Short story around the time of Unova's capture, and of Okita's origins.
PLEASE READ THE TW TAGS BEFORE READING!!!
Hearing nothing but echoing corridors, Gary Oak was sure he was done for after his trip into an infamous Aunuran desert Trapinch hole. With his head bound, he knew he wasn't out of the woods just yet. He hears a familiar craggy voice address him as he's pushed onto a chair and bound in an unknown room.
"Did you find what you were looking for?"
Said the unknown voice, Gary's ears piped up as the man continued.
"Just as nosy as your grandfather in the pursuit of knowledge, rest assured your nosiness ends here."
After the statement from the unknown man, Gary's head covering had been lifted off, revealing a dark room with a spotlight upon himself. He knows this man… Not only from the Kanto region, but as the head of Rocket industries in Aunura, Giovanni.
"tch, well well, I knew that old man stink was bound to be you. This whole place smells of retirement home and failed yakuza."
Gary quipped.
Giovanni, looking the same as he did back in the mid 2000's aside from the hair dye running down his face, leaned in from his wheelchair towards Gary to offer a deal out of this place alive.
"I know what you've been digging up… Our team has taken the liberty of confiscating your 'findings'. Rest assured, you won't be publishing any of them; in fact, you'll do as I say or you'll end up more dismembered than that arm you collected."
Giovanni leaned back in his wheelchair, with a large grin on his face creasing his crows feet even more. Gary was unphased by the threat and smirked back at the acquaintance as he spoke back in a nonchalant manner,
"I heard on the grape-vine you're getting back into the genetics commissioning game, and had to check it out for myself! Seems like whichever geneticist you hired this time can't even get one of those creatures to form properl-"
"Enough talk!" shouted Giovanni.
"There's one more thing, seeing as you're so interested in our development"
Giovanni leant forward once more with a stern look on his face, as Gary remained stonewalled.
"Your skills will be needed here one day, 'Professor Oak', I know you've been collecting and studying Arceus plates for medical research for some time now."
Gary's eyes shuddered in anger,
"WHAT MAKES YOU THINK I W-"
"You despise the thought of pokemon in pain, and I'm giving you an opportunity to t-"
"Yeah yeah… So you'll put them in pain so I can take them out of it… Sounds completely ethical to do that to an innocent creature, Artificial or not…"
Giovanni paused and smirked as he leant back in his wheelchair.
"So you know of the pokemon Mewtwo, and it's origins"
Gary Squirmed within his bound state in a fit of fury,
"Why are you making so many!??! Some of them are still alive out there! The ones your disgusting cronies buried and chopped!"
"It doesn't matter, those ones are merely unable to form, as you put it yourself, Gary… We're nearly there, and I will have one obey my commands if it's the last thing I do on this Earth!"
Givovanni coughed loud and hoarsely at the end of his statement. No one would tell if it was just his talking or the musty dark room that caused it.
Just as Gary was squirming around in his bindings, he'd been slowly able to get a pokeball to finally drop from his pants pocket, unleashing his Arcanine.
"Grrrrwaarrh!!!"
In what felt like a flash, Arcanine chomped it's way through Gary's bindings and shoved Giovanni backwards into the wall with it's hind legs with no hesitation. Gary grabbed a hold of his Arcanine before using a teleportation device he refers to as 'Escape rope'.
Two Team rocket grunts charge into the room to assist the frail Giovanni as his phone rang,
"Sir you need to see the medic! You shouldn't take thuds like tha-"
"I'M NOT AS DECREPID AS YOU ALL THINK!? Nghhh…"
Groaning from the incident, Giovanni reaches into his inner jacket pocket and pulls out a black rotom phone, answering it in a huff.
"This better be good news! Have you found more DNA from the Unovan experiment, Drake!?"
Through the video call is a bright, curly haired woman with a piercingly defiant voice. Some of the team rocket grunts refer to her as 'the clown', as a smile has barely ever wiped off her face. Except for those few who tell tales of a grim reality behind the mask…
"It's always good news! You just don't know how to take progress, ahahaha!!!"
Giovanni stared blankly into the phone's camera as she cackled, before continuing,
"ahah… Well, not only did we get the rest of the samples, but we got the main cretin themselves here! Well, we let it go after we t-"
"YOU LET IT GO!?!?!? THAT WAS OUR CHANCE TO CLONE HUNDREDS OR THOUSANDS OF THEM, YOU FUCKING IMBI- what!?"
As Giovanni began to unleash his tirade, the clown, known formally as Professor Kana Drake, showed him a fogged up glass and metal chamber with what appeared to be a nearly complete foetus of a mewtwo.
"I hope you're read to listen or you wont get your kitty cats!"
