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Description
Continued from Part One

“Grand theft of the statue of Countess Cleopatra Persian,” the soldier bellowed to the massive throng of citizens gathered around the stage.

My best work. Glad to know they haven’t forgotten. Dmitri couldn’t help but smile with pride while he recalled the giant marble statue.

The rope rubbed against his neck and made him incredibly uncomfortable. He would have gone to sleep earlier if he had known he would have had to sit through thirty minutes of his accumulated crimes. That wasn’t to say that the trip down memory lane wasn’t a bad one. He was certain that they’d never figure out how several thousand gold and silver coins vanished from inside the back room, or how he managed to abscond with their statue of their beloved first Countess.

He felt it now. The pang of regret somewhere inside him where he assumed he still had some sort of heart. Though, not because of guilt, but rather at the fact that his career was ending not with a swan dive off some rooftop after robbing the entire Wing blind, but with on the gallows after an arrest for the petty crime of looting. He stamped his clawed foot against the roughly-hewn floor boards.

“It’s not fair,” he muttered under his breath just loud enough for the guard to his left to hear as the announcer continued to drone on endlessly about his vast successes during his few years of infamy. A rather beefy Hairyama guarding his left chuckled as the soldier heard his remark. Dmitri smiled on the inside while he put on the most bitter scowl he could for the muscular Fighting type.

The guard laughed again and, with the attention of the others guarding him, gave him a light shove. Dmitri stumbled about on the stage, tethered by the rope about his neck. He had never been truly religious, but he whispered a prayer to whatever was watching them in this hell that he didn’t lose his balance and prematurely hang himself. The bound Zoroark couldn’t help but slam into the wall of laughing guards that pressed about him.

He had intended for the jarheads to abuse him while he was awaiting death, but now he was beginning to be feel nauseous. Now, the crowds were laughing along with the guards, a dark sea of harsh mockery. While he kept the appearance of a stumbling fool, he tried to keep his rapidly dizzying mind focused on the covert task at hand. The crowd loved the act, and the guards were laughing like ones possessed. Those two events overshadowed the fact that the announcer had finished his list two minutes ago and he was already supposed to be swinging.

That’s right. Just keep on shoving me. The claws on his right arm, hidden by the tight ball of rope wrapping them, were working feverishly against the cords. The sharp tips slowly slicing through each stand of dried plant pulp as the unruly soldiers kept up their rough game of “Shove the Convict”. The Hariyama gave him one last powerful shove with his meaty hand. Dmitri flew back, the rope around his neck stretching taut and starting to constrict.

There. Better make this count. As the rope reached its tightest, he slipped his right paw out from the broken cords, and swung his arm in a high arc. The action strained his joints, but was worth it as the sharpened claws cleanly cut through the rope, releasing him from the gallow’s murderous hold.

He knew he had stunned everyone as the crowd collectively gasped. After taking one last smug look on the bewildered Hariyama’s scrunched face, Dmitri spun on his heel, and used his claws to tear a piece of the night out of the air, ran it over in between his claws, and lobbed the sphere of darkness at the looming gallow pole. The wooden base splintered and buckled while the top crane went crashing onto the stage.

The guards dove to the sides in an attempt to avoid the falling mast, leaving Dmitri virtually unattended on the middle of the stage. The wooden structure smacked into the stage, sending showers of splinters onto the once-jeering, now-fleeing audience.

“Is this what you’ve all come to be? Watching a hanging like it’s a circus? It’s downright morbid,” he tutted as he calmly eased the now-limp noose off his neck with a few quick cuts of his claws.

“Well then, ‘escape from a noose’ is now checked off my life’s list. What now?” he mused as he vaulted over the wrecked banisters into the panicking crowd.

The Zoroark might as well not even been there among the screaming throng of both humans and Pokémon. His ability to dilute the reality surrounding himself was not even needed under the thick haze of confusion, chaos, and complexity he had created with a single flick of his claw.

The citizens of the town ran all around him, inadvertently creating a protective barrier between him and any of the guards. He calmly walked through the mob, brushing his claws up against the front of a disorientated Bibarel. The large, brown beaver gibbered something incomprehensible as the sharp claw pressed against his chest seemed to sap his basic motor functions. The Pokémon shifted his panicked gaze from side to side. Despite being in the middle of a crowd that wanted him dead, Dmitri had received next to no resistance.

A bright, glowing sphere shot above his head, landing among a throng of human citizens. The object exploded, releasing a pulse of bright blue energy that enveloped the citizens’ frail bodies. Instantly, the fleeing rabble was no more. Their booted footsteps frozen in place by the blue pulse along with the rest of their forms.

