The Red Stripe

Somewhere, deep down in her throat, something was itching.

Usually, this simple fact would have already put Denise out of her mind. She was a singer. Well, an aspiring singer. It had always been her childhood dream, ever since she could remember. Unlike most childhood dreams, however, by a mix of chance and talent, she really had the chance to realize hers. But she knew well that those weren't even nearly enough. Endless practice and hard discipline were a given to reach results in any discipline, and she had never shied away from them. So, she had always searched for a balance between taking an extreme, even obsessive care of her ”singing organs”, from her mouth, to her vocal chords, lungs, and diaphragm, and focused, almost mindless practice. There was the stomach too, despite most people not knowing of its use in the noble vocal art, but that was a whole different thing.

The last thing she remembered was sitting in her room in Lumiose, a warm mug of chamomile between her hands as she inhaled the flowery scent rising from it, soothing her lungs as she tried and failed to calm her nerves and shake off an incredibly wide and silly grin printed on her face and the soft giggles escaping her lips. The task was made even harder by her little fuzzball Wubby, the most adorable Noibat of the world, comfortably sitting on her lap and looking up at her with absolute adoration with his big, sparkling, yellow eyes while he rubbed his poofy chest against her trying to get her attention and some cuddles, small and innocent like a child.

Then she had fallen asleep, and when she had woken up, her whole body felt weird, she was missing her hands and Wubby didn't look so small anymore.

The itching grew worse, now almost a pressure at the top of her lungs as she struggled for breath.

"Momma? You hurt? Momma?"

Oh, and she could understand what he was saying too.

"W-Wubby... please... just... just be quiet, ok?" she whispered in reply, having the feeling that if she had talked any louder, of she had dared to take breath any deeper, the lump in her throat would have exploded. It didn't, but she could still feel her eyes burning and watering up.

At the very dim light filtering through the borders of what ought to be some oversized door, as big as the wall itself of the dark room they were currently inside, she could barely make out the now humongous figure of Wubby's looking down at her worriedly, before the little bat-like Pokèmon sat down, not letting her out of his sight, but obediently silent.

Then it hit her. He had called her 'momma', and judging from how naturally he had said it, the pure innocence of his tone... sweet Xerneas, he truly believed she was his mother. For a second, the implications, both utterly terrifying and heart warming, overcame her.

But in that moment she couldn't bring herself to care at all, and didn't give these thoughts chance to shape in her mind. Closing her eyes, she basked in the silence.

Silence was good. She needed silence. There was something wrong going on there with her whole body, and she needed to be calm and think clearly.

She didn't have her hands anymore.

She just... couldn't feel them. When she had touched the ground, as soon as she had woken up, there hadn't been any true feeling from them, but she had still felt something flexing in their place, and her arms bended funny, and her legs too and- and...

Denise gulped, hoping for the burning lump in the top of her lungs to go away. She was panicking. On a purely rational level, she knew that was wrong. And she couldn't breathe, or maybe she was breathing too fast and she didn't even know it. She needed to calm down, and the best way to calm down she knew was to breath deeply, savoring the soothing touch of fresh air, and so she did. As the cool air passed through her mouth, caressing the insides of her throat and lungs, however, she choked on it and slammed her eyes open again.

This is wrong.

She was a singer, and singing, on a pure technical level, was nothing else than a carefully crafted flow of air. True singers were masters of breathing techniques, so she had practiced that too, spending countless hours to breath in and out the right amounts of air at any given time, feeling it caress her lips, passing over her sensitive teeth and on the insides of her mouth and then travelling inside her through her trachea all the way to her lungs, following a immutable path inside her body that she had become familiar with through thousands of repetitions.

When she took that breath, despite the impossibility if it, she had clearly felt the flow of air shaping itself in a completely alien way inside of her.

In the first place, she hadn't felt any air it on her usually sensitive lips. When she shut them close, she didn't even feel the two small, soft flesh  cushions touching each other, but, strangely enough, she heard a clear, loud clack, vaguely similar to the one one would hear from hard teeth shutting.

Teeth. Oh, sweet Arceus, her teeth. She hadn't felt them at all when the air passed through her mouth. Hesitantly, she slowly moved her tongue around, searching for them.

She utterly freezed, and the itching suddenly became a lot worse, and creeped in her lungs.

It was wrong. Whatever that thing was... that just wasn't her mouth.

The lack of light of the room became suffocating, unbearable. Denise suddenly couldn't think, couldn't talk; she didn't even dare to breath. She felt like she was drowning in that darkness, every coherent thought gone and her mind numb. She needed light, she craved it more than the air she breathed.

