FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Cold and desolate, Nomad's Land had not changed much since their last visit. Lucario trod through the snow with heavy footsteps, and even Zerobi was beginning to sink through the softening whiteness as spring did what it could to melt the frozen north. Zerobi was delighted to be seeing Celebi again, prideful as she carried her now slightly torn present and eager to tell her about the successful reunion with Eve. Lucario was not as excited though, returning to a place of many dark thoughts and depression. He predicted there would be no relapse however, having no intention to drink or visit Mew. A nice, long sleep was all he needed, while doing his best to avoid Blue or whoever else came to whisk him far away.

"Yep, they left," Zerobi stated as they passed by empty cave after empty cave, most of which were never inhabited in the first place but at least used to have a few Pokémon roaming about.

"No, I'm telling you, I can sense the presence of something," Lucario insisted, although not from anyone he could recognize. Then again, Zoroark and Celebi were beyond his senses, and he hadn't gotten to know anyone else well enough to remember their emissions.

"Yeah, from an ambush maybe," Zerobi muttered, thinking about how inconvenient it was to be a dark type with a psychic sister. She had noticed that Lucario's pants worked as a beacon of sorts, so as long as she stayed near them good things were sure to happen.

"This IS supposed to be a hidden lookout!" Lucario shouted loudly, hoping to summon the attention of someone. However, the only attention summoned was his own as Zerobi tapped his shoulder, pointing towards a Pokémon lying outside a cave that was clearly not lifting a finger to come greet them.

It blended in quite nicely with the surrounding scenery, being a creature hewn from stone. The only giveaway that it was even alive was a set of tired eyes and four arms used to scratch four spots on its cracked body simultaneously. Lucario was immediately reminded of the four-armed muscleman he had trashed once, while Zerobi instinctively prepared an Ice Beam as getting the first strike against a Graveler was of the utmost importance for ice types like her.

"You two sure picked the right time to go on vacation," the Graveler muttered with a voice so low it took a moment for the two to decode his words. It was then Lucario realized where his footsteps had taken him - The Graveler was guarding the entrance to where Mew was.

"Hey, does it look like I had a good time!?" Lucario yelled angrily as he moved closer, displaying his many wounds, "I got stabbed! And hit by a tree!"

The Graveler seemed unimpressed but did not attack, and so Zerobi assumed he was part of the revolutionaries. Something about what he said bothered her, though.

"What? Did something happen?" she asked nervously. The Graveler looked at her for a moment before sticking its hand into a hole in the ground, pulling up a tiny notebook. Being blessed with such bulky fingers, it had no choice but to simply hold up the book and blow from its wide slit of a mouth to turn the pages.

"Zoroark wanted to see you two urgently... Like a month ago," he grunted while licking his lips, shuddering from the taste of stone as he spat out a bit of gravel, "That thin legendary trio guy wanted to see you, Lucario. Some police came by again looking for you, Zerobi."

"You know, I was half expecting this place to be abandoned by now," Lucario interrupted while nervously turning around, remembering what Zerobi had said about an ambush, "You're not building a new city here, are you?"

"I'm real eager to join the war back home. Champions that want me dead are the best," the guardsman spoke ironically as he was reminded of something and flipped through his notes with a mighty puff of air, "That's right, Red comes here every week looking for you. And you two should probably go see Celebi, she's recovering where Mew's body used to be."

"... Used to be?" Lucario repeated and wondered what he was talking about.

"Recovering!?" Zerobi exclaimed in surprise, not as slow to pick up the guard's meaning. Lucario looked between the rock type and ice type, trying to figure out what was going on.

"Don't tell me you buried Mew while I was away?" he asked with a pang of guilt, realizing he might have missed something very important.

"Who cares!? Why is sis recovering!?" Zerobi burst out as she stepped up to the silent Graveler, her frustration increasing with each passing second that she was not given an answer. The Graveler pondered his response for almost fifteen seconds, his skills at diplomacy rarely up to par.

"Someone stole Mew's body," he said bluntly while shrugging with all four of his arms, "Celebi went after them and, well. She got a raw deal."

Lucario opened his mouth but immediately closed it again, staring dumbfounded at Zerobi who stared back with eyes wide open. An unspoken decision passed between them as they suddenly moved ahead, trying to push aside the heavy Graveler but failing badly.

