Pokemon Fan Fiction ❯ Luck ❯ Chapter One ( Chapter 1 )

Luck

 

Chapter One

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I'm probably one of the luckiest people in the empire. Recently, anyway. My childhood wasn't what a human would call “happy.”

 

I have been in this field for three days. Three long days of pain and anguish. I haven't eaten more than a bit of old bread and some water from a canteen in the bag I managed to grab before I was thrown here. That's all I've been able to do. Eat a little, lie on the grass, and wait.

 

“For what?” you may ask. For my wounds to heal. The wounds I sustained while fighting for my race. It's a long story, and I'm just too tired to tell you the whole thing now. The point is, after the fight (which I won) my opponent's bodyguards fired six arrows into my gut. I'm just happy that they didn't hit anything important.

 

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Three Days Earlier

 

I was losing too much blood. I knew it. My mind was fogging and my reflexes were slowing down. The emperor was standing across from me, still gloating about how he was the ultimate being to ever walk the face of the Earth and how killing Mana and me will finally remove the werewolves from this world.

 

Funny how he forgot that he's one, too. Though he was probably thirty years older than me, he had fighting experience equal to my own. And without weapons, we were an even match.

 

But of course he cheated by using a loophole in our agreement on the rules of the Challenge. We had simply agreed on no metal or bladed weapons, so he walks out with a club and smashes my ribcage. Jackass.

 

“Now, Runt,” he said, taunting me as I lay on the floor of the palace throne room, bleeding on the expensive silk carpet, “You will die a horrible death. And after you do, do you know what I'm going to do?”

 

“Go…spit,” I panted, pushing myself up onto my legs.

 

“Heh heh heh. As defiant as ever, Runt,” he laughed. “No, I'm far more concerned with your sisters. You see, after you're dead, no one will be able to protect them. And Mana-chan has been such a thorn in my side. Naba is supposed to be mine anyway, after I sent my servant to buy her from Barry. I wonder...what happened to him, anyway?”

 

“He's, dead, you bastard,” I answered. “Just like you'll be in a short while.”

 

“Of course, your sisters are both still so young and supple. I wonder how good they'd be in my chambers,” he continued as if I didn't even say anything, speaking in a tone filled to the brim with lust.

 

It was at that comment that my control snapped. I forgot about the rules that we had set at the beginning of the challenge, if you could call them that.

 

I flew at him, ripping flesh with my newly-formed claws and fangs, trying to tear him to shreds for daring to have such thoughts about my sisters. He blocked a few of my attacks, as he did the others for the past hour, but I slipped through and hit a few vital spots, including a gash across his gut and a deep cut in his arm.

 

“You insolent little runt,” he drawled in a disbelieving tone. As if I couldn't kick his ass. He grabbed my wrist as I tried another slash and threw me into one of the columns. Leaving a good-sized dent and a lot of cracks in the column, I fell to the floor. He took that imperial stance again and strolled over to me, convinced that I was beaten by the way I was panting, spilling blood everywhere from the gashes in my chest and back.

 

“You can not win against me. You, Runt, are just…too…weak,” said, letting his arms fall limply to his sides as he kicked me in the gut. He continued to speak, punctuating every word with a kick in a new part of my already heavily damaged body. “You. Would. Never. Amount. To. Anything. Not. Ever. Now. Die. You. Son. Of. A. BITCH!!!”

 

That was the very last thing he ever said. When he pulled back to give a neck-breaking and devastating blow to my skull, I twisted around and surged forward, focusing my strength into my clawed hand as I hurled it at him. I punched straight through his breastbone, obliterating his heart and snapping his spine. His legs fell limp, but he still had some fight in him.

 

He kept punching me, even though his movements were dramatically losing speed and power. He was dying. He had lost. His body and I both knew it. His mind just didn't want to accept it.

 

Just to give it some sense of finality, I extended my neck forward and bit down on his windpipe. My elongated eyeteeth closed on the tube, drawing blood where they punctured the skin. I pushed away from him with my free arm, removing both my right hand and the emperor's air tube from his body.

 

His corpse fell to the ground, a growing pool of red extending from the hole in his chest. I looked with my good eye (my left eye had blood clouding it from where that bastard had raked my face) over at the people who were watching the whole time. Mana and Naba, my younger sisters, were staring at me wide-eyed, as all present were doing.

 

“Oniichan!” Mana shouted, which brought everyone else out of their reverie. Six of the imperial guards opened fire, a volley of arrows headed straight at me.

 

Behind me, I heard someone chanting the end of a spell. They finished, the arrows imbedded themselves in my gut, and a strong suction opened up behind me.

 

It was as if everything was moving at a tenth of the speed it normally did. Mana, running as well as she could with her swollen stomach, heavy with an unborn cub. Naba, right behind her as they raced to me. The guards, reaching for more arrows while a few of the handmaidens reached for the weapons hanging on the wall.

 

And finally me, falling backwards into the suction. Falling out of reach of my only family.

 

My body was done fighting. I wouldn't be able to take much more.

 

My last thought before I saw my sister for the last time: Sorry.

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But I'm a little relieved. Tonight is this land's full moon. I could smell it. Once the sun goes down, I'll be forced into my wolf form and most of my injuries will heal. Well, the ones that don't have a foot of arrow sticking out of them like a flagpole. I forced myself onto my side with a groan so that I could watch the sunset, counting the moments before my curse would save my life.

 

Something I forgot to mention. I'm a werewolf. Have been since I was a little kid. Every cycle, on the night of the full moon, magic changes my body to that of a large wolf. Back to the present. By the time that half the sun is hidden by a nearby mountain, I've wrapped a hand around one of the six arrows in my body and pulled it out with a slight tingling.

 

Something else—I don't feel pain. Not right away. If I get cut on my arm, for example, I don't feel it for anywhere from a few seconds to a couple of hours.

 

The sun's almost completely gone, the last few rays reflecting off of the water and what looked like a giant shell, much larger than anything in my homeland. I couldn't tell what color it was because of the light, but as the sun's final ray disappeared, I felt the change coming.

 

Agony. Fury. These two feelings filled me. The first because of my earlier attempt to remove the arrows, the second because the mind of the wolf was taking over.

 

The first thing that changed was my left arm. It spasm as the bones changed their shape, the muscles strengthened even more than they were. My thumb disappeared, while my other fingers and hand curled into a paw. Claws grew from between them while my skin sprouted dark gray fur and the changes spread to the rest of my body.

 

My nose and mouth pushed outward, cracking loudly as the bones lengthened. My teeth sharpened, my nose turned black and wet, while my sense of smell strengthened to the point of being able to smell humans within a league and something else that I couldn't place.

 

My ears flattened out and pointed, moving to the top of my head, which was substantially lower, due to my skull sloping back. My hair turned the same gray as the fur covering the rest of my body. My ribcage pushed outward, ripping my shirt to shreds, and I heard my organs sloshing around, repositioning themselves. My right arm mirrored my left while my pelvis cracked and shifted so that it was better suited for a quadruped.

 

A tail budded from the base of my spine, long and shaggy fur sprouting from the new skin. My legs cracked and groaned, and I scrambled to remove my pants before they were damaged by the change.

 

Hey, I only have one set of clothes.

 

My legs shortened, while my feet lengthened, becoming digitigrades. My toes curled up and grew claws, and thick pads formed on the bottom of my feet.

 

I felt my mind fade away as the wolf took over. He pushed himself onto his legs, sat down on his haunches, and howled.