So she ignored the utter wrongness of how her body jerked in motion towards the dim blades of light, of how the muscles and bones in her legs and everything else bended in ways they were not supposed to, and she charged towards the light, unaware of the startled squeak Wubby let out as she slammed her head against the wall from which borders the light filtered, promising much more just beyond it. Shrugging off the pain as she just kept pushing and clawing her way through the oppressive wall, her arms merely shifted against the wall, unable to get any grip, their tips ending in some kind of flat stump without strength. And it wasn't working!

The itching ceased, and in its place the lump in her throat began to burn.

In an act of desperation, she gave up using her hands, arms, whatever was in their place, and just started to throw herself against the wall, time and time again, ignoring the pain hammering her muscles and rattling her bones with each hit. Then, the door finally yielded under her shoves, flying wide open with little to no forewarning, and she found herself stumbling on the ground, shoved by the force of her own desperate dashes, until she rolled on her side and stopped.

On a soft, warm moquette-covered floor. An incredibly tall, unpractical, brown moquette, enough to allow all her to partially disappear under all that huge fluffyness.

Denise blinked. She hadn't been expecting that. Sure, it was a welcome change to the hard, rough surface of the room she had been before, but still... moquette. That was a total surprise.

Then she looked up.

Suddenly, she felt very, very small.

She was in an office, that much was clear. What wasn't clear at all was why the single room was probably the size of a whole house, and everything inside it was accordingly proportioned, from the ten-feet-tall chair she was looking at, to the humongous desk behind it, probably as big as her old living room had been, that could have probably been used by an Aggron.

Just what on Earth was going on?

As she looked around, however, she noticed that something had, at some point, entered her field of vision. Pink, and lumpy, about where her nose was supposed to be. She crossed her eyes to get a bet look at it, and tilted her head a little, trying to shrug it off, to no avail. Instinctively, she tried to bring up her hand to touch it, and finally under the light, she could see it.

She suddenly felt like all the air in her body had frozen. No warm wind in her lungs, but frigid snow creeping in her veins.

It was blue.

It was flat.

It was feathery.

It wasn't even an arm.

"Momma?"

Slowly, almost afraid she was going to shatter like ice if she dared move too fast, she turned to see Wubby. Her little, now enormous Wubby. Peeking timidly from behind the doors she had bursted through, the doors of a closet, she barely noticed, his endless, yellow childish eyes were gazing directly in hers, almost gleaming by pure wonder and curiosity, like only a child could feel.

"Momma, why are you a Chatot birdie?" he asked blinking, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

The ice melted. The lump exploded, flooding her lungs with power.

She screamed.

A blur of green and white. The hiss of air being cut.

Beatrix pushed her wings stronger, and the blade barely missed her again. The weird winged Ponyta didn't miss a beat, however, and let the momentum of the slash carry the pole of its weapon, making it revolve around its Steel-type clothing before grasping it again with the leg and moving it forward with the blinding speed of a Ninjask running for its life.

Beatrix was about to push herself back again, when she noticed that the green Ponyta had managed to push her against a building. Right behind her, however, was no stone or concrete, but a broken window, sharp shards of glass still jutting from the frame. Seeing herself out of alternatives, the Fearow cursed for the umpteenth time, let energy and wind flow in her beak, before she thrusted her own head forward to meet the weapon's blade, steeling herself for what she knew was coming.

Peck!

As she parried the blade to the side, interrupting the flow of lethal swings, slashes and thrusts of her enemy, and avoiding death by getting skewered, her beak met cold, hard metal, and white blinding pain filled her whole body, almost worse than electricity running on her nerves, forcing her to close her eyes. For a moment, she couldn't help but think that letting it hit her would have hurt a lot less.

Stupidstupidstupid how could I be so... damn... stupid!

As the Fearow mentally punctuated each word in her mind, she spread her wings as far as she could, straining her muscles until they started to pull back under her feathers, and clinged to the almost crazy hope that the green flying Ponyta... thingy was still trying to get back in a balance after their clash and couldn't exploit her opening. Thankfully, it didn't.

Her muscles snapped as a spring, and she flapped hard.

Gust!

The gust of wind fully hit her opponent, launching him backwards and spiraling out of control towards the ground. Before it could slam against the stone, however, Greenie was engulfed by a bright orange shimmering, his fall slowed down, and with a simple flap of his wings, he gently landed on the ground near another of his kin, a small, flameless Rapidash, wearing the same Steel-type clothing of her friend.  A quick look confirmed that her horn was still shimmering with the same hue that had previously enveloped Greenie, who muttered a few words to his companion along witha “thanks” or something like that. She was too far to hear, and honestly she didn't even care. They had merrily ignored all the pleas of help from the Ponyta or her own requests to stop, so she had decided to ignore them too.

