purple_drake
~Elite obsessed~
- 119
- Posts
- 19
- Years
- Blackthorn City. :3
- Seen Feb 5, 2011
A/N: Okay, this is a fic I want to enter for the tragedy/angst contest over at SPPf, but it still feels unfinished and I'm not sure how to improve on it. So please, any and all feedback is loved.
Set exclusively in the animeverse, in accordance to a challenge I received from a friend. Rated PG-13 and with a warning for some gore.
DAMN.
Lance took a deep breath, running a hand through his thick, spiky pink hair and looking blindly towards the edge of the clearing, into the deceptively still foliage. Damn, damn, damn.
How the hell did this get so screwed up?
It was only supposed to have been a short and relatively easy assignment. There had been pokémon thieves-slash-poachers—rumoured to be Rockets—lurking around the wooded region just southeast of Goldenrod, but every time the police went out to patrol they found no trace of camp, men or pokémon. Then, a few days after the law had given up, the poachers would reappear again, only to vanish without a trace if the authorities so much as breathed in their direction.
He'd been in the area, so he'd offered to lend the Goldenrod Police Department a hand in trying to find them. It wasn't the kind of case he normally managed—small potatoes in comparison—but Officer Jenny had accepted anyway.
You didn't refuse the offered help of the 'undefeatable' Dragon Master, leader of the Elite Four and reigning Johto Champion. You just didn't.
Lance wished she had.
…God, he wished she had.
"Something wrong, Dragon Master?" a—unfortunately familiar—mocking voice said from behind him, and Lance stiffened, letting his hand fall back to his side with a ripple of his cape. "We're getting along so well."
"Ddrrrnnn," he heard his dragonite growl warningly, but didn't dare turn around, his hand fisting beneath the folds of his cape, flexing with frustration and anger. This situation was already spinning far too quickly out of his control; he couldn't afford to lose control of himself as well.
He'd done a flyover of the woods and followed a new, recently-used trail to where a pair of men—black uniforms and caps, he didn't need to see their chests to know the uniforms would be printed with that glaring red 'R'—had been scouting a pack of houndour on the wooded ridge above them.
He'd managed to sneak close enough to hear them talking about a warehouse—a hidden warehouse where they laid low with their kidnapped pokémon every time the police searched the forest—but then the wind had shifted slightly, the houndour had caught his scent, and the Rockets had been onto him.
They'd scattered. He'd only had a chance to go after one of them, with a foregone conclusion.
But that still left one operative on the loose. And the Rockets didn't leave evidence behind if they could help it.
I have to find them before it comes to that.
He didn't have time to do another flyover; the woods were too extensive. Nor could he wait for Officer Jenny—she and her people had stayed in Goldenrod while he scouted ahead, in an attempt to keep the poachers from fleeing again.
Now they were too far away.
"Tell me where the warehouse is." His voice was steady enough, and he poured all the command that he could muster into his tone. Any trainer, officer or gym leader hearing that tone would snap to obey.
Unfortunately it didn't work nearly so well on mortal enemies.
The captured Rocket snorted. "Again? You really are delusional if you think I'm going to bow to you like those pathetic fools do, Dragon Master."
I don't want someone like you bowing to me! Lance's jaw clenched and he took a deep, not-so-calming breath, holding it for a second until he felt he could speak without emotion.
"The warehouse."
He could practically hear the sneer on the Rocket's face as he answered, even without turning around. "You're really pathetic, you know that? Any one of us would have got the information by now."
I know. Lance's stomach twisted and he didn't dare move, not that he knew what he'd do if he did. And he wasn't sure he wanted to know. Because the same idea had occurred to him once he realized just how short of time he was.
He'd vetoed it immediately—the thought was inconceivable—but the longer this charade went on the stronger that little voice became.
When he spoke next his tone was low and quiet. "I'm not anything like you."
"Then all those poor precious pokémon of yours are going to die."
You—
Without thinking Lance whirled around, cape billowing behind him, but upon seeing the Rocket's sniggering face he stopped short and took another deep breath to calm himself, forcing his hands to relax from the fists they'd been in.
They're going to die. He said they're going to die. They're not planning on moving them out—they don't have the time or equipment to do that anyway—so they probably have a self-destruct in place.
The subject matter didn't help, but putting his thoughts in order did—at least up until the cold dread clutched at his stomach with a dawning premonition. There's no time. I could save them—if I could get the location of the warehouse now.
