Pokémen: season 2

[Scriptor Scorpio]

Pokémen: season 2

Pokémen: season 2

Episode 1: The first second chance

We thought we had won. We thought we'd ended all we'd been through and life would be back to usual. But here we are, in hiding.

"Let us out..." a young man said as he banged on the door. Covered in a blanket he let out a loud yawn before calling out again.

To the world. To anyone listening.

"Come on, Leaf, go back to bed," his blond-headed twin brother Ruben said a she pulled on his shoulder.

The blanketed Leaf jerked away, his gaze fixed on the locked-tight heavy metal door. He grumbled before turning back to his bed, or his prison cell as he called it. He didn't know the world being like it was now: too much for even all of his kin to handle.

Someone who did know the treacherous times that had shook the world, was Lyra Green. In her rebellious phase she'd managed to not only change outfits, hair color and style, rattling her divorced parents' chains, but in the process she'd also taken down various villainous teams with ease and charm. Before all of this, you wouldn't have thought she was capable of that, even with some help. But this conflict was different. It had forced her to drop the naive, innocent persona of 'Bianca', the teasing of boys she thought she knew... But the change wasn't complete nor perhaps for the better.

"Hold on!"

The phrase echoed through her head, loud and clear as if he yelled it to her right now, right next to her ear. She slowly opened her clear blue eyes as she was joined in the conference room by the professor. Professor Kristof Ball to be exact. He'd invented the device that beared his name... and the machine that had caused this mess. He was therefore determined to rectify it. Although, as his blue and pink helmet and his curious dito-colored labcoat made clear, that wasn't the only reason.

"Send me on a mission, I'll fix it..." Leaf mumbled in his sleep as Ruben watched over him. As his tendency to rub his knuckles for every occasion had lessened, so had Leaf's relaxedness made way for battle-preparedness, being almost constantly on edge now.

"Never thought I'd be the calm one," Ruben said to himself.


"How's the new Team Alpha doing, professor?" Lyra asked.

"Unit Spearhead... is making progress, slowly but steadily," the professor said.

"Oh sorry Unit Spearhead. In other words the new leading team after," Lyra said and paused.

"After one too many screw-ups," Now if you would excuse me, my 'chef' and me, the humble assistant have work to do," the 'assistant' said, who'd thought he'd outgrown the role a long time ago, before he exited the room as swiftly and light-footed as he'd entered.

Meanwhile, another young man sat in front of a computer hooked up to a heavily fortified mainframe containing important data.

"Okay, just one more category, the hardest one," the young man said as he sifted through it. He quickly decided to skip Gastly and its line and moved on to...

"Yes, let's try this one, record a Fred File," 'Fred' ordered the computer.

As the high quality webcam ran, he tried to think of just one thing clearing his mind of all the things that worried him and influenced his ability to reason and plan ahead at all these days. He started to change. Literally.

"And?" Lyra asked as Fred entered.

"Still w-w-working on..." Fred said as he suddenly struggled to remain upright.. From an almost carefree smile he immediately shifted to stretching out his face as a sharp acute pain took ahold of him. Widening his blue eyes to an inhuman degree he stared at his hand as it grew muddled, unnatural light blue and swelled up. One, two, three, four, five spikes sprung up pointed at radically different angles, before the horrid blob changed back into a hand.

Without saying anything Lyra grabbed Fred's hand, took it to a small cylindrical machine and put it in. As she flicked the cell stabiliser on and the warm light brushed along Fred's skin, Lyra made tiny circles on his wrist with her soft hands.

"You have to fix this, you're the only one who can. That's why you got Ditto's abilities," Lyra said as she kept looking down at Fred's hand, avoiding looking into his eerie blue eyes.

"Attention, Team Homebase, the city is threatened by a vicious Cacturne swarm. Move out at once," Prof. Ball mumbled through the intercom.

"Great," Lyra said as she did her final check-up on Fred, "another attack and we're grounded if only he trusted us... Wait a minute, Team Homebase, that's us!"

"Guys, that's us, we're gonna kick those Retroments back where they came from!" Leaf yelled as he came storming into the room. Ruben quickly followed.

"Yes, let's go," Fred said as he glanced aside to Lyra, who quickly turned her big, light blue eyes away, not knowing what people could read off of those shining mirrors of the soul. Her soul.

At the same time in the city a Cacturne turned to growl menacingly at a bystander before it fired off a storm of Pin Missiles, striking every person and Pokémon in the immediate vicinity. A Poochyena, though young and particularly strong, shrugged off the pins stuck in its fur and ran to the side of his owner, a young frail woman that yelped as her pet tried to pull out the pins. Her multiple wounds looked ghastly deep...

"Step into the tubes, emergency transformation shall commence during travel," Prof. Ball said. It was quite clear he liked spilling multiple syllabled words.

"Wait what?" Lyra gasped as they were shot off to the city as a light shone and a weird sensation took ahold of her.


The Cacturne, with that eternal dark grin plastered all over his face, approached the helpless girl as her Poochyena alternated between trying to bark off the brute and high-pitched, anguished howling as he felt his owner's excruciating pain as his own.

As the dog Pokémon turned to pull another pin out of the woman's leg, the Cacturne charged up a dark attack, the woman crying out for help. And then, the Cacturne struck. Right afer, a thundering roar cut the air in half as an Arcanine rammed the green fiend, sending it flying through the air. The giant vermillion dog was right behind it, speeding as he jumped several meters and searing heat streamed around his teeth and were set aflame.

The Cacturne struck its attackers as the big canine rescuer dug its teeth into its arm. His swollen water plant frame shuddered as flames ran amok on its treacherous needles. Instinctively it punched the Arcanine in the forehead, repeatedly, before it let go. The Arcanine glanced aside to the woman as he landed.

The Poochyena had lied down besides her and laid completely still. The Arcanine grinded his teeth that were still hot to the touch as it charged a stronger attack and fired almost instantly. A flaming jet of burning internal gases blasted out of its mouth as the Cacturne tried to jump out of the way. It failed.

The woman had begun to hyperventilate and twisted and turned and her dog Pokémon cried out and turned to see where the attacker had went. The Arcanine was joined by some of the unlikeliest of Pokémon to be found next to a giant fire dog: a Togekiss, a Metagross and a Flygon.

The great flaming hound's manes twisted and spiked and curled as if caught by the wind. But then its snout grew bluish along with the whole of his fur before his general structure simply collapsed and he turned into a muddled blue blob the size... of a shiny Ditto. It quickly shapeshifted explaining 'their' plan of attack before they moved out and the shiny Ditto, aka Fred, turned into a Spearow before taking to the sky.

"Beau, Beau come here, stay with me," the woman spoke softly.

The Poochyena cried softly as well as it crept closer and licked the woman's face. A white light seemed to pass before the woman's eyes as she closed them. A tingling of a peculiar kind started at her feet and made its way along her wounds, legs and her broken frame up to her heart. She felt she could breathe again, but doing so she also felt... lighter. She opened her eyes, looked to her Beau clenched between her arms... as she saw the buildings beneath her.

"What, what is happening?" she exclaimed as she kept going faster and the skyscrapers started to blur into a sea of grey. She looked up to a Togekiss that seemed to carry her psychically.

"Don't worry, almost there," the Togekiss assured her as they approached the hospital.

The Togekiss slowed down as it made her descent, carefully laying the woman in the stretcher as astonished nurses and a doctor watched. The doctor quickly assessed the woman before saying: "She's still critical, get her out of here people, move it!"

As the woman moved to turn her head and slightly opened one eye, she thought: "Thank you," and the Togekiss nodded to affirm she got the message. Then, she took off.

A green shape whizzed across the city before it hoovered in mid-air as something caught its eye. Another Cacturne was talking to someone on his wrist.

"Be sure we understand each other, Grackx, I want this city taken over today," the villainous leader spoke through the purple wristband.

"Understood, Mr. Draken," Grackx the Cacturne said as it gave out orders to the other Cacturne as store windows shattered and cars were overturned for cover against the local authorities.

"Take aim..." the Flygon whispered to himself in Pokéspeak as it charged up its lizardous mouth and throat with super-heated air and let loose one single shot, a concentrated fireball, hitting Grackx right in the head, incapaciting him for just long enough for... Out of nowhere a metal disk appeared and mowed through the other Cacturne as they succumbed to the flash-struck injuries. Just one attack, the Metagross thought, slightly disappointed.

As the cops and a brave, but foolish news crew rushed to the intersection where the Cacturne had been thrashing around, the Metagross turned to see Grackx standing up from the super-effective attack like it was nothing and reaching out to strike against the people with some particularly deadly looking needles.

Fred, having arrived at the scene and believing they'd won, mind-blowingly quickly turned into a Rotom of sorts to achieve the speed of lightning to change again mid-air to a Reuniclus to envelop the Cacturne together with Ruben the Metagross. They sighed in relief. Now they would be homestuck no more.

A white light enveloped the Cacturne, only changing his form slightly but his look dramatically, into a human face with human eyes, recognizable as something decidedly unknown for the whole world to see. All this time trying to hide this monstrosity, their curse, had been for nothing.

"It's... a Pokéman?" the reporter blurted out.

 

[Scriptor Scorpio]

Episode 2: Discovery again

"Put on the channel, discovery, they've discovered something!" a guy said to his room mate as he struggled to instruct him to change to the news channel.

In front of all those people gathered at the intersection the Cacturne human stood restrained by the Metagross and Ditto turned Reuniclus, although they were hardly holding him back at all. This creature had done what it had been told to do and now he would just stand there and watch as the press drowned the unfortunate team in a million questions.

"Look over there, on that roof!" a reporter shouted.

The figure was a lot more distant than the first Cacturne human, but as cameras zoomed in, the shape and color was unmistakable. As more Cacturne humans appeared in the light of the morning sky, people in the crowd started to mutter it could just be a advertising stunt, though one so damaging and dangerous that the people responsible would surely be dragged to court and trialled severely. The white flash had made them believe it was a trick by some cliche magician, but nobody thought about the unlikelihood of hiding trap doors in the pavement. A new wave of light blinded the spectators as they tried to shield their eyes from the undamped full white. As they blinked several times, they saw the Cacturne back in its original form with ever so fleeting human features disappearing. The slower transformation sequence had been done on purpose and had solidified what people were struggling to believe: hybrids. Hybrids that could pop up at any moment and kill them. The police gathered around as the Cacturne swiftly escaped and the mysterious savior Pokémon, or Pokémen as reporters would ponder, did the same.

"Now there's nowhere left to run. When we as 'wild Pokémon' try to protect people, they will taser us or catch us or whatever. We as Pokémen..." Fred said as he paused and looked at Professor Ball.

"... will wind up on the dissecting slab," professor Ball put it ever so gentle. "He's a sly tactician. One that might be too much for your team to handle."

"Doc, if you're trying to think about keeping us here because of one mistake..." Lyra said.

"Too many mistakes, Miss Green! Even with the new forms of the practically trained most valuable Pokémon in competitions between players, you failed to stop mister Draken. Meanwhile, everyone of Team Homebase is suspended as I try to figure out who will betray us. Perhaps there are more moles than heroes in this team," the professor said.

The words struck hard and fast and silenced any remarks that Ruben or Leaf, rebellious young teens as they were, would have wanted to add.

Melody, Benny, Crystal...

Visibly shaken, Fred nevertheless started to think. How could they ever prove their worth again after this? With the world knowing about Pokémen because of them not foreseeing the Retroments' real plans, they would have to remain in hiding indefinitely. Cracking the genetic code of the hybrids they had once cheerfully nicknamed Pokémen, proved to be extremely difficult, to say the least. Untill that day would come, the Retroments' leader wouldn't have to face any strong resistance while his underlings grew stronger every day. Worse, if their 'inside' source was to be believed, he was creating new ones, even without scientific knowledge about the Pokémanizing process, but how?

After Prof. Ball had left to continue work on the genetic code, he said to the others as he tried to scratch the right words together and form pounding sentences to reinvigorate his cousins and Lyra:

"I wanna take, the ultimate steps, find the courage to be bold, to risk it all and not forget the lessons that I hold. I wanna go where no one's been, far beyond the crowd, learn the way to take command. Use the power that's in my hand!"

The others remained silent.

"We all live in a Pokémen world now. I know you all have the skills to surpass the other teams by miles to stop... him," Fred said as he turned to Lyra.

So many liars there are, she thought to herself.


"This is professor Kristoff Ball, personal report 05. Here are as follows my observations of the past few weeks. I shall limit myselves to the current residents of the base, being some of the members of the former team Alpha. I realise that I was led by the achievements of them as human Trainers in the past and not their ability to adapt to the situation at hand that... I put them in. Several effects have surfaced fine-tuning my profiles as I've begun to study this admittably dubious field of expertise and delve ever deeper.

Ruben and Leaf Kitchmeh have shown to carry distinct and some might say bipolar personalities opposed to each other. Nevertheless they seem to mimic each other closely and share as if it were one brain, one mind, one thought. They slowly start to blend over into each other, as the hotheaded one, Ruben, seemingly switches places with Leaf, the relaxed, laid-back one. It's as if it's a simple Pokémon trade, but that metaphor shows quite some holes. After a few short conversations with them I've caught that they consider themselves to be two sides of the same blade and they look up to their older cousin Fred as their hero and example. They do still lack some of his most prominent traits, which I will discuss shortly after the next member, Lyra Green.

Lyra Green used the denomination of 'Bianca' and a curious, naive persona to go with it to start a new slate going with her visiting a new continent. Her parents' divorce at the age of ten might've been a Freudian excuse, but teenagers are seldomly transformed to this extent by just one traumatic event. Her subsequent moving to Hoenn and to Sinnoh a year later after she'd lived in Kanto and Johto due to her parents' work being based in those regions, prompted her to change her personality and clothes and to do incredibly irresponsible things among of them some things being lying about her identity, losing herself into her new identity and tricking many wary travellers with her acted portrayals of a strong and independent girl or an inexperienced ingenue. The list could go on practically forever. Other than in terms of her many shattered personas, there was also her defeating many nefarious organisations bent on changing this world forever. This seems to be a facade for a scared little girl that secretly depends on others for emotional support, but punishes them for the act at the same time. Time will tell if the rift between her fighting abilities she turns to use as a Pokéwoman and her mental stability grows too large or smaller... Either way offering next to no personal growth and use for the situation at hand.

Fred Kitchmeh seems to be quite intelligent, but with his knowledge limited to what he found practical on his journey through the Kanto region, he didn't match up to Benny's encyclopedic memory nor to another subject's tactical abilities. The first candidate for leadership was born to do so and had the charisma to see his orders getting carried out. The second lacked that charisma. All that was left was Fred and his everyman status, not excelling at anything, but not being bad at things either. As he was increasingly relied on by what was left of the team, his Ditto powers developed to accomodate all the trades this simple jack got dropped on him. It is a mystery to me as to how much their first Pokémon forms were linked to their character and if that connection is strong, it might explain his revelation as not being a Kricketune at all. Is he just a nice guy with a simple love interest that got pulled in when betrayal made 'Bianca' reveal herself as his childhood friend? Are the motives of this dysfunctional team's members true enough and are our antagonists so dark and twisted set on domination?

A week passed as the four teens tried to stay far away from boredom and silently pondering they might not be worth something in the end. Fred tried ever harder to spur them into action and learn to know their new abilities and moves. As for himself and his ever malleable Ditto form, he kept taking on several type categories from the mainframe. This in an effort to being able to revert to them in the snap of a finger and act accordingly to the situation at hand. Perhaps being aware of what professor Ball had noted in his top secret reports, he tried to avoid coming closer than necessary when Lyra put his hand, shoulder or leg in the stabiliser when he lost control.

The professor had held on to his notion of levels of strength and ability to measure how their hybrid forms became ever more Pokémon like once more, so human features and abilities diminished while their respective Pokémon form powers increased in the hybrid form. The original accident and bright flash had caused them to be completely turned into Pokémon, though with human levels of reasoning and intellect. Shortly after, professor Ball managed his first victory: a hybrid form to return some of their humanity. However, with them growing stronger, the human DNA started to be slowly eaten away by the hyper-powered genetic material of the Pokémon. The transformation to their new Pokémon base was also an experiment to halt this change. Time would tell if it was succesful.

"I have a new mission for you. It is routine and low-level, but I suggest you don't screw up, lest the 'humans' catch you and dissect you," Prof. Ball said.

One day, they would ask the professor why he so vigorously holds on to that belief.

"You will be assigned to scouting this mountainous area and determining if any of the Retroments are doing something there. An extensive cave system exists there with part of it being a mining system. Don't get any ideas. It's unsuited for any new base they could have set up."

And so they set off. Perhaps not so coincidentally, the four members of Team Homebase could all fly in a manner, except for Fred of course. He concentrated for a moment and shifted into a Pidgeot. As he tried his hardest to focus his bird brain on what he had learned about the majestic Pokémon, it could fly at mach 2 or 3, though he could be wrong. They travelled above the clouds to avoid attracting attention to a Togekiss, spinning Metagross, Pidgeot and a whizzing Flygon passing over the heads of the people of High Arrows.

When the night had fallen, they descended and with the help of their wristbands, they homed in on their designated spot from which they would start scouting the surrounding area. Realising by the several yawns Ruben, Leaf and Lyra as well let out that it had been much later than they had anticipated. Fred instructed the others on gathering materials for setting up camp and so they all went their separate ways to get materials that fitted their respective niches. Despite them having grown so close because of their adventures, their radically different species as Pokémon and Pokémen meant they all could sleep better apart and in their own way.

Ruben as a Metagross dug himself in deep into the mountain's slope and powered down, as the supercomputer steel can its species was. Leaf preferred the driest sand closer to the forest to lay himself to rest as it reminded his instincts and senses of the desert a bit. Lyra went even farther and found a hole in an old tree to sleep in, covering herself with her large wings as she dozed off. As for Fred, he gathered some leaves cutting them up as a Kricketune, maybe as a reminder of how he'd slept all those days before he'd discovered he was a Ditto. In that daycare, when Lyra kissed him. It had been for hiding the fact why they'd been there, being lured in by that sweet smell and all and coincidentally his Ditto powers had activated in an unusual way. Yet, after that they grew closer again as she revealed herself as not being Bianca, but Lyra Green. She had made a fool of the team before that, why should anything that happened after it be any different?

