Twilight Always Falls
Part 4
Light. Then pain, and the light intensified.
A blinding white light that seemed to dance seductively, but just barely out of reach as it attempted to saturate the soul within it completely, soaking into the being to make it one. “Am I dead?” Movement, and the light wavered, splitting into two barely discernible black shapes. “Where am I? What happened?” “I think he’s coming around sir.” An angelic voice. “Good, as soon as he’s strong enough for phase one of Twilight, do so immediately, don’t even contact me, just do it and contact me afterwards, got it?” And the contrasting voice of the devil himself. “I-I get it sir.” “Right, stay with him, and take care of him, though the accident was staged, he’s still injured.” The man recognized the two voices, and the accident they spoke of, but he had thought it was a true accident, why had it been a fake? “B-But Jessie, what about her?” he thought to himself.
“What about his friend?” He managed a small nod and shut his eyes again tightly as the light became so intense it burned. “Who? Jessie? She believes he’s dead, just as the other, she is no longer of my concern, for all I know she’s slashed her wrists or jumped off a cliff, I don’t really care, but I’ve got a gym challenge now, I’ll be back to check later. Take good care of my new project Deirdre.” “Yes, Giovanni, sir, and good luck.”
James felt the tears sting the corners of his eyes, never even hearing Giovanni leave the room as a small groan of remorse escaped his throat, and he was able to utter a single, weakly spoken word, “Jessie.” “Shhh, don’t strain yourself,” Deirdre’s soft voice whispered, and James opened his eyes again. He struggled to keep them open under the soft florescent lights he recognized from the Team Rocket labs, and frowned at the young lavender haired rocket clad in a tight, form fitting lab coat. “Deirdre,” he muttered distastefully, his handsome features twisting in disgust.
Deirdre looked away from James’ still form shackled to the experimentation table, and bent over the first syringe, filled with a dark blue liquid. She let her impending tears fall as she knocked it roughly away from the small dish filled with cool water, and picked that up instead, placing it in her lap as she turned back to the captive in front of her. “I’m so sorry James, I’m so sorry, but it’s not in my hands,” she whispered wrenching the water gently from the cloth she had prepared. “I told you what happened between us, Deirdre, I was so happy… I trusted you,” James replied with difficulty.
The young woman pressed the damp cloth against James’ fevered forehead gingerly, caressing his cheek with her thumb affectionately. It was true she disapproved of what Giovanni had done, but in the back of her mind she knew she wanted it as well. She was in love with James, had been since the first moment she saw him, and the prospect of the experiment actually being completed with him, being able to train him to hone the natural powers of the transformation, then perhaps taking him for herself, the ultimate weapon as Giovanni called him, delighted her. She could have cared less about the red-haired slut he called his best friend and the woman he loved, and now that she could taste victory, she found herself realizing the insanity behind her thoughts, while slipping ever deeper into it.
“But I love you James, please don’t be angry with me,” Deirdre whispered, forcing her sadistic and intimate thoughts away. “No you don’t, you’re just like him, you’re in love with whatever he’s going to do to me! Let me go Deirdre! This is wrong!” James cried, gathering the strength to struggle against his bonds. No answer came from the lavender-haired youth as she shut her eyes bitterly, clenching her teeth as the burning conflict within her surged to life with its malicious fangs that threatened to tear her apart, both body and soul, the blazing irises opening again with the fires of hell behind them. “I know!” she shot back, standing so swiftly and furiously the chair she had occupied crashed to the floor and casting a look of pure hate towards her captive. “I know it’s fucking wrong! It’s sadistic! I watched Butch die with tears in his eyes for Cassidy! I went to both of their funerals! Giovanni didn’t even want to have a mock one for either you or Butch! He doesn’t fucking care! But I do James! I care a lot… And I…I don’t love you, I love what you and Jessie are, you’re just so perfect, and so were Butch and Cassidy,” she paused, retrieving the needle from the drawer to show to James, “in here, is what killed Butch and his Cassidy, your future, as Giovanni’s slave. The Twilight Project.”
James swallowed hard, and barely felt the hot tears slide down his temples and through his tangled and matted blue tresses. “What’s he going to do to me?” he asked piteously. Deirdre could barely stand the child-like fear and confusion in his voice, and his piercing and pleading emerald eyes that gazed with pure betrayal and longing behind them at her. “The twilight project, is another of Giovanni’s sick dapples in the realm of genetic engineering. After his Mewtwo project failed, which was to enhance a Pokemon, he-He absolutely went insane, and that’s when he thought of turning a human being into one of his “weapons”,” Deirdre explained solemnly. “Mewtwo?” James muttered, confused.
