Monster: Chapter 4 (Shadows of the Fallen)

--WARNING: THE FOLLOWING STORY CONTAINS SCENES OF GRAPHIC VIOLENCE UNSUITABLE FOR YOUNGER READERS. IF NEED BE, THEEEVEEWARRIOR WILL TURN ON THE MATURE FILTER. STILL, IF YOU ARE EASILY SCARED OR HAVE A FEAR OF BLOOD AND GORE, THEN TURN AWAY NOW. BY READING FURTHER, YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THEEEVEEWARRIOR IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY TRAUMA OR LOSS OF SANITY THAT MAY RESULT--
--YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED--

CHAPTER FOUR
Shadows of the Fallen

    With a grunt, I kicked open a vent cover and slid out of the maintenance tunnel onto the floor below. Lemme tell ya- you've never known true frustration until you've spent a good hour and a half trying to navigate those damn tunnels. It's like trying to solve a ten-mile-wide maze without looking anywhere except where your pencil is. And don't even get me started on the tunnels themselves- those things are cramped as hell, barely wide enough to admit a mid-size pokèmon, and holy shit are they dirty. Seriously, since these things were made for the upkeep crew, you'd think someone would bother bringing a fucking broom down there once in a while.

    Mumbling a few curses under my breath, I began to brush the dust and grime off my body, examining the room I was in all the while. Looks like I had gotten lucky- there was a sign on the wall not five feet away that read "Air Recycling Center and Filtration System" with an arrow pointing down a nearby hallway. Perfect. I thought, tossing aside a random bit of banana peel- don't ask me how that got there, I honestly don't fucking know either. Now, I thought, slowly walking down the hall, still cleaning myself off, if memory serves, I'm gonna have to go through decontamination first. Let's hope the AI still works around here...

    I wasn't wrong; after about a minute of walking, I found myself in front of an airlock. Carefully, I stepped inside and stood on one of the bright white circles on the floor. Instantly, the AI kicked in. "Please remain still while the decontamination process takes place." I knew better than to move when the computer said that- despite having never been to the Filtration Center, I had heard quite a bit about how germaphobic they were. These guys had actually enhanced the decon sequence for their department to include a number of... unusual things. Such as the anti-bacterial gas that quickly filled the room. I held my breath and waited for the thin pale-blue fog to dissapate. While that happened, a wall of ultra-low-power lasers appeared over my head and moved all the way down to the floor before returning to position. I felt a slight tingling feeling as the red energy field ran over my body, destroying any and all contaminants I may have been carrying.

    Finally, the computer vented the gas and opened the other side of the airlock. "Decontamination complete. Have a nice day." I released the breath I had been holding and walked out into the hall beyond, wincing as the tingling feeling persisted. Now, I had heard about side effects for the laser grids, such as an occasional nosebleed or a filling vaporized here and there, but I never heard of something like this. I glanced down at my arm to see that it was turning... pink? Not "jigglypuff" pink, mind you, but something like-

    Oh, fuck.

    The transformation hit me like a brick a second later. I collapsed to my knees as my gengar body reverted back to its human form. However, I had used humanizing rings in the past, and this felt nothing like that. For one, this transformation fucking hurt. Every fiber of my being was writhing in sheer agony as the massive amounts of dark energy in my veins were forced down and contained in a state that wouldn't instantly kill the human me. For almost a solid minute, this transformation stretched on as my body returned to that of an eighteen-year-old human. I felt the transformation even return my clothes to me, although a black T-shirt and jeans didn't exactly make me feel safe with all these hybrids around.

    Then, it was over. I collapsed as the sensation faded to little more than a slight tingle, then vanished altogether. After a few moments, I muttered "just fucking perfect" and got to my feet. After so long without a human form, it took me a few seconds to readjust to my old body. Luckily, there weren't any Lurkers around to catch me off-guard. In fact, as I glanced around the large, sterile-white hallway, I couldn't see a single person anywhere, living or dead. "H-hello?" I called, slowly walking down towards a steel office door at the end. I could hear something, a voice behind the door, muffled by the metal between us. Taking a deep breath, I put my hand on the doorknob, wincing as static electricity zapped my hand, and pulled the door open-

    Wait...

    WHAT?!