He gently laid himself to sleep...

"So he has put Team Alpha back on active duty? Good. I'll show them all what it truly means to be a Pokéman. I... wanna be the very best," the Retroments leader quietly said to himself.

 

[Scriptor Scorpio]

Episode 3: Revelations

"We have to teleport!" Lyra yelled as she gestured for Melody to take a hold of Leaf. "Think you can do it?"

Leaf shivered, but nodded yes. Maybe...

Fred got dragged onto Leaf by Benny, all of them gathering around Ruben, who still didn't get up. Fred transformed into a blob that was indeterminate in terms what it exactly was, but it was created to blast them away with a powered-up teleport. Fred looked to Kai and milliseconds before the white light covered them completely, he dragged him along into the sphere.

"Noooooooooooooooooo!" it echoed as 'he' saw his plan get thwarted, if only so slightly.

In a flash, they disappeared.

"Hwhwhwhwhoooooold ooon!" Fred said as his indeterminate form tried to protect them all while trying to shape a mouth.

Lyra stared into his eyes as they came up close to hers as she struggled to hold on. A hand that was more blob than anything remotely human grabbed her wrist as she did the same with whatever the blobbish hand had for a connection to its arm. This couldn't be, not him, why did it have to be him to betray us... She looked in Fred's eyes and he was wondering the same thing. Yet somehow, something started to dawn on him which he tried from Lyra by looking away. Before she could cry out why he suddenly turned away, they landed. But not in a soft spot.

As the tree branches snapped under them and barely slowed down their fall, the green leaves flew everywhere and made Ruben lose sight of Leaf. He yelled for his dearest twin brother as he pulled out his Hitmonlee legs to brace for impact. Benny had survived the fall when he stretched out his wings and Melody's Vaporeon form made her squishy enough to get up from the ground almost immediately as Dittous Fred tried to reform himself. Ruben rushed to Leaf's side as he had made quite the crater in the soft soil.

"Leaf, can you hear me!" he yelled.

Lyra had managed to spread out her Ledian wings as well, but her insect exoskeleton wasn't strong enough... A huge crack had appeared in her carapace, her body, her something Fred couldn't quite name at the moment. They had to get to back, now.

They had gotten back. Soon after that, they went into hiding as 'he' showed off his power to the wild Pokémon population of the mountain and reeled them in for his army. Fred didn't quite know it at the time, but his pink color had begun to fade as eerily light blue took its place. In less dreadful times, Prof. Ball would want to investigate why a creature that could turn into any Pokémon would take on a pink color or in its 'shiny' form a curious blue. But with the events of the following months, that wouldn't seem interesting at all.

"Freeeeeeed, where are you?" a female voice said.

Fred opened his eyes as he realised he couldn't move. He remembered this feeling. Why was he all paralyzed, like when he practiced being a Geodude...

"Geo?" he said puzzled.

"Fred, why does that rock sound like you?" Lyra said as she kneeled down in front of his eyes.

Fred started to move and with standing up he saw that he'd instinctively turned into a rock, as Ditto did in the wild to sleep without being noticed in the landscape. Seemed his identity as a Ditto proved to be stronger than that of a Kricketune, though his dream could have had something to do with it.

He glanced at Lyra for a moment as he changed himself back into his Pokéman form, as he kept the Kricketune form out of comfort. A long red coat, a black and lush mustache with his body looking like a red violin with a yellow band of some sorts... The 'fabric' looked sturdier than from what he remembered...

As he finished inspecting with was actually his exoskeleton that came with Kricketune's Pokéman form, he looked up to see Lyra as her worries about his whereabouts started to wane. Her long white gown with red and blue symbols like her full Togekiss form wrapped around her torso as the elegant strapless dress looked particularly unsuited for the outdoors. Her fairy-like wings on her back fluttered as she tried to calm down and they covered her shoulders as she felt a need for protection. She'd yet again colored her hair, now to a gold blonde, with the red and blue highlights pointing out. And she looked as beautiful as he remembered from their days in Kanto.

"Fred, you gotta see this," Ruben said.

As they approached the hill, Ruben beckoned Fred and Lyra to take cover. The twins had gone ahead to scout the general area and found nothing. Untill now.

"What are they doing there?" Lyra whispered.

"Doesn't seem like they're mining for evolutionary stones like last time," Leaf said.

"Though they're under new management now," Ruben said.

Instead of the small Meowth pack, the new leader now used mass-produced Retroments, in this case Golem men. The resemblance was uncanny... When Pokémen were made, one sample was used for each species so mass-produced Pokémen, or Pokéwomen, would look exactly the same as Pokémon. Nevertheless when the process was done inverted, fusing normal Pokémon population's respective DNA with that of human DNA, the levels of human reasoning and intellect seemed to take over the brain functions of the original Pokémon so they all thought pretty much the same. And they all looked identical to the Cacturne Retroment, at least in facial features.

"Right now some random unfortunate citizen has the same face as these dangerous creatures. The more DNA he procures, the more dangerous 'he' becomes," Fred said.

"What if he's trying to procure DNA of legendary Pokémon that lived here, in the cave system I mean," Lyra said.

"That's a dangerous possibility," Fred said.

"I estimate the possibility to be 1 in 2,345. There are no records of any specific legendary being seen in this specific area. Apart from maybe... What?" Ruben said as he turned his metallic Metagross head.

"You are a supercomputer, so it makes sense... Can you calculate or determine anything else?" Fred said.

"No sorry, it seems to come and go. Nerd talk," Ruben said smugly. It sounded even more nerdish with that robotic voice.

"Anyway, the entrance is heavily guarded. And more is going in there. Should we call Prof. Ball?" Lyra suggested.

She had been strangely loyal to him as he promised to keep her secret and functioned as a sort of assistant in communications with the team. Untill everyone got a wristband to switch between forms, communicate with each other and she blew her cover. If a sly lie as the naive and innocent 'Bianca' just for kicks could be called a cover.

Fred thought it over for a moment. They could call Prof. Ball, who'd immediately pull them back and send in Unit Spearhead. He wouldn't risk it that they'd screw up anything. But what if things couldn't get any worse and they could finally prove themselves with these powerful forms?

"We do it ourselves. If we come back with spectacular results, he'll have no choice but to promote us from pitiful scouts. Are you guys with me?" Fred said.

Ruben and Leaf nodded quietly.

"We're always behind you," Lyra said.

She briefly kissed him on the cheek in her Togekiss form as Fred remembered how he'd hidden the both of them when they stood as Pokémen in the daycare: an invisibility ability. She'd kissed him then to let the owners mistake them for young lovers instead of 'Pokémen' that oh so coincidentally were the same species as the Kricketune and Ledian they had captured.

Fred shifted from red to green as yellow-lined horns began to appear on his head and a red crooked band flashed across his stomach.

"Okay, activate Color Change," Fred said as if he was still commanding his Pokémon.

His Kecleon form immediately turned invisible, only his crimson stripe remaining as he sneaked over the hill and lightning fast dodged the Golem men moving busily about.

As he ventured deeper into the dark caverns, Fred was forced to rely on his sense of smell by sticking out his tongue constantly. His googly eyes went around and around as he looked for signs of what the Retroments were upto.

"You know, you're not the only one that can turn invisible. And I can still see you," a voice said.

Fred froze as he pretended he couldn't possibly have been discovered already. Worse he recognized that voice. The second candidate for leadership who had been quickly voted away because of a popularity contest. Which Fred won. This person was all about revenge since then and maybe even before. Fred had stood in the way of what he had wanted most, again and again. Fred could say he didn't really want to take charge or wasn't infatuated with Lyra, but that wasn't true entirely.

"It is me, Fred. Nicolas Draken, leader of the Retroments and soon the world," Nicolas said as his malevolent grin appeared out of thin air in front of Fred's off-set Kecleon eyes.

As purple fog started to appear and a light bulb flicked on in the deep cavernous tunnel, Fred shut off his Color Change, he knew it was useless to hide any longer. The Gengar Pokéman stood before him, seeming even more vengeful than when the group had escaped from his grasp in the nick of time. His eyes shot more fire than when he revealed him having taken over the Retroments and their ultimate weapons and he glared at Lyra, showing how much he'd come to hate her flirtations and lies. And betrayal.

Besides Nicolas another ghastly creature appeared. What was he going to do with him? Fred tried to figure out a way to get away. Perhaps a Dark type? But what was that elongated thing that appeared besides Draken?

 

[Scriptor Scorpio]

Episode 4: Doubts of the venom

"Noooooooooooo!" Nicolas yelled.

Things would get difficult, but he'd won and commanded two legendaries. Eventually, he'd...

"Win," he thought as he grinned widely with those Gengar teeth.

The ultimate weapons that were now under his ultimate command were flushing out the tunnels. Soon he would start on recruiting many more Retroments. Good thing his predecessor had replacement parts for his Pokémanizer.

"Who's there?" Nicolas said as he turned around. He could detect even the smallest signs of temperature rising or dropping in the spacious room. Right now, it was eerily dropping indicating an Ice Pokémon or... a ghost.


"So, have you met my partner in crime?" Nicolas said as he gestured to the Mismagius woman besides him.

She, or it, came closer. Her purple long hair was arranged rather menacingly under her witch's hat with tufts of lighter purple at the top and ends. The purple robe-like dress with red crystals around her waist also increased the wailing witch appearance along with strands of purple fabric with lighter tips floating around even with no wind. Fred's attention from the big red jewel on the rather simple waistcoat top of the Mismagius' robe was thrown off as she stared at him with menacing yellow-tinted eyes and eerie green irises. Could it be...

"Minami Lynn, former intern at the police department," Minami the Mismagius said.

She had gone on only one date with Nicolas and must have been completely smitten with him from then on as she managed to find him and get caught in the second flash that turned all the Pokémen's human allies into Pokémen as well and cured them from the 'instability' caused after reaching level 40. It had been a genuine enemy mine what with Prof. Ball joining forces with evil Nicolas' predecessor to solve the problem. And then she phased through the enemy base's walls just in time to join forces with Draken turned villain. Something had to be off with this girl, Fred could've figured as much when she said yes to going out on a date with Nicolas of all people. Wonder why Ben didn't intervene back then... Ben, where would he be right now.

"Now thing is, you probably didn't come here unprepared, well neither did I. Let's see how Team Alpha measures up to this," Nicolas said as he pushed a special button on his dark purple wristband, modelled after the professor's designs.

Then, Fred heard the roar.

And then another one.

Back with Lyra, Ruben and Leaf, they felt the earth shake as they saw the Golem men rush away from the mining entrance, as if they felt what was coming.

"That isn't good, is it?" Ruben said.

Within a few seconds, they heard a pounding force rush through the mining shaft as they tried to take cover and tried to figure out what it was. Their time was up: a torrential wave of water bursted out of the entrance and flooded everything and everyone unlucky enough to be standing near where the aquatic terror had been near too.

"Good thing we're ghosts already," Nicolas whispered to himself and Minami with a dreaded smile.

Fred had been stuck into a Kecleon when the wave hit and as he tried to recover from the original shock, he was cast out in the open as his eyes were pained by the sudden flash to a sunlit mountain range. But that was just the start of his troubles.

"Rrrrrrrrrrruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh!" the beast roared as it appeared out of the newly created water basin of its partner.

Its white wings, blue underbelly, dark blue fins and hawk-like head, there was no mistaking it: the Lugia Pokéwoman Nicolas had gained command of. And it was quickly joined by the powerful dark blue and red-lined whale species legendary, Kyogre, the other ultimate weapon. And they were about to obliterate Fred and his small-numbered team with him.

It was a mystery to Fred as to how Nicolas knew they would be assigned to scouting this particular area, but one thing was clear: Draken wouldn't let him leave without making him suffer. And Fred's team mates wouldn't permit that without putting up a potentially deadly fight.

Lyra flew in front of Fred as he tried to think up a Pokémon that could hold its ground, while purging his lungs from the excess of water. Miss Green the Togekiss meanwhile summoned a reflect and light screen barrier stretching the whole width of the mining site above ground. Some holes were left in, as Lyra instructed Ruben on Meteor Mashing right through as Leaf urged Fred to change into something that flew or levitating. Nobody had had the time to study the team's movesets, but that urging could only mean one thing.

Ruben felt being lifted upwards as Leaf released his attack as he flew upwards then struck down as hard as it could, setting of a shockwave throughout the unstable caverns and striking the Kyogre minion hard. Lugia was unaffected, but immediately got hit by a Shadow Ball, fired by... the same Gengar that was lifting up Ruben. Nicolas, but how?

The Gengar used all its ghastly glow and fumes to ward off the Lugia as it struggled with conflicting orders. It was still trying to carry out its original order of decimating Fred, yet... Fred himself was ordering it not to.

"Hold on... Drop me, now!" Ruben yelled to Fred as he complied and Ruben smashed into the ground again with a far more powerful earthquake shaking up the Kyogre, causing the Lugia to turn its attention to its partner.

As Ruben took flight again pulling in its limbs, Team Homebase made their escape and disappeared above the clouds.


Professor Ball was furious that they ignored his orders to stick to scouting and said he was seriously considering grounding them at the base permanently. But Fred couldn't care less as he wanted to see the young man that Prof. Ball had been made a subordinate to in the fields of science. An old friend in more ways than one.

"So, Kai Manning. It is time we hear your side of the story. What have you been sending Benny and the others on? How do you know so much of genetics? And why did you make the Eevee girls, build an army and made those Legendary Pokéwomen, at least before Nicolas wrestled away your power from you? Why did you went from Nicolas' grumpy rival to... a scientific and criminal mastermind?"

As the man in the white labcoat with red spiky hair, barely older than Fred and Lyra turned to them from his computer screen, he took a deep breath.

"Your friend, the former Eevee girl, Melody, Prof. Ball's daughter and the bespectacled stoic love puppy, Benny, your half brother, have been sent to search for materials and genetic material to solve the flaws of Pokémanizing mechanics and possibly... cure it. As this could very well be used against us by my once slightly formidable rival, it has to be perfect before we try anything. And so..."

"Hold on we're almost there," Benny said as he huffed and puffed himself. Why did they make hills this high?

He reached out his hand towards Crystal, who turned it away, not being too keen on Benny's soft spot taking care of her. Her blue spiky hair glistened in the morning sun, although her wit and intellect had surprised Benny the most. That and hot tops.

"I don't like it that we have to keep our mission secret from Fred. And the others. And I really don't get why we got these new forms in this scorching heat," Melody Ceryean said, once a watery and cool Vaporeon.

An ice Pokémon like her Froslass form now wasn't that good for long hiking by day, neither was Starmie or a dark bird like Honchkrow. Benny waved his black feathers around as he scanned the horizon.

"It's not far now, just follow me," he said.

"I'll follow you a hole in your stomach," Crystal whispered grunting.

Why her father had let that red-haired kid that was her age of all things, send her off on a field trip like this. Evelyne could've handled this far better, what with that lusting factoid spilling bird guy and that manic pixie girl that seemed obsessed with that trainer back at the base. At least she wouldn't have to be here and waste her time.

"It's here, we've found it," Benny said.

In the ground, circular symbols had been carved that seemed strangely familiar to them, though they couldn't quite place their finger on it. Benny and Crystal started setting up equipment to scan the ground for more clues as to the mark's origins as Melody flicked her wristband to turn into a full Froslass. She thought about the fourth move she had never revealed to Fred as to remain mysterious. Or just poke at him for fun, as he seemed to take it very seriously and be determined to find out what it exactly was. Once he had muttered about a connection to Ben, as he couldn't wrap his mind around his betrayal. Lyra couldn't at all. As Lyra seemed to have grown closer to Fred afterwards, maybe she should start thinking about the happenings as well if only to, you know, give Lyra and Fred some peace at last.

Maybe she really was obsessed with Fred. All she wanted at the beauty pageant was be special and she had her wish granted, with Kai turning all of the participants into beautiful female Eevee assistants. Lyra had tried to save her, that's how she made the switch to the Pokémen, remembering that a while after the transformation. Now all she wanted was to lead a normal life, perhaps with Fred who seemed so mysterious. Maybe she was fooling herself and Lyra wasn't. She did seem to be more level-headed than Melody could give herself credit where credit was due. Well, at least she could now show she could take care of herself, seeing as Benny was focusing all his attention on Crystal, the professor's daughter.

"So if he thought my move could have something to do with Ben, seeing as he had gone over the TMs that had been stolen by us, the Eevee girls, that leaves that girl to use... hold on a second," Melody said.

"Move over to way over there, Benny!" Crystal said annoyed as the young man had been inching his way over to her, though the scan wouldn't be that great if he did so.

Saddened, he did as she said and continued the scanning. Lonely.

 

[Scriptor Scorpio]

For those angry this isn't a new update, don't worry. I purposefully posted it on the second waiting day as an optional piece to read and perhaps enjoy. Tomorrow a new episode will be posted per my every three days posting schedule as usual

A special: Prototypes of Pokémen, how it came to be

No, I'm not writing this as some kind of ego trip, quite the contrary. Witness how I went from crazy, disjointed ideas to... well I do hope you enjoy reading Pokémen and my other stories, kinda, maybe?

So lately I've been thinking about a story I made a whole while back, as well as some ideas that never got to be a story, though traces of those ideas still remain in this story.

The spiritual predecessor to Pokémen, if you will, was named 'Pokémon Mystery Dungeon Yellow Rescue Team'. It was originally intended to be a sort of fan-made third version to the paired games of Red and Blue rescue team that existed mostly in my mind. I figure it was made somewhere between mid 2004 and late 2006, since my inspirations by and shout-outs to Pokémon Colosseum were quite blatantly obvious. Also, the two paired games weren't released yet and so I had to make do with my overactive imagination.

All I knew was it being about a human getting turned into a Pokémon and him/her trying to fix it. And so, one day an accident happened in a lab with the lab assistants getting hit in the attack, possibly one of them being the prototypical professor Ball/Fred. The accident ultimately turned out to be caused by the another assistant, a young man named Xavier, who had gathered around him some people including his girlfriend. Funny, I hadn't worked that part into Pokémen, I had forgotten about the one-dimensional girlfriend character called Lea untill I dug up my scribbles from back then. I'm a bit sentimental when it comes to holding onto my first tries at writing and all that.

