Whew, Part V. Just as my watch draws rapidly closer to eight AM. I don't know why I felt this urge to get this part out now, but I did.

This is my favorite part for various reasons - mostly because of the character development that takes place throughout it and because some of my favorite chapters are in this part. (I think my absolute favorite is chapter XXXIII, which is incidentally also that shortest one which is half a page.)

It is also, I might note, the longest part by far, and in fact the longest thing I've ever posted in one piece: it is neither more nor less than 34 pages (well, admittedly with page breaks after each chapter), and more than 11,000 words, i.e. it constitutes more than a third of the entire fic! I didn't think I'd ever beat chapter 32 of The Quest for the Legends in terms of length, but it looks like I have. So make yourself very comfortable before you start...

And now we are officially approaching the finale of the fic, as Part VI is after all kind of the last; Part VII is more of an epilogue.

So enjoy, Part V...



PART V: ROB

XXIV

It was late in the night and he was deathly tired when he finally caught up with her.

She was sleeping in the shadow of a tree near the southern edge of Ruxido. The subtle scent led him all the way to her – had it not been for that, he would not have seen her lying there.

It was a good hiding place, but the smell had given her away.

He approached her carefully without making any sound at all so she wouldn’t wake up, and then stopped only a couple of meters away from her.

He watched her sleep. She was curled up on the ground, tightly by the tree. Her breathing was calm and deep.

She was beautiful.

And – understandably, considering what he had been thinking and smelling all day – he wanted her so bad that he could die.

But something kept him from approaching her further or waking her. He walked to another tree close by and curled up on the ground himself, glancing at her one last time before closing his eyes for some much-needed sleep.

It was a beam of sunlight falling on his face that woke him up the next morning. He opened his eyes sleepily, at first not sure where he was. When he remembered, he rose quickly up and looked over to the other tree.

She was still there, still sleeping, still shielded from the sun by the shadow of the tree.

He was about to walk up to her – his plan didn’t go a lot further than that at the moment – when he faintly heard the sound of approaching footsteps on grass.

He quickly hid behind his tree, peeking past the side of the trunk to see.

It was a tall human boy with dark red, bushy hair and large eyes. He was walking casually towards the forest, completely oblivious to the fact that there were two Scyther just ahead of him.

Razor hid himself better.

The boy approached the approximate spot where Nightmare was still sleeping. Razor knew he should do something, attack the kid or wake her up, but somehow he was frozen in the same spot, unable to bring himself to do anything but watch. After all, what would she do if she now found out he had been following her? Perhaps she would just kill him…

The boy suddenly noticed the Scyther lying under the tree just by his side. He jumped, visibly afraid before he realized that she was asleep.

Razor watched him relax and look at her for a moment before picking a Pokéball from his belt.

“No…” Razor whispered. He wanted to jump out and kill the human before he could do what he was planning, but he was frozen in terror.

The human threw the ball carefully at the sleeping Scyther and then stepped away in case she broke out.

Nightmare’s form dissolved into translucent red light that was zapped into the ball within a second. The ball closed and began to wobble.

Break out of it! Break out of it! Razor thought desperately. You can break out of it and kill him!

He was wrong.

The ball stilled, the red glow on the button in the middle of it fading away, and a little ping indicated a successful capture.

No!

The boy picked up the ball. “Whahey, I caught a Scyther!” he exclaimed happily, attaching the Pokéball to his belt. He paused only momentarily before sprinting back towards where he had come from.

Razor followed him while dread built up in his mind.


XXV

There were two reasons why the Scyther despised, loathed, abhorred the idea of being captured by humans.

The first one was that to be caught was both defeat, which Scyther society never particularly approved of, and directly breaking the fourth law of the Moral Code: allowing oneself to be controlled. To be captured, therefore, was a sign of weakness.

The second one was that humans had discovered the species of Scizor, and for some bizarre and utterly absurd reason preferred it to its pre-evolved form.

Oh, how they loathed the Scizor.

Scyther cherished two things beyond everything else. The first was their speed – few Pokémon if any had their quick reflexes and speedy run. The other was their beautiful, curved scythes, sharper than razors, the mirrors of the soul.

The speed and the scythes were what made all the difference between victory and defeat in a duel, between being attractive and ugly, between a successful hunt and an empty stomach. They were the two things that made Scyther what they were.