Then the shimmer disappeared, releasing Greenie, and she noticed that, unlike her, he was still completely unharmed.

Beatrix's eye began to twitch.

That day just couldn't get any worse.

She had no idea where her, Nathan, and the rest of their mixed flock he called "team" was or what had happened to them. Could have all been dead and she, the one supposed to watch over them all, didn't even know. Another spike of frustration dug in her heart.

She was also absolutely lost, woken up in a city she had never seen filled with weird creatures she didn't know about that acted vaguely human-like, despite the fact she hadn't seen the shadow of one since waking up.

She shot a quick glance at the street the small Ponyta hatchling she had  rescued -or tried to- had ran towards, followed by several of those creatures, and started clicking her beak, but immediately winced in pain and stopped. How could have she been so stupid? She had just seen the poor Ponyta trembling and wounded, the creatures creeping towards him, and thought it would have been simple. Attack the creatures, defend the hatchling, and everything would have turned out fine.

Too bad everything went wrong.

She had launched herself using a Drill Peak on the closest of the creatures, without even considering that it was wearing a thick, hard, Steel hide. A mistake she regretted the moment her attack landed, when she heard a loud crack and she had been literally blinded with pain.

She had barely managed to fell her target, as attested from the blood of the creature still staining the tip of her beak, but at a too high price. Her main weapon, her beak, had now a thin crack running all the way from the tip to where it connected to her head. Not that she could see it, but for sure she felt it, throbbing with each of her heartbeats. And with every breath. She just prayed Ho-oh the parry of a minute ago didn't damage it too much further.

With the same foolish attack that had almost shattered her beak, by the way, she had also scared the little Ponyta she had meant to protect, causing him to run away from the city-clearing, away from the sea and towards the maze of streets of the town, and she had immediately lost it in the mob of panicking creatures running away. She had been about to try and follow him when very, very little Hyper Beam thingies started to rain towards her from the ground, launched by the horns of the small Rapidash, and kept her in place until Greenie had flown right in front of her and had very nearly beheaded her with that... long... bladed... weapon... thing.

She needed Nathan.

He would have known what that weapon was. She was stupid, and he was smart, very smart. She was so proud of him, to be one of his Pokèmon. He would have known what to do. If there had been him there to give her orders and instructions, her beak would not have been wounded, the little Ponyta would have already been safe and everything would have gone well. She just knew it.

But he wasn't there, she reminded herself, and she needed to move.

It hadn't been too long since the small Ponyta had ran away. If she was fast, she could still find him from the air and take him away from the creatures. And now that she had finally the chance to do it. Greenie was still on the ground, about to fly in the air again, but she could just speed away from him with an Agility, and the small Rapidash couldn't do much alone as long she stood up in the air, out of its Psychic-like powers. Honestly, she felt mildly offended that only two of the Ponyta... or Rapidash-lookalike had stood behind to face her while all the others followed the Ponyta hatchling. The true one, she meant. The one without Psychic-like powers that didn't felt like Psychic type at all and-

Ugh, this is way too confusing.

Not important. Thinking wasn't her strong to begin with. She had more important things to do. She turned, and relaxed her muscles, letting the warm shimmer of her Agility move envelop her, the sky-blue light reflecting on the shards of glass of the broken window she was in front of.

Of course it was in that moment that it decided to explode.

"Nnnooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!"

Before Beatrix even knew what happened, the shimmer around her body had been dispelled and she was falling together dozens of small shards of glass. Instinctively, she tried to turn and catch some updraft wind under her wings keep herself flying, but the dull pain all over her body and the loud ringing in her head made difficult to concentrate on the feeling of air on her feathers. Some rational part of her mind, honed by years of fighting, recognized the attack that had struck her as an Hyper Voice. A clumsy, badly aimed one, but still powerful. For a moment, amidst all the pain, she felt a spark of pride for having been smart enough to recognize it.

Too bad pride couldn't shield her crash against the unforgiving cobblestone.

The only reasons she didn't lose consciousness as she impacted against the ground, the shock rattling across her hollow bones, to her skull and into her beak, causing a flood of excruciating pain in her whole body, were the small shards of glass that had managed to insert between her thick plumage and dig in her flesh, forcing her to stay awake.