She widely grinned and giggled through her words.
"We let her go, as we still don't know how she even got pregnant in the first place"
"P-Pregnant!?" Giovanni spluttered,
"They're pokemon? They are meant to have"
"Yes, Eggs! Ahahaha! We thought it best to let her go and hope that she is found again with another baby just for us, Gio!"
She laughed more and more maniacally before continuing
"This one will be a sure thing, fuse it with a docile psychic pokemon or psychically gifted human and it'll be too indecisive to think for itself!"
Giovanni grumbled with reluctance, putting more faith in the eccentric genetisist.
"Drake… Once you bring it back here, I'll take care of the other component…"
"Hahahaha!! Of course sir! I knew you'd understa-"
Giovanni had hung up before she even had a chance to finish. He leans forward again, almost lost in thought. A grunt goes to ask about his condition before they're cut off by Giovanni.
"Have the Gym leaders of Symphony come to their senses yet?"
The grunt blankly stares at him before checking his watch in a hurry
"a-ahh! sorry sir, right away! … … Their last email reads… uh…'Get fucked, we own the gym by law, no 'protection' money will be paid… Sincerely, Ai and Amare Spes… P S … How do you plan on forcing it from us? Your pokemon are undertrained and undervalued'."
Giovanni must have been infected with the clown's disposition as his smile widened, wrinkling his elderly face as he looked at an email on his rotom phone.
"Well, how about that… According to my intelligence division, they've frozen an embryo in recent days… How lucky for us".
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PLEASE fucked-up-fish!Joker and Bruce having absolute ungodly sex would be top tier
Rating: M
Pairing: Batjokes
Warnings: uh. many. Mostly gore and cannibalism (does it count as cannibalism, if it’s a semi-human monster doing the eating?)
This is unedited flash fic - please excuse any errors!
The harbour stinks at night.
It stinks at every other hour too, as corrosive concoctions leach from the output sluices of the chemical plants and raw sewage splatters from black-crusted pipes, draining the city's rot like pus from a lanced boil. But at night, there's no breeze. No stir of the thick, soupy air. The stench presses sweaty hands over your nose and mouth, smothering you in effluent and acid.
Batman lands silent on the broad concrete pipe of a storm drain, letting his heavy duffel rest at his feet, and wishes he'd let Alfred pipette a few drops of peppermint essence into his nosepiece.
He's come here several times over the past year. Once a month at first, now twice a week. The frequent exposure hasn't helped him acclimatize. The only way to inure yourself is to line your boots with lead, jump in to the water, and let your lungs fill until you add your own putrefaction to the perfume.
Or to slip, while fleeing the scene of a petty robbery with Batman pounding close behind. To laugh, breathless and bewildered, as Batman lunged for his hand and missed...
Batman shuts his eyes. Breathes in, breathes out.
Then unknots his duffel and pulls out a leg.
The pale flesh looks unreal in the moonlight. Like wax, like clay. But Batman can feel the limb's fleshy solidity through his gauntlets, down to the faint crispness in the soft tissue where it hasn't quite thawed from its stint in the deep-freeze unit at the morgue.
Batman holds it a moment longer, studying the curve of muscle over the tibia and fibula , the dots of hairs that either fell off in the freezer or were shaved away pre-mortem and never had chance to regrow. Reminding himself of the humanity this lump of meat once possessed feels important, somehow. Though he got laughed at, last time he tried to explain why.
He lets go. Down the leg tumbles, down-down-down, until it hits the black.
The water seals over it and reforms without a ripple. One hungry gulp.
After that, the only thing to do is wait. Batman chooses to stay standing, the moon casting his shadow over the greasy tidelines that stripe the soakaway below.
He doesn't need to wait long. He never does.
He's fishing out the second offering - an arm, from a young RTC fatality who donated her body to science - when he hears it. The water doesn't splash against the harbour edge; it slops, a thick and constant sound, oddly perverse, like skin striking skin. But there's always a rhythm to it, steady as a heartbeat. It only changes when something falls in or pulls itself out.
Batman doesn't turn to look. Just unhooks the duffel from the petrified elbow joint and tightens the strings.
A hollow, wet thump echoes from inside the storm drain. As if whatever just emerged from the river just hauled itself inside.
"Hello, darling," it says. "Business, or pleasure?"
Batman shoulders the duffel. He swings down into the tunnel, shining his flashlight into the gloom. Four reflective eyes bounce it back, bright as coins. They all blink in synchrony - then alight on the arm and widen, pupils shrinking to predatory points.
"Ooh," coos the monster, slithering closer. Sleek scales scrape on the rough concrete. The rank stench of the estuary gains an extra touch of acid. "For little ol' me? You shouldn't have." A stroke of an eerie white stomach, concave as that of a famine victim. "A girl's gotta watch her figure."