To be caught meant to be evolved, and to be evolved meant to lose them both.

Few things were scarier to a Scyther than evolution.

This was why Razor was now deathly afraid: he felt certain that this was the fate that awaited his beloved Nightmare.

And a scary thought it was indeed.

He knew he should just kill the human before it was too late, but he was terrified that the human would notice him and catch him as well. He knew he was wrong to be afraid, but he was.

He followed the trainer as he entered a small, secluded Pokémon Center a short distance away, and found himself a large window on the side that he could look in through.

He saw the boy enter and walk straight to the machine in the corner. Razor felt his blood pumping violently through his veins. The human was really going to do it.

It crossed his mind for a second that the reason he was standing there watching but not doing anything about it was subconscious mind punishing him for breaking the Code by torture.

He watched the human place his bag on the floor and take out a shiny metallic coat – his stomach churned at the sight of this horrible item he had heard spoken of in horror stories as a Descith – before letting it touch Nightmare’s Pokéball. The Metal Coat was sucked into the ball as well.

“Oh, please, no!” Razor whispered desperately by the window as the boy placed the ball under a tube on one side of the machine he was standing by, and another ball under a tube on the other side.

The boy pressed a button.

The two balls were sucked into the tubes. The deed was being done. When the balls came out again, she would be a filthy, slow, pincered Scizor, and nothing could reverse the process.

It was this thought that finally gave him the power to do something. With a roar of blind hate and fury, Razor drove himself headfirst through the window and landed on the floor of the Pokémon Center in a shower of glass shards.

Panic arose immediately. The humans screamed at the sudden invasion as Razor slashed blindly at nothing in particular; a boy reached for a Pokéball but grabbed thin air as his Pokémon were being healed in the back room of the Pokémon Center. The Scyther flew across the floor towards the trainer by the trading machine, hardly even thinking about what he was doing. The claw on his foot accidentally struck a little kid on the way; he hardly noticed. He randomly slashed at the arm of a boy who was running away, but missed.

He was about to reach the cornered trainer by the machine when he eyed the screen. The silhouette of a Scizor was just disappearing off the screen on the right side, and the two Pokéballs dropped back into their original places through the tubes.

She had evolved.

All his power was suddenly drained away. Razor crumbled down to the floor in despair.

“I’ve got a gun! Stay back!” he heard a voice say. He looked up, finally feeling like himself again, and saw an old, paranoid-looking man with a long black object aimed at him.

He realized he’d better get out of there.

Razor quickly got up and flew out back towards the window he had come in through, but felt tiny burning pellets pierce into his back just as he was reaching it. He lost his balance of flight, crashing into the sharp glass shards left in the window frame before managing to crawl out.

He didn’t manage much more. As the horrified cries of “Why did you shoot at it? It was leaving!” and “Oh my God, he’s bleeding!” faded away, he managed to run a short distance towards the forest and just barely into it before he collapsed in a heap on the forest floor, unable to move.

His last conscious thought was that justice had found both of them after all: her a Scizor and him left to bleed to death far away from home.

Then his awareness drifted away and he was left alone and dying in a strange place, having lost all that was worth anything to him.

That was how a bearded man with wild blue eyes found him later that day.


XXVI

Razor blinked.

He couldn’t remember anything at first; it was all cloudy and disorganized.

Death…

Pain…

A female named Nightmare…

His surroundings were dark. He blinked again with difficulty. On second thought, there was some light there by the side.

A strange smell wafted through his nostrils.

He heard breathing.

Razor’s eyes jerked wide open and he turned his head towards the mysterious light source. It was a small candle on a dirty wooden table. Through the dim light he could just see the walls: he was trapped in a small room.

An adult human with a black beard and small, shining blue eyes was sitting on a chair by the table and watching him without saying a word.

Razor squeaked in surprise, rising immediately to his feet. His first reaction was to press his back against the wall, trying to stay as far away from the human as possible. He felt too weak to attack.

The human’s eyes moved along with him, but otherwise he was completely still and quiet.

Razor looked frantically around for a possible escape route, but lack of experience with buildings did not make the door he was pressing up against stand out as a way out. Anyway, although he did not know that, the door was locked, although he would probably have been able to slash it apart.