Anyway, I looked up the Pokémon moves for each species involved (because we're still writing a story about people turned into Pokémon naturally) and slowly let them level up, keeping track. Although it isn't done that often because it's more game like than book-like, I liked the extra rules the moveset and minimum levels gave me, to keep me from pulling out a Hyper Beam and all that.

So episode 1, aptly named 'It begins...', had been jotted down with four short sentences, most of it in my head. I still remember the largest part of it, yeey! Stein the Abra, Buzz the shiny Elekid and Evan the Eevee went out to have some crazy adventures, meeting a Ralts named May (not a coincidence, I'm a May fan) who wasn't human, but I planned to make human. And now Retroments are considered controversial in Pokémen, apart from a crazy exception, hm... Studying biochemistry sure made me think about how you could possibly make a Ralts into a human with a human brain.

I also seem to have notes about collecting Pokéballs... to free Dark Pokémon. Pokémon Crater anyone? Ultimately, Stein made a Snag Machine to make Snag Balls and the like, you can tell I'm still a huge fan of the game, perhaps because it was my first unorthodox one at age 12 1/2.

Furthermore, they traveled through the Hoen region for a while, interfering in small Events like Birch being attacked by a Poochyena, the first Trainers you meet on the road to Petalburg trying to catch the characters, discovering the Verdanturf Tunnel, Stein accidentally teleporting himself into Registeel's hideout and briefly (!) fighting him before returning. Yeah, I was out of my mind, that's for sure.

There is more, courtesy of me buying Firered at the time: visiting Sea foam islands randomly to encounter Articuno, also the pokémon tower, the unown temples, the Two island gold mine, then using the made up 'hatch system' in the Daycare on Four island to hatch the egg they got from a wild Miltank, revealing it to contain a cute Pichu Stein and May adopt, going to Far away island to encounter Mew, Mewtwo and Mewthree, going to Agate village to rescue Celebi, while locked in a 'timeless box' from Xavier's girlfriend who had been turned into a Dark Celebi, visiting doctor Kaminko and beating Robo Groudon. For some reason the party had to beat every gym in the three then known regions to gain access to victory road (which wild Pokémon should be able to reach without badges?), to ultimately defeat Xavier as Deoxaruseys (mixture of Deoxys and Arceus) after his allies turned legendary Pokémon had done the same in the previous rooms of the Pokémon League. Have I forgot to mention they rescued an injured Wailord, caught it and used it as a ride? Or that every single Legendary known at the time was summoned, Darkened and purified again? Or me inventing an improved blue colored Ditto2?

Presumably after this they found the cure to turn themselves back. With May (and the Pichu named Cho) being turned human too, seeing as Alakazam and Shiny Gardevoir (I like blue, hence the shinyness) are of other egg groups, which confuses everyone no doubt. And so the human-like Gardevoir of the Indeterminate group became human, lol. But I never actually jotted the end down and thought about doing a sequel when Darkness and Time Explorers was gonna come out, though still just in notes and not actually as written out episodes. There were 28 episodes conceived for Yellow Rescue team, but with only a few notes per episode, that wasn't that hard to do.

Seeing as I loved the product of my overactive imagination about a then mysterious new pair of games with a concept new to the series, I decided to go back to it and borrow the interesting elements from it. Mainly, the lab accident and it not being an accident. The Pokémen concept came when I wanted some human form for the teens to interact with each other. Also I had seen some 'hybrids' on the internet and as I based the characters on some of my close friends, I wanted to show their quirks and human behavior as much as possible, as seen with the oddball heroes and their comedy, mostly in the first season. As I like the idea of my sign being a Scorpio (hence the 'writer in Latin' Scorpio username), a mysterious and powerful creature, I had begun to work on personality based teams and movesets just for fun. So what if each character turned into a species that resembled their personality? By the way, I don't believe in horoscopes, but like reincarnation, I like the idea, in this case the grouping it gives to personalities, like types. Perhaps you have found Ledyba, Meowth, Tyrogue, Bonsly, Hoothoot and so on to be fitting for these characters back in season 1, perhaps you have seen their troubling deviations as the darkest events change them for good. For better or for worse.

You can expect to find more familiar characters popping up as I deliberately based the characters on game (and perhaps anime) counterparts, though I'm deviating from their personalities (which player characters usually lack anyway) in order to tell a story. Their accomplishments in the games still shine through, with some twists as I admire them in a way, having played all of them throughout their journey. Perhaps this is laziness to no bother with introducing original characters and describing them and finding accomplishments for them to have besides the existing ones' astounding feats in the games. Perhaps this is a way to play with them and their anime counterparts to see if it makes a good story. One time, I tried to make a ton of shipping schedules that would give every character two known parents, as well as fulfilling many ships of the recurring or main characters without invoking incest and repeating the process for four additional series after the 'replacement' for the anime as we know it. I quickly realised I needed help from many writers to finish all five within my lifetime and still have a somewhat normal life and I did realise nobody would want to read series that were as long as the anime in written form, shudder. That or I was just too lazy to remake the whole thing when I found out incest had creeped in and I didn't feel like doubling the family trees with new original characters that would confuse the reader and make the series have way too many storylines, all teenage drama anyway. Not a big fan of that.

So yeah, that's my 'too long, didn't read' story about the origin and prototypes of what would eventually be Pokémen. Say, this being linked to CHA-05 and me having pondered for years about Pokétransformers... who know what the next episodes will bring?

 

[Scriptor Scorpio]

Episode 5: The man behind the man behind the man

"I couldn't count on my father to come and fix everything. I subscribed to college quite early after my travels in Johto. Come to think of it, must've been my father behind getting that to work. My classmates were much older and genetics were an incredibly difficult subject, but I kept going, determined to succeed. I eventually got to know anything there was to know about Pokémon and human genetics at the time. All I needed for my work was funding and for what I wanted to do, many ethical lines had to be crossed. Eventually, a mysterious figure approached me with the offer of funding anything I researched in exchange for the use of the finished product. I had no choice. One more line needed to be crossed: stealing professor Ball's technology, modifying it and then testing out my first concoction on all unknowing attendees and myself. But it had been insufficient and I knew I needed legendary DNA. However, it wasn't for power, it was to ensure the stability of the hybrids I would create. You see, we are slowly falling apart. At least that would've been the primary tendency for concern if not for the level 40 glitch resolving flash Prof. Ball and I worked on. Now it seems... we're turning back into full Pokémon. Prof. Ball's last ditch attempt to recover your respective human DNA, turning you, and eventually my allies and me through my copying of the method, into Pokémen, might soon be in vain. All my work to save my loved ones, would be in vain. And now..." Kai said as he paused.

"... You succeeded in stabilising their form with legendary DNA, but Nicolas has got his hands on them," Fred said.

"... Yes," Kai said. "So... can I trust you and your team to help me atone for my sins?"

"Perhaps," Ruben said.


"It seems you like toying with your enemies," a voice said as the screen flashed on.

Nicolas grinned behind his back and turned to face the figure, who was as much shrouded in darkness as the other was.

"I've inherited mister Manning's debts and I'll be sure to let your funding not go to waste," Nicolas said. "Soon, you will have your army."

"Our prisoner isn't talkative about Kai's programming," Minami said as she hovered along and turned into her Pokéwoman form on the way over to Nicolas. "He claims to have no fear."

Her red jewels glowed as she said so.

"I might have other methods to make him talk, but we might be overestimating this cat lieutenant. Its normal type also might cause some problems, so he'll just freeze up more as we try to control his brain. Humans might not be normal, what if we... Find that unit that has been sabotaging our efforts and track them till you find the professor and Manning. No doubt we'll find Fred and his others too."


"All I know, was that the organisation I was working for called itself BIO, capitalized. It stood for Borderline Intensification Organics. They'd never thought I'd defect from them, but then again, even they didn't foresee Nicolas..." Kai said.

"Kicking your behind," Ruben added.

"... Yes," Kai said. "Kicking... that. They wanted humans with power that matched that of Pokémon or went beyond. Though records of the ancient past are very incomplete, it is an utmost certainty that us becoming the dominant species on earth should be called a miracle, even if we found out to catch and tame these powerful creatures. Perhaps it's our intelligence that has ultimately provided us with the power to make technology to handle genetics this way. So if we were to combine Pokémon's power and humans' intelligence..."

"This new organisation could take over the world or worse," Prof. Ball said as he had joined the others.

"Could this be Team Galactic? Team Magma? Team Aqua? Team Rocket?" Fred asked.

"Those are crippled now and easy to defeat to begin with," Lyra mused.

"Wait, so you're the one that... never mind, we have to save the girls, at all costs, before Nicolas runs them into the ground. I'd like to go myself, but I'm of more use down here. Either way, as the chaos in the cities and businesses grows, so do Nicolas' opportunities for taking over the Reminiscence region even without my research."

"I know we screwed up, okay," Ruben said crossing his arms, thinking angry thoughts.

"Hold on, you haven't been watching the news after the Pokémanizing incident, have you?" Kai said.

"What do you mean by that?" Fred said.

Kai started to dart across the keyboard with his nimble fingers as he elaborated. Now it wasn't as prominent or important as it had been when it first happened but while all the trainers professor Ball had visiting were taking the tour through his lab, above Sky City a massive battle had been taking place between two prominent figures using dangerous technology. The stock market had been shaken up pretty badly in the aftermath and there were large protests against the development of such dangerous technology by private companies. There were even talks of weaponizing law enforcement to a ridiculous degree. With you laying low, my allies did the same and so we could rob and move along the region without upsetting too much people. Like that small town were professor Ivy came from. The mysterious disappearances of several strong trainers, however, gave rise to new concerns as it was linked with the Sky high incident with the machines and Pokémon. As I had the girls kidnapped from the hospital, the concerns worsened. With the Cacturne attack on Sky City, all attention will be focused on the 'dangerous bio weapons' I reluctantly made all of us. Nicolas won't have a problem obliterating the military, we however..."

"So, what do you want us to do?" Fred asked.


Back then...

Nicolas has just taken over command and he wants me to prove my loyalty to the cause? It's not that I care anymore, as long as I...

Ben the Raichu looked at the yellow wristband he held in front of him with added holographic features. It gave him a direct link with A.A., the Xatu Pokéwoman that had convinced him his place was with the strong. And now he'd been trusted to test this new technology. Nicolas said he had to find new ways to defeat Fred, Lyra and his gang and as A.A. had been standing with him holding his arm, Ben gladly had excepted the device.

As he turned his black-lined ears to see what he heard, the buzzing of fast-moving wings intensified. It came from all around me and it didn't sound like the puny flock of Beedrill he'd defeated without moving from the spot they had attacked him from. He had helped himself to all their food before taking off.

Out of the leaves they came, many Vibrava that seemed to be quite out of place and there was something odd about them. The flying critters changed into their human form. Retroments, Ben thought. Nicolas must've sent them as some kind of test. Ever greater was his surprise when he saw that they all resembled... himself.

"Are you ready, electric rodent?" the strongest Vibrava said.

Angrily at seeing his own face belittle him, he shot a lightning bolt from the tip of his tail, but the Vibrava didn't feel a thing.

"We levitate and are ground type. What exactly were you thinking about doing?" 'he' said to himself again.

This was getting too confusing, he had to end this battle quickly before he started to doubt his own sanity. He would defeat these hybrid rejects and gain full access, complete freedom to think about... In the split of a second the Vibrava had transformed and buzzed past him, first only one, then all of them hovered off the ground and flew towards him.

"We're not waiting for you to move. Show us that the ssssystem works, come on!" the Vibrava hissed together. It was unmistakably insectoid and spoken in the tongue that all Pokémon seemed to understand.

Yet, he could swear he could hear his own voice resonate through and taunt him.

"Are you strong enough? Or will I put you out of your misery and throw you away with the garbage?" Nicolas said as A.A. had bowed down for him after the Pokémen had escaped and Nicolas had taken over control.

In A.A.'s mind as a insanely intelligent Xatu, power meant authority. And Nicolas' control of his ghost power was not be underestimated, even more as his 'girlfriend' didn't possess the poison weakness A.A. could have exploited.

"I am strong enough!" Ben yelled as he flicked the wristband and after the white flash that followed, an immense heat pushed back the Vibrava flock.

Ben couldn't care less about the type disadvantages of this form, a Blaziken, he would blast them with heat untill they burned. That would show that purple ghost rat face.

The Vibrava seemed to change tactics as if they were one mind, foreseeing this newfound determination. And now to whittle it down... True to their name, they vibrated their wings at high speed as Ben started to feel nauseous. The desert, when he lost his way... He remembered how that Vibrava had caught him by surprise and he'd forgot to heal his Pokémon before going on a trip through the desert with her... Back when he was just leisuring across the region, instead of finding a purpose in his life.

Now A.A. yelled in his ear to hold on.

"I will, thank you," Ben said as his fists were set aflame.

"You'll fail," the Vibrava sung. Nicolas was definitely doing something to his Retroments.

Ben would only come to that realisation. Now, he couldn't stand hearing those things. As his face lit up, the Vibrava backed off slowly. Untill it was too late.

"Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" Ben the Blaziken yelled.

From afar, the shockwave couldn't be heard, only smoke could be seen afterwards. The flaming pillar that had shot out from every extremity that the Blaziken Pokémanstrosity possessed. Now, he sat quietly in his Pikachu Pokéman form as he watched the Vibrava flying off, their wings singed perhaps beyond repair. By potions at least.

He just sat there. Looked at the hologram of the next form he was supposed to try out. Was this really what he was supposed to do? He remembered his heroic speeches he gave at the beginning. He remembered Lyra. He remembered Fred, Benny and Nicolas just jaw-dropping when he told them he passed up the chance to catch a Shiny Bagon. Maybe...

 

[Scriptor Scorpio]

Episode 6: Rebuilding everything

"I don't know why everybody's making such a fuss about her and those other Pokémon. I got scared when they attacked, terribly scared of course. But I know that those Pokémon or men or women were good people. Could you tell them that?" the woman said.

With her precious pet Beau the Poochyena not leaving her side and doctors providing her with the best care there was, she had all the emotional and medical support she needed. Nonetheless, her rescuers had planned to stop by and see how she was doing. This proved to be more difficult than any of them had hoped.

"I will," Fred said as he noticed her leg was beginning to heal from the pin missiles that had struck messily through.

There was hope for the woman.

"You'll still have to tell me how you know them, sir," the woman said.

"We'll be able to, someday... See you, Eleanor," Fred said a she darted out the door.

On his way to the boulevard, Fred's face flashed aside from him as he stopped and turn to see. In the window, he saw the face of a twenty-something man he'd taken on in order to gain access to the hospital without his identity as a missing star trainer being revealed. Or as a Pokéman. No that wasn't true. He tried every time before he went to bed in front of the bathroom mirror, but he couldn't bring his face and body to take on his original shape and DNA. Even now, he felt the Ditto genes inside him fighting back to become a Pokéman or even a Pokémon. He was the only one that could go into town under the guise of being a normal citizen. Everyone, even professor Ball, would immediately be arrested in their Pokéman form and studied to death. By his own peers. The military wanted results and dangerous propositions that would help them defeat this abomination threat nature had posed them. If he wanted, he could focus his attention on his own DNA alone and perhaps in a few weeks be able to leave the team and live a normal life, just like that. He shouldn't think that way.

As he walked out the store with the supplies they needed he remained in deep thought as instinctively small eyes formed in the back of his neck to warn him from impending danger. He envisioned it: a truck would hit him but he wouldn't be harmed in the slightest. Best case scenario, it would be deemed a miracle. Worst case scenario, he's left smeared across the windshield of the truck and his blue goo would turn heads. And then make the people's heads turn and scream in utter fear. No... couldn't let that happen, couldn't think that way.


"Today, everything changes," Lyra said to Fred. She was smiling as if to make the sky jealous of only being able to appear clear to the people and instill hope. Lyra seemed to do so much more.

"We're going back, kicking behinds and taking names!" Leaf said.

"That, was my line..." Ruben said.

"First stop is Prof. Ball's old lab, back where it all began," Lyra said.

"Be sure to recover all possible data. I've upgraded miss Bianca's, ehem, Lyra's wristband to allow a direct synch or transfer of everything to me so I can decode and download it without me actually being there. With those Retroments being after me and mister Manning like replicating lasers on genetic samples, I finally feel my agoraphobia is fully justified."

It didn't take long for them to get there. Unbeknownst to even most of the field duty teams, the lab had been relocated not far from its original position, but the secrecy surrounding it worked perfectly nonetheless. As for the old lab... the same didn't go quite the same. Several police officers who looked eerily similar to each other had been stationed outside to keep guard.

"Maybe you gotta try ghost this time?" Ruben said.

Fred hesitated. Nicolas had perfectly predicted Fred would go in alone. He even knew his team was being sent there, how? The professor's data was at stake, he couldn't go all impro on this and hope for the best.

"We gotta take a more tactical approach. Besides that, Lyra has the wristband connected to professor Ball," Fred said as he looked over to her, hoping she would get the hint.

They had talked about what had happened in the mine shaft when his cousins had been fast asleep. He told her about how Nicolas had seethed in the thought of revenge for the countless betrayals Fred and Lyra with him were guilty of. Some were paranoid, others were not. She had stroked his cheek and told him not to worry. Nicolas was history, she said. It had put him at ease, the talk, but also planted more worries about caring for Lyra, making his cousins proud and him... well, could he say about that really.

"We'll claim our rightful place. So what's the plan, boss?" Ruben said.

"I think I have it," Fred said as a mold of an idea began to grow in his head.

"Hypnooooooooooooo," Fred said as he used all of his psychic power he could muster.

Leaf smiled at the determination in his cousin's eyes and as he felt the power of mimic allowing him to copy Fred's move, then struck as well with all the power a Flygon could possess.

"Hey, you feeling drowsy?" an officer said as he held a hand to his head.

"No, why?" the officer said as he turned to see his partner collapse. "Hey, what's happening? Come on, wake up. Are you out cold or something?"

The officer sprang up as he looked round and Fred and Leaf tried harder to confuse him into submission as they also wanted to prevent him from looking up...

