Darkness was everywhere, but it wasn't a quiet darkness.  I was swaying, braced against something hard and smooth and curved.  Frightening clunks and clatters resounded all around me, almost in rhythm with my movements, and in the next moment, the sky ripped open and long, slender fingers each five times my length dove towards me in the sudden dull light.

I screamed, screamed for all the unimaginable nightmarish things this could be, and I buried my head in my hands, desperately willing this all would end.  My stomach lurched, and I knew I was moving upwards at a terrible pace.  It took all the courage I could muster, but in time, I opened my eyes.

It was her.  Chloe.  Her angelic countenance filled my vision, and I could only stare at her darkly painted lips, her huge, shimmering green eyes and perfectly arranged, brilliant red hair spiraling down about her shoulders.

She was a goddess, holding me in the palm of her hand.  I hated the layer of grey plastic between us, keeping me from feeling the warmth of her flesh beneath me and obscuring even a trace of her utter perfection from my eyes.

She was all that was beauty and power, and I belonged to her.  I marveled at how gracefully her thumb shifted, clicking a smooth white cylinder downwards towards me, and at how utterly stirring her marvelous little chuckle was as she let me fall from her fingers and tumble towards the distant floor, a deadly mile-long drop from where I sat.

There was another burst of light all around me, each one seemingly more disorienting than the last. I got my hands beneath me and looked up, and she was still there, smiling her smug, self-assured smirk and watching me pull myself together.  She was just a woman, a few years and inches more than me, and I couldn't determine if I feared her or hated her or loved her.  She took a step towards me, and I flinched and jerked back while she stooped down and plucked up the ball I'd been held in.

"Amazing, isn't it?" She purred, waving the dull, translucent ball a bit as she rose back to her full height.  "Really puts your little life into perspective, doesn't it, pet?"

***************

Chloe was beautiful, there wasn't any doubting that, but the way she seemed to captivate me... the strange yearnings I felt for her were unlike anything I'd ever experienced.  Still, I was starting to understand my situation.  She had captured me, and I was being held here in what seemed to be her well-decorated and spacious bedroom.

"Why am I here?" I finally asked, trying to piece together this puzzle and figure out what was going on and just how much danger I was in. "Who are you, and what did you do to me?"

I pulled my legs underneath me and tried to get a little more comfortable where I sat on the floor, not feeling quite up to really standing up just yet.  Chloe took another small step, and I found myself unexpectedly shuddering when her shoe clicked heavily on the hard floor, but the simple grace of her motion as she settled upon the side of her bed and smoothed out her skirt settled me instantly.  She was so perfectly elegant, but her smile, her girlish glee was so strangely and utterly thrilling...

Ugh!  What's wrong with me?  I'm her prisoner.

"So many questions, little one," she purred, leaning back on her hands and casually draping one leg over the other, meeting my gaze as she continued.  I fought the urge to blush and drop my eyes.  "Fortunately, I have to admit that I'm rather eager to explain all of these things to you.  As I've said, my name is Chloe, and for all intents and purposes, I am the new chief executive of Team Flare."

"But Team Flare is done for!" I protested. It hurt to contradict her, but I'd done it myself, I knew it to be true.  "I see its former members everywhere, and they're not part of any organization anymore."

She chuckled softly and shook her head once, her hair twisting slowly through the air as she clicked her tongue.  "You don't understand the first thing about us, child.  Do you think every fool you met on your journey mattered the least to me?  We took their money, gave them cheap red suits and promises of a brighter future.  They were cattle, foolish animals scraping together everything they'd ever earned for a dream, and while they count for little in the grand scheme, their contribution to the better tomorrow I'll create ended with their cash."

I stared silently at her, dismissing the dozens and dozens of people that had loyally served her with such ease.  I never imagined someone so casually cruel could exist, let alone be so gloriously gorgeous…

No!  She’s a monster.  She’s…

“As for your next two questions, sweetest, I can provide a simple answer to both.  We battled, I defeated you, and then I captured you.  It’s not complicated, dear, you’ve done it a hundred times over at least in the past few months.”  She smirked and tossed the dull grey sphere into the air, catching it in her palm as it fell back to her hand and looking it over.  “I caught you in this ball right here, and now you belong to me.”

Whatever spell I was under was broken right there.  I swiftly hauled myself up to my feet and looked her dead in the eye.  “You’re crazy!  I don’t belong to anyone, least of all you, and Pokeballs don’t capture people, it just… it just doesn’t work!”

Chloe’s expression didn’t change for a moment.  She leaned forward a bit, uncrossing her legs and pulling open a drawer in her polished oak nightstand.  “Did you completely forget that we captured the Pokeball factory?  That for every twitchy goon you ran across on the road, there was a scientist back in our labs, working day and night to accomplish our glorious dream?”

Her hand emerged with another dark sphere, identical to the one she claimed had held me.  I held my breath, certain I could see something inside.  “Anything is possible with enough time, effort and money.  We did, after all, come within moments of wiping nearly every person and Pokemon from the face of Kalos.  Altering the programming of a Pokeball and creating these magnificent new devices was almost easy by comparison, and yet, they are what’s going to change the world.”

She held her newly produced ball in her hand, lifting it to her face and squinting at whatever, or… god, whoever was inside.  “That doesn’t make any sense, Chloe,” I found myself protesting.  The idea was just too crazy.  Pokemon were special, different, and the way people and Pokemon existed together and related to each other was something that just was.  “You can’t just capture people!  People have lives and families and plans and dreams, even if it worked, you just couldn’t do something like that.”

Chloe laughed a brief and frightening laugh, suddenly sitting upright and crossing her legs once more, leaning towards me and biting her lip as her piercing gaze bore into my skull.  “Oh, it works, little girl.  We tested these devices several times before I decided the time was right to come for you.  See for yourself.”

And with that, she turned the ball in her hand, covered the larger of the two buttons with her thumb and pressed down.  A cool, bright light began to flow from the sphere’s parting seams, and by the time Chloe let it fall to the ground, I could already see a figure forming.  She flickered into being, taking shape and rising from the ground in a bright, flickering blue light.

Human.  A girl.

Shauna.

My friend, one of the closest I had, just popped out of a Pokeball and stood before me, smiling sweetly at me as she had so many times before.  She even waved a little before I could break the silence.”

“What… what are you doing here?  Is that really you, Shauna?”  She was wearing the same outfit I saw her in last, her favorite pink top and those little denim shorts.   Her lips parted like she was about to answer, but Chloe cut her off.

“Shauna, shoes.”  Simple and direct.  A command.  That was all it took, though.  Instantly, Shauna responded, sinking down to her hands and knees, bowing before the statuesque beauty that had captured her.  Chloe’s eyes never left mine, and her grin only grew wider as she watched me cover my mouth, gasping in shock as I watched my friend press her lips to the executive’s elegant ivory pumps, placing one reverent, loving kiss after another along the surface of those expensive heels.

“Shauna,” I whispered, unable to look away as I sunk to the ground, watching my friend flatten further to the ground and start to draw her tongue along the soles of Chloe’s shoes.  Our captress, though, did only one thing more.  Her head rolled slowly back, and she began to laugh.