He knew what the guards were doing: Petrification Orbs were hardly a new tactic the Itranian guards had used against him, but this time, he wasn’t the target. They were taking out his protection.

Well, that’s annoying. He turned his attention back to the fear-filled Bibarel, pushing his claw past the fur and slightly into the skin on his chest. Grinning, Dmitri looked up at the Pokemon’s terrified face and slowly leaned forward, nearly pressing his snout into the side of the beaver’s head. He pressed his claws in slightly harder, breaking the skin, and letting a few drops of crimson stain his already red claws.

“You’re going to tell me where to go to get out. Seeing as your security is trying to murder me, sometime soon would be excellent,” he whispered into the Bibarel’s ear, quickly dashing around the side of the large Pokémon as another Orb exploded too close for comfort and froze another gaggle of citizens.

Dmitri didn’t need directions; he had practically grown up in Itra. He had memorized the town until it was engraved in his mind like a detailed delineation. The winding streets carved into the ancient trunks, the wobbling bridges, the canals --a nearly impossible feat of engineering, were all mapped out in front of his closed eyes.

The Bibarel continued to blabber on, not knowing that the Zoroark wasn’t paying him the slightest bit of attention. He tried to calculate just how far he could run before eventually being spotted by the guards. Dmitri took his claw off of the beaver and sent him stumbling into the crowd with a rough shove. Several more blue flashed illuminated the square; the mob was nearly all frozen or otherwise contained. He was running out of time.

A quick scan of the chaotic market center revealed that every conventional passage out was occupied by more of the Countess’s guards than he would have liked and the crowd was being frozen by the Petrification Orbs far faster than he anticipated. Seeing that his passage downwards into the lower slums of the city and the wild marshes beyond was blocked, he looked upwards. Not to the heavens for some sort of divine intervention, but rather an escape.

Apartments, fastened into the sturdy trunk and branches of the tree by a plethora of wooden beams and rivets, sloped up from the town square all the way to the very top of the tree. Not that it would do him any good. Going up was essentially a death wish. He didn’t have much time, or much choice, in the matter as a duo of an Abra and a spear-carrying human charged him from through the stunned mob.

Dmitri didn’t waste any time. Turning on his heel, large mane swishing behind him, the black fox sprinted towards the wall of wooden buildings. His desire to avoid death coupled with his adrenaline to give him the boost he needed to leap into the air and the foothold he needed high above the guards’ heads.

The Zoroark dug the claws on his feet into the wood as he scaled the structure. Yells from below accompanied his ascent as the measures to stop him grew more desperate. A steel bolt from a crossbow embedded itself into the wood inched away from his head, quickly followed by a hail of other projectiles. Arrows, bolts, bottles, the occasional elemental attack, it all rained down upon him as he scampered up the wall.

A few of the arrows landed harmlessly in his mane, while a few of the attacks managed to splash onto him when they collided with the wood. Dmitri grunted as he swung himself onto a closed window frame and immediately ducked his head as a slew of bolts shot through the glass where he once was. The frame shattered as nearly every bit glass was forcibly ejected.

Seeing his opportunity, Dmitri leaped through the empty frame into the apartment building, much to the surprise of the human woman who had been watching the spectacle for the last few minutes. The lady seized up against the wall, her voice caught in her throat as all that came out of her mouth was a horse screech. Taking advantage of the slight reprieve, he gathered the remaining rope off of his arms and stretched his aching muscles, as arrows and bolts continued to hammer the exterior wall.

“You wouldn’t happen to have any spare Luminous Orbs ‘round here, would you?” he casually asked the terrified woman. Based on a rudimentary observation, she wouldn’t be in the dark. Her colorful evening dress and the comfortable apartment on the square was enough of an indicator of her status.

“I’m sure you can afford to give up one or two. Now, would you kindly?” he calmly asked with a smile, tapping his claws impatiently against the wall next to her head. She went as pale as a Froslass, Dmitri was almost certain she’d pass out before he’d get any supplies from her abode. The middle-aged woman gulped, pointed a shaking hand towards the a door down the hall, and mouthed what Dmitri thought was the word “kitchen”.

“Thank you, ma’am. I do appreciate it. I’ll be sure to return the favor one day,” he said as he took off in a blur of darkness, racing down the hallway even as Pokémon guards tackled down the thick, wooden door two stories below.

Dmitri slipped through the slightly ajar door to the kitchen and immediately began rummaging through the carved drawers to find the glass spheres he needed. He was rewarded with his prize as he heard the echoing crash of hinges breaking loose. He took the two, dim, grey orbs in his claws, shoving one into his mane, and clutching the second as he readied to make his exit.