It would've been hard to miss a big flying metal saucer going overhead with a Togekiss on board that subsequently crashed through the top window. Lyra winked to Ruben thanking him for the help while she flew on ahead with on her foot the wristband for easy handling. She scanned the room and whizzed across it as soon as she picked something up. They were almost done when...

"What was that ruckus, maybe I should check..." the police officer said as he turned around after signalling in his partner fainting.

"You gotta be kidding me, who is this guy," Fred the Hypno said.

It was now all up to Ruben and Lyra.

"We gotta get out of here now," Lyra commanded.

"Hold on tight," Ruben said as Lyra quickly did so and he started to spin once more, but with his claws stretched out.

"What are you..." Lyra said before they went from 0 to... something ridiculously quick, real fast. Ruben made another hole in the top window on his way out as he gained altitude.

"I believe... In us," Ruben said to the others through his wristband.

As Fred turned to Leaf he said: "Can I hitch a ride?"

"Of course," Leaf said as they followed after Ruben and Lyra, with the hikers resting out at their equipment or burning away lunch, looking up from hearing the Spirit of the Desert, but only some seeing a green flash.

"Next stop, where it all ended," Lyra said as she hooked off of Ruben and flew on her own, magificent white tuffed wings.


"I want you to stop them, understand?" the voice from the wristband said to the commander.

"Understood," the Retroment said.

Soon they would arrive and then...

"It's been a long fight, I'm looking forward to a long and calm search," Ruben said.

As they dived between the clouds, dozens of what seemed to be Skarmory.

"What do we do now?" Leaf asked.

"We have to get that information, don't hold back, hold your head up and dive, dive, dive!" Fred roared over the blasting winds.

Ruben drilled itself into the ground as he stopped spinning and looked up to the tough as nails Skarmory that squawked at him. He answered with a thunderpunch right in its glass jaw of a beak, never mind it was supposedly made of steel. Pity an earthquake wouldn't do squat. Oh well... As Ruben's claw lit up, so did his face as his power surged through all four of his arms. As his whole arm turned to white, he struck out against one Skarmory after the other, as yellow meteor sparks flew off them.

"Better jump of Fred," Leaf said as he flapped his wings with all his might to stop his dramatic drop onto the battlefield.

Now was the time to unleash it, he thought as he spewed a stream of fire from his mouth and he roared. As the flames swirled around him, the grew crimson red and his eyes an even darker crimson color. With almost perfect accuracy, the dragon's flames spread farther and farther away as they lashed out like solar flares and hit the Skarmory. They shielded themselves with their tough armor plating, but nonetheless backed away more and more as the power waves increased their tempo and became more erratic, coming inches close to their unprotected eyes. It didn't do enough, their typing was carefully selected.

Fred knew so and suspected Nicolas would have a power move TMed into the most powerful Skarmory to cancel his transformation's potential out. Or did he expect him to do so? They didn't threw spikes, those wouldn't have much effect. What to do...

"No loitering Fred, come on!" Lyra said.

She had to do something, he wasn't taking action like he'd promised. But what could she... Perhaps it was time to... Fight!

From her fragile avian body, Lyra unleashed a blue ball as if it had appeared from thin air as she kept diving. She seemingly tried to outrun the aura sphere before she broke off and the thing hit a Skarmory. It might not've been taken out, but it was going to have one heck of a headache in the morning.

That shook him up, Lyra thought as she saw Fred caming to his senses, transforming into his next surprise, a Vaporeon that unleashed a tidal wave in all directions.

 

[Scriptor Scorpio]

I'd better say, I'm going on a lengthy vacation so I won't be back for posting untill September. Hope you enjoy the rest of the Summer!

Episode 7: Blinding returns

A Vaporeon, Lyra thought as she soared on off-handedly fired another aura sphere at a Skarmory to its side, dropping onto the battlefield as Ruben continued to give it his all and fist the Skarmory into submission. Steel versus steel.

Leaf felt the fatigue coming on and the confusion set in. He quickly had to eat his Persim Berry as the Skarmory crept closer. He flew up in the air with multiple Skarmory quickly following. As he flew up he sharply made an U in the air and flew right back at his pursuers, having picked up a new move for this second battle today: aura sphere.

He spit out the blue balls like it was snowing powerful strikes out of the air hitting every target flawlessly as one armored bird Pokémon felt as he turned tail. It looked behind him as the blue ball homed in on him and struck it out of the sky. He felt the fighting spirit that the curious move carried and briefly thanked Lyra for the move through his wristband.

The girl landed besides Fred as a familiar looking Vaporeon and readied her stance when the latter said: "Go inside, I got this. Though could you..."

A blue ball whizzed past him and hit two Skarmory that had been diving towards him just a split-second ago.

"I eh, actually meant set some shields up, but okay," Fred said as he held off one lone big bird with a water pulse.

"You can handle that yourself can't you sweetie," Lyra said with a wink as she went inside.

Fred nodded, slightly stunned by her response and changed into a Togekiss.

This feels weird, he thought.

He put both reflects and light screens as Ruben and Leaf arrived to guard the entrance to Kai's old base.

Now for that data, Lyra thought as she ventured in deeper as fast as possible. She looked around and yes, she remembered yet again all the things that gone on when she stood well... Right about… She quietly landed on a seemingly random spot before the destroyed lab... right about here, Nicolas had stuck them with his powers and some new tricks he'd nabbed off of Kai.

And then...

He’d betrayed them, just like that. And now he had a girlfriend to abuse and cherish, so why was he still so mad? She guessed it was the effect she had on people. But was everyone going to betray her? Like Dad, who only wanted her to live with him and his new wife in Hoenn? Or Mom, who dyed her hair and went after some blue-haired asocial type who got sucked into a parallel dimension? And she was partly responsible for her mother’s second loss. Or third if anyone counted Lyra herself but nobody seemed to do so.

Except Fred and… Nicolas. She had read about him after he had ranked high in Johto’s Pokémon League, although he had postponed his Pokémon journey three years. He said to the TV crew he just wanted to prepare extensively for his battles, so a ‘rookie ranking high through luck and extreme talent’ was a bit exaggerated he’d said. What had really been the reason… Was that his best friend who taught him how to catch a Pokémon moved away to another continent and never tried to reach him again. She’d seen the glimmer in his eyes when he said he would travel the whole wide world. He would find her, she was sure of it. Then, she had moved to Sinnoh. What wonderful throws of the dice of fate. She’d accepted she would be alone in her journey. But then he found her, then Fred found her… was she pleased about any of this?

She got what they needed. It was time to go.


“I really wish you would dye your hair or something. You know how allergic people have become to green cloaks and the like after that Cacturne incident?” a man cloaked in dark blue said.

High above the pavement of Sky City, two lone figures, each in a different colored cloak stood gazing at the horizon, pondering about which way to go. The green one had matching hair, it was his favorite color, not dyed at all, which made him special in his home town. At least he believed his mother when she said it. He coughed as he reached for his inhaler, used it then put it back inside the dark space under his cloak.

“Sorry Blue Blur, I was born with it,” the Blue Blur’s companion said as he breathed in. Finally, his condition had improved. Nevertheless, he wasn’t a big fan of the high altitudes. Standing on this medium-sized skyscraper would keep them hidden from the people, but still… He didn’t like heights.

“No matter, we’ll stop at nothing to achieve what we came here to do. We will find them and their kidnappers. Our first lead,” the Blue Blur said as his spiky brown hair peaked from under his hood. “Is her ex, Kai Manning.”


“We got what we came for. Now we can finally head back to the lab. And stop following me like a Poochyena!” Crystal snapped.

Her loyal puppy scurried backwards as he, Benny the usually stoic pointdexter, sighed and used his wristband to turn into his Honchkrow form. Melody walked up to Crystal as Benny scoured the area.

“You shouldn’t be so hard on him, you know,” Melody said.

“Not if I want to keep his hands off me and his eyes in his pocket,” Crystal responded.

“What’s wrong with some attention? It’s to have a boy to lean on,” Melody said as she flustered.

“I see it now. You’ve already traded in your innocence for five seconds of happiness. Don’t waste my time with your fleeting romance,” Crystal snapped as she tried to spray herself with water from her Starmie arms. To no avail.

She was carrying on a losing battle and she knew it. She wouldn’t go out without a fight, that was for sure.

Melody sighed, not even offended by Crystal’s harsh views on life as she had come to consider them normal for the Professor’s daughter especially. She wasn’t quite convinced by Crystal’s views though and she would keep on fighting for the man she‘d taken quite the liking to.

“The entrance to the lab is up ahead! Just a few more hours,” Benny squawked from his aerial scouting patrol.

“Next time, I want to be a bird, with working wings. That Dodrio form was my father’s doing,” Crystal said.

Melody couldn’t apply the thought to herself, as she had been turned into Eevee by one of Kai’s first well-aimed experiments, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that the general behavior of the Pokémon the others had been turned into, had something to do with their personalities. A Dodrio for Crystal and a Hoothoot for Benny. Perhaps the transformations weren’t overlapping with their character outlines at all, but made them slowly turn into their transformation’s thoughts, feelings, instinct, characterisations. One could only guess which doom a Lugia, Kyogre, Latias or a Hydreigon would spell.

They continued onwards as they wanted to reach the lab and sneak in unseen by civilians and enemies by nightfall.


"We're slowly starting to get information from the heavily encrypted material the girl found after the first incident," Prof. Ball said to Kai. "Every day, I could use my PorygonZ abilities to decrypt it a little bit after my work on the Pokémanizing problem. This could very well give us clues to the organisation, if I'm reading this right. Only problem is, where did it come from?"

"I didn't bring it and it seems to handle another man's research besides mine. It's got to do with Pokémon and organic tissue alright," Kai said.

"Then maybe an introduction is in order for this new mission," Prof. Ball said.

 

[Scriptor Scorpio]

After a long break, I'm carefully continuing this season.

Let me know what you think. I'm working on getting my motivation back up. Other stuff. Enjoy!

Episode 8: Rebuild of Team Alpha

This form was a very strange one, Ben thought. He felt his rock head weighing on top of four dark purple arms with vicious claws at the end. Red spikes seemed to sprout from everywhere on his body: chest, head, shoulder blades… He still had to adjust to the yellow gaze of this ‘Gigalith’ and its intensified hearing. And in his center, he felt a powerful energy surging, waiting to get out.

Without realizing, he’d been standing in the sun for quite a while so suddenly… the power inside of him got out. The solar beam painted the sky gold as it shot out of his center and obliterated everything in its path. Fortunately, only some leaves were in the way. This time at least.

“The master wants you to cause destruction in the town of Lovend,” A.A. said with her loving, soothing voice.

Ben nodded to her as if she was standing right in front of him and flicked the switch on his wristband to change into his fastest and original form, a Raichu. Then, he sped off. The latest form he’d unwillingly tested, would come in quite handy for the destruction Draken wanted.

It didn’t take long for the news to reach Prof. Ball and the others. Though understandably, they couldn’t do anything as they’d just recently went into hiding after the power of Nicolas’ Legendayr Pokéwomen washed away all their troops and spread them thin. Rescue parties were still searching for Team Beta and Gamma, but they’d lost contact with those parties as well.

“I have to go there! They’re wrecking Lovend, my hometown. For years I’ve been living with the people there. They don’t deserve another attack from the Retroments,” Prof. Ivy, a girl near to celebrating her 18th birthday in a damp basement hideout, said as she struggled to break loose from Benny and Fred’s grip. Her Pelipper Pokémanisation had endowed her with great strength, stamina and water moves, but in her Pokéwoman form they were useless as her hollow avian bones would snap if she tried to break free. But she could still try.

“It’s too dangerous, Evelyne. We’ve lost contact with many teams, their rescue parties… we can’t even be sure if they’re alive, if Jamie…” Prof. Ball said.

“Don’t you dare say that, he’s alive, they’re all alive and I need to get there and stop those Retroments!” Prof. Ivy said as she calmed down, her brown hair covering her face as she gave in and Benny and Crystal escorted her back to her room.

“How much damage are we talking about?” Prof. Ball said.

Kai Manning was still working on installing everything into the tiny spot he’d been given to work on the Pokémanisation process, but as he was able to check his computer he was able to say: “Mostly property damage, but the attackers remain unseen. Should I send more of your Magnemite?”

Prof. Ball’s Magnemite had been trained to do the job of the wristbands for a short while before he’d replaced them with the latter. They still made great seeker drones that were satisfied with their daily zap of energy. Kai sometimes pondered if the Magnemite had been Prof. Ball’s only friends.

“No no, it’s too dangerous… But what could wreck all this havoc, yet escape the eyes of Magnemite? Looking at the types and their patterns, based on exclusivity of certain moves, it should be a whole squad…” Prof. Ball said more to himself than to Kai and the others.

“I’m afraid… I have an idea,” Kai said.

Present day, the hideout…

“In the surprise visit of Team Beta, they managed to destroy much of my DNA database. It could be called a miracle I was able to salvage the code for Kyogre and Lugia,” Kai said.

“Or a curse,” Fred said.

“Yes… If we can restore the damaged data that you brought me, we can recreate the Pokémanizing process I have been working on as well as its opposite that Prof. Ball had been trying to create. Two halves can make one process. A cure… Which is every bit as dangerous as the Pokémanizing process, as it can take away power.”

“So what are you waiting for, start it up!” Leaf said.

Ruben patted him on the shoulder, but his brother was still anxious, like all the people in the room.

“It will take time, but your work has greatly accelerated our efforts. But while we work, you must go after something entirely new… another project possibly issued by BIO alongside mine. If it involves Pokémon and genetics, it can’t be good… Ah and there is some extra help arriving,” Kai said as he turned to the door from which stumbling sounds could be heard coming through.

The door opened and Benny, Crystal and Melody stepped through. Benny, however stoic approached Fred, Ruben and Leaf and knuckle punched while smiling widely. On his half-brother and cousins’ urging, he started recounting all his adventures while he had been away, with Fred and co. weaving their stories through it. Crystal lighted up as she saw her father and went over to give him a hug, which the stern professor accepted with a little smile. Fred turned to Melody as Lyra had done so the instant she had walked through the door and Fred knew this spelled serious trouble. What could he do now, he…

“With the data Crystal provided me with, we can continue our research on a counter for Draken’s power. But first, your mission,” Prof. Ball said, having no idea what troubles he just postponed. Or maybe he did… “We are sending you to the last known location of the project. It’s an old tracing and the memory cells we got it from could have been placed here as a trap, but if it’s true what it says as we decode it, Draken might not matter at all.”

Kai prepared several packages he gave the team members to carry, as he already began working on the info both halves of Team Alpha had gathered.

“Your guide in this mission shall be another Pokéwoman…” Prof. Ball said. “She has a knowledge of the workings of the memory cells, it itself being an advanced technology to my knowing. Introductions will have to follow later as you must know be heading for the exit. Time is of the essence.”

“Please step into the launching tubes. Mika,” Kai said as he spoke through his own wristband, “prepare for re-Pokémanising from your Empoleon form.”

“Understood,” Mika said.

The others had boarded the tubes before she stepped into the chamber. The sequence was already underway and she had to hurry. She got handed what Fred believed to be the memory cells, holding them in her hands with amazement and almost nostalgia… Could she be trusted? Fred thought. Her blue robes, as if they befitted royals and emperor penguins alike, flowed as she went into the tube in between Ruben and Leaf’s before the countdown came to an end.

They launched.

The coordinates showed that they were headed for a mountain, mined in another age but abandoned like all the others as perhaps resources ran dry. And yet, Fred knew they’d found evolutionary stones in another mountain range… Perhaps the risk of getting there had been too great?

The landing was harder than expected. Even with their bodies enhanced by a freak accident giving them the resilience of Pokémon, it still hurt like hell. Ruben was one of the first to get out of his launch pod, as his whole body was covered with blue steel being a Metagross. He looked up to see two dark blue heads with purple fins throwing a crooked smile at him as they laughed with razor-sharp teeth. Startled, he staggered backwards as the others came to his side as they’d sort of recovered from the fall as well. What… was that thing?

To be continued…

 

[Scriptor Scorpio]

So many things coming together... I'm trying to run it all smoothly. Enjoy

Episode 9: The turning point

The heads gnarled as they were suddenly pulled back by their owner: Mika, now a strange blue dragon Pokémon in human form. That is a Pokéwoman form.

“You guys afraid of a Hydreigon? It is the terror of Unova, but don’t worry, I won’t bite,” Mika said as she studied her new form.

The short blue dress was lined with purple tread marks at her sides going up as if she’d been in a car accident… Maybe that’s why she couldn’t remember anything…

Her legs and feet were covered in blue ‘stockings’ with a blue and purple, black-tipped tail hanging from her back. The three parts seemed to keep her almost afloat as she tiptoed up the mountain. A midnight black capuchin lay draped on her shoulders and around her chest, with her arms in the sleeves extending from it and ending into the still very frightening dragon heads that had seemed to lick their teeth when they smiled at Ruben.

From her back sprouted six unearthly wings with two-tipped ends that pointed inwards, always looking threateningly.

“You got… purple feathers in your hair, like a crown,” Leaf said.

“Fuchsia,” Benny corrected.

Mika stroke the feathered crown back in her green hair, after which they started curling back. Under her blue hat that was in reality part of her forehead, shone her light blue eyes at all these new people. At least she wasn’t supposed to know before her lapse in memory.

“So, you’re Mika,” Fred said. “Care to tell us what you know?”

“Nothing,” Mika said. Her stern face didn’t betray any thought or emotion and that troubled Fred.

“Why were you assigned to this mission then?” Crystal said.

“I woke up in the lab, transformed and without any recollection of what had happened before. I was put in Team Delta until a few months ago I exhibited the ability to understand the memory cells. I’m as Prof. Ball put it, our only hope to locating this other BIO experiment. Shall we continue?”

“I guess we will,” Fred said as he looked aside to Melody and Lyra.


“Why are we here again? Those cops might find out we’re here any second now,” the Green Blur whispered.

“We’re here since this is the last place Kai Manning was seen, apart from when he came to get the girls in the hospital. It’s an old trail, but it’s the only one we’ve got. And stop making me monologueing out loud, they’ll hear us for sure with your yapping,” the Blue Blur answered as he whirled his cape around him and studied the damaged mainframes against the wall. “What is this… someone’s been forcefully downloading the information on this by using some sort of by-pass… Someone’s beating us to the punch.”

