Attention all personnel. Incoming transport. Please clear the docking area.
Attention all personnel. Incoming transport. Please clear the docking area.
Daylight streaked into the vehicle storage depot as its towering doors shunted apart. From between them a navy blue truck with white stripe markings emerged - it was usually the type of conveyance used for delivering goods of some kind, and this time the contents were live ones.
As soon as the truck had slowed to a respectable speed, the rear hatch was flung open and a slim, anxious-looking figure leapt to the ground behind. Flicking her olive ponytail round hurriedly, the woman quickly glanced down at her clipboard then back across the depot toward the passenger exit.
“On your feet, you pathetic bunch of losers!” a gruff voice bellowed from inside the truck, sending a cluster of grunts in their Tatto regulation navy blue uniforms scuttling outside.
“Ms. Radwell wants these specimens today, not next week, so GET MOVING!”
As the visibly exhausted forms began to wheel out the crates containing row upon row of black Pokéballs, a hulking figure with short golden hair clad in grey heavy-duty trousers and sleeveless jacket over a tight lycra shirt stepped out into the open, adjusted his translucent-lens glasses and smirked at the results of his command. Taking a device from his belt he held down the red button upon the side and raised it to his face.
“Specimen capture expedition was successful, ma’am. I should have them in the laboratory ready for extraction in five minutes”
“Not ‘should’, Agent Brógan”, came the stern reply.
“You will”
With that the transmission ceased. Agent Brógan furrowed his brow at this before muttering something under his breath, reattaching the device to his person and turning his attentions back to yelling in the direction of the struggling drones.
One by one the crates were wheeled through the greenish glow emitted from the walls of the clerically white corridor that served as the medical scanning system. Gloria skittered ahead - her expression dictated her desperation to return to the laboratory area, to see what had happened in her absence. ‘You have to accompany the coordinator on the expedition’, they had said. Insisting Gloria was the most experienced figure in Pokémon behaviours; with her knowledge of certain Pokémon’s natural habitats and mannerisms the job of capturing them would be made quicker and easier.
Part of Gloria was adamant that the other scientists had assigned her the task simply to be rid of her presence from the laboratory for a few days. The woman knew how much the others despised her morals and methods of working; they insisted she complained far too much upon every aspect of every project. But Gloria was certain she had reason to; the way in which experiments were carried out upon both human and Pokémon test subjects was positively appalling, in her opinion.
Was she simply too soft? Gloria dismissed these doubts with a shake of her head and strode onward.
“Deliver the report” the tall, aloof male figure stated as his more muscled companion approached.
“Members from the most powerful species obtainable were gathered as requested, sir” was the obeisant reply. “The crates are awaiting in the lobby ready for your next order.”
“Excellent work, Agent Brógan” the figure nodded approvingly with a slight smile. “Tell your men to move the crates to study bay 15.We shall be looking into these specimens in much more detail soon enough”
***~~***~~***~~***~~***
Gloria knew something had happened. Something big; the excited expressions upon the faces of passing technicians as they darted around holding reams of printed material, wheeling trolleys or pulling cables told the story all too well. Eventually curiosity overcame angst and the woman was forced to make a stop near a youthful oak brown-haired adolescent who was busily operating an important-looking piece of machinery.
“What’s going on?” she inquired softly. “Why all the activity all of a sudden?”
“Major breakthrough” the boy replied in a cheerfully rushed manner, grabbing a polystyrene cup filled with coffee from its resting point upon the machine and draining a large portion of the contents. “Guys in the gene room…cracked a vital code…progressing in leaps and bounds, yesyes.”
“Vital…code?” Gloria ran these two words slowly over her mind. The figure’s caffeinated exuberance was causing her thought process to shift into overdrive as it struggled to work out exactly what sort of code it could have been. Then she let out a gasp of realisation.
“You mean they’ve…”
“Yupyup” the figure nodded furiously. “Worked out how to modify existing genes, yes. Fantastic news don’cha think? Absolutely marvellous!”
A heaviness had set itself upon her heart and Gloria wasn’t enjoying the feeling one bit. She turned from the console.
“I have to go now” she informed her associate. “Thank you for the information, uh…”
“Mondo” the boy grinned, turning to face Gloria with a slightly manic look in his eye. “That’s my name, don’t wear it out, it’s the only one I got ya know. Literally!”
“Okay” Gloria replied with a nervous grin. “Thanks again. And you may want to think about cutting down on the coffee a little, ok kid?”
