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Lucario fanfic – Quest for Power (Team Ruki Origins)
【 Chapter 2: Haunting Past 】
It took awhile, but by the next morning, Ruki managed to carry Auguste’s body to the nearest human settlement, Snowpoint City. He told the people there of the Abomasnow attack that caused the unfortunate accident. The city’s mayor thanked Ruki for retrieving Auguste’s body.
“You’re heading to Kalos, aren’t you? I don’t know how you’d do that because it’s so far away, but take this with you,” The mayor said, his voice hoarse with age but gentle and kind. He dug into his bag and took out a folded piece of paper, marking a route on it with a wrinkled hand before handing it over to Ruki.
“It’s a map to Kalos. I hope you can find your way there and arrive safely.”
“Much appreciated,” Ruki said, taking the map. He wrapped his black cloak around himself, Auguste’s Mega Badge pinned to it.
Auguste had warned Ruki of the dangers of Mega Evolution, but to the Lucario, it was better to have a weapon in hand than to have none at all when he needed to fight. He’d try this exotic evolution thing first and then decide for himself whether it was worth it or not.
With that in mind, the Lucario left, following the map and dashing through Sinnoh’s snowy terrains towards the west, never looking back.
The Kalos Region was located on the large continent west of Sinnoh. Kalos being a great distance away, traveling there wasn’t going to be easy for Ruki. He considered a few possible options.
Humans seemed to travel great distances using these large flying machines, but they needed something called ‘money’ to use it, which Ruki didn’t have. He supposed that it would be very expensive, considering the distance. It wasn’t like they’d just let a random wild Pokémon walk in and out of a highly secure human facility freely, anyway. He doubted that he’d find a Flying-type Pokémon who’d be willing to carry him over such an enormous distance so far away from their home territory either.
But going to Kalos on foot by himself would take months. He was starting to consider giving the Hoenn Region a look. But as Auguste said that there weren’t any Lucarionite in the wild there, it would probably take just as long to find a human who had one, and then it would be a gamble if that human would even hand over such a rare possession to him.
After weighing his options, Ruki decided that Kalos was a surer and better option. It would take a long time, but maybe going far away from Sinnoh would help him get his mind off things. Going out and seeing the world might also teach him something new. His mind set, he walked along Sinnoh’s western coast, looking for a way to cross the sea.
Thankfully, there was a kind, traveling Lapras who happened to be stopping by. She was heading back to her home in the great continent, so she didn’t mind Ruki riding on her back to the other side. It would be a long and lonely sail, so she was thankful for the company.
“So, heading to Kalos, eh?” The Lapras girl started a chat with Ruki as they sailed the calm seas. “Such exotic land! I wish I can go there too some time, but it’s too far! It’s rare for a Pokémon to travel that far from their homeland. Sounds difficult!”
“Yeah… But I have to do it.”
“How are you going to return? You’re coming back, right? What about your Mama and Papa?”
“Well…” Ruki thought for awhile. His caring parents and his little brother Ruka’s smiling face flashed across his mind. “I… don’t know. I’ll figure it out once I finished my business in Kalos, I guess. I can’t go back home right now. Not like this…”
Lapras seemed concerned when Ruki’s voice trailed off sadly, so she tried to lighten the mood.
“You know, we Lapras are really good singers! How about I sing you a song of the seas so you can enjoy the trip? It’s my mother’s favourite song.” She giggled proudly. Ruki seemed to cheer up a bit.
“Hm? Go on.”
Overjoyed that the Lucario agreed, Lapras cleared her throat and got ready.
“Okay, okay! Here goes!” She said. Ruki looked forward to her beautiful voice.
Unfortunately, this particular Lapras was a hopelessly terrible singer.
A broken, unhinged melody that sounded awfully like a Perish Song filled the air. Ruki felt a cold chill run down his spine and his blue fur stood on end, his face immediately losing all its colour. He grabbed his ears and glared at Lapras, but he could sense from her Aura that she was really happy and enjoying herself, swaying her head sweetly from right to left as she sang.
“Lala~ Lallalaaaa~ Lilililiiiii~“
“Nnnnnn…”
Ruki’s head began to feel dizzy, but not having the heart to tell Lapras to stop, he lowered his hands and sat up straight. Who knows, if he complained and offended her, she might throw him off her back into the dark, cold waters. The Lucario decided to just bear with her for the rest of the trip.
And so, they continued sailing across the sea like that, scaring away any other Pokémon who happened to be swimming nearby.
After Lapras finished her long solo opera, they finally arrived on the coast of the western continent by nightfall. Ruki fell off Lapras’ back onto the sand on all fours, throwing up.
“Ooh, sea sickness? Nasty,” Lapras commented. “Hope you enjoyed the trip, though! It was my best trip so far since my friends usually don’t let me sing around them. Thank you so much, Lucario!”