"You can have it," says Batman, guttural, "if you tell me what I want to know."
That too-wide mouth tilts down at its edges, hiding a disquieting number of serrated teeth. At least that stops the monster from licking his lips. "Business first, huh? No fun. Haven't you heard, Bats - All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy?"
"Last time I was here, you told me Jack's dead. Now it's only Joker."
Joker waves one hand as if to dismiss his past words as the rambles of a madman. Which, Batman supposes, isn't inaccurate. The webs between his fingers come down to their tips, where the corpse-pale flesh turns slimy and black as mildew. "Dead's usually what happens, when you push people into this harbour."
"I didn't push you. You fell."
"Fell hard," Joker agrees, clasping both hands to his cheek and fluttering all four pairs of non-existent lashes.
Batman fights not to let his scowl twitch. He walked right into that one. "No games tonight, Joker. I need to know what happened to Murray Alberwitz."
Joker slithers to sit before him, criss-cross applesauce. Joker. Why he calls himself that, Batman can't figure . He certainly doesn't find what happened to this man funny.
From a distance, the mutation seems mostly cosmetic: the freakish white skin, the toxic-waste hair. The dapplings of soft purple scales that coat Joker's long, skinny bare legs. Only when you get close do you notice the really disturbing parts. The fleshy gills opening and closing down the lines of his ribs, the color of infected knife wounds. The grotesque sheen of his skin, like he's half-liquid, held together with mucus and spite. The extra two eyes, situated laterally and inferiorly to the originals, but all the exact nuclear shade of green.
The improbable quantity of meat-ripping teeth.
Joker bares these at Batman in a cheery and utterly horrifying smile. "Whomsy-what-now?"
"Murray Alberwitz. He vanished yesterday, last seen heading home along the dock path after his shift at ACE Chemicals. Here." Batman pulls the photograph from his utility belt, holding it under his flashlight beam. Joker tilts his head, rubbing the sticky webbing between his index finger and thumb back and forth over his top lip.
"Can't say he rings any bells. Big fan of the beard though: points for lumberjack realness. Now, that's business over - onto pleasure?"
Joker leans back, letting his slim legs slide apart. He arches his back so his thin dorsal spines scrape the pipe's interior, concrete on bone. His translucent eyelids slide halfway over his irises, dampening the acidic intensity of his stare - the closest he can come to bedroom-eyes.
Repulsion flickers in Batman's stomach. That's far more welcome than what else flickers there.
A year is a long time, after all. At first, the visits were out of necessity. Having discovered what the smalltime criminal nobody he'd chased out to the harbour that night had become - and what he needed to eat, to survive - it only seemed right for Batman to take responsibility. And - sure, he'd allowed himself to show a touch of kindness. But that was because he’d been reminiscing over Harvey's fate, hoping he could spare this man the same pain as he learnt to live with his disfigurement.
Joker had never seemed particularly bothered by his new state of being, though. He'd been far more intrigued with Batman.
And flirty. So very flirty.
Irrepressably, shamelessly. Night after night. Snuggling up to Batman, mouth stained with blood from the bags Batman took from the hospital bank, like he wanted to absorb his bodyheat. Winking at him, two of the four eyes twitching closed. Modelling bikinis he'd stolen from god-knew-which-beach - certainly, there were none local - with the strappy tops hanging off his rake-thin chest. Pouting at Batman; teasing him; ever-determined to make him laugh, as if the horrific left-turn his life had taken the moment he hit the cesspit of chemical waste in Gotham harbor was nothing but one big joke...
But there will be no laughing tonight. No tucking his arm around that gaunt shape, so squishy where it ought to be sharp, Joker's mutated bones bending into his embrace. No strumming down the spinous prcesses that jut from his back, just to make him shiver. No kissing the blood off his teeth.
A trickling stream of rainwater spills along the base of the pipe, moistening Joker's too-soft amphibious skin. Batman wants to lick it off, and the thought makes him want to plunge his batarang into his own mouth and cut out his tongue.
"You're lying to me," he whispers.
Joker's eyes are cold as his blood. "Huh," he says, mild like they're discussing the weather. "Took you long enough to figure that one out."
Batman's swallow pulls at the collar of his suit. Behind him, the water's surface shimmers with oil. It looks so thick you might walk across to the far side of the estuary, where the Narrows shine harsh and sharp as a mouthful of broken teeth.
Batman isn't fooled. Firstly, oil spreads itself to a mono-molecular thinness over water's surface, no way near enough to hold a man's full weight. Secondly, deaths around this sector of Gotham's jagged waterfront have doubled in the past month.