"So Zoroark told me to, like, detain you," the guardsman said unenthusiastically while half-heartedly trying to sweep his arms around to catch them.

"Try it!" Lucario roared as he ducked and slipped past him, Zerobi leaping up on the Graveler's head and getting past him that way.

"... Whatever. You owe me for this," the Graveler's voice echoed behind them as they rushed inside the cave.

Zerobi led the way as Lucario had only been to witness Mew's final rest a grand total of one time, and did not know his way around. Bracing herself for what she was about to see, Zerobi kept close to the walls and turned each corner quickly as if expecting to be tackled and restrained if someone less lazy were to see them. Strangely enough the caves were completely desolate, giving her an impending sense of finding nothing but an ambush where her wounded sister should be. It had been one of her favorite tricks back when she used to lure prey into the Cerulean Cave. She thought of how utterly appropriate it would be, and simply hoped her dear sister was not in on it.

A strong smell of burnt ash stuck them as they entered Mew's tomb. The pink legendary was no longer there, although the atmosphere of death had not lessened one bit. On the flower in the middle of the room laid Celebi, her normally verdant exterior now brown and decayed like an autumn leaf.

"SIS!" Zerobi burst out in shock, forgetting all about her paranoid conspiracy theories. Celebi smiled faintly as she heard her voice, having felt Lucario's presence and hoped her sister was accompanying him. Zerobi ran up to her and stopped herself from giving a hug, fearing she would hurt the broken legendary.

"Oh my god, what the hell happened!?" Lucario exclaimed in a similarly surprised fashion, just barely noticing that Celebi's trademark aura of pleasantness was gone due to her withered appearance being in such contrast to her regular form. Never before had it been more obvious that she was a grass type, looking almost exactly like a plant bereft of water. Her antennae lay lifeless above her eyes, her arms looking like dried up twigs and the top of her head seemed crisp and brittle like a fallen leaf.

"It is but a sunburn," she exclaimed as she witnessed their horrified faces.

"... Winter sunburn!? In a cave!?" Zerobi replied, not convinced of Celebi's feigned display of vigor. Lucario nodded as he looked up, realizing the weather over Nomad's Land was still as dismal as ever with barely a few rays of light poking inside the cave despite it being in the middle of the day.

He also realized that there was now a very notable hole in the ceiling. An unnervingly precise thing, a chunk of rock having been cut out as cleanly as if by a scalpel. Wondering why things had suddenly gotten so quiet, his sight returned to ground level only to notice Zerobi and Celebi closely hugging each other.

Zerobi felt her sister tremble, from physical exertion or sorrow she could not tell. She was hugging her hard though, probably as hard as her little body could muster. To Celebi this was a whole new experience. Built so vulnerable, physical contact had always felt both distressing and awkward to her. Now it was filling her with calmness, melting away her inner fears and leaving behind a sweet sense of numbness.

Even though Lucario could tell they were having a touching moment together, something seized him by the heart as he stared at where his forlorn love was no longer resting in peace.

"Where's Mew?" he asked with a sense of urgency in his voice. Celebi opened her eyes and returned to reality, and Zerobi felt her stop shaking almost immediately. They separated as Celebi laid back again, looking at Lucario with a serious expression.

"Someone took her," she said bluntly. Lucario frowned - He had hoped the aloof guard was just really bad with the details.

"But... How!? Why!?" he burst out while throwing his arms to the side. Zerobi gave him a bit of a glare, warning him to not get belligerent. Celebi looked up at the hole in the ceiling with a dead expression.

"I never left. I was just outside, barely even left this room..." she whispered sadly and stared deep into the dark sky, feeling like she could never view it with innocent eyes again, "There was a flash of an aura, a crash and a piece of the ceiling was gone, together with Mew."

Celebi closer her eyes, and Zerobi took a step back in surprise as a carved stone in the corner began to move and soar on its own. Lucario was finding it difficult to process this new information, but could tell it fit the hole in the roof perfectly.

"But I could still feel its aura, so I gave chase! I could even see its figure at times!" Celebi explained as she let the stone turn around in midair, showing off the cracked side where it had collided with the ground.

"That's... What was it?" Zerobi asked with intrigue, the scenario reminding her of many stories included in the Occult Magazines, chasing mysterious figures into the night.

"Where the hell did it go!?" Lucario asked with a reinvigorated lust for punching something, ready to set off in any direction at a moment's notice despite his wrecked status. His fury did not go unnoticed by Celebi who had felt the same thing at the time.

