FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

The Gible was abandoned by his mother, a wild Pokémon, who had born too many children in her most recent clutch to take care of. So, she abandoned the runt of the litter far away from her cave in the Johto mountain range, in the National Park outside of Goldenrod City. There he was found by Abel's parents, who believed that taking their recently born baby on a walk in the park would help familiarize him with Pokémon. What they didn't anticipate, however, was bringing home one extra mouth to feed.

Having been injured by the resident Pokémon for being outside his natural habitat, the Gible had been left just off the road to die, being passed by other people on their walks who, upon seeing the state that the beast was in, looked somewhere else and quickly hurried along their way. Not Abel's parents. Abel, barely a year and a half old at the time, leaned forward in his stroller as they neared the place where the wounded Pokémon lay. His parents stopped upon seeing it there, just off of the road, and stood in silence.

His mother spoke first, asking quietly. "What is it, Weston?"

The man responded after some thought. "I don't know for sure, Clara, but I think it might be a Gible. I recall that they come from Sinnoh."

Tiny Abel made some poppy noises with his lips, participating in baby babble. "Gib bub bub gibbuh." He looked up at his parents.

Upon hearing the voices, the small creature stirred and startled both parents, who instinctively stood in front of their son. They both knew how a wounded Pokémon could act, and were taught from an early age to take no chances, no matter how injured one might be. It could still fight.

Clara stared at the tiny blue critter, guarded, but at the same time she was amazed. "It's still alive?" She whispered, the initial tension of the creature moving wearing off.

Weston nodded. "Looks like it, poor thing..." He turned his gaze further down the path, and then cast it back towards the way they came. More people were walking by, trying not to look. "We can't just leave it here," he said, loudly. The couple that was just coming upon the scene flushed crimson before walking on much too briskly for the weather to have been a factor. It was the natural way of things, they knew. Pokémon died, as did people.

Abel piped up from his stroller again, babbling some more. "Gib gab gibbah gah. Arifurechoo? Azzydada." He nodded to himself, taking his eyes off the Pokémon and looking around, before turning his gaze back again. "Nanimani," he surmised.

The two parents looked back to the stirring creature, knowing they couldn't hold it in their hearts to let the beast die by continuing on. Most of the people who had already passed it by had probably thought the same thing: someone else will help it. Clara's eyes became misty. This Pokémon had a mother somewhere, and that mother clearly hadn't loved it enough. She wiped her eyes before turning to Weston with a pleading look, to which he nodded. That 'someone else' would be them.

---

The nurse who had tended to the nearly dead dragon had given him a fifteen percent chance to live, and that even that number was optimistic. Along with the problem of blood loss, a number of his bones were either fractured or outright broken. And then to top it all off some of his wounds were already infected, and the infection had been spreading. She told them not to expect a new addition to the family, and that burial would be taken care of by insurance, despite the Pokémon having not been captured. Disheartened, the Zanfis family decided to hope for the best, but took her advice and made no changes to their home.

It was a surprise to everyone when the tiny male -- they determined sex before operating -- lived long enough to actually shake off some of the infection, helped along with some strong antibiotics. It prompted the nurse tending to him to set an appointment for surgery as soon as possible, to get him patched up enough to where the healing machine could take care of the rest. While the machines in Pokémon Centers worked wonders, such as weaving muscle and flesh together again, and easing combat fatigue, they could not do more complex things such as set a bone so it could heal properly, or drive an infection from the body. Technology simply wasn't that advanced.

About a week after entering the hospital and soon after a successful surgery, the Gible, named "Garen" by the Zanfis family (despite being told that giving the creature a name would have been a waste of thought by one very rude nurse), was transferred out of the Intensive Care Unit and into the general Clinic, which consisted of an indoor Pokémon Center. His ball, an antique Dusk Ball that Weston had with him the day they found Garen, carried as a 'good-luck-charm,' was placed into the most powerful healing machine that Goldenrod City had to offer, and was given rest for three more days.

Life became much more stressful for the family. They had a very small apartment within the city, and they lacked an extra room for their new family member. Firm believers in the idea that a Pokémon should not be confined to their Ball until needed, however having never owned one previously, Weston and Clara decided that Garen would be a veritable member of their family, thus deciding to keep him in his Ball only if absolutely necessary.

When he was released from the Center and brought back to the apartment, Garen was very disoriented and confused, as was expected. The nurses had told them that the small creature could not have been more than one year old, although it was hard to tell with his unusually small size. And so the two parents of the Zanfis family decided that Garen would be Abel's "twin brother," seeing as how they were both so similar in age, and promptly took to the care of another toddler, although the newer one behaved more like an infant due to its lack of mothering. Clara saw to that underdevelopment immediately, showering him with the same love she gave to Abel.

Garen progressed quickly, much to everyone's relief, and he and Abel were rarely apart for more than a few minutes during their early lives, mainly due to the fact that both of them got highly agitated if they were ever kept apart.

The first conscious memory that Abel could actually profess to having any recollection was of himself and Garen splashing around in the tub just after they had turned three, with their mother paying close attention to the both of them. There had only been a few inches of water in the tub, and by then Garen had grown to the point where he didn't mind the splashing, as it didn't swamp him completely. He was at the time perhaps one and a half feet tall. Abel didn't know why he remembered it so clearly, or why he remembered it at all, but as he got older he settled with the idea that his memory had to start somewhere, and that just happened to be the time.

The two truly believed that they were brothers, though, and by the time that Abel was supposed to start school at the age of five, he declared loudly that he would be "the most absolute worstest little boy forever ever" unless Garen was allowed to accompany him. At first, his parents resisted, but after the first few days of their human child being gone from home and on what was indeed considered by many to be on "most absolute worstest" behavior, coupled with their Pokéchild acting absolutely miserable spending days alone, crying forlornly at the loneliness of his time when Abel was at school, the parents relented. They tied Garen's Dusk Ball to a cord and put it around their son's neck, and told him that if Garen misbehaved, he was to press the button on the front immediately, and that Garen would disappear for a while. Hearing this, Abel panicked, crying loudly at the thought of making his brother disappear. It took a long while to convince him that Garen would still be around, but that he would just be inside the Ball, safe. Demonstrating a few times, if not only to convince their human son that no harm would come to Garen, than to also get Garen accustomed to being recalled to his Ball. The first few times he was disoriented, and it took some explaining until he finally understood, but he grasped the concept in short time. The two adults could not understand their Pokéchild, however Abel and Garen were able to communicate with each other quite easily, and Abel was often their interpreter if Garen ever had a question or concern. It was actually quite strange to listen to the two of them having conversations, the animal clicks and growls of the tiny Gible being answered by a child's voice.

With their two sons appeased, though, then came the task of getting the school to agree to allow Garen to accompany Abel to school.

The Zanfis household was neither wealthy, nor much of a household, being that they still lived in their apartment complex. Weston worked in the Goldenrod Radio Tower as an electrical engineer and technician, whereas Clara, on maternity leave, had once worked as a personal trainer. With Clara staying at home to take care of their boys on most days, the family relied on Weston's income to sustain them. He wasn't by any means underpaid, however the man certainly did not earn very much.

During the days that the boys were at school, Clara found herself reading more and more often with all this newfound time on her hands. She found a passion for learning the behaviors of Pokémon, and purchased very many books on Pokémon raising methods and behavioral habits. She thought of it as a personal hobby, something to keep her mind busy since she could not maintain her old work schedule. She remained as a consultant for her old clients, however she did not go out and meet with them personally very often.

It was a problem, then, that the school Abel was attending promptly said "No" in regards to Abel bringing Garen along to accompany him. Upon asking, the school's representative tauntingly stated that they would have to get approval from "higher up" if they wanted the school to even consider it. While that representative had intended to mean something along the lines of "it will take a miracle, it's not worth your time," the Zanfis family understood it as, "do this, and it can work for you." And so they wrote a letter of appeal to the Mayor's office, explaining their situation (it would have been very inconvenient to switch schools so early in the year, not to mention it would have been a much farther walk for the two young boys with their parents). After a very convoluted and intense week of Abel being lonely at school, Garen being inconsolably depressed, and the school sitting on its hands about it, they finally managed to work out a deal. If the Zanfis family agreed to pay for insurance for Garen's potential to destroy, he would be allowed to participate in the school and accompany Abel. Unfortunately, the amount for the insurance was exorbitant, and the family had to take a small loan out in order to pay outright. The financial stress wasn't kind to Weston, who began trying very hard to obtain a raise, whereas Clara only hoped that, after a few months of seeing how well-behaved and kind that Garen was, the requirement for insurance would be dropped or, at the very least, the actual price of the insurance would be lowered.

The insurance rates did drop, thankfully, however it took a year without mishap on Garen's part to finally make it happen. Weston was unfortunately going grey, and though Clara was able to handle the financial stress more easily than him, she still bore the faintest trace of wrinkles upon her forehead. She withdrew into her books about Pokémon, spending quite a fair amount of her free time in the public libraries near their building.

---

Starting their second year of school together, the duo known as Garen and Abel were not very popular. Most children were jealous of Abel for already having a Pokémon, whereas the law required most children to wait until they were ten years old to obtain their first starter. To be only six years old and already have what would eventually be a powerful Pokémon at, as one parent said, "his disposal" made the other children very envious, almost to the point of hostility. Their anger was only fanned when Abel would look at them with a confused look and say "What do you mean 'have a Pokémon?' Garen's my brother! He doesn't belong to anybody but himself."

The first days of the year were awkward, to say the least. Their new teacher, Mrs. Brisby, had been told about the child and the dragon, however she didn't share the same mindset as the Zanfis family or their previous teacher. She believed Pokémon to be animals, and that, unless they were needed, they should stay inside their respective balls. She also was not a fan of the child being allowed a Pokémon at such an early age in the first place, and as a result did nothing to stop the harassment and bullying that came about from any "single child" being different than the rest.

Abel, upon being told on the first day of school, that Garen was to remain inside his Pokéball, went to the principal's office immediately, knowing that he and his parents had earned the right to have Garen in class with him. Mrs. Brisby was promptly put in her place, much to her chagrin. She was, however, very devious, and had a plan. She approached the Principal and made an ultimatum: either force Garen to participate and be graded as any other child would, or the principal would have her letter of resignation by the end of the week. She intended to either enforce her will by having Garen flunk at the end of the year, or have him become so stressed by his workload that he would ask to stay home from then on. What she didn't anticipate, though, was that Garen had wanted to take part in the fun thing that was "school" anyways. It was boring sitting around, unable to do the things everyone else was doing, and truth be told, Garen actually spent almost as much time asleep when at school as he did awake. And so when the ultimatum (which the Principal readily agreed to, and offered Mrs. Brisby a bonus for thinking of, for he was not fond of the Pokemon on campus either) was presented in the first Parent-Teacher-Child conference, Garen's eyes widened and he jumped out of his seat, singing and cheering happily in a myriad of musical clicks and howls. Not only would he be allowed to do the things the kids were doing, but he'd be graded on it too?! It was a dream come true!

Abel was smiling widey as he watched his brother dancing around the empty classroom, much to the confusion of Mrs. Brisby.

"What's the matter with him?" She asked, trying her best to remain polite. "Doesn't he understand that he'll be expected to learn how to read and write, and do math?"

Upon hearing confirmation and elaboration again, the Gible trotted on over to the teacher and gave her a messed jarble of Pokéspeak. Abel translated for her, smiling.

"He says he's wanted to do school stuff for the longest time, and he doesn't know how to thank you for givin him stuff to do, and grading the stuff he does the same way as mine." He got out of his seat and went up to Mrs. Brisby, hugging her legs tightly. "And I wanna thank you, too! You're the best teacher ever, Mrs. Brisby!!"

It was at that moment that the hyperexcited Gible just couldn't contain himself anymore. He shuddered slightly before leaning his head back to give a triumphant cheer, just when a brilliant light struck out from within him. His small form, outlined by the corona, began to stretch and shift as his joy blossomed outwards, and soon, when the light had faded, four pairs of eyes turned back towards Garen, who was quite a bit taller than he had been previously.

The newly evolved Gabite chirped happily at the changes, and immediately began gloating at the new difference in height between him and his brother. He had about eight inches on Abel now, and the now smaller of the two brothers huffed, becoming red-faced.

"Hey! I never made fun of you for how small you were!" He said, pouting. "I'm actually kinda tall for my age, thank you," he said, nodding to himself. Garen nodded apologetically and gave his smaller brother a hug, which he was delighted in his ability to give without needing to be picked up first. He was still a little small for his species, but he was by no means as excessively small in comparison to the rest of his species as he was when he was a Gible.

Mrs. Brisby was livid. She fumed silently for a moment before an idea hit her. "Well, Garen's going to have quite the difficult time learning how to write now that he only has those two claws at the end of his arms which, if I might point out, will need to be filed for safety reasons. And that is only if he can actually manage to write with two claws." She closed her eyes and nodded, smug that she was somewhat familiar with the Garchomp family to know that the hands they have as Gible are lost in evolution to Gabite.

Abel and Garen looked at each other, confused. Garen began talking to Abel quietly. "What is she talking about? … Yeah I know, I can see your hands right there… You have some big claws, mister."

Upon hearing their dialogue, though, Mrs. Brisby's sense of achievement immediately disappeared, and she opened her eyes, shocked. Surely it was some trick, but no! Looking at Garen's arms, they ended in clawed hands! The claw on his pointer finger was much larger than the others for some reason, but the teacher was utterly flabbergasted.

"I... What? But... But…" She paused, her mouth moving though no words came out. "Gabites don't have hands!" She shouting, throwing her own into the air as she became very red in the face, before finally gathering control over herself and forcing herself to calm down. The Zanfis parents only beamed at her, respect bound with pride blooming in their hearts towards such a kind and loving woman.

Clara clapped her hands in front of her face, her eyes becoming wet as this generous woman gave more than she could have dreamed for. "Thank you so much for giving Garen this opportunity, Mrs. Brisby. I'm so happy to know that we can count on you," Clara said, getting out of her seat to give their sons' teacher a tight hug. "I can't even begin to tell you how much this means to us! To him!"

Weston nodded from his seat as Clara released the teacher and sat back down, composing herself and wiping her eyes, sniffling. "I agree," he said, a warm smile on his face revealing that it looked like a large weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He leaned forward. "Can we ask a favor of you? We're aware that some of the teachers at this school are... Of different schools of thought than me and my family here. If you could put a word in with the boys' next teacher at the end of the year and tell them to allow Garen to be a student, it would mean the world to us, and to him. I don't think he will want to go back to simply sitting on the sidelines because of a new teacher, now that he's going to have a taste of what being a real student is like." He, too, had to wipe his eyes free from the tears, and he bowed his head respectfully towards her. He was moved by the sheer generosity of this woman, who gave their son an opportunity none like him had possessed ever before.

Mrs. Brisby simply stared,with her mouth slightly agape, shocked for a moment before the professionalism kicked back in, and she started. "I... Um... Y-yes... Of course. I know it means... A lot to him, and that's why I offered. A teacher must be able to read her students, Mister Zanfis, and the quicker we do, the better," she said, trying to cover up her blunder. Was this entire family prematurely senile? They didn't think that she had done this for their favor, did they? However it was so: the entire family was either in tears of joy or romping about the empty classroom, taking care not to bump into anything.

In that moment Mrs. Brisby was touched. That touch lasted only for an instant, and had the strength of a baby Caterpie, but she felt it in her core. In that moment she truly understood the depth of their love for both their sons, and knew that nothing would misplace it.

Then, the moment faded and old, crabby Mrs. Brisby, with wrinkles as deep as her granddaughter's college debt, smiled. Happily.

---

It took a while for Garen to learn how to hold a pencil. It took him even longer to understand that he could make the same symbols that his family could make on surfaces with it. He had thought it was simply something that only they could do, same as he was the only one of them that could break rocks without tools, or tease the delicate beginnings of flame from his mouth (in a very safe environment with parental megavision, mind you). He was utterly thrilled to have his brother helping to teach him all the letters of the alphabet, as well as what the words he made meant. He understood what the words were upon hearing them, but seeing them written down without any auditory aid caused their meanings to elude him.

He was incredibly quick at learning after that initial setback, though, and within a week or so he was on par with Abel, lessons from the previous school year that he sat in on coming back to him as their relevance was revealed. He found endless joy in seeing how all the lessons and words and sentences could be connected on paper, and how ideas could be conveyed without any sound between two individuals, like a Psychic Pokémon.

Mrs. Brisby always gave the Gabite extra homework. Mainly because she told herself she did it because the Pokémon's stamina would give out soon, and she could fail him for poor work, but also, inwardly, because she knew that other teachers would do the same thing, and for the same reasons, as she told herself she did. Her bonus was revoked upon telling the Principal the news of Garen's progress, but they couldn't simply expel the two boys without causing a major public stink, as news of the Pokémon being accepted into the academy was catching the media like fire to dried grass. It was sensational!

It wasn't every day that you got a normal Pokémon to start learning a language other than Pokéspeak... And having a literate Pokémon? Unheard of.

And so the two brothers went on with their schooling, incapable of comprehending the storm that seemed to be brewing for them.

---

It was getting more and more difficult to walk the short distance between their home and the school every day. Their route was changing constantly to try to evade reporters, journalists, and the occasional lunatic newbie trainer that wanted to battle, despite Abel's obvious age and insistence that Garen was his brother, not his Pokémon. The two were excelling in their studies, each of them pushing the other to achieve more in some sort of friendly competition. The friendliness of each other was the only friendliness they had. But it was not for lack of trying on their part, no.

The bullying had stopped so quickly it burned skid marks into the brothers' minds. The other kids now seemed afraid of Garen since he had evolved into something much bigger than they. Standing at 4'5", he was by no means tiny anymore, and needed a larger desk in the classroom. Naturally, Abel sat with him, but together they sat alone. No one wanted to be near the Gabite. It didn't make sense to any older observer. Yes, the Pokémon was stronger now, and he interestingly enough did not have a dorsal fin as he should have, and his hands may have even been somewhat strange to look at, but he was still the same being. His personality hadn't changed. The other kids somehow got the idea that, now that Garen was bigger than them, he would want revenge for the bullying. But Garen was not like that, however the other children refused to understand.

At home, they got visitors very often.

More reporters. More journalists. More people who just wanted a picture or an autograph. They offered a wide assortment of things in exchange. They offered a gift of other Pokémon (something that Abel found disgusting and abominable), they offered money, one strange woman came wearing some sort of strange pajamas and for some reason said she'd "offer herself" to Weston just for some "alone time" with Garen. Weston had called the cops and she was arrested. The people didn't come as often for a time after that, but soon they were back at it as before.

The kids at school got over their fear after their second year ended. Garen never did anything to them in retaliation, partly because he knew better, but for the most part that it just simply wasn't his nature. They started bullying the brothers again, though, and their new teacher, Mr. Alrick, was no help. He piled the extra work onto Garen like Mrs. Brisby did, but he did it differently. When Mrs. Brisby had assigned extra work for Garen, it was always something interesting and different from the work that was normally assigned. He would do the worksheets or study with Abel, and they would both benefit from it. Mr. Alrick didn't do that though. He just gave Garen more of what was already being given to the class. If there was one math worksheet for homework, Garen would instead get two, both of them covering the same concept, and thus, boring. If he didn't do them then he failed the assignment. The brothers knew that something wasn't entirely fair about it, but they persevered, knowing that things would get better eventually, or so their mom would say.

When they progressed into third grade, though, that's when things started to really go downhill. Weston was fired from his job because of a "faulty circuit" that he had built, but in reality his boss had fired him after refusing to bring Garen to work so that he could have the Pokémon as his personal aide. They didn't have any income anymore, and while Weston was out looking for jobs on the daily, Clara began drinking this awful smelling liquid that looked like honey but tasted like fire. She kept reading her books on Pokémon breeding, but she drank from that awful bottle more and more regularly. She would throw things and cry if she drank enough of it, and after the first few mishaps, the young brothers learned to leave their mother alone when they saw her with it.

Garen was making a lot of progress, as was Abel, and the two of them finally decided that it was time to try and teach Garen how to speak human language in secret.

It was hard. The Gabite's voice box wasn't made for the sounds of human speech, and his tongue wasn't quite the right shape, but as they progressed into fourth grade, the family living on savings and loans from friends, the brothers got the reptile speaking, albeit slowly and shakily. They told no one of this, and each swore to take the other's life if they told, with the caveat that they could tell someone if it was absolutely needed.

Though they were only around the age of nine, they had a general grasp of cause and effect: if other people knew that Garen was learning to talk, they could only expect more unwanted visitors.

And so they practiced in secret, taking strolls to the National Park during the evenings when they were least likely to be followed. They even kept the secret from their parents.

That secret saved Abel's life, though.

One evening, when the two were in the Park, practicing Garen's human speak, they decided to take a break and explore the surrounding forest. Boys being boys, they held the protective barriers keeping the park enclosed from the deep forest with contempt, jumping them easily and progressing further into the woods. They played hide and seek, tag, and the like, but it all took a turn for the worse when Abel misplaced a foot. Intending to squeeze through two bushes, the youth's foot impacted nothing instead of earth as he looked backwards to try and run from Garen, and suddenly a narrow ravine opened up beneath him. Abel screamed as he lost his balance and fell, twisting his ankle as his misplaced foot hit something beyond the ravine's edge. He careened forward, and the branches his reflexes tried grabbing were naught but twigs, snapping in his grasp.

He tumbled down the slope, getting bruised and scraped something fierce, but thankfully not breaking any bones. Garen came running at the sound of his brother in peril, calling his name, but stopped at the bushes when Abel warned him of the drop.

"Garen, go get help!" He said. His head was spinning, and he was bleeding from a scrape to his scalp, but he didn't know that it was nothing exceedingly dangerous.

Garen could smell the blood, too, and his Pokéspeak came down to Abel and was understood as easily if he were speaking human, Abel having learned long ago the language his brother spoke. "I don't want to leave you down there," he cried. "I want to come down and help you!"

Abel shook his head, although the Gabite couldn't see it. Doing so was a mistake, as it made him woozy again, making him grit his teeth. "No, don't, even if you came down here I don't think I can get back out because my leg is hurt. Go get Mom and Dad, please!" He groaned in pain as he tried to sit up, and he gingerly put a hand to the side of his head, where the pain was. His hand felt something slick, yet sticky, and he pulled it away streaked with red lines from his bloody hair. He knew his brother well enough to know that the Gabite didn't like leaving him alone for very long at all, and that he would still be up there, having not moved. "Garen, please! I'm bleeding and I need help," he begged.

Garen knew this, but he was panicking. It took a few more precious minutes of receding daylight for the Pokémon to finally make up his mind, and he sped off towards home, running at haphazard speed through the undergrowth.

He was fast. Very fast. He'd never run so quickly before, and he didn't even pause to climb the fence, only angling his arm fins instinctively as he leapt. His lack of dorsal fin hindered him, and he ended up rolling to recover, but he had cleared the fence easily and continued on his way, panting loudly.

He probably would have been stopped on the streets if he had been traveling slower, seeing as how he nearly bowled over several people as he made his way back to his family's apartment. He came through the entrance, bolted up the stairs, and entered the door, finding their Mom with her bad bottle, sipping it leisurely. She glanced up with glassy eyes when Garen came in, sighing softly before returning to the bottle, before Garen unleashed a barrage of Pokespeak on her. She visibly winced, putting a hand on her head when she heard the Pokémon's chirps.

"Garen, I can't understand you." She said, muttering. "Where's Abel? Go get Abel, sweetheart, and then we can talk."

But the Gabite stomped the ground furiously, chittering to himself before quieting. He cleared his throat, or made a noise like it, which caused Clara to look back at him, confused.

Slowly, the Pokémon formed human words for his mother, exposing their secret and jeopardizing the both of them.

The Pokémon made weird faces as he sounded out each word he knew he needed to say, a look of intense concentration underneath it all. "Abel... Hurt. Need… h… h… help. Come!" He said, looking up as his mom beseechingly. Clara only gazed at him, eyes half-lidded yet surprised, before glancing back at the bottle.

"Huh. This stuff's pretty strong. Coulda sworn you just spoke to me." She chuckled, smiling lopsidedly before taking another drink, which ignited the Pokémon's fury. He leapt up onto the table his mother was sitting at and swiped at the bottle, claws glowing with rage.

The glass cut like butter under his claws, and his mother let out a cry as the force of the strike knocked the shards away, and she was soaked with liquid. He shouted his words at her, uncaring of her drunken fear, uncaring of the way his breath smelled like fire and the back of his throat glowed gold.

"ABEL HURT! Come, NOW!" He roared, the last word punctuated by a small tongue of flame escaping his mouth and dissipating harmlessly in the space between them.

Her eyes, already wide, widened even further, as she realized that this was no alcohol-induced trickery. Her mind shook off the cobwebs as the reality of what Garen was telling her sank in. Abel was hurt. One of her babies was hurt! She stood up much too quickly for how inebriated she was, knocking her chair back and stumbling as she became acutely aware of her lightheadedness. She recovered as quickly as she could and looked towards her Pokéchild.

"Take me to him, Garen. Take me to Abel."

