From: Karnivax <karnivax@my-deja.com> Subject: [PW!] [LEAGUE] Black and Blue Date: Saturday, January 08, 2000 6:40 PM I can't tell you outright why the following story is so incoherent. The only clues I can offer are as follows: Kurt Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions"...Wild Cherry Pepsi...the Foo Fighters' "A320"..."Bubble Gum Crisis"...my two First Edition holofoil Scyther cards...and several pounds of Peanut M&Ms. ^^;;; --BLACK AND BLUE-- Part 1 by Karnivax "Kyle, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but take it from someone who's charred more bug Pokémon than he can count: Jessica has a pretty good chance of survival, but a lousy chance of ever waking up again." Kyle angrily took his gaze away from the Pokécenter floor. "Will you shut your hole, Espio? That kind of talk is exactly what we *don't* need right now!" Espio the Charizard's head drooped. He heaved a depressed sigh. "I can't do anything right..." Kyle's expression softened. He sat down next to Espio. "I'm sorry...I didn't mean it. It's just...how would you feel if you knew that the only female Charizard to ever give a flying fuck about you might not live to see another day?" Espio lifted his head as he contemplated this hypothetical situation, then tears started streaming from his eyes. Kyle sweatdropped. "Maybe I phrased that poorly..." Suddenly a familiar person in a black leather jacket pushed his way past the Pokécenter crowds, approached Espio, and tossed a roll of money into the white dragon's lap. "Don't let that jerk push ya around. Join my team," the jacket-wearer suggested. "Enzo!" Kyle growled. "Are you stalking me or something?!" Vincenzo Larufa responded to Kyle very calmly. "I saw Jessica get clobbered in round four, an' I believe I have th' right to see if my future wife's okay." "My Scyther never told me she was engaged," Kyle chuckled. Enzo grabbed Kyle by the scruff of the neck. "Don't play dumb, ya little prick! I know full well about Jessica's little 'lab accident' at Bill's." Kyle's eyes widened as he wondered how Enzo knew of Jessica's darkest secret. There was a long period of silence as Kyle contemplated his next words. "She'll never love you," Kyle finally snarled. "Course she will," Enzo shot back, sneering. "We were made for each other." "Damn..." came a nearby voice. "What kind of foreshadowing is that, Paul? What the hell were you thinking?" Kyle was about to use Enzo as a punching bag when he suddenly noticed a scrawny brown-haired teenage boy sitting across from Espio. Clad in a Dinofest T-shirt, gray jeans, and blue Adidas running shoes, this newcomer was typing rapidly on a laptop. Both Kyle and Enzo glanced at the newcomer in perplexion. "Don't mind me," the typist said without looking up from the laptop screen. "I hadn't planned on it, but I'm all for you guys kicking the crap out of each other." Kyle asked sheepishly, "And...who are you?" "I'm the writer," the typist said matter-of-factly. "And since this story is so pivotal, I decided to pull a Vonnegut and write myself into it." The writer's introduction was met with blank stares from both Kyle and Enzo. "Don't look so surprised, Kyle," the typist said. "When you, Jessica, and Torrasque were getting drunk off your asses at that They Might Be Giants concert, I was hanging out backstage. When you and all those PCs took on Vorge, I was sitting in a tree and watching the carnage unfold. That reminds me...I still haven't made it up to Lordlocke for letting Protopticon beat Gads in that one..." Kyle began, "How do you know -" "- your name?" the writer interrupted. "I'll let you figure it out." Espio looked on with understanding. "I knew it, Kyle! You and Jessica thought I was crazy, but I was right! We're all just characters in some elaborate epic!" "See, you guys should always listen to Espio," the writer advised as he looked up from the laptop screen at last. "He's the only one of my characters who has any semblance of depth." Kyle was remarkably accepting of the reality-shattering information that was suddenly coming crashing down on him...not that he had a choice. "So where does that leave the rest of us?" "I categorize each of my characters in one of three ways. Espio is in his own category, because he's arguably had some character development. Characters like you and Enzo fall into the category of 'characters who have about as much personality as a loaf of bread.' Characters like Jessica and Panopticon fall into the category of 'cardboard cut-outs who exist solely for the cool fanart they inspire.'" Kyle released Enzo and grabbed the writer by the scruff of the neck instead. "Smile when you say that." "Hey, what do you want? Consistent with what Espio said several stories ago, I'm a complete hack. I can draw anthropomorphic animals, girls with anatomically impossible breasts, and combinations of the two. That's all I've ever been good at. And even then, my art's not exactly 'Bubble Gum Crisis' material." The typist frowned. Espio raised one eyebrow. "I don't like this guy. He's starting to sound like me..." "But I'm not here to discuss my limited talents," the writer added. "I'm here to take the first step in my sabbatical of sorts from this fanfic." "What exactly do you mean by that?" Kyle queried. He let go of the typist. The writer continued typing. "I won't spoil it for you any further. But I *will* get things moving a little..." Suddenly Nurse Joy emerged from the back room and motioned toward Kyle. "Your Scyther has regained some consciousness," Joy said in a somber