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- #2
-Chapter 1-
-Battle-
Her eyes snapped wide open. Breathing heavily, she tried to move her head to see where she was. All she could see were white walls, a white ceiling, and glaringly bright lights. Where was she? What was she doing here? Why was she in the middle of this empty room painted so white her eyes were burning? Why was she strapped to what felt like a table in the middle of it?-Battle-
...who even was she?
She paused to gather her bearings and gave herself a quick look over. She had a black torso and legs, blue and black fur, and strange rounded bumps on the front of her paws. She was a riolu. A pokemon. A creature with powers.
She tried hard to think about what else she could figure out. Unfortunately, she couldn't even scratch the surface.
'Okay,' she thought. 'Time to figure out a way out of here. Wherever 'here' is.'
Though she didn't have any memories aside from her basic biology, apparently, the mere fact that she was strapped to a table was a bad sign. The fact that right at that moment she heard a door open and footsteps nearing was even more of a bad sign.
She craned her neck to try and find the direction in which she heard the door opening from, but was stopped by a strong, calloused hand snatching the side of her face and pulling it forward.
Her first instinct was to glare harshly at her captor and struggle, “let me go!”
The man-a human, right-had the gall to smirk at her. With a buzz cut and clean shaven face, he looked absolutely spotless. He also looked like a punching bag. “Aw...does the little riolu want to go home?” He paused, then, “oh, right...you have no idea where your home is, now do you?”
He actually moved back a little at her retaliation. “Who the hell are you? Why do you have me captive? What do you want from me?”
The man let go of her face roughly and backed away, the smirk never falling. He began to pace back and forth, leaving her to stare back at the ceiling. Her ears perked carefully for a change in the man's footsteps.
They stopped. Then, “oh, how I wish Troy were here...” She frowned at the odd statement, but the man continued, laughing to himself. Actually, she wondered if the man were actually speaking to himself the entire time. “Well, there's no point in talking to the riolu...best get on with it, then.”
'Well, that confirms it then,' she thought. 'He was talking to himself. Weirdo.'
It took her a moment to be alarmed that he was approaching her, with a strange cube like device in his hand. She eyed it warily as he pressed a button on the cube and set it down right next to her before enlarging into a cage, trapping her inside.
The man unbuckled the straps tying her against the table, allowing her to move freely. Though, the term was to be used lightly considering the tight cage containing her.
She growled at the man as he leaned over to pick her cage up, humming merrily to himself as if he hadn't just moved her from one restraint to another. “Jerk,” she growled. “I wish you could understand me so I could give you a piece of my mind...”
Funny how, as the sentence stumbled out of her mouth, she realized something: she was a pokemon, and the man was a human. He couldn't understand her, no matter how much she yelled.
Even so, that didn't stop her from screaming profanities at the man as he took her out of the white room to even brighter colored hallways, filled to the brim with people in lab coats. The people kept shooting nervous glances at the man as he passed by them with her in his grasp, a few even asking if it was okay for her to be taken out so soon.
She had no idea what that meant, but it didn't stop her from shouting at them to back off anyway.
They arrived at what looked to be...a battlefield, with many other pokemon in cages surrounding it on all sides. More people in lab coats were in this room, carefully eyeing the pokemon in cages as if they were about to lash out. She thought this was pointless, as all the pokemon looked wholly submissive, with only a few letting out weak growls in retaliation.
'What am I doing here?' She wondered. She got her answer a mere second later when she was roughly pulled out of her cage without warning and tossed into the arena, causing her to inhale a bunch of dirt in the ground. “Ow...” she groaned and slowly pulled herself up.
It took her a moment to process that she was free. As soon as it sunk in, she whipped around and charged at the man, who calmly stepped back over the line of the battlefield, that stupid smirk still plastered on his face like a clown's.
She jumped into the air and pulled her fist back, ready to smash that stupid smile in to the ground...and then she froze. Mid-air. Her eyes widened as her heart plummeted into her stomach. What was going on? Why couldn't she move? Panicked eyes fluttering about, it took her a moment to realize why she had stopped in her tracks.
“A barrier,” the man said, maintaining his stupid smirk. She glared as she slowly backed away and shook herself off. “You're not going anywhere, Little Riolu.”
She scowled at him. He pointed behind her expectantly, as if waiting for her to turn around. She hesitated, before doing so. It wasn't as if there was anything else she could do by now, and the sounds of shuffling behind her had caught her attention. The scowl still kept on her face from having to listen to that man in the first place instantly died, however, once she caught a glimpse of a large pink pokemon in front of her.
An audino. The audino's knees were shaking as she weakly held her paws up as if ready to fight. “I'm ready...”
The riolu's eyes softened at the wide and erratic eyes of the audino. The audino kept glancing over her shoulder every few seconds, as if she were waiting for something to attack her from behind.
The audino didn't deserve this, just as much as she didn't. She took a deep breath and tries to strike up conversation, to try and understand what was happening, what the audino was doing here, but was stopped before she could speak a single word.
“Ready? Begin!” A voice called out, from a loudspeaker, making her ears ring. From the way the audino cringed, she knew that the fairy type felt the same, if not, worse.
'Are audino even fairy types...?' she briefly wondered where the thought had come from but snapped back to reality once she felt a huge weight slam into her, throwing her into the air and tumbling onto the ground.
She groaned and pulled herself up, wearily eyeing the audino as she did so. What was that move...?
“Take Down, again!” Another voice ordered-how many people were even here?