He nodded approvingly, darting out the door as his mother slowly followed, gradually picking up speed. The Gabite's head popped back in for a moment, only to hiss with annoyance in his native speech. His mother seemed to need further clarification of the danger Abel was in. "Abel bleed," he growled, showing his teeth in a snarl of anger as he concentrated on making the right sound for 'bleed'. "Dark coming, follow hurry! In forest!" He darted back out the door again, down the stairway, and urged her on with growls and clicks. She finally managed to shake off most of the cobwebs in her mind, and hurried, stumbling only twice as she descended the steps and picked up speed.

It might have looked comical to an onlooker, seeing the aging woman chasing after a blue creature in the fading light, but Clara thankfully had the presence of mind to not lose sight of him as he jumped the fence, barely pausing to wait for her to clear it before continuing.

It was almost dark by the time they got to where Abel was stuck. The pain in his ankle was throbbing, however he'd been taught that if you're wounded in the woods, you need to stay where you are rather than try and walk. It was swelling, but he didn't know what he could do.

When he heard the rustling in the bushes above, he was worried it might be a wild Pokémon, but was relieved when he heard the familiar Pokéspeak of his brother, floating down the ravine as he said plenty of not-nice things to his mother, who called down to him as soon as the Gabite had stopped making noise.

"Abel? Abel, where are you sweetheart! Mommy's here, baby, call out for me!" She sounded so anxious... Abel began to cry, happy that she was there, but sad that he made her worry.

He called out between sobs. "I'm down in a ditch, Mom. I'm so sorry... I'm down here, be careful."

He heard his mother sigh with relief, before her voice came back down to him. She was peering over the edge, trying to pierce the gloom with her eyes, but could only make out his silhouette. "Are you hurt, Abel? Can you climb out?"

Abel shook his head automatically, which brought on another wave of dizziness, before realizing she couldn't see. "N-no," he said, shakily. "I hurt my leg and I can't stand up. My head's hurt too, and I think I'm still bleeding a little." He started to cry softly again. He hadn't followed the rules, and he got hurt because of it, and was hurting his mom because he got himself hurt, and hurting Garen by making him leave to go get his mom which hurt her which hurt him and everything just really hurt and he was so done with it already but all he could do was cry.

His mother cursed softly, unable to peer into the darkness that was quickly deepening. "Garen, can you make light? Not on the ground, just in your mouth."

The anxious Gabite didn't know what she meant for a while, before finally coming back to reality and remembering that, yes, yes he could make light. He took a deep breath, trying to still his shaking, before exhaling, a small tongue of flame leaving his maw, illuminating the surroundings enough for their mother to finally make out Abel, who was sitting maybe eight to ten feet down in the gulley.

"Thank you Garen," she said, turning to him momentarily before focusing back upon the son that needed her. "You wait right there, Abel, I'm coming to get you. You just hang on, alright? Mommy's coming to get you."

Abel nodded, his face streaked with tears as he watched his mom try to navigate the slope by the light of Garen's flame. It guttered then flared briefly when he took another deep breath, and it seemed like the task of keeping a flame delicate and controlled like that was taking a toll on him. After five minutes, Clara finally reached her human son, and took him up into her arms. She looked back up at Garen. "Can you see without the light, Garen? Can you take Abel from me if I try to pass him to you?"

The brother nodded, the flame wavering before going out after his mother climbed the slope as high as was safe while carrying Abel, and was at the point where she could go no further when she told him to stop the light. The reptile panted softly from the exertion of remaining concentrated for so long before recovering, knowing what was important at the moment.

He edged closer to the opening in the earth. "No move," he warned her. "I take Abel, I see in darkness." He leaned down as she held her human child out as far and as high as she could without tumbling back down the slope, and Garen reached down, gingerly taking the shivering Abel from her. As soon as he was sure he had a firm grip, he reeled back, clutching Abel to him tightly. He whispered Pokéspeak into his ear, a collection of quiet chirps and whistles leaving his maw as his smaller brother cuddled closely to his warm chest.

"I was so scared for you," he told his twin. "I was worried I might lose you, and I promise not to ever let it happen again."

Abel only nodded in his grasp, shuddering with quiet sobs as his larger brother held him protectively.

Their mother called up from the gulley. "Do you have him, Garen?"

He replied in human speech, talking loudly. "Yes, Mom, have Abel. Safe with Garen."

The relief washed over her as if, in the middle of a hot shower, she turned the water down and felt the refreshing chill envelop her. The sensation was sobering. "Thank goodness... Can you make a light for me to get out? Just be careful not to burn Abel," she warned, adding the last part as a hurried afterthought.

Garen nodded, holding Abel in his arms more gently. "Abel safe with Garen. Garen never hurt Abel. Never let Abel be hurt, ever again. Not if Garen can stop it." He turned his body, still clutching Abel, to the side, and kept his head pointed towards the gulley, summoning the flame from his mouth once more.

It took considerably longer for Clara to get out of the gulley compared to how long it took her to get down into it, but she made it eventually, and collapsed to her knees as Garen extinguished the flame. She drew them both into her arms and cried softly, pressing their heads against either side of her own as she was finally reassured that she would be losing neither of them that night. "Let's get you two somewhere safe. Ugh... I'm going to need a drink."

Those were the last words passed between them as they made their way out of the forest. Clara made to carry Abel, but the Gabite let known his extreme distaste of the idea with a very uncharacteristic and hostile hiss, his eyes flashing gold with a fierce protective instinct as he held Abel closer to him, turning his body (and Abel along with it) away from their mother. Fear ran through her mind like a fork of lightning, and she backed off, hoping the Pokémon was being gentle.

And so Clara let him carry Abel. Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, she realized that carrying her injured son while tipsy through the forest at night was probably not the best idea, and subsequently realized that Garen must have known this, and was protecting him still. She mentally thanked the blue dragon as the thought of her alcohol abuse preventing her from holding her son when he was hurt sank in.

They cleared the fence and walked to the hospital, and Abel was admitted. Garen would, under absolutely no circumstances, leave Abel's side, and he remained absolutely glued to his brother as they gave his swollen ankle a cold compress, and put stitches in his head wound. They checked for a concussion, shining a bright light suddenly into Abel's eyes, and the boy groaned, clutching his head in pain as he arched his back to try and shrink away from the light, which only prompted the Gabite to react accordingly. He stamped the ground powerfully twice, growling threateningly as he perceived what the doctor did to be hurting his brother.

He spoke up, much to the surprise of the attending doctor, though his words were half-growled.

"You will not do light again. Hurt Abel," he said, glaring. It had taken quite the large amount of coaxing to finally get the protective Pokémon's arms to release the boy so he could be inspected, and he was held at bay only by the promise to be returned to his ball indefinitely if he did not do as he was told. As much as he wanted to stay near Abel's side, and despite how his newly sparked protective instincts screamed otherwise, the Pokémon had released him, coming to the conclusion that while he would be very helpful holding Abel, his usefulness would be cut short by the return to his ball. And so he resolved to be more helpful to Abel over a longer period of time by keeping watch of him as the doctor did doctor things, and then holding him later when the doctor was done.

Those doctors decided that Abel had a minor concussion, and insisted that he stay monitored at the hospital for the night, to reduce the risk of complications. No one argued when the Gabite utterly refused to leave. They were still too shocked that the Pokémon knew how to speak human to argue with him. They turned off the lights and closed the door, leaving the two alone. Garen's yellow eyes glowed ever so faintly in the darkness as he watched his brother, and he gingerly climbed onto the bed, snuggling in beside him. They had separate beds at home, though they shared the same room, but they had never shared the same bed. They had shared cribs, yes, but never a bed, and neither of them remembered the time when they were in cribs. Abel was dozing quietly under some light sedatives, but he let out a soft breath of relief as he felt the warm presence slip in beside him, strong arms sliding in front of and behind him as he laid on his back in the bed, the Gabite cuddling close.

Garen made some decisions that night. He knew that he and Abel were different, but he realized that Abel, along with most humans his age, were much weaker than him. He made the choice then and there that he would never again leave Abel's side unless it was of the utmost importance. He would protect his brother from everything, and in his heart he knew it was the right choice, as it sang its approval of the idea immediately.

---

The next day came and the doctors found Abel snuggled up on his side, with his back to Garen's front, the dragon's arms protectively and carefully wrapped around him, holding him close.

The more conservative of the two doctors threw up his hands in disgust at seeing this... Animal... Being allowed to share the same bed as its master. And not at the foot of the bed, as many people practice with their Pokémon (which was already bad enough, he made sure to explain), but actually in the bed, spooning him. They were both male, on top of that! He walked out the door then, utterly refusing to service the master and family of such an abomination. Not only could the creature speak human, but it was allowed the same things that humans were allowed. The blasted family even had human insurance covering the creature! The audacity, the gall, going against everything that was natural! He angrily stormed off, leaving the much younger doctor alone in the room with the two of them.

He, unlike his senior, was touched at the closeness that the pair shared, and he found himself actually a little bit jealous of their bond. He roused them gently, greeted by a soft warning growl as Garen woke first, and proceeded to inspect the bandages and stitches on Abel's head. The young man gently put pressure on Abel's ankle under the watchful eye of the Gabite, asking if it hurt. The joint was tender, and a plenty bit sore, and the young professional ordered a pair of crutches for him, which were promptly delivered. He was released later that day, being deemed in good enough condition to return home, but not before giving a detailed account of the events that took place. Abel tried to recount it as well as he could, but his memory was still a little fuzzy. Garen ended up recounting most of it, although his skills with the human language were improving significantly with not only the amount of speaking required of him, but also the fact that he did not need to keep it a secret any longer. Abel confirmed the events when questioned, and their story was filed away into a medical report, which was, as they and their parents had been assured multiple times, was confidential.

Still, it was only a matter of days before the story was on the news, of a Pokémon heralded as "Hero, Son, and Brother," with Garen's photo on the television. Someone had snapped a picture from the front of the two of them walking home after being released from the hospital, Abel's crutches being substituted in favor of Garen's shoulder and arm around his waist. The picture was sweet, the Gabite's head was alert and looking off to the side, seemingly scanning for danger while he allowed his brother to put weight on him. The news story sensationalized the rumor that, in order to get help for his brother, the Gabite had suddenly broken the Pokemon-Human-Speech-Barrier through sheer willpower and intelligence with perfect fluency. The story then went on to include the older articles of how Garen was accepted at the local school as a student, and how he and Abel were "star students, exceeding all standards and breaking few rules." After that, there was a talk show which finally came to the subject of the Gabite's unusual physiology, in terms of his hands and lack of dorsal fin. They called him a "shiny," and when the expert on set was asked what else they could expect from such a rarity, he simply shrugged, saying that shinies were incredibly rare, in that they defied their original genome in one way or another. While Garen's physical abnormalities were apparent at the moment, he could very well intuitively know techniques and abilities traditionally unavailable to his species. Perhaps even his ability to communicate with normal humans using their language was a part of his "shiny attributes."

Garen was a local sensation, and soon the story spread. People were going out of their way to travel from far-away places to try and get an interview with the brothers, only to be shooed away by their parents.

But it wasn't all bad. With the story reaching far and wide, sponsors soon were sending donations to the family, and Clara and Weston finally relented in the media's request to learn the story of how they found Garen, and why they decided to have him become a part of their family.

With the money, Clara was able to go to rehab for her alcoholism, and the family was able to purchase a small house just outside of Goldenrod City, along the route between the city and the Ilex Forest, on the road to Azalea. Clara finally put the knowledge she had gained through books on Pokémon breeding to use, and turned their expansive backyard into a daycare center. Almost immediately, she had people lining up for her to take their Pokémon, but she wisely started very small, only allowing one or two Pokémon at a time to stay with them until she and Weston became more experienced. They hired a man to help them keep people away from the property, and he would stand guard, preventing people from getting too close to the family

---

The next four years went by quietly. Abel grew more quickly than Garen, but Garen was growing, too. He was still taller than Abel, but only by a few inches or so, standing at 5'2" in comparison to Abel's 4'8.

They were thirteen years old, and still in school, despite most of their old classmates having left their education behind to pursue the lives of Trainers. That didn't mean that Garen was untrained, though. After the accident in the National Park Forest, the dragon insisted on training regularly, and the pair made it a habit to venture along the route separating Goldenrod from the Ilex Forest. They strayed from the path regularly, although they stayed relatively close to home. They both still remembered very clearly the trouble they had caused four years prior, and did not venture too far out of familiar territory, until the territory they were venturing in became part of the familiar.

The two brothers had mastered each other's languages, and they actually preferred the communicate with one another in Garen's original tongue of whistles, clicks, and growls, but only actually did so when they were either in private, or being furtive. When asked about it, the both of them simply said it was easier to say more with less breath that way, which was entirely true. It also allowed the two of them to have private conversations, regardless of whether or not they had company.

The media was interested in Abel's fluency in Pokéspeak, however they didn't bother mentioning it in anything more than a side story when it first came to light. While a human learning the tongue of a Pokémon was indeed rare, it just wasn't as sensational as a Pokémon learning to speak human language.

The two were thankful that it didn't turn out to be a big deal.

Weston and Clara were still running their breeding center on that Route, and they were actually not bad at it. While their original spike in business stemmed from the fact that they were the "parents" of the speaking Gabite, and slightly famous, it soon became apparent that the couple had a knack for raising Pokémon, and became quite skilled with practice. With finances no longer an issue, the family was very close again.

---

The two youths walked along a familiar path in the backwoods near their property, listening to the sounds of wildlife all around them, floating to their ears upon the gentle summer breeze. Garen walked in front, leading the way. They were on their way to the creek to take a swim, seeing as it was fairly warm out. The duo had found a secret pool at the mouth of the stream; a natural spring that was encircled by a large rocky outcropping. It was shaded, but clear, the water coming from somewhere underground.

They walked in relative silence, giving the occasional chirp or click to the other to communicate quickly. Where it was safe to step, what kind of creature made a noise, how much farther until they arrived.

After arriving to the pool and Abel stripping down, they both simply jumped in, swimming around gleefully before sitting on a natural shelf within the pool that laid, for the most part, about one foot beneath the surface.

Abel leaned back, looking up at the trees overhead as the sounds of the forest simply mused.

A thought that had been bugging him for a while rose to the surface of his mind, and he figured he might as well ask.

"Hey, Garen," he said, using the tongue he'd learned from his brother.

"What is it?" The blue creature said, looking over towards Abel.

"I was wondering... What do you want to do with your life?"

The Gabite tilted his head, perplexed. "What do you mean, 'want to do?' I want to stay with you and protect you, like a good brother. Like I promised."

Abel shook his head, still looking upwards to where the sky peeked through the trees, small shards of azure threaded through summer's deep green. "I mean after we are all grown up. You could do almost anything you wanted, with the reputation you have. You could go anywhere you wanted, eat all kinds of food, go on adventures, that kind of thing."

Garen looked back at the human again, wondering why he was suddenly so interested in the future. "Well," he said, scooting so his back was against the bank of the pool, arms crossed, "I think I would just go wherever you wanted, really. Does that answer work?"

Abel frowned, shaking his head again. "You cannot possibly want to spend the rest of your life with me. We are too different."

The Gabite looked at him again, one eye ridge raised questioningly. "Well what if I want to? And I do not see how we are too different. Not at all."

Abel's eyebrows knit together, and he chewed thoughtfully on his bottom lip, a bad habit he'd recently started.

"Stop that," Garen said, referring to Abel's lips. "Mom will get mad if she catches you doing that."

The human groaned, stopping. "Why in the world would you possibly want to spend the rest of your life with me, Garen? I am just an ordinary human, but you are so much more than an ordinary Pokémon. You have a lot more opportunity than me. I do not understand why you would want to stay."

The dragon kept his eyes on his brother, his gaze soft and searching. "I do not think you are ordinary, Abel," he said, gently. He felt that feeling again, the one that had caused him to act hostile to anyone or anything that might have threatened his brother years ago when he and his mother had saved him from the gulley. He just wanted to clutch the human tight and keep him safe, like he did whenever they went to bed. The two of them had shared the same bed ever since that night, with the smaller human always cuddled up with his back to the dragon's chest for warmth, and with the dragon's arms around his waist for security. Garen's claws, sharp as they were, had never gouged Abel in their sleep, no matter how either of them shifted and moved.

Abel sat up, looking over at the dragon with an accusatory, yet curious, look. "What do you mean, you do not think I am ordinary? I am completely ordinary. The only really remarkable thing about me that I can think of off the top of my head is that you and I can talk like this."

The Gabite shook his head again, the fluttering in his chest causing him to titter softly to his brother, an instinctual sign of intense affection that was completely beyond his control. "That is not what I said. I said that I do not think you are ordinary, Abel. You are so amazing. When those kids were bullying us all through elementary school, you never let it hurt you, and you defended me despite that it meant you would get bullied, too." Garen looked down, the blue scales across the bridge of his nose looking slightly purplish with a blush that Abel did not see.

Abel shrugged. "That was because I knew better than them. They were calling you a freak and treating you like dirt just because you could talk to answer questions in class and write answers on the board. That's not right. I can do those things. Honestly, most humans can do those things. I did not, and still do not, see why it was such a big deal to them that you could do those things, too. It was silly, and they were silly. And Mom always told us not to let silly things like that bother us, remember?" He glanced to his brother, looking for agreement.

Garen sighed, slumping as his shoulders sagged. He couldn't believe that he was about to try and say what he had been wanting to say for a long while. "But I could not handle it like you could. They were so mean to me for doing something that made me so happy. I wanted to cry most times as it happened, but you were always there for me. They were ordinary, those other kids, the bullies. But you, Abel, you are anything but ordinary to me. You stood up for me when I could not stand up for myself," he said, looking up to meet Abel's eyes. He was being much more 'wordy' than usual, and there was something in his eyes that made Abel's stomach do a flip. He'd originally brought up the subject because he was developing strange feelings towards his brother, but he knew that nothing could ever happen between them. He was a human, and Garen was a Pokémon. In trying to push his brother away, to try and make it so that neither of them got hurt, his brother was instead coming closer, physically and emotionally.

"Your heart is so strong, Abel. Mine is not. But my body is stronger than yours. So we balance each other out in our differences. I do not think we could comfortably exist if we were ever separated from each other..." He was edging closer now, his facial scales were purple with a blush, and his golden eyes were shining. "Abel. I look at you and I think to myself 'That person is the reason that I am who I am today. His parents are the reason I am still alive right now. I would love to keep him safe, forever. I want to keep him safe, forever,' and it just feels so... right to think that! I have never been more sure of anything in my entire life when I tell you this, Abel: I want to be with you until the day I die."

Their faces were close, so close to one another. Abel's face had flushed crimson at his brother's words. He wanted it.

Love between the two of them wouldn't be right, to most people. It felt right to Abel, yes, and even the fact that Garen was another male raised no flags for him, but he knew that it couldn't be.

"Garen, I…" he began. But his brother's claw gently pressed against his lips, quieting the smaller boy.

"Shhh," he breathed, and took his claw away from Abel's mouth, only to replace it with his own.

Abel's eyes widened, and he inhaled reflexively, drawing electricity from their lips and feeling it rocket through his entire body. The kiss was simple, but it blew both of their minds. They stayed like that, with Garen on top of Abel, pinning him against the bank, their lips pressed together, for a long time. It felt so normal, so easy to the both of them. They gazed at one another, breathing through their noses and utterly in sync, inhaling as one. Abel was as captivated by the look of sincerity in Garen's shining, golden eyes as Garen was by the shocked desire in Abel's own green and blue. They slowly took a deep breath together, kissing for the first time, and exhaled just as slow. It felt beautiful.

But a tiny voice in the back of Abel's mind, one that he ignored, warned him that the world would make it rotten.

Their bodies were pressed together closely, the cool water doing nothing to abate the heat that flowed between them, and though they were well into the throes of puberty, the two of them were both much too shy or modest to act upon their hormones.

They separated at last, and the sun was already setting. They had dozed off in each other's arms for a while, Garen on top of Abel with his head next to the human's, and it was well beyond the time that they should have left for home. They got out of the water and dried off quickly thanks to the pair of towels that they had brought with them beforehand, blushing madly. Abel, who had taken his clothes off without a second thought before getting into the pool, now asked that Garen turned around as he got dressed, which Garen did without complaint.

"Garen," Abel began, speaking softly in his human dialect, for once. "You know that we can't... Do anything like that... Where people might see us, don't you?" He looked up at the blue dragon, sadly.

The Gabite looked back at him, confused. "Your meaning?" He asked. He was mostly brief with human speech.

Abel rubbed his arm, looking very much embarrassed. "I mean… what we did in there. The kiss. We can't let anyone know that we did it. And if we plan on doing stuff like it in the future, we have to do it in a way so no one can find out."

Garen scoffed. "Why? Love's good."

Abel nodded, before blushing furiously as he realized that Garen had just said that he loved him. "Yes, but.." He paused, flustered. "Most people think of love as between two humans, and maaaaybe two Pokémon. But never between one of each. Heck, people are still leery about two humans of the same gender having the right to marry, aren't they?" He said, calming down a little. His blush persisted, though.

Garen put an oversized index claw to his chin thoughtfully. "People are dumb," he concluded. "Love is love, between anyone. No one has the right to make it stop."

Abel nodded. "Yeah, that's the way we see it... But if people found out that we were... You know… In love... Well, we might be separated, and never see each other again....." He trailed off and flushed scarlet, having realized that he just said that they were in love, too. Garen had noticed as well, and his tail was swaying happily.

"Nothing will keep me from you, Abel," he said, his blush returning. "Not even a Pokéball," he grinned.

Abel felt his blush burn in his ears. Something about Garen saying it in human speech was oddly gratifying, and made him feel wobbly in his knees. He coughed once, turning around before starting to head back, teetering slightly. "W-we need to get back… it's late, and Mom is probably wondering where we are and-"

Garen's voice carried clearly to him, and he almost didn't believe his ears.

"Cute butt," he said, smirking. Abel whirled around, blushing all the way down his shoulders.

"G-Garen, don't say stuff like that!" He stuttered.

The Gabite merely smiled wider, shrugging his shoulders. "Why not? You have a cute butt. I don't lie."

Abel felt so utterly exposed, even though he had just put his clothes back on, and looked around, as if someone could have been hiding nearby. "S-stop! What if someone hears you?!"

The Gabite shrugged again. "Then they would probably agree you have a cute butt."

Abel threw his hands into the air with a cry of what he hoped sounded like disgust before turning around and stomping back towards home along the trail. Garen followed, but was roaring with laughter.

"So red, by just saying you have a cute butt," he teased, coming up behind the human and wrapping his arms around his waist, causing the both of them to stop as the Gabite lifted the human to his toes, nuzzling him behind his neck with a series of happy tittering. "I love it, and I love you," he crooned.

The embrace, along with his words, made Abel melt. "I… I love you too, Garen. Just don't be a pain in my 'cute butt,' and maybe we'll live to be married as long as my parents have," he smiled. Garen chuckled appreciatively.

"Let's get home. Mom probably has dinner ready for us."

The Gabite nodded, releasing his... mate's... waist, before taking his hand in his own.

Abel began to protest, but before he could say a word, Garen cut him off.

"It's dark," he said slyly. "You might fall."

And to that, Abel laughed, squeezing the scaly hand in his own as they walked home.

---

Two years later, Garen slipped into his usual spot in bed behind Abel, putting his arms around the human protectively. He went over the human's shoulder and gently nuzzled Abel's cheek, which only served to make the human blush.

"Garen, stop," he chirped, quietly. "What if Mom or Dad come in and see?"

The Gabite behind him only chuckled and gave the back of Abel's neck a hot lick, causing the smaller human to gasp and shiver at the same time, loving the feeling and the affection it communicated, yet fearing for the very same thing being discovered. "I think they would be okay with it. After all, they let me sleep with you like this every night."

Abel blushed. "Well.. Yeah, I guess so... But still." He shifted a little in the dark, suddenly aware of the Gabite's breath on the wet spot on the back of his neck. His brother, his mate was so warm.

The creature at his back inhaled deeply, letting out a soft growl. "You smell so very nice..." He buried the tip of his snout in Abel's hair and murred, taking more deep breaths as Abel felt the rumbling against his back.

He was blushing deeply, letting out soft noises as the Gabite's clawed limbs slowly played over his body, rubbing against his chest before slowly going lower.

"G-Garen, s-stop," he whimpered, reverting back to his human language. "We can't.."

The Gabite gave a quiet snort of derision. "Says who?" He demanded, one clawed hand reaching down to the front of the human's pajama bottoms, seizing them as if doing so would provide the answer, and he desperately wanted to know. "We have waited long enough."

Abel was squirming now, his hidden arousal being palmed and rubbed through his clothing, and he soon became aware of Garen's own erection pressing against his back. It felt much larger than his own, and the teenage boy grunted softly, prizing himself free of the Pokémon's grip, which Garen was not a fan of. He turned around then, laying on his back, and pulled the Gabite on top of him, which Garen was quite a big fan of, and did so quite quickly, laying his weight on the human and pinning him to the bed.