Deirdre slapped herself lightly as she recalled that both Rockets and Meowth had been stripped of all memories of the psychic wonder she herself had helped create and sighed deeply as she realized she had been instructed to inform James of his fate. “I’ll tell you later,” she replied off handedly, unable to continue. James sighed as well, and looked back toward the young scientist sitting on a low stool next to him, forehead cupped in her hands despairingly. “So Butch was an experiment, and now- Now I’m the lab Rattata?” he asked in a small voice. Deirdre looked up, her reddened eyes meeting James in a tacit explanation and exchange of her true feelings of the psychotic old man’s plans for him, and yet James could see something else behind them, something she didn’t want him to know, but he could feel that he would find out sooner than later. “The injections can be very painful, because at first your body will reject the transformation we’re trying to make. Which makes me realize, the modifications on the mew DNA were what kept killing our experimental Mewtwo specimens, because Giovanni demanded an enhanced clone,” she replied, not bothering to answer James’ question.
The blue-haired youth frowned, closing his eyes in remorse as he finally realized what had befallen his teal-haired friend. “So that’s what killed Butch, and what will kill me,” he whispered solemnly. “No James! You have to make it! You have to pull through, do it for your friends! Do it for the woman you love! She needs you, and you need her, and I just know you can escape from this!” Deirdre protested, “he thinks he can control you! Just like Mewtwo! Don’t let him James! Please don’t give up, I can’t stand it if I have to watch another human being die at my hands! Don’t you fucking dare die on me! Not again! Not again!”
Deirdre fell to her knees sharply at this, sobbing bitterly and loudly into the palms of her hands as she pressed them into her face, furiously gripping her scalp as if her head threatened to explode, and screamed at the top of her lungs. “I can’t do this anymore!” she screeched to the dull, electric blue of the lights on the ceiling, “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t!” She lay down on the floor, too exhausted to sit up any longer, and coiled into the smallest ball her body would allow her, repeating her previous words convulsively to herself as she rocked gently. It was James’ tender voice that eventually brought her back to her senses, as she realized he was calling her name gently. “Deirdre, get up, Deirdre please get up,” he whispered softly, gaining only the attention of her eyes, “there’s nothing you can do. Get up, and do your job, if Giovanni wants me, he can have me for now, and we’ll find a way out of this, I promise.”
Deirdre sat up gently, pressing her back onto the cold metal of the table behind her and bringing her knees from the floor into a weak fetal position, shaking her head gently. “No, Butch didn’t make it past… God I don’t even remember, but he wanted so badly to hang on for Cassidy! And she was already dead! He loved her so much, and he lost his life anyway, James I don’t want to watch you wither away and die liked I watched him!” she whispered hoarsely. “Cassidy loved Butch too, with all of her heart, and she took her own life for him. He…Oh lord, oh god no, oh please don’t let Jessie do that, Jessie I’m not worth it! I promised you I’d always find a way home! That I’d never leave you! I won’t Jessie I won’t! I promise! Please don’t give up!” James sobbed, bursting into tears as he remembered the vow he had made to her before the accident that had taken him away from her, and realizing he had broken it.
The phone situated upon the metal desk Deirdre rested against rang through James’ hysterical crying, and the young woman slowly rose to pick it up, her face set into a hard scowl as she brought the cold plastic to her ear. “What?” she answered cruelly. “Well I was victorious as usual. How’s my boy?” Giovanni asked brightly. “Your- Uh, James is better than we previously thought, you planned the accident well sir, we should be able to begin the procedure-“ “Today.” Deirdre was interrupted from her suggestion they begin experimentation the next day by Giovanni, who had much different plans for the captive Rocket. “S-Sir, with all due respect, I believe we should begin tomorrow,” she protested nervously. “I’ll be down in a few minutes, have the gentlest serum ready,” Giovanni hissed and hung up abruptly.
Deirdre sighed deeply closing her eyes as she coiled her fingers about the cold, unforgiving glass of the blue-liquid filled syringe she had previously knocked so contemptuously away. “Yes sir, right away,” she muttered into the dead line and slammed the receiver down with a vengeance.