But he did not think of attempting to slash it apart. He was too scared and confused, and too busy keeping an eye on what the human would do.

Finally the man spoke, still sitting still in his chair.

“Hello, Scyther.”

“What is this place?” Razor asked. He was not sure if he was expecting an answer; the wise Scyther did not agree on whether humans could understand Pokémon language. The Leader had said he doubted it, but one of the most respected Scyther in the swarm, one who had been around more than any other member of the swarm, insisted that he had seen humans talk to their Pokémon.

Apparently he had been right and the Leader wrong, because the human gave a calm, unsurprised answer:

“This is a back room in the unofficial Gym of Alumine, run by me. You are here because I caught you a couple of days ago to be able to treat your wounds and nurse you back to health. I think I’ve succeeded.”

“Release me!” Razor shouted fearfully. “Let me go!”

“I’m afraid I caught you fair and square,” the human said simply. “And I’m afraid I caught you in a special Pokéball of my own creation that prevents you from ever getting too far away from it…”

“No!” Razor screamed. “Let me out! I don’t want this!”

He leapt towards the human, but in mid-air he felt himself disintegrate. In horror he watched his vision fade into red, and then to nothing.


XXVII

The next time he was properly aware of himself, he was in a much larger room, lit by the daylight shining through the many large windows on one wall. Although he did not yet know that, he was in the battle arena of the same Gym that he had been in before.

The human was standing in front of him.

“Don’t try anything, Scyther,” he began. “If you try to attack me now, I am ready to recall you back into the Pokéball you were in just earlier. I only want to help you. Understand?”

“Help me?” Razor replied and chuckled hollowly, curling up in a sitting position by the wall. “How do you think you can help me? You have no idea what I’ve been through. If there is anything being captured by a filthy human to be evolved does not do, it is help.”

“Evolved?” The human looked at him, mildly amused. “I wouldn’t dream of it. Trust me, I like your scythes the way they are. Every bit as much as you do.”

Razor looked up at him, for the first time genuinely surprised. The human’s expression did not change.

“But that is not what I took you here to discuss,” he just said. “I wanted to introduce you to my other Pokémon.”

“I’m not yours,” Razor said quietly.

The human shrugged indifferently. “Call it what you like.”

He took five Pokéballs off his belt with and dropped them on the floor.

“Come out.”

Five white shapes emerged on the floor before the light faded away and left their true colors showing. The first one that caught Razor’s eye was a brown, skeletal Pokémon with a flat head and, astonishingly, a pair of scythes very much like his own on his arms.

There was also a sand-colored pangolin with brown spikes layering his back and two oversized claws on each front paw; he had seen a couple before in the forest, and knew they were called Sandslash. The Sneasel he was also familiar with. The large blue bipedal alligator with the intimidating lower jaw, on the other hand, he had never seen before, nor the sleek tan feline that looked resentfully at him from the back. She had huge, protruding fangs that appeared to be splattered with blood and crimson markings reminiscent of the slash of some huge clawed Pokémon on her shoulders. Although all of them looked somewhat intimidating – not that a Scyther felt particularly intimidated – Razor couldn’t help feeling she was the most vicious-looking.

“Kabutops,” said the human, indicating the creature with the scythes. “Sandslash, Sneasel, Feraligatr, Fangcat. Guys, this is Scyther. He finally completes the team.”

Kabutops nodded, raised his right scythe up into a horizontal position and pointed it at Razor. He looked blankly at it.

“Kabutops, he doesn’t know how to shake hands,” the human said with a slight smile. Razor, of course, had no idea what he was referring to.

Kabutops lowered his scythe apologetically. “Sorry, I forgot.”

“Scyther, will you let me approach you?” the human asked hesitantly. “I just want to tell you he was trying to do. If you attack me, my Pokémon will defend me. Understand?”

He did not understand. He looked at the five Pokémon, especially the Fangcat who was growling protectively as to emphasize his words, and could not possibly imagine why they would defend him.

But he couldn’t feel motivated to take his chances with that.

“Yes,” he simply answered.

The human walked up to him slowly, uncomfortably close in fact. A Scyther generally liked to have plenty of empty space around himself. But he did not complain.

“When humans meet one another,” the human said calmly, kneeling down, “they do this thing called a handshake.”

