it would have been a shame to waste what little was left of her. Rachel knew the flower would have wanted herself to go to more use than a bit of soil in the earth. And, of course, the assassin had her own set of tricks. All of them had suitcases, for clothes and food. This would not be an easy mission. It was just harder for Raiden, with his hands where they were.

"Well, here we go." Glen pushed a series of buttons. Ceres placed both hands in a small alcove in the phone booth-esque room they had all squeezed into, closed her eyes as the world seemed to twitch, and took them to the mountains.

Immediately, the cold of where they had landed made itself apparent. "Right!" Glen said brightly. "Should have worn warmer clothes." His peacock-challenging shirt was more than visible as they walked out of the tiny booth they landed in. This stand had actually been created to <i>escape</i> the violent climate; not enter it. But they had all wanted a wilderness area.

"I told you that four times at the restaurant," Rachel grumbled, wrapping her massive scarf tighter around her face in the frigid darkness. She was shivering.

"If only you two were in Team Rocket, you'd have these awesome, insulated jackets." Raiden sneered, then gulped as Glen turned a hungry gaze on his clothes. "But they're all standard-issue shit; not like it really helps that much."

Rachel called Ceres into her pokéball; there was no sense in the creature freezing out there. Glen let out Allanon, who immediately got back in the booth, tapped a few controls, and vanished. Raiden blinked a few times, confused. "Where the fuck is he going?"

While the black-haired enigma began searching through his massive satchel, the purple-haired girl slapped Raiden. "Would you mind your language? I am a lady."

"Ah-hah! Don't know why I didn't do this earlier," Glen answered before bringing out a large electromagnet and using it to pinpoint Raiden's microphones and cameras. He then systematically cut each one out, leaving gaping holes through which the chill wind could blow its gelid breath, and crushed them in the small patch of concrete surrounding their landing zone. "He's covering our tracks, basically. False leads and all that. Then, I'll scramble that thing's system with this."

Raiden clenched his teeth in the new cold dancing through his clothes. "Can you please explain to me what my purpose here is?"

"Well... um." Glen pondered for a moment, before holding up a finger in exclamation. "Right! You have a quilava I'm interested in getting to know. You know, because it's cold and dark."

The blond-haired gangster was outraged by the suggestion. "Do you have any fucking idea how much that will hurt him? They're not tools!"

There was a click, and Raiden felt a sharp tip press into his throat as Glen's face filled his field of vision. "You think I don't know that?" The only sound was the rushing wind around them, and the only feeling was the light snow as it glanced off their faces, and the only sight was that hellish face and the hair whipping across it. His eyes almost glowed in the thin light of the stars, and they had an animal blackness to them, like he no longer knew the meaning of remorse. "I could stick you like a pig, have Al break that quil's mind in half, and turn him into my personal thermablanket, you worthless excuse for a thinking organism. Have the brains to recognize when you're being done a favor."

"Glen," Rachel said firmly. "Now isn't the time for this. We need to find a cave. There probably won't be one nearby. Raiden, your kabuto can sound for it, if it knows how."

The newest member of their group swallowed as Glen slowly drew away. "Of course he can! Untie me so I can get my fuckin' pokéballs."

"Raiden?" Rachel said, turning her own deathly glare to him. "If the shape coming out of the pokéball you throw even reminds me of an espeon, Ceres will crush its head." Raiden couldn't tell, but Glen could hear the strain in her voice. She didn't want Ceres to crush its head. It was too violent for someone like the witch.

Luckily, once Glen had untied the rope, Raiden was not willing to test her. He couldn't know whether or not she had become as ruthless as her apparent partner. The kabuto emerged and did its work, rotating its flat body and making clicking noises in addition to sending out querying pulses of ether to detect the nearest cavern. Once it had locked on a direction, Raiden recalled it and the party began its short journey.

Just a second... oh, God, that's all I ask for. One second so I can think... One.

...

~Mew?~

_ ..._

_ Wh.. what?_

Zach blinked rapidly and looked around his tiny cell for the source of the voice. No one was there... at all. Just like usual. The only things in his forty square-foot living space were an empty food bowl, a bowl of water, and two mounds of hay. One was for sleeping on. The other...