The violet hair sweeping over her shoulders caught James’ bleary eye briefly, and he looked just in time to see Deirdre wheel a small cart with an odd array of medical equipment atop it next to the examination table on which he lay. His breath caught in his chest as he looked downward to the bottom rack which held an elaborate area for the storage of hypodermic needles, all filled with a spectrum of color, and labeled in chronological order in phases. He noticed the slot for phase one was empty, and felt his stomach twist in terror as he looked up in confusion to the horrifying sight of Deirdre gently flicking air bubbles out of a blue filled syringe.
She sighed and re-capped it, setting it down atop the metal cart and moving to a nearby chair for her tanned suede coat. “Wait, where are you going?” James asked fearfully. “After I finish phase one? I’m going to go get a nice order of some hot Sake and Sushi at the local bar, and tell them to hold the Sushi. Look for a drunk driving crash in the news tomorrow,” she replied emotionlessly. “Deirdre,” James began, shaking his head in disapproval, but he was interrupted by a sharp jab of pain in his neck.
He cried out in pain, and felt the numbing surge of liquid flow into his body from the cold metal of the thick needle. He snarled under his breath and shot an icy glare at the Rocket standing next to him with the now empty syringe in her hand, paling visibly as it dropped to the floor to shatter. Breaking glass was the last sound audible in James’ ears as his world swirled with color as the serum took affect, moaning in physical and mental anguish. “I’m so sorry James, please forgive me,” he barely heard Dierdre’s soft voice just outside of his ear, his emerald eyes opening wide with the foreign and utterly excruciating feeling of the injection. He could almost feel it surging throughout his entire body, soaking into his being, his soul, becoming one with him, changing him. The shards of ice hurtling at inconceivable speeds through his veins threatened to tear free of his body, ripping it to shreds in the process, and as James finally opened his mouth to scream, he found he could no longer breathe.
The pain rose in a hideous crescendo, and the young man finally forced the air from his lungs, shrieking a loud as they would allow as his body finally gave up the struggle, lurching grotesquely forward, then falling back to the cold, indifferent metal. A small sigh of relief exited the young man’s lips as the light faded from his wide and panicked emerald eyes, and Deirdre was instantly at his side, fingers beneath his jaw and her other hand at her mouth. “No James, don’t give up on me,” she whispered, and upon feeling a strong and steady pulse beneath her fingertips, sighed in relief, “I’m so sorry sweetheart, but I won’t let Giovanni go past any phase I think might kill you, I promise. Sleep now, and when you wake up, training will begin.”
Deirdre kissed James’ fitfully slumbering lips tenderly, brushing his matted blue hair out of his face affectionately before standing, nodding to the shadowed figure in the doorway, and brushing apprehensively by it on her way out. The figure stepped forward into the dim light above his experiment, noting that he slept much more calmly than his previous test had, and smiled, looking to the rainbow shroud placed so delicately into a plain wooden rack. The meager light deepened the groves in his face and distorted his features as he picked up the brilliantly purple filled syringe, and looked to the young man on the table thoughtfully, resting his palm against his fevered and sweaty cheek, and lifting the glass tube to the light.
It glimmered deeply purple and malicious webs upon his own face and James’, dancing upon his ashen skin and closed eyelids, reflected off of the still resplendent cerulean locks. It beckoned to be used, to be known, to merge, and infect a mind with its deadly poisons and take root there forever. It spoke to Giovanni, told him it wished to become one with the boy it had allowed him to select for the honor of receiving its powers, to rip out his heart and feelings and feed upon them, simply to give a heartless puppet to the man it deemed worthy, and the chosen one closed his eyes thoughtfully as he received the message. Giovanni debated whether or not to disobey his scientist’s word and proceed much sooner with the transformation to obey his serum, and decided with a smile, that he now knew why the first specimen had died with the introduction of the purple solution to his battered and dying body. “It’s the strongest one,” he mused, “and it should have been done when the body was still strong as well, not after being weakened by the preceding injections.”
James didn’t stir from his sleep as Giovanni drove the thick needle into his neck where the mark from his first was, viciously pressing the plunger to trigger the burst of burning, noxious fluid into the youth’s body and smiling when he did not react. “This is working my son, your spirit will be broken, you will submit to me, and you will do my bidding, whatever it may be that I ask,” he whispered cruelly as James’ still body twitched gently in various places.
Giovanni kissed James’ forehead gently before standing up, and tossing the empty syringe next to the other on the metal cart. He walked silently to the doorway and turned the lights off, shutting the heavy metal door behind him, and entered to correct code for it to lock, bleeping at him in satisfaction, then adding with an indifferent and robotic voice to have a nice day.