"Up. Straight up into the stratosphere, and..." Celebi clarified before involuntarily shivering, "... Beyond."

Zerobi gasped and Lucario's mouth fell open again.

"I chased it for many hours, but it was almost as fast as Zapdos," she continued while holding up her badly burnt arm, reminding herself that she was green no more, "... The sun's radiation becomes quite intense at that altitude, so I could not follow."

Not wanting to worry them, Celebi decided to leave out how she cried and screamed for the kidnapper to stop until her voice grew hoarse. Not able to look down even for an instant as to not lose track of her target. She and Mew had often explored the skies just to see how close they could get to space, but always turned back before things became too dangerous. Such cautious behavior seemed as foreign as the days she had spent together with her dear friend, knowing that she could never forgive herself if she let this monster get away and disappear with Mew forever.

She had not even noticed the intense pressure or air thinning out, subconsciously bringing a large supply with her psychic abilities. In fact, at the speed she was moving she was close to igniting at several points, keeping herself somewhat cooled to avoid her body reaching its flash point temperature. The sun's radiation was a lot harder to ignore, however. Crossing the ozone layer, she felt her vulnerable skin flaking off from her face to her legs, bathing in ultraviolet rays ripping the green from her body like a hyper beam. But the mysterious creature just kept going, unaffected and not caring how badly Mew's body was desecrated by the hostile environment. Celebi grew desperate and lost track of keeping herself safe as she noticed pieces of Mew falling around her. She only just wanted to see her friend one more time, but after she dropped her guard the sun's brutal planet-destroying onslaught had no mercy to give. Just barely outside the mesosphere, everything went black as Celebi lost the ability to move and fell back to earth.

Dwindling in and out of consciousness, waking up as soon as the pain of fire caressed her, she would temporarily slow down only to faint again. Hopelessness and despair wracked her, but despite it all she refused to die. If only she could make it back, she could find out who did this and hunt them down. Her fall became a long struggle for survival, ending where it started in the formerly desolate cave now packed with terrified revolutionaries, someone catching her with a pillow as she gasped for air...

"So what did it look like?" Zerobi repeated, breaking Celebi's reminiscing. She was thankful for it, the memory making her entire body sting like hell.

"Bright. About the size of..." Celebi said as she realized she had kept the rock floating all this time, carefully placing it down on the ground as to not cause further damage to her only lead. She looked up and saw Zerobi was looking back, giving a faint smile of encouragement. Lucario, however, was looking off to the side, clutching his forehead.

"Lucario, I..." she whispered as a pang of shame struck her. Lucario noticed this and let his hand drop.

"No, don't worry," he hastily stopped her from apologizing, "I mean, you did way more than I would've been able to. No one would blame you for letting..."

His voice trailed off as he looked off to the side again. The conversation was bringing back a set of uncomfortable emotions he had thought left behind. He forcefully suppressed them, not wanting to go back to being a depressed wreck.

"Doesn't matter, Mew was already dead anyway," he exclaimed harshly and crossed his arms, absolutely refusing to let this get to him. Zerobi followed suit by crossing her arms as well.

"See, that's what bothers me," she said with a vexed tone, "What would ANYONE want to do with Mew's rotting corpse?"

"What? I can think of plenty of uses," Lucario responded while letting his imagination fly wild, "Steal her appearance? Copy her DNA? Use the body as bait? Maybe eat it and gain superpo-"

"LUCARIO! ZEROBI!" Celebi shouted sternly, staring at them with shock. Zerobi swallowed as she realized how insensitive they were being while Lucario turned his eyes away again.

"Sorry," Zerobi said shamefully, remembering that normal people didn't see corpses as bags of stale blood.

"Hey, I just want to find whoever's responsible," Lucario explained, feeling he had gone a bit far with pretending not to care, "And, y'know, kill him."

"Not by harassing every Ditto in Kanto!" Celebi exclaimed as her voice struck a higher pitch, forcing her to clear her throat, "No Pokémon alive can just fly into space like that! The amount of Pokémon that can even leave the troposphere can be counted on one Starmie's arms!"

"Great, we've got some suspects! Let's start questioning them!" Lucario responded with hostility, thinking Starmie was some form of space type. This boneheaded show of defiance sparked a memory within Celebi, and she opened her eyes wide as it was not a pleasant one.