Lapras laughed and flapped her flippers happily.
“Y-Yeah… I appreciate your services, too,” Ruki replied, standing up in an attempt to look a little less pathetic. Lapras smiled at him with joy.
“Call me whenever you pass by here again on your way home. I’d be happy to bring you back to Sinnoh and sing you another song or two!”
“Well… Okay, miss…” Ruki said awkwardly.
They nodded at each other and said their farewells. Ruki watched as Lapras swam slowly along the shore into the night to meet her family, humming a broken but happy tune. Ruki sighed. Such an easygoing and happy Lapras. He remembered how he was a little like that too as a child, an unimaginable behaviour for his current self. Shaking his head and regaining his composure, he took out his map and turned around to study his surroundings.
It was somewhat cloudy. A large bamboo forest spread itself before him, with many mountains in the distance. He couldn’t read the human alphabets on the map, so he had to figure things out from the map’s pictures and all the stories that he had heard about this region. Eventually, he concluded that the bamboo forest in front of him was Zhuzi Forest.
It was Ruki’s first time in the great continent, so he was a little nervous, alone in unknown lands. He closed his eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath and convincing himself that things would be alright. It was one success to have made it across the sea. Now he just needed to keep walking westward until he reached Kalos.
He looked up at the night sky, trying to look for the stars through the clouds to find his bearing. But then a drop of rain hit the tip of his nose, followed by another, and another. Thunder rolled and soon, the rain got heavier. Ruki cursed, immediately running into Zhuzi Forest in search of shelter. He could tell that it would develop into a heavy storm, so it was probably best to hole up somewhere. Finding an abandoned burrow in the ground among the bushes, he settled into it and glared at the rain outside.
The Lucario had always hated the storm and the thunders. It was dark, cold and noisy. Aside from the cursed weather impeding his journey like it did right now, he remembered being afraid of it when he was young. The loud bang of a thunderclap always made him feel so small and helpless as a Riolu. Furthermore, it brought back a slew of unpleasant memories that he’d rather not remember.
Shaking his head, he decided to try and get some sleep. He was exhausted from the long sail, after all. Maybe he’d be able to sleep off the storm and not have to deal with it. Unfortunately, fate was not so forgiving, and the storm followed him into his dreams.
It stormed a lot when Ruki was held in the secret lab of the evil organization that captured him. He was indoors in a cage, so he couldn’t see the rain or feel the cold, but the storm was always loud enough to make itself known. The rumble and crack of thunder always sounded like it was laughing at him, a small, helpless Riolu hugging his knees in a metal cage. A woman loomed over him in the dark room.
“We’re going to make you the strongest Pokémon, Ruki. You’re an amazing Riolu. What luck to be able to catch such a fine specimen to test on! Hahaha!”
Nozomi, the young petite leader of the clandestine organization, Team Hope, laughed as she adjusted her glasses, watching Ruki in his cage from her wheelchair. Behind her, her Inteleon looked on quietly from the shadows, arms folded. The tattered fins on the reptile’s back were a point of interest. His body was thin to the point of looking unhealthy, but his eyes were as ruthless as his Trainer’s. Ruki, still a Riolu, could only snarl at them, powerless in his iron prison. A tag marking him with his experiment subject number, 447, hung from his left ear.
“You’re evil! All of you!!” He barked angrily, grabbing and shaking the iron bars to no avail.
“Evil…?” Nozomi said. She shook her head in disappointment. “No. Some people call us that, but that’s only because they looked away from the truth–the true evil.”
“Nonsense! I won’t believe a word you say!” Ruki protested. But then he saw Nozomi’s Aura glow darker as she looked away, a deep sorrow in her eyes.
“IVs…” She mumbled, pushing her short, snow white hair behind an ear.
“…?” Ruki wondered what the foreign word is. Nozomi explained.
“Individual Values, it’s what us humans rate each Pokémon’s strength with. They’re genetic advantages you get from birth such as stronger Attack, Defense, Stamina and so on. The higher the IVs, the stronger the Pokémon.”
“And…? What does that have to do with all these?” Ruki asked impatiently. Nozomi answered.
“You, Ruki, we’ve identified that you have pretty high IVs in everything, but there’s a problem.”
“…?”
“They’re not perfect–Not a 100% IV. No matter how strong you are or how hard you train, a Trainer aiming to win tournaments won’t think twice about throwing you out for a better, stronger, more perfect Riolu or Lucario. It’s disgusting!”
“……!” Ruki gasped. Nozomi said those words as if they were poison, continuing.
“There’s a humane way to increase IVs such as Hyper Training, but it’s expensive and time-consuming with multiple other disadvantages. In the end, people prefer the more convenient method.”
“Convenient…?”
“To breed Pokémon for the perfect IVs and throw them out the moment they’re born if they don’t make the cut. People have become devils for convenience. Pokémon are not livestock or toys, dammit!!”