Giovanni walked briskly away, calling his beloved Persian to his side for the gym battle he knew he was inevitably late for, and didn’t even notice the dull blue glow from beneath the metallic barrier. He didn’t hear the soft drip of water to the tiled floor, or see James’ placid, dulled, and now moss green eyes open, they too, glowing with a gentle blue as his vision met with nothing but blackness. The young man was oddly composed as he shut his eyes to a gorgeous crimson specter, dancing seductively just out of his reach, and though he knew he could never reach out and touch it, it comforted him. He opened his eyes and to his astonishment it was still there, the first warm and benevolent thing he had seen, and it seemed to chase away the blackness with two brilliant Sapphires, which smiled delicately upon him. Sleep, they told him, sleep and you’ll be alright, and he heeded their request, though he never wished the beautiful and loving vision to end, as he closed his eyes at last when he realized what it was, his final words before falling into a feverish sleep the entity’s name.
“Jessie…”
@->->-
“James? Come on James, sweetheart, wake up!” “J-Jessie?” “Yeah Jimmy! Don’t make me use my fury swipes on ya!” “Meowth too? But, how’d they find me? I thought Giovanni told them I was dead.” “Meowth! Do, and I’ll wring your scrawny neck!” “Am I dead?” “Geez! Calm down Jess! I ain’t gonna hoit yer precious James! Just wake ‘im up a bit!”
James’ eyes snapped open violently at the final comment from his cat friend, and he sat up with a cry of confusion and fear. Hadn’t he just been shackled to a cold metal examination table? Cold, scared, in pain, and utterly alone? “James? You alright?” His eyes finally focused on his surroundings and he found that he was sitting beneath the shade of a beautifully blossoming Sakura tree in a public park. It was pleasantly warm, the light pink flowers cascading in the swift breeze to a brightly colored blanket set beneath it set with a nearly completely devoured light lunch and gingerly lacing the long plume of crimson hair he knew belonged to only one person. He looked to the side to see his beloved Jessie, hands cupped lovingly about his face as she gently brushed his flower laden hair out of his eyes, and he reached out to touch her cheek, tears gathering in his eyes. “Jessie? Oh my god, Jessie!” he cried, pulling her into his arms, the sudden realization hitting him.
Jessie hugged him back willingly, calming him and stroking the back of his head reassuringly as he began to cry. “Shhh, it’s okay James. Don’t cry, it was only a nightmare, don’t cry,” she whispered, putting the pieces of why her friend was crying together. “Jess, it was awful! They staged a car accident, and I was in it, only I didn’t die, but you thought I did and they were experimenting on me, and I think I died and I broke my promise never to leave you!” he sobbed, holding her more tightly. “Who? Giovanni?” Jessie asked. “Y-yes, and Deirdre, she was the head of it, a-and she said that she loved me, but then performed the procedure! After I told her that I had finally admitted to you that I love you! And I really hope that wasn’t a dream too,” he said, his cheeks flushing bright pink.
Jessie laughed and pushed away slightly, pressing her lips against his gently to assure him they had admitted love, and the feeling was mutual. “There now, better?” she asked lowering her eyes deviously as she wiped the tears from James’ cheeks. “Yeah, scary dream, but I’ll be okay now,” he replied. “Good! Now you can chase me through the field! Come on Meowth!” she yipped as she jumped from the ground, her sheer white dress flowing behind her as she ran, barefoot, into the vast field below the hill that bore the tree that James had slept under.
He laughed in response, and stood to give chase, but as he looked upon the angelic form of his beloved prancing happily within the fragrant rainbow, a dark shadow of death reared across the landscape. As the shadow passed, the flowers shriveled and died in the blackness, the putrid and pungent odor of blood reaching James’ nose, and he closed his eyes against it, making a move to run to the aide of his beloved, but found himself unable to lift his feet from the ground. He reached out to her, too utterly terrified of the entity to speak, tears once again streaming down his cheeks as he noted the glossy black glint of a gun held in death’s bony hand. Jessie stopped in the shadow of the tall figure of the dark man, and stepped backward fearfully as an unfelt wind whipped the black cloak about his stocky frame hideously. He pointed a finger at Jessie, then leveled it at Meowth as he extended the hand that gripped the pistol, blood dripping from the sleeve of the black coat, cascading in a scarlet shower of malignancy to the slowly withering and now gray flowers beneath her. “Jessie! Meowth! No!” James finally shrieked, and the second she turned to look in his direction, the bringer of death cocked the gun in his hand, to which Jessie wheeled back around, her hair exploding above her head framed by a listless sun, a final shroud of flame as she reached out to her beloved. “James!” was all that left her lips as two shots sounded in the deathly silence, and a brilliant spray of bloody scarlet exploded from her chest as she crumpled to the ground.