He heard the heavy stomps and boot steps of the city guards charging up the stairs. Dmitri tested the floorboards beneath him, pacing down the hall until he found one that squeaked at the slightest touch of the claws on his foot.

This will do nicely. Just as he heard the door near the frightened woman bash inwards, he squeezed his eyes shut, and flung the Luminous Orb at the first guard that burst through the opening -- a young Primeape whose day was about to take a massive turn for the worse.

Bright, white light exploded through the entire building, bleaching every shadow out of existence for a few, short seconds. In that span of time, Dmitri curled his claws into a fist and slammed through the weak planks. The floor beneath him splintered, letting him fall out of the building. He tucked in his body and hit the ground on a roll, sparing him from the tragedy of breaking his legs from the drop. He was back in the square, but, this time, he had the element of surprise on his side.

Alright, now time for a bit of distraction. Everything had to move like clockwork, otherwise he could easily see himself on the gallows again, and this time, swinging. Reaching into his mane, he pulled out the second Orb. He spotted a large group of gibbering humans on the far right side of the square, and to his left, a squad of guards not paying him the least bit of attention as they searched a row of shops.

In one twist, he lobbed the dormant sphere into the air, hoping that the trajectory was high enough to land it dead center of the group of conversing humans. Before he was sure that his toss was true, he turned around and tore off a shadow from a nearby lamppost and balled it up into a crumpled mess of darkness. Dmitri wound up his right arm and launched the crude ball at the squad by the shops. His two tasks complete, he could only hope that what ensued would be enough to save his life. He ran as fast as he could for the massive piles of cargo boxes propped against the trunk.

Twin flashes of blinding white light and abyssal darkness flooded the city square. If his demonstration earlier during his escape left sheer panic in its wake, then complete and utter anarchy reigned under the world of white and black he created. Now, all that remained was for him to flicker through the shadows. He realized he could have easily escaped the city, but a thought entered his mind.

Why secure my freedom only once? Why should I escape with my life when I could have the entire city bow to me? Greed was a powerful drug. It wrapped its tantalizing hands around his thoughts, clouding them with visions of gold and power. His sprint quickly stalled as his brain forced his feet to a standstill. He looked up into the dimly lit branches the housed the palace.

“They’ll never forget my name,” he whispered as he vanished from all mortal eyes.

End Chapter Five

Description
Continued from Part One

“Grand theft of the statue of Countess Cleopatra Persian,” the soldier bellowed to the massive throng of citizens gathered around the stage.

My best work. Glad to know they haven’t forgotten. Dmitri couldn’t help but smile with pride while he recalled the giant marble statue.

The rope rubbed against his neck and made him incredibly uncomfortable. He would have gone to sleep earlier if he had known he would have had to sit through thirty minutes of his accumulated crimes. That wasn’t to say that the trip down memory lane wasn’t a bad one. He was certain that they’d never figure out how several thousand gold and silver coins vanished from inside the back room, or how he managed to abscond with their statue of their beloved first Countess.

He felt it now. The pang of regret somewhere inside him where he assumed he still had some sort of heart. Though, not because of guilt, but rather at the fact that his career was ending not with a swan dive off some rooftop after robbing the entire Wing blind, but with on the gallows after an arrest for the petty crime of looting. He stamped his clawed foot against the roughly-hewn floor boards.

“It’s not fair,” he muttered under his breath just loud enough for the guard to his left to hear as the announcer continued to drone on endlessly about his vast successes during his few years of infamy. A rather beefy Hairyama guarding his left chuckled as the soldier heard his remark. Dmitri smiled on the inside while he put on the most bitter scowl he could for the muscular Fighting type.

The guard laughed again and, with the attention of the others guarding him, gave him a light shove. Dmitri stumbled about on the stage, tethered by the rope about his neck. He had never been truly religious, but he whispered a prayer to whatever was watching them in this hell that he didn’t lose his balance and prematurely hang himself. The bound Zoroark couldn’t help but slam into the wall of laughing guards that pressed about him.

He had intended for the jarheads to abuse him while he was awaiting death, but now he was beginning to be feel nauseous. Now, the crowds were laughing along with the guards, a dark sea of harsh mockery. While he kept the appearance of a stumbling fool, he tried to keep his rapidly dizzying mind focused on the covert task at hand. The crowd loved the act, and the guards were laughing like ones possessed. Those two events overshadowed the fact that the announcer had finished his list two minutes ago and he was already supposed to be swinging.

