Title: Paid in blood
Author: Shadow/Phantomness
Pairing: None

Fandom: Pokémon
Theme: #21, Blood
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Pokemon belongs to Nintendo and Shogakukan Comics. This non-profit, non-copyright infringing fanfiction belongs to me under international copyright laws and taking it is plagiarism. Thank you. *Phantomness bows*

Notes: <> for telepathy, ** for thoughts, italics if a pokemon talks

Warnings: Character death, OC

All she’d ever wanted was to be as good as Lance. But no matter how much she trained and practiced, she could never quite achieve that perfect symmetry. She was never as in-tune with her dragons as Lance was, she was always off-kilter, just slightly, and she felt it shamefully every time she lost a battle to him.

Finally, she asked him the secret. To her surprise, he told.

“You bind them with blood,” Lance told her, stroking his fingers over the crest of Gyarados’s head, as he leaned along the water serpent’s back, Gyarados careful not to cut him with its sharp ridges. “It only takes a bit, and then they’ll be loyal forever. Of course, the other option is binding them with love, but I find that it’s terribly painful and you have to start young if you try that road.”

As if to demonstrate, he rolls up a sleeve and Gyarados bares sharp fangs, before cutting two clean lines of blood down his arm, lapping them up. Lance hisses, but only slightly, before he smirks.

“That’s all.”

Crystal returns home, ecstatic, glad that she’s finally going to win, because to get Lance’s attention she has to defeat Clair, and she’s quite sure Clair’s never used this technique before. Besides, even though she’s not of the Blackthorn City dragon clan and started with an Eevee when she ran away from home and not a proper dragon, Lance took her under his wing and now she’ll be able to make him happy and she’ll be brilliant and the best Dragon Master in the world! In fact she’ll even beat Lance because she knows she’s perfect and all her pokemon love her already so there!

She releases her beautiful Dragonair and her pretty shiny baby Lugia and her Aerodactyl, and orders them to do what Lance’s Gyarados did. They stare at her for a moment, before they shrug, and instead of anything resembling calm they charge her, and she cries out in pain as Aerodactyl sinks his teeth into her leg and she’s dimly aware of her baby trying to grab her by the throat before she passes out.

“I suppose I should have warned her,” Lance says the next day, when he and Clair are mounding dirt on the gravesite of another dragon master wannabe, “That it only works for our bloodline.”

Clair just sneers. “Her own fault.” She says. “Besides, it’s forbidden to reveal clan secrets, Lance.”

“It was for a good cause.”

Clair laughs. “I suppose. One less Dragon Master means less competition.” She finishes, tossing her shovel aside. “So what of her pokemon?”

“Do you want them?”

“We’ll have to kill them, probably.” Clair ponders. “Once they taste human flesh, it’s almost impossible for a trainer to control them.”

“Pity. But we all do what we need to do.” Lance replies, and she sees no guilt in his eyes. It’s for the good of their Clan, after all, and that always came first.

Clair shrugs and heads back to her gym to deal with the next arrogant upstart who wants a Rising Badge, and Lance washes the blood off his hands before he flies back to Indigo Plateau.

End Fic

Completed 3/29/07

I know. I created an OC to kill. I’m such a horrible, evil person. *Shrug* and I thought the idea of the Blackthorn City Dragon Clan taking drastic measures to guard their secrets would work… too much Naruto on the brain I guess.