Chapter excerpt: Will be deleted later

[emsiecat]

This one I wrote late last night and kinda liked it so I decided to post it now. It will be later in the story but just felt like posting it early. XP

"Hey!" The shout, forcefully deepened to compliment her disguise, preceded her as she ran thoughtlessly into the alley. "Hey, leave them alone!"

The three thugs, alcohol marring their senses, didn't turn quickly enough. With an audible thump and a wet splatter of mud, the biggest two of the three men were struck in the back and head with a clod of mud and stones.

Liana bent and scooped up more projectiles from the ground, which was wet from the rain. She bought her arm back ready to let them fly; her face a picture of grim determination as the relentless rain soaked her hair, the damp curls falling into her eyes.

"You shouldn't treat Pokémon like that, it's wrong." Her voice was strangely calm.

"Little brat." One of the men snarled.

He turned from the cowering Meowth that was crouched protectively over the unconscious Pikachu. He bought his hand up and wiped away the thick mud that had splattered over his platinum blond hair. Liana was satisfied to spy a small wound where the stone had struck.

Several things happened at once: The blond drunk made an ill attempt of a lunge towards Liana; the Meowth looked up and cried out what sounded like a warning; and the third thug had managed to sober up enough to outmanoeuvre the young woman-dressed-as-a-man and suddenly had her lower arms in a vice like grip.

"Dude check out the skinny arms, how puny!" One of them chortled.

"Don't ruin our fun girly-man!" The other supplied in a slurred voice.

"There's no fun in torturing them like that. Let them go, now." Liana was slightly surprised her voice still worked.

"Damn he's pissing me off," the one who was holding her arms confided to his friends before turning back, "little squirts like you need to be taught a lesson."

For a drunken lout he moved surprisingly fast. Liana didn't even see him strike out until she felt his fist connect with the side of her face. She reeled backwards and felt a kick connect solidly with her stomach.

Liana managed to push herself to her feet despite being winded. She wasn't going to take this lying down. Finding her footing and catching her breath, she turned and lashed out at one of the less alert males. Her fist made contact and sent him off balance but didn't do any serious damage.

Seeing that Liana hadn't been bought down by one hit the trio set about a more serious attack.

She felt a hand go to the back of her neck. Turning and gripping the man's index finger, Liana jammed her thumbnail into the base of the man's own nail. He yelped and let go.

The blond haired man lunged at her. Liana ducked and moved and the man hit his companion instead.

Something made a noise behind her and Liana suddenly felt a foot slam into her back between her shoulder blades. The man she'd punched had evidently got back up. She went down hard and turned to face her attacker who lashed out with his foot again: she seized his foot and twisted it as hard as she knew how, growling with the effort. Caught off balance again, the man fell.

Someone grasped her ankles and dragged her towards them. Liana grabbed their hands. Another of them fiercely grabbed her hair and yanked her to the ground so their other companion could better aim a punch. She desperately kicked out and rolled away, grabbing the hair-puller's wrists so that they didn't pull out a chunk of hair.

With a flurry of desperate movement Liana was back on her feet gasping and clutching a stitch in her side. Another punch caught her just below her eye and Liana fell backwards against the alley wall with a cry.

When she opened her eyes she was gazing at the sharp end of a large knife.

She heard the two Pokémon she'd aimed to help shouting in equal parts fear and rage further down the alley.

On instinct Liana gasped and screwed her eyes shut, just as she saw the man wielding the knife smile viciously as he drew the weapon back and jabbed it towards her throat.

The strike never came. Or if it did she certainly didn't feel it. Was she dead already?

She was pulled out of her wonderings at the sound of a scream and a choking gasp.

Opening one eye minutely, Liana gaped at the scene before her. Her attacker was frozen mid knife thrust. A strange aura of blue fire surrounded his hand. Slowly, so very slowly, the knife began to twist and bend, before it simply melted away to the hilt.

"Holy shit!" One of the knife wielders companions shouted.

"Dude I must be more pissed than I thou-"

The confused thug never got to finish his sentence. He was suddenly hoisted up into the air and thrown solidly into a skip that was against the alley wall.

Liana sank to the wet ground, legs shaking as she took in the spectacle. The other two men extricated their friend from the skip, and of course being drunk, decided they'd fight whatever invisible force was preventing them from committing murder.

"C'mon show yourself! We'll take you on." One of them shouted with bravado.

It was a fatal error on their part.

A very tall man appeared at the end of the alleyway, covered from head to foot in a cloak.

Liana nearly groaned. Just what she needed, some nut job dressed like a super hero.

She was about to tell the man to leave it, to go. She could fight her own battles now that it was a fair fight, now that there wasn't a knife pointed in her direction. He'd only get hurt like she was and she didn't want that on her conscience.

However, before she could open her mouth to say anything the man (she assumed it was a man anyway; no women she knew were that tall) attacked.

One moment he was stood threateningly at the end of the alley, the next he'd entered the fray in a blur of motion. He was so fast Liana couldn't keep up with the movements, his feet, though she couldn't see them beneath the hem of the cloak, didn't seem to meet the ground at all.

Liana stared numbly out at the rather one sided fight as the Pikachu and Meowth cautiously approached her and sat by her side to watch as well. Their presence was comforting.