And in that moment of clarity, he almost lost himself. The voice that he had heard came again, with a light, amused chuckle: ~Mew!~ He was being treated like an animal. Like an animal, here, and he had let it happen. The shock of his initial enclosure, his fury at being separated from Glen, his loneliness, his heartache, and the constant experiments that were being done on him, had thrust him into a mindless existence, living like an animal, not thinking except in fervid spurts of humanity, usually while half-asleep after testing. Testing for what, he didn't know. He tried to remember the last time he had bathed.

He couldn't. He didn't even know how long he had been there. Had it been hours? Days? Weeks? Years? Where were his parents? Where was Glen? Where was Jerome? Where was he?

He ran to his water bowl on all fours, realized what he was doing, and cried out in frustration. No. He shook his head. I am not an animal. I am not! I won't be like that. With a tremendous effort, he pushed himself up with his arms, tottered on his legs, and fell back down to his hands. He couldn't balance; his legs didn't want hold him up. Snarling, he tried again, and whimpered when his face hit the dirt floor.

He lay there and felt tears form in his eyes. This couldn't be who he was now. He had to still be human. He had to. Where was Glen? Why wasn't he answering his cries? Why was he alone? Tears splashed into the loam as he wept quietly. He wouldn't sob out loud; he hated crying. He cried too much. This was stupid! Why was it happening to him?

With a snarl and a growl, he heaved himself up again and threw himself against the bars of his prison, wrapping his fingers around them determinedly and holding himself up. Even though he was unbalanced, he pulled his legs in, pulled himself up, until he was vertical and panting with the effort. "I'm a human being!" he screamed into the darkness. His feet flailed for balance as he tried to let go, but he refused to let himself fall. His arms, weakened from hunger, even though they were stronger from walking on them, were shaking and burning with the effort, but he wouldn't let go. He got his feet under him again and searched the dark hallways for any sign of life. It was like an old dungeon - torchlit, with light illuminating only far enough for him to see that he was underground.

He let go and slowly, slowly, his feet steadied themselves under him. "I'm human!" he cried. "I'm not an animal! I'm human!"

A voice issued from a loudspeaker somwhere. It was a jeering voice; one that made Zach want to kill it. "Then what're those things stickin' up outta the top a yer head?"

Frightened through his fury, Zach put a hand to his hair. What was the voice talking about? What... what were these? He could feel them, like fleshy, fuzzy little triangles, they - ! His eyes widened in terror. His ears!

The voice laughed meanly. "Yeah, fur-face! Sure you're human! Wait 'til somethin' starts pokin' outta yer ass - we'll see how human you feel!" The laughter continued, echoing in Zach's ears, refusing to leave him alone.

Fur-face? Tears started leaking out of his eyes as he collapsed to the floor, shaking in a corner and bruised from the iron bars he had fallen against. "I'm human!" he bawled, his dirty face buried in his arms while he tried to ignore the thick, short fuzz he felt there. "I'm not... I'm not an animal!"

At that instant, a bell sounded, and he started salivating. It was dinner time. The moment of clarity was over.

The trio ended up spending two whole weeks in the mountains, something they quickly realized none of them had been ready to do. Basic bodily functions were an issue all of their own. Food was cold until Raiden grudgingly admitted he had brought an electric grill with him that could be charged at the teleport booth. Water had to be melted into a pan over his quilava. Amber, Heracles, Al, Gheist, Ceres, and Petri the kabuto were loathe to admit that it did, in fact, make far more sense for them to remain in their pokéballs for the majority of the time there.

Raiden tried more than once to escape. Once, he very nearly slit Rachel's throat in her sleep, but before he knew what was happening, Allanon had broken two of his fingers and pointed the knife back at Raiden's eye. Needless to say, tensions were very high for those two weeks.

Much of the time, Glen spent wandering the icy peaks in search of the troupe of absol whose tracks he had found in the snow. Rachel and Raiden followed behind, often discussing how insane Glen appeared to be. Oddly, this was enough for them to begin forming a bond. Rachel needed a human outlet for Glen's unpredictable behavior, and Raiden hated them both with a passion. Even more so because Gheist had not been allowed out of her pokéball more than a single time.

"Who is he, anyway?" Raiden asked once, his arms wrapped around himself from the cold as he and Rachel watched Glen from a distance. It was a little over a week into their search, and the boy was crawling painstakingly through the snow on all fours, supposedly incognizant of his bare hands, which were purplish blue. He was making his way towards a ridge; they had tracked one of the absol here and seen it disappear.

"What do you mean?" the violet-haird girl answered. "He's a lot."