But at what cost?
He stared unseeingly at the Rocket, restrained against Dragonite's cream-coloured belly by the dragon's claws. The man's shaggy blonde hair was mussed and dirtied from when he and his dirt bike had taken a dive, his stance arrogant and expression mocking, and Lance felt a stir of fury.
Nothing as high as the one they'd pay if I don't.
"Dragonite…"
But even through the anger, the thought—the realization—of what he was about to say made his mouth go dry and his stomach clench. I can't believe I'm even considering this.
But I don't have any other choice.
"Dragonite, use—"
Thunder Wave, was what he planned to order, but the words died in his throat. To use even an attack as relatively weak as that on someone, with the express intention of causing pain—even someone as hateful as a Rocket, who'd probably done exactly the same thing for even less reason…
"Dragonite…"
…he couldn't do it.
A few moments later the approaching sound of tires on a dirt track became audible, but Lance hardly heard it over the Rocket's mocking laughter.
Barely half an hour had passed before the explosion came.
Lance was the first one there, landing in a tiny clearing north of where they'd been searching, up where the thinning woodlands turned into mountain.
Except, it wasn't recognisable as a natural clearing—at least, not one that had any place outside of a nightmare. The warehouse had been set into the grassy ridge, hidden by foliage and trees. Or it had been.
Now, the blast had cleared a space in the woods, a space filled with charred and splintered timber, blackened rock and smouldering grass. The trees at the edge were scorched, the leaves blown back, the canopy threadbare where it wasn't smoking.
But the worst…
The worst was that not all the debris on the ground was wood or rock.
It took a moment for it register, the hot air momentarily cleared by the wind of Dragonite's landing. He had already dismounted and taken a few steps into the area, the temperature palpable even through his heat-resistant flightsuit, before it hit him: the unmistakable stench of burned flesh, heavy in the woods, thick and cloying.
Oh, God. He froze, his every muscle tense, his chest so tight it felt like he couldn't breathe; it took white flashes in front of his eyes before he realized that he wasn't. When he finally did manage to inhale it was gasping, ragged, and it was all he could do not to throw up, his heartbeat roaring in his ears.
This can't be happening.
That had been his mantra for the past half-hour; that and the flimsy belief—the desperate hope—that he would get lucky and find the warehouse before the second Rocket got there.
Now, he stood immobile in a scene of destruction, his horrified eyes finding, against his will, every single piece on the ground which could even possibly be a paw, or a head, or a flower's bulb…
Oh, God.
"Dddrruunnurr," Dragonite resonated mournfully from behind him, her deep voice echoing out over the woods, unheeded in her trainer's ears.
He swallowed once, twice, his face ashen and horror-struck gaze travelling over the charred debris which thickened near where the entrance to the hideout would have been, where the ridge was now not much more than rubble and the ground was black with ash, tinged red and green, where cinders coated formless soggy remains. He didn't want to look too closely.
He couldn't help it.
A flash of a grimy reflective surface turned about to be a scyther's claw, cracked and torn, the ash a mercifully thick blanket, damped by liquid, which hid where the joint would have been. Those rock flakes were exeggcute shells, crushed and broken, the yolk-like pollen inside poached by the heat of the explosion, left encrusted onto stone. And over there… what on first glance appeared to be a charred branch was actually a rack of stantler antlers, still attached to the blackened husk of a body… and that scorched moss—mareep wool.
He didn't have to worry about nausea anymore. A veil of numbness had settled over him, enough that it now felt like his body belonged to someone else, enough that he could cling to it and know he could maintain at least a façade of control for a little while.
It was all he had left.
When Officer Jenny and her people finally screeched to a halt on the outskirts of the clearing, they found him standing quietly in the centre of it with his plump dragonite beside him, staring down at the destruction around them, his black cape rippling slightly in the breeze and his pink hair tousled by his flight.
He turned his head slightly at the blue-haired policewoman's hesitant approach, his face a frighteningly blank mask. "You'll need to call in more people to help with the clean up," he said quietly.
"Yes, sir," Jenny whispered, but he had already turned and walked away, the thin veil of his control threatening to shatter completely as he stepped through rock and barely recognisable pieces of what had once been living beings.