“Someone… with Pokémon,” the Green Blur said. “These trails…”

Just then, he heard someone scuffling from the entrance and the two of them decided to bolt out of the roof window before they were discovered.

Back then…

“They’ve discovered the subject. It’s as I feared… but who do we send with…” Kai said as he peered over his shoulder.

Prof. Ball checked that nobody was eavesdropping and said: “We have to handle this discreetly. Mister Draken’s experiment must fail. We need a cold solution and the destruction of this ominous device.”

“Your stepdaughter, perhaps? If you won’t let her go, she will find a way out,” Kai said.

“I won’t risk it. With her mother… Here, I’ll show you something I’ve never showed anyone, especially Crystal,” Prof. Ball said.

Before Kai on his laptop a file appeared coming from the prof’s own secure files. A map called ‘psychological profiles’ was opened and through Prof. Ball it told a story. Of a professor that had met a moderately famous movie star called Felicia Ivy, with long flowing purple hair, who’d recently recovered from a long relationship. Of course the paparazzi jumped on the chance to snap the two together, mainly due to the busty and in every way very attractive woman choosing a dark blue haired brainy guy for once. And Prof. Ball was considered a big expert on Pokémon, becoming the basis for the omniscient Professor Oak from the anime. Everyone thought it wouldn’t last. From the previous relationship Felicia had kept custody of her baby, Evelyne. The professor and Felicia would have the blue-haired Crystal, who inherited the brains of Professor Ball and some looks from her mother. Evelyne felt insecure when compared to her little sister and when she became a professor at a young age, fanboys of the Professor Ivy character based on her divinely beautiful mother came running and she ran to Lovend to conduct her own research in quiet, without any parallels being drawn. She must’ve grown to love Lovend as she loved the anonymity. And her feelings of justified lowliness. Prof. Ball loved her like his own daughter… and now with a boy from Team Beta she liked having disappeared, she’s started to crack. She wants to have a purpose, an important one. Hence why she so eagerly helped on the Pokémanizing solution. But it wasn’t enough, not anymore.

“We need to assign someone right away. Fred Kitchmeh is in training, the others are away, the younger cousins aren’t up to it… My psychological profiles say this would be a poor choice… But like democracy, it’s the best possible one.”

They’d arrived at the entrance to the mountain. It had been open, possibly all this time, but nobody had noticed it because nobody came as high up as they were now. Without warning, it shut itself and whatever the Pokémen team did, they couldn’t budge it open.

“What do we do now?” Ruben asked.

“Try the memory cells,” Benny said.

“Finally you use that slightly useful part of you,” Crystal said.

Mika stepped forward and took out the memory cells, but before she could present them, a voice spoke and a scanner flashed. As the scanner continued its work, the voice said: “Designation CHA-05, welcome.”

The door opened and almost everyone stepped through. Ruben however held Fred back and said: “You heard that just now? I toy around with replacing letters with numbers and you know which name that designation just tipped me off to? Chaos.”

“I’d say you’re crazy, but here we are half man, half Pokémon with memory cells and an amnesiac girl that understands them,” Fred said. “Keep an eye out for that girl.”

“Oh, I will,” Ruben said.

He had that weird look on his face. Fred didn’t quite know what Ruben was thinking, but he could now be sure Ruben wouldn’t fail his ‘mission’, so to speak.

And so they headed inside the hard rock of the mountain. In it a long hallway was hewn out. Maybe it was blasted out, as the rock was known for its strength. Several species of plants had started to grow on the walls of the immensely vast complex. It could take ages to sweep it all, but one large room close to the edge of the mountain piqued Mika or ‘CHA-05’ her interest as she approached it and saw the wreckage of all kinds of strange pods with robotic arms inside.

“Green, Timateus, start the examination, put up the multi-compatibility plug-ins. We need to know what this project is about, even though this is an old trail to track,” Crystal said as she commanded Lyra and Benny… and whoever else she could find to order around.

Mika stood staring at one particular pod to the far left as she tried to remember something, anything.

“Mika, you alright?” Fred said.

Sure._

“Mika?” Fred said.

I said sure._

“Mika, what do you think you’re doing?” Fred said and manually turned her jaw to face him.

Why are you… Why am I not hearing my own voice… And what is this other voice in my…_

“Are you even awake?” Fred said as he noticed the unnatural glaze in Mika’s eyes.

“Fred, the data says,” Melody said as she intercepted Kai’s words before Lyra could pass them on, “that this was a cybernetic experiment, involving biological manipulation and technological replacements for Pokémon… and humans.”

I can’t speak, I can’t… he wants revenge, he’s coming for me… Get out of my heaaaaad!_

 

[Scriptor Scorpio]

Episode 10: AI’s and robots are always evil… but I’m not a robot

“The experiment has failed, we lost the test subjects, Wright has been arrested and it took all our immediate resources to cut the trail of his failures that would’ve led the authorities to us. What more do you want, Miss Satellite? A recommendation as Wright’s lowly assistant. We have no use for you after Miss Evans made a run for it. Who we will find very soon, so don’t get any ideas of 75th percentile IQ calculated escape plans.”

That hit Miss Satellite right between her emotional heart and lungs. After she’d briefly gasped for air and had regained her composure, she said: “The project isn’t exactly lost. CYBER isn’t lost. With the help of DIESEL’s resources, we can regain every cyborg… and prove our superiority to the BIO division’s attempts, which have failed as well, haven’t they?”

The men and women behind DIESEL, BIO and CYBER got intrigued. “We’ll allow you one more chance. BIO’s next phase will go on as scheduled. Work quickly.”


“So you’re a cyborg. The memory cells we found… they’re yours. Kai had studied the Pokémanizing process so when it changed his girls, the transformation would work extremely quickly and so weed out the defective human cells, diseases, anything that caused them to slowly weaken. He didn’t have time to find a cure for the mysterious disease, or maybe there were even two, one deadly ailment for each one. Then, he got funded. And with you somehow present at the site of the first Pokémanizing accident, you got transformed as well. Your enhancements and your memory got expelled like the ailments Kai had been trying to eradicate. But why were you there? Who are you? Answer me!” Fred said.

Benny, Ruben, Leaf, Lyra… They’d never seen Fred like this, talking like his tongue was the edge of a knife, cutting to the bleeding heart of the matter. And all Mika did was stand there, motionless. They thought she tried to remember, but something was telling her things to do. Things she didn’t want to do. To anybody. Why was this voice, this VOICE still TALKING! Dzaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

As Mika crumbled to the floor, Fred reformed his hand still twitching with electric arcs and gestured for Benny to give him a hand. As Fred’s half-brother approached, Benny asked: “What are you doing?”

“Something is reactivating her, maybe the purge wasn’t perfect. Whatever it is, we gotta get out of here with the data before the same thing that made and activated her finds us. Move,” Fred said as Benny helped him carry Mika to the exit with their wings speeding them up.


Once I’ve destroyed this place, I’ll be able to do something about my faith, I’ll get A.A. to come with…

Ben was startled as a yellow shape flew by him with the sound of thundercrackles. He turned around in the form of a Machamp and scanned the horizon for the mirage. What the heck was… He dodge the thing’s attack again and flicked his wristband, rapidly changing into a Raichu to keep up with the speed of the yellow flash. He leaped and struck with a thunderpunch, knocking the yellow thing off course. It was a Jolteon and it snarled at him.

Another one of Nicolas’ lackeys? Ben sure started to pity those beauty pageant girls, lured in by Kai then turned into his Eevee girls, elite lackeys. He suspected he also chose them because his eye saw some things he liked as well. No matter. If this was another test, he’d pass with ease. The female, as Ben noticed by its stance, snarled once more, then shot off pin needles. It didn’t do him much, but it did annoy Ben. Why wasn’t it using more effective tactiques? He’d hardly noticed her approaching before she whisked by him.

Either way, it was time to finish this. With one flick of his wristband and a white light showered him to reveal another form he’d tested successfully, a Gigalith. The purple rock had started to grow on him, literally. Carefully he aimed with the spikes on his front right leg as rocks started to detach from it. Game over, Jolteon girl.

Out of nowhere, the yellow dog shone with a strange white light as Ben lowered his arm, stunned. What the… Out of the brightness a Lucario appeared with a small blue ball charging up in its palm, slamming it into Ben as soon as she got within an inch of Ben’s face. With a somersault it changed again, this time into a Vespiquen. There was no mistaking it now: that girl had the same omnipotent wristband Ben had. But why? Before he could maul over the possibilities, one of which being Nicolas being plain malicious, he dodged a power gem that wouldn’t have been that effective even if it hit. A bug and flying type against the rock blast he was about to shoot… Wait a minute.

That gesture she was making at him, was she taunting him? The only thing that reliably flew on his radial was Venomoth. Had to go with that then. Jumping into the air, he changed into the bug and began chasing the girl around. As she unleashed several hordes of small Combee into varied patterns of attack on him as they dived and pitched like warplanes in a dog fight, the Vespiquen girl kept taunting Ben with her insectoid face as she rolled over and sped up again. Another bright light in his face, great, Ben taught as he fluttered in mid-air to come to a halt. He kept an eye on the white as it disappeared and the girl changed into a red-headed creature. He picked up the pursuit and rounded the corner before bumping into a glass wall at half-full speed. A strike from a psybeam made quick work of the wall as he dived between the shards. It seemed like it wasn’t glass, but reflects and light screens… He reared his Venomoth head and saw the outlines of a Ledian buzzing a few meters in front of him. It couldn’t be. But he had to say it.

“Lyra?” he said.

As he said it, he changed into a Dusknoir and levitated above the ground, looking up with his lone red eye as the Ledian changed as well, this time into a Wormadam. Then, she reverted into her Pokéwoman form: a purple ruffled dress that fitted the trash cloak of the city. It didn’t look like trash though. It was Lyra. Ben would recognize anything about her anywhere, in any Pokéwoman form.

“I knew it was you, the instant I pieced together who could possibly be trashing Lovend. With the professor and Kai tiptoeing around the issue, it had to be you. And now I’m going to stop you,” Lyra said.

She can’t do that, A.A. said. You can’t listen to her.

“I can’t let you do that,” Ben said as he charged his Dusknoir hands with ghostly energy.

In an instant Lyra changed into a Blastoise gaining considerable mass and shot a powerful hydro pump at nearly point blank rage. As the shadow ball hit the jets of water, they evaporated instantly, obscuring both former friends’ view of each other.

Before it could clear and the ruins of Lovend were treated by a sudden gust of rain, Ben had disappeared. That’s why he’d chosen Dusknoir. He couldn’t face her.

B*st*rd.

“You sent her? They briefed me on those two and their closeness back in Hoenn. Why didn’t you send me? Did she catch him?” Professor Evelyne Ivy said. She was in tears, no matter which answers her stepfather Kristof Ball would give. He felt far less than a professor. Just, a father who’d failed to protect his daughter from sadness and pain. “… Is there anything left of Lovend?”

“I…”Kristof Ball said, but he was at a loss for words.

“Screw it, I’m gonna go see for myself and find Jamie. Screw you, to heck with all of you,” Evelyne said as she switched on the wristband she’d nicked from Ball’s not so fail-safe safe and spat out a smashing hydro pump as a Pelipper before flying out. And disappearing.


Now in the present, back in the lab…

“Evelyne… where have you gone… Was it a mistake to let Crystal go out and help Team Homebase? I don’t know anymore,” Prof. Ball said.

He felt the data coursing through his digital arms that he’d been stirring through the computer all day. He hadn’t come closer an inch. He felt the erratic nature of the PorygonZ ‘upgrade’ slowly taking over. Or was he just starting to doubt his own, analytical decisions?


“We’re here. The clue has brought us here. Hold on, I’ll be there soon,” the Blue Blur said as he stared at the picture on his PokéNav.

 

[Scriptor Scorpio]

When powerful trainers meet...

Episode 11: There’s always someone better

“Do you think she’s alright?” Ruben asked.

“I’ve got a feeling this… girl can survive anything,” Fred said as he was done scanning her with his wristband. “What have you got professor?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t found anything. I’ll process the data and see what I find,” Prof. Ball said.

Fred nodded and switched off the communications channel. He looked back at the others, unsure of what to do now. Lyra had taken her gaze off of him for the first time in a long while. He knew she was watching even when he wasn’t looking. Now however, she seemed to be in deep thought about something.

After losing Ben in Lovend yet again, Lyra had returned to the hideout to find Evelyne Ivy missing and Benny, Crystal and Melody having gone on a mission to gather DNA samples or something. Fred, Ruben and Leaf were stuck at base. They had been named Team Homebase and were stuck defending a hideout which, if it was ever found, was doomed anyway. They’d been replaced by Team Spearhead, who had risen in the ranks of the Pokémen. They’d stopped Kai from Pokénapping the entire region’s Ditto population or something. And they had failed to stop two of their own team mates from betraying them, one slowing them down in the tunnels, the other one replacing the head of the Retroments, Kai. It didn’t matter that Lyra didn’t trust the red-headed, seemingly amoral genius, Prof. Ball needed his help in the process Kai had created. Lyra didn’t trust anyone anyway anymore these days. She didn’t believe in anything anyhow she looked at it. Those any words had ringed in her ears for weeks on end. And yet, with Melody sent away and her green multi-form wristband locked away for further study, she’d grown closer to Fred. He seemed to be her only hope. And then she came back.

Lyra looked up at what she’d remembered from the recent past, specifically the things that had troubled her. She’d always teased Nicolas and he’d gone over the edge. And now she was maybe toying with Fred to satisfy some bizarre need. She curled her hair between her fingers and remembered all the colors it had gone through.

“What’s that?” Leaf asked as he heard the trees rustle.

There wasn’t any wind. Fred briefly regained his temporary leadership and heart of the group mindset, which he’d been applying to himself for months at an end now and said: “Okay everyone, you know the drill, they know what we are, so might as well change into Pokémon so we can fight back. If I give the signal we run and try to lose them and possibly each other.”

At his signal, Lyra switched the settings on her wristband to turn them all back into Pokémon, including Mika. In the beginning, she’d worn the only wristband to switch the original Pokémen of Team Alpha back and forth. How things had changed.

“Don’t attack unless provoked,” Fred said as he took the form of a Jolteon.

Two shadows jumped and appeared in front of the pack of Pokémon. The two humans, hidden under a blue and green cloak respectively, immediately pulled out four Pokéballs each and threw them up in the air. Out came a Blastoise that caused a tremor as he hit the open space between the trees. With a speed you won’t expect from such a large turtle Pokémon, streams of water leaked from every crevice in his armored shell and exploded in a foaming wave towering above the Pokémen and smashing into them a second later. As they scattered to escape the brunt of the Blastoise’s attacks, the Pokémen got cornered by some of the other Pokémon. An Arcanine roared majestically right before it blasted Ruben as a Metagross with a Flamethrower as the latter spun out of control in an effort to evade the flames. Leaf found himself mirrored as another Flygon, owned by the human dressed in green, flew at him and Leaf just barely avoided a vicious dragon claw. They went up in the air as a very different kind of air dogfight developed, with Benny cutting through the rocks fired at him with a steel wing while in mid-air as he tried to match the Rhyperior’s power.

“Melody!” Fred yelled as an Arcanine attacked her fragile Froslass form.

She blasted the dog’s snout with ice as Fred called to Ruben to team up on the Arcanine, before his cousin found a new opponent, a Tyranitar that quickly joined the Arcanine’s attack.

A Roserade had ingrained itself into the ground, setting up slowly before ensnaring Crystal as a Starmie and draining her health, without her having any way to move.

“Crystal!” Benny said as he tried speeding towards her.

As more and more of the rocks hit Benny, Lyra traded blows with the Gardevoir as psychic energy started to build up between the both of them. The human in green silently nodded with the Gardevoir, hinting a psychic link as it seemingly acted even before the human gestured as much.

“Looks like it’s between you and me big boy,” Fred said.

In his Jolteon form, only the Pokémon understood him so the human in blue shrugged with the Jolteon growling at him and said: “Let’s finish this with the leader, Blastoise. Just like old times.”

It couldn’t, Fred thought. As his spikes tightened, he kept telling himself it couldn’t be. He knew what to do now.
He kicked next to him, seemingly in thin air before a green reptile with a red stripe across his belly became visible, startled by the sudden attack and its scales rippling to adapt to the type of the attack, but failing. The Kecleon was still normal type.

Your watchdog right? Shame I knocked Mika out and we have to defend her now, 7 to 8, but that doesn’t matter, Fred thought. I’m not going to lose.

In an instant, Fred stood upright and increased his mass with his cells rapidly self-replicating and using a food or energy source unbeknownst even to him, as he formed leaves, multiple heads, odd brown legs and a palm tree like body.

“An Exeggutor,” the blue cloaked figure said and seemed amused at the sight of the Ditto Pokéman changing its strategy so suddenly.

Everyone, Fred thought and the others received. I can’t talk long, I’m not used to this psychic connection thing. Melody and Ruben, trick the Arcanine and the… looking with six eyes here… Tyranitar into following Melody, than she fades through the floor with Ruben trapping them in an earthquake without them ever seeing it coming. But Melody, be careful. Benny, you pick up Crystal so she won’t get hit and she wrecks the Rhyperior with her strongest water attack. Leaf, get the Flygon to follow you and cut off the Roserade. Hit it with your own Dragon Claw to be sure. Lyra, back up to me and unleash that psychic energy on this Blastoise. I’ll trap him and the Kecleon with…

“Grass Knot!” Fred yawnedly yelled in his new form.

Like domino blocks in some weird, three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle one motion resulted into another and every pawn shifted into place as the tables turned in the Pokémen’s favor. Fred withstood the earthquake by timing a clumsy jump perfectly, dodged the Kecleon’s shadow claw as a stream of water flew behind him into the Rhyperior. Leaf yelled: “You didn’t make the cut,” as he took the fight with the other Flygon up in the air again. The blast of psychic energy took Fred a bit by surprise as Lyra brought it a bit more sooner than he’d anticipated, before she flew in front of him throwing up her reflect and light screen barrier to protect him. The Blastoise didn’t know what hit him while he was busy hitting himself, confused beyond recognition.