He pulled down Abel's pants with one hand and grinned as his other held the human's chest down, his golden eyes easily spying Abel's five and a half inch length in the half-light. He pressed their hips together, his own slick eight inch piece of flesh resting against Abel's and radiating heat. Everywhere on the Gabite's body was hot, so blissfully hot, but his length was another few degrees warmer than the rest of his body, and Abel basked in the heat of having his brother on top of him, mimicking the rumbling that Garen had done earlier as he was pleased.

Abel swallowed nervously though, despite his purring, and looked up at the dragon-type. They had fooled around before, giving each other handjobs, or giving the other some occasional head, but the look in Garen's softly glowing eyes said that he wanted something more than that now. The Pokémon started thrusting gently against Abel's familiar length as he pinned his smaller brother down, his thick draconic shaft leaking fluids onto Abel's human one, as well as his stomach and groin.

The dragon leaned his maw forward, kissing his mate. Abel moaned ever so quietly for fear of being caught, parting his lips as the dragon's wide tongue dipped inside. They twisted and pressed their tongues against each other, each reveling in the unique taste their partner had, as their arousals ground together. Garen reached a hand down and stroked their cocks together, feeling his balls descend from his body to gently press against Abel's smaller pair.

They moaned quietly, rocking back and forth in their passion, before Garen finally broke their kiss, a small string of saliva connecting their mouths still. He gave Abel a wink, and went lower, lifting his human's legs over his head and giving his tailhole an exploratory sniff. He was clean, and the Gabite growled, pressing his snout against Abel's virgin opening to sample more of his musk.

The horny human moaned quietly, rolling his head back as Garen's tongue swiped against his sensitive pucker. Abel clapped his hands over his mouth, his eyes screwed shut as he whimpered with the pleasure, trying not to make too much noise.

But his taste was divine, and Garen quickly found himself burying his snout in the human's taint, pressing his tongue more forcefully against Abel's tight ring. With a huge amount of effort and a quiet slurp he finally wormed it in, and he heard Abel gasp above him as the human curled his toes with pleasure, feeling the dragon's spade-shaped tongue venturing deeper inside him.

The Gabite swiped his tongue left and right, stretching out Abel's tight hole as best as he could, but he could only move his tongue around so much, the human's tasty rump was so tight. Eventually, though, he felt the time had come to finally lay claim to his human, as he had fantasized about whenever they had fooled around.

His tongue popped from Abel's asshole lewdly, and the Gabite slurped, licking his lips as he saw how his love's ring gaped, seizing rhythmically now that there was nothing inside of it to try and close back up. Abel groaned in need as he desperately wanted to feel filled again, having had only a taste of it and yet already an addict. Garen moved back up to the human's eye level and kissed him, sharing Abel's taste.

The human moaned though, feeling his mate's erection at his back door, pressed against his taint and leaking hot fluids that seemed to come from some endless repository within him, not only marking the human but lubing him up as well.

>

Abel had seen and sucked and felt his mate's cock enough to know exactly what was going to be ending up inside him that night.

Garen's tool was six inches long, with two extra inches in the form of a knot at the base to make eight inches in total. It was two inches thick along the shaft, with his knot a dauntingly large three and a half inches thick at the thickest point. Abel knew he could barely fit one hand around half of Garen's knot, at best. The mammoth length had ridges going up and down both the top and the underside, and a spaded tip that began with a point and whose ending thickened out to become the first ridge on either side, with all other ridges after it extending just as far as that first. The tip was shaped, however, in such a way that even though there were the same number of ridges on top as on bottom, the bottom ridges were staggered slightly farther forward than the top ones. That tip, though, was drawn back with Garen's hips as he reared back, and pressed forward, catching on the rim of Abel's entrance as it struggled to close, sinking in half an inch or so. Abel was frozen, panting softly as he began to sweat from the heat the dragon was emitting, feeling as his tender ring and beyond were bathed in musky fluids flowing from the dragon-type's exceedingly leaky tap. Garen grunted, leaning over his mate and giving him another kiss, and they remained like that, making out for the better part of five minutes, before he finally felt Abel nod.

Garen pressed forward then, his spaded tip easily sliding deeper into the human's well-rimmed hole. The first ridge that made up the end for the tip popped in with a wet slurp, and Abel moaned, his hole not used to being stretched so much. It was such a strange feeling, like he needed to relieve himself but instead simply became more stuffed as Garen continued further. He stopped after the second ridge popped in, leaking precum almost constantly into Abel's tight depths as he looked at his mate's face, laying atop him gently and nuzzling at his neck. His instincts told him to thrust forward, and to impale the male on his cock, but he knew it would hurt him, and so he waited.

Garen's shaft was so thick! Abel had seen stars when the tip forced its way in, his mouth gaping wide as he unintentionally did a remarkable impression of a very surprised Gyarados. At first it felt like burning, but soon it turned into a soft, pleasant sensation, and the human nodded again to his mate. Garen growled loudly upon feeling Abel nod once more, and shifted his hips before sinking even deeper into Abel's tight depths. Ridges popped into Abel rhythmically, coaxing moans from him as the Pokémon was soon hilted up to his very intimidating knot.

Both of them couldn't possibly believe how good it felt... Abel was having quite a lot of discomfort at first, but then Garen pressed against something inside him, and the ridges on the top of Garen's cock massaged it softly. It felt like fireworks inside him, and he found himself already so close to blowing his load... Whereas Garen was astounded at simply how tight Abel was. He felt amazing, silken walls slowly rippling down his length... He hungered to feel Abel's walls spasming uncontrollably around his knot, longed to see his mate's face of pure erotic agony as he was claimed, and drew back an inch, experimentally thrusting back in.

The feeling of emptiness for just an instant had Abel sucking in air, trying to fill himself again, but all that air he took in was released in an unintentionally loud moan as Garen's length came back and hit his prostate.

"Now now, Abel," he said, grinning devilishly. "What would our parents say if they heard you taking such a massive dick and loving it?"

Abel merely clamped a hand over his mouth again and whimpered, nodding for Garen to continue, but Garen snarled softly and tore Abel's hand away, silencing his submissive mate with his tongue as he gave the human the deepest kiss of his life, to which Abel responded by tightening up his hole with another muted moan.

Seeing his mate's reaction, the Gabite drew back again and gave another one inch thrust, however he did not break the kiss. Abel moaned and squirmed beneath him, his human shaft releasing fluids much like his much larger one did almost constantly when aroused. The human's production was nothing compared to the dragon's seemingly faucet-like capabilities, but they were a sign that the human was loving it.

The dragon drew back and gave another thrust forward, using more of his length to plow the small human beneath him, and Abel gave another muted cry of ecstasy, his sound-making capabilities greatly diminished due to the dragon tongue invading his throat. Garen's shaft twitched and gave one long squirt of precum that felt like a mini orgasm, and Abel whimpered when he felt the heat splash into his insides. He broke the kiss.

"Did you..?" He asked, panting softly.

Garen shook his head. "I did not. Buckle up, my love, I am about to start getting rough."

Abel nodded softly and tried to resolve himself on not making any more noise than he needed to as Garen reared back, his broad and flat ridges popping out with some of his precum as he drew backwards, only to dive forwards again forcefully, stretching Abel's ring around the beginning of his knot with the force of his thrust. Abel's eyes rolled back into his head with a groan, and he arched his back accordingly as those ridges drummed against whatever it was that was making him feel so good, and he was hardly prepared when Garen drew back almost immediately to do it again, but using more length this time around.

The dragon slammed into the human beneath him, growling dominantly down to his mate as he shifted Abel's legs, taking them from where they were hooked around his waist to instead take his ankles in each hand, lifting those legs up farther for him. Abel has the presence of mind to somehow put a spare pillow underneath the small of his back, thinking that it would help keeping him exposed, and the dragon murred in thanks, drawing out to thrust in with half of his buried length, making Abel squeak with how forcefully his knot impacted.

The dragon listened to age old instincts and raised his thick, yet stumpy tail, flicking it down and outwards whenever he thrust in to give his thrusts a little more oomph, and did Abel ever "Oomph," feeling that knot perhaps stretching him close to the three inch mark.

Garen's thrusting had started becoming more regular, the dragon easily sliding five of his six non-knot inches into the human beneath him, drilling him wide open by using his hefty tail to help give him momentum.

Abel simply had no idea how to cope with it. Each thrust drove the breath from his lungs, whereas each time Garen drew back sucked the breath back into them.

"You are so big, Garen," Abel chirped quietly to him, with his head thrown back in pleasure as his dragon split him wide open, easing him open wider and wider with each thrust, teasing his ring open with his meaty knot.

Garen rumbled appreciatively, leaning forward and taking Abel's legs with him, allowing him to surge even deeper into Abel's depths. "And you are so cute, so tight, so mine!" he said, each of the words to describe Abel punctuating a particularly rough thrust. On the last of the three, Abel cried out, having taken as much as he could bear, and unloaded his essence onto his stomach and chest, moaning softly as his insides clamped down on the dragon's cock. Garen stayed hilted without the knot as he waited for Abel's orgasm to pass, the dragon having an incredible stamina as he simply watched his mate's pleasure, leaning down when he was done to lap at the human's seed, growling softly. It wasn't like he could actually thrust during the human's orgasm, the smaller male was unreasonably tight during the time his seed splattered his own stomach, almost to the point where it hurt the dragon's member.

Abel, feeling the distinct lack of anything extra inside of him, though, looked downwards, wondering why he hadn't also heard his mate climaxing as well. The reason became obvious when Garen gave his mate another devious smile before slowly popping each ridge out of Abel's tight ring one at a time, top, bottom, top, bottom, top, bottom, and so on.

"You did not… also climax?" Abel said, a mixture of pleasure, fear, ecstasy, and exhaustion playing across his face.

Garen shook his head, having reached the point where only his tip remained. He began slowly popping the ridges back in then, one at a time, watching as Abel's face softened and grimaced each time a ridge stretched him out, as well as entered. "I want to see you writhing around my cock for as long as I can, my love. You look beautiful with me inside you."

Abel blushed, not only because of how he was being treated, but also from how he was being talked to. His answering clicks and chirps came in between grunts and moans as his dragon set about stuffing him once more, grinding his knot against the human's tailhole roughly. "I should hope that I look beautiful otherwise, but I must admit I enjoy seeing you inside me, too." He clicked, grinning lopsidedly.

Garen nodded. "I would not have any other as my mate. Are you ready for more, my love?" He said, shifting his hips to make his rock hard erection stir around within Abel's belly, which caused his smaller brother to moan as he nodded. The dragon resettled himself on the bed and resumed thrusting, driving into the small human beneath him powerfully, his ridges popping in and out one after the other with little time between. Abel's length never softened despite having climaxed, and the dragon leaned his head down to lap at his spilled seed, only to deliver it back to Abel's body with a kiss as he forced the human's lips open and ground forward with his knot, his thrusts seeming to make headway in the deliverance of the knot into Abel's body.

Garen got an idea while thrusting and moved Abel's legs onto his shoulders, positioning them in such a way that they hooked together to stay in place. With his hands now free he took immense pleasure in running his sharp claws gently down Abel's skin as he thrust, making sure he did not cut him but also making sure that the human squirmed. His tight hole spasmed around his length when he paid close attention to Abel's nipples, as he found out upon gently prodding one with the sharp tip of his claw. The reaction Abel had was gorgeous: The human arched his back, sucked in his breath, and clenched tightly around his cock, only changing when the dragon toyed with the small nub evilly despite Abel's protests to stop.

He did stop teasing his nipples eventually, and by that time the dragon figured he had given his mate enough time to recover from his first climax, having not stopped his powerful thrusts that lifted Abel's torso off the bed throughout the entirety of the teasing. Instead now the dragon leaned down closer, feeling how the human had soaked in so much of his heat that he now radiated his own while making the human bend his torso even further to accommodate the dragon nearly laying on top of him.

Garen rumbled affectionately as he gave one of Abel's nipples a lick with his searingly hot tongue before rearing back until only his tip remained. He slammed forward powerfully, causing much the same reaction in Abel as his first thrust did, Abel looking like he belonged with Magikarp and Gyarados with how wide his eyes were and how ajar his mouth was, however Garen didn't stop with just one. He continued the slamming, going at a breakneck pace as he plowed into Abel's hole, precum flying from the ridges of Garen's cock as the concave parts scraped against his insides only to release their tension upon becoming freed. It was all replaced as quickly as it was lost, however, with the larger brother's repository of precum seemingly endlessly leaking into Abel as his knot stretched his hole dangerously wide.

They remained rutting, Garen clawing down Abel's sides carefully as he thrust, knowing that his own climax was close at hand and that soon he would make the tie to mate them, as well as perform the bite that would mark Abel as his, just as the Pokéball could be said to mark Garen as Abel's.

"You feel so good, Abel," Garen said, panting from the exertion of hammering his knot against the human's resistant backdoor, his pumping hips impacting the sweaty human's rump with each thrust. "I am almost ready to give my seed to you… just wait a while longer."

Abel gasped for air, constantly moaning from the constant stimulation those ridges were having on the part of him that felt so good when they rubbed against it. "G-give it to me, Garen. Make me yours!" He chirped, trying desperately to hold on to his second climax, which was already waiting to burst forth from within him, yet still Garen thrust, harder and harder as the pain of Abel's tailhole getting prized open caused him to see stars with every thrust, until finally the moment came.

Garen opened his maw wide and clamped down onto Abel's shoulder with the very last thrust he could manage before knowing that he would be lost to his own orgasm. He pushed forward as hard as he could until finally, raw and ravaged, Abel's tight ring finally relented and sucked in Garen's knot with a loud slurp, the sound of their hips slapping with finality before the dragon roared into Abel's shoulder, his cock throbbing once before unloading spurt after spurt of hot dragon cum into Abel's depths, spurned on to deliver more by the human's ring and passageway spasming around his length as he underwent his own climax, effectively milking the dragon for all he was worth. Garen yanked and tugged on his knot, thrusting even while tied somehow, battering the human's prostate with it as he stretched out incredibly tight parts of the human's insides that he had not been able to reach without the extra length from his knot in play.

Garen bit down harder, breaking the skin of Abel's shoulder with his teeth and drawing blood, only to summon fire from within and cauterize the wounds instinctively before too much bleeding took place. he would have scars of Garen's mark on his shoulder, and all who saw him without a shirt would know that Abel was his, which was just what the Gabite wanted.

Abel's orgasm ended long before Garen's, the virile male dragon seeming to orgasm for upwards of three minutes. By the time the flow of his seed finally petered out to an end, the human beneath him had a noticeable bulge in his stomach simply due to how much fluid over the course of their lovemaking and Garen's orgasm had ended up inside of him with nowhere to go due to the three and a half inch knot plugging him up quite nicely.

The two of them laid there, panting heavily as they felt the other's heartbeat. Garen leaned upwards and delivered a kiss to Abel, where the human tasted his own blood and realized that he had been bitten by his mate. He had been so lost in his own orgasm that he had not even felt it, however that was not the only thing the human had lost track of during their orgasm, as the lights to the room flicked on, followed by gasps from two mouths as Clara and Weston stared at their two children, their blue son balls deep in their pink son.

Abel had apparently cried out in pain as he was tied, and the sound woke up his parents who then came rushing to his aid. Only he could not have been safer, by the brothers' own judgement.

Clara cleared her throat, somewhat pale as she saw her two sons clutching to each other, fearful for their own perseverance. She had been about to punish them, but seeing their faces she was instead reminded of herself and Weston so many years ago, two scared kids fooling around when they were young, albeit much older than these two miscreants, but still. She stilled her voice and simply said: "We will talk about this in the morning. Garen. Abel. Don't do anything… more tonight. Okay? You boys have a lot of explaining to do tomorrow."

The two brothers merely nodded before their mother turned off the light, leading a Weston who looked very much shellshocked back to their own bed.

Garen turned back towards Abel in the darkness, his fearful heartbeat thrumming quickly in Abel's rear. "I love you, Abel. No matter what they may do to us."

Abel nodded, kissing his mate's neck. "And I, you, Garen. I am yours."

And since they could not move easily with Garen still tied within him, Garen simply laid on his brother and slept on him like that, the exhaustion taking both of them to their dreams.

>

---

The next day found Abel and Garen still laying together with the dragon on top as the golden morning sunshine lit up their curtain, casting a soft glow throughout the room.

Abel roused first, awoken by the bird-type Pokémon outside his window chirping to one another. He blinked his eyes blearily, the events from last night slowly trickling back into his mind's eye in almost much the same way Garen's seed had somehow trickled from his rear during the night, after the dragon's knot had deflated, and his shaft had retracted back into his vent. At first, the human had blushed, feeling love for his mate as he dozed on top of him while he recounted the events of the previous night, however that warm feeling quickly turned to dread as he realized that his parents had caught them, and told them that they would be talking in the morning.

Abel gently shook Garen's shoulder, clicking wake-up sounds to him as he desperately tried to formulate a plan for the two of them to try and run away. Where would they go? How would they manage? Surely if they were recognized, they would be given temporary shelter from people, correct? The thought of using their unwanted 'fame' in such a way made Abel slightly queasy.

"Please, please, Garen, wake up…" he whispered, finally managing to get a reaction from the dragon, who opened his eyes in much the same way that Abel had done.

"Mm? Is it breakfast time?" He asked, rubbing his eyes with one hand before cuddling up to Abel once more, smelling his sexual musk all over the human and finding that he very much liked the mix of his own and his brother's.

Abel shushed him softly. "No, we need to think of a plan in case Mom and Dad decide we can't stay together. We need to leave if they try to keep us apart."

Garen's eyes widened as he recalled the events of last night, suddenly realizing that their parents had walked in on them and saw them together. His cuddling suddenly became much more possessive as he clutched the human to his body. "I won't let them take you away from me, I'd rather die."

Blushing, Abel nodded and gave the Gabite a kiss. "Then we need to get moving. We need to pack, and we need to make a plan."

The dragon nodded and the two of them slipped out of bed as quietly as they could to begin packing for a journey. They packed clothes, books, technology, everything they thought that they would need no matter what situation they might have found themselves in. Abel was actually kind of proud at the amount of things that he had managed to think that they might need, and mentally congratulated himself on being good at planning.

However, their problem arose when they entered the darkened kitchen and tried to exit through the back door.

As Abel reached for the doorknob with one pack upon his shoulders, someone behind them cleared their throat, and he froze. Garen whimpered softly and covered his eyes with his hands, even though he could see in the dark, he hadn't seen that Clara had been behind the door when they entered!

The light flicked on from their mother's hand and bathed the two in an apprehending light, and they turned to meet their mother's cold stare from where she sat next to the light switch. "And just what do you think you're doing, Abel Aphori Zanfis, Garen Vontil Zanfis? It is much too early for school, and neither of you showered after your little escapade last night. If you were thinking you had to run away, anyone who looked carefully enough would be able to see just why you were running," she said, motioning to the unclean scales around Garen's nether regions, as well as Abel's mussed-up hair that had suspicious white crust tangling it in a few places."

Only silence answered her and she sighed, looking at her two terrified boys. "Weston! They're in here, they were trying to get out through the back," she said, calling towards the other end of the house.

Their father's voice came echoing back a quick confirmation that he had heard, and he arrived shortly after, closing the kitchen door behind him. He gave his sons a once-over, looking them up and down before crossing his arms. "Go take a shower, both of you. Separately." He had added the last part as a precaution since the two brothers had been bathed together since they were infants, and the habit continued throughout their lives as they made the conscious decision to maintain it.

The pack on Abel's shoulders sagged off of one of them before thudding to the floor, and Garen carefully set his own pack down before nodding towards his dad. He took Abel's hand in his claws and tugged him towards the shower. "Come on, we can't leave…"

The human whose hand he grasped sighed, wiping tears away with the back of his hand before allowing the dragon to lead him to their bathroom, their father following them along. They heard the kitchen door open and then close, their mother going outside to perform some unknown task.

---

"Well," Weston said, crossing the room to where he could look at both his sons sitting at the table. The two boys were clean, and Clara had caught Abel, who was the first to bathe, trying to escape with Garen inside of his Pokéball through the bathroom window. She had pushed him back inside with a curt reprimand, and it had stung the young teen's pride.

"I'm gonna ask you two a few questions, alright?" He waited for the two of them to nod. "Alright. First, do you two know why we're having this talk?"

Garen piped up, finally breaking the silence he and his mate had shared. "Cuz we… we mated."

Weston nodded, "Correct. And do you know why that might be a problem?"

Abel spoke then, quietly. "Because I am a human and Garen is not..." He remained with his face downcast, unable to meet the gaze of either of his parents.

Weston nodded again. "Not to mention the fact that you two are both males, but that is really not as big a deal as the fact that you two aren't even the same species. Not to also mention that you two are brothers for goodness' sake. Now am I right to assume that it was something mutual?"

The two spoke at the same time, their soft voices echoing each others' "Yes."

And then the table fell silent as each of the four people in the room sat alone with their thoughts. Garen and Abel were holding hands again beneath the table, a fact that did not escape either of their parents' perceptions.

"We love each other," Garen blurted out, blushing so furiously his blue face became purple.

Weston was taken aback by that, slightly. "But do you truly love each other like that? It's natural for you to love each other as siblings, but what you did last night is something that people who love each other like your mother and myself love each other do. I can't imagine that to be the case, though."

Abel was blushing now, too. He didn't want to say what he was about to say, but he figured he had to, otherwise what little chance they might have had could have been put in danger. "But... That's just it, Dad... We do love each other like that..." He was looking up at the both of his parents now, pleading to them with his eyes for their understanding and compassion. When all he was met with in return were steel faces carefully betraying no emotion, the teen hung his head once more and began to softly sob.

Garen scooted his chair over closer to him upon seeing his distress, and put his arm protectively around Abel's shoulder. He added on to Abel's statement. "We want to be together until we can't anymore," he said, "and we will fight to stay together." His eyes glittered almost dangerously with that last statement, showing he truly meant it. He would turn against his own parents if he had to, that look had said.

Weston hadn't expected that. "You two are... Serious?" He looked over to Clara, who had stayed tight-lipped and silent over the whole conversation. His gaze prompted her to share her thoughts.

"It's… not unheard of," she said before trailing off. She had read about such a thing occurring in a few of the many books she had read on Pokémon behavior. She turned her gaze back towards her sons. "Although you both know that most people don't approve of a relationship like that, right?"

Abel nodded, coughing softly in between sobs as he choked on his own sadness. Garen leaned closer and put his warmth against the teen, rubbing his back to try and help him. "Yeah..."

Their parents looked at each other before looking back at their children. Watson stood up before addressing them once more. "We are going to discuss something, you two. We'll be right back."

He and Clara both exited the kitchen, closing the door behind them and waiting to see what their sons would do.

But throughout all of this, Garen was worried. His mind wandered. What would happen to the two of them? Would he be released in some faraway place, unknowing of how to survive as a wild Pokémon? Would he be captured by a human who was not as kind as Abel, as compassionate as Abel? What if he was simply put into a PC for the rest of his life… The thoughts and ramifications of what he and Abel had done bubbled to the surface of his mind as easily as water boiled. He could already feel the sadness that would encompass him upon losing his brother, his best friend, his lover. It threatened to swallow him up, and the dragon silently began to cry. The words his father were saying were not important anymore. To him, all they would do is condemn him to a fate worse than death; they would sentence him to a life without Abel. They faded into nothing but auditory blurs as the dragon sank into his own despair.

The door opened again after a few minutes, but Garen did not hear it, nor did he heard his parents entering the room once more and delivering to the brothers their decision.

All he heard was Abel gasping, and he felt the human's heartbeat flutter, from what the dragon assumed was fear. He looked inward, preparing himself for the worst before he was shocked out of his reverie by Abel, who had taken the dragon's face in his hands and turned his head to deliver a fiercely passionate kiss.

The dragon sputtered during the kiss and tore away to look around, confused. His questioning gaze fell on his father, who was smiling alongside his mother.

Weston looked at his blue child's confusion. "Garen, did you hear me?"

The dragon shook his head. "I will be sent away, right?" He sniffed.

Weston balked, moving as if he had just been punched in the stomach in the way he almost doubled over. "What? No! What!? Why on earth would you think that?"

Garen sniffed again, wiping the tears from his eyes. "Because what we did is illegal, and I'm just a Pokémon..."

Weston gawked this time, looking back to Clara who simply shrugged while shaking her head, clearly unaware what Garen was talking about. He turned back to the Gabite. "Didn't you hear what I just said?"

Garen looked down, utterly crestfallen. "No… I was too busy wondering where you would send me away to…"

Weston walked around the table, kneeling next to his blue hued son. "Look at me, Garen." The dragon's golden eyes looked up, puffy from crying. Weston put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed gently. "You are just as much our son as Abel is. For the last fifteen years you've been part of this household, and while I'll admit, seeing my two boys... Uh... In bed... Tied... Was a shock... If that's truly how you two feel about each other, then who am I, or your mother, to get in the way of it...?"

Garen held his gaze, his eyes still uncomprehending. "So…"

Weston smiled to his son. "So, I said as long as you two 'do it' in private, where no one will find out..." He looked towards Clara, who nodded towards him with a mirror of his own grin. "Then your mother and I are fine with it. We love you. And if you love loving each other, then we'll love the idea of you loving to love each other," he trailed off. "If that makes sense." He shook his head as if to clear it. "You know what I meant. But we're not sending you away, we would miss our son too much, and our only remaining son might leave us to go after you," he said, to which Abel nodded furiously and prompted Weston to chuckle.