“I’ll think about it, yes ma’am!” Mondo saluted, before swivelling back to face the screen and pushing about ten different buttons in quick succession.
“Thinking is good, oh yes!”
The woman continued searching between the high shelves and elaborately constructed mechanisms that made up a large part of the laboratory facility, determined to seek out the source of the hubbub. It wasn’t too long before she found it; suspended in a cylindrical ‘pod’ of bluish liquid, backlit by an ominous aura as tubes fed in oxygen and removed unnecessary waste matter from the vicinity.
Gloria’s eyes creased at the corners with utmost horror and shame. There was something humiliatingly vulnerable about the creature’s circumstance that caused a terrible pain to grip at the woman’s insides; its eyes were tight shut in an expression of subconscious agony as the pale fur upon its lengthy appendages moved back and forth with the subtle thrum inside the pod.
A helpless victim of technology at the mercy of those who controlled it. Gloria choked back a sob.
“Masterful work of science, don’t you think?” came a voice. A woman stepped in front of the pod, her face and ringlet of golden hair illuminated by the unearthly glow emitted from within. “Cell Platosis was the key; the cog that drives the wheels of mutation. I often wonder how we could have possibly overlooked that. But no matter. The concern now is to further our exploration.”
Gloria hunched her shoulders at this.
“What…” she began softly. “What was it, Ms. Radwell?”
“It used to be a Meowth” Bonnie replied. “This was the path it chose to take. I never said the outcome would be an easy nor a successful one, but that was the risk it was willing to approach”
“I don’t understand” Gloria continued, her voice showing clear signs of distress. “What was the path it chose to take?”
“The path that leads to humanity” the voice droned, emotionless and cold. “And I can see why. We have a distinct prowess over the lesser-developed beasts we share this world with. Soon the prowess shall become ever greater.”
“Greater?” the younger figure echoed quietly.
“Indeed” Bonnie smiled icily, motioning toward the pod with a wave of her left hand.
“This first step has been the most vital one”
With that she walked out of sight, handing over a few more orders to the surrounding assistants as to the upkeep of the creature in stasis. Gloria heaved a disparaging sigh. She had already put two and two together; the monstrosity that lay suspended before her was more likely than not a result of her own foolish words.
“So that’s all they see you as, huh?” Gloria muttered to herself. “A ‘step’. Well you’re more than that. You were a being with more questions that needed answering than any human or Pokémon I have encountered in my time. Maybe I did put some crazy notions into your head...maybe they were already there. Either way you must have really wanted this to have sacrificed your body in such a way.”
She reached out a hand and placed it carefully upon the glass outer shell of the pod, moving it downward, lifting it up and repeating the procedure almost as if she was stroking the cheek of the figure within.
“I don’t know if you can hear me or not…” she began solemnly. “But there’s one thing I do know for sure. I don’t intend to let them use you like this; I’m going to make sure you grasp back the piece of life you once held. Give you the chance my Pokémon never got. It may not be much, but it’s the best I can do…
…for now.”
***~~***~~***~~***~~***
“Working late again, eh Mondo?” a security guard remarked as he passed by, nonchalantly glancing at his wristwatch. “It’s past 9pm already, and you know they don’t pay you guys overtime…”
“I know, I know..” the figure muttered a lot less brightly than before. From the sight of the heavy, dark rings under his eyes it was clear to see he was duly suffering the consequences of his copious coffee binging earlier. “But these records don’t write themselves either.”
The guard raised an eyebrow at the youth’s off-hand attitude but thought nothing more of it.
“Suit yourself, mate”, he remarked, walking away. “Though if I were you I’d be saving that for the morning. Get some rest…”
Mondo uttered a half-hearted chuckle at this.
“Rest, yeah… that’s a good one. He should try resting after ten cups of Rouba Brand Extra-Caffeinated. Man, I forgot how addictive that stuff is…”
With that last mumbled sentence the figure raised his hand to continue tapping unenthusiastically upon the keyboard, but paused. He could already hear the noise and he had yet to lay a finger on the console. Turning around, Mondo’s bloodshot eyes widened slightly as he took sight of Gloria’s slender figure pattering its way hurriedly toward him.
“What are you still doing…” the boy began, only to be silenced by a furious shake of the woman’s head and a gesture to the lips.
“I need your assistance with something” she hissed.
“Me?” Mondo exclaimed, pointing at his chest.