“Now a dark move on the Kecleon turned Psychic!” Fred said to Benny as his half-brother dived in and struck the greenish reptile.

The figure in blue smiled as he said: “Everyone, retreat.”

“But why?” the figure in Green said.

Hold on a second, Lyra thought.

“This people the clue led us to, they’re not dangerous. You had a clear shot at me, yet you didn’t try to kill me. Why is that?” the figure in blue said.

Fred gestured for Lyra to turn them all back. In his Exeggutor human form, he said: “Because I wanted to defeat you.”

“Fred…” the figure said. “Your mother’s worried sick about you.”

“I ran into a little problem,” Fred said.

 

[Scriptor Scorpio]

Episode 12: Rocket delay

“Fred, what the heck is going on?” Lyra wanted to know.

The person in green pulled up an eyebrow as he understood the female Togekiss through his Gardevoir and their psychic connection.

“Turn us all back. Now,” Fred said as the two figures that had just attacked them recalled their Pokémon. The fight wasn’t over yet. What was Fred doing?

Nevertheless, Lyra complied and flicked her wristband transforming all of them back into Pokémen and Pokéwomen.

“Now if you would kindly remove your cloaks so the others catch on what’s going on,” Fred said and gestured.

Both of the ‘Blurs’, as they’d called each other to conceil their identities, revealed themselves as two spiky-haired boys, one close to Ruben, Mika and Leaf’s age and one close to Fred and the others’ age. Before any of them could say something, two peculiar girls said what they wanted to say for them.

“Wally? Wally Mitsuru? The small Hoenn boy with asthma that needed me to catch a Ralts? Is that really you?” Lyra said.

“Yes, it’s me,” Wally said shyly, though not as much as he used to.

“Well, you sure have grown,” Lyra said quite pleased.

“And you’re Marino Oak, aren’t you?” Melody said.

“Yes I am,” Marino, the one in the blue cloak said as he frowned. He didn’t quite remember this girl.

“Anyone else looking familiar?” Fred said and snided it a bit it seemed. More surprises to brighten his day. Terrific.

“Say Fred, who are these people?” Ruben said.

“Clue, or Marino as most people call him, is my old rival. He’s quite the big hero, actually,” Fred said as if it tasted like acid in his mouth.

There’s always someone better, Fred had said to his cousins once when they kept going on about how skilled of a trainer he was and how easily he beat them, yet instructed them how to do better at the same time. Was this that guy? His rival?

“I wouldn’t say hero…” Marino said.

“Most people at home do, including my mother,” Fred said. “He defeated Team Rocket six years ago when he was ten years old. I only helped a small part. He defeated me in the Pokémon League quarter finals and lost in the semifinals to some Pokémon training whiz kid. The Elite Four kept the whole thing under wraps to keep remnants of Team Rocket from retaliating. But the Gym Leaders knew. He had quite a slew of girlfriends. Last time I saw him, he was talking to Misty at the Cape…”

“I changed, Fred. And you did too I see, besides the obvious. You really had me there for a moment. Me and Wally here too and he did much more than any silent kid with a chronic illness ever did before. He,” Marino said as he held onto Wally and turned the both of them to Lyra, “defeated the new Team Rocket a year ago, something I couldn’t have pulled off. He’s a real hero. I was a jerk to you, wasn’t I?”

Fred didn’t say it, but he didn’t feel like addressing Marino anymore directly. Instead he turned to Wally. “You, green-haired boy? What are you doing here anyway? It’s pretty clear now you’re not hunting us for the Cacturne attack, so why did you come looking for us?”

“My girlfriend is missing. And my sister. From what I’ve gathered, Kai is involved in these Pokémen, isn’t he? He shouldn’t have kidnapped them, even if they were so ill…” Marino began breathing heavily. “Professor Ball’s lab gave us a clue about how to find Kai, through the Pokémen. We went there because he went missing around the same time a lot of trainers went missing in this region and he was conspicuously an expert on Pokémon genetics.”

He seemed to have regained his composure with that rattling of information. Sounds like him.

“Still following your trails, aren’t you Clue?” Fred said. “Our resident kid detective has grown up… and found us within days. Hold on a second, Daisy’s missing?”

“… Yes, I’m afraid so. I figure Kai’s still got her huh. And he thinks this hybridizing of human and Pokémon DNA will save her and his sister, Giselle Seiyo who’s also my girlfriend. I can’t let him go on like this. I knew that redhead was trouble the moment my sister introduced him,” Marino said. “And then I met his younger sister…”

“We have a lot of explaining to do,” Benny said.

“There’s more, isn’t there?” Marino said as he turned to Melody. “I’m sorry, I really can’t recall where you might’ve met me. Are you a trainer I battled in the tournament?”

“No, I…” Melody said before she turned to hear a sort of moaning.

The Pokémen rushed to who had awaken after having slept through the entire battle just a few minutes ago. The shock Fred had given her made sure of that. Mika opened her eyes and saw everyone gathered around her.

“Why is everyone looking at me?” she asked.

“We have a whole lot of explaining to do,” Leaf echoed Benny’s remark.

Fred looked around at the tree line and the bushes, trying to spot spies sent by Nicolas. He must’ve found them by now. They had to move quickly. Lyra switched everyone back into their Pokémon forms on Fred’s command and the latter took the lead while thinking about a Pokémon that could find those spies as quickly as possible for the others to take out.

Of course, why didn’t he think of that sooner? While still in flight as a Kricketune, Fred transformed into a Lucario and began experiencing the species innate talent to detect aura and by extension, other Pokémon and people.

He knew it, a few Drifblims. He gestured for Lyra to come closer and whispered something in her ear. Melody followed close behind in her Froslass form and looked on as she saw the two of them so close. But there was something else on her mind. The reason she knew Marino’s name after all these years… He didn’t recognize her. That probably meant she had changed a lot from when they met.

She looked once more at Fred and Lyra. Maybe she hadn’t.

‘Establishing psychic link. Fred, go ahead,’ it sounded in everybody’s head.

‘Wow, weird,’ Ruben thought.

‘Echoooooo,’ Leaf thought.

‘Okay enough chit-chat, Sudowoodo at five o’ clock, Hitmontop at three, Ledian at eleven, Noctowl at four. Don’t let Draken get to you guys. Beat those spies and we can go back to the hideout,’ Fred thought-ordered.

The Pokémen scattered as each of them went the way they were ordered too and almost immediately found their targets. Marino meanwhile had made his own preparations as he’d laid Mika on his Arcanine and Wally supported her as they rushed after Fred in front. The girl that dressed like a Hydreigon, as Wally had noted before they had appeared in front of the Pokémen, or rather, it was part of her body. She looked a bit like his sister, Marino had thought, if he had had a younger sister.

A fireball flying past him snapped him out of his thoughts and focused his attention on a strange rock formation in front of them.

“An intricate maze,” Marino said as they followed Fred, Lyra and the others in. Pools and certain flower species to absorb any scent trail they leave behind, pit traps to capture anyone trying to follow them, electric fences… Even he couldn’t have gone through this maze alive. He would have no reason to if not for Fred’s information. Something in the far left of his gut told him his sister and girlfriend weren’t here. But someone else was. They arrived.

 

[Scriptor Scorpio]

Episode 13: Evening the odds

“What do they call themselves?! The Blue and the Green Blur? And you know them personally? Somehow, I don’t find that very reassuring mister Kitchmeh,” Prof. Ball said as he paced around the room.

Saying he was a bit surprised when the former Team Alpha brought in two human teenagers riding powerful Pokémon, was quite an understatement. While the Professor was working himself up over the matter and trying to think of a solution, Fred called for ‘the other professor’. Confused Marino looked on as he heard a sound of someone stumbling coming from a corridor. Meanwhile Fred gestured for Ruben and Leaf to help him with something.

It took Marino two seconds to realize what was going on as he saw Kai Manning rounding the corner, then he flew towards him acting on instinct as he clenched his hand into a fist. It took all Fred, Leaf and Rubens Pokéman strength to hold him back as Marino glared at Kai, who’d gotten quite the scare as well.

“Why did you take him here?” was Kai’s first response.

Afterwards, he never inquired about how Marino had found them. Because it was Marino.

Marino wasn’t about to give in to the three Pokémen and inched his way towards Kai in his labcoat.

“Marino, please leave it. I’m sure they’ll explain everything, right?” Wally said as he turned to Fred and the others.

Marino nodded and regained his composure. After sitting down on a seat someone fetched, he gestured to Fred to start explaining.

About how they had tried to stop Kai from gathering resources for his cure, battling his experiments along the way. Tried and failed. How they had launched a full-on attack on his base in an attempt to stop the creation of the Legendary Pokéwomen and that mission had been successful at first. But the one who wiped out Kai with ease, declared himself no longer a Pokéman. Nicolas Draken had betrayed his team like Ben did before him and finished the Pokémanizing process on the two subjects before releasing them upon the joined Pokémon forces, washing them away through the tunnels with them barely surviving if they hadn’t teleported out along with Kai. And how they and the professor now worked with Kai to find a cure before they turn Pokémon permanently. And Nicolas uses his Legendary weapons to take over Reminisce. Kai and Marino’s sisters and girlfriends, respectively. Then there’s Mika, who was or still is part of a very different kind of experiment. She’s a cyborg turned Pokéwoman.

“Though she doesn’t remember,” Fred said. “Which worries me a lot.”

“I see… What do you think Wally? Is it the Rockets?” Marino said.

“No, I don’t think so. Team Galactic, Team Aqua, Team Magma… from what I’ve learned about them, they could go this far, but it’s not their style to modify Pokémon and humans to such an extent. They’d rather just wake up Reminisce’s legends and try to control them. And they wouldn’t be running two radically different programs together, unless… This is much bigger than we thought,” Wally said.

Marino thought deep for a moment.

“There’s something bigger behind these people experimenting on people and Pokémon and the only one who can lead us to them… is that cyborg girl,” Marino said.

Mika had been under sedation as the Professor and Crystal affirmed that she was in a very fragile mental state. Anything that linked her to that base they found, froze her up immediately. Prof. Ball advised against zapping her next time.

“Even though she is resistant to that type,” Benny added.

“I didn’t have much options, I can’t think things through that quickly… but you’re right,” Fred said. “Now how do we find some clues as we wait for the girl to reset, Clue?”

“I’m afraid something will happen that I fear the most. That the clues will come to us,” Marino said.


At the police station, an officer asked his partner if he wanted some coffee as he poured himself a cup.
“No thanks,” the partner named Samuel said as he thought about how the other officer, Mark, had collapsed as they were guarding the old lab of professor Ball. Whatever did it, it didn’t seemed to have affected him. Maybe he was strong-willed?

After his partner had described the strange feelings that had washed over him to the shrink, the latter had confirmed it must have been a psychic attack most certainly from a Pokémon trying to lure him in. A good cup of coffe would change that for sure.

They would still have to be on their toes with that Cacturne Pokémen gang on the loose. Several people were still in the hospital after the attack including a very fragile woman he sometimes saw, still lying in her bed. Samuel was doubting if she would make it. What if those things came back? To finish off all of them…

He shouldn’t think such thoughts. They only made him more paranoid than he already was. Sometimes Samuel thought he knew what people were thinking. Or that he could persuade people to think something else. Then again… there were rumors that some gym leaders could lift things with their minds, psychics they called them. All hogwash if you asked him.

Yet when he walked out to get a bit of fresh air, he was about to change his opinion on the matter as a few minutes later a girl screamed and he turned around grabbing his gun through instinct. He looked around for the source of the sound before spotting a girl in traditional robes being harassed by three shady figures.

“Freeze, this is the police,” Samuel said as he whipped out his gun and badge. He knew they weren’t going to oblige, but what came next he didn’t see coming.

From under their coats the men pulled out strange looking pistols which they fired before he could react. He dived behind a car and checked for bullet wounds. Was there a gaping head wound? He could still think and breath, but he was sure he’d been hit. He gazed at his stomach waiting for the dark red blood to come gushing out. He knew that he wouldn’t have a flesh wound like last time.

He’d been trying to stop a robbery when the criminal shot his side. Doctors had said it was a genuine miracle that the bullet had only grazed him without doing too permanent damage. It wouldn’t be the case now. Why did he have to act so rash and impulsive, as if by some instinct pushing him to throw himself into mortal danger? He should have known the men would’ve whipped out guns of their own with the new law being passed. He always knew that kind of thing but now… He looked down again. He wasn’t bleeding, there wasn’t a scratch on him. What the hell was going on here?

“Check if that cop’s gonna give us any more trouble,” he heard a guy whispering as if it was right next to his ear.

There was that idiot instinct of him again, making him think dangerous thoughts. He was really going to do it, wasn’t he? Protect the innocent, he really believed in that.

“Drop the guns and release the girl, this is your final warning,” Samuel said as he aimed for the leader’s back.

What’s up with this guy, it echoed in Samuel’s head.

The thought whizzed through his conscious as another bullet went flying his way. And he saw it coming, bending over him harmlessly and drilling itself into a concrete wall.
The three shady guys’ jaws dropped as Samuel ran upto them, threw a telekinetic blast at each one before picking up the girl and kicking away the characters’ guns. With three at gun point, their leader turned a wheel on his watch and in a flash of white light, they disappeared. An Alakazam teleporting request, that had to be expensive.

“Thanks officer,” the girl stuttered as she stroked her dark blue robes.

“I did my job, ma’am. But I do have to ask, why did those men turn up to kidnap you?” Samuel asked.

“I don’t know, our temple doesn’t have any enemies. But… there is something different about me people want to know. Something similar to what you have. Are you a psychic?” the girl said.

“I guess I am,” Samuel said, though he hardly believed what he was saying to the girl and himself. “Are you one too?”

“No… I can sense auras and am one of the few even among the adepts in our temple that is as strong as I am. They gave me something strange that’s distorting my vision of you. Can you keep me safe?” the girl said. “I’m Sayo.”

“I’m Samuel. I think we both are going to need protection from these people. Come quickly,” Samuel said as they ran to the police station.

They knew with their mysterious powers that this was only the beginning of sinister abductions. If they had only known what dangers would come their way.

 

[Scriptor Scorpio]

Sorry for the wait, here it is... The plot thickens.

Episode 14: A tale of brothers

Marino soon learned that Benny was Fred’s half-brother and Ruben and Leaf being Fred’s nephews he didn’t see that often, but they hadn’t been this hostile to him the last time they met. Perhaps Marino already guessed they looked up to Fred and hated the thought that someone outmatched him in almost every way, which could’ve only been done by cheating they figured. He’d have to prove himself, this amateur detective slash high-ranking trainer.

He took an interest in Lyra’s accomplishments in defeating Team Magma, Aqua and Galactic, but she stayed close to Fred and tried to avoid his questions. She did talk to Wally and showered the one year younger boy with compliments about how much he’d grown as a trainer. She was also glad to see his asthma had bettered with the clean air of the Reminisce region though he did keep his inhaler with him at all times. Melody sticked close to Fred as well, but she didn’t say anything. While Benny was busy trying to stick with Crystal, Fred had these two girls who seemed quite nice to Marino, but also a bit off. The Froslass girl in her cute kimono, she said she knew him, but from what?

Marino didn’t want to lose Fred’s good will to allow him into the base and help with the whole cyborg girl mystery, but his curiosity soon gained the upper hand. If only Fred knew Marino really loved Giselle and he was through with flirting with Gym leaders and the like. He finally blurted out: “I’m terribly sorry, but where did we met?”

Melody looked up, followed by Fred looking at Marino and Lyra looking at Fred standing next to Melody. The last one simply said: “Shamouti Island.”

“The new island maiden, in the ceremony? That was you? Melody?” Marino said but he didn’t let her answer his question. “Of course you are, you were there and helped me get the orbs and save…”

Marino looked sideways to Fred and continued: “the island…”

“More like the whole world,” Melody said with a hazy mist in her blue eyes. “After that, I kept hearing about your exploits. They didn’t give a name but I knew it was you. Greenfield, the forest home to a Celebi, Alto Mare, the incident with Jirachi, LaRousse City, Rota and the Tree of World’s Beginning, the Manaphy incident, Alamos Town, the Shaymin incident, Michina Town and Crown City… You looked up trouble and saved the world numerous times.”

“That’s, that’s supposed to be confidential,” Marino uttered in surprise.

“Oh believe me, it wasn’t easy, but then again, the Gym leaders had a hard time covering all that up without leaving a paper trail. And people don’t easily forget they saw multiple members of the Elite Four together outside the League,” Melody said as she forgot any other people were still in the room. Tears started to form in her eyes. “After I saw you, our local Chosen One, doing your best to be a hero by trying to stop the fighting of the legendary birds and Lugia, while all I could do to help you was play some song on an ocarina to activate the shrine… I knew I had to make more of my life. Do more than snark at people on the island and playing its maiden after my sister grew too old to do it. And she still stayed on the island wasting her time. So I went out into the world to make something of myself, to grow stronger. And now I’m here… and I haven’t accomplished anything.”

“I, I am sorry,” Marino said and it seemed to be more directed at the others who stood there with jaws dropped at Melody’s revelation. Fred sure knew how to attract… interesting people.

“So no Fred, I won’t rely on you. I know now that Lyra and I are more alike than I’d admit and very different in things I don’t want to admit either, but I also know I’m not going to change that vying for your attention… I’m going out.”

With a blinding light Melody changed into her Froslass form and phased through the wall on her way out. Fred immediately started rippling his hand to change into a Ghost type, but someone grabbed him by the arm to stop him. To his surprise it wasn’t Lyra, but Marino.

“She needs time to think,” he said. “We all do.”


Benny pretended he was studying his Honchkrow human form, which he’d done extensively all those weeks ago when he received it: a thin dark coat with a white feathered collar slash scarf and a dark mobster hat. The coat had red patches under his arms and at the back end of his coat as it was in his Pokémon form. His glasses were white circles around his eyes thanks to an adjustment from Prof. Ball. It was the same adjustment that had allowed Lyra to shield her eyes with blue goggles in her Ledian form and that allowed Leaf take of his red Flygon eye shields when he was in his Pokéman form.