"I mean, what makes him able to do this?" He gestured out at the boy briefly, then tucked his hand back under his arm for warmth. "He's not normal."

"Fuck me if I know," Rachel sighed, staring. Her language had been affected significantly in the week they'd been there. "Ceres says he's changed since the first time we saw him, but this has always been there, from what little I can tell. He just... He doesn't care. He gets an idea or a mission in his head, and everything else disappears. He doesn't feel the cold, doesn't feel pain; the only thing he wants to do right now is get an absol. That's all that matters."

"What the fuck changed, then?" Raiden muttered. The kid was insane. He had recruited the two of them, so far against both of their initial wills, and yet seemed to trust them. It made it feel like Raiden's mind was being toyed with. It was true, though, that thoughts of escape had dwindled significantly, and he had gotten used to releasing Fern so the quilava could keep them warm at night.

"She says he's even worse, now. I think two weeks ago, he wouldn't have forgotten to pack a sweater. He probably wouldn't have brought you along. He's acting on more instincts now." She spat a bad taste from her mouth. "God only know what instincts."

"Yeah, but what caused it?"

Rachel snorted. "Your people killed his love interest."

"Love interest?" he sneered. "Who?"

"Enya."

He grimaced. "Damn, she was hot. We killed her?"

"Yep. He'd gotten infatuated with her, somehow. Don't know why." Her words were clipped.

The grimace became a smirk when Raiden watched her pretend she wasn't jealous. But he ignored it, for the time being, readjusting his crossed arms and looking out at his captor. "And now he's insaner. Awesome."

"It's worse than that," Rachel said in a low voice, hedging about revealing this. It worried her, though. One insane person was bad. An insane person and his insane pokémon could end up killing her and Raiden and all theirs.

"How could it be worse?" Glen appeared to have frozen solid as he looked over the edge. He must have found them.

"Allanon - his abra - is worse, too. And the two of them have been spending the nights talking."

"I thought he seemed tired..."

Rachel nodded. "He hasn't been sleeping much. Neither has Allanon, and Lord knows abras need their sleep. I caught them arguing over something, once. Something about what Allanon can and can't do. The thing has a god complex worse than Giovanni's."

It was Raiden's turn to snort. "Fuck Giovanni."

"Agreed. Whatever they disagree on... whatever. As long as they don't explode before we're out of this cold, I'm fine with it." She had grown increasingly irritable the longer they lived up here. The constant cold was abrasive to her personality, and she didn't like having to look at Fern every night. Fire had killed Demetre.

"Why? Then we could toss his fucking body down a fucking mountain and Gheist or Cleo could warp us back to a place people actually live." His steely eyes seemed to grow colder. Both of them shifted in place. It was an attractive idea.

"Because," Rachel stated. She waited a few moments before continuing, trying to gather her thoughts. She didn't like that he called Ceres Cleo. "I need him. There's money on his head, and I'm trying to see if I can lift that off Pokénomics and... dammit, I wanna save the kid, too."

They had already talked about Zach, so Raiden just nodded. He didn't like the idea of a little kid being held in a prison cell. Rachel had told him everything she knew, and it had sickened him. He had had a little sister, once. Still did, really, but she was wrapped up in Rocketeer shit completely, now. He just hoped she had stayed alive this past week. "So do I, I guess."

As it turned out, Glen had found the troupe's nesting site after all. The ivory-furred creatures had noticed him and started to flee, watching him coldly and some lowering the blades on their skulls threateningly, but they opted not to run when he made no movement in their direction and managed to give off an air of noncombativeness. Over the next week, he pretty much ceased talking with Rachel and Raiden completely while he began to ingratiate himself with them. They vastly respected the display of strength that was his simple survival in the cold without the heavy gear his two human companions wore. It wasn't long before he was descending into their little valley and letting Al out so that he could speak with them, learning about each individual and trying to coax them to let him into their graces.

His arguments with Allanon grew more noticeable. One night, Raiden and Rachel were awakened to the sight of Allanon pointing a pewter spoon at Glen's throat while the human bared his teeth right back at him, seething. When the combatants had noticed, Glen had smiled weakly and Allanon had dropped the spoon in a huff and returned himself to his pokéball. "Get a hold on yourself," Rachel had growled, angry that her slumber had been interrupted, and pulled her sleeping bag back up over her head, her back firmly to the quilava. Raiden opted to stay awake the rest of the night, and sat cross-legged on one side of the cave, facing Glen over the light of Fern's gentle, hearth-like glow.