    Past the doorway was, put simply, nothing. Nada. Empty void. Black space stretching in all directions as far as the eye could see. In the darkness, I could hear faint voices whispering, their words lost in the echoes of the vast emptiness. Tenatively, I leaned out the doorway and looked around, confirming my suspicions that I had somehow opened a doorway to oblivion. Suddenly, out of absolutely nowhere, ceramic floor tiles flew out of the void and formed a thin pathway in front of me. "What the fuck...?" I whispered, carefully taking a step out onto the pathway- it held. Slowly, I stepped out onto the physics-defying surface as more tiles flew out of the darkness to form a long, winding path far into the distance. Slowly, I started following the tiles, trying not to look down as I went along. I heard a loud slam behind me, and, when I whirled around, the doorway I had just come from had completely vanished.

    I gulped and continued onward. What the hell have I gotten myself into? I thought, noticing that voices were becoming ever-so-slightly louder with each step I took. After about a minute of walking, the voices abruptly stopped, the void becoming as silent as a tomb. I froze, slowly looking around for anything else this place could throw at me. Nothing. Just the path. Carefully, I took another step forward-

    And a loud, inhuman shriek split through the silence, causing me to cover my ears from the sheer volume of the noise. I glanced behind me again, and my heart just about stopped when I saw that the path was now collapsing behind me, falling into the oblivion below. Cursing, my ears still covered as the earsplitting scream continued, I started running forward along the path of tiles, hoping that I could outrun... whatever was causing them to fall. I could see something up ahead, an island of some sort with a thick grey fog over it. I pushed my legs to their limits, sprinting for that island as fast as I could as the falling tiles began to outpace me. Wincing as I took my hands off my ears, I dove off the path as it vanished beneath my feet and barely caught the edge of the floating island. Groaning, I pulled myself up and rolled onto my back, thoroughly exhausted from that little exercise. My human body wasn't anywhere near as strong as my gengar form, lemme tell ya that. About five seconds later, I finally noticed that that terrible screaming had stopped, vanished with the path as it tumbled into the endless void below.

    After about a minute of resting, I pulled myself to my feet and looked around to see... a headmaster's office? Don't get me wrong, it didn't look exactly like a headmaster's office- everything was semi-transparent, for one, although I'm not sure how I could tell against a black background. I could see an uncomfortably familiar bisharp standing there, just as translucent as everything else, staring at a female zoroark sitting in the headmistress' chair.

    The zoroark gave the bisharp an apologetic look. "I'm sure you know why I asked you to come here." "I would've come regardless of your intentions to tell me or not." The bisharp growled back, and I was finally able to identify him- Daniel Bryson, the same man that stopped Nightmare a year before. The zoroark sighed and glanced down at her desk. "You know why I put you on probation from active PRT service, right?" "Yes, yes I do, and it's a bullshit reason." Daniel replied, placing his hands on her desk. She didn't react to his movements, instead calmly saying "We can't be sure if the interaction with Nightmare has altered your mind." "Of course it has, Luna! I was fighting for my life against a dark lord from the Pokèmon Era! Of course it changed me!" "Then you know that we can't risk you going out into the field anymore, Daniel. If you suffer a PTSD attack during a mission, it could kill you." "I don't have flashbacks, Headmistress." "You know full well what I mean. You're too unstable to keep going on missions. Or did your last mission in Portland not make that clear enough?"

    For a minute, they were both silent, then Daniel finally said "I've got the powers of a deity, Luna. I'm more use to you on the front lines-" "No, you're not, Daniel!" she said, her voice fraught with a mixture of frustration and concern. "Ten pokèumans that could've been rescued ended up dead because you underestimated your own power!" Both fell silent for a moment, then Luna whispered "We can't risk that happening again. I'm sorry, Daniel." With a grunt of frustration, the bisharp turned and walked out of the office. As soon as he left, the entire scene vanished, leaving me standing on a lone island of black rock in the darkness.

    What in the name of Arceus...? I wondered, my eyes still fixed on the spot where they had been, expecting the two of them to reappear at any moment. Instead, the faint voices began to whisper again, only I could understand them this time. Slowly, the voices grew louder, filling the void with their ghastly words. "He has no idea." "Led like lambs to the slaughter." "The darkness will consume him." "Nothing can handle this kind of power."

    "Wake up."