Garen's eyes refilled with tears, and his bottom lip quivered before he flung himself at his father to hug him tightly, sobbing with relief.

He had been so absolutely certain that he was going to be sent away… So many happy emotions swirled around inside of him, blasting away the dark clouds of sadness with what felt like a wind of exhilaration, that his entire body began to shake as he openly cried, as if his body could not contain all of his emotions within him.

But that's exactly how things were. His body literally could not contain all the emotions and thoughts whirling through him; all the worries and scenarios that could finally be put to rest with the assurance that they would not take place… the weight being removed from his shoulders made him feel expansive, as if he would explode from the inside out just from how everything had taken place.

And so his body did the only thing it could do.

It got bigger.

---

A soft light encompassed Garen's form, and it quickly grew in its intensity as all three pairs of eyes were reminded of the day during Abel's first week of first grade, when he had evolved due to sheer happiness at being able to take classes and do homework.

Garen's silhouette stretched and pulsed within the near-blinding cocoon of evolutionary light, and Clara's expression grew worried as she watched him expand. She had read several books on the Garchomp family throughout the years, and all of them stated the average height of a Garchomp was 6'03", with a standard deviation of three inches. As a Gible, Garen had been incredibly small, several standard deviations below what was generally accepted as the standard height of a Gible, although that problem went away when he evolved into a Gabite. In fact, he was a bit taller than normal as a Gabite, two or three standard deviations above the norm as he aged, but he was perfectly sized upon originally evolving...

Clara had always assumed that he would balance out when he evolved, but she realized as the blazing shadow stretched taller than her 6'04" husband, that wouldn't be the case.

Weston had been released from the Pokémon's arms as the evolution took hold, and he was on the ground, wide-eyed as the shape before them stretched nearly all the way up to their eight-foot ceiling before finally stopping.

Garen's form finally stopped emitting light, and he seemed to materialize from it as he dimmed. His size was... Intimidating, to say the least. He would actually have been quite scary, it not for the fact that the family knew better that he would not intentionally hurt them. That, and he had quite the cheesy grin on his face. The chair he had been sitting in was absolutely ruined, and the table had scooted across the floor as Garen's growing form had pressed against it. Abel had the presence of mind during the evolution to move away from his brother, having gotten off the chair he had been sitting in and taking several steps back. The big beast in their kitchen looked around curiously.

"Woah," Garen said, his voice significantly deeper than before... More a growl than a voice. "You guys are so small!"

Abel gulped, looking up at the creature that now towered three feet over him. "No… You're just huge, Garen."

He looked down at himself, twisting this way and that to get a better look. It wouldn't have been a problem, really, if he didn't nearly knock everything in the room over with his tail, which was now much longer and thicker than it was before, and actually tail-like instead of some tapered stump.

Abel ducked beneath his swinging tail as Clara lunged forward to catch a vase that the creature had knocked over in his curiosity, saving it from a run-in with destruction.

"Garen, outside! There's too much stuff to break in here," Weston said, loudly. The huge beast might have been an intimidating size, but he was using his 'father voice,' and Garen was still his son.

Realizing this to be true, Garen froze, carefully looking around before moving slowly to the back door, towards the backyard. He opened the door gingerly and had to squat, going through the door like a Krabby, sideways and one leg at a time, ducking to make the 6'8" clearance, and even had to suck in his chest and stomach a bit to fit through. It was almost comical.

"I'll… I'll go get the tape measure," Clara said, putting the vase back on its pedestal, visibly pale. Her hands were shaking slightly from the shock of seeing how that tiny Gible had transformed.

Abel was equally as shocked as his mother. Plenty of thoughts were running through his head, but the newly mated human had one thought with particular regards to how on earth the two were supposed to mate now that Garen had become enormous.

Out in the backyard, Garen raised his arms and stretched, arching his back and using his thick tail to keep balance by pressing it against the ground. He had digitigrade legs, like he had when he was a Gabite, but now they looked like they could propel him at the speeds his species were known for with how muscled and thick they were. However that could be said for all of him, which looked incredibly fit and muscular. The Pokémon even had what looked similar to the pecs and eight pack that most male models enjoyed showing off.

Abel was just staring at him from the doorway, unsure how to feel about Garen's evolution as he watched the huge male carefully rampage around the lawn, going over his new body and getting used to it. Yes, he was happy that Garen evolved, ecstatic, even. But he couldn't help but notice that the area where his internal balls were located had two prominent bulges. If his internal parts were that large, the fifteen year old had a hard time wrapping his head around how big the member housed within that equally prominent slit was. A very hard time. He was at the same time both aroused and afraid... Worried they would never mate completely again like they had the night before, and aroused that Garen would try anyways.

His own horny teenage mind aside, though, he had to admit that the reptile looked very impressive, and he came out of the doorway to watch his brother test out his new shape.

Clara came out of the house after a few moments, having finally located the tape measure. She called Garen over and brought out a step ladder, getting on top of it and then telling the dragon to stand in the way that felt the most relaxed and natural to him. Garen settled himself and waited for Clara to position the measure's coil at his head, and lower the end towards the ground. She scribbled the measurements onto a notepad that Abel hadn't seen her bring out with her.

"Seven feet and eight inches," she announced, somewhat weakly. "Well you certainly have consistency down, Garen," she said, laughing nervously.

"How am I going to fit inside?" He asked, softly.

Clara measured the width of his shoulders and the put a hand on one of them, turning the Pokémon around. She quickly jotted down 2'11" onto her notepad in the appropriate space. "I don't know, sweetheart, but we'll figure something out, I promise."

"Will I have to sleep outside?" He asked, worried. Clara took his head measurements and wrote down 11" directly from one ear to the other, and an almost even 1'4" from the back of his skull to the tip of his snout.

"You might have to," she said, softly. She rolled up the measuring tape after recording the size of Garen's horns and put it away, going over the numbers one last time before nodding. "You have grown up to be a very big boy, Garen. But we can work with it, it's not something that we'll make fun of or insult you for. It might take a while for us to renovate the house, though... I'm not sure if we have the money for it. You'd have to be outside or in a tent until then." To that, Garen looked rather solemn. She quickly kept talking to try and reassure him. "But I'm sure Abel would love to stay outside with you!"

"Yeah," Abel said, having walked up to his giant mate. "I haven't been able to sleep without you next to me ever since you started insisting on it, and to suddenly have you not next to me might prevent me from sleeping," he said, laughing.

Garen smiled, his golden eyes now having the black sclera of normal Garchomps. He still didn't have a dorsal fin, though, so running at high speeds might not be a good idea, however the dragon's mind was quick to figure that piggy back rides might become the norm. The large dragon gingerly picked up his mate around his waist, putting him carefully on his back. The dragon's waist was slim in comparison to his shoulders, and it was easy for the human to wrap his legs around his mate's waist and his arms around his neck.

Abel was suddenly incredibly aware of the powerful, corded muscles rippling beneath the scaly, blue-gray skin of his mate. He imagined Garen on top of him doing all sorts of things, and he blushed, burying his face in the dragon's back, only to realize the mistake a tad too late.

The dragon's own scent was very strong in such close proximity to Abel's nose, and though it wasn't particularly cologne-worthy, the human fell in love with it instantly, and got a nose full of it. He blushed, watching their mom head back into the house after telling them to be safe, her paleness having returned when she saw Garen pick up Abel, and as she went inside she was muttering about how nice a drink would have been.

Garen waited until their mom was inside before he looked back towards the human deviously, a Gengar-grin splitting his muzzle.

"I can feel your member pressing into my back, Abel," he said, snickering.

Abel blushed crimson. "Sh-shut up," he stammered, matching Garen's quick switch to his own speech.

"Do you really like the changes that much?" He asked, hefting his mate up higher on his back so that Abel could rest his head on his shoulder.

"Y-yeah," he chirped, softly. "I like them a lot… I loved you before, don't get me wrong… But now you're… Irresistible."

Garen chuckled, that Gengar-grin coming back to grace his features. "Well, let's see what we can do about that, eh?" He turned towards the forest behind their house and began walking, leaving Abel to figure out just what his vague statement had meant. The human sighed softly and relaxed as he was wrapped in a sense of security caused by the smooth, powerful movements of his mate's gait.

They walked into the trees, and Abel briefly contemplated for the first time the soreness of his ass, making note that the soreness was from Garen when he was still a Gabite… How would he manage now that Garen had evolved?

---

Garen led his mate down one of the familiar paths, and Abel was almost lulled to sleep by the combination of the rhythmic motions of his partner's walking and his powerful, dominant musk, which further enhanced his sense of security.

They walked past the place where some bully Trainers were normally camped out, trying to prey upon weaker Trainers attempting to skirt the Trainers that were directly on the route, and met no one. Either there was no one there that day, or whomever happened to be there was scared witless at the sight of the huge blue-grey Pokémon and wanted to save themselves a trip to the Center. Either way, the pair was fine with the outcome. They were allowed to go farther off-route without opposition. Even wild Pokémon seemed to steer clear of Garen. He commanded a new air of regality and confidence around him, his aura demanding respect and signaling strength. When he was a Gabite, those traits might not have seemed to suit him, however as they walked the Garchomp quickly came to terms that maybe having those traits was not such a bad thing, so long as they were used respectfully and with purpose.

They reached their destination soon enough, and the dragon took a deep breath before letting it out, a puff of steam escaping his nostrils unintentionally. He was still so warm.

The dragon put his hands on his hips and arched his back, the human's weakened and drowsy grip slipping from the dragon's back. Abel slid down Garen's back, slipping smoothly down the Pokémon's thick tail to the ground. He roused from the movement and rubbed at his eyes, looking about to realize he was snuggling his mate's tail.

He stood up, stretching his back and limbs to look back towards the Garchomp. Abel was struck by how human Garen looked, with his stance wide, hands on his hips, and a cocky grin on his snout.

Abel tore his eyes away with difficulty and gazed around them. They were in a small clearing which was unfamiliar to him. He turned his eyes back to Garen inquisitively.

"How long were we walking?" He asked.

Garen stuck his wide yet tapered tongue out at the human. "I think you mean how long was I walking, you lazy human."

Abel laughed, quick to blush at how his mate had caught him redhanded. He grasped for excuses. "I… figured you would want my ass to be all nice and relaxed, not tense from all the walking."

Garen rolled his eyes. "You need to brush up on your biology, babe" he said, blushing as he tried out the name for his mate. "Your rump will be a lot more tense from staying in the same position for so long than if it was moving the entire time."

The human flushed a bright Razz berry color. He shook his head quickly and thought of a comeback. The proverbial lightbulb went off, and Abel turned around. Garen watched expectantly.

Abel tried to keep his voice steady as he walked over to a very conveniently present tree stump and leaned against it, putting his hands on the rough surface and putting weight on them, intentionally letting his rear jut out towards the dragon. "If you think my ass should be so tense then, perhaps you should come over here and… l-loosen me up." He almost had it! But that hesitation at the end gave away his nervousness, and Garen didn't miss it.

He growled softly, eyeing his mate's pose. He felt his slit warming up, liquids being produced from within him to help ease his cock into the world, and then into something else.

"Gladly," he growled, sauntering up to the smaller male, a Sharpedo-toothed smirk upon his snout. He came up and stood right behind that upturned rear, putting his hands on his human's waist and feeling as his mate stiffened as he pressed his bulging, leaking slit to the seat of his pants.

"Lose the pants, babe. I am about to make sweet, sweet loving to you… But I cannot do it with these in the way," He smirked.

Abel blushed, undoing the button on his pants and letting his huge mate pull them down. Garen managed to get his mate's shirt off as well, and soon he had a sexy, naked human in front of him. Humans as a species had a horrible sense of smell, and so they produced a lot of pheromones, something Garen was very appreciative of as he inhaled his mate's potent mixture of a curiously sweet and an almost spicy aroma, reminding him vaguely of cinnamon and vanilla.

The huge male pressed his leaking slit up against the human's taint for a while, letting him feel the heat radiating from his body, letting him feel dominated and owned. The seemingly small bite scars of their first time the night before made the dragon growl deeply. He wanted a new set of scars on the other side, now… one that would show how much he had grown.

Garen got down on his knees behind his mate, moving his hands from Abel's waist down to his delicious rump. The huge dragon licked his chops, remembering the utter deliciousness of his brother's tailhole. He leaned in close, gently massaging Abel's ass with his hands, and exhaled a hot, moist breath right onto the teenager's taint and the back of his balls. He grinned widely when he felt Abel tremble beneath him and the dragon pursed his lips, blowing hot air gently right on the human's entrance to watch it wink and spasm at him as he continued to tease. Abel let out an animalistic moan of desire, unintentionally shaking his ass from side to side out of his sheer inability to do anything else. He let the Garchomp do with him as he willed, trusting his brother completely.

"Looks like someone missed me," Garen said, speaking closely to the human's sensitive entrance, tickling it with the sudden, erratic bursts of breath that came from his talking.

"Please..." Abel said, almost too quietly for Garen to hear. His horns twitched.

"I am sorry, what was that? I did not quite catch that," he teased, gently working his thumbs closer and closer to Abel's taint. He touched everywhere around the teenager's pucker except his actual pucker, and it was driving Abel absolutely wild. He writhed underneath the Garchomp's ministrations.

"P-please!" He moaned out in his own native speech, gritting his teeth as he felt his anus itch with need, aching for relief.

"Oh, am I forgetting to do something?" The Garchomp asked innocently, switching back as well "Why don't you tell me…" He leaned in close to Abel's ring, nearly kissing it. "Ex-act-ly. What-you. Want." He had his lips almost pressed against the human's tailhole, and punctuated each syllable in such a way to deliver a burst of air to that spasming pucker, the ending 't' noise of 'want' sending Abel absolutely crazy.

"Y-yes!" He groaned, swaying his hips back and forth. He arched his back, his resistance crumbling. "Please rim me Garen! I can't take it anymore! Give me some relief!" He hit the stump with a fist, letting out a groan of frustration that turned into a moan of ecstasy as Garen finally heeded his wishes, the teasing having put the poor teen's hair-trigger sex-drive on a knife's edge. When the dragon's wide, pointed tongue finally slathered his entire taint, tailhole included, Abel couldn't help but spread his legs as liquid pleasure shot from his rock-hard length, accompanied by what was the human nearly crying with relief.

Garen smiled, having put a hand below his mate's needy erection before it blew, and caught most of his love's ejaculate in his palm. He brought the hand up to Abel's face and felt his bulging slit split open with arousal as his mate obediently started lapping up his own seed and cleaning the dragon's palm. He felt his arousal, as well as his erection, grow the longer he teased and pleased his mate.

He had his tongue slathering the human's tailhole, teasing it gently with the tip of his tongue before finally pressing forward and slipping it in. His tongue was fairly wide, being the same general shape of his snout, and it stretched the poor young man's anus wide open.

He plunged his tongue deep within his mate, extending the fleshy appendage into the human much farther than his cock had when he was a Gabite. Abel could only try to imagine as the fireworks of pleasure rocketed through his mind... If the Garchomp's tongue was reaching more than eight inches into him, how far would his cock reach...?

Abel gulped for air as his sensitive areas were ravaged, half due to the pleasure and half as reflex due to incomprehension for just how big the Garchomp was now.

Garen was instinctually swishing his tongue around in such a way that would help loosen up his mate. His hands were still kneading Abel's rump, and the human shuddered and began to let out a soft rumbling that Garen had been known to make when incredibly pleased.

The dragon pulled his tongue from his mate's ass with a slurp, and it came free with a sexy pop. "I didn't think humans purred," he said, jokingly. He gave his mate's rear a final squeeze as he straightened up and sat back on his knees, regarding himself thoughtfully. "Turn around love. I want you to see what you're dealing with… Just… Don't be too intimidated, okay…? Looking at it for the first time myself right now, I'd probably have second thoughts about taking me…" He looked down, blushing softly as his tool subtly bobbed in time with his heartbeat, dribbling fluids freely.

Abel did as he was told, and turned around, slipping off the stump to sit on his own knees in between his dragon's. He faced the dragon's by endowment, and gulped.

"Wow," he said. "That's…"

Garen put a clawed hand up, laying it on his mate's shoulder. His hand engulfed the entire shoulder of his mate… "I know," he said. "It's pretty big."

If Abel had to guess, he would have said that his mate's cock was at least fifteen inches in length total, with four or maybe even five of those inches being in the reptile's knot alone. The shaft itself was covered in those same ridges as when he was a Gabite, only... Larger. The tip was tapered to a spear-like point, followed by the first ridges on top and bottom, staggered like before, as soon as the shaft's girth evened out, which happened after about three inches.

It was four inches thick at the apex of each ridge, and just over three in every dip. The knot? The knot looked like it would tear him apart! A solid inch of extra flesh extending out from the normal shaft on all sides! A five inch knot nestled right underneath the last staggered pair of ridges. Abel gulped.

He reached out tentatively with his left hand, grasping the thick and slippery pole of flesh, eliciting a moan from Garen as his fingers slipped under the overhang of one of the ridges on top, and brushed against the inner pocket. Sensitive.

With his other hand, he reached down and experimentally rubbed the twin bulges beneath it that housed the dragon's internal testes, causing a shiver to visibly travel up his mate's body. Abel tugged behind that huge knot, making Garen gasp and convulse, his cock throbbing powerfully in his grip.

"I'm not gonna last much longer if you keep this up… Oooooh…" His eyes fluttered dreamily as Abel's fingers gently caressed the back of the dragon's tip, the smooth surface apparently very sensitive for the male. Abel nodded, getting up from his space between his dragon's legs, and positioned himself on the stump again, bending over with his still slightly-gaping tailhole glistening and still dripping with saliva from the dragon's maw.

"No," Garen said, shaking his head. "I want you facing me. Missionary style." He smiled, watching as his mate complied. He bent down and gave his mate's tailhole a quick and sloppy French kiss, thrusting his tongue in just a few times, as much to stretch him again as to taste his delicious tailhole, to which Abel writhed with pleasure and moaned softly.

He drew back up, a string of drool connecting his mate's tailhole with his tongue, which snapped momentarily.

Garen put a hand on his hefty erection, marveling at the weight it had as he slowly brought his tip to rest at Abel's entrance.

He gazed down at his mate lovingly as he ever so slightly see sawed his hips forward and back, not even half an inch of movement each time. Soon, just his very tip was in the human's ass, and his copious precum quickly began to saturate Abel's rear end. It dribbled in constantly, the virility of a dragon making Garen quite productive.

Abel stared back up at his chosen mate, and he felt the love he harbored for the other male blossom in his chest anew. He nodded, not breaking eye contact as he gave the dragon the 'go-ahead.'

Garen's look of adoration and love mirrored his own, and as he gently started to press forward, he leaned down, giving the love of his admittedly short, but hopefully long, life a soft kiss. They had all the time in the world, and Garen kept his pressure constant, sinking his massive tool in slowly, until the first ridge right after it broadened out popped in, sinking the dragon in an extra inch suddenly.

Abel moaned, feeling himself being so stretched, so full already. Yet it was barely a fraction of what his mate had to give him. He took a deep breath; the pain was all mostly in the initial spreading. Now that the tip was in, the ridges would be all he had to worry about. Although, the ridges were only about a third as deep when Garen was a Gabite as they were now. An entire inch of variance would probably leave him sore. Garen eased forward and the mirroring ridge on the top popped in, making Abel moan loudly and convulse in pain beneath the dragon.

It felt so good though! Through the pain, the pleasure burned just as intensely, if not more, and soon the pain was dwarfed entirely.

They stayed like that for a while, their tongues slowly joining in the dance their bodies were currently entwined in, sensuously gliding against one another, savoring each other's taste, daring to dip into each other's mouths. One sharp grunt from Abel was all Garen needed to begin pressing forward again, the large amounts of precum pooling within and being added to Abel's body providing the stud with ample lubrication for him to slip another few ridges in.

He went slowly, his kisses through closed eyelids telling Abel that he would never hurt him, that he would always be safe. That right then, in that moment, nothing could touch him.

In went a few more ridges, a few more inches, a few more moans. The duo was rocking back and forth, Garen slipping ever deeper and deeper into Abel's incredibly tight depths, refusing and rejecting every instinct that yelled at him to rut. This was for Abel.

Garen's knot eventually kissed Abel's entrance, the last ridge popping in with a loud sigh from the larger of the two males. The itch behind his knot wasn't yet sated, but it would have taken the world ending around them to pull Garen away from Abel at that point. And even then, the dragon doubted that the human would let him leave.

Garen slowly pulled away from their kiss, moving his lips down his human's jawline, over to the shoulder not scarred by their previous night's activities. Was it only last night? It felt like forever ago since they had mated as Garen gently fixed his teeth onto Abel's unwounded shoulder, planning on remedying that problem soon.

He shifted his hips, stirring around Abel's insides lewdly. The poor teenager's prostate, abused by the passing of every single ridge, and having to contend with the constant pressure of the dragon's dick, couldn't handle much more. That simple movement pushed him over the edge, and Abel tilted his head back, his insides spasming as he shot his second load of sperm of the day onto his chest and stomach, the massive cock inside him seemingly milking the creamy fluid from his body.

Garen shook silently, clutching Abel close to his body as he rode out his orgasm, the intense clenching of his insides nearly pushing the dragon himself over the edge. He stopped afterwards, and let himself edge off of his impending orgasm.

Wordlessly, and with his maw still on the human's shoulder, the dragon drew back, the first ridge popping out with a wet slurp, the precum that had been pooling under the ridge spilling out onto the stump after dripping out of his ass.

Abel clenched tightly, gasping at the feeling of emptiness that single ridge's absence caused him. His clenching was futile, though, as Garen was many times stronger than him, and slowly, every ridge but the first on the bottom was outside of Abel, and he whimpered with how utterly empty he felt. He begged to be filled again, trying in vain to rock back and wedge even just one more ridge back into his velvety depts.

Biting down, Garen let out an animalistic growl, and pistoned his hips forward with all of his strength. All the inches, all the ridges, disappeared into Abel's tailhole, and the human convulsed, crying out with lust as he was speared by his lover.

Garen roared into his mating bite, drawing back and impaling his mate again, thrusting with such force that his knot was stretching Abel's backdoor, introducing pain back into the equation again. He didn't care about the pain, though. He welcomed it.

The pain meant that his dragon was loving him, and he needed his dragon to tie. He needed to be claimed, to be marked, to be bred.

Garen sensed this, and built up a steady rhythm for his thrusts, his tail curling while raising and uncurling while lowering to help counterbalance his powerful thrusts, and he snarled and growled, breaking the relative silence of the clearing. He bit down hard enough to break skin and then released him, letting the scent of blood fill the clearing before cauterizing those wounds just as he had done to the first.

"Fuck yeah," Garen grunted, knot now slamming against the human's bright red pucker. He got his mate's legs in his hands and lifted them up, hooking the smaller male's heels over his shoulders. Abel opened up for him gladly, trying to tilt his hips up into the Garchomp's thrusts.

"Gonna breed you nicely, Abel. Gonna fill you full of baby Gibles... Make your belly look pregnant with all the cum I'm gonna dump in you!" He snarled. He began acting more feral, and it looked like Abel was responding well. He rolled his hips with the Garchomp's thrusts, moaning loudly as the massive male's knot pounded against his entrance, forcing him just a little bit wider with every thrust.

His horns twitched when he heard Abel's voice actually submitting...

"Oh... Oh yes... I want your cum, Garen. I want you to claim me! Make me yours, you fucking animal! Give it to me!" He roared, surprising even the Garchomp with his volume.

He didn't need to be told twice, though, and the Garchomp brutally pounded Abel's ass, much more roughly than he would have ever intended.

With one, final thrust, combined with a roar, the Garchomp's clawed feet cut gouges in the forest floor, slamming that meaty knot deep into Abel's insides. He roared, the heat coming off him, combined with the knot punching Abel's prostate, was enough to send them both over at the same time.

"YOU are MINE!!"

Garen howled, his internal balls kicking into gear as his knot was squeezed tighter than a vice.

Huge, thick ropes of Garchomp seed pumped out of the massive creature's giant cock, which was even more visible in Abel's stomach with the added knot flesh.

The huge dragon clutched his mate to him, roaring loudly as Abel unloaded on himself once more... He could literally *feel* his stomach bulging with each and every spurt of his beloved's cock. All the edging, all the foreplay, even the words, did the trick, and the Garchomp unloaded so much semen into the teenager, it started to leak out around his five inch stud plug.

Garen's entire orgasm lasted for just over three minutes, throughout which he came pulse after pulse of thick seed deep into Abel's body. It was hot. Garen's seed was hot, his cock was hot, and his body was radiating heat in waves. The human could literally see the light refraction in the air just a millimeter above the creature's skin wherever there was a visible edge.

Soon, though, with the human's stomach bulged and bloated, the Garchomp's blasts of cum finally ended. They weren't spurts... They had been more like sustained streams every two seconds, lasting for about one second each.