That’s right. Just keep on shoving me. The claws on his right arm, hidden by the tight ball of rope wrapping them, were working feverishly against the cords. The sharp tips slowly slicing through each stand of dried plant pulp as the unruly soldiers kept up their rough game of “Shove the Convict”. The Hariyama gave him one last powerful shove with his meaty hand. Dmitri flew back, the rope around his neck stretching taut and starting to constrict.

There. Better make this count. As the rope reached its tightest, he slipped his right paw out from the broken cords, and swung his arm in a high arc. The action strained his joints, but was worth it as the sharpened claws cleanly cut through the rope, releasing him from the gallow’s murderous hold.

He knew he had stunned everyone as the crowd collectively gasped. After taking one last smug look on the bewildered Hariyama’s scrunched face, Dmitri spun on his heel, and used his claws to tear a piece of the night out of the air, ran it over in between his claws, and lobbed the sphere of darkness at the looming gallow pole. The wooden base splintered and buckled while the top crane went crashing onto the stage.

The guards dove to the sides in an attempt to avoid the falling mast, leaving Dmitri virtually unattended on the middle of the stage. The wooden structure smacked into the stage, sending showers of splinters onto the once-jeering, now-fleeing audience.

“Is this what you’ve all come to be? Watching a hanging like it’s a circus? It’s downright morbid,” he tutted as he calmly eased the now-limp noose off his neck with a few quick cuts of his claws.

“Well then, ‘escape from a noose’ is now checked off my life’s list. What now?” he mused as he vaulted over the wrecked banisters into the panicking crowd.

The Zoroark might as well not even been there among the screaming throng of both humans and Pokémon. His ability to dilute the reality surrounding himself was not even needed under the thick haze of confusion, chaos, and complexity he had created with a single flick of his claw.

The citizens of the town ran all around him, inadvertently creating a protective barrier between him and any of the guards. He calmly walked through the mob, brushing his claws up against the front of a disorientated Bibarel. The large, brown beaver gibbered something incomprehensible as the sharp claw pressed against his chest seemed to sap his basic motor functions. The Pokémon shifted his panicked gaze from side to side. Despite being in the middle of a crowd that wanted him dead, Dmitri had received next to no resistance.

A bright, glowing sphere shot above his head, landing among a throng of human citizens. The object exploded, releasing a pulse of bright blue energy that enveloped the citizens’ frail bodies. Instantly, the fleeing rabble was no more. Their booted footsteps frozen in place by the blue pulse along with the rest of their forms.

He knew what the guards were doing: Petrification Orbs were hardly a new tactic the Itranian guards had used against him, but this time, he wasn’t the target. They were taking out his protection.

Well, that’s annoying. He turned his attention back to the fear-filled Bibarel, pushing his claw past the fur and slightly into the skin on his chest. Grinning, Dmitri looked up at the Pokemon’s terrified face and slowly leaned forward, nearly pressing his snout into the side of the beaver’s head. He pressed his claws in slightly harder, breaking the skin, and letting a few drops of crimson stain his already red claws.

“You’re going to tell me where to go to get out. Seeing as your security is trying to murder me, sometime soon would be excellent,” he whispered into the Bibarel’s ear, quickly dashing around the side of the large Pokémon as another Orb exploded too close for comfort and froze another gaggle of citizens.

Dmitri didn’t need directions; he had practically grown up in Itra. He had memorized the town until it was engraved in his mind like a detailed delineation. The winding streets carved into the ancient trunks, the wobbling bridges, the canals --a nearly impossible feat of engineering, were all mapped out in front of his closed eyes.

The Bibarel continued to blabber on, not knowing that the Zoroark wasn’t paying him the slightest bit of attention. He tried to calculate just how far he could run before eventually being spotted by the guards. Dmitri took his claw off of the beaver and sent him stumbling into the crowd with a rough shove. Several more blue flashed illuminated the square; the mob was nearly all frozen or otherwise contained. He was running out of time.

A quick scan of the chaotic market center revealed that every conventional passage out was occupied by more of the Countess’s guards than he would have liked and the crowd was being frozen by the Petrification Orbs far faster than he anticipated. Seeing that his passage downwards into the lower slums of the city and the wild marshes beyond was blocked, he looked upwards. Not to the heavens for some sort of divine intervention, but rather an escape.

Apartments, fastened into the sturdy trunk and branches of the tree by a plethora of wooden beams and rivets, sloped up from the town square all the way to the very top of the tree. Not that it would do him any good. Going up was essentially a death wish. He didn’t have much time, or much choice, in the matter as a duo of an Abra and a spear-carrying human charged him from through the stunned mob.

Dmitri didn’t waste any time. Turning on his heel, large mane swishing behind him, the black fox sprinted towards the wall of wooden buildings. His desire to avoid death coupled with his adrenaline to give him the boost he needed to leap into the air and the foothold he needed high above the guards’ heads.