He held his right hand forward. The hairy human arm was muscular and thick, as were the fingers. Razor didn’t like it; hands like the frail hand of the boy he had caught as First Prey looked pathetic and harmless, but this one did not.

“Now, what you do is to move your right scythe forward too. You don’t have fingers, but that’s all right. You just allow me to grab your scythe. Try it.”

Razor doubtfully held his scythe forward so that the end was close to the human’s outstretched hand. The human smiled and touched the green edge gently, watching him carefully all the while.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” he asked simply before suddenly grabbing hold of the scythe with his fingers.

Razor twitched. He felt vulnerable in this position, with one of his scythes held hostage by the human’s muscular hand. He could probably have jerked it away if he had needed it, of course, as the grip wasn’t very tight, but it was still very uncomfortable for a creature so accustomed to having free arm movement.

The human shook the scythe slightly up and down a few times. Then he released it, and Razor withdrew it as quickly as he could.

The human smiled. “You’ll get hang of it.” He stood up and looked at the other Pokémon. “Now, why don’t you Pokémon talk a little and get to know each other?” he said, turned around and began walking towards a small wooden door on the wall.

“Why do I need to know a ridiculous human greeting?” Razor couldn’t help asking.

The human turned back towards him, smiled and gave a cryptic answer:

“You don’t need to if you don’t want to, but neither did they.”

And with that, he exited the room, leaving Razor alone with the other Pokémon.


XXVIII

The Pokémon all seemed very used to this, but Razor was still confused.

Fangcat glared at him once and then walked slowly off to a corner of the room from which she observed the others darkly. None of the other Pokémon were at all surprised or bothered by this, either. They just kept looking at him, apparently waiting for him to say something.

“Who is that human?” Razor finally asked.

“Rob?” Kabutops said, seemingly slightly surprised by the question. “He’s … our trainer?”

Razor closed his eyes and laughed hollowly. “Why do you submit to him? Why do you let him enslave you? Why aren’t you breaking that window and running off? Did he catch you in these strange Pokéballs that keep you from going too far away, too?”

Kabutops looked positively puzzled at the suggestion. “Why would I want to leave? Rob is my best friend. There is nothing for me out there.”

As much as he’d have liked to protest, some little voice in Razor’s head couldn’t help pointing out that there was nothing for him out there either.

Razor sighed. “But to be under a human’s absolute control, being forced to fight your own kind for him? What sort of life is that?”

“We’re not under his absolute control!” Kabutops replied incredulously. “What can he do to force us to do anything we don’t want to? We’re the ones with scythes and claws and fangs.”

Razor looked blankly at him. This was a very strange concept indeed. He still could not imagine why a Pokémon would willingly do anything that a human told him – especially because it was directly against the teachings of the Code. He reminded himself that other Pokémon species didn’t have the Code, but the thought just seemed too absurd.

“Then why do you fight for him?” he finally asked.

“We enjoy it,” Kabutops simply said. “It’s fun! And myself, I like Rob’s company. Trust me, you’ll like him when you get to know him! We all thought like you at first.”

“Rubbish,” Razor replied darkly. “I’ll sooner die than submit to a human’s control.”

Kabutops shook his head and turned to the others. They talked in hushed voices, apparently agreeing to leave him alone, and then walked off into the middle of the room where they started killing time with mock fights of some sort.

Razor slumped down against the wall and closed his eyes. Was he to be brainwashed into obedience like that poor Kabutops, too?

His thoughts wandered back to the events of the day he had left the swarm. And to Nightmare. He realized he hadn’t even managed to touch that trainer who had caught her in his rash assault on the Pokémon Center.

And it hit him harder than ever that he had lost everything. The swarm, his reputation, his freedom, Nightmare…

He tried to remember what she smelled like, but couldn’t recall it properly.

He recited the laws of the Moral Code to himself.

He had feared death.

He had failed to commit suicide after losing his duel.

He had failed to help or alert Nightmare when the human had come to catch her.

He had been caught.

He looked at his shiny scythes. They were still sharp, and he had not subjected his prey to torture before killing it. But that was all he had left. It was the only law left unbroken.

Razor raised his scythe to his throat. There was no thought of Nightmare to stop him now. He deserved to die. He could do it this time.