    A light brighter than a thousand suns appeared right in front of my eyes, blinding me for a second. When that light faded, I looked around... to find that I was back in the Filtration Access Hallway. Cautiously, I opened the door again, but there was no void beyond it this time. Instead, I was looking into a large warehouse-like structure, with storage crate upon storage crate piled high- maintenance supplies, no doubt. I glanced around one last time to make sure I wasn't hallucinating, then took a deep breath and walked into the room.

    Have you seen Indiana Jones? You know that huge warehouse at the end of the first movie where they hide the damn Ark? The place that's a mile-wide maze of boxes? Well, that's what this looked like, except the boxes were steel and much taller. I'm gonna need to get a good view if I want to find the Recycling Center. I thought, taking a step back before running up to a ground-level crate and jumping at it, grabbing the top edge and pulling myself up. I repeated this three more times, slowly working my way up the mountain of storage supplies, before I finally reached the top. With a vigilant gaze, I looked around in an attempt to find any sort of doorway that could lead to the Recyclers. Let's see... wall, wall, wall, wall. Dammit. No, wait! "Ah-HA!" I laughed, my eyes locking onto the sterile-white doors on the far north side of the room. With a few careful bounds, I made my way back to ground level and set off to the north.

    That's when everything went to hell. The instant my shoes hit the deck, I heard a loud, feminine giggling noise echo through the vast warehouse. For a second, I thought it was Nightmare again, but this voice sounded a lot older- and a hell of a lot more insane. With the psycho orb-thing, there was a hint of innocence masking the insanity in her voice at all times- not now. Whatever was giggling in here was not Nightmare. Doing my best not to make any unnecessary sounds, I made my way towards the Recycling Center. The voice just kept getting louder, then softer, then louder, then softer again, as if whoever was giggling was just roaming around aimlessly. I had made it most of the way to the doors when my luck finally ran out. I walked around the corner of a blue storage container-

    And found myself staring at what looked like a dark gardevoir, sitting on the floor and giggling like a maniac. Now, I certainly know what gardevoirs are supposed to look like, considering that I worked with Gavin. This thing looked nothing like that. The usually-white robes were charcoal-black, and the other highlights on her body were various shades of red. The pink horn that most gardevoirs have was completely missing on this thing- in fact, I could actually see a glowing crimson scar on her back where the horn should have been. Slowly, she craned her head around to look at me, and I saw a demented grin plastered on her face, a look made only more creepy by the crazed, demonic look in her pale-white eyes. I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that this is what Nightmare meant when she was talking about "Jesters." I thought, slowly backing away from her as she got her feet, giggling evilly all the while.

    Just as I was about to run, my entire body locked up like a freaking statue. The only thing I could move was my eyes, and that didn't really help except to let me see how I was about to die. Slowly, ominously, the Jester rose up into the air, her demonic giggles become even more terrifying with each passing second. Desperately, I struggled to turn and run, but something blocked me at every turn- the Jester! That damn thing was paralyzing me! Memories of the Nightmare incident report came back to me, reminding me of a little something called a Wanderer. Damn damn DAMN! I cursed inwardly for not noticing the similarities earlier. NEVER trust a psychic hybrid! The Jester reached out into the distance and I saw something fly across the warehouse into her hand. Slowly, still giggling like a madwoman, she held it out to me, and I realized in horror what it was- a revolver. I fought her influence as she made me reach out and take the gun, but I literally couldn't stop myself. The damn bitch was too strong. Dramatically, she made me place the barrel of the hand-cannon under my chin-

    And I collapsed to my knees as a wave of sheer agony washed over me. Instantly, I knew what had happened, and I could not thank the universe enough for it. PERFECT timing! I thought, grinning as I turned back into a gengar. Dark energy washed into my veins, blasting the Jester's influence out of my head. With a shriek, the gardevoir/gengar hybrid (as I would later find out) flew up into the air and into the rafters as I raised the revolver and fired off a shot. I knew by the metallic ping a moment later that I had missed, but it didn't matter right now. This warehouse was full of heavy objects, and I had no doubts that the Jester could use telekinesis. Unless I wanted to get crushed, I needed to get out of there fast.