“NO!” James wailed, falling to his knees as he watched the light fade from Jessie’s eyes, her gaze turning upward, lifeless irises forever staring intently at something just barely out of her grasp. “Never James, never,” the figure moaned as the landscape became completely gray, the only color Jessie’s radiant halo of crimson hair spread above her head on the ground, her inanimate and blindly staring azure eyes, and the pool of brilliant dark red blood spreading beneath her and Meowth.
James buried his face in his hands, sobbing, and only when he felt the hot thick liquid in his palms he brought them away, and his vision blurred with red to discover he cried not tears, but blood. “You killed her James! You murdered an innocent, her blood is on your hands,” death, moaned in hideous synchronization with the winds. “No! I’d never hurt Jessie! I’d rather die than hurt her!” he replied angrily. “You killed her, you killed her! You left her, and you killed her, you broke every promise you ever made to her! She hates you, and now she always will.” “No! We loved each other! I would never hurt her!” “You’re a traitor James, you betrayed everything dear to you. Traitor!” “NO!” “Murderer! Wicked, black-souled heartless demon!” “NO! Damn you! NO!”
James leapt to his feet as death’s wailing became excruciating to his ears, running as fast as his legs would carry him to Jessie’s grotesquely sprawled body, throwing himself upon her when he finally reached his friend’s side. “Jessie! Jessie! Jessie! No, Jess. Oh Jessie, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” he sobbed, cradling her still and apathetically cold body against his own. “You can’t be dead, please Jess, please answer me, wake up Jessie!”
James stared into the dead eyes of his beloved, the glazed pair of sickly blue stones staring not back at him, but through him, and when he could stand to look at them no more, closed them gently with his fingertips, rocking her gently in his embrace. “Prepare for trouble,” he started, knowing it was Jessie’s line, but hoping and waiting for her to continue, and when she didn’t, he would start again, but her sweet melodious voice never came. Instead, a cold, brutal wind whistled through the barren and stone landscape, with the same uniform, jagged rocks laced with black, the only color the red blood on his hands, and spilt upon the once perfect ground. Even Jessie’s once gorgeous mane of hair faded to gray as James watched, leaving the only thing to stand out, the blood, a painful reminder of his horrendous deed. “I…I’ll never leave you Jess, I’ll never leave, Never, never, never,” he repeated to the rhythm of his gentle rocking oblivious to the crying, sobbing, and screaming of unknown voices carried upon the wind.
Then suddenly, above the howling, and billowing beautifully above the land, a white veil descended upon the trio, and James looked up as he felt a gentle warmth embrace him gently. “Don’t leave me James. Please don’t leave me, please hold on. Everything will be alright you’ll see! I love you James, I love you so much, please just open your eyes, open your beautiful eyes for me to see. I need you James, I need you.” James looked up, swearing he heard Jessie’s voice beckoning him to return, and hugged her limp form closer to his body, knowing it could not possibly be her voice. “I’m right here Jess, and I’m never going to leave I promise!” he whispered as if she could hear him, kissing her forehead gently, “I love you.”
The light enveloped him further, and he felt it wrap around his waist brutally, hauling him to his feet as he was forced to close his eyes against the familiar burning. He let Jessie’s body fall from his embrace, screaming her name as his head spun with a thousand colors, feeling himself plummet from an unseen unfelt location to what he knew was his doom below him. “Come back to me…James…” James didn’t bother to answer as his name echoed within his mind, the only sensation the hot blood of his tears brutally being blown across his cheeks, leaving a trail of crimson behind him as he fell, faster and faster until at last, nothing.
@->->-
“How is he Deirdre?” Giovanni asked gently, smiling at James’ oddly lucid and tranquil features. The young scientist sighed, rubbing her throbbing temples sore with hangover ruefully and checking the chart she had started the day James had lapsed into a coma. She was unaware that Giovanni had used a second injection the first day of experimentation, and after the young man had remained lifeless for three days, further medical examination showed what her employer had done, and a grim prognosis of events to come. “I hate to say it sir, but I believe proceeding with the complete series of injections while he was unconscious may have cost you your specimen,” she answered bitterly sincere.