"Raven, what the fuck?" Raiden had asked in an honestly inquiring voice. He tried to meet Glen's eyes with a quiet tone and an earnestly entreating gaze. "What the fuck is going on with you and Kitsune?" He had stuck to calling them by their codenames the whole time. It was a sort of stubborn attachment to his original associations. "I don't wanna die 'cuz you and fox-bait are having an argument."

"Only I call him fox-bait. And nothing's... nothing's wrong." Glen had leaned tiredly back against his wall of the small cave. He looked depressed and tired as the grave.

"And you're a bad fucking liar." Raiden kept staring at him, trying to hold his eyes. It was difficult effort. "I'm afraid for my life, Raven. I've seen what you and he do. You're fucking crazy, and he's crazier. And Rachel tells me the both of you are even crazier than the crazy you were before. So before you fucking crazy the two of us to death, I wanna know what's going on. I think I deserve to, you keeping me trapped up here like some god-damn fucking Stockholm test subject. I don't think you even know why I'm here."

The thin, almost emaciated boy breathed in and sighed out slowly. Raiden was seething at his nonchalance. "Allanon... doesn't want me to get an absol."

Raiden's eyes bugged out. "Is that all? Is that fucking all? There are a dozen other dark-types to choose from; get one a them and get us the hell out of these mountains."

"No, that's not 'fucking' all," Glen drolled, staring up at Raiden from under his eyebrows. "An absol's the only one I'm willing to get. Allanon also doesn't like that I'm keeping you or Rachel here. We've traveled as our group of four for years, and he doesn't like the change."

"I don't fucking like it either, if that helps at all."

"You're here because you're useful, so shut... the fuck... up and let me answer if you want answers." The expletive was shot out almost as an afterthought. Glen really was tired. Raiden shut up, suppressing his anger at being reminded of how powerless he was. Or... was he? The pokéball was a few feet away from Glen... Raiden caught Fern's eye. The name was short for Inferno. The badger-ish creature was good at what he did.

"Go on."

"He doesn't like that I'm catching a dark type at all. He knows something about me that he won't tell me. He's done something he won't tell me about. He won't open up to me, and keeps complaining I won't open up to him."

"He threatened you with a fucking spoon. If he evolves and goes bat-shit crazy, we're fucked." The thought of Allanon was scary. The thought of him as a kadabra was terrifying. The thought of him as an alakazam would give Raiden nightmares if he dwelled on it too long.

"I'm well aware."

"So call off the search. Rachel and I can take you through Pokénomics HQ." He shifted, ready to jump. Gheist's pokéball was underneath Rachel's sleeping bag. If he could get to it fast enough, before she woke up...

Glen laughed. "You have no clue how fast we'd all die. You think Rachel is their best special agent?"

"Then come up with something better! Kitsune scares the fuck out of me, man."

"You're not alone in that."

"You're fucking crazy."

"So I've heard."

Silence except for the crackle of Fern's flames wafted through the cave. Rachel shifted; she had certainly heard, but neither of the boys cared. Raiden wasn't ready to make a jump for it, yet, especially if she was awake. "So what made you go after this kid in the first place?" He had yet to hear Glen's full opinion on Zach. A good answer was the only thing that might, somehow, keep Raiden from continuing to search for a way out.

Glen stared at him for a while, studying him. "I don't really know." He looked up into the ceiling, where the light played shadows across the granite there. "I just saw him and... knew I needed to know more about him. I've never been this right about a hunch before."

Raiden nodded slowly, playing with a few bits of gravel, arranging them and rearranging them, no longer trying to pin Glen to the wall with his stare. "What's he like?"

"Hm?"

"What's the kid like? Zach, I mean?" Glen's ears perked. He'd used the boy's real name. Raiden felt something for the child.

"Interesting that you ask."

Raiden spit and glared at him. "Is everything psychological brainfuck for you? I just wanna know."

"Sorry." The fire on Fern crackled with a sudden, empathetic heat, and the noise stretched out the silence while they looked at one another.

"'sall right." Raiden went back to playing. "Zach's... Heh, he's adorable. He's really shy, usually quiet. He loves his pokémon. More than anything. And he can talk to 'em. I can understand Amber and... and Syn because of Al's translation patch, but Zach somehow just has a sort of feel for what they're saying. He called a spearow down out of a flock the first day I was traveling with him. And he's got a spark of courage in him. He's a good kid."