Not that she noticed, or could do anything about it.

In that moment, her whole world was pain and hurt and fear. She, a creature belonging to the sky and to the air, writhed on the ground and whimpered in pain as she forced down every single, uneven breath. She didn't want the pain. Another breath, a strangled sound tried to escape her beak. She needed it to stop. She breathed out, and her ribs grinded, something warm and wet sprouted up her throat. She couldn't take it anymore, it had to stop nownownowNOW!

Roost!

Her body glowed, and after mere seconds she could already welcome warmth and relief as the pain receded, and Beatrix finally breathed. Now she could once more think rationally.

And then she realized she was dead anyway.

She had been incredibly lucky that none of the glass shards she had fallen with had been big enough to cut all the way to one of her organs, or had missed her throat, but maybe that would have been better. Using her healing move while she had alien, sharp objects inside her body meant she had pretty much sealed them inside her, and any movement on her part would have just made them to dig her flesh from the inside. That, without counting the living flesh rotting–infection, Nathan called it–that they were bound to cause even if she didn't bleed to death. Before she had been human-caught, she had seen several of her flock mates die from it because of a thorn or a Poison Sting getting stuck in them, even if it didn't cause poisoning. She had known the luxuries of medical treatment only thanks to Nathan. In the wild, once a wound started to smell, you knew you were doomed to a feverish, painful, delirious death.

The swiftness offered by the Ponyta-thing’s weapon, for a moment, became alluring.

Grinding her beak, Beatrix raised slightly her head, and from that simple, minimal movement she could already feel the glass shards raking her muscles and starting to burn. Hissing for the pain, she cracked open one of her eyes, and looked at the creatures, finally able to observe them closely now that she couldn't even bother fighting.

Beatrix had never noticed how big and expressive their eyes were. She found Greenie and the miniature Rapidash were staring directly at her, and it was way too easy to read all the emotions in their faces, despite being partly hidden by the Iron clothing they were wearing. Surprise, confusion, anger, a little bit of fear and, surprisingly... pity. The Hyper Voice attack that had suddenly struck her down had been a surprise for them, too.

Then the miniature Rapidash spoke.

"Sergeant, have we... won?"

"...I guess so." and just like that the awkward stillness was swept away in a whiffle of frigid wind. In a swift move, the creature's weapon leaped from its forelimb to under its tucked wing, the blade pointing directly at the Fearow, and the atmosphere became tense once again.

"Whatever that scream was, it came from inside the harbourmaster building." Greenie continued, before turning to the grayish Rapidash, "Check if there are ponies left to be evacuated, and then run out immediately. If that was another monster... animal like the flaming pony or this bird, we'll need reinforcements."

"We are not animals! How dare you!" Beatrix snapped at the Ponyta, or at least tried. The sudden, jerking movement had made the glass shards move again and as she briefly convulsed in pain she could swear some of them had already broken her skin, the pain a reminder of the fact that she couldn't move at all and was at the mercy of the creature.

Helpless. Useless. Again.

When she raised her head again, Beatrix saw the small Rapidash looking at her with surprise and a little fear, probably caused by her sudden outburst.

Good, even if she was going to die, she would have at least made an impression on the ones claiming her life.

She turned slightly to look at Greenie, and then she fixated on the blade. "Well, what are you waiting for? Just do it." she hissed through her beak, nodding at the weapon.

At this, the small Rapidash took a hesitant step back. "Did it just... try to communicate?" it said turning at its companion, "Sergeant Dandelion, maybe we should wait... I mean, look at it... it won't go anywhere, and well... it tried to tell us something! If it is so domesticated to do that, maybe it belongs to someone..."

"And so what, Zenith?" Greenie -or Sergeant Dandelion, whatever its name was- interrupted and glared at the miniature Rapidash, wings bristling with barely contained rage. "You have seen what it is capable of. Stone Snap was wearing a heavy armor, designed to protect from Chimera claws, and this bird managed to pierce through it all the same! Chimera armor, cadet! If it had attacked anyone wearing lighter armor, it would have killed one of us on the spot!" Greenie turned back to Beatrix, the wing holding the spear shifting slightly, and the other snapping open. As its eyes bore into the Fearow own ones, they looked as cold and hard as the metal it was wielding. "It's too dangerous to let it go!"

As it finished talking, Greenie blurred in motion, and Beatrix knew her moment had finally come.