He collapsed, though, and rolled onto his back, carrying his mate with him so he could lay atop his stomach. With a little finesse, they manage to get Abel turned around, so his lower back was against the Pokemon's washboard abs, and his head was resting right in the nook of the Garchomp's neck, in perfect nuzzling position.

He could hear Garen's heartbeat, as well as feel it deep inside him, as the beast put his arms around his mate.

They stayed, temporarily locked on that final ridge, for a long time. Garen's precum was beginning to make Abel's stomach feel a bit more squishy than normal... Except for the space where the noticeable bulge in his abdomen made by the huge dragon's equally huge cock slowly pulsed, in time with the dragon's mellow and relaxed heartbeat.

---

People were beginning to call them the "Daycare Couple." Clara and Weston didn't really mind it much at all. They were quickly becoming respected members of the field of Pokemon Breeding, and when the public caught wind of their need for renovations, people from all over began chipping in, sending donations so that the family business could expand. For once, things seemed to be looking up for the family.

It didn't take long for renovations to get under way, and the project was completed in six months, when Garen and Abel were 16.

There were a lot of rumors circling around in the meantime, though, of a massive Pokemon having said to take up residence in the nearby woods, just outside of the Ilex forest, and dangerously close to the Zanfis family. However, most eye-witness accounts were not uniform about the size of the creature, ranging anywhere from between eight and twelve feet tall. Given that the majority of traffic going through the area were young Trainers on foot, they tended to exaggerate about the size. The other encounters happened along the road, where drivers and their passengers would see the beast. But the speed at which they travelled distorted what they saw, and the glimpses they caught were often much too brief to be described as anything more than "big."

The reports were all in agreement on the color of the creature, and almost every eyewitness confirmed that the enigma was some sort of grayish blue. People had absolutely no idea what it was, and that, unfortunately, drew attention.

Garen and Abel's woods were crawling with people by the time the renovations were over. Abel still came home frequently, getting his meals primarily from his parents. Meanwhile Garen often made do with foraging alone behind the property most days. The two had spent the time familiarizing themselves with the surrounding woods, and even ventured into the incredibly dangerous Ilex Forest on a few occasions, figuring that familiarizing themselves with such an area on a whim would be fun.

Eventually, though, the inevitable happened. Garen was re-discovered.

It happened with the completion of renovations; the much larger rooms and doorways, as well as the larger ceilings and overall expanded floor-plan, allowing for Garen to move back into the house. But, as a result of doing so, he was seen quite frequently, and word of his evolution and size got to the Goldenrod Radio Tower. They sent an intern as a reporter to investigate.

It just so happened that the reporter's visit took place when both Clara and Weston were busy tending Pokémon in the rear yard.

---

Magnolia Tannel knocked on the door to the recently remodeled "Zanfis PokéClub," wondering which of the owners had come up with the name. The dirty blonde seventeen-year-old was excited to finally be off doing something other than paperwork or errand-running, and she was definitely happy to finally be acting like a real journalist.

It was an odd desire to be seen in one so young, but Magnolia had always been one to strive towards being different. She didn't like the idea of being a Trainer, but she had a license, as well as a partner who was safe and sound in the ball on her belt. It never hurt a girl to carry around some protection, her mom had told her.

She shifted from one foot to another, waiting. She was just about to knock again when the door opened, and the face of a similarly-aged boy greeted her.

Abel had gone through a growth spurt during the time he lived in the woods with Garen, and the young man now stood at 5'10", with a decent amount of strength in his limbs from spending every day moving around, keeping up with his huge mate. Garen always insisted that he could carry Abel on his back, but Abel liked the excercise.

"Can I help you?" He asked. Not even a greeting, wow. Magnolia sighed inwardly before putting on a charming smile.

"Hi! I heard that this was a Daycare. Can I leave my Pokémon here?" She tried to make herself sound excited, which really wasn't that difficult to do. She was finally allowed to act as a reporter, and she was also nearly lying through her teeth. 'Excited' was easy.

The man nodded, opening the door wider and stepping aside to let her in. She entered gladly.

He led her through the house to a tatami sitting room that contained a low table and four cushions, one of them noticeably larger than the rest, and she gladly sat down when offered.

"I'm going to go and get one of my parents to come and discuss details with you. They're out back."

Maggie smiled again. "Okay, thanks!"

"Just don't touch anything," he muttered, disappearing into the house.

He returned a few moments later, alone, and sat down across from her looking like he had many other better things to do.

"My mom will be here to speak with you in a little while. Right now she's dealing with a Skitty living up to its species' name. Thing was all over the place."

Magnolia nodded before tilting her head curiously. "Mom? You mean you're the Daycare Couple's son?"

The man across from her hesitated, barely.

"One of them."

Magnolia figured she might as well work on asking questions while she waited. She also wanted to see if he knew anything about the rumors, but if she just asked him outright, without any rapport, she knew she had low chances of him actually answering. She smiled cheerily. "Oh cool, you have siblings! How many?"

He grunted. "Just one, my twin brother." He figured either this girl was playing dumb, or she was simply terrible at connecting dots.

"Oh wow, having a twin must be fun. Are you two identical, or...?" She trailed off, seeing his expression.

The man sitting across from her had started laughing, although she had no idea why. "No, we look absolutely nothing alike." He continued to laugh softly after saying so, it was just too good.

Magnolia frowned. "Well I don't see what was so funny about that."

He stopped laughing then and seemed to take a second look at her, tilting his head with a furrowed brow. His eyes didn't linger on her chest or waist, like the looks of most boys tended to, but instead his gaze seemed like it was looking at something that was more than skin-deep. Magnolia shivered.

"Sorry," he said, keeping the joke to himself. Rude.

"Well then," she said, taking a second to look around the room as much as to simply break eye contact with the man sitting across from her. She let her eyes wander, before turning back to him as if something just occurred to her. "Oh, have you heard the rumors?"

His eyes narrowed again, and that stare resumed. "Which ones?"

She smiled excitedly. "They say there's a colossal Pokémon living in the woods around here. It's incredibly elusive, though, and no one knows what it is even though they've seen it." She nodded, smiling wider.

Her company's face darkened. "Oh. Those rumors."

She nodded. "Yeah. You live here, have you seen it?"

He shook his head, taking much too little time to have thought about it properly. "No. I know the woods outside well, and I've never seen it." His voice was level, though, so either he had surprisingly nimble mental faculties and was being honest, or he was lying and had plenty practice.

"Aww, that's too bad," she pouted. "I hear the forest is full of people looking for it."

Abel shook his head slowly. "There's plenty of people out there, you're right about that, but if you ask me, they're all looking for something that doesn't exist."

Magnolia reverted back to her bubbly attitude. "Well it's a good thing I'm asking you, then." She nodded again, spying a Trainer's Belt with a single Dusk Ball on his waist, looking like it had also been modified for hanging on a necklace. "Oh, are you a Trainer? What's in your Ball?" Hopefully it would help him to open up.

But his expression didn't change. Something was off about this guy. Most people would brighten up immediately after a dark subject once their Pokémon became a subject.

"I have a license, but I'm not a Trainer." He said, vaguely.

"Are you a Breeder like your parents, then?" She prompted.

Abel chuckled secretively. "Not exactly."

Magnolia pressed further. "I'm not sure I understand."

But just as she thought she was finally going to get an answer out of him, a person who must have been his mother walked in. "That's okay," he said, getting up off the cushion. "It's nothing you need to know."

He left the room with a measured amount of speed, disappearing into the back of the house again. Magnolia's journalism senses told her he was definitely hiding something… She couldn't concentrate on it further, though, as she turned to greet the woman who she guessed was Clara.

"Well hi there!" She said, smiling. "Abel tells me you've got a Pokémon you want to drop off here for a while."

Magnolia nodded, "Yeah, yeah." Something clicked. "Wait, you mean that guy's name is Abel? Like, 'I taught my Pokémon how to talk' Abel?"

Clara scowled. "Oh, he didn't even tell you his name. I'll have a talk with him about manners later, dear. Don't worry about it now." She nodded, sitting down where Abel had been. She set her hands in her lap and smiled. "Now, what can I do for you?"

Magnolia shook off the mental fog that had suddenly descended upon her and put her smile back on. "Well, my name's Magnolia, but most people call me Maggie. I came here to ask about rates for housing my Seviper for a little while…"

---

Abel groaned, slumping against his closed door with equally closed eyes.

"So who's our visitor?" A voice called over from the bed, where Garen was reading a book about different Pokémon moves that their parents had given him for their most recent birthday. The six months in the forest did nicely for Garen, he had grown another inch and packed on quite a bit of muscle, which Abel found quite fascinating to study, and took the opportunity to do so quite often.

Their bed was huge, and for obvious reasons. The two of them enjoyed it, and they were allowed to do so by their parents on the compunction that they do their own sheets, as well as kept the house tidy in general. They had to get their bum kids doing chores somehow. That somehow just happened to be sex privileges with no questions asked by them.

Abel sighed, righting himself before walking over and getting on the bed beside his brother. "She's no one remarkable, which makes me wary. My intuition tells me she's acting. Her mannerisms completely contradicted her mindset." He got under the sheets and leaned up, giving the dragon a kiss under the side of his jaw.

The dragon rumbled appreciatively, reaching with his right arm and tugging his human close. Abel relaxed against the exceedingly warm Pokémon's side, taking a glance at his book.

"Does she seem like someone we need to be extra careful of?" He asked, carefully turning a page with his claws.

Abel shrugged. "No more than the average person. She asked questions about the rumors about you, though. Wanted to know what I thought you were."

The dragon chuckled, glancing at the page number before closing his book. He set it aside on the nightstand as he turned his attentions towards his human.

"Oh? And what did you tell her?" He grinned, tugging the human over one of his legs and turning him about so they were facing each other. Abel smiled, gladly taking the chance to get closer.

"I told her that you were a horrible, sex-crazed fiend who lives in my bed and rapes me every night!" He grinned, playing up the joke.

"Oh no!" Garen cried, throwing his hands up to grab his horns in false dismay. "My secret is out!" His head quirked then, and he looked back down at the human, a giant Gengar-grin on his face, his voice low. "But did you also tell her how much you love it, and that you beg for my cock every night like a needy slut?" He got in close, leering knowingly at Abel as the human simply stuttered and blushed. He watched his poor mate try and form an excuse before silencing him with a kiss, rumbling appreciatively as Abel's body melted in his grasp to lay against him lovingly. It was so fun to tease the human, not to mention rewarding.

They laid cuddling for a while, before a familiar presence made itself known against the seat of Abel's pants.

"We should stop," the dragon said, sadly. "Don't want someone walking in."

Abel appreciated his concern and reached down to give the dragon's half-mast erection a loving pat. He got off the Garchomp's body regretfully, his own budding arousal slightly tenting his trousers, and rolled to the side of the bed. "I'm gonna grab a bite to eat, want anything?" He looked behind him as he stood up, and saw the Garchomp laying there with a stupid-happy look on his snout, gazing off towards the ceiling dreamily. His erection hadn't flagged, rather it had stayed pretty much the same as the beast enjoyed whatever he desired in his mind.

Getting no answer, the human scoffed with a smile and turned to the door.

---

The door in front of Magnolia opened inwards, startling her away from its surface as she'd eavesdropped, and she quickly composed herself, looking like she was just about to knock with one hand raised.

She took her hand back in mock surprise, "Oh! Hi Abel! I was just about to kno-" but she stopped cold as her eyes wandered into the room behind him, being drawn to the most out-of-place thing instantly.

His Garchomp had an erection.

Strike that, his utterly massive Garchomp had an utterly massive erection.

His utterly massive Garchomp in their utterly massive bed had an utterly massive erection and had his utterly massive legs under their utterly massive sheets.

She just stood there, open-mouthed, with her hand still raised yet close to her body, eyes locked on the form of Garen.

On his utterly massive erection.

Garen just watched the two humans simply stand there, the female looking like she was trying to blow his cock by how wide open her mouth was stretched, and Abel staring at her like he had stared at his cock the first time.

They probably would have stayed like that for hours if he hasn't rolled his eyes, getting off the bed to walk over and gently herd the girl into their room. Her eyes followed the way his hefty cock bobbed and swayed with his gait, and Abel moved silently. The dragon Pokémon closed the door and led her to their desk chair, turning it around so it faced the bed, and deposited her in it. With Abel, though, the mighty dragon took up his small prince within his arms and whisked him off to the bed, sitting him against the headboard before going to the other side and sitting next to him.

His cock was drooling precum, as it was wont to do when he was horny.

He'd been remembering the first time he and Abel had done it after he evolved when she was presumably caught eavesdropping. He hadn't heard her come to listen… Probably because he was distracted by sweetly kissing his second half when she started.

He sighed, raising his hands and bringing them together with a loud, resounding clap. Both humans acted as if they had been hit with a sudden Thundershock, and were snapped out of their respective reveries.

The girl spoke first.

"Why does your Garchomp have an erection, and why was he in your bed when the door was open?"

Abel shook his head to regain his senses, and looked back towards her, his eyes a scathingly intense glare of implied threat. "Well, one, most males have erections, two, this is the privacy of his home, he does whatever the fuck he wants, three, he has a voice of his own and you should be asking him that, you inconsiderate twat, four, he is not 'mine,' we are each other's, something your bugged-out eyes tell me you've never felt before since you cannot seem to look away from his meat, furthermore with five, you can take your slut-bound eyes off his dick now because I am the only creature, human or otherwise, it is probably ever going to be in. Six, if you asked him, I am willing to bet my life that he would not have it any other way, and seven, are you such a rude cunt that, upon being invited into a stranger's home, you go and eavesdrop on the people living there, sticking your nose into things that are by every definition of the phrase: 'none of your business'?" He was red in the face by the end of his rant, clearly angry at the girl for not only snooping, but discovering their secret. The girl mirrored his shade of flush, but for completely different reasons as almost each of Abel's seven points struck a chord.

"Fuck," was all she had to say. She'd at least gotten over her ocular fixation of the dragon's privates, so Abel guessed he could be 'happy' about that. Look at the bright side, that sort of thing. His dragon and he were still in deep trouble, though.

Abel growled, surprising her with how animalistic he sounded. "How about you tell us the real reason why you're here. I knew something wasn't right about you the moment you walked in. So shame on me for not listening to my gut feeling, but I am not going to allow you to threaten what we have. And if you're wondering what gave you away, it was your posture. Your attitude said 'bubbly,' but your body said 'serious business'."

The girl swallowed once, steadying her breathing. "My name is Magnolia Tannel, but all my friends call me either Mags or Maggie, and-"

Abel cut in. "Shut the fuck up about your friends, Magnolia," he said, clearly implying that he refused to be considered one of them, "and tell me what the fuck I want to know."

Magnolia winced at his words. They cut deep, surprisingly. She hadn't expected what she got upon opening the door, that was for sure... But if the two of them truly were together as Abel said during his rant... Well, she could see it from his perspective, and if she were in the same position she figured that she'd be acting pretty cataclysmal, too.

She'd known it was wrong to listen in, the actual talk with Clara had only taken about five minutes, and the two lovers on the bed had spent a much longer time than that in each other's arms, lips pressed together, so she hadn't heard anything other than the movements on a bed as a leg was adjusted here, a body shifted there, et cetera.

The Garchomp sitting next to Abel put an arm around him, tugging him close. Abel gladly leaned into the Pokémon's warmth and companionship. He crooned to his mate softly, rubbing his shoulder with a hand before thinking better of the position. He easily moved Abel into the seat on his lap, his erection having yielded when faced with the severity of the situation. Abel looked close to tears as he clutched the arms that wrapped themselves both protectively and inhibitively, his mate wanting to keep him close and safe, yet also away from the intruder should she prove to be a problem he decided he could solve with a snap of a neck. The Garchomp had seen him do it to trapped game before, and while Abel had always been sad to take a life, he profoundly felt his human would feel no remorse in killing Magnolia.

She sighed after taking another deep breath. Her hands were shaking. "I was sent from the Goldenrod City Radio Tower," she started, and already she could tell she'd said the wrong thing, despite it being the truth. The Pokémon's expression, downcast when she'd started, clouded over more as she mentioned the Radio Tower's name. She continued cautiously, knowing that she walked on thin ice.

"They sent me to investigate the rumors of the mystery giant, which, from what I can see now, was probably your Garchomp."

Abel snapped loudly and struggled in Garen's grip, but he couldn't break free. "His name is Garen and he isn't mine! He's his own and he chooses to be with me," he said, quieting his voice. "The only reason he has a ball is so that some nimrod doesn't try to catch him, and so that he can be healed if he ever gets hurt."

Seeing she'd upset him, she put her hands up apologetically. "Okay, I'm sorry." She looked up at the dragon for the first time since looking away from him. "It's nice to meet you, Garen. I'm sorry I've offended."

Garen spoke coldly, in a matter-of-fact voice that told her volumes beyond what he spoke. "We would kill you if we thought we could get away with it. Blame it on the mystery creature." His words chilled her blood. "But," he said sadly, "it would only take time for people to discover me again, like you did today, and learn that we killed you. You're alive not because we cannot kill you, but because we choose not to."

Somehow she knew that the Seviper in her ball wouldn't have been able to save her even if he tried, and she nodded. "Okay… I didn't come out here to bust you guys for… whatever you do in private. I personally don't have an opinion on the subject. But…" She paused, taking a deep breath as she decided to gamble a little. "I promise to omit everything about it from everything I ever do if you come forward with me as the 'mystery beast,' and give me exclusive interview rights. The credit for solving the mystery and the rights to cover the story of your size goes to me… And the scandal about your sex life goes to no one." She swallowed anxiously as she finished.

"You are in absolutely no position to make demands, you ill-conceived bitch!" Abel nearly screamed, struggling to break free of Garen's grip. He turned back to look up at Garen, who was beginning to struggle to keep his murderous human contained. "Let me go, Garen! I'll kill her and dump her in the woods, and we can run away to be happy anywhere else on the planet! She's almost definitely lying!"

Magnolia winced. It seemed that Garen wasn't the only protective one. They had a symbiotic relationship beyond the love for each other she saw in their eyes. Garen would protect Abel from the world and its dangers, where Abel would protect Garen from the despicable humans living in it. People like her, she reflected, however she knew that this was what she had to do in order to finally get out of being a intern, and move on to doing actual journalism.

Magnolia shuddered with her breaths. She was not only inciting the wrath of the massive Pokémon on the bed who was restraining his mate with cuddles, but she was also inciting the wrath of the human he was cuddling, who seemed to be the first one who would jump at her throat had the dragon not been holding him. The Garchomp was even unashamedly peppering his human-half with kisses, bending down to nuzzle and comfort the distressed male. Abel was utterly hysterical.

"You said you wouldn't be able to get away with it," she said shakily. "This way we both win. I get credit and coverage rights, and your secret stays safe."

"Yeah, so you can blackmail us for the rest of our fucking lives, which, might I add, had every reason to look bright and happy before you showed up on our doorstep! You're trying to become a journalist or a reporter? What kind of reporter would let this kind of thing stay in the dark forever? You will expose us eventually!"

Magnolia's patience was dwindling, but getting angry wouldn't help her win the argument. "The big guy, sorry, Garen even admitted that it was only a matter of time! You should be thanking your lucky wish tags that I'm actually willing to deny myself fame and negotiate, instead of running off straight to the radio tower to rat you two out to the whole Johto region and beyond! Who cares about mystery creatures! I caught one of the world's leading topics of discussion having sex with a human of the same gender!"

Abel's struggles slowly ceased as he began to mutter about how she had no right to act as if she were sparing them from some sort of divine judgment. However Garen was particularly intrigued by her last statement.

"I am a topic of discussion for the whole world?" He asked.

Did they not know? "Of course you are! You're the first recorded Pokemon without a criminal record to verbally communicate with humans using their own language. Yeah sure, Psychic types can use telepathy, and legends say that most mythological Pokemon could use telepathy, too, but there's little proof that they exist to begin with."

"Without criminal record?" He asked, an eye ridge raised. Magnolia was struck by how human his expressions were; they were unlike any other Pokémon she had encountered before, as if he was making a physical effort to be read more easily.

But Magnolia waved a hand dismissively. "Yeah there was a Purrloin or something belonging to a criminal organization called Team Racket a long time ago. I think they were called that because the Pokémon was their mascot and never shut up. I think they also tried to take over the Radio Tower once, too. It didn't work, though. People probably would have studied that one, if it hadn't been such a huge douchebag. The scientific community has been turned on its head since you two were discovered, and have been baffled as to where you guys went for the last six months. Statements sent by your parents said you were traveling around Johto, and people thinking they saw you were popping up everywhere, however none of the reports ever added up."

Garen grunted in comprehension. "We were in the woods this whole time while our house got remodeled. When I evolved my size became somewhat of an issue. Still growing, too. We had Mom measure me last week shortly after we got back, and I've grown an inch since I evolved six months ago."

Magnolia nodded. "That makes sense. So the thing people were seeing was you, accompanied by Abel as you guys lived off the grid"

Abel growled again, this time to his mate. "Why are you talking to her about it, Garen? As soon as people find out that we're here, they'll be flocking here for reasons other than some cryptic beast in the forest, and they'll be doing it at our front door."

Garen hefted the teenager up and got his legs underneath him, setting his mate on his lap. He rested his chin on the humans head for a bit, rumbling softly to try and calm him down as his heat seeped into Abel's bones.

"But we've dealt with reporters and scientists harassing us before, Abel. We can do it again for a while until we can find a way to disappear again. It isn't that bad, honest. And besides, if we give her exclusive rights to any subsequent interviews, doesn't that mean that at the very least, news reporters will leave us alone?" He looked up at Magnolia. "Can we actually trust you to keep our secret safe?"

The girl nodded quickly, her shoulder-length hair rippling with the effort. "Absolutely, so long as I get what I want."

"And what if you suddenly decide you want to ruin our lives," Abel spat.

She shrugged. "As of right now I don't see myself wanting that. Won't happen, I promise. The secret will die with me."

Garen nodded, apparently satisfied.

Then the two looked at Abel, who remained quiet.

"Dearheart?" Garen asked quietly, using the unique combination of clicks and whistles he had made to affectionately address Abel. Abel's face filled with color, but his expression remained stony.

Finally he sighed, before deciding to quote some Hoenn literature. "'The Land of No Choice is a foul field for attempting to grow Trust upon,' Magnolia. I will trust you, but not willingly. There simply isn't another option."

Magnolia clapped once, smiling ear to ear genuinely for the first time since she'd entered the household.

"Splendid!" She cried, and reached into her bag to grab a clipboard with some papers, as well as a pen. "I'm going to need you to come back to the Radio Tower with me, preferably with Garen in his ball so that people don't steal my thunder. It will be quite the surprise to bring you back, only to scare the shit out of my boss when out pops Garen. Also I'm going to need you both to sign these contracts."

Abel scowled. "I don't like the idea of Garen in his ball."

To that the Garchomp nodded. "I hate it, actually, but, if it will get you what you want, which will hopefully by proxy get us what we want, then I'll bear it for a while."

Abel looked up at his comfy seat's face forlornly. "We can still kill her, you know."

The Garchomp nodded, his expression somewhat grave. "I know, but then I'd have to eat her to get rid of the evidence, and even when cooked and seasoned human meat tastes terrible. Plus, look at her! She's all elbows! It would be more of a chore than a meal." He barked with laughter at his dark humor, and Abel smiled softly.

Magnolia was honestly scared.

---

"It's still called the Goldenrod City Radio Tower, but in all actuality it broadcasts televised programs now, too. Don't ask me how, though, I have no idea," Magnolia said, offering idle chitchat along their walk towards Goldenrod.

Abel grunted, a hand on the minimized Dusk Ball hanging from his neck. "My dad used to work for the Radio Tower. He was an electrician."

Magnolia made a thoughtful sound. "And I'm guessing he stopped when your mother took up breeding?"

Abel shook his head, his expression grim. "No, actually. The scumbag CEO who gave him the job around fifteen years beforehand fired him about five or six years ago."

"Oh no, how come?"

Abel laughed once with contempt. "The bastard wanted to buy Garen off of my Dad to be trained as his personal assistant. Dad said no, for three reasons. One was that Garen wasn't his to sell. Two was that he'd never sell his son. And three was that he doubted that Garen would have fun or be treated well there in the first place. This was about a month after people found out Garen could talk. And so what did this CEO do? He had some guy come in and replace a working fuse somewhere in the building with a faulty one, changed the records so that it looked like my dad did it, and then fired him when the fuse failed saying they couldn't have people who couldn't even install a working circuit in 'such a prestigious workplace'."

Magnolia stayed silent for a while, contemplating. "Yeah that sure sounds like him, alright."

Abel looked over at her. "You know him?"

"Yeah," she said, nodding. "He's my dad."

Abel huffed. "Well this is getting very complicated, very quickly. I despise him. He nearly destroyed my family. My dad had no income until my mom began using her hobby of reading Pokémon books to good use. It was a bad time," he said, remembering the way his mom used to drink alcohol as often as she drank water, yet preferring to keep it to himself.

Magnolia stayed silent for a while. "I'm sorry," she said, quietly.

Abel figured she had quite a damn lot to be sorry for, all recent developments considered.