Accidental drownings, according to the papers. Drunks shambling home through the industrial district who totter into the water when they're too inebriated to tell up from down. Workers exhausted from a night shift, stumbling, falling, smacking their heads open on the reclaimed concrete shoreline and adding their brainmatter to the toxic stew.
Batman doesn't believe it. Though he wishes he could.
Drowned men don't show up with bites missing.
You cannot turn a blind eye, Alfred had insisted.
This needs to be dealt with, said Gordon, by you or by us.
They're right. And Batman shouldn't have needed to be told.
"Why? I - I bring you food. I've been helping you! Why would you...?"
Joker shrugs. "Sometimes there ain't a reason, Batsy. Sometimes, the water's just gotta eat."
"If the corpses aren't enough, you could've said! I could get you more." He's sure he could source them from more donors, if he expanded his search radius outside of Gotham.
Now the flash in Joker's eyes is dangerous. He scoots back a little way, into the shadows of the tunnel, rocking up onto his haunches. His bare feet are flat as flippers, the bones oddly elongated, toes joined with a single thick web. He complained once to Batman that the one thing he misses is being able to wear high heels. "Oh, good little Batsy. Feeding his pet. Providing soooo much enrichment in his enclosure, with the regular fuckings."
The harsh words hit Batman like fists. "That's not what's going on here, and you know it."
"Isn't it?"
...Isn't it?
No. No. Joker can't manipulate his way out of this. The appropriate action when feeling trapped in a relationship, concerned that your partner is exerting too much control, is to talk to them and establish boundaries. Not to start eating anyone who dares approach the water at night.
Batman holds up the cadaver’s arm. This is stupid. So very stupid. Alfred told him as much, Dick too.
You need to bring him in. This is the time. Or else, more civilians will be forfeit...
Batman knows that. He knows. But he still can’t help but hope...
“I’ll bring you a whole body,” he says, gruffly. “Once a week. That should be more than enough. And no more people go missing in the harbour.”
“Sure,” agrees Joker. He’s smiling again. Batman doesn’t like it one bit.
But what can he do?
More than this, whispers a little voice in the back of his head. Batman drives it away.
He passes the arm to Joker - not tossing it, because Joker isn’t an animal in a cage, no matter his delusions. Though that could be doubted, watching him eat. His eyes go utterly blank, nothing in them but hunger as he unhinges his jaw and tears the limb apart, swallowing it in two devastating bites.
Not a pleasant sight. Still, Batman refuses to look away.
“Now,” says Joker when he’s finished eating, wiping the gore on the back of his hand. It leaves a vermillion smear, rudely bright in the pale glow of the flashlight. “Not that I don’t appreciate the UberEats service, but - hey, wait. Have you seen the one about the hot stepson and the UberEats driver?”
“Is this the set-up to a joke?”
“A porno,” Joker explains, shuffling closer again. Batman can smell blood and rotten human meat on his breath. “I thought we could improve on it. I mean, I’m like, freakishly flexible now and there’s some new moves I wanna try - and I reckon the ol’ PornHub’s missing out on the ‘mutant freak’ category. You gotta anticipate the market on these things.”
Batman lets the rambling wash over him. Somehow, despite the bleached skin decorating Joker’s face and torso, the smatterings of amethyst scales on his legs, his lips are still bright red. It’s not just the blood. Physical markings, from the acid that birthed him. Nature’s venemous warning signs.
“Promise me,” he whispers. “No more bodies.”
Joker rolls his eyes like he can’t believe he’s being this boring, and presses his cold, damp lips to Bruce’s. The kiss of a drowned thing, dredged from the harbour floor.
“No more bodies,” he singsongs. “I’ll eat all the evidence, next time. Even though beard hairs get stuck between my teeth. The things I do for you, darling...”
Batman tenses. “Joker...”
But the monster’s already crawled into his lap, kissing him hard and just a touch too toothy, arms locked around his neck and legs around his waist, squirming against him like it wants to burrow inside his ribcage and wrap itself around his heart. Iron fills Batman’s mouth, painted over his tongue by the Joker’s. He wonders, if he nicked his lip on one of those sharp teeth, whether Joker would be able to control himself, or if the feeding frenzy would take over.
He wonders if Joker would mourn, if it did.
But though the night is cold, Joker is colder. Though the stink rolls off the harbor, the death on Joker’s breath is worse. He’s Gotham’s ugliest parts condensed into one monster. He’s killed before and he’ll kill again. He’s in Bruce’s arms, in his mind, in his blood. Permeating him like poisoned water.
Batman kisses him back. He holds him tight as a straitjacket and tries not to think of tomorrow.
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