Bad Moon Rising

Chapter 10

"The train to Kanto has been experiencing technical difficulties," the loudspeaker embedded in the wall of Goldenrod City's train station boomed. "Thus, no tickets will be sold for the Kanto train until it has been repaired. Unfortunately, that was the only train that goes to Kanto..."

The combined groans, shouts, and curses of the agitated people in the train station deafened the rest of the words that were being emitted from the loudspeaker, and Wendiga covered her ears with her gloved, long-fingered hands, wincing. Her yellow cat-like eyes gave an eerie glow, and her long, silver hair was slightly messy and unbrushed, but she could care less. She was wearing a gray tee-shirt with a white vest over it, and wore a pair of black jeans. Her leather moccasins tapped the floor impatiently.

Great...No way to get to Kanto...or at least, no short way...Guess I'll have to be patient before I can wring Gio's neck...

Giovanni would have been pissed is he heard her call him that name, Gio...a name that she would say in front of his face for the soul purpose of watching him writhe in discomfort and growl in agitation. For a 14-year-old girl, Wendiga was one of Giovanni's most hated enemies. She would always find ways to escape from his labs, and he always ordered his minions to get her back alive, even if it meant that the blood of his men spilled onto the ground.

Those minions were too bony for my liking...but the flesh was good...maybe it would be better with some barbeque sauce...I should try that sometime...

Wendiga snickered, then licked her lips while she pondered. Gio's first Lycanthrope experiment, that was her, mixed with a bit of Wolfsbane to allow her to shift from human to werewolf freely. Those two facts made her life a living Hell...as well as the facts that she was kidnapped by Rocket Grunts at the age of ten, escaping the labs from time to time, only to get caught again.

And then she learned that her parents had commited suicide, unable to bear the pain of living without their only child. They had given up hope of Wendiga returning two years after she was kidnapped, and the police never found her...

Wendiga cast her eyes downward, staring at her right wrist, which had a long scar going vertically along the main artery. Her own suicide attempt, on the exact same day that her mother and father killed themselves. She wanted to be with them, but her body wouldn't let her. The wound healed too quickly, and all that remained of the open wound was a scar. One of the many curses of this werewolf blood...either die of natural causes, of flesh wounds, or an overdose of Belladonna, or don't die at all.

The worst thing about the Lycanthrope blood was the Wolfsbane. After being infected by another Werewolf, the Wolfsbane was injected into her blood stream...permanently. Any cure or half-cure would stay in the body...meaning that, if fully cured, you cannot be infected again...yet, if you are half-cured, you cannot rid yourself of the Werewolf blood, nor fully become a monster. The Wolfsbane let you control your Werewolf side...but you would be scarred for life.

Wendiga sighed and stared at her belt, which had only one pokéball on it...a pokéball that contained her only Pokémon and her only friend, a Poochyena. They were newly discovered, so they were hunted by poachers and trainers around the world, but she came across this lost cub by fate. She had been strolling in the woods after she escaped from Gio's lab for the last time, and heard shouts and cries. Nervous and anxious, she darted towards the area, only to find a trainer looming over a small Pochena cub...his one hand balled into a fist.

Her heart panged when she saw it. It was in a bloody heap, showing that these trainers had been ruthless to it...obviously beating it. There was a scar embedded on its forehead, freshly cut and dripping with blood, and it was limp on the ground, barely moving at all as it watched the trainer with wide, fearful eyes. The trainer advanced again, and Wendiga let her rage boil over. How could a trainer hurt a Pokémon like that?! An innocent creature?!

And thus, transformation took place, and, within second, a large, burly and disfigured wolf stood in front of the wounded Pochena cub, snarling at the trainer and advancing, gnashing her long, sharp fangs threateningly. She watched in amusement as the trainer took his Pokédex out, hoping to find information about her, but when the mechanical voice of the virtual dictionary rang out with, "File not found. Not a Pokémon," the kid fled in fear.

She took care of the cub after that, transforming back into a human form and patching up the wounds. After a little while, the Pochena gave a small yip of joy and began to lick her cheek, not seeming to care about whether Wendiga was half human or not. They had been friends ever since...

Poochyena had been there for her all of that time, and acted a lot like a sister to her, sometimes getting as protective as a mother, and Wendiga had always protected her, as well, defending her with her life. She had nicknamed the little girl Poochyena 'Garou', another name for Werewolf, yes...but the little cub loved the name.

She smiled weakly, and her head shot up when she heard a voice. She didn't turn to see who it was.