"This is nuts." She croaked as the pair beside her made sounds of encouragement to their saviour.

The Meowth looked up at her and gave her a grin so reminiscent of their group's Meowth that it was slightly unsettling.

"Nyaa, nya nyanya!" He pronounced happily.

"Sorry. I don't speak Meowth." Liana smiled a little, the action opening the cut in her cheek and making her wince.

"Piikaaa!" The Pikachu cried, jumping to his feet and waving his arms up and down, a delighted look on his face as he watched the fight unfold.

The sudden movement was too much for his injured body however, and his eyes slid half shut as he staggered to the side with a tiny whimper. Liana scooped the poor thing into her lap and held him there as she watched their saviour loom over the thugs.

He didn't beat them in anyway now that they were physically bested. Instead a blue glow surrounded their heads, and suddenly all three of them were shrieking in apparent terror, rolling on the ground as if trying to escape some nightmare.

Liana clapped her hand to her ears to block out the sound and looked aghast at the person who'd helped them. There were very few human psychics; fewer still would have any definite power over another's mind like this one.

What is he!?

As if he'd heard her unspoken question, the man turned his head slightly in her direction. She looked down to avoid the gaze she couldn't see. In doing so she noted with growing shock, the man's feet peeking from beneath the folds of his sodden cloak.

They weren't human feet that was for sure. It looked as if he was standing on his toes, but he only appeared to have two of them from the vague silhouette she could make out in the dark alley. They were big too, and seemed to have something like a dewclaw further up.

He's not human. He must be a Pokémon!

Suddenly the fight, the near death experience, and the shock of seeing a completely alien Pokémon caught up with the young woman. The edges of her vision blurred and she passed out, the Meowth besides her made a sound of surprise at the sudden change in her physical condition.

[emsiecat]

Mewtwo sat by the window, a puzzled expression on his face as he watched the rain falling in heavy sheets outside.

Foul weather for hunting, but it didn't do to meddle with the weather too often, so he let the rain stay.

Not that he hated the rain, he quite liked it. It washed away the smell of pollution from the city and obscured the vision of those that may seek to catch him. Right now he could hear the water pounding on the roof, the sound softened by the many floors above him; it gave him a relaxed almost soporific feeling.

Behind him he could hear the quiet chatter of Pikachu and Meowth. It had been on their insistence that he'd bought the human back with them; just to make sure his injuries weren't too bad.

Turning away from the window, Mewtwo glanced uncertainly at the human slumped on the lumpy couch, still unconscious. He owed this human really, for helping his friends. However the thought that he was indebted to him, especially when another of his race caused his friends harm was not a pleasant thought.

There was something decidedly odd about this human. Mewtwo creased his brow in thought as he remembered the events that had led up to now.

Mewtwo had been surprised when Pikachu and Meowth didn't return after scavenging for food. The city, he knew from experience, could be a dangerous place for Pokémon, so he'd set out to search for them readily, locking on to the signatures left by their auras.

He'd looked for them in several places they'd been that day, before hearing the ruckus in the alleyway.

Mewtwo had turned up in time to see the young boy stand up for his friends. Obviously the drunken humans already in the alleyway were responsible for Pikachu and Meowth's injuries.

It hadn't taken a genius to figure out that the fool was in over his head. Humans always did have a habit of tackling things much too great for them. An image of another boy, unruly black hair and cocky smile came to Mewtwo's mind unbidden by that thought, and he smirked at the comparison his subconscious had made.

He couldn't sit by though. Obviously the human, admirable as he was, was going to be bested in battle against the thugs, and then his companions would be in trouble again.

He was proven correct when one of the gang pulled out a knife on the boy. Mewtwo had growled in spite of himself, a dirty trick.

Mewtwo saw the boy squeeze his own purple eyes shut at the sight of impending death, and without another thought, Mewtwo had come to his aid.

Only indirect aid however, he was helping his own kind as a priority.

As kind as the boy had been, Mewtwo really didn't care two jots if the idiot got himself killed for a moment of heroic bravado.

And then the little weakling had gone and fainted, and Meowth being kind had wanted to help him, and Pikachu being grateful had agreed. So here Mewtwo was now with a human, a damned human in his hideaway. Perfect, just how he'd wanted the evening to end.

Mewtwo drew himself back from his musings as he cast a glance over the human who was curled in a foetal position, wincing now and then when he moved uncomfortably in his sleep.

There was something not quite right about calling him a male either.

The thugs had stated he was a male, but something was niggling at Mewtwo. Could they have been mistaken? Mewtwo was an observer by nature and he'd picked up on a few small details that drunken humans would not. For example:

The boy was very slight of frame, any muscle he had was lean and not focused in the upper body like with most males. His facial features, 'pretty boy' or not, were much too effeminate and soft to be a man's. Then there was the voice. True Mewtwo had only heard a few words pass the humans' lips, but even so the pitch he spoke at seemed forced somehow. On the way back to the hideout the boy had muttered a few odd phrases in his unconscious state and the voice had been different; husky but lighter than the voice used in the alleyway, not a man's voice at all.

Mewtwo tilted his head to one side in thought. A roll of thunder rumbled outside and the human whimpered slightly, grabbing the pillow in a childish gesture.

No, not masculine at all this one.