“Yes. I need you to unlock the Pokéball storage vault, there’s a Pokémon I need…to examine”
“Why?” Mondo inquired with a puzzled tilt of the head. “They were all run through the appropriate tests this afternoon.”
“I know,” Gloria nodded, gulping back her nervousness at the fact she was about to attempt a lie. “But some of the results from the Kirlia specimen seemed a little suspicious and they wanted me to double check them.”
“Ah…” Mondo thought this statement over for a moment before responding with a beaming smile.
“Okay! Lemme just finish up this entry and I’ll be right with you”
Pokéball in hand, Gloria strode toward the area that held her chosen target. Checking to see that the guards patrolling the area were currently out of sight she swiftly released the contents of the object in her hand onto the tiles beside her.
“Lia?” came the confused exclamation as the svelte greenish creature poised in a stance resembling that of a ballet-dancer and examined its surroundings. Gloria hushed it hurriedly, kneeling down so she could look the psychic Pokémon in the eyes.
“Listen to my thoughts” she whispered, motioning toward the pod. I need your help. He needs your help.
The figure drifting behind the glass was almost unrecognisable. The surface of its four foot long body was scattered with tufts of creamy-coloured fur; its disproportionate arms and legs tossed helplessly amongst the liquid within as air bubbles scattered between its swollen digits, into the upper half of the container.
“Eerrr…” the Kirlia gasped in repugnance. Gloria nodded silently.
I feel the same way. That is why I need you to work with me to set him free; once he was a Pokémon like you. Now I’m not sure what he has become, but nevertheless I must make sure that this horrific experience for him progresses no further.
“Kir” came the soft affirmative. Gloria smiled
Thank you so much, I was hoping I could trust in you.
Now here’s what you need to do…
***~~***~~***~~***~~***
Uhhhhhhh.. .. ..
Just under the veil of darkness Meowth could sense it; a dull thrum that wound its way through every muscle, every bone of his body as if seeking to tear him apart limb from limb. It tangled with his dampened thoughts, pulled relentlessly at his consciousness and plagued his senses. A force beyond his control, a force like no other…
…a force growing ever stronger by the moment.
Bright light hit the back of his eyes, causing Meowth to wince from a mixture of temporary blurred vision and a pain that was fast becoming agony. A terrible, bloated nausea gripped his stomach while every passing second a disturbingly loud crunch resounded from the rest of his body like some mordant grandfather clock.
The suffering was so intense that Meowth couldn’t even open his mouth to yell. From his horizontal position upon a firm mattress with fruitlessly soft pillows to prop his aching head the creature lay; a prisoner of his own constitution, tears streaming down the sides of his face, longing to understand what it was that was causing him so much grief.
Screwing up his face to try and ignore the pangs of affliction, Meowth struggled to raise an arm to lever himself into a sitting position upon the mattress, only to be met with an utterly hideous sight. Where his left paw should have been there was a malformed stump covered in a fine layer of fur bearing three outstretched, crooked, bulbous digits, none of which Meowth seemed able to move.
He felt his irregular breathing quicken. What was going on? Was this some kind of nightmare? The appendage he could see looked like it should have belonged to Mewtwo, not him! Then something else caught his eye; a movement under the skin near the phalanx on the far right. At first Meowth couldn’t believe it; he blinked furiously to try and correct its vision but it still remained, a gradually enlarging mass upon his person. He was certain the development was far too rapid to be a wart or boil, and he was right. In one sudden grim reaction the growth had ruptured before Meowth’s gaze, sending another spindly finger into existence.
It didn’t take long for the figure to find his voice again after that. Seconds later he had opened his mouth and uttered a harsh, bloodcurdling scream.
By this time fear had overthrown pain. Meowth threw all his efforts into attempting a getaway; to where he wasn’t quite sure, but anywhere had to be better than his current location. Flinging his awkward legs from under the blanket the creature hurriedly lowered a pair of sizable feet to the floor and forced the rest of his body into a standing position lasting all of three seconds. Gloria entered the room just as the shaky figure toppled toward her.
The woman came to her senses in the nick of time and caught Meowth with both arms before there was a chance to hit the ground.
“Whoa there…” she murmured. “It’s far too early to be trying to walk. Your lower limbs haven’t had the chance to reach their full length yet”
“Whuh-wha?” Meowth withdrew breath upon hearing his own voice once more; something about it didn’t quite sound the same. Gloria sighed deeply at the sight of his distressed expression.