"Great...jus' great," the voice, a Brooklyn-accented one, hissed. "How are we gonna get to da Team Rocket headquart'as now? Since da Bo- I mean, Giovanni, attacked Jim...he knows dat Jim's a Werewolf...den what'll he do ta him?"

A Werewolf?

Wendiga grinned lightly, turning her head to see two people...make that, a human and a Pokémon. The human was a woman, who looked to be around the age of 18. She had long, crimson hair that tied back in an arch of a ponytail, and had sapphire eyes. She had two large, green earrings on her ears, and was wearing a simple pair of blue jeans and a yellow shirt. The creature beside her was a Meowth, although it walked on two legs...and spoke with a Brooklyn accent.

"Let's not think about that...," the woman whispered softly, and sadly, as Wendiga could detect. "We have...to get to him before Giovanni does something..."

Wendiga blinked, then felt rage pulse through her, boiling in her blood stream. Another life...another innocent one...tampered with by Giovanni. Her eyes narrowed angrily, vividly thinking of what it would be like to rip Giovanni limb from limb...piece by piece...

She saw the two turn and walk out of the train station, heading to Route 35, both staring at the ground sadly. She could hear them trying to figure out how they would get to the new Team Rocket Headquarters, which was now resided in the depths of Mount Moon, as she heard.

Mount Moon? That's odd...I thought his base was in Viridian City...Oh, wait a minute...that was destroyed when Mewtwo escaped...

Nevertheless, she could help. She would meet them on that route, and she would encounter them, then gain their approval.

**********

James was now standing in a battle arena, somewhere in Giovanni's Team ROcket hideout. It was in Mount Moon, that much he knew, but he didn't exactly know where it was in the mountain. For all he knew, it was probably deep underground, and the thought that Jessie and Meowth may never find him was only added to the depths of his despair.

The arena was large and damp, as it was built in what seemed like an underground cavern. Stalactites protruded from above, and stalagmites from below, each in miscellanious places, and each dripping with little bits of melting water, only to freeze when it hit the ground, creating little patches of ice on the ground. There were circles of white along the floor and among the ice, forming the symbols that were on Pokémon battle arenas. Behind him stood Giovanni, who was holding a gun at James' back if he turned on him.

James gulped, turning to look at the other end of the arena. There was a Pokémon there, lying in a crumpled heap. It was a small creature, with light brown fur and a white belly. Its paws were dark brown, and it had six tails, all a brownish-red, and it had some fur of the same color on top of its head. There were two, pointy fox ears on its head, and the creatures eyes, both a pale brown color and filled with pain, stared at James in utter terror and fear. A Vulpix...

What did Giovanni do to it?

James caught the scent of blood almost instantly, and pain welled up in him as the intensity of his hunger for it grew. He hadn't eaten raw meat since the Rattata...and that was only a day ago. He gulped and doubled over, gritting his teeth and closing his eyes, trying to fend it off.

Giovanni grinned, watching as the younger boy struggled with his own instincts. "Why fight it?" he hissed to him. "You're hungry, just as I was..."

"Not...," James whispered, "not a...monster..."

"You are, just like me..."

James looked at him with empty eyes, then shook his head, forcing himself not to lung at the wounded Pokémon. "I...won't...can't..."

Giovanni grinned wider, and used his empty hand to search through his pockets. When he pulled his hand out again, he was holding a vial with a nasty looking pale green liquid. Something inside James cringed, but the blue-haired boy didn't know what was wrong. What was that stuff?

Giovanni shook it lightly. "This is a cure, James," he whispered, and James felt a chill run up and down his spine as he heard the tone in his voice. "A cure to rid yourself of the Lycanthrope. And I will only give it to you...," he pointed at the Vulpix, "if you obey me. Now attack!"

James turned to look at the fox, and saw its eyes again...hurt, despair, sadness, all packed together in those eyes. Did Giovanni do that to the Pokémon? But the smell of the blood seemed to overpower him, and the hunger grew stronger.

"No..."

Giovanni cocked his gun, making sure it was loaded before aiming at the back of James' head. The Rocket winced and gulped, closing his eyes. He couldn't die...he couldn't leave Jessie and Meowth...not like this.

Meowth was a great friend, always there for him, making jokes with him, and always lightened the group up when they were in a normally bad mood. He had a good sense of humor, and always managed to make a joke out of serious things. The name 'Joker' applied to him a lot, and that's what Jessie and James would often call him. He never left their side, and they never left his.

He knew Jessie was upset about Miyamoto, her mother...he knew that she hated to talk about her. But how would she react to James' death? She wouldn't handle it well...if she found out he was killed...he didn't want to think about it. But he at least wanted to tell her how he felt for her before he died... He could feel impending doom approach him, looming like a storm before it strikes, and he knew his time was running out...whether it would be the effect of the full moon or something else, he didn't know.