The Zoroark dug the claws on his feet into the wood as he scaled the structure. Yells from below accompanied his ascent as the measures to stop him grew more desperate. A steel bolt from a crossbow embedded itself into the wood inched away from his head, quickly followed by a hail of other projectiles. Arrows, bolts, bottles, the occasional elemental attack, it all rained down upon him as he scampered up the wall.

A few of the arrows landed harmlessly in his mane, while a few of the attacks managed to splash onto him when they collided with the wood. Dmitri grunted as he swung himself onto a closed window frame and immediately ducked his head as a slew of bolts shot through the glass where he once was. The frame shattered as nearly every bit glass was forcibly ejected.

Seeing his opportunity, Dmitri leaped through the empty frame into the apartment building, much to the surprise of the human woman who had been watching the spectacle for the last few minutes. The lady seized up against the wall, her voice caught in her throat as all that came out of her mouth was a horse screech. Taking advantage of the slight reprieve, he gathered the remaining rope off of his arms and stretched his aching muscles, as arrows and bolts continued to hammer the exterior wall.

“You wouldn’t happen to have any spare Luminous Orbs ‘round here, would you?” he casually asked the terrified woman. Based on a rudimentary observation, she wouldn’t be in the dark. Her colorful evening dress and the comfortable apartment on the square was enough of an indicator of her status.

“I’m sure you can afford to give up one or two. Now, would you kindly?” he calmly asked with a smile, tapping his claws impatiently against the wall next to her head. She went as pale as a Froslass, Dmitri was almost certain she’d pass out before he’d get any supplies from her abode. The middle-aged woman gulped, pointed a shaking hand towards the a door down the hall, and mouthed what Dmitri thought was the word “kitchen”.

“Thank you, ma’am. I do appreciate it. I’ll be sure to return the favor one day,” he said as he took off in a blur of darkness, racing down the hallway even as Pokémon guards tackled down the thick, wooden door two stories below.

Dmitri slipped through the slightly ajar door to the kitchen and immediately began rummaging through the carved drawers to find the glass spheres he needed. He was rewarded with his prize as he heard the echoing crash of hinges breaking loose. He took the two, dim, grey orbs in his claws, shoving one into his mane, and clutching the second as he readied to make his exit.

He heard the heavy stomps and boot steps of the city guards charging up the stairs. Dmitri tested the floorboards beneath him, pacing down the hall until he found one that squeaked at the slightest touch of the claws on his foot.

This will do nicely. Just as he heard the door near the frightened woman bash inwards, he squeezed his eyes shut, and flung the Luminous Orb at the first guard that burst through the opening -- a young Primeape whose day was about to take a massive turn for the worse.

Bright, white light exploded through the entire building, bleaching every shadow out of existence for a few, short seconds. In that span of time, Dmitri curled his claws into a fist and slammed through the weak planks. The floor beneath him splintered, letting him fall out of the building. He tucked in his body and hit the ground on a roll, sparing him from the tragedy of breaking his legs from the drop. He was back in the square, but, this time, he had the element of surprise on his side.

Alright, now time for a bit of distraction. Everything had to move like clockwork, otherwise he could easily see himself on the gallows again, and this time, swinging. Reaching into his mane, he pulled out the second Orb. He spotted a large group of gibbering humans on the far right side of the square, and to his left, a squad of guards not paying him the least bit of attention as they searched a row of shops.

In one twist, he lobbed the dormant sphere into the air, hoping that the trajectory was high enough to land it dead center of the group of conversing humans. Before he was sure that his toss was true, he turned around and tore off a shadow from a nearby lamppost and balled it up into a crumpled mess of darkness. Dmitri wound up his right arm and launched the crude ball at the squad by the shops. His two tasks complete, he could only hope that what ensued would be enough to save his life. He ran as fast as he could for the massive piles of cargo boxes propped against the trunk.

Twin flashes of blinding white light and abyssal darkness flooded the city square. If his demonstration earlier during his escape left sheer panic in its wake, then complete and utter anarchy reigned under the world of white and black he created. Now, all that remained was for him to flicker through the shadows. He realized he could have easily escaped the city, but a thought entered his mind.

Why secure my freedom only once? Why should I escape with my life when I could have the entire city bow to me? Greed was a powerful drug. It wrapped its tantalizing hands around his thoughts, clouding them with visions of gold and power. His sprint quickly stalled as his brain forced his feet to a standstill. He looked up into the dimly lit branches the housed the palace.

“They’ll never forget my name,” he whispered as he vanished from all mortal eyes.

End Chapter Five