Benny tapped his dark boots tipped with white talons as he peeked to the girl he felt warm and fuzzy about it even when she kept insulting him day in day out, no matter what he did: Crystal, the professor’s daughter. In her Starmie woman form the ten appendages draped around her like a ballroom gown that could change its width. Her dark blue hair had been quite combed and controlled before in her Dodrio form apart from some spikes in her two tails, but now the dark blue mess spiked in every direction like a starfish with the red octagonal jewel with yellow lining glowing on her forehead. That meant she was concentrating really hard on her work on the genetic samples or she was using her psychic powers to read people’s minds.

Without a word Crystal smacked Benny clean across his shocked face as he’d realized just a nanosecond too late what Crystal had been upto as her jewel glew. Hold on a second, he was a dark type. He’d been gazing again, wasn’t he? On the other hand, this type combo between him and Crystal seemed quite the contrivance. Professor Ball couldn’t have done it on purpose, could he?


“Moves have been made, we trust you have done the same?” said the voice that commanded Nicolas, besides Minami.

“There is no need to worry… My Retroments and my other experiments will prove their worth in what is to come,” Nicolas said. “With Kai’s two girls at the helm. He won’t know what to do.”

“And your own conflicts?” the voice said.

Minami appeared from the wall and as she drifted towards her love, Nicolas said: “I’ll crush all of them with one blow.”


“There is news, terrible news,” Prof. Ball said as he beckoned for the others to gather around.

“What’s wrong?” Marino asked, beating Fred to the punch.

“We’ve received information about multiple individuals disappearing. Some suddenly and without a word, others rather violently. They get taken by mysterious men and they don’t seem to belong to Nicolas’ experiments at all, or they’re human slaves of some kind. What’s disturbing is that they all seem to have a rare gift, be it being psychic, as multiple gym leaders have been electrocuted from their training ground with dozens of witnesses that were easily held back, communicating with ghosts among them some mediums and even someone with aura sensing abilities was abducted had a mildly psychic police officer not interfered. They’re believed to be next. I want you to go and try to protect them while remaining undetected. If you don’t succeed, make sure you can follow them and report their base, methods, anything that can help us find out what they’re up to. Don’t get caught however, as we’re still short on Pokémen. Few have returned and neither did… Just be careful, please.”


The Pelipper had flown across the Valleyfound Rainforest multiple times now. It was so dense you could hardly make something out. But she had to find him, she just had to. She was growing tired, she knew she had to land before her wings grew numb. Landing on a branch, the Pelipper changed herself back into her Pokéwoman form and balanced herself as she looked out across the forest. The night was falling and trying to catch her in its slumber. She feared she had no choice but to answer her fatigue and rest for a while. Soon I will find you, Evelyne thought. Soon…

Extra extra! Timeline of the CHA-05/Pokémen universe (will be added too as the plot unravels)

1995: Evelyne Ivy, age 1. Prof. Ball meets Felicia Ivy; end of the year: Crystal Ball is born; ‘affaire’ (did they get married?) is followed until 2000 at least

1997: Prof. Oak inspired by Prof. Ball; anime starts. Evelyne Ivy: age: 3, Crystal Ball: age 2

1999: Prof. Ivy inspired by Prof. Ball’s minor movie star wife Felicia Ivy. Evelyne Ivy: age 5, Crystal Ball: age 4

Early 2005 (6 years ago): defeat Team Rocket, Team Aqua and Team Magma inspires Aqua/Magma arc in Pokémon anime; Gary and Lyra age 10

Early 2010 (1 year ago): defeat Team Galactic and Team Rocket II inspires Galactic arc in Pokémon anime; Lyra age 15; Wally: age 14

2011-2012: the events of CHA-05 and Pokémen; PUNK’s domination; anime takes another route with ‘???’ as the new villainous team. Lyra, Marino and Crystal: age 16-17 (born 1995), Evelyne Ivy: age 17-18 (born 1994)

2020: 10 years after defeat Galactic and Rocket II: team Plasma lengthens their plans as they wait for ‘???’ to be taken down; then strike

 

[Scriptor Scorpio]

Sorry for the delay, here goes.

Episode 15: Fake memories

Ruben looked at Leaf as they knew they both felt it. Sharp jolts rushing through their Pokémanized muscles. It was like they could break down every day now. They had to find a cure and quick.


Meanwhile in the main room, Fred noticed Lyra dragging her leg around as she walked.

“You alright?” he asked.

“No, I’m not. And we should focus on other things anyway,” Lyra said.

Prof. Ball entered and said: “She’s stable. I don’t know for long, but we’ll have to try our hardest to see who’s behind all this.”

“Okay, I’ll call the others,” Fred said.

As they all soon stood around her bed, in places there wasn’t heavy medical machinery that is, Mika opened her eyes.

“Where am I?” she asked.

“You’re with the Pokémen, you remember?” Benny said.

“No, where is Cha… I’m sorry, I’m so confused,” Mika said.

“Yeah, a big zap can do that to you, oomph,” Leaf said as Ruben elbowed him so he wouldn’t say some more things he himself would like to say about Fred’s actions from the past few days. About everything actually.

“We need you to remember what changed you into what you are,” Prof. Ball said.

He hesitated saying that she, besides having been turned into an obedient cyborg, had also been changed into a Pokémon-human hybrid because of his machine. The guilt was slowly eating him up and making him almost less stoic, which he almost never broke out off.

“The machines? I remember we found them… But not how I was… hold on,” Mika said.

Then the flashes came and she tried to describe them out loud.

How she was abducted two years ago as a ten-year old girl. How they kept injecting stuff in her that made her sleepy and doozy. Then one day, she couldn’t remember anything besides what she had been programmed to do. She’d been given suicidal missions, lethal cybernetic upgrades and powerful Pokémon that had been ‘enhanced’ as well. She obeyed their every word. Then she stepped into a machine. She passed out. When she woke up, she was in this mature body, she’d become 15 in a few hours. Later, she somehow found out she wasn’t a cyborg that had been upgraded to a larger body and sharper mind. Her growth had been sped up, her very appearance altered. She didn’t hate her ‘father’, not after all he had done to her. Not after she’d been pulled out of a third machine, the one in the base they returned to and found, one of a row of machines. It would’ve been her final upgrade, but then she was forced to remain human, kidneys, brains, stomach, heart and all. Why did she grow distressed, she’d been saved, blood had been spilled but it wasn’t hers, she was healed by the white light but she lost her memories again. Now she found it again…

Besides her, the memory cells grew active. She was linking up to them through a remnant of her wireless communications.

I was controlled through the air, given orders, commands. I came so close to killing people. My hands are moving…_

Suddenly Mika struck at Lyra’s wristband and flicked it, turning everyone into Pokémon. Mika’s change into her Hydreigon form broke her out of her bounds and toppled the machines she was connected to. The fuzzy feeling in her head, the confusion, the sedation… It was gone. And she had her orders._

With an incredible speed the female tri-headed dragon whizzed through the air and the different rooms of the hideout before she fled into the labyrinth. The Pokémen didn’t hesitate a moment and went after her.

Next time I have to turn into a psychic type or something, Fred thought as he raced as an Arcanine right behind Lyra as a Togekiss.

“Fred, can we help?” Marino called as he rode his own Arcanine with Wally on it, barely holding on.

Fred nodded to Marino and to his Arcanine and they tightened all their muscles as they used Extremespeed and went as fast as the wind.

Mika didn’t know of the traps and got electrocuted multiple times, but that didn’t stop her now that she was in her powerful dragon form. She remembered she owned one once. And her previous form, an Empoleon too… She was inclined to correct herself. They were the property of CYBER, just like she was.

“Doc, did she grab the memory cells?” Benny asked through psychic connection so the doc didn’t have to try to translate Honchkrow chatter.

“I’m afraid so,” Prof. Ball said.

“That’s the only clue we have to finding the people behind this and end it, we have to stop it,” Benny said telepathically as he dodged one of the labyrinth’s traps. “Fred…”

“Yeah, we know,” Fred said as he referred to Marino. “On my mark, we attack.”

“Got it,” Benny said, with Ruben and Leaf following in unison.

“Okay,” Lyra said. “And for it’s worth, I’m sorry for everything.”

They were at the end of the labyrinth. There stood Mika in her Hydreigon form, seemingly waiting for something. In one of her heads she held the memory cells.

“Lyra, you’re in range?” Fred asked.

“Yes,” Lyra said.

“Fire it!” Fred said as he braced for impact.

Lyra flicked the wristband and turned every Pokéman and Pokéwoman back in their humanoid form and made them hurtle through the air as they landed on their feet. The more they practiced, the better it went, but it still was quite the bruising ordeal to go to.

Mika turned to the Pokémen as she held onto the memory cells and looked at them, preparing to fire something from one of her heads. A cold breeze was all that followed.

“You haven’t turned Pokémon enough to do anything in this form. Perhaps your cybernetics have something to do with it,” Marino said.

“Or… you have been lied to,” it sounded as a blast obliterated the rocks at the end of the labyrinth. Out of the dust cloud, shady types in black uniforms appeared with in the middle…

“Charlie?” Mika said exasperated.

She cried tears of joy as she ran to him and hugged him.

“Your organic skin was Pokémanized, but you are still a AI, one that can feel and think for herself. Come with me and find out who your real friends are,” Charlie said. “The ones who gave you back me.”

“You always saved me, I thought it was that older boy Diedrich that saved me, but it was you, wasn’t it?” Mika said.

“Yes and I almost bled to death, but then they found me and took me back, Michaela, CHA-05, come with me,” Charlie said.

Before anyone realized what they were talking about or who Charlie and the uniformed men were, a blast of energy surrounded the new group and Mika and they teleported away with an Alakazam transfer request. That wasn’t cheap in the slightest.

They were gone. With the memory cells. And a powerful Pokéwoman.

“We lost her!” Fred said in his Arcanine human form and breathed fire into the air.

Their cure seemed to be further away than ever and their complete transformation dangerously close.

 

[Scriptor Scorpio]

Episode 16: Not quite ending

“The cure, it can’t be… if we can’t find this organization before it takes over the region, we’ll never find a cure in time,” Fred said as he pounded the ground.

He didn’t have time to see everyone being shocked about him breathing fire in his Pokéman form. The unstable Ditto DNA had accelerated the transformation all this time. Soon, Fred would lose the last stable parts of his human DNA…

“There is still hope Fred,” Marino said. “Remember what she said before she grabbed Lyra’s wristband? The machines are capable of accelerating growth and adjusting cybernetic implants. They could even roboticise people completely if given the chance. That latest model has a whole row of them back at that base you visited before we met up with you. That technology could help all of you and perhaps even give us a lead.”

“But we searched the whole place and found nothing… Though we had to leave before those guys from the cybernetic experiment would show up and we’d have to battle them with Mika or CHA-05 who Fred’d just zapped. There could be something there, even if it was only cybernetics technology.”

“With something that influences your growth. That girl… used to be five years younger. Nothing can ever change that back. No genetic manipulation or operation in the world. We have to find here and destroy those implants. Through it, any person or Pokémon is a slave to the shady people behind it,” Lyra said.

“Let’s go,” Ruben said.

After they’d told Prof. Ball through their wristband about what they were going to do, the Pokémen along with Marino and Wally took off in their Pokémon forms. As Marino didn’t have a flying Pokémon at hand, he got on Fred’s back in the form of a Pidgeot.

“Well, this is akward,” Marino said.

“Duly noted,” Fred said before taking off.

It was a long trip to Sky City and the mountain near it. From up high as much as a Pidgeot flew, Fred could see the Professor’s former lab as well as the tiny forest they’d moved through where they defeated every Caterpie they could find in an effort to level up from the small and puny forms they’d been first turned into. How they had grown as Pokémon and as people. Soon there wouldn’t be any people or Pokémen, just Pokémon with the memories of a teenager. Mika had a gap of five years that never happened. They would have to give it their all to defeat this new, deadly organization.

They didn’t value human lives that much, nor those of Pokémon. The Pokémanisation process was almost too clean. If it was reversible that is.

“We’re here,” Benny said.

Stealthily everybody landed near the entrance. The complex still seemed to be abandoned, with now new traces of activity or people passing through. They’d still have to be cautious.

“You’re worried about the girls, huh?” Fred said to Benny.

Benny nodded.

When Wally had noted that Melody wasn’t present when they were about to leave, Crystal had offered to stay behind and wait for her. Lyra remarked that Crystal couldn’t fly but she could. So, they’d stay behind and look for Melody while the others went ahead. If Lyra and Melody got talking without anyone to calm them down when things went wrong and with Crystal throwing a little extra oil on the bonfire with her displeasement about Benny following her around… But the cure was more important than cat fights. If there was a cure to be found at the complex that is.

“We keep moving through the compound in one group. If any of us gets cornered, we might not be able to rescue you. So keep close, keep together and check every corner. The quicker we find a clue about CYBER, BIO’s counterpart, the better. I’ll make sure we don’t lose the machines, trust me,” Fred said.

Reluctantly, Benny, Ruben en Leaf nodded and followed close behind Fred. Wally and Marino did the same after they sent out their Pokémon to provide powerful back-up. Ruben tried not to think about what would happen if his human DNA got absorbed enough for him to be captured by a Pokéball? The end of his humanity and the beginning of his life as a Pokémon. It didn’t sound as okay as he thought it would. He liked certain things about being a human. Like opposable thumbs. Then again, he was now a psychic robot supercomputer. And yet… he wanted to still be Ruben, not Metagruben.

With a hand of fire Fred lighted the way through the corridors. Usually you’d see something like ‘Medical Hall’ and ‘R&D department’ and more. But here everything was R&D and had strange codes that presumably you needed some kind of badge for to read and understand. Or cybernetic implants. After the incident that happened here, with those two men duking it out with experimental technology ending above Sky City and being dubbed the ‘Sky high’ incident, what had happened to the employees? Was the project cancelled? That Charlie guy who seemed to be about one year older than Mika proved it wasn’t. The men in uniforms fitted the description of people trying to abduct psychics and mediums, so they weren’t under Nicolas’ control or the people of BIO, they were from CYBER. They were still functioning and they must be planning something big. If they’re not part of BIO and they’ve been known to cybernetically enforce and enslave innocent children… What would they be willing to do to powerful prodigees with powers like Sabrina’s? Something was coming, but Fred couldn’t use psychic powers as well as most Pokémon even when transforming into an Alakazam and concentrating really hard, so he couldn’t see the future yet. Something told him he’d soon see it with his own eyes, or Marino’s.

They looked through piles of spare parts for anything useful for if the machines were in worse shape than they thought. Ruben used his Metagross form to recognize parts that were still functioning and loaded a lot of them on top of him as if he were a hover train ready for transport. Than something shook the complex as Wally and Marino struggled to remain upright. The Pokémen had gotten used to such quakes made by powerful things looking to crush them.

“They’re coming for the machines, aren’t they?” Ruben asked.

“Yep, but I’ve got a plan,” Fred said. “Trust me.”

A white light shone and Fred disappeared. Marino quickly instructed everyone to run to the machines room as fast as they could. What was happening here, where did Fred go? The others thought but as soon as they entered the machines room they saw: Fred had changed himself into an Alakazam. And he was shielding the machines from the shady men from CYBER trying to clean up their mess. If they couldn’t have the machines, nobody could.

Benny instantly got it.

“We have to distract them until Fred has gathered enough power and concentration to teleport those things out of here. They’ll get onto his plan pretty quick, so make sure we completely blow them away before they can!” Benny said.

“Got it!” Ruben said as he created a psychic blast that blew the uniformed men away from Fred.

He couldn’t hear the ruckus, he was already summoning every psychic fiber he could copy with his Ditto capabilities. Leaf shot out a hyper beam and in the gleaming light he saw one man jumping all the way to the ceiling and throwing something shimmering. In a hurry, Leaf as a Flygon broke off the attack and dodged the thing. He glanced back as he saw the thing arcing with electricity. What kind of gadgets did this guy have, he thought before realizing that wasn’t the only thing that was off about them.

Marino’s Arcanine charged for another uniformed man before the latter grinned and punched the mighty fire dog right in the forehead. It was the latter that succumbed to the other’s strength.

“Cybernetic strength, like Mika,” Ruben said as he countered another punch from a man that charged at him and tried keeping it at bay, but he hovered along backwards through the air. What in the name of…

“I. Want. A break. Now!” Fred said and his brain waves resonated through everyone’s minds as his uncontrolled psychic energy exploded and he got surrounded by a white light. Everyone got blown out of the hole the shady men had come through and fell down below. Fred had disappeared. But he didn’t give any signal.

 

[Scriptor Scorpio]

Episode 17: Lady of the lake

Ruben shrugged his head as he looked side to side for the others. He remembered there had been an explosion before he passed out. He looked up to the mountain with the big gaping hole. They had fallen quite the long way. If he was feeling his bruises as a metal hulk, what about… Fred’s rival, Marino and that Wally guy!

Frantically Ruben started drilling through the rubble that was all around him looking for the frail human trainers as well as his brother Leaf and cousin Benny. Well, half-brother to Ruben and Leaf’s cousin Fred. They didn’t always get along, but now wasn’t the time for that, he had to find Benny and the rest.

He knew he had to have psychic powers, but as a living supercomputer he hadn’t used them for a lot besides the occasional quick plan or analytical assessment, but Ruben knew that instead of using his iron fists, he had to try use his mind’s eye to find the other Pokémen and get them out before they suffocated. He concentrated as much as he’d ever done, which wasn’t much considering his more difficult fighting moves had failed in his previous form had failed because he’d always been so rash and impatient. He’d changed since then, all the more since his transformation into this flying brick that was incredibly smart to boot.

Ruben psychically scanned the immediate area, then struck forward as he reached under the rubble without using too much force and picked up Benny, still in his Honchkrow form. His wing seemed twisted in a very painful way. Instead of asking if Benny was okay which he clearly wasn’t, Ruben asked:

“Can you breath, can you stand? I have to go find the others.”

“Yeah yeah, I’ll be alright, go. We have to find Fred… and the machines,” Benny said.

As soon as Ruben had turned his back, Benny snapped his wing back into place, which hurt like hell. Pokémon could heal much easier from battles, that’s why they could participate in them at a daily basis, but a serious, near lethal injury wasn’t anything near fun and games and as said before, it caused Benny a great amount of pain. He knew Fred had done his very best to get the job done in a decent way without trying a more direct approach, but the explosion had still left its marks. Where was he? And what had happened to him?