Giovanni’s emaciated face flashed with fury, and his icily spiteful gaze was turned with hatred toward the lavender-haired girl sitting by the table. “What are you saying Deirdre? He’s not dead, I haven’t lost him yet!” he chided her sharply. “I’m saying,” she started, desperately trying to hide her tears, “I’m saying that I don’t think he’s going to wake up sir.”
Giovanni drew back with a small, childish gasp of fear, all at once feeling the dreaded emotions he’d felt when he’d been informed Mewtwo had gotten away, and that he had failed. The same emotions he’d so guilefully hidden when Butch had succumbed to the deadly poisons of the Twilight project and died on the very same table right in front of his eyes. Something in his mind snapped, and a furious burst of frustration flared to life within his tortured soul, clenching his fists to avoid breaking something important. “W-What?” he choked, unable to grasp the devastating words. “Look, he’s been in a completely unresponsive coma for two months now, he isn’t showing any signs of coherent brain activity, I think it’s time you face the facts,” Deirdre replied, gently stroking James’ pale cheek.
As if to respond, a small groan rose in his throat, and a glittering diamond of a tear rolled down his cheek, whispering something vaguely under his breath. “Never…Jess…Never.” Deirdre blanched at the small utterance which only she had heard, cupping James’ chin gently in her palms. “James? Oh my James, come on!” she pleaded, stroking his cheeks. “I knew he’d make it!” Giovanni cried victoriously.
James’ dull and faded, now mossy green eyes slowly slid open, staring with nothing but contempt at the oddly familiar black figures that loomed above him. “W-Who? Where’s Jessie?” he asked groggily. Deirdre softened her gaze, running her hands through James’ silken blue hair as she kissed his forehead lovingly. “We don’t know sweetie, she’s been missing for about two months now,” she replied gently and James looked sharply away. “Don’t call me that,” he growled, “but-But is she alright?” Giovanni scowled, knowing exactly what he needed to do as he sat on a small metal stool next to the cold metal table on which his experiment lay. “We told you we don’t know, you lost her James, this is where you belong now, and this is the only place you’ll be appreciated,” he sibilated roughly.
James closed his eyes as he felt the hot trickle of tears down his cheeks, and he instantly gasped in terror, placing a hand to his eyes and pulling them away to ensure they weren’t covered in blood. When he verified they weren’t, he let them fall unabashed, looking piteously up to the duo that hovered over him like parents over a sick child. “A-A dream?” he muttered, finally realizing what the terrible vision had been, and a tiny, meek gasp of terror exited his lips, “I-Is she dead?” Deirdre felt her own tears fall at the utterly hurt, betrayed, and twisted look of child-like fear on her beautiful James’ face, and took his hand gently. “We don’t know where she is, but we didn’t kill her, so I’m sure she’s alright,” she whispered tenderly.
James snarled under his breath at her, and she gasped at the, not grateful reaction she had expected as the youth narrowed his eyes bitterly in contempt. “You did this to me!” he cried, his eyes flushing a brilliant but icy blue. “No James, please, you have to believe that I love you more than anything in this world! I would never hurt you!” she replied backing away as she felt the hair on the back of her neck tingle. “It’s too late, you already have hurt me!” James sobbed, and Giovanni looked on with a smile as his young scientist was surrounded by an ethereal blue aura, and gently lifted from the ground.
“You belong here with me James! Together we can be great! You’re the ultimate weapon! You’re invincible! Join me James!” Deirdre cried frantically. “NO!” was the youth’s only response, and the lavender-haired woman barely had time to scream before being hurled roughly through the air to strike the wall at sickening speeds. She fell roughly to the ground as the blue aura faded, and James looked on in disbelief, unaware of the hideous grin shining like a white beacon in the darkness behind him, plastered upon the craggy face of Giovanni. “W-What happened?” James inquired meekly, and looked mournfully into the definitive gaze of his oppressor. “From now on, James LeBlanc is dead, you will feel nothing, regret nothing, you will cease to be, except as my ultimate weapon,” he hissed vehemently. “Your what? I don’t understand! What the hell are you talking about?” James queried again, the panic rising in his voice. Giovanni was oddly composed as he put a hand on his creation’s shoulder, caressing it gently, then clamping down on it as if to emphasize his previous point of his new being.
He then gently picked up James’ hand and pressed his thumb into his wrist, smiling as he could just barely feel a small ridge in the otherwise perfect flesh, massaging it tenderly. He sighed in pleasure, knowing that all stages of the experiment were complete, and his living breathing, functioning, as he had just proved, entity was right in front of him, and he pressed harder, just to ensure that the faint but distinct ridge was in fact beneath his thumb. “Do you feel this? Concentrate on what I’m touching right now, I know you know what it is,” he mused softly. James raised an eyebrow, making no attempt whatsoever to reach out, or to feel, but his eyes widened as he realized Giovanni’s touch was an altogether new sensation.