But no, he couldn’t. Some spark within his mind still wanted to live and paralyzed his scythe, no matter what he did.

It just wouldn’t move.

Bitterly, he curled up by the wall and cried.


XXIX

He lay there the entire day, lost in thoughts of his own misery. Time meant nothing for those hours. He wasn’t sure whether he fell asleep at some point; at least he was dimly aware enough of his surroundings to realize suddenly that the other Pokémon were gone, without having any idea when or how they had disappeared. But he didn’t particularly care either.

It was very late when he heard the little wooden door creak open. A few slow footsteps. The door quietly squeaked shut.

He heard a deep sigh and more slow footsteps.

“Scyther,” said the human’s voice finally.

Razor didn’t move or respond.

He heard the human walk all the way up to him, to being uncomfortably close. It struck him that now his Pokémon weren’t there to protect him anymore and he could take him by surprise and kill him – but somehow, mysteriously, he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to do anything except lie there completely still and be miserable.

The human laid a hand on his shoulder.

Razor twitched, but found a strange comfort in it. For some reason it brought back hazy memories of his mother being affectionate towards him after he had gotten scared from climbing a tree as a Descith.

He didn’t feel as alone anymore.

“I know you hate me,” said the man slowly. “Kabutops told me you don’t like humans and have been lying here all day refusing to talk or move…”

Razor still didn’t answer.

The human sighed. “Please eat something. I don’t want you to starve.”

He could smell the faint scent of fresh meat. It made him realize just how hungry he was: he hadn’t eaten anything at all for days. He felt like he was somehow making a point by lying there absolutely still without reacting to anything, and in a way he wanted to keep doing it, but his growling stomach convinced him otherwise. Reluctantly, he sat up and turned to face the man. He was holding a slab of raw meat of some sort.

“It’s very difficult to find Pokémon meat for sale, I’m sorry,” the human said. “And Pokémon usually find the taste of animal meat strange for the first few times – but I hope it’s not too bad.”

Razor smelled it better. It did smell unfamiliar – but the closest thing he had smelled was the human he had caught for First Prey. He grimaced. The human had been awful, after all.

“Please at least try it.”

His hunger overcame everything else. Razor bit into it, tore a strip of meat off it and swallowed.

It wasn’t as bad as the human. Not the best thing he had ever tasted, but quite edible.

He finished it, one bit at a time. The human stayed there in patient silence while he finished.

Rob, Kabutops had called him…

“How did you like it?”

“It wasn’t too bad, I suppose,” Razor muttered.

Rob smiled faintly. “Well, I’m glad.”

Razor curled up and faced the wall again.

“You didn’t like being in that Pokéball, did you?” Rob asked quietly.

Razor shook his head.

“It’s okay. I won’t put you in there again if you don’t want it. You can stay here tonight. Try to get some sleep.”

Razor was very tired, but hazily surprised by what this human was turning out to be like. He couldn’t help thinking he was actually fairly nice.

“Good night, Scyther.”

“Good night, Rob,” Razor mumbled back.

Had he turned around, he would have seen the human smile as he exited the room.


XXX

After a month with Rob, Razor had made a few observations.

Every day, the Pokémon were let into the room for training, where they freely battled against one another to train their skills. Once a week, they had supervised training where Rob watched them and made suggestions for improvements to their technique or commanded one of them against the others. The Pokémon never minded this; in fact, he sometimes got the feeling they enjoyed it all the more when Rob was ordering them what to do.

Every evening, Rob would ask him if he felt like being alone or if the other Pokémon could sleep in the large room, which Rob called the “battle arena”. Razor always had the final say. He had begun to let him release the other Pokémon to sleep there as well, although Razor always kept a short distance away from them.

One evening every week (on Fridays, more specifically), Rob came in at the end of the training session, recalled his Pokémon into Pokéballs and took them somewhere. They all then returned late in the night, sometimes behaving a little strangely.