"Never mind that, I just remembered!" Celebi shouted as she reached for him, feeling too weak to fully extend her arms, "Lucario, Red came looking for you!"

"... Yeah?" Lucario answered and shrugged, "Kind of expecting that."

"No, you misunderstand! He came here for YOU specifically!" Celebi continued, "He asked for you and left when you were not here, saying he would return!"

"I already met with Brendan and Blue," Lucario pointed out while scratching his itchy shoulder, "Red's the one least likely to shank me."

Celebi stared at him with a dumbfounded expression before falling back in her flowery bed.

"But... You were being hunted...?" she mumbled in confusion, certain that Lucario's entire point for even being here was to get away from the champions and their legendary dogs. Her promise to protect him now seemed a little less important to honor.

"Don't worry sis, I can explain," Zerobi interjected while stepping between the legendary and the jackal, noticing a chance to turn this dismal conversation into something more cheerful, "In fact, I've got a lot of good things to tell you. Lucario, could you... Go see Zoroark? Make sure everything's cool?"

They exchanged a look, Lucario remembering she had asked for some privacy with her family once they arrived. The plan was for Lucario to push away whatever crowd had gathered to lavish the fabled legendary with attention, but as it were the entire room and even the passage leading up to it was completely deserted.

"Oh wait, did you want to be alone or something?" Zerobi asked her sister in sudden realization, clearly thinking along the same lines as Lucario.

"... What? Absolutely not!" Celebi exclaimed as her eyes shot open in panic, "I have been alone so long I was unsure whether I was still alive or not!"

"Hehehe, that's perfect," Zerobi snickered while grabbing the present from Lucario's hands and placing it down on the floor, "There's so much I have to tell you, you won't believe what happened-"

"So before I go, I just need some help with..." Lucario hinted while poking his meaty-looking shoulder, picking off a tiny bit of coagulated blood. Celebi showed revulsion as she observed it.

"I would love to help, but I feel a little out of shape," she admitted as she felt her mouth dry up, "I fear I would just make things worse."

"Seriously!? I'm badly hurt! Can't you do anything?" Lucario exclaimed in surprise, never having been denied medical attention before. Zerobi looked at him and shrugged, he seemed to be doing fine for someone so badly hurt.

"It would be best if you let it heal naturally for once," Celebi explained as she leaned back, treating her flower like a throne, "Nothing good can come out of repeated operations."

"NOW you tell me!" Lucario exclaimed desperately.

"Some bandages, maybe?" Zerobi requested, Lucario's constant bleeding definitively getting on her nerves."

Lucario nodded fervently as Celebi looked back and forth between them. Sighing deeply, she leaned forward and ripped off one of the large leaves sticking out under her flower. Nonchalantly she tore it up into strips and placed it down on the ground, signaling for a disappointed Lucario to come pick it up.

"I could apply them, if you want," Zerobi snickered, remembering his reaction to her plucking poison stings off his back.

"Hell no," Lucario insisted. With 'bandages' in hand, he left the two sisters alone to talk about whatever family secrets he was not allowed to listen in on.

He strode determined through the caves. After leaving Mew's ex-domain their labyrinth-like structure were no match for him, having passed out drunk nearly everywhere and been forced to find his way back to the stash. While a nice memory-erasing slug of malt and berries wouldn't be entirely uncalled for after the information he had just been given, he was determined not to fall back into that old trap. He was not feeling crippled by sorrow as things were, so there was a certain prideful charm to staying sober and focused this time.

He reached his destination without running into any other Pokémon. It suited him just fine, feeling like he wanted to be alone with his thoughts anyway. During one of his many drunken escapades he had fallen asleep in a peculiar room where a previous inhabitant had carved a crude but functional window to the outside world and hung up a cloth to serve as a door. A number of assorted things were there as well - A few rugged newspapers, a yellow pot filled with crumbs of something that tasted an awful lot like sand and most importantly, a surprisingly clean mattress. Whichever Pokémon found this to make a suitable living spoke his language for sure, and Lucario collapsed on the mattress with a relieved sigh.

Tying up his wounds was not too difficult. He accidentally ripped one of the leaves as he bit down on it, and had to use his tongue to keep the next one in place as he put pressure around his shoulders. He doubted bandage alone would be enough to help his broken wrist heal properly, but decided to put some on there anyway if only to show people not to touch him there. When he was done he laid back and his thoughts turned to the burnt-out Celebi.