tone, "but despite everything we've done since then, she's still fading." She paused. "If there's anything important you want to tell her, now's the time." Hearing that, Kyle looked as if his whole world had just fallen apart. "How th' hell could it have gotten this bad?!" Enzo snarled. He pushed Kyle out of the way and followed Joy to the E.R. Kyle and Espio slowly trailed behind Enzo and Joy. With laptop floating eerily in front of him, the writer eventually followed the procession as well. Resting inside a glass-domed recuperation chamber and covered in severe burns was Jessica the Scyther. Her wings had been reduced to blackened stumps. Her scythes were shriveled and curling. Deep crimson blood was slowly oozing down the sides of her mouth. Her eyes - just barely open - were bloodshot. Frustrated that his planning had gone horribly wrong, Enzo sat down and buried his face in his hands. Espio sat down on the floor and continued sobbing. Kyle stood right next to the recuperation chamber and watched as Jessica slowly turned her head to look at him. Joy went back to work. At first the only sound was the gradually decelerating periodic beep of the EKG. Then came the sound of frantic typing, followed by singing. "There's a place I'd love to go / Strangers takin' me there / I dream about the day I learn to fly," the nearby writer sung. "I'm afraid of aeroplanes / Even though I like the way / It feels to be a person in the sky..." "There's a person dying, and you're singing Foo Fighters songs?!" Espio sniffled. "Hey, I'm not Frosterfree," the writer snapped. "I don't cry when I read my own stories." Kyle approached the writer. "What is going to happen to Jessica?" the trainer said intensely. "Sorry man, I have to maintain my air of mystery," the writer responded. "I can't just *tell* you that information. Now go over to Jessica and dispense some heartfelt words like you're supposed to." Kyle backhanded the writer across the face, and the laptop fell to the tile floor. There was a blast of sparks as the portable computer exploded. The writer looked in shock at the flaming wreck that had once been a laptop. "Great merciful crap," quoth he. --BLACK AND BLUE-- Part 2 by Karnivax Kyle pulled the writer out of his seat and slammed him up against the wall. "Perhaps you didn't hear me correctly," Kyle growled. "What...is going...to happen...to Jessica?" "Now I can be blunt," the writer said. "You blew up my laptop, and that means I can no longer affect the outcome of this story...or any others, for that matter. Now there is no fate but what we make for ourselves...or something." He nervously reached into his pocket. "In any case, I really should be getting back to reality..." The writer kicked out of Kyle's grasp and then tossed down a smoke bomb. The room's inhabitants coughed for a while as a cloud of gray smoke engulfed them, then, and as the smoke cloud parted, Kyle saw the writer smashing through the nearby window and running like the wind. As Kyle watched the retreating writer disappear into the distance, he heard a tiny cough come from inside his backpack. Kyle quickly unzipped his backpack and released an oxygen-deprived Cathode the Pikachu. "I think that guy may have done enough damage to accomplish his goal," Espio commented. "Jessica isn't going to make it..." The beep of the EKG was still slowing down. "She is, I know she is!" Kyle protested. He pressed his hands against the glass dome of the recuperation chamber. Cathode sat next to the chamber and panted heavily. Jessica, too weak to talk, slowly pointed one warped scythe in Kyle's direction. Without much thought, Kyle pulled the glass dome off of the chamber and hugged the blue Scyther tight. As he did so, Jessica's raised scythe suddenly fell limp. Her eyes closed. The beep of the EKG turned into an ear-piercing wail. Even with Jessica currently showing all the signs of being legally dead, Kyle did not let go of her. Tears ran down his face. Enzo gritted his teeth. His discretion clouded by rage, he jumped up from his seat. "Fuckin' Magmar was supposed to kill pretty-boy, not Jessica!!!" he thundered. Hearing this, Kyle gently put Jessica down...then lunged at Enzo and started to strangle the life out of him. "That was *your* Magmar, wasn't it?!" Kyle boomed. "You sent Magmar to whack me, but you hadn't counted on Jessica rescuing me, had you?! You murdering bastard!!!" "Damn straight!!!" Enzo choked. Enzo grabbed Kyle's wrists and kicked out of Kyle's grasp, then brought back one fist and nailed Kyle with a right hook that sent him flying. Cathode ran for cover as Kyle crashed into a chair. "That was my Ditto impersonatin' Lorelei, too! I thought my Pokémon were smart enough to get rid o' ya on their own, but it looks like I'm jus' gonna hafta deal with ya myself!" Espio stood up to defend Kyle, but before he could even fire off a Flamethrower attack, Enzo knocked out the white dragon with a metal chair to the cranium. Enzo took his leather jacket off, and as he did, he looked to be in intense pain. He doubled over. And then, with a loud tearing of fabric, insectoid wings sprouted from Enzo's shoulder blades. Stunned from both Enzo's punch and the impact with the chair, Kyle's only action at that point was speech: "Then you...must be...the were Scyther...that that Starke guy made...!" "I don't know what that's supposed to mean," Enzo snarled as his forearms turned into scythes. "But I told ya Jessica an' I were made for each other!" Enzo chuckled diabolically for a bit, then raised one scythe high and then