The exception from everything was Fangcat. She always liked to stay a bit secluded from the others, she never took part in the unsupervised mock fights, and she never came with the others on Friday nights. Generally she just sat in a corner and licked her paw, often watching him with suspicion. When Rob was there, she would fight if, but only if, he suggested it, and then she would be a very powerful fighter who clearly took immense pleasure in the battling, but was noticeably more violent than her teammates – she was the only one who had ever seriously injured one of the others for as long as Razor had been there, at least. She had stabbed her fangs so deep into Sandslash’s body that Rob had had to cancel the training session and rush with him to the Pokémon Center. But Rob had nonetheless immediately forgiven her. In fact, he often took her alone with him into the little back room while the other Pokémon were training, and they would talk quietly for hours on end. Razor had not quite gone as far as listening at the door, but he could hear the faint echo of their voices through it.

Razor had not taken part in the training sessions, the less asked where they were going every Friday night, anyway, but he was starting to feel a certain longing to do it.

He realized it was only a matter of time when he would be tempted to go ahead and act on it.

And when he had those thoughts, an old sense of duty made him attempt suicide again. He would sometimes sit for a couple of hours alone in the Gym with his scythe raised to his throat, his eyes closed and his mind screaming Do it! but always, invariably, finding himself unable to take his own life.

He was having those thoughts now, as Rob walked into the room to put an end to a training session.

“It’s Friday, guys… get in your balls…”

Razor always felt a little unnerved on Fridays. Rob would leave him alone in the battle arena with only Fangcat for company, and she would sit in the corner, often glaring at him continuously for the hours that they were away. Sure, she never did anything – but he always felt a little uncomfortable alone around Fangcat for some reason. She creeped him out.

“Scyther… would you like to join us?”

Razor looked up. Rob had asked him every Friday if he wanted to come with them, but he had always automatically said no. Now he wasn’t sure. Perhaps it would be interesting to see what it was they were doing, anyway – and how could it hurt?

He stood up. “Okay.”

Rob smiled and took out Razor’s Pokéball. It was different from the others, he noticed; the upper half of it was bright purple and had a small white M in the middle. But by the time he had finished thinking that, he was already dissolving into immaterial form.

When he came out of the ball again, they were in a strange place.

The room was, at a glance, full of people. At a second glance, it was full of people and their drinking glasses. Rob and his Pokémon were standing by a long counter, behind which a bald man stood and wiped a glass with a cloth.

Although Razor did not know that, they were in a bar.

Razor looked around at the people. Most of them were watching the Pokémon with suspicion and hostility. Especially many of them paid special attention to the Scyther.

“Rob…” the bartender sighed, leaning closer to Rob. “Do you really have to bring your Pokémon here every time? I’m dead serious, I’m losing customers for it. They’re not approaching the counter with a Scyther standing there, and honestly, I can’t blame ‘em.”

“They’re harmless,” Rob replied sternly. “If people choose to make judgements because Scyther happens to have blades on his arms, it’s their problem, not mine.”

The bartender sighed again. “I’ll put up with it, Rob, but only because you guys are regulars.”

Rob ignored the comment. “Beers for all of us, please.”

He waved some bills in the bartender’s face, which the bald man reluctantly accepted.

“Honestly, though…” he muttered. “Last time Kabutops nearly caused a serious accident. You better be taking care of that. Pokémon are way too quick to get seriously drunk.”

“One beer is fine!” Rob insisted. “He was well into his second.”

“Only one per Pokémon from now on, then,” the bartender said firmly. Rob just shrugged.

A couple of minutes later, the bartender placed a glass bowl full of a strange, fizzy golden liquid in front of each Pokémon, including Razor. Rob got an ordinary glass.

Razor smelled the drink suspiciously. He wasn’t sure he liked the smell. He looked at the other Pokémon; they were all eagerly slurping it up from the bowls already. Rob was taking a sip from his glass; eying Razor, he put the glass down, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and leant closer to Razor.

“If you don’t want it, I can drink yours.”

Razor just nodded. He really didn’t like the smell of that liquid.

For some reason that puzzled the Scyther, they all seemed to become gradually more talkative as they finished their drinks. By a very confusing thread of conversation, Kabutops began talking about the strange flashes of ancient memories that kept bothering him because, according to the bits that Razor could piece together, Kabutops was actually an ancient fossil that had been resurrected millions of years after its death.

He didn’t really get it, but that was the basic gist of it.

After they had all finished their drinks and talked for a long while about Kabutops’s memories, Rob finally said they should get going. Despite some mumbled protests, he recalled the Pokémon to take them back to the Gym.

Well, now he knew what they did on Fridays.