The Human Species Ch. 4 - Remorseful Vampire Zerobi by BlazingSkies < Submission

Keywords pokemon 175399, human 100538, red 16884, lucario 11249, weavile 1454

“Welcome to my home!” Zerobi said triumphantly as she and Lucario entered a fairly small room. She had carried him all the way to the mountains he had seen in the distance earlier, where he dismounted her and promptly gave up on any plans to act macho. She had then led him into a cave and where they went through a very long and complex system of paths within, making the room they had just come across almost impossibly difficult to find. Looking over the room, Lucario could hardly see anything because there was only a very small source of light. With what little he could see, he was able to make out a bed in the corner and what appeared to be magazines thrown all over the place.

“Hehe…” Lucario snickered sarcastically, “Must be hard keeping the place clean with the constant stream of visitors you’re getting.”
“It’s a cave, there’s really not much you can do about it…” Zerobi sighed as she at long last shed the cloak she was wearing. Lucario stared eagerly, having been curious about the creature that lay hidden underneath it ever since he first saw her.

Lucario had never seen anything like it before - She was standing on two legs and had two arms, but the similarities to a human being ended there. Very fine black fur covered her entire body, so thin it could easily be mistaken for skin. Her figure was both slender and elegant, but Lucario didn’t even notice that as he was busy staring at a set of strange red feathers sticking out of her head, neck and tail. She also seemed to be holding on to a couple of very sharp-looking blades with her hands, but at closer inspection Lucario noticed that they actually WERE her hands!
“Ah… Huh?” Lucario couldn’t help but say as he tried to take it all in, “What the… Are those…!?”
“… I’m not that weird!” Zerobi yelled in embarrassment as Lucario gasped, just having noticed a yellow crystal between her eyes.
“Whoa!” he exclaimed while pointing at it, “Right between the eyes, what a scary place to get an implant!”
“I-Implant!?” Zerobi stammered and was taken aback by his confusion, “I got this when I evolved into a Weavile! It grew out of me!”
“… Holy shit, it’s organic!?” Lucario yelled in disbelief as he reached out to touch it, “No way!”
“Whoa, whoa! Don’t touch me!” Zerobi shouted as she took a step back from the approaching paw, noticing some dried up blood on it. Lucario halted himself and let his sight slowly shift down the body of the Pokémon in front of him. His eyes stopped between her legs as they suddenly saw something that made them widen in shock.
“Y-You’re a girl!?” Lucario gasped while visibly flinching.
“Just where the hell are you looking!?” Zerobi shouted as she was getting really mad at him, “You couldn’t tell from my voice!?”
“Well…” Lucario mumbled to himself, not having thought about it sooner since simply getting used to hearing animals talk had been strange enough.
“You oaf! You ungrateful jerk!” Zerobi kept going, slowly remembering why she rarely had guests over in the first place, “Is this how you treat your savior!?”
“Sorry! Sorry!” Lucario apologized, deciding to keep his curiosities to himself before they get him into more trouble.
“Hmpf…” Zerobi exclaimed before tossing her cloak behind her, making it land gracefully on the bed.

“You know, I’m appreciative and all, but…” Lucario said in an embarrassed way as he looked her in the eyes, “… Why did you save me?”
“H-Huh?” Zerobi stuttered as she was taken off guard and quickly came up with a lie, “… Surely you don’t need a reason to save someone’s life?”
“Hmm?” Lucario said, so surprised by her answer that he bought it without a second thought, “You’re surprisingly reasonable for a Pokémon.”
“… What do you mean?” Zerobi asked before mentally telling herself not to press her own lie.
“Nothing…” Lucario sighed in disappointment, for some reason thinking back to the little penguin that he had left behind, “I was just hoping that you’d be a bit more… Human.”
“Human…?” Zerobi mumbled, still mad from earlier, “Alright then, let’s go back, you seemed to be getting along just fine with that trainer…”
“No, I don’t mean it like that!” Lucario replied quickly, not thinking of what to say next, “I just… Well…” Gathering his thoughts, he remembered that so far the only human he had encountered had been a bastard maniac, while Zerobi and that penguin had actually been helpful and nice. Suddenly, he realized that in his desperation he had not only fled like a coward three times in a row, but abandoned someone to a fate neither animal nor man deserves and still had to get himself rescued to even survive.

In the heat of the chase and battle that followed he had not really thought about it. Now, the remembrance hit him like a stack of bricks as shame welled up in his stomach and he began to feel sick, his head spinning as if he was going to faint. He kept himself from collapsing on the ground in defeat, but it was more difficult than he had imagined it to be as he for the first time in his life truly felt like a pathetic loser.
“Damn it… What have I been playing at…!?” he whispered as he slapped himself across the face. He barely felt it, the wound on his right shoulder already far more painful, but somehow it made him feel a bit better. Like he still had a chance to turn things around if he just put some effort into it.

