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The lucario screamed as he looked right back into the weavile's augmented golden eyes. Blood was dripping from his wounds, covering the blade the weavile rammed right through him. He could see the grin on the weavile's face widening for a moment, but it was soon wiped off his face when Cheng pressed the barrel of the gun right against the weavile's jaw, and pulled the trigger. An exit wound opened up at the side of his cheek, and out of it sprayed blood, as well as fragments of teeth and bone. The blade was suddenly retracted from his chest as the weavile fell to the ground. Cheng fell onto his back, grunting in pain as he pressed a hand to his chest. He was bleeding badly. He tried to push himself back up, getting on his hands and knees. As he did this, he realized something. The weavile's body was gone. Quickly, he activated his smart vision, and saw the weavile stumbling towards the stairwell. The lucario wanted to finish him off. He took aim hastily, and fired another round straight into the weavile's back, right where his shoulder blade was. The weavile stumbled and let out a yelp, but he still made it into the stairwell.

"Cheng!" The jolteon yelled as she ran right over to him, seeing blood trickling from the back of a tear in his jacket.

"He's getting away..." The lucario growled as he stood up on his own two feet again. He almost immediately began walking after the weavile. He didn't want him getting away, or the other harvesters would know that he still lives.

"Stop!" Jiao yelled as she ran in front of him, stopping him from going any further. She then got a look at the damage from the front. There was a wide gash at the left side of his chest with blood still trickling out. "You're going to die if you chase after anyone! You need to get that looked at!" She firmly told him with a very worried look on her face.

"I'll be fine... Takes a lot more than a two foot blade through the chest to kill me." Cheng told her with a faint smile on his face. On the outside, he sounded confident, but on the inside, he wasn't completely sure he was going to pull through this one. He could feel blood soaking both his chest, and his back.

The swampert walked out of his apartment with a shocked expression painted on his face. He looked down the hallway, looking at the lucario. "A-a-are you alright?" He stuttered.

"I've been better... Do you want the other fifty credits?" Cheng replied as he looked back to the old swampert. He wondered what that old swampert did for a living, and why he never got that limp of his fixed. It made more sense now, he was a hacker. He probably spent a good amount of any money he made on implants.

"Err, I... Think maybe I shouldn't take any money from you anymore... You just keep it, I... I have stuff to do..." The swampert awkwardly said as he began walking back into his apartment.

"We should leave, just in case someone has called the cops... We don't need them slowing us down..." The lucario replied as he began walking towards the stairwell.

"What about getting you fixed up?! You can't just stay like that!" Jiao was worried he might die before they even reach any kind of boat. She couldn't do this alone, she needed his help.

"I know I can't..." Cheng replied as he looked back to her. He needed her help just as much as she needed his.

10AM...

"Get back here!" A man yelled as the jolteon ran out of a clinic with a hypostim in her mouth.

Jiao as fast as she could on three legs, weaving past people and almost tripping up and falling over more times than she could count. She ran into the nearby subway, and through an open vent. The vent led into a disused part of the station, into what used to be some sort of control room there, the lucario was sitting on an old leather chair. All his clothes were thrown over to the side. The non-functional control panel in front of him was smeared with his own blood. All around him were bottles of antibiotics and other things to help him back onto his feet. The lucario's wounds was all dressed with bandages, but he lost a lot of blood. Overall, he was not feeling so good. "I goh hou hish."

The lucario smiled a little at her muffled words. It was a little hard to understand her, but he got the message. He reached over to her, and grabbed the hypostim, and popped the top off it to reveal the needle. "Thanks... Hm, if I survive this... I have a feeling I'm going to be a stim addict if I keep injecting this shit into my veins."

Jiao watched as he injected himself with the stim, the fluids now entering his bloodstream. Once it was done, he threw away the needle. She was worried for him, he didn't look so great. "How do you feel?" The jolteon asked him.

"I'm alright... Thanks to you... You saved my damn life..." He told her. He wasn't sure what he would do without her help.

"And you saved mine twice." Jiao replied with a big smile on her face. The lucario still wasn't looking so good, but he looked and sounded a lot better than he was a few hours ago. "... Is it true what that swampert said?" She asked the lucario.