Nicolas stil couldn’t believe how the Pokémen hadn’t even tried invading Kai’s old base, where had had stayed because of the afore mentioned event not occurring for all this time. Now however it was time they moved to their newly built base closer to where everything would come to an end as he rose to power. He was forced to put the Meowth and Eevee girls under his control with his modified wristband, as he had done with Kai’s sister and girlfriend, the two Legendary Pokéwomen. Now they were towing all the equipment they couldn’t afford to leave behind up the hill as Nicolas and Minami hovered along without breaking as much as a sweat. A little ghostly power was enough to keep the most resisting of their unwilling helpers in check. And soon, Nicolas’ experiments with Kai’s technology would grant him an army of Retroments and vile Pokémen. When they reached the top…

“Ah!” the Lugia Pokéwoman cried out as she hit her ankle on a rock and stumbled.

“What in the… get moving!” Nicolas said as he reached for his wristband.

It was too hard to control the Legendary Pokéwomen all the time in their Pokémon forms, as one of them was psychic and they were well, legendary and extremely powerful and thus notoriously hard to capture in even an Ultra Ball. They couldn’t fly or skyrocket at all like this though and it slowed Nicolas and Minami down who could ascend in minutes if given the opportunity to do so. His mind control lessened so the Kyogre Pokéwoman could help her friend get up and support her. He didn’t even try to recall their names, if he had ever known. With the healing power the Pokémanisation process had bestowed upon the girls and other test subjects or people by Kai, the injury would repair itself soon enough. Nicolas still felt a pain in his chest though and he wasn’t quite sure that as a ghost, what he was feeling mentally was partly physically or… No, he shouldn’t think about Bianca or Lyra or whatever. He’d already taken care of that. Soon, none of the original Pokémen would stand in his way. Soon CYBER and BIO would rise.


Crystal, Melody and Lyra had arrived at the mountain base where Mika had once been ‘made’, for as far as they knew. That Charlie guy had lied straight to Mika’s face and she’d believed him. Melody and Lyra seemed to agree it must’ve been mind control and those cybernetic implants, Crystal however firmly ‘knew’ the ‘truth’: that Mika was madly in love with him and followed her ‘man’ around like a Zigzagoon. Although Melody and Lyra seemed to agree on something that was mostly optimistic and positive instead of the only negative thing they seemed to agree on, they didn’t quite get along. For the remainder of the trip, after Crystal had explained where the others had been sent, the three girls had been quite quiet.

Now they’d landed at the entrance to the CYBER base, one of them had to say something, if only to agree on a plan or something to search the complex. It had been a while since they last received word from the others which was unsettling, even if the hard bedrock would complicate communications; they had to have reported in right about now. Instead, Lyra said:

“I’ve been a rather big flirt lately, haven’t I?”

“What? No, don’t say that…” Melody said in her usual calm and kind manner, but she then added: “Maybe there is a more suitable word… But we’ve all been acting like idiots. The danger got to our heads and then there’s a sensible guy and we thought: Hey, now or never before we die kissing some…”

Crystal quickly added a suitable denomination for what they were all thinking about and the three girls laughed.

“Okay, let’s go find Fred, the others and Benny,” Crystal said.


The shockwave expanded and left cuts in the surrounding trees. As the dust settled, an Alakazam coughed and said to himself: “Well, I’m never doing that again.”

The nearby lake seemed eerily quiet and still and it felt like the only soothing place where nature could breathe in peace, with all the fighting and commotion in the region… It felt like a deep pool of silent consciousness.

Fred while still in his Alakazam form looked behind him to see the machines were still with him and the teleport had been a success, but he doubted if he could do this insane magic trick again. His head felt like a steamroller had used it as pavement while it was still a rock. A stubborn rock head that had taken quite some risks to redeem itself as actually being intelligent. He tried so hard to be perfect and not make the same stupid mistakes he sees people do in real life or in stories, but he still failed more than anyone else. Maybe he wanted to much, but then again…

“Boy boy, it sure takes a lot of me to calm that mood of yours. Are you always this on edge?” a voice said and Fred turned around with his mind going overtime on who it is that had found him and how he’d once again failed to effectively use his psychic powers.

He saw a beautiful woman that shone like the sun coming towards him from the lake and he couldn’t distinguish any of her features at first; the only thing he could think, such a beautiful lady of the lake.

“Who are you and yeah, I’m like this, always doing my best to save the day, what’s it to you?” Fred said.

“Oh nothing, I just want to keep calm, cool and collected in my chilly place of peace. The water is so delightful,” the woman said as Fred sensed there were others just under the surface of the blue tinged lake, that seemed to cover itself with a thick fog. The lady seemed to be doing it.

“That sounds… perfect…” Fred said as she took steps closer and closer to the lake. He threw away his Alakazam form, but the woman in the water didn’t seem to mind as she wasn’t startled at all at his new appearance. He went closer and closer until he could almost touch her, but she’d gone just a bit further and he could no longer reach her. If only he’d go in the soothing water.

 

[Scriptor Scorpio]

Episode 18: Tales of convergence

Fred’s clarity started to wane as he went into the water in the form of a Gyarados man after shining the bright white light of his wristband towards the shining woman in the water with red flowing hair and soothing big brown eyes. The thoughts that flowed through him as his resistance began to break down, were puzzling. He’d changed into a Gyarados man, but the woman wasn’t startled of him being a Pokéman with Ditto as his true form. Now why would that be? Did she know who he was?

As he almost seemed to become entranced, Fred thought about how his communication channel on his wristband bad been broken.

Then he noticed how the woman had certain features he hadn’t noticed before as he was captivated by her shining beauty that literally seemed to blind him. Her skin wasn’t a pale pink like with most strangely named ‘white’ humans, but a soft creamy hue that matched her wavy vibrant red hair which got picked up by the wind almost constantly and made her seem like she was floating in both air and water. Two strands of hair were curved upwards from her temples like mystical arches. Her legs and lower torso seemed to be in the water covered in a blue and red scaled skirt as it shone through the water. Her upper torso that was as creamy as her neck and mysteriously smiling face, was covered with a small draped poncho a little bit lighter than her skin, with her waist and bellybutton exposed.

She was a Milotic human hybrid and no one else could have made her and the other Milotic women, that looked a lot alike as they swam closer, but Nicolas Draken, using a beautiful woman’s DNA to make all of these Retroments like this. This was a trap… If only he could fight back…

“That’s it, let all your worries away and calm yourself, no need to worry about anything,” the lady of the lake said. “Stop fighting…”


Ruben coughed as he pulled Wally out from under the rubble. That was the last one and both him and Marino were okay: their Pokémon had protected them during the fall and Benny was already helping Marino spraying hyper potions to patch the Pokémon back up. Benny’s wing had been twisted far worse than they had thought and he couldn’t use it all. With his avian bones he could break something quite easily, but luckily none of his bones had, only his wing got twisted. Nevertheless he was in no condition to fly and go look for Fred, so Leaf had been sent out to do so. He probably had wounds as well, but he didn’t say anything about them so he could go look for Fred. Ruben was still clearing rubble, but it was clear the uniformed men had disappeared already. They were probably looking for Fred as well and the machines he stole from them at the last possible second. Even if Fred could take care of himself, that didn’t mean he had to all the time.

“You okay Wally?” Ruben asked.

“Yeah sure, my Gardevoir protected me from the fall with her psychic shields. Thanks Mary,” Wally said.

The Gardevoir made its soothing little sound that sounded like a high pitched ‘la’ in tone or the beginning of a lullaby, making you feel all mushy and sleepy.

“I’ll go find Fred, you let us know if something’s wrong,” Ruben said before he flew off into the sky, spinning like a giant metal saucer.


“Lyra, you see anything?” Crystal said.

She was still trying to get a connection with the others while they went through the complex, which seemed eerily quiet now, to no avail. Everything seemed to have been sweeped away by whoever was here first, the uniformed men or maybe the boys in the Pokémen team. They’d made a mess of things, Crystal was sure of it.

“No, sorry,” Lyra said through her wristband as she kept scouting the area.

The limited psychic powers she had made her feel like that if she couldn’t find Fred soon, something terrible would happen. And she wasn’t thinking of her rivalry for a distraught guy’s affection. Well, maybe a little bit.

“If we don’t find them or the machines soon, our own genetic code will get replaced by the Pokémon we currently are. If my father had just given me the chance to make a crack at… Oh wait this thing’s still on,” Crystal said before flicking off the wristband.

Melody had arrived at the room where the machines had stood and it was pretty obvious they weren’t there anymore. There were some strange trails that weren’t there before though. Signs of strong Pokémon duking it out like on Shamouti island, when they needed a chosen one trainer to rescue the world where all Melody could do was play a song. It was a powerful song though and soothing. Maybe she could it sing sometimes… but she didn’t have a singing voice at all. Forget it.

“Girls, I think I found something,” she said through her wristband as she looked through the hole to down below and saw colorful figures walking around in a rock fall that hadn’t been there before. Pokémen.

She described to the others where she was and what she saw and descended on a ghostly snow cloud to down below in her Froslass form.

“We found you!” she said.

She counted, checked for quirks, colors and the like and Melody quickly realized that Fred wasn’t with him. And the machines were gone. A chilling fear ran up what was left of her human spine in Pokémon form. Was this the end?


“Stop fighting all the time against yourself against the world,” the Milotic lady of the lake said.

She hugged Fred to calm him down, before a burning anger rose from within him, struggling until it finally broke free.

“No! I will not let you capture and seduce me with your marvel scale, cute charm or whatever! I will stop you, Nicolas and everyone who threatens my friends!” Fred said as he pushed away the Milotic Retroment lady and swam to the shore of the lake, ready to flick his wristband to unleash Gyarados’ infamous hyper beam on Nicolas’ latest, twisted experiment.

“Who is Nicolas?” the Milotic lady said visibly shaken by Fred’s reaction. She wasn’t calm anymore and started breathing heavily. “As Milotic we always try to take the negative feelings away and I wanted to help, even in this state. I sensed you were a very distraught Ditto… What happened to your friends?”

“That is none of your…” Fred yelled before he suddenly grew quiet.

His jaws were widely apart so he looked quite menacing and could roar when needed like he did know. The Milotic lady was shivering at the infectious and destructive anger he emanated that had erupted like a wild beast instead of a caring protector, like he’d wanted. Not knowing how to speak next in this impulsive form, he changed into the quiet form he liked the most: that of a Kricketune man.

“I’m sooorry,” Fred hummed in his quite musical and nice sounding guise.

The Milotic lady kept quiet as she dipped a bit deeper into the lake just in case she need to quickly dive away to escape this creature’s sudden wrath. So Fred said:

“Can you tell me about what happened, how you became like this?”

After a moment or two of pensive thought, the Milotic lady rose back up from the water a bit and started recounting what had happened these past few days. She and her ‘sisters’ as she called every Milotic that inhabited the lake, had always held to the peaceful quiet lake where they and their kind had always lived for whole their lives. But then there was a white light that changed them so profoundly that they were scared of one another at first. They found out they could speak, that they all looked alike a lot more than before and that the subtle differences a Milotic could pick up like the length of their eyebrows or other patterns, they could no longer to distinguish their seemingly identical sisters. Something in their mind had also changed and they had started acting less like Pokémon and more like ‘humans’, like Fred acted and thought when he’d appeared next to their lake. She’d decided to call herself Milonika, or just Nika for short. They had never heard of someone called Nicolas before though.

Fred realized Nicolas had used Milonika and the other Milotic as unwitting test subjects with a massive Pokémanizing device that could change whole herds into Retroments with a single human DNA sample. He might not even have tried to make an army with these overly peaceful Pokémon, just testing how far he could go. Then Fred heard a sound and Milonika and her sisters cringed.

 

[Scriptor Scorpio]

Episode 19: The world thrown into chaos

“I… could change every Pokéman back to normal with these machines,” Fred said. “So come at me, try to take away my cure, I dare you!”

The shady individual hiding in the trees looked at Fred and tried to think of his next move. But this wasn’t the only thing that was happening at the time.

The full board had been brought together in the box hanging over the large arena. Their faces covered by darkness, they watched on as the members of CYBER and BIO finished up their preparations for what was about to begin. They would have to prove their projects were worth continuing and consequently weaponizing it against the region of Reminisce and possibly the world. But there was one catch: they had to prove themselves by eliminating the competition for further funding. The cyborgs of CYBER now led by Miss Satellite versus the Retroment and Pokémen army of BIO, led by Nicolas.

“Let it begin,” the distorted voice of one of the men in the box said.

Miss Satellite had ordered to include all the original CHA’s who had been re-kidnapped after her mentor and idol Mister Wright had been attacked by Cleft, of formerly Cleft Industries or whatever it was called, and they were both arrested. They’d finally found CHA-05, but they wouldn’t let her participate in her fragile mental state. Miss Satellite hoped their newest unwilling cyborgs, made by prototype machines would fill in the gap CHA-05 had left in her absence. There were certain faults in the cyborgs and though they were much smarter, absolutely obedient and ruthless, they’d lost to those pitiful Pokémen, which was unacceptable. Though they quite literally had some tricks up their sleeves to utterly destroy that pale teen leading Kai Manning’s experiments.

“Find their weakness and exploit it,” Nicolas said to his girlfriend Minami.

She was willing to go to any length for her boyfriend and she didn’t care about the consequences. Perhaps it was the nature of her Mismagius half taking over or perhaps… she’d always been this way.

“Got it,” Minami said before she turned invisible and started looking for any organic parts the cyborgs had left and that were susceptible to her deadly charm.

Nicolas sent out the Meowth and Eevee girls in packed groups straight at the enemy. They tried to fire a few elemental attacks in vain, but the cyborgs effortlessly dodged them before they folded back their arms and revealed odd cylindrical weapons that didn’t seem to have any magazines... After a short charge time they let loose a beam that hit every Eevee girl and Meowth. They didn’t feel pain, yet, they started to feel weaker before they collapsed.

“Pokémon health sapped, next targets locking on,” the cyborgs said out loud purposefully to impress the board. The technology of Cleft’s company, now falling under DIESEL, Disastrous Incorporated Egregiously Stealing Electronic Leftovers, one of Wright’s bitter acronyms for his greatest opponent’s former company, was certainly put to good use against the Pokémon-based experiments of BIO. And it couldn’t be used against the cyborgs who also deployed state of the art shields against any elemental attacks.

They’re not invulnerable, Minami knew. Normal Pokémon couldn’t be influenced by Ghost Pokémon, but humans could, leading Nicolas to think humans weren’t normal, some more than others. He had heard of the kidnappings of psychics, mediums and aura users and he knew CYBER had to be behind them. The Meowth and Eevee girls hardly took orders from him so it was only logical they would serve as cannon fodder while his Retroments attacked from behind, led by Minami.

Out of nowhere the Retroments appeared and froze the cyborgs in their back. They were called to be ‘eliminated’. The sparing of their pitiful lives in the demonstration wasn’t because of the hearts of the board, which they all completely lacked, but the traces and waste products of a real massacre would possibly lead the authorities to them… that and it would be a pain to dump it somewhere far away.

They were holding back the psychics and the other kidnappees, but why? Perhaps they weren’t ‘finished’ yet. The Pokémen did seem to have been concentrating on other enemies than Nicolas and his Retroments. Whatever the case, Nicolas would prove his leadership could triumph over any disadvantage or work with any advantage like Kai’s Pokémanizing technology. It was flawed, as Nicolas felt himself becoming more like a Gengar every day, but he’d started to crave the power that came with it ever more. If he got more money after he’d won this showdown, he’d find ways to make himself even more powerful. Soon his scouts would find the Giratina DNA and then… he wouldn’t even need the board for funds.

“CHA-04, your turn,” Miss Satellite said to Charlie, the one that had found Michaela, but also the one who had betrayed the organization.

He’d forgotten how he wound back in CYBER, ready for conversion.


Chase breathed heavily as they stumbled onto the building up ahead.

"We're... almost there... Guess we'll have to keep loyal to each other, right?" Chase said as he touched the door of the white, shiny building, behind the hills next to Sky City, through the woods of Caterpie and Weedle.

One last perverted touch... he opened the door, threw her in, knowing the guy in there would help her... She slowly woke up and turned around as she saw Chase collapse and stand back up, over and over again as he stumbled into the woods again.

"I don't want to be... blindly loyal... I want you by my side, Chase!" Rachael/Michaela/Mika/CHA-05 said as she clutched her chest. The bullets... they hurt so much.... But then again, she was only human.

A white flash emanated from the lab. Then everything went...

Black.

“M-miss Satellite?” Charlie said as he saw his second identity Chase getting taken away from him as well as his second chance.

The timid and blank looking voice coach that had stood besides Wright as the latter had woken up ‘CHA-04’ had changed completely. Now she was busy ordering people around as they operated on the ‘defective’ cyborg.

“Oh, you’re up. Well, that’s not too bad for what we are trying to do. It might hurt a little for you though,” Miss Satellite said just as Charlie felt like he was hit by a thousand needles, in his eyes, back, neck, throat, lungs, everywhere.

He held on for a little bit longer and then he lost consciousness. When he woke up, he didn’t remember anything about his betrayal and him being a human child turned into a cyborg instead of a ‘robot with organic skin’… but he did remember what he had to do to win CHA-05 back over to CYBER’s side. Now, she wasn’t even here to fight alongside him.

Then the tanks came rolling. CHA-05 had made sure Cleft’s exoskeleton prototype never got demonstrated and Cleft’s company collapsed along with it, but they could still salvage his military projects for the Ministry of Defense contract. They were as reliable as the suit when nobody sabotaged them and they rained fire on Minami’s squad as more cyborg squads appeared alongside to fire their health sapping beams to finish the Retroments off.

Nicolas didn’t have a choice and released his secret weapons from their bounds as a white light shone and unleashed the devastating power of the Legendary Pokéwomen on the tanks and the cyborgs alike. CYBER had lost. BIO had won. The further funding had already begun.

Mika looked on in her slender Hydreigon woman form at Fred as she received word from command. In an instant, she disappeared.