“I know…” she replied, hoisting him up over her shoulder. “You expected to be human once you regained consciousness. But believe me; if I’d left you in that laboratory you wouldn’t have had a chance to experience humanity at all. My only choice was to release you from the stasis capsule and have you complete your transmutation here. Not a pretty experience but it’s certainly a lot better than being terminated”
She turned round to lay Meowth gently back upon the makeshift bed she had created. For the first time since he had awoken, the creature got a good view of the room he was in. It was rather small, about 6 by 12 foot, and one of its larger walls was completely covered by non-functioning monitors and a somewhat rusted console decorated with buttons and levers. From a glance, Meowth deduced that the area must have been the previous organisation’s security camera room, before the place was taken over by Team Rocket. Since then the system had been salvaged for parts that Giovanni himself had stated were ‘for more useful means’ and as a result the room had become defunct and fallen into disuse.
“I sh-shoulda known,” Meowth stammered as he gazed at his reflection in one of the dusty monitors. “Of course dey wouldn’t have been out ta help me. What was I t’inkin? How could I have been so stupid?”
“Hey… hey…” Gloria protested, pulling the blanket over the figure’s legs. “Don’t blame this on yourself. It’s understandable how, in your excitement, you could have easily overlooked such things.”
“Maybe an amateur would,” Meowth muttered under his breath, scratching moodily at his scalp. “But I ain’t no amateur. I shoulda seen dat double-cross comin’ a mile off.
I’m such a fool.”
A tentative silence descended, interrupted only by the noise of cracking bone, shifting sinew and an utterance of discomfort. Gloria sat down on the edge of the mattress and looked sternly at her charge’s face.
“You’re not a fool at all, Meowth” she told him. “You were just a Pokémon looking for answers.”
“Yeah…I was” came the bitter reply. “But what am I now, eh? Not a Pokémon or a human; fer all I know dey could have set out ta mutate my body inta anyt’ing!”
Gloria hunched her shoulders slightly with upset and reached out a hand in attempted comfort.
“Please, Meowth. Try to calm down” she persuaded. The figure responded with a maniacal laugh.
“Meowth? Who’s Meowth? Do you see any Meowths here cuz I sure don’t! All I saw when I looked in da mirror was some deformed, disfigured freak!”
His hysterical visage began to crumble, leaving only a quivering of the lip and pair of large slit-pupil eyes that grew more watery by the second. Gloria had retracted her hand in alarm, but upon seeing her companion’s new expression she raised it upward once again.
“What have…I done?” the figure whimpered, clasping hold of Gloria’s hand with both of his own. “What…” The rest of the sentence trailed off into louder sobbing as Meowth threw his head upon the woman’s shoulder and an arm around her neck. Gloria stared nervously out into space as the creature continued to empty his sorrows upon her white lab jacket.
“I-I’ve lost my identity…” he uttered mournfully. “I’m… I’m a nuthin’!”
“You’re not a nothing at all” Gloria disagreed firmly. “And neither are you destined to be. Once this transmutation period is over you’ll see who you are.”
Meowth gritted his teeth as one ear shifted slightly further down his head.
“How long…will dat take?” he asked quietly.
“About four more days” Gloria told him. “The best thing I can advise is to lie very still. I’ll see about fetching some pain relief formula from the medical bay, though I don’t know whether it will work.
Just don’t leave this room; we can’t let anyone else know you’re here”
Wow… Meowth thought in astonishment. She’s risking her position…her existence, even…fer me!
Gloria turned to leave, only to be halted by a somewhat disjointed cough on Meowth’s part.
“I just wanna know somet’ing before ya go” he spoke up carefully.
“Hm?”
The woman aimed her glance in the creature’s direction.
“How on oith did ya get me outta dere?”
“Well naturally I couldn’t have done it without help” Gloria explained. “I employed the assistance of a Kirlia to create a psychic wave throughout the lab that would fool the security guards and others who passed into thinking I was invisible, and you were still in the stasis chamber. While she emitted the wave, I drained the chamber, detached the siphon equipment and quickly carried you here”
For a moment the figure’s face was overtaken by a slight smile, despite his discomfort.
“T’anks, Gloria” he murmured. “Youse don’t know how much dis means ta me.”
“If its anything like what it means to me…” the woman remarked warmly, turning the handle and letting the door swing open slightly. “Then I know all too well. And you’re welcome, Meowth…you’re very welcome indeed. You deserve the life that you’ve been striving for.”
And with those final words, she was gone.