He stared at Giovanni reluctantly, and watched as his former boss lifted a finger to the trigger, squeezing...

James gulped, whimpering lightly, and walked slowly towards the Vulpix. He mouthed an 'I'm sorry' to it, and the fox simply stared, nodding faintly and accepting its fait. James' mind blacked out as it had did last time, and the hunger took over as he blindly attacked and fed.

Giovanni snickered, lowering the gun and looking at the vial he held. Too bad James didn't know what it was. The sickly green liquid was not a cure...it never was...It was a half-cure, Wolfsbane, the same liquid he had used on his former experiment, that silver haired girl. He vividly wondered what happened to her...the last he ever saw her was before Mewtwo had destroyed his old headquarters...but he could sense that something was stirring. Trouble, perhaps...but he would be able to face it, and the danger didn't bother him.

He placed the vial in his pockets, and heard a faint 'cling' as the glass hit another vial in his pocket...containing something deadlier. The liquid in the other vial would've been a cure it he hadn't put so much in it...a single overdose of that anti-Lycanthrope plant could kill a fully grown Charizard. He would use it on James after he was of no use. He smirked, pulling it out of his pocket for a minute, staring at the thick, milky white liquid that sat inside, and chuckled as he read the words that were written on the tape that was on the bottle...'Belladonna'.

**********

Jessie and Meowth trecked on to Route 35, sighing softly in defeat. From what she heard from one of the workers at the train station, the Magnet Train to Kanto wouldn't be complete for about a week...giving James one less week to live before the full moon...

How were they going to get to him in time? That same thought travelled through both of their thoughts. There was no way they could get to Mount Moon in less than two weeks by walking...and they didn't have the money to get a bike, as they were barely able to gather enough to buy a ticket at the Magnet Train Station. Plus, neither Mondo or Jessie had extra pokéballs to catch a Flying type Pokémon. It seemed that Fate didn't want James to be rescued...

I can't lose him, Jessie thought wearily. I won't lose him...not when the twerps are looking for the Monkshood to cure him, not when Giovanni has him, not when I haven't revealed my feelings, I can't ever lose him, I don't WANT to lose him...But...what do I do...?

Jessie was now on the verge of crying, and Meowth hopped onto her shoulder, placing a paw on top of her head and stroking her hair. "C'mon Jess...," the cat whispered, trying to fight off his own depression. "Somethin'll happen...a stroke of luck? We'll get Jimmy...We'll help him..."

But the Rocket said nothing, only stared at the ground. Her eyes wobbled ever so slightly, and finally her mouth cracked open to speak. "I...can't lose him Meowth...He means too much to me..."

The Scratch Cat gave a weak smile, shaking his head. "I knew it...don't you worry, Jess...Meowth'll make sure we get to Jim...We have ta..."

The cat froze, his body rigid. Her head the rustling of grass and shrubbery, and all the other wild Pokémon and other creatures fell silently, as if trying to avoid danger. Meowth also felt it - an ominous air, and the scent of something foreign and wild, something that smelt like...

The cat hissed lightly, poking Jessie in the head with a claw and shaking his head. "Jess...something's wrong...We've gotta go...NOW..."

But before anything could happen, a sudden shadow shot out of a nearby brush, and pounced on the ground before the two, giving a low, light growl. They could see its features in the moonlight, and both recoiled at what they saw.

The long, slender body of a wolf...but it had a larger build, as if it was once human. Long, strongly front and hind legs, all four paws tipped with five, incredible sharp claws, all glinting menacingly. It had a long, pointy snout, and its mouth was open, showing the razor-sharp teeth that lined its jaw. Its nose was black, an its body, unlike the werewolf that had attacked James, was covered in much more fur...almost completely silver, but its ears, paws, and tail was tipped with black, and its underbelly and chin were white. Its eyes were an eerie yellow.

Meowth screeched and jumped off of Jessie's shoulder, landing in front of the Werewolf and drawing his claws threateningly, hissing and baring his teeth. Jessie gasped and pulled away, grabbing Meowth by his tail and hoisting him off the ground before she proceeded in running-

-but they were stopped again as the Werewolf jumped ahead of them with incredible speed, landing in front of them again and shaking its head. Jessie and Meowth gulped and pulled back slightly, fearing their own death, fearing the fact that they may never get to James if they were killed, but the creature simply looked up at them, its eyes gleeming with sorrow and joy at the same time.

"I will help you, if you do not mind."