He stared at his arm in wonder, and watched the gnarled and cracked hands work their way across his translucently pale skin, suddenly aware of an odd feeling deep inside of his being. His mind felt open, and much more vast than it had ever felt before, and he could still feel the ice of the first injection searing through his veins, pacified by a more intense rage of fire within them as well. He looked at his other hand, utterly transfixed at the odd and jumbled mix of sensations he could not place, and a spark of cold blue electricity rose from it, crackling warmly in the deathly silence as Giovanni released James’ other hand. “Now do you see what I mean? Go ahead, try it, experiment, learn,” he said softly.
James extended the hand, and his eyes went wide with fear as a long green vine extended from the base of his palm, hanging like a malevolent specter before both men in midair. James gasped, and shook his head as if to clear it, squeezing his eyes shut until a celestial dance of colors swirled before his vision. “No! No it isn’t true!” he moaned. The vine twitched as he commanded it, and James knew it belonged to him. “How…Is this possible?!” he screeched, his formerly gentle eyes wild with a primal fear raging behind them, “What have you done to me?! What the hell am I?!”
James felt his soul burn, like someone had reached inside of it and torn it in half, devouring one, and gruesomely mutilating the other as he watched. The thought of that man, the man who had beaten him, called him worthless, insulted him, caused him to hate only one person other than his fiance, experimenting on, tormenting his body while he was soundly in a terrifying realm of death and blood, made him sick. Visions danced before James’ eyes, the sound of laughter robustly poured forth from the broad chest of the snarling black beast of death standing beside him blurring into an indescribable roar in his ears. “This is a nasty stage, but once you learn to control your powers, you’ll be alright my son, I promise you’ll be alright.”
James opened his mouth to scream, but a deafening wail of voices rose in his ears, and he managed only a small cry of terror as he lurched forward, savagely gripping the sides of his head. They spoke nonsense, and he screamed at them to stop, electricity writhing about his body as he felt it reach inside of him, seething into his being, beating back his sensible mind, the kind caring person he knew he was, and charring his heart black. He knew neither what he was, nor the purpose for his being any longer, and as he finally realized what had happened to him, he watched as what little he had retained of his sanity slipping through his fingers like slick and aqueous sand.
The voices rose in a rapid crescendo, and James finally forced the sir from his lungs to scream, falling to the cold metal of the table and coiling against his own body. “Stop it, leave me alone!” he cried, “stop tormenting me!” “James get a hold of yourself you worthless fool! If you can’t control the powers they’ll destroy you! You fucking idiot!” Giovanni screamed, and this time, the blue-haired young man heard him. “I…I can’t! What are they?! I can’t control… What I…” his speech was interrupted only briefly by a ghastly scream of agony, “I don’t, understand!”
“You do understand! Concentrate! You stupid ignorant fool! I knew giving you the psychic powers was a mistake! Focus James! Focus damn you!” Giovanni roared, slapping the incapacitated young man harshly across the face. James snarled in anger, and narrowed his now bitterly ice blue eyes at the man, and grinned with relish as he too, flared with an intense blue aura, just as Deirdre had before he had. “I’ll kill you, you psychotic old man! I’ll kill you so slowly you’ll barely know you’re dying! All you’ll know is the pain! Rising steadily until you go even madder than you are! You deserve to suffer for what you’ve done to my Jessie, and to me!” he hissed abhorrently.
Giovanni held up a hand calmly to the capriciously jerking and convulsing young man, reaching forward ever so gently as his mossy eyes glazed with pain and fatigue, the blue completely draining from them and the choking psychic grip on Giovanni’s body releasing gently. “Shhh, you’re just a little confused, and Deirdre tells me she ‘forgot’ to tell you exactly what the twilight project is, think you can stay focused and awake long enough for me to explain?” he asked gingerly, and caressed James’ cheek gently. James nodded, and closed his eyes, trying to make sense of the voices in his head, and the odd perceptions he felt everywhere in his body.
