I, Pokemon
By Saliaven Chronotis
Chapter 8:
I, Vapor:

     Let my mate take a break, you don’t need to hear the same story from two people.  That’s all it would be, the exact same.  The story that I feel obliged to tell is one that we both had equal and same parts in.  The story of how we came to reside in the center of the planet.
     We were at the pinnacle of our profession, second only to grandmaster Oak.  Our powers were such that we could do almost anything with barely a flicker of concentration.  We’d known of the dark magics, and how they could corrupt the souls of magi, but at the time we figured that if we couldn’t control them by now, why did the library even have them?  So, we broke the seals on the Books of Vile Darkness and read.  At first, all that happened was that we could cast the dark spells, which mostly were things we had no need for.  Then the hunger began, and we found ourselves searching through every book in the library trying to find dark spells.  We didn’t know what we were looking for, but something did.  When we’d assembled a group of spells I no longer recall, since they seemed to have no connection to one another.  The last, I do, actually, because it was one that was totally against the lore to use without proper authorization.  Even we weren’t really allowed to use.  A planar portal, a gate to the other places.  As soon as we opened it, grandmaster Oak closed it and summoned us to the receiving hall.  Although we’d seen nothing, he claimed that a dark being had come through the gate, and disaster would ensue if it wasn’t captured.  We were told that since we’d brought it, we’d have to go and get it.  He knew what we were doing, but he wanted us to learn firsthand what it was like.  It was too bad he didn’t realize that our wills had broken by then, and we were servants of the evil seed.  We built it a dark citadel, where no one would find it, and tried to help the seed gain strength.
     After seeing what Oak and Gabriel wrote, it makes sense what happened next.  We saw Mew coming towards the citadel and we fired on her, thinking that we could overcome her.   But what came at us was not the Mew we expected, but Oak’s incarnation, one with the darkness creeping around it, and a crystal implanted in his forehead.  We tried to fight, but the spell he threw was more powerful than we thought possible, he didn’t have to fight us to bind us, he did it in one shot.  We were far gone by then, and in a fit of rage, we struck down one of the GL members that had come to watch, the Articuno that Gabriel was so fond of.
     We were conscious during the entire length of our imprisonment.  Oak did not take kindly to traitors.  It would be futile to plead with any of them for our old pokemon forms.  I personally do not deserve the light of divineon form, and I know Blaze agrees about his paradesium body.  Our powers now rest only in the area of the arcane, and that is enough, we shall not beg for our powers, nor shall we attempt the indignity of serving the Seed once more.  Our knowledge can be safely given to our descendants, who aren’t as great in pokemon form as I had hoped.  I guess it was too much to ask for a Kruno or Tan’Aric in the family.  It actually puzzles me that the Chosen One of his time would be a pikachu, even if it is the mirror form of a metalevel.  I don’t think Ash realizes this yet.  It would probably distress him to know he is morphing into a female pokemon.
     We were once the emissaries of divine spellcasting, at least there we were at the top.  Oak never could get the hang of praying, said he didn’t believe in anything greater than himself.  Not even with the evidence of an avatar in our midst has changed that.  If he weren’t retired, I’m sure he would have challenged Saliaven to a mage duel by now.
 Author’s note:  The first use of the Books of Darkness would be Carnival from Wishfire, and the summoning and charging would be Binary from the same.  The four line refrain is pretty much the basis of the conversation between Oak and Vapor.  It starts with her, goes to him, back and then he finishes.  Seraphs, also Wishfire, is good for the duration of their punishment.