He idly entertained the idea of simply bolting, of just running as fast as he could away from Goldenrod City. Away from the creeps who would come asking to 'take samples' from Garen, away from the obnoxious Trainers that would come up to them, asking for a battle. Not to mention the reporters and journalists, how they let almost nothing stand in their way at trying to get what they wanted. Even Magnolia was doing that. But his other half, upon being released from his Ball, which Abel was itching to do by the way he kept his hand upon it, would merely pick him up and march him right back into Goldenrod, potentially ruining Magnolia's scoop and costing them their secrets by breaking the contract.

There wasn't any way out short from actually killing the girl, and that wasn't an option.

They walked on in silence, reaching the suburbs of Goldenrod within an hour. From there they got on a bus and rode the rest of the way. Despite being a huge city, the largest in the Johto region as far as population density was concerned, there weren't too many cars within the city proper. Everything was close enough to everything else, relatively speaking, so that cars weren't absolutely necessary.

The bus dropped them off at the Radio Tower, and the pair entered without ceremony.

Abel simply followed Magnolia around the lobby and into the elevator, telling the elevator operator what floor they needed.

It lurched into motion and the two soon stepped off, into one of the floors with a recording station and set.

"Wait here," Magnolia said. Abel merely complied, too annoyed at how the day was turning out to argue.

She walked off towards an office door and went inside, trying desperately to hide her excited smile.

---

"Oh, Mag_no_lia!" Donelle said, surprised that her intern was already back. "I'm guessing that you either rec_ognized a dead end when you found one, or got _something huge. Which was it." Down to business immediately, no chances to dodge questions, no room to give a half answer.

"I found the latter," she replied.

Donelle smiled. "Ex_cellent work, _Ma_ggie. I take it _you wrote the report on your way back?"

Magnolia put her hands behind her back, rocking back on her heels before going forward again. "Actually," she said, "I did you one better. I found out what was responsible and brought it here for a live televisions interview."

Donelle stared at her, before quickly organizing her desk and adjusting her make-up. She picked up the phone and hit a button.

"Maurice? It's _Don_elle. Get a _film_ing crew up to floor 7 set B, impromptu interview, _break_ing news." She was flushed. Her worthless intern had actually found her a scoop! She went to hurry out the door, only to find her way blocked by Magnolia.

"And just where are you going off to so quickly?" She challenged.

"Why, to interview the people you brought in," Donelle replied, as if it were obvious.

"Oh no no no, this is my scoop, Donelle. I've been your intern for two years, slugging through paperwork, and now that you've finally let me out to do some inquiring, you want to take what I found and claim it as your own? Not gonna fly with me. Not this time."

The pretty red headed woman glared at the intern. "You can't stop me, I'm your su_per_ior," she said, as flatly as her condescending voice would allow.

"No, I can't, but I can make sure that the people I brought with me don't answer your questions, and cut in on your screen time." Magnolia's grin was turned into a look of mock horror, her voice wavering. "How embarrassing! A reporter with twenty years' experience having the spotlight stolen by a little girl working an internship!"

Donelle made a sound of disgust. "You wouldn't."

Magnolia made a show of examining her fingernails. "I already have. Let's just say that, in exchange for not telling the whole story, they've given me explicit rights to interview them, as well as cover any stories about them afterward."

Donelle scoffed again. "Must have been a pretty big secret."

Magnolia cringed at the woman's choice of words, recalling the scenario at Garen and Abel's place of residence. "You actually have no idea."

Her boss scowled. "To_tal bitch. But if I _fired you right now, Jerome would have my head."

Magnolia just shot it right back at her. "What can I say, Donelle? My internship gave me plenty of time to learn from the worst."

---

Mere seconds after Magnolia had closed the door, Abel let Garen out of his Dusk Ball, quickly filling him in on whatever had transgressed that he thought was relevant… Which pretty much only consisted of tell him that Magnolia was the Tower CEO's daughter.

He just couldn't believe how their situation had devolved into such a mess with almost no effort on their parts. It was no fault of their own, unless someone could actually find fault in falling in love.

Now there was an entire camera crew coming up through the elevators, making the place camera-ready. The first few of them seemed edgy and nervous upon seing of Garen, but the Pokémon quickly assured them that he was positively harmless, with the caveat that he remained unprovoked. He particularly didn't fancy the idea of being sent to jail. One of the more faint of heart (and conservative) team members actually fainted upon seeing and hearing the Garchomp speak, but thankfully he wasn't a major member of the team and was hauled off to the side where he could revive peacefully.

One of them called for a makeup team, and then approached the duo.

"I take it you're the two getting surprised today?" He asked, giving the pair casual shrug, along with a once-over.

Abel nodded. "Yep. Unfortunately."

The seemingly friendly man chuckled. "My name's Maurice, nice to meet you." He stuck out a hand and Abel shook it firmly. Maurice wasn't unpleasant to look at. He was tall, had a nice, somewhat masculine facial profile, and short, light brown hair accompanied by dark brown eyes. The contrast between browns was nice.

"We're gonna have a makeup crew come in here and make you more presentable, okay? Not that you two need much help" He winked before turning around, not waiting for an answer as he scanned the room, talking loudly. "Where is Donelle?"

At that moment Magnolia came out of Donelle's office, looking quite happy with herself.

"Donelle's not going to be covering this one, I am," she said, her voice utterly oozing with pride.

Maurice rolled his eyes, as if he felt that Magnolia expected a gold star. "Great, get over here so that you can get touched up for the camera."

The makeup crew came in soon after that. They opted not to put any on Garen, as they hadn't anticipated him being there, but they did put a light polish on his horns quickly, as well as some of his facial features to make them shine.

Having makeup done was a weird experience for Abel. He was ticklish, and not in a good mood, and the two together definitely did not mix. He snapped at the makeup artist a few times, and Garen wanted nothing more than to just come forward and cuddle him, but they agreed a long time ago to keep physical interactions in public down to a minimum, for obvious reasons.

Finally everyone was ready, and seated in front of the cameras, with Garen and Abel off to the side as the opening camera focused on Magnolia. Her makeup was tasteful, and Abel had to admit that he didn't dislike what they'd done for him, even if it had only consisted of foundation and blending, to hide his pores and give him a more even skin tone.

"Aaaand, we're live!" Maurice said, with a decisive chop of his hand through their to signal that they were broadcasting.

Magnolia didn't have a teleprompter, but she put on her best smile and burst into sound as if she had one anyways.

"Hello, Johto! I'm here with a breaking story concerning the mystery creature living in the woods off the route running from Goldenrod to the Ilex Forest. Now, there's been a lot of discussion about this rumor, and I'm sure many of you are aware of how busy the area's become, especially local Goldenrodders. Well, I'm Magnolia Tannel, junior reporter and amateur journalist, and I have an answer for you."

She was radiant, a natural on camera. This was her foot in the door to becoming something much more than a simple intern. She had to nail it. At all costs.

"Now, the answer might surprise you, but let's go over some witness reports first. Most reports conclude that the creature is grayish-blue in coloration, and though the reports on its size vary greatly between reports, they all generally agree that the thing is huge. Most estimates fall somewhere in between eight to twelve feet in height." She nodded, folding her hands in front of her.

"I have with me today a pair of guests who can help shed some light on the enigma. Please, allow me to introduce Abel the human, and Garen the Garchomp!" She held out her hand as if she were motioning to something off screen, which was the signal the cameramen had been waiting for.

The visual broadcast switched to a secondary camera that had all three of them in its view, taking in the half-circle table they were sitting at. Magnolia sat on one side of the curve, where Abel and Garen sat on the other, with Abel closest to the corner. Garen was between them, but much closer to Abel than to Magnolia.

"I'm sure people are already pretty familiar with you two, with your history, but can you two briefly explain for those of our audience who might not have heard about you before?"

Abel cleared his throat, slightly nervous as he gazed back towards Magnolia. He guessed the report would be talk-show style, and acted accordingly. "W-well, my parents found Garen as a baby Gible when taking me through the National Park when I was around one year old. He was badly hurt, and no one else seemed to be trying to help him. So they took him to the hospital. He had infected wounds, broken bones, and had to have surgery done immediately. Doctors gave him a fifteen percent chance to live. He was also incredibly tiny as a Gible."

Abel nodded to himself, getting a little more comfortable with the camera.

Magnolia looked shocked. "You mean Garen was in the middle of the forest, nearly dead?"

Abel shook his head. "No, he was only a couple feet away from the path. My parents said people were passing by him but trying not to look."

"You mean to tell me there was a baby Pokémon nearly dead on the path, and no one was trying to help it?" Magnolia asked, her face easily portraying an emotion of disgust and shock towards the people who'd passed him by. "That's sickening."

Abel nodded again. "My parents helped, and I guess that was the start of their journey towards eventually becoming Pokémon Caretakers," he said, coining the phrase right on the spot. Maurice gave a thumbs-up from off the set.

Magnolia nodded again, her eyes closed as if she were imagining it. "So go on, he had been given a fifteen percent chance to live…"

"Right. Well, since he's here now he obviously survived, and to be honest my parents raised us as brothers. My earliest memory is of Garen and me splashing around in the tub when we were almost three. We never did anything without each other, and each of us apparently threw out own separate fits if we were ever separated."

Magnolia nodded, as if connecting dots in her head. "And doing so much together is what led you to the first thing that got you guys some attention from the media."

"Yeah. Garen was absolutely torn up that I had to leave every day to go to school, and so after being denied directly by the school to allow Garen to sit in with me for my classes, my parents went directly to the mayor, writing a letter about the situation and asking if there was something he could do. He told the school that Garen would be permitted to sit in on classes so long as my family paid a hefty sum in insurance in case anything went wrong. My dad actually had to take out a loan to cover it for a while.

"After a year, though, the rates were lowered, and we went on to the next teacher. Now, Garen was allowed to sit in on classes, but he was never allowed to participate. That all changed when Mrs. Brisby, our first grade teacher, allowed Garen to do the same work that the other kids were doing. When she told him about it in the first Teacher-Parent-Student meeting, he was so overjoyed that he simply evolved into a Gabite right there on the spot. He kept his hands, though, and didn't have a dorsal fin, making him something that people call a 'shiny,' meaning he is a deviation from the normal for his species."

Magnolia nodded. "And that's another thing that got the media interested in you guys. A shiny Gabite in school. But there's more, surely? What was it like, having the media on your backs for a while. I'm told you two have never been interviewed before today."

Abel sighed, his shoulders becoming slumped. "It was awful. Strangers would come up to us on our way to and from school, when we want to the park, they even knocked on our door regularly, disturbing our family's rhythm. I was busy teaching Garen how to read and write, and after about a month my Dad actually got fired from his job."

"What did your father do for a living?"

"Well he was an electrician for this Radio Tower, actually."

"Did he ever tell you why he was fired?" Magnolia gave him a slight wink with the eye that was not closest to the camera. He guessed what it meant and hoped he was right.

He was entirely prepared to give them the lie that the company had given his dad, but he told the truth anyways. "Well obviously Garen was in school with me learning how to read and write. It was great until about a month after he was allowed to participate in class. Unfortunately, there was one man named Jerome Tannel, CEO of the Goldenrod City Radio Tower's transmitting company, who thought he could buy my brother. When he approached my dad about purchasing Garen to work as his personal secretary, my dad refused. He was fired two weeks later on account of a 'faulty fuse' that my father had 'replaced,' causing a temporary power outage to parts of the building. In truth, he was framed so Jerome could fire him as a punishment for not giving him Garen. My dad wasn't even at work the day the fuse was replaced."

Magnolia nodded sadly. "I see... That's so sad."

"Our mom started drinking, unfortunately, and we had no income for a while. In the meantime I started teaching Garen to speak human language. For the longest time we could communicate easily with me using my language and him using his, but it was time we decided to learn each other's languages."

Magnolia's eyes widened. "So you're saying that Garen can speak with us, like you and I are speaking now?"

Garen laughed at that. "To be honest I've been finding it difficult to keep my mouth shut this whole time!" He said, smiling with the Gengar-grin he got when he was having fun.

Magnolia clapped enthusiastically, as if the dragon sitting across from her hadn't spoken about how they would kill her had it not been inconvenient for them no more than two hours earlier. "Wow! How exciting! And you can speak with him in his language, too?"

The two of them nodded.

"Can we hear a demonstration?"

"I suppose," Abel said, trailing off. He turned to Garen and began speaking to him in his language.

"I like the way the sky turns the same color as your scales just after the sunset fades away," he said quietly, his cheeks getting slightly rosy.

The dragon type flushed, his gray-blue scales turning into more of a dark purple as he blushed. He turned his head away in embarrassment before replying, hiding his face shyly.

"I like the way your hips move when you walk. They don't sway like a female's would, but it is hypnotic to me regardless."

Abel flushed darker at his words, and looked off to the side, clearing his throat nervously.

The entire exchange only took about two seconds each, and Magnolia looked at them intently. They were fascinating.

"Might I ask what the two of you said to each other that got you so flustered?" She asked, smiling knowingly.

Garen shook his head, smiling back gently. "It's something private. The whole reason I taught Abel to speak my language is so that we could speak privately without having to be alone."

Magnolia paused. "But won't other Pokémon be able to understand you?"

Garen shook his head again. "It's a common misconception that all Pokémon speak a universal language that is incomprehensible to humans. In actuality, upon meeting another Pokémon, even one of the same species, for the first time, we can't really understand each other. A general exchange takes place, as we each have different sounds for different things, and we can learn each other's languages very quickly thanks to natural selection working over many generations to favor Pokémon that can comprehend new dialects and languages easily. If you had another Pokémon in here, it wouldn't be able to understand us. Give them perhaps half a week of constant exposure, though, and they could communicate essential information to us easily. It's why Pokémon can understand your human language so easily. It's so slow, and vast numbers of you agree that certain words mean certain things, so it's incredibly simple."

Magnolia nodded slowly. "Wow. That's fascinating! So why don't more Pokémon speak our language?"

Abel shrugged. "It was really difficult for Garen to learn how to speak human language. His mouth and tongue aren't quite the right shape for it, and it was really slow going when we first started. It was more or less growls of differing lengths that had different emphasis to begin with, and then he learned how to move his cheeks, lips, and tongue properly enough to make the most basic phonemes. It took years of daily practice. It also might have helped that he was in a school environment, where people were talking all the time, and where English and spelling were actively taught."

Magnolia nodded again. "Makes perfect sense. And while I'd love to know what passed between you two, I'll respect your privacy."

Garen shrugged, scratching his cheek. "It's not that we said anything incredibly personal, it's more related to the fact that we've never done it on camera with potentially the entire region watching... It's a really personal thing. We hardly ever do it in front of other people, anyways, despite that being the reason why we learned. Simply because anyone overhearing would ask about it, and interrupt what we were talking about."

"I see," she said. She sat up straight for a moment, getting an idea. "Oh! Hang on! I want to try something!" She turned in her seat and reached into her bag, pulling out her Pokédex. She fiddled with it for a while before holding it out to Abel. "For our non-televised audience right now, I've just pulled out my Pokédex and am holding it out to Abel, using the 'recognize cry' feature. I want him to speak into it using Garen's language to see how it reacts. Whenever you're ready, Abel." She hit the capture button.

Abel flushed again and said something he thought a wild Garchomp might say.

"That food is mine," he rumbled. Garen had to suppress a giggle, his eyes shining with a smile as he covered his mouth.

Magnolia's Pokédex dinged, indicating a cry was heard.

"Pokémon cry detected. Analyzing… Cross-referencing… Cry unknown. Similarities found. Cry similarity to Garchomp family is 83%. Cry similarity to Flygon family is 56%. Cry similarity to Feraligatr family is 23%. All other similarities are under 10%. A number of the similarities come from dangerous families. Caution is advised." Her Pokédex stopped speaking.

She nodded. "So it recognized you as a Pokémon, but couldn't tell exactly what you were mimicking, despite saying that you matched a Garchomp's cry by 83%. Now, like any good and credible experiment, we need a control. Garen, would you please?" She held the Pokédex over towards Garen.

Garen nodded, chirping into the device "I like licking Abel's tailhole. It is very tasty."

Abel flushed as the Pokédex dinged again. "Pokémon cry detected," it said, whirring. "Analyzing… Cross-referencing… Pokémon identified as Garchomp family. Caution, approach with caution. Pokémon family is incredibly dangerous. Do not aggravate."

Garen chuckled at that. "Well it's not wrong on either of those accounts," he said jokingly.

"Duly noted," Magnolia said, smiling outwardly, yet inwardly recalling their interactions at their home. "I imagine your newly developed speaking was a hit with the scientific community."

Garen let out a sound of disgust. "Ugh, it was awful! It wasn't bad enough that I'm a shiny, and a few wanted to study me just for that alone, but then you add my talking into the mix and it was like every laboratory in Johto and Kanto was sending a representative to come and see me, to ask of I would come with them to 'fulfill my duty,' or to 'pay my debt' to the sciences. What duty? What debt? I have a wonderful brother who taught me everything, and suddenly science is the one I am indebted to? That simply because I am an aberration from the norm I must give myself over to be studied? No. I'm indebted to my mom and dad, and my brother Abel. I am also indebted to the doctors that saved my life. No one else." He crossed his arms with finality.

"Sounds like you've wanted to get that off your chest for a while now," Magnolia said after a theatrical silence to let the dragon's words sink in. The huge male nodded. Maurice waved from off the set, getting her attention. He held up a hand to signal they had five more minutes. "Good for you, Garen. Now, while I'd love to keep talking about your guys' past, I think we might be running low on time. Why don't we skip to when the sightings of the creature near your home first started, about six months ago."

Abel nodded. "Well, Garen evolved from a Gabite into a Garchomp one day, and as our video audience can probably tell, he's massive."

Magnolia nodded. "How tall are you now, Garen? And how tall were you before evolving?"

The dragon tapped his chin thoughtfully, looking towards the ceiling. "Well I think I was close to five feet tall before evolving, but afterwards my mom took the measurements and declared that I was seven foot eight. That was six months ago, and I'm seven foot nine now."

Magnolia nodded. "That sounds like it must have been quite the shocking change. Did you evolve indoors?"

He nodded back, laughing. "Yeah, I almost made a huge mess of the kitchen."

Abel chipped in there. "Yeah, Garen's evolution was the original reason for the remodeling. We needed to make the house big enough for him, really. When people started giving donations upon hearing about our renovation plans, we figured we might as well expand my parents' business as well. We knew that if people knew that Garen had evolved, and that he was so much larger than the normal Garchomp, it would have been reporters and scientists at the construction site in droves. And so Garen and I went off into the woods near our home, living out in the wild for six months until it was completed. I still went home and showered regularly, things like that, but it was the two of us living out in the woods this whole time. We tried not to be seen, but we were seen anyways, and now we have this massive mess."

Magnolia sat back in her chair, fingers interlaced in her lap. "And with that, it's mystery solved. How do you guys think your lives are going to change, now that you've been interviewed?"

Abel slumped in his chair, looking down. It seemed that something she said had hit a nerve. "Honestly? I don't think Garen and I will ever have another moment to ourselves. There's always going to be someone knocking on our door. People wanting autographs. A picture. Some answers. A sample. A battle. It just won't ever stop. Garen and I don't even battle, anyways. He's my brother, not a tool for me to use to beat up the tools of other people. He's more human to me than most of the people I've been unfortunate enough to meet in my lifetime." He already looked exhausted just sitting there, thinking about it. "It was really nice living in the forest at the beginning. Granted, people had started leaving us alone as time had gone by, but we still got a few visitors every week, hoping to see us. Or rather, hoping to see Garen. We'd still get stopped every now and then by tourists if we went into the City. It was nice not having to worry about any of it for a while."

He looked up, making eye contact with Magnolia. She vividly remembered their fierce determination, their glittering fury, when she had trespassed into their privacy. But now? His eyes were hollow and lifeless as he spoke his last words directly to her.

"Now, I don't think that we'll ever have peace again."

It was like dropping a brick on a pane of glass, the way the understanding finally shot through her mind. She just sat there, silent, completely caught off guard by the wave of emotion that threatened to sweep her away into depression. And she realized that even without exposing their most precious secret, she was ruining their lives.

And for what? So she could be on camera. So she could reach her dream just that much quicker. So she could do what she wanted.

The guilt hit her at that precise moment, and she found it difficult to breathe. Her chest was tight with the effort of simply trying to hold back the tears.

For the briefest of instants, their video audience caught a look at junior reporter and amateur journalist, Magnolia Tannel, almost overwhelmed by melancholy. But she quickly composed herself. The mask had slipped for just a few frames, a microexpression in the gamut of her persona, and she readjusted it back into place with practiced ease. Hiding the way she truly felt was not something she was unfamiliar with.

"Thank you for your time today, Abel, Garen." She turned towards the camera. Her voice had lost some of its depth, lacking as much emotion as it had when the interview first started. "And thank you for tuning in. This has been Magnolia Tannel, signing off." She gave one last farewell smile to her audience, but it was a smile without teeth, and a smile that had her eyes glittering with the tears she condemned from falling from her eyes, so long as that camera was pointed towards her and recording.

Maurice made the signal to shut the cameras off, and they were taken off the air. The camera crew applauded, and the makeup crew joined in. The man who fainted had revived sometime during the show, and he was sitting in a chair as refreshments were brought in.

Maurice walked up to them, a smile on his face. "Great job you guys." Then, he turned towards his junior reporter and amateur journalist. "Magnolia, you were awfully professional. You're a natural at screen time."

But his praise fell on deaf ears, as Magnolia just sat in her chair, hunched over, her knuckles white with how tightly she was gripping her seat. Garen and Abel got up and embraced, not caring who saw them at that point. Abel was sobbing softly, and Garen was rubbing his back, tittering softly to him in his own tongue.

Maurice looked at them all, not understanding why they were all so emotional. "What's wrong, you guys? It was a hit, you all did great."

Magnolia shook her head. "No, Maurice." She looked up with a pained expression. "I don't think I've done well at all."

He raised his eyebrows. "How do you figure?"

Magnolia just shook her head. Abel and Garen went over to the elevator, the dragon growling loudly whenever someone came over to offer them compliments or some sort of food. She watched the silver elevator doors open before them and then close behind them. Magnolia sniffed softly, wiping the tears from her face as her make-up artist saw the horror happening to his work, the tears smudging her mascara and eyeliner into a horrible mess. "I don't mean I did poorly as a reporter, Maurice. I mean I've done poorly as a human being."

Donelle came over, having been watching the entire time, and stood in front of Magnolia, her voice mysteriously lacking its usual derisive tone. Her condescending accent was gone, and for once she sounded like a regular human being. "Why do you say that, Maggie? You don't even know them."

The intern looked up at her superior. "But I do know them. I learned about them on the way back from their home, and in the interview just now. And I've just ruined their lives," she said.

Donelle frowned, putting a hand on the young woman's shoulder. "Sweetheart. What did you think was going to happen? Media ruins lives." She shook her head sadly. "That's what it was designed to do."

---

Almost immediately after exiting the Goldenrod Radio Tower, Abel and Garen were met with cameras. Local photographers, amateur scientists, and the like were waiting outside, each having just finished listening to the transmission end on their PokéGears, or having watched it on their home television sets.

Voices crashed into them in waves, a few cameras flashed. Abel hid his face against Garen's chest, and the Pokémon shielded him. He wanted to growl, to snarl, to make the threat of all the humans near them become aware of how dangerous he was, but he couldn't; he wouldn't. He wouldn't make more trouble for Abel.

The Garchomp took up his brother in his arms and tried to wade through the slowly growing mob.

"Excuse me... Pardon me... Move please.. I don't want to step on you.."

Garen sidestepped past a person asking whether he preferred Pecha berries or Rawst berries and then encountered someone asking if the two played near any power plants when they were young. The Garchomp had absolutely no idea why any of the questions were of any relevance at all, but he didn't bother with answering any. Why did people want to know about him? Why couldn't they just leave him and Abel alone?

"No questions, please.. Excuse me.."

---

The two got back home after what felt like ages, and they were followed the entire way… Upon getting to their property line, Abel finally asked to be put down, and he then turned to face the group. His face was somber, forlorn. He wore the look of someone who had seen too much in their life, and was tired.

"This is private property. Trespassing is illegal and I will not hesitate in calling authorities on anyone who is caught here on the property whose reason for being here is related in any way, shape, or form, to Garen. And that includes any relation to me, because Garen and I are related. Go home. Or wherever you freaking live. Leave. Do not come back." He turned away without another word and walked down the dirt road leading to his home, hoping that the two of them would get some peace and quiet at last.

The two of them headed inside, and it seemed like Abel's threat had worked. Neither men had heard anyone follow them on the dusty path leading to their home from where they were left on the road.

They looked at each other after closing the door.

Garen spoke first. "I'm sorry, Abel.."

His brother only shook his head. "What impossible reason do you think you have to feel sorry for?"

The Garchomp looked down. "If I wasn't so big, this wouldn't be a problem…"

Abel shook his head once more. "That would still leave plenty for people to be interested in. For one, you can talk, and two, you're a shiny, with hands and no dorsal fin. Being large and being a shiny are both nothing you had any control over, Garen… Talking is, but we knew this could happen one day when we first decided to teach you. It's not your fault, hon… You did absolutely nothing wrong, no matter whose moral compass you look at." He looked up at his big dragon and stepped forward, giving his mate a hug. Garen's arms instinctively hugged back, holding his human close to him protectively.