Called a spearow out of a flock? Damn. That was more than a spark of courage. Frickin' lightning storm. "Good to know... At least we're not chasing after some pathetic fuck." His sister had been brave. Just, she was also stupid and greedy. God, he missed the person she'd been. Regardless, Raiden was watching Glen's face carefully. When he talked about Zach, he... became calm. His cheeks returned to a healthy color; the tightness in his eyes relaxed, if only for a moment; he started to seem vaguely human again. And he chuckled at Raiden's comment.

"Yeah... He's a good kid. You're good, too, somewhere."

"Oh, don't play that game." He scattered the pebbles dismissively. So Glen wanted to butter him up into staying? Raiden hated to admit that the recounting of Zach's personality had already warmed him up to the mission more than he wanted. Besides, breaking into Pokénomics HQ was a bit more of a chance to hurt them than beating a new loser each week.

"It's the most effective game I know," he said with a sideways grin, closing his eyes and leaning back again. He stretched and yawned. "The very fact you hate the Rocketeers and take your petty little vengeance on them is clue enough, but I like that you still love your sister. Rachel said she's turned into quite the little bitch."

Raiden shifted uncomfortably at having his motives called out so bluntly. "Yeah, she is... Didn't used to be." His eyes emptied for a little while as he remembered a laughing, long-haired brunette that clutched a jigglypuff like a stuffed animal to her flat, seven-year-old chest. He remembered an older, sultry young teenager who pranced around with the same puffball on one shoulder and a clefairy clinging to the other. He also remembered when the trio sang a classroom of children to sleep and the police into comas from which some never returned. His unfocused gaze darkened. "But she's changed."

"You can get her back," Glen mumbled sleepily, and promptly dropped off. Rachel opened her eyes and turned towards Raiden once his slow breathing had filled the silence for a while.

She whispered, "You gonna do it? You could, you know."

Raiden was quiet for a long time. Fern watched him closely, waiting for any signal he was willing to give. It would be easy. Burn Glen and Rachel to a crisp. Steal their pokéballs and turn them in for the reward. Live carefree again. Let an innocent child continue to rot, cold and alone, in a jail cell. Damn this conscience. Damn his sister. Damn the Rocketeers, and damn Pokénomics. He shook his head, slowly. "Fuck me."

Rachel smirked. "Later. I still don't trust you, even if you are a looker."

He smirked back and gave a little, playful mrowl. "See you in the morning." With that, he scooted over to Fern and sat cross-legged next to him, caressing the creature's ears and getting happy, humming noises in return. One of the benefits of owning the heat source was that he got first rights to it, so he had no problem eventually laying down with his arms loosely over the quilava, still petting him while the pokémon made sure not to burn him, and dropped off into the deep and welcoming pool of unconsciousness. Outside, the mountain winds blasted cold, but in here, amid these three warring forces, there was some small, shared warmth - the warmth of being united by nothing more than the desire to save a child.

The day was remarkably clear. There was no snow falling. The sun shown bright on the blanket of white that enveloped the rocky landscape. It might even be argued that there was a semblance of warmth spitting in the face of the frozen barrenness. This was what Glen noticed as he stumbled once, drunkenly, and tripped off his cliff perch to tumble fifty feet while Rachel screamed behind him. The pokéball he had aimed at an absol shrunk back down to size and inserted itself in his pocket as he fell. Through his haze of confusion, he wondered lazily if the white-blue sheet underneath him was ice or powder.

He stopped falling with an inch to spare, and the psychic hand that gripped him let his nose touch it. Solid ice on a granite slope. He would have cracked his skull open like an eggshell. Red and purple yolk spilling out. He couldn't focus. What would the absol think? Why was Allanon choosing now, of all times...?

Glen was rotated, still in a brittle grip, so that he was facing up to a sun eclipsed by the very recognizable shape of a kadabra. All he could see was blackness in front of that halo of light, but he knew it was his Allanon. His Allanon, who had knocked him off a cliff, right as he aimed the perfect shot at an absol he had been watching for the past week, to begin a task he should have started two years ago. He knew it was the perfect one. It had that spark of intelligence; it could be taught; it wanted to be taught; it came to speak with him whenever he visited the troupe; it had even made efforts to get along with Al and Amber, and had succeeded swimmingly with the latter. Amber fully approved. Allanon, clearly, had yet to be convinced.

"Why, Al?"