And… it's because of me…
He tried to comfort himself with the thought that at least he hadn't betrayed his values, that he hadn't sunk to the level of the Rockets, hadn't become like them, that the world needed—wanted—someone who wouldn't sell out…
…it wasn't enough.
~ finis
Set exclusively in the animeverse, in accordance to a challenge I received from a friend. Rated PG-13 and with a warning for some gore.
~ AT WHAT COST ~
DAMN.
Lance took a deep breath, running a hand through his thick, spiky pink hair and looking blindly towards the edge of the clearing, into the deceptively still foliage. Damn, damn, damn.
How the hell did this get so screwed up?
It was only supposed to have been a short and relatively easy assignment. There had been pokémon thieves-slash-poachers—rumoured to be Rockets—lurking around the wooded region just southeast of Goldenrod, but every time the police went out to patrol they found no trace of camp, men or pokémon. Then, a few days after the law had given up, the poachers would reappear again, only to vanish without a trace if the authorities so much as breathed in their direction.
He'd been in the area, so he'd offered to lend the Goldenrod Police Department a hand in trying to find them. It wasn't the kind of case he normally managed—small potatoes in comparison—but Officer Jenny had accepted anyway.
You didn't refuse the offered help of the 'undefeatable' Dragon Master, leader of the Elite Four and reigning Johto Champion. You just didn't.
Lance wished she had.
…God, he wished she had.
"Something wrong, Dragon Master?" a—unfortunately familiar—mocking voice said from behind him, and Lance stiffened, letting his hand fall back to his side with a ripple of his cape. "We're getting along so well."
"Ddrrrnnn," he heard his dragonite growl warningly, but didn't dare turn around, his hand fisting beneath the folds of his cape, flexing with frustration and anger. This situation was already spinning far too quickly out of his control; he couldn't afford to lose control of himself as well.
He'd done a flyover of the woods and followed a new, recently-used trail to where a pair of men—black uniforms and caps, he didn't need to see their chests to know the uniforms would be printed with that glaring red 'R'—had been scouting a pack of houndour on the wooded ridge above them.
He'd managed to sneak close enough to hear them talking about a warehouse—a hidden warehouse where they laid low with their kidnapped pokémon every time the police searched the forest—but then the wind had shifted slightly, the houndour had caught his scent, and the Rockets had been onto him.
They'd scattered. He'd only had a chance to go after one of them, with a foregone conclusion.
But that still left one operative on the loose. And the Rockets didn't leave evidence behind if they could help it.
I have to find them before it comes to that.
He didn't have time to do another flyover; the woods were too extensive. Nor could he wait for Officer Jenny—she and her people had stayed in Goldenrod while he scouted ahead, in an attempt to keep the poachers from fleeing again.
Now they were too far away.
"Tell me where the warehouse is." His voice was steady enough, and he poured all the command that he could muster into his tone. Any trainer, officer or gym leader hearing that tone would snap to obey.
Unfortunately it didn't work nearly so well on mortal enemies.
The captured Rocket snorted. "Again? You really are delusional if you think I'm going to bow to you like those pathetic fools do, Dragon Master."
I don't want someone like you bowing to me! Lance's jaw clenched and he took a deep, not-so-calming breath, holding it for a second until he felt he could speak without emotion.
"The warehouse."
He could practically hear the sneer on the Rocket's face as he answered, even without turning around. "You're really pathetic, you know that? Any one of us would have got the information by now."
I know. Lance's stomach twisted and he didn't dare move, not that he knew what he'd do if he did. And he wasn't sure he wanted to know. Because the same idea had occurred to him once he realized just how short of time he was.
He'd vetoed it immediately—the thought was inconceivable—but the longer this charade went on the stronger that little voice became.
When he spoke next his tone was low and quiet. "I'm not anything like you."
"Then all those poor precious pokémon of yours are going to die."
You—
Without thinking Lance whirled around, cape billowing behind him, but upon seeing the Rocket's sniggering face he stopped short and took another deep breath to calm himself, forcing his hands to relax from the fists they'd been in.
They're going to die. He said they're going to die. They're not planning on moving them out—they don't have the time or equipment to do that anyway—so they probably have a self-destruct in place.
The subject matter didn't help, but putting his thoughts in order did—at least up until the cold dread clutched at his stomach with a dawning premonition. There's no time. I could save them—if I could get the location of the warehouse now.
But at what cost?