    Of course, she wasn't gonna make it easy for me. As soon as I started running, a large orange storage crate fell from the ceiling and almost crushed me. I winced at the thunderous bang that the impact made and darted around it, making my way towards the exit on the north wall. I saw a flash of red up on the rafters and fired two shots at it. There were two pings, two missed shots, and three multicolored crates sailing down from the ceiling to crush me. Nimbly, I dove out from under the first crate and lept on top of it as the other two fell into place to the left and right of it. Clever bitch. I thought, firing off a random shot at the ceiling, which naturally missed. She was trying to cover any possible escape path I could take, and that last trick almost got me. I jumped onto the top of a large pile of crates, hoping to get a height advantage on this thing-

    Only to feel a force about as strong as a freight train ram into my gut. My breath left my body in a loud huff as I was catapulted halfway across the room and slammed into the floor. Gasping, I got to my feet and leaned against the wall- wait, a wall? I looked up to see that the Jester had just launched me exactly where I wanted to go. Maybe she isn't as smart as I thought. Ignoring her stupidity, I made a mad dash for the door- and lept back just as fast when a blue shipping crate the size of a bus flew out of nowhere and smashed into the wall, leaving a two-foot dent in the titanium plating. I turned in the direction the crate had come from, only to be slammed into the wall by the Jester, still giggling just as madly as ever. She raised a psycho-cut to kill me-

    And I pulled the trigger on the revolver. The shot flew out of the barrel and hit her in the belly with a wet crack. In that split second, I could almost hear the bullet as it tore through her stomach and flew out her back. The Jester gasped in pain, and I realized that, for once, she wasn't giggling. With a roar of defiance, I re-aimed the gun and put a second bullet through her chest, punching a clean hole in her left lung. She dropped me and collapsed to the ground on her back, convulsing and gasping as her lungs filled with blood. And worst of all, despite being in massive agony and probably dying, she was still laughing, a sound made even more horrible by the wet gurgling sound of her choking on her own blood all the while. For a few seconds, I just stood there, pressed against the wall as a pool of red formed under her, then I finally decided to have pity on the damn thing and put the last bullet through her skull. Then, the warehouse was silent, save for the sound of a gunshot echoing into the distance.

    For almost five minutes, I didn't move an inch, still in shock from my near-death experience. Finally, I tossed aside the empty revolver and walked towards the doorway a few feet away, my gaze never leaving the dead Jester, that demented grin still plastered on her face. That had been one of the most horrifying things I'd ever seen, and certainly one of the scariest experiences of my life. I shook these thoughts out of my head as I walked through the automated doors into the Primary Filtration Center.

    Instantly, I regretted that decision. Once, I'm sure that these pale-white walls and flourescent lights had inspired a sense of sterile healthiness, but the blood and corpses had long since ruined that image. A number of the lights were hanging down on the walls, others were flickering as if someone was playing with the switch, and still others were shattered, leaving sharp glass on the floor below. Juust great. I thought, tiptoeing around the shards of broken glass. I was almost certain that there were more of those Jesters around here, a fact soon confirmed by the faint sound of mad giggling, so one false move would alert them to my presence. And without that revolver, I wouldn't stand a chance against them if they found me. And of course it was not five seconds later that I heard a loud glassy crunch under my feet.

    However, while I expected the Jesters to come running, I was not ready for what happened next. There was a bright flash down at the far end of the passage, accompanied almost instantly by an impact on my shoulder and holy SWEET JEEBUS THAT HURTS! With a cry of pain, I ducked behind a cubicle as another flash lit the area, and this time I heard the telltale cough of a silencer. Wincing, I glanced at my shoulder to see large quantities of shadowy fog pouring out of a large hole in the joint. As usual, the wound healed itself, but I felt slightly lightheaded afterward. Great. The healing drains my stamina. Absolutely PERFECT! I involuntarily growled a little bit at the end of that thought, an instinctive reaction to the fact that someone was trying to kill me that wasn't a mindless psychopath. I heard the mystery sniper yell "Don't come any closer! I've got a bullet trained on your position and I will take your head off if you don't walk away right now!"