“Um… You need any help with that?” Zerobi asked awkwardly, not having noticed his inner fight as she had been too busy staring hungrily at the blood seeping out of the wound the icy spike had left on him.
“With what?” he snapped back while looking at her sharp claws, “Making it wider?”
“… Smart” Zerobi mumbled, trying her best to quench her thirst. Five long years had passed since she was even in the same room as blood, and she had promised herself to resist any urge that might pop up.
“Listen, you should probably know something about me…” Zerobi suddenly said while looking down at her own body in disgust, “Don’t ever let any blood get on me. I can assure you that bad things will happen.”
“Like, the blood types will mix?” Lucario responded, for once trying to jump to his own conclusions instead of being oblivious to everything, “Yeah, that’d be bad.”
“Huh?” Zerobi exclaimed, realizing that Lucario had just somehow lied to himself in her place, “No… I mean…”
“Don’t worry!” Lucario told her with a new resolve, “From now on, thing will be different! I’ll fight seriously this time around!”

“… By the way…” Zerobi muttered while slowly falling back on the bed, “Why was a weakling like you being chased by a legendary like Suicune?”
“W-Weakling!?” Lucario gasped, scoffed and spluttered at the same time, “Man, you’re SO wrong! I’ll have you know I’ve been fighting and training all my life!”
“Sure didn’t seem like it, out there…” Zerobi said, leaning back and enjoying the soft feeling against her back, “Why didn’t you use some of those fancy fighting-type moves?” Lucario chuckled sarcastically at this, thinking back to how hard it was for him to simply walk with his new body at first.
“How the hell am I supposed to suplex a six foot tall canine!?” he shouted, making Zerobi sit up in surprise, ”I mean, apart from punching or kicking it, there’s really not much else I can do.”
“Wow, are you really that inexperienced?” Zerobi asked, thinking back to what she had read about fighting-types back in school, “What about the Aura Sphere, or the Aura Stor-“
“Damn it, why does everyone keep saying ‘Aura’!?” Lucario interrupted her while throwing his arms up into the air, remembering the Piplup from earlier. The wound on his shoulder hurt a bit, but not as much as before.
“Well… You ARE an Aura Pokémon, right?” Zerobi asked even though she already knew the answer.
“Am I?” Lucario responded.
“… You’re kidding me, right?” Zerobi said, staring at the wolf-like creature in front of her in disbelief. Lucario suddenly stopped himself. For some reason, telling Zerobi that he was actually human did not seem like such a good idea. So far he had told everyone he had met about it, and everyone seemed so surprised by it… It must be as unnatural as he first feared. Earlier he did not care what animals thought of him, but Zerobi was different. She was… Cool. She also seemed to have some kind of grudge against humans, what if she started hating him all of a sudden? For the time being, he decided to dodge the subject.

“The last time I checked, I was a blue wolf on two legs” Lucario said confidently, “What do you expect me to be able to do, anyway?”
“Like, shoot blue spheres of energy and stuff…” Zerobi replied as her chest and back started itching a lot, “… I’ve had bad personal experiences with it, myself…”
“Blue spheres…” Lucario snickered to himself, but then realized that in a world of monsters and magic, he might not be all that different. Thinking back to the Combusken he fought, right before knocking it out it had produced some sort of strange light that melted the snow and burned through the ground.
“Oh, cool!” he suddenly exclaimed, “You mean I’m able to do all sorts of awesome stuff, too?”
“You would be less of a dead weight in battle, that’s for sure…” Zerobi mumbled, lying down on the bed again. She was really quite tired from running so much.
“Wait…” Lucario said and quickly looked over himself, “How? How do I do it?”
“How should I know?” Zerobi shrugged, which felt weird as she was in a vertical position, “I’m an Ice and Dark-type Pokémon. Try finding the aura first, and then shoot it out of your hands.”
“Find the aura…” Lucario said as he crossed his arms and thought hard, “… Ha! I get it!”
“… Y-You do?” Zerobi stammered, surprised that her aimless advice had any effect.
“Yeah! That thing that makes me sense creatures around me…” Lucario exclaimed happily and tried finding the strange sensation that had been lingering in him ever since he switched bodies, “Hmm… I must have that in me, too… Now, to focus it…”

Staring intently at his right arm, Lucario had no idea on how to go about it and simply tried to push every inch of his being into his hand. This proved to be as a mistake, as his hand suddenly exploded in a ball of blue flames, making both Lucario and Zerobi gasp.
“GRAAAAAAAHHHH!” Lucario screamed, his right hand feeling like it had been blown off and set on fire at the same time. Falling to his side, he went from convulsing in pain to wiggling pathetically on the ground as the blue flames slowly died off by themselves. Zerobi sat up quickly and ran up to him to see what was going on. The flames had dissipated by the time she made it there, as Lucario was clutching his badly burned left hand and groaning.