He stared unseeingly at the Rocket, restrained against Dragonite's cream-coloured belly by the dragon's claws. The man's shaggy blonde hair was mussed and dirtied from when he and his dirt bike had taken a dive, his stance arrogant and expression mocking, and Lance felt a stir of fury.
Nothing as high as the one they'd pay if I don't.
"Dragonite…"
But even through the anger, the thought—the realization—of what he was about to say made his mouth go dry and his stomach clench. I can't believe I'm even considering this.
But I don't have any other choice.
"Dragonite, use—"
Thunder Wave, was what he planned to order, but the words died in his throat. To use even an attack as relatively weak as that on someone, with the express intention of causing pain—even someone as hateful as a Rocket, who'd probably done exactly the same thing for even less reason…
"Dragonite…"
…he couldn't do it.
A few moments later the approaching sound of tires on a dirt track became audible, but Lance hardly heard it over the Rocket's mocking laughter.
* * *
Barely half an hour had passed before the explosion came.
Lance was the first one there, landing in a tiny clearing north of where they'd been searching, up where the thinning woodlands turned into mountain.
Except, it wasn't recognisable as a natural clearing—at least, not one that had any place outside of a nightmare. The warehouse had been set into the grassy ridge, hidden by foliage and trees. Or it had been.
Now, the blast had cleared a space in the woods, a space filled with charred and splintered timber, blackened rock and smouldering grass. The trees at the edge were scorched, the leaves blown back, the canopy threadbare where it wasn't smoking.
But the worst…
The worst was that not all the debris on the ground was wood or rock.
It took a moment for it register, the hot air momentarily cleared by the wind of Dragonite's landing. He had already dismounted and taken a few steps into the area, the temperature palpable even through his heat-resistant flightsuit, before it hit him: the unmistakable stench of burned flesh, heavy in the woods, thick and cloying.
Oh, God. He froze, his every muscle tense, his chest so tight it felt like he couldn't breathe; it took white flashes in front of his eyes before he realized that he wasn't. When he finally did manage to inhale it was gasping, ragged, and it was all he could do not to throw up, his heartbeat roaring in his ears.
This can't be happening.
That had been his mantra for the past half-hour; that and the flimsy belief—the desperate hope—that he would get lucky and find the warehouse before the second Rocket got there.
Now, he stood immobile in a scene of destruction, his horrified eyes finding, against his will, every single piece on the ground which could even possibly be a paw, or a head, or a flower's bulb…
Oh, God.
"Dddrruunnurr," Dragonite resonated mournfully from behind him, her deep voice echoing out over the woods, unheeded in her trainer's ears.
He swallowed once, twice, his face ashen and horror-struck gaze travelling over the charred debris which thickened near where the entrance to the hideout would have been, where the ridge was now not much more than rubble and the ground was black with ash, tinged red and green, where cinders coated formless soggy remains. He didn't want to look too closely.
He couldn't help it.
A flash of a grimy reflective surface turned about to be a scyther's claw, cracked and torn, the ash a mercifully thick blanket, damped by liquid, which hid where the joint would have been. Those rock flakes were exeggcute shells, crushed and broken, the yolk-like pollen inside poached by the heat of the explosion, left encrusted onto stone. And over there… what on first glance appeared to be a charred branch was actually a rack of stantler antlers, still attached to the blackened husk of a body… and that scorched moss—mareep wool.
He didn't have to worry about nausea anymore. A veil of numbness had settled over him, enough that it now felt like his body belonged to someone else, enough that he could cling to it and know he could maintain at least a façade of control for a little while.
It was all he had left.
When Officer Jenny and her people finally screeched to a halt on the outskirts of the clearing, they found him standing quietly in the centre of it with his plump dragonite beside him, staring down at the destruction around them, his black cape rippling slightly in the breeze and his pink hair tousled by his flight.
He turned his head slightly at the blue-haired policewoman's hesitant approach, his face a frighteningly blank mask. "You'll need to call in more people to help with the clean up," he said quietly.
"Yes, sir," Jenny whispered, but he had already turned and walked away, the thin veil of his control threatening to shatter completely as he stepped through rock and barely recognisable pieces of what had once been living beings.
And… it's because of me…
He tried to comfort himself with the thought that at least he hadn't betrayed his values, that he hadn't sunk to the level of the Rockets, hadn't become like them, that the world needed—wanted—someone who wouldn't sell out…
…it wasn't enough.
~ finis