The two stayed like that for a while, cuddling in the entryway. They spoke in hushed tones.

"Do you think that with your mention of trespassing, that they will actually stay away?" Garen asked, growling quietly into Abel's ear.

The smaller human shook his head. "No. For a while it will keep them at bay, however afterwards it will fail to stop them. And then it will be another long while like when we were young before they lose interest yet again… And even then it might only be a matter of time before their interest is sparked once more by something else." Abel crooned back, softly.

Garen's tail and shoulders slumped in dismay as he let out a defeated sigh, the latter of the two body parts thumping gently as it impacted the carpet. "You mean it is going to be like this for our entire life?"

Abel nodded again, slowly. "Either we go out there and let them be satisfied as they come, or retain our right of privacy and, as consequence, continue to hold the public's interest. We are very unusual, my dearheart, and humans are insatiably curious. I doubt we will see much variety."

Garen let out another low growl. "And what gives them the right? To do this? To invade our personal lives with their questions that teach them nothing."

Abel pressed his cheek against the Garchomp's chest, his ear at the perfect height when standing to listen to his brother's powerful heartbeat. "That is just it. They do not have the right. But they are not breaking the law so long as they do not solicit us at our home, and trespass where not welcome. Out in public it is different. They can walk where they want and say what they want. And even though it is illegal to trespass here, that is not enough to stop everyone. Some people will ignore it."

As if on cue, there was a knock on the door. The two of them unwillingly stepped back from one another, and Abel opened the door.

Standing outside was Magnolia, her stage makeup removed, and seeing that reminded Abel that he needed to take off his own. He glanced back to make sure he hadn't gotten anything on Garen before looking back towards her.

His voice was monotonous, with the hopeless downward inflection of someone in the middle of a battle that they know they have already lost. "What do you want…?"

Magnolia looked down upon hearing his voice and sighed, feeling a profound ache of self-loathing. "Can I come in..?"

Abel stared at her for a moment, with her head down and sad tone, before glancing at Garen. Seeing him nod, the smaller of the two opened the door wider. "My heart is saying yes but my brain is saying no. Luckily for you, Garen and I think with our hearts more than with our heads."

"Speak for yourself," Garen said teasingly, trying to lighten the mood.

Magnolia looked back up, but she didn't smile. "Thank you," she said, walking inside.

Someone from the crowd of people at the property line yelled in anger. "Why does she get to come inside?!"

Abel raised his voice and calmly talked back. "Because she knows what she's doing, and she knows what she's done."

Someone else spoke up. "What's that supposed to mean?!"

Abel shook his head. "When you figure it out, you'll go home, because you'll finally understand. No more questions. Goodbye." He shut the door. "Come on," he said, having turned towards Magnolia. "I'll go start some tea."

---

The two humans sat down in the same places that they had been seated earlier that day, before the discovery, except Abel only sat down after he had filled a teapot with water and set it to boil on the stove. Garen sat on the large cushion, and a detached part of Magnolia's brain registered that he was the reason that the cushion there was so big.

The three of them remained silent for quite some time.

"Garen... Abel, I..." Magnolia began, unsure of how to say how she felt. An unusual thing, considering what her passion was. "I'm sorry. I didn't…"

Abel cut her off. "Do you have any idea how incredibly selfish what you did today was, Magnolia?"

She hung her head in shame, while Garen gave Abel a light tap on the shoulder. "Don't be so mean, Abel... I'm sure she is very aware of what she's done now… You don't have to rub it in."

Abel turned to look up at his mate. "We could very well say that she's ruined our lives, Garen."

The Garchomp gave the human another tap as Magnolia sobbed. "Abel!"

"He's right, though." Magnolia rubbed her eyes and remained looking downwards. "I didn't think of how it would affect you two. I had been an intern doing grunt work for so long.. I wanted to get my foot in the door. I," she paused, searching for her words. "I didn't think beyond myself."

Garen gave her a pat on the shoulder. "You did what you thought was best for you, and you can't take too much fault in that."

Magnolia shook her head. "It wasn't worth it. If I had simply thought ahead…" She sighed.

Abel grunted, retrieving the singing tea kettle from the stove and putting leaves inside. It was Rawst leaf tea and Watmel leaf tea mixed together, an interesting blend of the bitterness from the Rawst combined with the sweetness from the Watmel. He let it steep as he sat back down in silence. "I will not forgive you," he said, breaking the silence.

Garen outright gave the back of his human's head a smack, to which the young man groaned. "Abel! Bad human! You apologize right now!" He turned to Magnolia, exasperated. "He's normally not like this…"

She put a hand up to stop him as he spoke. "No, it's okay. He has every right to be angry with me. I'm angry at me, too."

Abel simply stayed quiet from then on, occasionally checking to see if the tea had steeped long enough. It had not, so he let it be.

Garen frowned. "So what do you want to do?"

The young woman looked up. "What?"

Garen prompted her again. "What would you like to do now? Now that you got your first story."

But Magnolia hardly knew how to respond. "I… I don't know. Find another, I guess."

It was at that moment that Clara came back in from tending to the Pokémon outside to find the three seated on the cushions in their living room. The cushions instead of chairs was a strange traditional touch, however when you had a nearly eight foot tall beast stomping around the place, they seemed like a much better option than chairs.

"So there's my two radio stars! Why didn't you tell me you were a reporter, Maggie? I would have loved to be on the air." Clara smiled. The brothers knew that was a lie, but Magnolia did not.

"I didn't think of mentioning it," the blonde said flatly.

Clara took the tone of her voice as all the signal she needed, and quickly dropped her cheery demeanor. "You realize what you've done?"

Magnolia nodded, looking to be close to tears again. Abel poured the tea, having finally determined that it was ready to drink. "Yeah, and I don't need you tearing into me about it, too."

Clara nodded. "Weston and I are grateful for the kindness that allowed us to renovate our home in this way, but it was done with our sons in mind, and it seems like they might not be able to stay here for much longer. I've been getting calls on my PokéGear since your segment ended. Professionals who I thought had been friends are calling me to tell me they are on their way to exchange 'favors' in an attempt to examine Garen."

Abel growled in a surprisingly nonhuman way at the mentioning of an examination, and Magnolia looked over at him to see him glowering hotly at his tea before taking a gulp.

Seeing him drink had Magnolia putting her cup to her lips as well, but she quickly cried out as her mouth was almost completely seared. Her cry attracted the gaze of the other three towards her, and she quickly got up and ran to the sink in the wet bar, dipping her head below the faucet to pour cold water into her mouth.

She came back and sat down, only to find Abel laughing softly.

"How were you able to drink that… It was scalding," she asked, clearly annoyed at probably having been tricked.

Abel simply shrugged, patting Garen's arm. "Heat doesn't bother me much, not when I've been sleeping next to this guy since I was eight or so. He's a furnace."

Magnolia frowned. "That doesn't explain why your mouth isn't sensitive to heat."

But Abel suddenly blushed crimson, and Garen burst out laughing while their mother simply hid her face in her hands, trying not to giggle.

Magnolia connected the dots, and instantly flushed, too. "Oh. You… You mean you drink Garen's--"

"YES, okay, I do, often, whatever, stop talking about it," Abel said, clearly distressed as he tried to busy himself with drinking more tea, but realizing that it only condemned him as they all knew the reason why he could. He flushed darker and put his cup down, steaming from the embarrassment.

"But even if you're not sensitive to heat you should still get burned," Magnolia said, thinking quietly to herself.

Clara clapped once. "Yes! Exactly! Finally someone who doesn't just dismiss it without thinking further! I think that Abel's body just somehow became resistant to being burned from exposure to high temperatures. I've asked him to stick his hand into hot water to check, but--"

Abel cut in. "Mom at one point you asked me to put my hand into water that was boiling and still on the stove!"

But his mother shushed him. "It was for science, sweetie! And you didn't do it anyways, so why complain about it now? If I had thought that it would hurt you I wouldn't have asked you to do it."

The young man simply put his head in his hands and groaned. "I hate science…"

Clara shook her head. "All jokes aside, though, I don't know what I'm supposed to do here. Do I deny people at the door to my home after they have travelled a very long way, or do I let them in to examine my son, which he does not want? It's an impasse."

Garen piped up, then. "What if me and Abel go on a journey? Set out and go travel the region?"

Clara shook her head. "It's not going to be that simple, sweetie. If people saw you leave, they would follow you. And even if you managed to leave here unseen, someone would recognize you from the interview on television at some point. Not to mention you would be almost constantly challenged to battles, which I know neither of you are fond of." She blew gently on the surface of her tea before taking a tiny sip. "Nng, ugh, Abel, you always put in too much of the Rawst leaves. It's too bitter."

Abel just pouted as he sipped his own, looking off towards the side. "I like my tea bitter…"

But Clara just shook her head before reaching beneath the table and retrieving the container of solids left behind by drying out Watmel juice that was stored there along with all the other tea accessories, dumping two pinches of the granulated sweetness into her tea and then stirring it with a slender wooden stick. She took a sip of it after waiting a few seconds and let out an appreciative "Mmm."

"May I?" Magnolia asked, reaching for the container.

"Of course," Clara said, helping her with however much she thought was needed.

Abel sighed dejectedly. "If we go somewhere that has people, we will be recognized and heckled. If we go somewhere without people, life will be hard and lonely, and we run the chance of being discovered by an adventurer anyways, and either have to deal with visitors again or find another place to relocate." He sat back on his palms and looked at the ceiling. "Is there no way to win here? Are we seriously going to be either hiding or on the run from people for our entire lives? How much longer do we actually have before they start to come for us?"

Magnolia stared at the liquid swirling in her ceramic cup. "Were they truly so bad, the kind of people who used to come and try to visit you?"

Clara nodded. "There were several instances each month where people calling themselves 'scientists' would knock on our door, asking for blood samples, skin samples, internal tissue samples, urine samples, even semen samples from Garen. Mind you this was back when Abel and Garen were still little boys, this was back when they were eight. The people asking for those semen samples didn't even care enough to learn that Garen probably wasn't even old enough to be producing semen yet. They just wanted the samples so they could say they had them. There were even some people who, I am not sure if you remember this, you two, but there were people who would offer your father and myself sex in exchange for simply having some time to interview you kids. Truly disgusting people, and your father and I never accepted any of the offers."

Abel nodded once, looking towards Garen who mimicked the gesture. "Yeah I think we remember one time this woman came by wearing some weird black lacy thing and said she wanted 'alone time' with Garen."

To which Garen shuddered, getting a sudden onset of the chills despite being so warm.

Clara's mother blushed, having forgotten about that woman. "Oh, um… yes. Her." She cleared her throat before continuing. "There was one woman who did that. She wanted to trade Weston having sex with her for her having sex with Garen. We called the police on her for simply suggesting such an awful, nasty thing… And I know that you two do very much the same thing as what she asked to do, if you only glance at the scenarios. But she wanted to have sex with Garen because it would have satisfied some fantasy of hers. You two do what you do with each other because you both love each other, and because you both want to satisfy each other. They're completely different things at that point."

Magnolia nodded. "I admit I kinda thought it was sick when the door opened in front of me and I saw Abel looking like he was leaving his Pokémon in the middle of having molested it… But I understand how they feel about each other now, and I know that it was me who was imposing on them, not Abel imposing on Garen…"

Garen laughed, slapping one of his knees lightly. "You would be surprised how often he imposes on me by how much he begs, actually."

To which Abel blushed redder than a Tamato berry and turned towards the dragon. "G-Garen! Don't tell them about that!" He was shifting rather uncomfortably in his seat.

But Garen had on his Gengar-grin and was in full-tease mode. "How come? It's not like what I said isn't true."

Abel floundered with his words. "It doesn't matter if whether or not what you said wasn't true, you don't have to go about discussing it with them! It's private!" He ended his sentence by crossing his arms, so flustered that he thought he might start flapping them at the dragon.

The young lady sitting across from them at the table smiled remorsefully. It was obvious how much like an old married couple they acted; they truly seemed to be part of each other.

Eventually the discussion changed from the dark subject of how life would go on for the two young males to something more lighthearted, the four of them soon turned into five by the arrival of Weston from working in the field, and they somehow found the energy to laugh despite all that had taken place that day.

Soon the sun had set, and Magnolia was asked to stay for dinner. She accepted, and the kitchen table was filled with vibrant conversation.

Young Magnolia Tannel went home that night, having finally been called 'Maggie' by Abel at least once before she left, and to the boys' parents it was almost strange. They had finally made their first friend, after sixteen years of having no one but each other.

Clara and Weston were proud.

---

They came later that night.

When everyone was in bed, seven people dressed in black crossed the Zanfis property line. The guard who had been hired long ago to keep the property safe was treated to a healthy midnight nap, and the seven of them closed in on the darkened house.

Garen usually slept with his human-half on top of him, with arms around his upper and lower back to hold him close throughout the night. Sometimes he would just lie awake with Abel asleep upon his chest, his gently glowing eyes barely illuminating the form of the creature that held his heart. He would think of the times they had spent together, the hardships that they both had faced. Often he found himself looking back to that night nearly half their life ago when Abel had hurt himself in that gulley, and the dragon reflected on how awful he'd felt when he had to leave his human back there in order to find help.

"Never again," he'd often croon. "I will never let that happen again, my Abel."

But that night Garen's usual thoughts were interrupted. Not by the human upon his torso shifting in his sleep, nor by one of the Pokémon entrusted to his parents crying out softly as it slumbered. Through the open window in the bathroom that was connected to their room, the dragon heard footsteps. The sound of several pairs of shoes gently scuffing along the dusty path greeted his horns, and the dragon looked up from staring at his sleeping human's face, listening with rapt attention.

He heard the faintest whisper of voices from his window, and he decided to ever so gently shake Abel awake, putting a claw to the confused human's lips with a barely audible "shh," the glow from his eyes highlighting Abel's features with the softest of golden lights.

The dragon pointed to the open bathroom door, and they both saw a faint light flickering in from outside and bouncing off the tiles. Abel gently climbed off of his mate, silently slipping on his clothes as nothing good could be occurring.

And then they waited.

More scuffling came from outside, the sounds easy enough to hear so that Garen did not have to strain, however they were delicate enough for Abel that he truly had to focus, and he would not have heard them at all if he hadn't been told to listen.

For a long while, nothing happened. Only the sounds of scuffing fading away and then gradually coming back telling them anything about who or what was outside their home. There seemed to be more than two, as Garen could hear their whispers. However he could not make out any of their words. The light flickering in their bathroom occurred two more times, and Abel finally recognized it as the light of a Pokémon being released from a standard Pokéball.

He turned back towards his mate, trying his best to speak without the faintest trace of breath, a whisper that would have been drowned out by whispers.

"Pokéballs," he breathed, and to Garen the description fit perfectly into place, being slightly familiar with the glow, himself.

"Three," he said softly, and Abel nodded.

"Maybe," Abel said after a while. He mentioned it to imply that they only knew of three, and that there could very well have been many more Pokémon being released from their Balls that they had not seen, taking place around other parts of the house. Garen nodded back.

There was a knock at the front door, halfway across the house. Abel looked at Garen and he shook his head to say they should not answer it, something the human heartily agreed with.

---

The knock came again, and this time the light sleeper of the family, Weston, was awoken from his sleep on the other side of the house. He sat up in bed, checking the time. Had someone truly knocked? He decided to wait a little while.

Yes, there it was again. Two knocks. He got out of bed gently and put on his slippers, walking towards the front door. Perhaps it was someone who was lost, in need for a place to spend the night. His mind idly wandered to whether or not the sheets on the bed of the guest room across the hall from the room of Garen and Abel had been washed recently.

But when he opened the door in answer to the knock occurring once again, he could not get even a single word of greeting out before the command "Hypnosis" was given. Weston easily slumped to the floor, out cold thanks to the power of the Pokémon at the command of the person on the other side.

---

Garen and Abel both heard the soft thump of their father's form hitting the carpeted entryway almost immediately after opening the door, however they did not know what the thump actually was. Automatically assuming that it did not bode well for them, they looked at each other briefly and did not need any words, save for one. Garen took his Dusk Ball necklace from the nightstand and gave it to Abel, preparing himself to go into the storage device only because it was necessary.

"Flash," Abel breathed to him softly. The dragon nodded in agreement.

Abel leaned up and gave his mate a farewell kiss before a dim red light shot forth from the old Ball. It enveloped Garen, and within the span of a breath the human was alone in his room, the Dusk Ball in his hand being put around his neck. He couldn't leave through the front door, that much was certain.

Truth be told, he didn't know if the situation was truly one worth running from. However hearing the thump from the entryway shortly after hearing someone open the door seemed like reason enough to Abel, and the human made sure that his door was locked before gingerly tiptoeing to the pack he and Garen always kept nearby in case they ever needed to return to the woods immediately. He put the pack on his shoulders and then carefully entered the bathroom, locking the door behind him once more as he scanned the area outside the bathroom window.

There was no moon that night, and as a result the human could hardly see a thing. He could, however, hear much more easily now that he was in front of his darkened window. He waited until the scuffling sounds all seemed like they were a good distance away, and just as he heard someone try the doorknob to his room, he released Garen from the Dusk Ball again, setting the Pokémon free in the night air outside the house before quickly turning his back and shielding his eyes with both arms.

The initial half-glow of a Pokémon being released from the special ball had attracted the attention of the three people whose patrolling had brought them around the back of the house, and in their foolishness they all looked back to try and determine just what it might have been. What none of them expected, though, was the huge dragon's form materializing from the glow, only to stomp powerfully on the ground once as his horns let loose a brilliantly white light, far brighter than the flash of a camera and so intense the ground around him was circularly scorched for perhaps three feet in any direction.

The three dressed in black, along with their respective Pokémon, screamed in pain as their retinas were seared by the incredibly intense light, and their cries attracted the attention of the others patrolling around the house, as well as the one that was inside. Abel took the opportunity and almost dove through the open window to come up in a roll before launching himself onto Garen's back. The heat-shimmering dragon immediately took off in a sprint, his human clinging to his back as the three who had been blinded simply laid on the ground, their Pokémon similarly sightless as the mated pair shot away.

---

Something had obviously gone wrong.

Vernace scowled as she looked at her subordinates, the ones still rubbing their eyes in pain at what they had explained to her to be the use of Flash.

She spat on the ground, telling the remaining three of her lackeys to travel after the Garchomp in pursuit.

"I do not think I have to tell you how important the capture of that creature is," she told them before she sent them off running. The only reason they knew which direction the beast had gone was because his body temperature was so intense after loosing the barrage of light, his footsteps left scorch marks in the ground leading in the direction he had went.

The effects of the Garchomp using Flash were actually very peculiar. Flash normally did not cause an increase in heat, neither to the surrounding area nor the Pokémon that used it. There was obviously something special about the dragon.

The woman took a deep breath and then swooned dreamily, her arms hugging around her midsection as she blushed. Oh, how she would love dissecting him, assuming that Science let her have the honors once they brought the beast forth to him.

She turned to her Pokémon, Houndoom. "Track," she commanded, and the Pokémon was obedient, too fearful of what its Master might do to it should it not comply. It had long ago stopped attempting to speak to her in its natural language, having understood that the human thought of it as incapable of thought. It was ashamed to have such a Master, however there was nothing it could do. And so the Dark-Fire-Type ran off after the three peons who had left before. It had tried simply running away, once, however the humans had put a tracking device under its fur, and it had learned that there was nowhere it could conceivably hide. It was easier just to do as its Master commanded, hoping that it would perform well enough that she would refrain from punishing it.

The woman with long, dark, wavy hair gave each of her lazy subordinates a kick in the ribs for letting themselves be fooled by such an obvious trick. Using Flash when your enemies' eyes were accustomed to night vision, very crass but very effective, assuming you were only trying to get away.

Vernace licked her lips before walking after her Pokémon. Science required that Garchomp, and she would be the one to give it to him.

---

Garen ran as quickly as he could, putting a vast amount of distance between himself and his pursuers in a very short time thanks to what he was, and he found himself instinctively angling the fins attached to his forearms and tail to help him steer. Normally his forearm fins remained folded flat against his arms, sticking out at his elbows much like the blades of a Gallade, however he could flex certain muscles and make them spring forth on a whim, and he felt he was making good use of them as he darted between trees and around bushes, over stumps and across streams. Almost as nimble as the wind, and definitely almost as fast.

It wasn't until Abel insistently touched his neck that he realized he could not hear the human over the whistling of the wind as they travelled, and he quickly stopped and saw the reason why Abel so eagerly wanted his attention.

The dragon was incredibly hot. His clawed feet were causing the night's dew to turn to steam beneath him, and the radiant heat he was giving off singed dry leaves and caused green ones to curl.

"They will be able to track us, Garen… you're too hot… I can barely stand it…" Abel said, panting as his body was sweating, trying desperately to cool itself off.

The dragon nodded, understanding. "Can you travel alone for a while, until I have cooled down enough for me to carry you again?" There were no questions of want, no questions of comfort, only declarations of need.

His human nodded, sliding off his back. The wind created by the Garchomp's running had been very gusty, indeed, however those winds were as hot as the dragon himself, and had done nothing to ease the human's own temperature-related dilemma.

The dragon turned around and held his mate by his upper arms just below the shoulders, kissing him deeply as he forced his tongue into Abel's throat. Abel tilted his head into the kiss, knowing that it would be a very lonely journey until he was able to let Garen back out again.

"I love you," the human said once Garen had broken their link.

"And I, you," the dragon replied, nodding to his mate. "Quickly, we can't waste any time."

Abel only nodded before pressing the button on the Dusk Ball, watching as Garen was once more enveloped in its dim light. "I know."

And once again Abel was alone.

He immediately turned on the ball of his foot and began working his way to the South, seeing that Garen had been running almost due East. Their best hope would be the Ilex Forest, the huge natural maze running from Azalea to Goldenrod. Only a small fraction of the forest consisted of the path most took in order to get from one town to the next, and even then the forest there was not as dense and thick as the rest, having been cut down a long time ago to make the path. The forest had reclaimed it, however the trees there were much younger and smaller than the trees in the forest proper.

Abel thought back to the time he and Garen had tried to familiarize themselves with parts of the forest, back when their house was still undergoing renovations. Had they really moved back in barely a week ago, and were already forced out again? It seemed like it had taken so much longer than that.

Abel ran through the woods, the familiar paths becoming unfamiliar in the deep blackness of the moonless night. He was, however, able to get his bearings quickly after spending a quick moment to analyze the overhead stars. The human was amazed at how much distance his mate could travel when he truly wanted to run, but then he also had to take into account that the dragon had not been running merely because he wanted to, but rather because he knew he needed to. He needed to get Abel to safety, he needed to increase their chances as much as he could before retiring.

The smaller brother's hand reflexively reached up to grip the Dusk Ball hanging from the cord around his neck, hoping that he did not have to release the Garchomp soon. His brother would need his strength.

---

He had only a vague idea of how far he had walked, the incomprehensible glimpses of sky through the branches having done absolutely nothing to aid him in trying to mentally position himself upon a map once he transitioned from walking through woods to walking through forest. He knew he was in the Ilex Forest's outskirts, for sure, and he knew that he was on the North side, however he had no idea where on that North side be could have possibly been.

According to his PokéGear, he'd been running for almost an hour, jogging for nearly twice that, and walking with intermittent jogging spurts for the rest of the time he'd spent alone. The fragments of sky that Abel could see through the intertwining trees above him were finally beginning to turn gray, a sign that the dawn would be arriving soon. The only other problem represented itself in that he intermittently heard a set of Pokémon howls, steadily getting closer.

They were still tracking him.

The human was reaching the end of his endurance, having tripped several times while running through the increasingly unfamiliar forest in the dark, and as a result he had quite the ugly assortment of soon-to-be bruises, as well as the general scrapes, scratches, and cuts decorating most of his exposed flesh. The backpack felt like it housed a pair of Arons, and exhaustion snapped at his heels, urging him to run faster, yet sapping him of energy to move on.

He fingered the Dusk Ball at his neck, and knew that he was reaching the limit to how far he could go alone. He depressed the button on the front and fell forward into the glow of dark light that surged forth to catch him in arms that materialized into bluish gray.

Garen held his mate, staring at him in the half light mixed with the faintest traces of the glow from his eyes. The human's beautiful smooth skin was marred by cuts and welts where branches had snapped against him as he moved at high speeds. Most of them, the Garchomp realized, had probably been from when Abel was on his back with the shadowy scenery whipping past them as he ran.

"And here I am, having hurt you once again, Abel," he crooned, gently moving to carry his mate in his arms before continuing with the walk. Based on the way Abel had fallen, and the direction the howls came from, the Garchomp continued in the direction his human had been heading, recognizing that they were traveling straight towards the heart of the Ilex.

He didn't want to run, though. Despite how much his body had cooled down, he did not want Abel's soft skin to be punished further by passing branches and twigs too quickly. His mate's skin was so cold, too… The fall was ending and he had been running all night… Stupid human. His own skin was thick, plated with tiny scales finer than sand and smooth to the touch, yet they gave his hide more than enough durability to withstand the hazards incurred by the speeds at which his species travelled over land.