“The twilight project, is my second, and perfected dapple in the realm of genetic engineering to create an ultimate weapon, and I can sense you now remember Mewtwo,” he began, to which James nodded solemnly, “Well that Pokemon was an utter failure, so I began anew, looking to make a more powerful creation than ever before. You may think I wanted to win Pokemon battles, like with my previous attempt, but I decided that to get more power I needed to strike fear into the hearts of the people. I needed to make them grovel at my feet, make them beg to be spared, plead to be treated mercifully, but as soon as they caught sight of the oppressor, know instantly that mercy, and benevolence, would be things of the past. You are that oppressor James, I have combined your body with Pokemon DNA, and the transformation was perfect! Just like you, as the candidate for this experiment, are perfect. You, my dear James, are now capable of using any type of Pokemon attack known to humanity.”
James’ breath caught in his chest, and he shook his head in utter disbelief. “No, no that is not possible!” he whispered hoarsely. “And why not? You just demonstrated a lovely confusion attack on poor Deirdre, a beautiful vinewhip, and the beginnings of a variety of electric attacks! Look at yourself! How can you not believe?” Giovanni asked smugly, and James gritted his teeth, the thought of what the psychotic old man had done to him permeating his mind numbly. “You’ll never get away with this, never!” he seethed, the silent tears running down his temples and landing resiliently into his carefully preened cerulean locks. “I already have James, and you’ll be sorry to know that this, is your life now. No one will have you but me, not even Jessie, if she thought you were alive, you’re no longer a human, you’re not even a Pokemon, you’re mine, and you are an assassin,” Giovanni hissed condescendingly. “No, Jessie loves me, and I love her…I…I couldn’t kill anyone, please don’t make me,” the youth whimpered in response. “Love is for the pitiful and weak, and you must learn that your heart serves one purpose, to keep blood flowing through your veins. You can kill and you will, but sleep now, and in the morning your training will begin,” Giovanni said sharply and stood, nodding to a rather dazed Deirdre standing at the door, “Remember, you don’t belong in any world but your own, you won’t be accepted anywhere else, I’m the only one who cares about you. Love is always conditional, and it isn’t a true emotion don’t trust it. Stay here and be safe, leave and you’ll die alone and miserable.”
James clenched his teeth harshly to conceal the sobs that wracked his body as he heard the harsh electronic voice of the door telling Giovanni and Deirdre to have a nice day, and let his tears fall under the harsh, yet dull neon glow of the dying halogen lamps lining the ceiling. “It’s not true, I know Jessie loves me! Our love is eternal, because I fell in love with her the second I saw her.” The youth coiled into a tight ball, his knees against his thundering chest to comfort him, rocking himself gently in a cruelly vain attempt to ease himself back to sleep.
No rest would come for the desolate young man that night as he cried into the bitter hours of the night and into the early morning, oblivious to the joyous songs of the larks, which chased away the more haunting melodies of the Nightingales. All James knew was the freezing metal upon which he lay, and he could almost feel it seeping into his being, telling him to lock away his heart, hide it so it wouldn’t be broken, freeze it in time and always remember the blazing love he knew he must dim to mere embers which must never be extinguished. The voices sounded in his ears repetitively and spoke to him of what they deemed his useless heart and feelings, telling him to betray his soul mate, for she was not of the same species as he, and she must be forgotten. James knew then he would never see anyone he loved again, and drove back his feelings and emotions viciously, now ashamed of the tears that would not abate of his own will. He dreaded with the utmost abhorrence what was to befall him upon the morrow through the entirety of the night, and eventually allowed his glassy, lifeless eyes to drift to the small slit Giovanni had deemed a window to see a thin ray of melancholy blue light of morning cascade like a beam of ice to the linoleum floor.
Reaching out to touch the cold energy, James pondered as to whether or not he was capable of the attack the light had reminded him of, weakly extending a hand to the floor. A shrill shriek of energy as the thinly weak blue beam shot forth from his trembling palm and to the floor in a mocking pile of ice from a perfect ice beam attack confirmed his horrid suspicions.
Completing an offensive maneuver on his own accord, albeit a weak one, caused a hoarse and subdued sob to escape James’ burning throat, and he pulled his hands into his body defensively, finally slipping into a light sleep before the inevitable torture that would follow. The desolate youth slept fitfully, nightmarish visions of blackness, and the mere sound of demented and sadistic laughter echoing perfectly and sharply in his ears, bloodied from the tears of blood he cried, and the gauges his fingernails had scraped from his flesh. He knew what terrors awaited him come the ironically bitter and leeringly golden light of morning, and what would be so for the rest of his eternity as Giovanni’s personal slave, his perfect weapon, a cold and heartless assassin, James LeBlanc.