    Great, NOW what am I supposed to do? As far as I knew, there was no other way into the Filtration Center from here that didn't involve going back up into the city, and I was not going to deal with The Beast again. I needed to find some way around this idiot, and I wasn't willing to straight-up fight him for two reasons; One, I was sure he wasn't bluffing, and Two, I still wasn't really sure how powerful I was and I didn't accidentally want to take his head off. Of course, I normally would've just used Shadow Sneak to get past him, but I still couldn't get it to work for some reason. Cursing under my breath, I focused as hard as I could on using that move-

    And my entire body turned invisible. I yelped in surprise, which caused the sniper to send another bullet through the wall and almost through my face. I waited a few seconds, then tried again and was shocked to see my entire body fade into nonexistence. Looking closely, I could still see a slight blur around my limbs, but it would near-impossible to see in this darkness. However, at the same time, I could feel my stamina draining uncomfortably fast- the invisibility was taking quite a toll, apparently. Gonna have to move fast! I thought, dashing out into the open and past the sniper, who I recognized as... "Owen?" I whispered, pausing for a moment to look him over. He was currently hiding behind a pile of bodies with a silenced Dragunov Sniper Rifle. There was a long, bloody gash down his right leg, deep enough to expose bone. No wonder he wasn't running; I doubted that he could even walk.

    Owen must have heard my voice, because he jumped slightly and pointed the Dragunov in my direction. "W-who's there?!" He called, his finger twitching on the trigger- a fact that made me slightly nervous, considering that the barrel of the rifle was currently right between my eyes. I backed up a foot and slowly put my hand on the rifle, pushing it out of my face before uncloaking. The zoroark yelped and jumped back a bit, readjusting the Dragunov again. "P-Peter? Is that you?" I nodded slowly and replied "Yeah, Owen. It's me." For a second, he kept his finger on the trigger, then he lowered the rifle out of my face. "Holy shit, man..." He whispered, looking me over. "What the hell happened to you?" "It's a long story, and we don't have much time. Those damn Jesters must've heard all this commotion, so we need to get out of here ASAP." The zoroark nodded and tried to stand, but his injured leg buckled under his weight and sent him back down to the floor. I rushed forward to help him, but collapsed just as quickly when a sudden headache erupted in my brain. A second later, though, it was gone. Owen reached out to help me up-

    And a carbon-black claw wrapped itself around his throat. I watched in terror as The Beast lifted him into the air, its claws digging into his throat. I could see Owen struggling, trying to reach the Dragunov, but it was just out of his reach. I tried to move, to attack, to do anything, but it was no use; my body had completely frozen up. I could only watch as The Beast raised its other claw into the air and plunged it deep into Owen's chest. "P-peter..." He gasped, choking as the claws rent his heart and lungs asunder. He took one last, ragged breath... and fell limp, blood trailing down his dead body as The Beast pulled its blood-soaked claw out of his chest and tossed the corpse aside. Slowly, it turned to face me again, that demonic growl filling the hallway as it gave me a murderous glare.

    No... I thought, staring at the lifeless body of my former roommate. No... I am not letting that son of a bitch get away with this! I didn't even think twice about my next action- with a roar of anger, I leapt towards that damned zoroark and punched him in the gut, grinning as I saw a perfectly-formed Shadow Punch erupt around my fist. The blow landed with a sharp bang, launching The Beast at least thirty feet down the hallway. I charged forward to finish that bastard off, but it quickly leapt to its feet and unleashed a powerful shadow wave that blasted me through the door on the far end of the hallway. Cursing, I pulled myself to my feet- and immediately jumped backward as a razor-sharp claw slashed across the floor where I had been a moment later, sparks flying as The Beast tore jagged holes in the titanium surface.

    It was about then that my rage finally dissapated and I was able to hear the rational part of my mind screaming "RUN THE FUCK AWAY!" I obliged instantly as a shadow ball grazed my face and left a sizeable dent in the wall behind me, dashing down an adjacent hallway as The Beast let out a roar that shattered every piece of glass within a hundred feet. BAD DECISIONS BAD DECISIONS BAD DECISIONS- I screamed inwardly, darting around corner after corner as The Beast pursued me without mercy. I would cut around corners- it would blast through walls. I would leap over corpses- it would just barrel right through them. Why won't this damn thing just give up?! Desperately, I rounded one last corner-

    And found myself standing over a gigantic pit, dark enough and wide enough that I couldn't see the bottom. "Shit!" I cursed, looking down into the chasm with my enhanced vision- still couldn't see a damn thing. Any other day, I'd just float down, but my ghostly abilities were still inactive- until I could fix that, this was a dead end. I spun around, hoping to double back before The Beast could catch up-

    Only to be blasted off the edge of the pit by a shadow wave. "SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!" I screamed as I fell into the darkness below. There was a loud bang and a spike of pain as I bounced off something, then a metallic crashing sound, and then I heard and felt no more.