rammed it into Kyle's left leg to ensure that the bleeding trainer would not be getting away. Kyle let out a shout that woke up a few of the sleeping Pokémon in the E.R. Enzo pulled his bloody scythe loose from Kyle's lower leg. "Okay, maybe I lied," Enzo admitted. His hair fell out, spines grew from his head, and his face pushed out into a scaly black muzzle. "She wasn't so much made for me...as I made her made for me." With his target crippled, Enzo saw fit to brag about his accomplishments. "Th' way I understand it, some guy held Bill's whole family hostage jus' to get Bill to turn me into th' Scyther-morphin' freak I am...but I wasn't bitter. I decided to go along with it...and figure out how to use my new form to better my already-cushy lifestyle as adopted son o' an Italian multi-millionaire." Enzo's clothes completely ripped apart as his transformation into a black Scyther completed itself. "My folks wanted only th' best, so they set up an arranged marriage for me," Enzo continued. "They got me hitched to some girl named Jessica in Cerulean who was not only filthy rich, but also damn fine-lookin', according to what I heard. Course, I never actually got to see her to verify that for myself...but I decided that if I was gonna marry her, she had to be just as much a freak as me to make th' relationship work." The talking black Scyther pointed one blade at Kyle's jugular. "So I offered Bill a hefty bribe to 'accidentally' turn Jessica into a were-Scyther too. He refused at first...but after I threatened to dice him into Growlithe kibble, he got cooperative real quick." Choking back tears from the unimaginable pain he was experiencing, Kyle tried to crawl away...to no avail. Enzo kept the weakened Kyle pinned to the floor with one scaly foot. "I know what's goin' through yer head," Enzo claimed. "You wanna know why I was such a jerk to ya and Jess from Celadon all th' way to Indigo, even though Jess was my future wife. Well, th' answer's really quite simple: I didn't know it was Jessica I was crushin' in Pokémon match after Pokémon match, 'cause we'd never met before th' run-in in Celadon. It wasn't until th' weddin' - th' same one that ya wrecked - that I was finally able to match th' name to th' face. After th' weddin' debacle, I decided I just had to get ya out o' the way. So I devised th' plan with th' fake Lorelei. An' ya know th' rest." Enzo brought one scythe back. "My fiancée may be dead now, but ya know me...I'm not bitter. I can always get another. An' besides, I get to kill ya. That makes this whole 'Chasing Jessica' thing worth it in th' long run." "You may be a giant dinosaur-looking mantis," Kyle growled, "but I'm willing to bet that you still squash!!!" Kyle grabbed the same chair he had hit his head against earlier, then smashed the chair over the head of a very shocked Enzo. With blood running down the bottom of his left jeans leg, Kyle very painfully stood up, then punched Enzo across the face four times. The tough Scyther staggered, but did not fall. Enzo brought both blades back and tried to give Kyle a twin Slashing, but Kyle had seen the slow attack coming. Kyle jumped back, and while the double Slash did leave two long slash marks across Kyle's shirt, it did not draw blood. "Chuuuuu!!!" Cathode shrieked. The brutal fight that was now going on, joined with the loud wail of the EKG and the cries of the other frightened Pokémon in the E.R., was nearly scaring the young Pikachu to death. Seconds after Enzo roundhouse-kicked Kyle in the chest, Cathode responded to the intense stimuli the only way he knew how. He charged up, then filled the whole room with blue lightning. The Pokémon patients were protected from the electric blast by the anti-elemental glass that covered their respective recuperation chambers. But the other beings in the room were not so fortunate. The already-stunned Espio was shocked into deeper unconsciousness. Kyle and Enzo were both zapped into submission. Jessica's lifeless body bounced as it received the high-voltage jolt. The clatter caused by the Thunderbolt caused Nurse Joy, Chansey, and several random trainers to come running into the E.R. The still- conscious but punch-drunk Enzo saw that his opportunity to slaughter Kyle had passed, and made an erratic retreat. The black Scyther jumped through the hole that the writer had made in the E.R. window earlier, then flew away. The first thing that the dazed and considerably singed Kyle noticed when he stood up was that the wail of the EKG was no more. The slow beep had returned. Kyle's heart skipped a beat as he noticed the beep rate speeding up ever so gradually. "It...it's a miracle!" Joy exclaimed, as she put a stethoscope against Jessica's thorax and listened intently. "Scyther is recovering!" Quickly Chansey put the glass top back on the recuperation chamber in which Jessica was. Dizzy from blood loss, Kyle looked over at the worn-out Cathode, then fell to the floor once again. _It's like Torrasque is watching over us from the great beyond,_ Kyle thought, shortly before blacking out. Whenever I make an honest-to-Goddish attempt to write a really good story, I either break rules left and right ("Omega"), or fuck up the intended mood completely ("The Long Kiss Goodbye"). But the above story is dishearteningly unique, in that it has a little from column A and a little from column B... -_-; --K * A * R * N * I * V * A * X-- "Our wretched society is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road." --Voltaire Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy.