Chapter Text
“Hey! Hey, you! Stop right there!”
The young woman’s combat boots skidded on the polished floor of the Krane Laboratory as she heard the indignant shouts and curses of the scientists she ran past. Two beefy security guards followed her, weapons drawn, although both men were hesitant to shoot at her for fear of hitting the bag containing what she had stolen strapped to her back, as she fled down the hallway.
She saw her motorbike just outside of the second-floor windows, surprisingly untouched. She let out a laugh of exhilaration, knowing that neither of those buffoonish guards had a snowball’s chance in hell at catching her.
Then she heard one, no, two shots behind her before the scientists screamed at the guards to hold their fire. One of them zinged just past her head and struck the left window in front of her, sending spider web-like cracks weaving through the structure, somehow not breaking it. The other bullet hit her in her left calf. She let out a muted gasp of pain, the adrenaline coursing through her preventing any pain except for a dull throb as she forced herself onward.
Knowing that the doors and elevators had long since been barred shut by the security system, and knowing she had no other choice, the thief tried her luck with the already-damaged window. She lowered her head and threw herself through the glass window.
Her black helmet and boots were unscathed. The rest of her clothes weren’t as lucky, the shrapnel cutting through her leather jacket, jeans, and gloves, along with tracing lines of crimson across her pale skin as she fell to the ground, hitting it in a roll, sending a jolt through her left shoulder as well.
The thief groaned as she staggered to her feet, limping to the motorbike while fumbling the keys in her bleeding hands.
“Fuck!” she spat, finally managing to grasp the keys in her unwilling fingers, and jammed them in the ignition, twisting it quickly. The motorbike, being the pile of crap it was (it was cheap and didn’t stall in the common Orre sandstorms, but that was the kindest thing one could say about the gas-guzzling monstrosity), didn’t start.
“Shit, come ON!”
She turned it again, hearing more gunshots, turning her head to see a bunch of people dressed in black trading fire with the security guards, who were taking cover behind the doorway. It still didn’t start.
“FUCK YOU, YOU PIECE OF SHIT, MOVE!” she screamed angrily.
She turned the keys for a third time as the people in black saw her predicament and began shouting unintelligibly. This time, fortunately, the engines blared to life, and she gunned it away from the lab, away from the conflict. She heard shots behind her as the treaded tires kicked up dust, speeding off into the Orrean desert, through the sandstorms that obscured the tracks.
The thief breathed a sigh of relief at getting away for now…but she grimaced as the adrenaline faded, her calf screaming at her, along with her left shoulder, which she realized had also been shot, to go along with the injuries sustained by the fall. Flecks of blood were spattered on the handlebars from her still-bleeding hands and rivulets of red trailed down where the glass window had cut her. Fortunately, it looked like the shoulder had only been winged a bit. The calf wound had gone in and out without any damage to arteries or bone as well, but that one hurt like a bitch and bled like one, too.
She gritted her teeth and kept her foot on the gas pedal, looking at the compact GPS/PC system (stolen a long time ago) to guide her to her destination: her squalor camp hideout in the middle of the desert.
The camp wasn’t much to look at: just a pitched camouflaged tent and sleeping bag in the middle of nowhere, small enough to fit in her backpack, and yet big enough to be habitable. Her Leafeon, Simon, was outside, basking in the sun’s rays, while her Glaceon, Keith, must’ve been inside the tent to keep the sun off of him.
Both Eeveelutions came to their feet as they heard the motorbike. Simon looked at her balefully, while Keith was yawning.
“Larch, what in the name of Arceus have you gotten us into?” Simon asked, as his trainer staggered off of her motorbike after turning it off, gasping in pain from the wounds, the stolen cybernetic device to understand Pokemon nestled in her ear allowing her to understand her Pokemon. “And you got shot. Twice. Wonderful. Keith, we need you to freeze the wounds.”
“Oh, come on, Larch!” Keith groaned. “Fucking getting shot or shot at all the time, fucking…”
The Glaceon sighed before going over to Larch - she never had another name to go by other than “the thief” for the longest time; she had just chosen it because she needed something to go by other than that for her Pokemon, and a tree was as fitting as it got - blowing a gentle freezing mist on her shoulder and calf. She gritted her teeth as the wounds closed up.
“Got a one-way trip out of this fucking hellhole, that’s what I’ve gotten myself into,” Larch said with a whisper, hissing in pain as Keith blew a mist over the wounds caused by the glass. Not exactly recommended by doctors, but hey, she had to make do.
She tore off strips of her ruined leather jacket - not like she could use it anymore - and wrapped it around the wounds on her calf and shoulder, discarding the now-useless gloves as well, revealing a black, sleeveless tank top as her undershirt (the ripped jeans, she kept on for modesty’s sake, and because she had nothing else) and little else, not even a bra.
“A one-way trip, huh?” Simon asked. “I do hope you’re including myself along with you?”
“And me as well?” Keith demanded.
“Of course.” Larch’s eyes softened when she saw her Pokemon, the only beings in this world she cared about aside from herself. “Of course, I’ll bring you both with me.”
“Well, of course, you’d bring me,” Simon said with a smirk. “Keith’s always been a bit of a question mark-”
“Oh, fuck you, too, you chocolate-chip-banana-bread-flavored bitch,” Keith snapped back.
“Only because you know what I taste like,” the Leafeon sang as his smirk grew.
“I hope your dick and ass get syphilis,” the Glaceon grumbled…but he was blushing a bit.
Larch ignored the Eeveelutions bickering like the mated couple they were and looked at the package for the first time, laying it on the sleeping bag. So much trouble over a little piece of technology, but it could be worth millions to the right buyer, enough to get her out of the hellhole she had been born in, her most desperate wish, seemingly granted.
She opened the package, feeling the cold metal that made up the machine. It was a device that extended enough to fit any wearer’s arm, a shoulder and elbow guard, and a long tube linking to a chrome glove and the final piece, a device for the eyes to detect any shadow Pokemon. All in all, it was the genuine article: a snag machine, brand-new and with many tricks hidden.
Larch grinned. This was worth all of the pain, all of the sacrifices she had made. This is what was going to get her and her Eeveelutions out of poverty, out of homelessness, out of Orre to anywhere else in the world. Unova sounded nice. Or Kalos. Or…well, anywhere was better than this shithole.
She turned to face Keith and Simon, neither of whom looked nearly as happy as she felt.
“What’s wrong, guys?” she asked. “This is it. This is really real. This is what’s going to get us out of here.”
“At what cost?” Simon snapped, his tail lashing with anger, which shocked her; Simon rarely showed any emotion. “Don’t you know what this is?”
“A snag machine? Duh?”
“Don’t you understand why this is so valuable?” Keith chimed in, the Glaceon glaring at her. “This is going to take Pokemon from trainers and make them into shadow Pokemon, most likely.”
“Well, I’m not going to be the one taking Pokemon, nor are you guys going to be taken, so I don’t see what the big deal is. Quite frankly, who gives a shit what happens in this backwater hellhole, so long as we’re out of here?”
“What about the Pokemon being taken?” Keith pressed. “Even if you don’t care about the trainers, what about them? What if they’re going to be shadow mons?”
“Shadow Pokemon haven’t been seen for years, and Cipher and Snagem have been wiped off the map. They’re dead and gone, and good riddance to them.”
“Then who the hell would want this snag machine, if not Snagem or Cipher?” Simon asked.
“Don’t know, don’t care, so long as we’re getting millions of poke for this thing.”
“What if we were one of the shadow Pokemon?” Keith asked, his black eyes glaring at his trainer. “What if we were made into lobotomized fighting machines?”
Larch stared at the Glaceon. “Well, you’re not, so-”
“Humor us,” Simon continued off his mate’s question, pacing the sandy ground with his paws. “What if it was us? Would you give a shit then?”
Larch sighed. “I…I’d move heaven and earth for you two. You know that. Haven’t I proven that?”
“Then why wouldn’t you do the same for others in need?” Keith asked.
“Taking care of Pokemon isn’t exactly cheap!” Larch said, throwing her hands in the sky.
“You’re thinking of yourself again,” Simon chided.
The thief sighed again. “Simon, Keith, you’re different with me,” she said. “You two have been around me most of my life. I remember when you two were Eevee, starving, pawing through a dumpster for scraps. I was, what, eight? Homeless? Starving myself?”
“You took a risk with both of us,” Simon acknowledged, “and we’ll be forever grateful that you did, Larch.”
“I’m just wondering why you wouldn’t help others when they need it?” Keith asked. “Why do you have to be so selfish, Larch?”
“They’re not you two.”
“Come on, we’re not that speci-”
“You’re special to me, and that’s all that matters, the only ones who matter aside from me!” Larch was suddenly shouting. “We look out for each other, we hide each other's secrets, and I think that’s all that I care about! You two are more than any other Pokemon, more than any random person or creature; you’re my only friends, the only ones I can count on in this world, and nobody else can take that place! NOBODY!”
Both Eeveelutions were stunned into silence, and Larch sighed for a third time, going into the tent, and flipping up the PC to type in an online message. The going was slow, as she cursed the region for every slow buffering, but she finally managed to get out a post:
To those whomever is concerned,
I now own the only snag machine in the world, right off the line and freshly stolen from Krane Labs. Whether you’re desperate to have it back or just want it for reasons of your own, contact me at this email address so we can discuss business. My price starts at five million poke and will go to the highest bidder.
Cheers,
The Thief in Question.
Larch copy-pasted the message and sent it multiple times to make sure it went through. With another final sigh, she crawled into her sleeping bag and fell into a fitful slumber.