"The only reason you called me back out is because you went on until you were half dead," he chided, unsure if his mate could even hear him through his exhaustion. But he glanced down at Abel's face, and though his eyes were closed he had the faintest of smiles, reassuring the dragon that all Abel hopefully needed was a good rest.

The only problem was that he doubted whether or not they would be able to rest in the future.

Surely, their pursuers must have also tired and accordingly slowed down their pace. The set of howls occurred once more, and though they were perceptibly closer, they were still a long ways off. The dragon started up a shallow incline, using the exposed roots of trees to assist him in his ascent. The tree trunks around him were gradually getting thicker. No longer were they at most one and a half feet in thickness, as they were along the path between the two towns. They were finally becoming thicker, meaning he had travelled off the path quite a ways. It would not be long before the tree trunks would become as wide as Garen was broad, and the creature had no doubt that their girth would not stop there.

He reached the top of the incline after half an hour and looked down, seeing through a break in the branches at eye level the place where Abel had been trying to get them to. In the center of the forest there was a veritable mound of trees, whose roots and branches were said to be twined together so tightly that it would not have been fair to say that the life forms were individuals. They all supposedly made one giant network of life, connected to each other much like mushrooms were connected underground, their fruiting bodies encircling the space where they intermeshed. That was the heart of the forest, what he was looking at in the distance, perhaps three miles away. The forest around that was the cluster's 'fruiting bodies', helping to aid in the forest's progression across the land, where these trees in the center were where they all hypothetically connected back to.

Garen stood looking at it for but a moment before making his way down the inside of the ridge, taking care not to trip as it was much, much steeper than the side he had ascended.

He had read a book on the Ilex Forest a few years ago, when he was still a Gabite. Topographically the area was very strange, the heart of the forest being nestled in a nearly perfect circular depression in the land, which gradually rose up into an increasingly steep inner ridge that peaked perhaps a few hundred feet above the surrounding area before dropping back down to 'normal' at a very constant and shallow degree. The book had stated that there existed a theory that long ago a star of some sort, rich with several ingredients required for life to flourish, impacted the Earth at that spot. However the area that the circular ridge encompassed was almost five miles wide, and so the size of the star must have been phenomenally huge, especially when taking into account how it must have been a straight-on impact in order to create such a perfectly circular crater.

Another theory suggested that the forest grew on top of an extinct volcano that had collapsed in on itself long ago, forming a fertile caldera that was sheltered from the area around it. The book had suggested that the latter of the two was by far the most likely of either, however it then went on to mention other theories that had been presented and then disproven in the past.

Abel wasn't a very big fan of history, and so the dragon never really got to talk about it to him as much as he would have truly liked to, but how the forest came about really was not that important, all things considered. What was important was getting to that mound of trees in the distance before those howls behind him managed to catch up to him.

But as the dragon continued to descend and began encountering less steep terrain, his mind began to wander once more. In a children's book titled "CleFables, Legends of Johto" there was mention of a treasure hidden in the heart of Ilex Forest, apparently passed down through generations by the people that had made the outskirts of the forest back then their home. As time wore on and the forest grew more vast, the tribe of people gradually drifted away from its center as the centuries passed, however the legend also said that a few still remained, waiting to give anyone worthy enough who reached the center their gifts of wisdom and their aid.

The dragon talked quietly to himself, using Abel's language for a change. "I'm not sure if I'd be considered 'worthy enough' by whomever the legend was talking about… but dang, any help right now sure would be appreciated…"

The human in his arms shifted slightly, opening one blue eye to look up at his soulmate. "What are you talking about, Garen?"

The dragon looked down briefly, smiling warmly at his mate before putting his eyes back to the task of finding footholds to descend the slope. "Just an old legend about this place. There was a kid's book that said there used to be people living in the center, and that they'd lend their aid to people they deemed worthy who managed to reach the place they lived."

Abel smiled. "Then I sure hope we're considered worthy enough for them, too, heheh. Nng…" He winced and put a hand to his stomach as he laughed, reflexively curling up a bit. Garen stopped, gingerly lifting his mate's shirt with his claws to try and see why he was in pain. Finding no wounds, he looked at his human imploringly.

"You okay?" He asked, putting his mate's shirt back the way it was, covering his stomach. Abel nodded in his arms, his eyes closed.

"Yeah, just sore."

Garen clicked his tongue in annoyance before continuing his walk. The trees were already thicker than he was, and he hadn't even noticed.

"You pushed yourself too far, Abel… you should have called me back out earlier. I had no idea if you'd been hurt or something, and I was worrying because it seemed like it was taking too long."

Abel nodded. "Sorry… What's it like in there, anyways?"

Garen bit his bottom lip, trying to find the right words. "It's like being forced to fall asleep. And even if you open your eyes, you can't see anything. Every now and then a fragment of what is going on outside might reach you. A fragment of sound, a flash of clarity into what the outside might look like. But there's not really a sense of time involved. I can't imagine why some Pokémon would prefer it to living outside and breathing the fresh air, feeling the sun on their skin or scales or fur or whatever they have. It's scary in there. And it's incredibly lonely." He trailed off, coming upon what seemed to be half of a small mud-brick house that had possibly grown a tree from one of its bricks. One half of the house seemed like it was part of the tree, grayish brown bricks sticking out of the tree's trunk on one side, while the other side remained unscathed, much like the remaining half of the hut. Looking up, the dragon could barely see more debris strewn about some of the tree's thick branches, and he could maybe make out what used to be the roof of the hut near the top of the tree, locked in a leafy prison. The side of the tree facing the house was riddled with knothole-like scars along with the exposed bricks, probably where individual bricks had been at some point completely encompassed by the tree's growing trunk.

The pair simply stared at the hut, whose walls were perhaps only six and a half feet tall.

"This is strange," Abel said, turning his head as best as he could to get a better look at the hut. The light was getting much better, the pale gray of dawn being replaced with the gold of sunrise. Shafts of light had begun gently descending through the trees to make gentle dapples of yellow in the green overhead. However no light was touching the forest floor yet, and the contrast caused by the yellow above made the shade below look blue.

"Is there a door, Garen?" Abel asked, speaking again, and the dragon walked around the small structure, determining that the door must have been on part of the wall that had been destroyed by the tree's growth.

"I can peek over the walls and see inside if you like," the dragon offered.

"Go ahead. I can stand on my own for now, I think."

The Garchomp set Abel down gently, only to walk up to the wall and put his hands on the top of it, easily peering over it with his lofty height of 7'09"

"See anything?" Abel asked.

Garen turned his head to look around the inside a bit further. There were two shelves that still withstood the test of time, and somehow there was a chair that had grown bark and sprouted small branches and green leaves, as if the wood used to make it had somehow come back to life after being fashioned into a tool for sitting on. "I see something shiny. A tiny round stone on a shelf. Should I take it?"

Abel shrugged, forgetting that Garen couldn't really see him do so. He mentally reminded himself and answered his mate with words. "I don't see why not. We have to hurry, though. Pass it to me and I'll put it in the backpack."

As if on cue, the set of howls sounded off again, and they sounded much closer than they had seemed the last time they had been heard.

Garen quickly grabbed the tiny stone, which couldn't have been more than half an inch in diameter, and then scooped Abel up, breaking out into a jog. They had long ago passed the point where branches and twigs sticking into their path had been an issue, and for some strange reason the forest was void of most bushy undergrowth, instead opting to foster small grasses and herbs, shrubs of differing varieties, however they rarely saw bushes. There was something incredibly strange about the inner forest.

"How do you think they got so close so quickly?" Garen asked, hoping his speed wasn't too jarring for Abel.

"The only thing I can think of is that they didn't. The ridge had probably been blocking the sound, and they must have finally crested it. How long do you think it will be before they catch us, Garen?" Abel didn't sound worried anymore as he fiddled with one of the pack's pockets, putting the stone inside before zipping it back up. He had come to terms with the fact that they were going to be caught. He desperately wanted it to not happen, however it did not seem as if they had much of a choice.

Outside of doing the unthinkable and killing their pursuers, they had no way out.

The thought suddenly chilled Abel's blood, and he made a decision. "Garen. Garen, you have to promise me something."

The dragon looked down briefly at his mate as he was jogging, curious as to where the serious tone had come from.

Abel licked his lips, finding that his run through the night's cold had left them chapped and cracked. "You have to promise me that you won't kill the people following us, okay?"

The dragon glanced back down at his human, shocked. "What are we supposed to do then, Abel? Let them take us, or beat them to within an inch of their lives and then keep running, leaving them to die anyways in this incredibly remote place? I refuse to give up without a fight, and I know you feel the same way. Just yesterday you were threatening to kill Maggie!"

Abel grunted, getting jostled as Garen made a particularly rough movement. The howls sounded again, somehow even closer, and seemed to be closing in. "That was different! I was wrong to even think of that as an option! Killing people, killing Pokémon, they're the same thing and both are equally wrong, okay? I'm not at all pleased that devices such as Pokéballs exist, through the use of which evil people can subject good Pokémon to doing their desires. You know that. The creation of Pokéballs never should have occurred, and their invention was worsened by healing machines coming about quickly afterwards. It only served to help promote more violence between people using Pokémon. I don't want that. Pokémon should stay with their Trainers because they want to, not because they are bound by something that limits the capability with which they can live their life. The only reason we have you tied to a Ball was originally because we needed you in one in case you ever got hurt, and so that, in case some asshole tried to capture you with their own Ball, it wouldn't work and you could stay free with the people you wanted to surround yourself with."

Garen kept jogging, listening to his mate as they ventured deeper into the forest. The ground was no long patchy networks of roots running through dust and dirt, but now the ground underneath their feet was carpeted in light green grass that, while still feeling cold in comparison to the Garchomp's warm feet, felt warmer than grass normally did, making him think that there was something beneath the ground sending heat up to the surface.

"And why do I have a Ball now, Abel?" He asked, having noticed Abel's use of the past tense.

"Now, it's useful for transporting you places because you're so large. No one likes it, I hate it probably as much as you do, but no one can honestly deny its convenience. We might not have been able to escape from the house as easily as we did because you wouldn't have fit through the bathroom window, and we would have probably had to fight someone, maybe multiple people, in order to actually leave. But neither of us truly want to fight, right? We don't, at the bottom of our hearts, want to willingly hurt other living creatures, do we?"

Garen grunted softly, the landscape around them suddenly becoming more uneven, with white rocks poking out of the carpet of grass, crisscrossed with hairline cracks filled with black that reminded the Pokémon of granite. "No, no one can deny its convenience, and we really don't want to fight anyone. The last thing I want to see is you getting hit by some attack that I dodged, causing you to get hurt or, in the absolute worst case scenario, get you killed. I'd never be able to forgive myself, Abel. Not after I promised to always protect you."

It was strange. Even though the trees were getting larger and more expansive, they were sprouting up from the ground less and less frequently. Each tree might have been over ten feet wide, however their branches were sparse enough that a decent amount of sunlight was actually hitting the forest floor, and there were actually plenty of flowering plants of various colors, causing the area to smell rather nice as they opened up for the day. The pair occasionally saw Combee, Volbeat, Illumise, Butterfree, Venomoth, Beautifly, Ledian, and other assorted Bug-Types flitting through the strange meadow-like landscape, however huge trees dotted the area and prevented it from truly being called a meadow. Another thing that struck Abel as particularly odd was how it seemed like none of the trees had lost any leaves in a long time. Otherwise the forest's floor should have been a veritable carpet of leaves, being refreshed yearly as well as being definitely thick enough to prevent things such as grass and flowers from growing in its place.

Garen noticed it too, and though he would have loved to stay and just cuddle in the plush grass with Abel, they were quickly approaching the absolute center of the forest. It seemed like perhaps they would actually make it, and Abel finally got Garen to agree in allowing him on his back again so he could run with the help of his arm fins, allowing him greater speed.

It was almost psychedelic, the way that the differently colored flowers whisked by below the speeding dragon, fast enough to blur against the green from Abel's place atop Garen's back, with thick white streaks appearing whenever he ran past some of the curious white rocks.

The trees were still steadily becoming larger, and soon the pair could see a thick, mottled mess of tree trunks in the distance that could have only been the theoretical 'core' of the forest. A bundle of trees growing together so closely that they resembled one life form instead of individuals. Small saplings rose up from the base of the wooden wall, soon to join the ranks of trees creating the single superorganism. It almost seemed as if the trees had grown in such a way to create tunnels leading into the structure's depths, and as Garen and Abel got closer, it turned out exactly to be the case

There were tall, narrow passageways breaking the surface of the wall every so often, frequently enough to be recognized as passages, yet infrequently enough to defy making a pattern. The insides of those passages were pitch black, and would have probably caused the pair to either trip of simply run into a dead end if they maintained their current speed, seriously injuring them in either case.

Garen would have done anything if he thought it might have saved Abel from danger, but though his resolve was strong, his body was finally becoming weak. He had travelled so far, so quickly, on very little sleep, it was finally taking its toll on him as it had taken its toll on Abel.

The dragon slowed to a stop in front of one of the tall, narrow openings. The pair looked up and for perhaps several hundred feet they saw nothing but the wall of tree trunks extending into the sky, Bird-Type and Bug-Type Pokémon occasionally being seen flying high up in the lowermost branches.

Somehow light was piercing straight down through the forest's canopy, despite both young males knowing that it was well before noon.

It was something incredibly strange.

They would have stopped to talk about it as Abel slid down the panting dragon's back, however the set of howls behind them reminded them once more that they could not afford to stop again. Forgotten were the normal pains of hunger from having run through the night without breakfast. Instead the dragon took the human's small hand in his own and they led each other into the sudden inky blackness of the living wall's passageways.

---

Vernace scowled at the wall of wood before her, and she scowled at the cheeriness of the almost-meadow. She scowled at her idiot subordinates who had let their quarry escape them in the first place, allowing them to lead her on such a wild Swanna chase. She scowled at the flowers, she scowled at the sunshine, she scowled at her Houndoom, whose back she was riding upon despite the Pokémon's grievances considering she was much too heavy for it to comfortably bear.

And lastly, she scowled at the way she had been arrested all those years ago, when she had paid a visit to the apartment rented to a family by the name of 'Zanfis.'

Vernace pointed forward with a leather riding crop, which had been used to urge her mount into achieving faster speeds, as well as many other purposes. The flat tip was directed straight at the wall of wood before them, and she made a broad sweep with it, passing before seven of the passageways.

"The targets have gone into this structure. I will go down the passage that they took, and the rest of you will each go down your own to try and surround them should they attempt to confuse us within the maze. Move!" She yelled, butting her heels against her Houndoom's sides to make the exhausted Pokémon move forward once again. It was exhausted, yes, however it knew that the exhaustion it endured was a far better fate than the punishment it knew its Master would inflict if it did not obey.

The woman scowled again as she entered the closest passageway not five minutes after the Zanfis twins. It was for no particular reason, she had simply felt like scowling.

---

It had been inconceivably dark within the first part of the passageway, the light filtering in from the sheer height of the opening having given them perhaps fifty feet of sight before it had suddenly turned into a seemingly tangible inky blackness, as if they were underwater and an Octillery had decided to grace them with its Smokescreen.

The darkness did not last forever, though. As the pair carefully made their way deeper down the passageway, they began to see tiny neon green points of light in the distance. Coming closer to them, they found luminescent mushrooms that pulsed in their intensity slowly, each one going at a different rate than the rest, yet all of them syncing up somehow every now and then to seemingly send a neon green pulse of light down the tunnel toward the two males. The mushrooms were everywhere. On the ground, on the walls, the two even looked up and saw constellations of the mushrooms beating silently to their own rhythms, apart from when they magically synchronized to send that eerie pulse down the tunnel. The only place that the mushrooms did not grow was seen as a narrow path of darkness that led down the center of the passageway.

The tunnel itself was fairly straight, their direction shifting only by a matter of degrees whenever they found that the path was actually changing.

They had only been walking for a short time before they heard a woman's voice barking orders from presumably outside, the sound echoing down the nearly-straight tunnel with ease. They knew that she had said something, but did not know what she said. Garen and Abel remained silent, still holding hands despite Garen walking behind Abel in single-file. Neither of them wanted to disturb the mushrooms, as much for their beauty as for the fear that they could have been potentially toxic. But still, the tired males tried to hurry as best as they could with their exhausted bodies attempting to rebel against them. Their pace increased slightly, and soon the path began to become more narrow, the solid wall of cumulated tree trunks soon giving way to individuals in very close proximity. The trunks of these trees were much like the trees on the path from Azalea to Goldenrod, perhaps a foot to a foot and a half thick, however now the coating of mushrooms was becoming perceptively less thick, the two beginning to see less and less of them as they walked further on.

Eventually the tree trunks began to be spaced farther and farther apart, however they did not change in size as Abel had thought that they would. They stayed relatively uniform, and soon the pair actually caught a glimpse of the passage to their right between the trees, the barrier of wood between them become less and less sparse to mimic the passageway to the left.

There was light coming from somewhere ahead of them, a dim light faintly tinged with the color of the sky that soon became almost blinding to their light-sensitive eyes.

The blur of light finally resolved itself into separate colors and shapes as their eyes focused on a small clearing in the exact center of the Ilex Forest. All the passageways eventually seemed to have their walls of tree trunks thin out before eventually stopping in such a way that gave the small clearing a very natural feel, the grasses and flowers that had flourished outside of the wall were carpeting the ground of the inner clearing, too, giving the area a lovely spring-like scent.

It was maybe seventy feet across, with paths leading off in all directions to lead towards what the pair could have only assumed were all the other openings in the wooden wall that they had seen just before entering, those openings probably circling all around the outside of the wall.

Standing in the middle of the clearing, though, was a weathered and ancient shrine built upon a small mound in the center. It was a small building, perhaps ten feet square on either side, and it had thin tendrils and roots running across its entire structure. Not so much that it looked entangled within a web, but enough to make it seem like the forest was holding on to it gently, like a parent cradles a baby.

Abel looked up, quickly nudging his mate to do the same. Above them was a circle of blue sky, no branches grew over the clearing, despite that the brothers could see branches coming very close to actually doing so until perhaps a couple hundred feet up into the air.

They looked for only an instant, noticing a soft breeze spiraling down into the clearing from that hole leading to the sky. The breeze would sink down into the clearing and spread out, travelling through the passageways and to the almost-meadow beyond.

Abel finally broke their silence. "It's… beyond beautiful here," he said. There wasn't much else to say beyond that.

Garen nodded. "But we have nowhere else to go. Nowhere left to run. And even if we did…"

Abel nodded, finishing his sentence. "We don't have the energy to get there."

The two walked towards the shrine, stepping up onto the mound and then up the two steps to take them into the shrine's walls. Old wooden floorboard that did not even creak under Garen's weight greeted them, and the two youths collapsed inside the shady structure, the breeze that had been flowing down the hole in the sky playing through the two open walls of the shrine.

Garen kneeled, and Abel sat down in front of him before receiving some assistance from the dragon to get the human's legs around his waist. The dragon hefted Abel up, holding his human close to him as he pressed their cheeks together. They could hear voices from the passageways now, militant voices shouting information back and forth, and they knew the two of them were coming to the end of their lives together.

"Garen," Abel said, softly whispering his chirps and growls and clicks up towards his mate's horn. "If this is the end, I want you to know I will never forget you. Alright?"

Garen simply scoffed at his mate, rocking him gently in his grasp. "As if I did not already know that, Dearheart. I would rather die before I left myself forget how much I love you."

Abel blushed, and he gave his mate a kiss just as the people who had been chasing them finally entered the clearing, seeing the human and the Pokémon kissing in an embrace silhouetted by the shade the shrine cast, against the bright green grassy background of the rest of the meadow.

A woman with long, dark, and wavy hair climbed off a Houndoom that looked far too small to carry her and strode forth, garnering the brothers' attention. They remained embraced, but they turned their head to watch.

"Well, well, well. If it isn't a love story. Who would have thought? I sure didn't hear anything about that in the interview!" Vernace laughed, rhythmically tapping the business end of her riding crop into her opposite, open palm.

The lovers just stayed silent, watching the woman that they thought they vaguely knew.

But Vernace only scowled, taking a few steps forward. "What, got nothing to say? Are you too good to answer me when I talk to you two punks, huh!?" She was standing on the steps to the shrine, and Garen shielded Abel's body protectively with his own, turning his back slightly towards the woman and giving a very feral-sounding warning growl to her. Even when he was kneeling as he was, he was only several inches shorter than her. He could have killed her in a heartbeat. He could kill them all, so easily… it would barely take any effort to break these fragile things called 'humans.'

But then he remembered his promise to Abel, and realized he could not hurt her.

When nothing more than the growl had come from Garen's throat, Vernace thought it to be a good idea to kick Garen in the back of the ribs with a very pointy-looking shoe. The dragon grunted in pain as his upper body actually swayed slightly from the force. Abel gave the woman a glare from over Garen's shoulder, something the woman found incredibly amusing, and so she squatted down to look Abel in the eyes.

She mocked him with a baby voice. "Aww, is widdle Abel awl upset because he knows what's abowt tu happen?" She grinned, despite Abel not responding or even blinking at her as she addressed him.

She got up and turned around, pointing at two of her subordinates. "You two, separate them and bind the boy. You other four, use the… special presents… to make sure that our lovely Garen doesn't go anywhere fast." She looked back at the two embracing within the shrine as she took a Pokéball from her belt. "I am going to have a tiny bit of fun. Come on out, Misdreavus. I have a new toy for you to break."

She grinned wickedly, throwing the Pokéball into the air where it opened and cast out its contents. The bluish green Ghost-Type Pokémon shared the same grin as its Master, and it floated above the two menacingly as Abel was forcibly removed from Garen's grasp, despite his every effort to prevent it. If he pulled too hard or grabbed too tight, he ran the risk of hurting Abel again, whereas the people manhandling him seemed to have no such concerns with giving the young man a few more bruises.

The next few moments passed for Abel in a blur. His arms were tied behind his back using a belt one of Vernace's subordinates had been wearing, and two of them were holding him by the arms as the people dressed in black attached heavy steel weights to each of his limbs.

Vernace said something to her Misdreavus, and it let out a cackling chitter before blowing ice crystals in a gusting wind towards the Dragon-Ground-Type. Abel's eyes widened as he saw Garen's face twist up in pain, recognizing the attack as Powder Snow. He struggled, tears brimming in his eyes as he watched Garen struggle and thrash against the pain of the Ice-type move.

He shrieked so loudly he felt the words tear from his throat, and it hurt him. "Stop it! You're hurting him!"

But the woman simply looked back towards Abel with a sickeningly sadistic grin, saying the next phrase loud enough for Abel to hear.

"Misdreavus! Use Blizzard!"

Abel watched in horror as the Ghost-Type charged up a ball of frigid energy, and he tried to look away.

"Make him watch!" Vernace cried, cackling with glee.

Strong hands roughly gripped his head and forced him to face towards the shrine where Garen was desperately trying to increase his body heat, his movements feeble and sluggish as he tried charging up for Flash. But it failed, and the woman's sick cackling echoed loudly through the clearing as her Misdreavus wound up to let loose its Blizzard.

It would be a direct hit. There was nothing Abel could possibly do. Tears streamed from his eyes as the energy was released towards Garen, and a cry, so full of anguish, so full of rage, tore forth from Abel's vocal chords with such intensity that he doubled over in pain.

" NOOO!!"

... There were no other sounds for a while, as his scream echoed back to him multiple times, having hit the edge of the ridge near the forest and bounced back to him all that way.

The Blizzard was suspended in midair as Abel panted, eyes wildly looking around as he tried to make sense of everything.

The world's colors had bled out, and everything was black and white, except for him and Garen. The woman's Misdreavus was suspended in midair just like its Blizzard, and the woman herself had both arms extended towards the sky, a look of crazed jubilation on her face as she had been laughing like someone insane. The people who were holding Abel were suddenly lifeless, and he easily moved out of their grips, running over to Garen immediately and kneeling down beside him, sobs being shaken out of his chest.

Abel doubled over then, coughing up blood onto the floor of the shrine, having damaged his vocal chords with how loudly he had screamed. Garen was covered in ice crystals, and water vapor was condensing in the air around his body, he was nearly frozen solid.

Abel sobbed, laying his head on Garen's cold chest and cried openly, his emotions on display for everyone to see, had they not been seemingly frozen in time. Abel heard a noise and looked up, worried that the Blizzard was coming.

But a small green Pokémon with transparent wings and long arms was sitting in the shrine, just on top of the offering table that Garen had collapsed in front of.

"Please," Abel begged. "I don't know who you are but please…" He sobbed, his tears seeming to never stop.

"Help us."

The tiny green creature tilted it's head before clapping once, and Abel felt as if millions of tiny hooks had suddenly sunk into his body and were pulling him at speeds his mind could not comprehend. Garen came with him, and their surroundings distorted as the two were taken nowhere different than where they had just been.

But time resumed for Vernace and her crew, and instead of hearing the cries of anguish as a Pokémon was hit with a supereffective move, instead she heard the sound of wood flash-freezing, as well as four weights dropping to the floor of the shrine, followed by a belt.

They were gone.

Garen and Abel were gone.