You're taking this too far. You hate dark types. You're running out of sanity. You don't even understand why you're here.

"I thought... you understood." He fought valiantly through the pain in his head, the pain that Al was imposing to keep him from thinking clearly. "I'm saving Zach..."

You're deluding yourself into suicide. Pokénomics will kill you. Rachel might, still. Raiden wants to. You're walking around with born traitors and convincing yourself they won't murder all of us.

The imposing figure finally dropped down in front of Glen's feet and let the human sit on the ice, but maintained his hovering position. Glen reached out a hesitant, shuddering hand towards the recently evolved, half-kitsune, half-lizard creature. "Al... You knew it was a thin thread when you started with me..."

The hand was thrown back at his face as Al's sibilant, silky voice hissed acidly through his mind. No I didn't! I didn't know you were just going to hand yourself back over to them, catch this abomination, and... and... He hesitated, refusing to give up what he so badly wanted to share.

Glen suddenly snarled, holding his wrist. "And what? What in God's name are you hiding from me? Did they kidnap you? Beat you? Rape your parents? Why won't you tell me?"

The boy felt something like a pin pricking against his throat, and his head tilted back like an animal submitting. Because you don't deserve to know.

"What do I need to DO?" Glen begged. Rachel and Raiden were both looking down at him, but neither seemed able to release a pokémon. Allanon had clearly learned a little about dividing his consciousness upon his evolution.

The jet-haired boy was entranced with Al's eyes. Solid black. No whites, no pupils - just black. They were gorgeous. Why were they like that? No kadabra he had ever seen had had eyes like that. Through the pressure, it was all he could focus on, for a moment. They seemed... they seemed dead, but had a kind of graceful light in them that made them shine with sepulchral beauty. "I've stayed with you, I've taught you everything I know to teach... What do you want out of me? Why are you doing this?"

Do you... really think that? My eyes? Glen was surprised, but not enough so to make a stupid mistake. He nodded. Al's face, which until now had been frozen into emotionlessness, softened imperceptibly. You have been good to me... But no! Gesturing sharply with the soup spoon in his hand, Al sent Glen flying through the air and against the cliff face from which he had just fallen.

A thunderclap ripped through the air, Allanon was hurled out of his airborne position, and the boy felt the grip relax. Immediately, Ceres and Gheist were released and pinned Al to the ground with their fearsome combined power. Struggling, but more concerned about the electric jolts that had disarmed him and were still making his arm twitch, Allanon whipped his head around for the source of the blow. What? What was that? Where did it come from?

A strangled, low, and unearthly growl rose up from beyond any of their lines of sight. "Rai..." "Don't you ever hurt Glen. I'll kill you, Al. I swear I will, if you touch him again."

Synapse? It WORKED? Incredulous glee inundated Allanon's voice. _I told you! I told you I could do anything! _Another thick, terrible bolt of lightning tore down from the skies and blew him out of the other psychic pokémons' grips briefly. His armor was badly blackened, as was his hand, but he lost none of his excitement.

Impossibly, an orange, jaundiced face suddenly appeared, climbing the crest of the hill Glen now sat on. It was tinged with opal blue from the cold, and emaciated nearly beyond recognition, but Glen knew his pokémon anywhere. "Synapse," he breathed, his face lighting up with wonder. "How?" The boy immediately threw himself to his feet and went charging after his raichu.

The giant mouse tried to run, but could really only limp his way forward with a brave smile until Glen fell around him, gathering him into his lap and hugging him tenderly. "You're so cold! Raiden! Raiden, send Fern over here, please!" he called, all of his attention on Synapse.

"Rai... raichu..." "Not that it matters... I'm kind of dead..." Allanon had had the grace to leave his translation patch up.

"That doesn't matter." Fern appeared by his side in a mist of red light, and Glen tucked the small rodent in against the ever-burning quilava's chest. "Here. Thank you, Raiden. Thank you, Inferno."

"Quil." "It's nothing."

It worked! I can't believe it worked! I can believe it worked. Glen, please tell them to let me up! I want to see him; please let me see him. Glen had never heard Al beg before. It was... embarrassing, really.

"Why should I? I should pack you away in a pokéball until I find a good place to leave you," he hissed bitterly over his shoulder, hands still on the raichu.