Eyes closed, she breathed out. She couldn't escape, the sharp glass inside her flesh ready to tear her apart if she just tried to unfold her wings, and her beak couldn't resist another parry without breaking completely, much less blocking the blade. So she tried to relax, ignoring the hammering in her chest, and held her head high, ready to accept death as the proud, ferocious predator she was. As she held her breath, her wings quivered slightly, and the memory of the last words Nathan told her resurfaced.

'...Bea, tomorrow I'll brush your wings for all the time you want. Now, for the love of Shaymin...'

She just regretted never receiving that brushing.

Or the scratch on the head that was bound to come with it, right in the spot where she liked them.

And the taunting Azure would have thrown her for being so affectionate right after. Oh, and Monaghan stuttering in her defense, trying to be brave for her. And the adorably clueless but fiercely concentrated face little Amiat would have made trying to understand what was going on. Then Garz would have just popped out of nowhere and started his endless obscene flirt with Azure just to annoy her and then wink out of existence as she raged after him. And then...

The blade cut air where, a moment before, her neck was.

No! I won't die like this!

As she finished rolling out of the way, ignoring the pain of the shards burning and cutting like bits of molten lava, she tried to stand again and unfurled one wing, droplets of her own blood running all over her feathers.

I need to know what happened to them! To Nathan! To my flock!

She focused on the flow of air inside her, but this time she tried to force it to still and harden, before letting it permeate one of her wings. She had never really managed it in years, despite her best effort, as the element she was trying to harness was almost a perfect opposite of Flying. Her element was like air, free and boundless, but this one? It's nature was to be not simply immobile, but utterly unmovable. Defined. It wasn't even that hard of a technique, any bird Pokémon could learn it. Nathan had told her she just needed to find the right motivation.

In that moment, she had five very good ones.

Take this! "Steel Wing!"

She leaped at the creature with a shriek, her wing outstretched. Metallic, shining feathers and the sharp blade clashed, the latter pushed back violently with a small cut where the wing had managed to overwhelm and penetrate it. Greenie stumbled back, surprise written all over his features, and Beatrix let out a victorious whistle.

Then the shining feathers suddenly faded back to their usual light brown, letting the steel bite in the now unprotected flesh of the wing, and horror overcame the Fearow. She tried to dislodge her wing from the weapon, but in a wave of dizziness she lost her footing and slumped on the ground, her wing sliding from the blade and losing even more blood while the sharp intruders in her body sent ripples over ripples of fresh pain in her system

She tried to look up at her opponent again, but her sight had become too fogged to recognize it as anything else than a green blur, and her wounded wing started to feel numb.

She could, however, hear his scream of rage, and the blade cutting air once again as it flew right at her to finish her off. This time, however, she couldn't even hope to dodge it, the Fearow realized in her haze.

Thankfully, she didn't need to.

"Stop!"

The voice sounded like a weird mix between a Luxray roar and a Staraptor screech, rumbling so loud she felt it in her bones and at the same time high pitched enough to hurt her ears. She tried to open her eyes again and raise her head, but her whole body screamed in protest and before she could see anything the strength in her neck disappeared like a leaf pushed away by the wind and dropped her head. She could, however, hear the familiar sound of two absurdly huge, strong wings beating in the air, and for a moment, she felt like a little Spearow chick again with her mother Fearow descending from the sky.

"Captain Ierd!" the cursed voice she had finally come to recognize as belonging to Greenie spoke up. "Finally you are here, sir! The situation-"

"I know the situation, Sergeant Dandelion!" the newcomer voice snapped, less loud than before but still low and powerful, before the rhythmic beating of wings stopped and something huge enough to make the ground shake under her for the briefest of moments landed with almost no noise. "Damn it looks bad... get away from the bird this moment, Sergeant! Do not harm it any further!" the huge one spoke again with a tone that reeked of anger and finality. For a moment, Beatrix thought to have misheard, and considered that she was feeling increasingly lightheaded it wouldn't have been surprising.

"W-what? Sir, you don't understand! Stone Snap has-" Greenie answered back.

"I probably understand the situation better than you, Sergeant! I know what happened to Private Stone, he's already being treated one block from here." Beatrix heard a low sigh , and the distinct sound of claws scraping on stone. "Whatever is happening... is not something we can fully deal with. I was lucky enough to manage to communicate with one of those creatures, he said that his name... at least I hope it was a 'he', was Edward Surge. He is some kind of Diamond Dog... gorilla... with antennae. And shoots lightings. Don't look at me like that, it's true! He's coming here...

Beatrix never heard the rest of the sentence. Another spike of agonizing pain crossed her whole body, and when she attempted to scream, even the sound of the world disappeared.