“Guess that answers my first question...” she muttered under her breath as the audino charged at her. She swiftly ducked under the audino's legs and ran from behind, her mind racing a mile a minute. 'What to do, what to do, what to do...' She braced herself as the man called for yet another Take Down before dodging out of the way yet again. 'I don't want to hurt her...'
“Double Slap!”
The riolu frowned as the audino charged at her, paws at her sides, emitting a strange light. What now? And why was the audino being given orders, yet she wasn't?
'What moves can I even use?' She wondered, before it slowly dawned on her. 'I can't use any,' she thought, horrified and unmoving as the audino struck her across the field. But she was too numb to react. 'I don't remember...'
She felt herself slowly begin to transition into a state of panic: she had no moves! She couldn't defend herself like this! Granted, she didn't want to hurt the audino regardless, but there was no other means of defense!
She gritted her teeth. 'All I can do is keep dodging...'
And so, dodging, she did.
The dance between the two pokemon grew tiring after a while, and Riolu wondered if things would be easier on her if she just let the audino knock her out.
If the audino could even manage that. The fairy type was breathing heavily, her eyes moving in and out of focus, and if her legs were shaky when she first entered the battlefield, they seemed to be completely made of jelly, now.
There was no way either of them could continue like this.
“Listen,” she finally spoke to the audino. “We don't have to fight. If we work together, we can get out of here.” She glanced around and frowned. “Wherever this even is...”
The audino straightened her posture, glanced back at the man calling out orders to her earlier-who currently seemed occupied by talking with another person, then carefully spoke, “...we're in the Battle Arena. Where we're put against each other to see how we fare in fights.” She swallowed, “some of us are even experimented on...”
Riolu frowned. “Who are these people anyway?”
“Cipher.” The audino spoke softly, briefly surveying the pokemon from the sidelines, all of whom looked rather unsettled. “They're an evil organization...world-wide...th-they're like Team Rocket but so much worse. Much, much, much, more worse...”
Riolu felt an involuntary shiver go up her spine. She had no idea who Team Rocket was, granted, but it still made her feel unsettled. A world-wide, evil organization? What on earth would this 'Cipher' want with her? What makes them so much worse than Team Rocket? And why does she not remember anything before she woke up?
Riolu glanced at the man who gave orders to Audino. “Do you not remember anything before you were taken here, too?”
The audino frowned, looking startled. “No,” she said. “Why do you-”
“Quit your chit-chat and fight already! Disarming Voice!”
The audino sent an apologetic glance at Riolu before opening her mouth, and causing an excruciatingly loud sound to ring within Riolu's ears. She startled so badly that she fell to her knees, vigorously shaking her head in an effort to get the piercing sound out of her ears.
She glared and looked up to see Audino charging at her again.
“Double Slap!” The man called out. Riolu jumped back at the last second, leaving the audino swiping at thin air.
She gritted her teeth and took a deep breath. She wanted desperately to continue her conversation with the audino, but worry for the pokemon overtook her-she couldn't attack back, or else Audino might collapse.
Her heartbeat sped up, and involuntarily, a series of thoughts pounded through her heat, increasing in rhythm, falling steadily in line with her heartbeat-
What can I do?
She jumped over the Audino's head, narrowly avoiding another Body Slam.
What can I do?
Her breathing quickened.
What can I do?
She heard a low humming sound as the backs of her eyes grew hot. Sweat dripped down the side of her face. What was happening?
What can I do?
What can I do?
What can I-
And then, something snapped. She wasn't sure what it was, but something in her made Audino stop in her tracks, staring at Riolu with such incredulity she looked like Riolu had died than promptly come back to life.
She briefly took note of the murmurs coming from the pokemon around the room.
“Are you seeing this?”
“No way...”
“That's super weird...definitely not like any other riolu I've seen.”
“Well, what have you seen? Golden Aura is not normal!”
“Wait, Aura's supposed to be blue, right? I'm from Sinnoh, so I should know...”
“Everyone quiet down!”
“Shut up, Espeon!”
“If you continue to be this loud, we'll get punished. So stop-”
'...Golden Aura?' Riolu looked down at her paws to see that she was, in fact, emitting a golden glow around her body. 'This is...golden Aura?' As the pokemon were berated by the humans for their chatter before quickly quieting down, a brief murmur of “I told you so” came from the espeon, and Riolu thought back to what she overheard one of the pokemon shout a second ago.
'Aura's supposed to be blue, apparently,' she thought. 'So why is mine golden, of all colors?'
“That's enough,” another man says, and she scowls as soon as she recognizes the voice as belonging to the man who she first woke up to. “Put the audino back in her cage. You,” he pointed to a woman in a lab coat, “take the riolu back to the containment room. We'll resume normal training regimen tomorrow. For now, shut it down for the night.”
Riolu frowned as the woman approached her with a cage in hand. She growled at her in retaliation, though was cuffed on the back of her neck by the woman's hand. “Ah, ah, ah, little one,” the woman chided as she grabbed Riolu by the scruff of her neck and roughly threw her inside the cage before slamming it shut. She leaned in to the bars of the cage, a feral grin plastered on her face, as she locked it. “Now, you be a good girl...”
She knew it probably wouldn't help her situation, but as the woman carried her to her “room”, she couldn't help but long to slap the woman across her face.
The woman took her back to what Riolu recognized as the room she had woken up in. It seems that she didn't want to try to take Riolu out of her cage, so she just plopped the cage down on the table and tied it to the table instead. The woman looked over the bonds a few times before nodding re-assuredly to herself and hurrying out the room.
Riolu was left alone to succumb to her thoughts.
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