Nozomi glared at the floor. Angry tears fell from her eyes, but she promptly wiped them off with the sleeve of her lab coat. Worried, her Inteleon made to comfort her, but she stopped him.
“Skye, my Inteleon, is such a Pokémon. His previous Trainer threw him out since birth. Look at him, so thin and frail! I found him alone and half-dead in the wild in Galar, so I took him in. I know how it felt like to be treated like an outcast, to be unwanted just because you were born less,” Nozomi said, gripping the armrests of her wheelchair.
“I don’t want any other Pokémon to have to suffer like Skye, so I wish to invent an elixir that can strengthen a Pokémon’s body. They’ll then have perfect IVs even if they weren’t born with it. I want to give them the hope to live.”
She looked at Ruki. “So I caught random Pokémon like you from the wild to prove that anyone… ANYONE can become the perfect Pokémon. The elixir’s still in its testing stage and it’s painful when applied. Some of my subjects die or were driven to madness because their bodies cannot handle the stress. It might still take years or maybe even multiple generations to have the perfect elixir, but I promise, your sacrifices will save all Pokémon-kind in future. I even wrote down all the names of my subjects so that they can be remembered for their sacrifices.”
Nozomi shook her head sadly, like a mother losing her precious children.
“It’s sad that many perished, but you, Ruki, you have a strong heart and resisted the elixir’s negative effects better than the others. If anyone’s going to make this work, it’s you. You’d join me in this noble cause, won’t you, Ruki?”
Ruki shuddered, shaking his head in disbelief and backing away from the bars of his cage, backing away from Nozomi until his back hit the wall. Despite her reasoning, this was madness! What would the humans do if they can just turn any Pokémon they caught in the wild into powerful killing machines?! He shook his head in fear.
“Y-You’re crazy!! You’re no different from those cruel Trainers, experimenting on us for your own selfish needs!” He cried, “I-I don’t want to have perfect IVs. I want to just live naturally, freely, like when I was born… I want to live as myself!”
Nozomi chuckled darkly.
“You say that now, Ruki. But you’ll discover one day that the weak can’t change a thing in this world. When you’re being kicked and shoved around by those stronger than you, you’d be crying and begging for power. In fact, you’re already wishing that you’re stronger right now so you don’t have to be stuck in that cage… Right?”
“……!!”
Ruki shook his head frantically and put his paws over his eyes, afraid of how right Nozomi was, afraid of the truth.
“No…”
Thunders cracked outside as the storm got wilder. Nozomi tilted her head and smiled gently at Ruki, the warm smile of a mother.
“Become the king you’re destined to be, Ruki… I’ll see to it that you do.”
Ruki opened his eyes, trying to blink the sleep away. His eyelids felt heavy. He didn’t sleep well at all. Who could with such a disturbing dream? The grogginess made him want to die. He cursed. The part about his past when Team Hope kidnapped him was something he never wanted to remember. He was surprised that he even managed to sleep through the entire nightmare without waking up.
“……?!”
The Lucario then realized that he had been cramped into a small metal box with steel bars on one side. Was he still dreaming? The rain had stopped and the sun was already high up in the sky. The landscape outside looked like the place he arrived in last night–Zhuzi Forest, mountains and all. Someone was carrying his cage and moving down the road further into the forest.
“Hey! What IS this?!” He demanded urgently, grabbing the bars of his cage.
“Ooh, our little captive’s awake! Hehehe.” A Bronzong floated into view, peering in through the bars to check him out.
“Looks nice and healthy. Good!” The Ursaring who was carrying his cage peered in too. laughing menacingly. “I sniffed you out and Bronzong here used Hypnosis on you to be doubly sure that you won’t wake up while we put you in this box. Lucario are pretty rare around here, so you’ll fetch a good price when we sell you to the humans. Harr harr!”
“You bastards!” Ruki cursed, kicking the bars of his cage in anger. The giant bear and the floating bell didn’t look like they’d let him go. What would happen to him now?
Trivia
- 447 is Riolu’s Pokédex number.
- Nozomi’s name means ‘hope’ in Japanese.
- Other reasons people prefer breeding over Hyper Training for perfect IVs include the fact that Hyper Trained Pokémon won’t pass their IVs to their children, Hyper Trained Pokémon will have their IV chart written as ‘Hyper Trained!’ instead of ‘Best’, Bottle Caps needed for Hyper Training are extremely rare and expensive, you can’t Hyper Train for 0 IV, and breeding can give you some Egg abilities you need.
- The land Ruki landed on is the Pokémon world’s equivalent of China. (A region based on China hasn’t existed in the game at the time this fic was written).
- Zhuzi (竹子) means ‘bamboo’ in Chinese.
- Ursaring are known for their sharp sense of smell to spot food (Pokédex info).
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