Every time he saw her she was still recoiling from some new catastrophe in life. Even though she had been dealt a better card a birth, her luck since then had been about the same as his. Much like him she had suffered a meltdown over Mew's death, but seemed to be returning back to her old self if her distinct lack of weeping and obsessing over Mew's corpse was anything to go by. He tried not to think about it either, it was probably best that way.

Still, he remembered reading somewhere that a sudden sense of calm after a fit of depression was a possible warning sign when it came to suicide. Such was definitively Zerobi's case, which had been a very close call, mostly due to him being too busy dying and the legendary trio not caring. Celebi had saved him that time, as thanks for him saving her from Lucas. She had saved him again when he was nearly killed by Silver, and in return he had helped her reconcile with her sister and stood up for himself when it came to taking on Torana. Their relationship seemed to be a symbiosis of sorts, constantly relying on one another for their continued existence. While not entirely successful, she had tried to pick him up during his own time of sorrow, and so he figured it was definitively time to return the favor. But how to cheer up someone like Celebi? A hug and some kind words? A present and promise to always be friends? Maybe he was out of his league even trying...

Lucario opened his eyes and stared out the window. It was even darker than before, signifying that night had fallen.

"Whaaaa..." he yawned lazily, his brain slowly working to catch up as he realized he had slept the day away. He lied down again in confusion, not sure what else to do and still feeling tired. He attributed it to blood loss and the fact that he was sleeping on something vaguely definable as a bed for the first time in ages.

The world seemed particularly hazy this night. His brain was both working too fast and sluggishly, a million thoughts running through his head but not one of them sticking around long enough to be recognized. Panic gripped him as he realized he could no longer control his thoughts, his mind going wherever it chose to with no restrictions. Guilt and regret were the prominent candidates in this maelstrom of emotions that appeared as he reviewed his life, or at least what he could remember of it.

For the first time in a while he began to see the hallucinations again, the figure of a twitching snake in the corner. Twisting and turning so painfully that he wanted to help, but out of reach for him to do anything. The small penguin was there as well, except this time it quickly tripled in size and promptly vanished, replaced by one of Torana's legs coming down to crush him like an ant. He flinched, doubly so as a bat flew by and disappeared into one of the walls, dropping lifelessly from the ceiling and through the floor. On the floor was Zerobi draped in blood, carrying a malicious grin as she stood over Zoroark with her face contorted into a perpetual scream. All these past encounter he could not get out of his head had come back to haunt him, the big flower of a Pokémon frowning at him before shrinking down to size into a sight so familiar yet he could not for the life of him detect the origins of. He lay frozen in bed, unable to move even as a spear reaching down from the black sky stabbed him straight through the stomach, filling his mouth with the taste of blood and something far, far worse. Like a meal he once had, incomparably bad and unforgettable.

And there she was. Among this absurd circus of Pokémon he once knew, perched on top of the window leading outside was Mew, her small and almost transparent body glittering in the moonlight. Despite unceasing cries and interfering from his other visitors, Lucario could not let his vision stray from her ghostly appearance.

"Mew..." he whispered, feeling his eyes tear up almost immediately. Of all the mind-rending expressions the forces that be might have given her, she had been kind enough to come to him with but a stare by those large eyes, as blue as the ocean and morning sky. He felt queasy, trying to focus on something that was not really there, parts of her disappearing the more attention he gave them.

"Are you... My shame?" he said out loud, wanting to close his eyes and leave this terrifying experience but not able to bring himself from erasing her from his sight forever. She just sat there, so peacefully, so harmlessly, could it really be a crime to never close your eyes? Minutes turned into hours, and he refused to even blink until she was gone. When exactly he was not sure, as she had never actually been there in the first place. Feeling a bit stupid to be staring out a window into the black nothingness of the night, he closed his eyes in the hopes of dreaming about something nice for once.

"Lucario," a smooth voice sounded, gently waking him from his sleep.

"Mmm... What...?" he mumbled, realizing his eyes were completely strained and he could not see anything.

"Red's here," the grey blur next to him said as a rock gripped hold of his arm and pulled him into a standing position, "Go see him."

Being moved forward by more rocks aggressively pushing his back, Lucario stumbled blindly and had a little trouble coming to term with what this new day had to offer after such a poignant night.