No!! the kadabra shouted, renewing his fight against his captors with desparate energy. No! Don't leave me. Don't leave me alone again. Glen, I'm sorry. I'll tell you everything, eventually, I swear. I'm just scared to, still. You know how it feels. You know how it feels not to understand yourself. At first, the voice had been so fervent that Glen was afraid the kadabra had stooped to lying just so he could examine Synapse more closely. As it was, the boy could tell his raichu was not well. He was too thin to even be alive; his ribs showed through his chest; his skull was visible behind the skin of his face; the residual burns from his attack at the PokéSpa had not healed, and lay black and scarlet on his cheeks. I know... what it sounds like... that I'm just bargaining... but I might be able to help him... and I won't hurt you, I swear. Just don't leave me alone. Let me see him. Catch your absol. I was... being proud. And arrogant. Please don't leave me alone, Glen.

Syn heard every word of it, as was apparent in his yellowish, sunken eyes. Glen looked to him for an opinion. Normally, he would just ask Ceres to see if Al was lying and be done with it, but he wanted to believe he could trust his pokémon. Synapse stared for a long time in the direction of his teammate before finally, slowly, nodding.

"Ceres... Gheist... Keep your own defenses up if you wish, but please let my pokémon go." A flood of relief washed through those present, like a great, gusting sigh, when the phrase "my pokémon" left Glen's lips. "Come here, Al. Come here and tell me how you brought Syn back to me." He took the raichu back in his arms from Fern, who was promptly recalled, and reached out an arm that tugged the kadabra to his chest in a warm, forgiving hug when Al humbly, penitantly, walked to his master - his friend. A moment later put Amber on the ground among the three of them, and Rachel and Raiden looked on as the reunion continued.

Rachel was still trying to swallow the dryness in her throat. She choked out a whisper to Raiden. "I... helped bury that raichu... two weeks ago..."

"You're fucking lying and way fucking better at it than he is." Raiden was staring with a humming ferocity at what he judged a sappy-ass scene in the snow and ice beneath them. Gheist informed him in a forced, frozen tone that he was wrong; Rachel was telling the truth, as she saw it. "If the thing died, it should have come back as a goddamn ghastly or haunter, not the same fucking thing."

"I buried my bellsprout with it... but I guess..." She remembered the ash Demetre had become, and her mind drifted to the few pods she had managed to scavenge from the scattered remains. "There's really no hope..."

"Sorry to hear it," he muttered.

"You killed her," she hissed bitterly.

"I would have and wouldn't've given a shit if it'd been my job." He looked sideways at her as she glared, tight-lipped, into the distance. She wasn't bad-looking, even angry. Maybe a little younger than he usually liked, but also... far, far more intelligent. He thought back on his life from before, something he'd been doing a lot, recently, which bothered him - he didn't enjoy reflection, as much as Gheist said he could use some of it. It wasn't a life that led anywhere. He could eventually be promoted and have a little power, but joining Team Rocket hadn't been part of any sort of master plan to disable them. It had been part of a plan to not have to finish college and to get to beat up when he wanted, drink when he wanted, and fuck when he wanted. He had spent a year and a half doing just that, and had enjoyed it. But this was something bigger. This was a corporation willing to sacrifice children to create abominations.

Maybe it's time for something different, Gheist's nebulous, cloud-like voice breezed through his mind. She pressed up against his thigh, and he reflexively dropped a hand to rub her forehead. He sighed out, long and slow, watching his breath condense in the air in front of his face. She was right. He was bored, and it had only taken a year and a half to bore him. Fine, then.

Raiden cleared his throat. "But it's not, anymore." She looked at him suspiciously, and he refolded his arms to look down at his feet and stomp one, irritated that he felt nervous, even if he was changing the direction his life was taking. Goddamn foolishness. What if he met his sister? They were on different teams, if he took this step. "Now, I'm following Raven Mindfuck and Violet Shitstorm to pick up a boy named Eve from possibly the most dangerous organization in existence."

"Seriously? I'm Codename Violet? That's the best they could come up with?" She couldn't decide between a smirk and a pout as a hint of humor returned to her features.

"The average IQ in management is lower than the temperature out here."

"HERR DOKTOR!!! CAN WE FUCKING GET OUT OF THESE FUCKING MOUNTAINS?" Her voice echoed satisfyingly around the snowy peaks. "SHIT, SON, IT'S COLD AS A WITCH'S AXE WOUND."

Despite himself, Raiden laughed when all four of those who were grouped close together on the level below them scrambled for balance. Maybe... maybe it was possible to get along with these people, after all.