"Depends on what he said." Cheng looked back to her with a curious look on his face. "What did he say?"

"He said that you sounded worried about me... Were you?" Jiao wasn't sure if she believed it at first, after all, she did drag him into this mess. But he did seem like a nice kind of guy at heart, even if he did threaten to leave her behind. She couldn't blame him, she would've done the same. After they were out of that place, he seemed nice enough. He treated her leg, he fed her, and even came back to get her when he could've just ran away without her.

"No... A little..." He eventually corrected himself with a sigh. "Are you going to make a big deal out of it?"

Jiao had a big grin on her face, she could hardly believe a tough guy like him had a soft spot for her. She could hardly believe an accountant was a tough guy for that matter. "I just wanted to know." She happily responded.

"And now you know... You seem like a good type of person... That person back there that you killed, was that your first time killing someone?" Cheng asked her.

Her grin vanished in an instant as she thought back to that moment. "He had a gun, he was going to kill us. I had to do something!" She quickly replied to him. She still felt sick just thinking back to it.

Even though her eyes were not organic, he could still see the guilt in them. The way her body moved in reaction to the question was a give away. Even if she lied, he would've been able to tell that was her first time killing anyone. "If you ever start feeling guilt over it, just think about what he was going to do to your body. It was him or you, and you put him down. You made it quicker than he would've made your death."

"... What about you? Have you killed people before all this?" She asked him, wanting to know if he had done this sort of thing before, or if he just quickly adapted.

"Once... But that situation was nothing like this. This one guy hopped a fence, and I went to go check it out." This was the first time Cheng talked to anyone about this freely. He didn't like to talk about it, but considering the situation she was in, he figured now was the best time to tell her this. "Long story short, he pulled out a gun, so I shot him. Turned out he was mentally ill, he shouldn't have even been allowed to own a gun but he stole one anyway... For years, every clever little fucker has had something to say about that incident. I don't have to even open my mouth and tell them what I did, they've already heard about it. I've seen and heard the people I work with at both jobs talking behind my back. They think I am a killer, they think I enjoyed blowing that guy's brains out. I didn't fucking enjoy it, I did what I had to do... I didn't know what the fuck was going through his head at the time, I thought he might be some kind of terrorist. I don't know. All I fucking knew was that he was pointing a gun right at me, and he was going to put me down for good... Do you know what it's like? Sleeping and eating besides the people you think you saved, only to hear them talking about what a fucking shit bag you are behind your back? No one wants to be around that idiot who killed the mentally ill guy."

The jolteon didn't dare interrupt him as she watched him breathing deeply, seeing the tears coming to his eyes. She never heard of the incident he spoke of, but it was clear it had a very deep impact on his entire life.

"I wondered what would happen if I hadn't pulled that trigger... Would I be dead right now? Would the bastards that spoke behind my back still think I was such a shit bag if I was the one rotting in the fucking dirt? Would they even still be breathing? Maybe I could've talked him down, or somehow got the gun off him. I don't fucking know and I have been trying to get those questions off my mind for fucking years... But I still think about it sometimes... And again, I always tell myself the same thing. At that moment, it came down to one decision. Me, or him... Don't let guilt take over, or it will drive you fucking crazy..." In the end, the lucario just didn't want her to blame herself for what happened like he used to do all the time. But now was she going to judge him like the rest? Maybe she would think he was just some blood thirsty asshole.

Jiao looked up to him, staring straight back into his eyes before then jumping up into his lap, and giving his cheek a small kiss. She wanted to bring a smile to his face after dragging up such painful memories for him. "Sounds like you worked with dicks. I would've done the same thing you did." She told him, being completely honest with him.

Hearing her say that, and feeling her lips against his cheek made him crack a smile for a split second. "I just don't want you to go blaming yourself for what happened... You did the right thing by finishing him off." Every second he spent with this jolteon, he was liking her more and more. He couldn't believe it, but he was becoming friends with the very person that almost killed him.

---

Author's note: Things are starting to look up for Cheng and Jiao, but they're not out of Hengsha yet. And Cheng still has a big hole in his chest and back. Again, big thank you to BigBossSonic and Zarf for looking through this. :) Oh, and thank you all for reading!