“Hah…” Lucario coughed, his voice hoarse from screaming so loudly. Turning around so that he was on his back, he held his left arm up into the air. Zerobi saw that his left hand still had all its fur on it, but the involuntary twitching told her it was actually very damaged.
“Hahaha! HAHAHA!” Lucario laughed as he was lying down, “I did it! HAH! TAKE THAT!”
“That wasn’t exactly a sphere” Zerobi said with an impressed tone in her voice, “But it sure looked like aura!”
“Heh! I’ll get it right this time!” Lucario said as he quickly leaped up on his feet and held out his left arm, “Or should I say, left!” Zerobi took a step back to see what would happen, worried that the whole Pokémon might explode into a sea of blue flames this time. Instead, Lucario was just standing completely still while gritting his teeth.
“Huh?” he said after a while, “Why’s nothing happening…?”
“You’re gonna strain your arm if you-“ Zerobi started, but was interrupted as a torrent of blue flames shot out of Lucario’s left elbow.
“AAARRGHHHH!” he bellowed as he once again fell down, this time stopping his descent on his knees. His elbow was burning brightly as he tried covering it with his right hand, but only succeeding in burning it even further. This time, Zerobi was prepared and started freezing his left elbow in hopes of dousing the fire.
“AAAAHHHHH STOOOOOP!” Lucario wailed as his arm became frozen, but the blue flames still burned within the ice, “GRAAAHH MAKE IT STOP DAMN IT!”
“I… I don’t know how!” Zerobi stuttered helplessly as the ice melted and the flames once again died off. Lucario collapsed forward as she thought about saving him, but remembered the dangerous blood on his shoulder and let him land on his face instead.

“B-Bastard…!” Lucario growled accusingly as he entered a coughing fit.
“Hey, it’s not my fault!” Zerobi said, getting a bit worried as Lucario was struggling with getting up this time.
“Not you…” he mumbled, not being able to decide which wound to clutch anymore, “Damn… I’m never doing that again…”
“Huh?” Zerobi exclaimed surprised, “Wait, what happened with your determination?”
“You have NO idea how much that hurt” Lucario said as he finally rose to his feet and shook his head violently, “… It’s like my insides were set on corrosive fire.”
“That bad?” Zerobi asked, not sure if he was being serious or not, “That’d make it a pretty good weapon should you learn how to use it.”
“Yeah… I think I’m gonna lie down for a while” Lucario said weakly as he wobbled towards the bed as a strange sensation suddenly hit him, “… By the way, are you expecting any visitors?”
“No” Zerobi replied as she thought about where she would sleep if the bed was occupied, “You’re the first one in five years. Why?”
“Just that I can sense the aura of something right outside the cave…” Lucario kept going with exhaustion in his voice, “Something pretty big…”
“Hah! Don’t worry!” Zerobi laughed while crossing her arms, “You know what a labyrinth this place is! They’ll never find it, I’ve been hiding here for-“

Zerobi was interrupted as the two of them heard a loud crash somewhere above them. They both stared up into the ceiling as another crash was heard.
“Oh shit, it’s coming right for us!” Lucario suddenly yelled, “It’s punching through the walls!”
“What!?” Zerobi shouted, as the room they were in exploded in a cloud of dust as something dropped down from above, smashing so hard against the ground that they could feel it shake. Lucario tried hard to stay on his feet and wiped some of the filth off his eyes as the cloud settled, revealing a large beast carrying a trainer on its back between himself and Zerobi. The airborne grime dissipated from the top, and made it so that the first thing they both noticed was a certain color emanating from the trainer on top…

Red

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

“Dad!”

“S-Son... Run...”

“No! I won't leave you behind, dad!”

“No... You need to-”

“I-I'm not scared... I'll stand my ground, and-”

“Listen... To me... For a second...”

“D-Dad?”

“... Get Pikablu...”

“H-He's not here, dad...”

“Run... And get Pikablu...”

“But... but what about you!?”

“I'll live. You... Know... I will...”

“D-Dad...! Alright, j-just... W-Wait here a moment, and I'll... I'll get Pikablu and Mom and Sis and the Gallade and we'll save you!”

“... Please... Not... That last one...”

“... Oh no! Here they come again!”

“Son... Know that your old man will always be proud of you.”

“Dad...”

“Now, RUN!”

“...”

“...”

“... You?”

“... I have a wife… And two children…”

“... So do what you will...”

“... For my lineage... Will still carry on...”

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The Human Species Ch. 4 - Remorseful Vampire Zerobi

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