This will be the last chapter I upload until next year. Whew it's been a busy year and so much has happened. OK this chapter includes another guest appearance from  RainbowDragon We sort of...CO wrote this chapter so that his lines and roles were a little more believable for his character. Also this chapter has been revised and edited by  Jet_The_Swampert Hope you all enjoy! Pokemon is of course Copyright of: Gamefreak

RainbowDragon is copyright of  RainbowDragon

And Max and all other Characters in the story are mine ^^

Reform

An anthropomorphic, black-furred wolf standing about 6'5 was walking through the Union Cave. Though, unlike most travelers that usually go through this route, he didn't use any sort of light source to find his way through the maze-like tunnels. Right behind him, keeping close simply by tugging on the canine's tail was Jesse.
"Come. Just keep holding onto me and we'll get out of this tunnel. There's supposed to be a hidden cave somewhere down here...quite a few of them in fact. That's why it's called the Union Cave."
"Yeah, I get that...but who or what is it that we're looking for specifically?" pondered the young trainer, he couldn't even see his companion in front of him due to how well his fur camouflaged him down there.
The wolf stopped shortly after the question was asked, rubbing his hand on a hard surface before grinning, his white fangs glimmering in the darkness, his yellow eyes turning around to gaze at the trainer. "While it isn't common...some people actually manage to split apart their good and bad halves...their light and their Darkness. Well it's come to my attention that your pal Max was one such person right? You mentioned that, when he was younger, he had terrifying nightmares."
A moment later, a door slid open in front of the two, behind which was a hallway lit up by small torches which allowed Jesse to remove his grip from the canine. "Yeah? That's right, Max was bullied when we were younger and he’d often have dreams that involved him becoming a monster and tearing the kids apart with large sharp claws... He imagined himself being some sort of raptor that kills... A black Raptor. He heard voices in his head once too. It got him to thinking he might have been possessed so his parents scrounged up every penny they could and hired an exorcist to take care of the matter. After that, there were no more nightmares or visions of the sort."
"I didn't ask for a history lesson, But thank you for the information anyway..." The wolf seemed to grin, pointing forward for Jesse. "Take a look. Did the raptor he described sound anything like that?"
When Jesse looked forward, his eyes bugged out. It couldn't have been Max, yet there rested a black guilmon curled up and taking a nap. He pulled out a small knife after one of its shining yellow eyes opened then shivered as he heard i's voice.
"You two woke me from my nap...I don't take kindly to strangers you know..." the voice growled out. It even sounded similar to Max, though its mannerisms definitely weren't the same.
"Yes...Please forgive us." The wolf gave a short, courteous bow. "My friends call me Delta. This boy holding out the knife in self-defense would be Jesse, but I'm sure you already know who he is."

The reptilian creature gave Jesse a grin before getting up and stretching out its limbs. "What I know of him is through the eyes of Max when we were one. You may call me Chaos. Now, what is it that you want from me, Delta?"
"You're all the hate and anger that was inside of Max...it's not hard to figure out that you're probably the personification of Darkness itself. And that makes you useful. What we want from you, Chaos, is for you to take care of Max...permanently…if you catch my drift." Delta was pretty straight forward with his request. He even spotted Jesse's eyes showing surprise at the demand he was asking of the creature. "That's not going to be a problem...will it Chaos?"
The dinosaur digimon snorted, walking over to Delta and holding a claw at him. If he’d had more than three claws, one would assume he was flipping off the wolf. "I left to protect Max. No exorcist could expel me from his body. But, if he was suffering because of me it was best to leave. Now you want me to return to him…which could cause him misery. You wish for me…to kill the person I'm bonded to. Do you realize what you’re asking of me? If he dies, that leaves me in the same position as him. And I'm sure that wouldn't work out for you, now, would it?"

Delta chuckled quietly, putting a paw over the dinosaur's claw. "You don't have to kill him to dispose of him. And you can still fulfill your desire to protect him. Simply make him a part of you. vInstead of him being the host again...you can be the one in charge." He grinned, showing his gleaming fangs and the same incandescent eyes that Jesse had when he encountered Leo. "By doing so, you'll be able to take the lead role all while making sure no harm comes to him."

"You're a smooth talker, you know that?" Chaos muttered, narrowing his eyes. "Yes, I do long to protect him. However I'd cause him the same misery even if I were the one calling the shots. Nothing will change the fact that I am born from him, not the other way around. But, I would like to see him. If you can point me in his direction, I'll check it out, then decide if I'll do what you ask or not."
Delta's eyes stayed locked onto Chaos. Then, with a wave of his tail, the dinosaur digimon disappeared from their sight. Jesse looked around for the guilmon, but Delta held up a hand. "Duke is already in place. Our job was to find this one. They should both be at Goldenrod by now to deal with your friend. We really have to thank that fool of a friend of yours. Leo. Without meaning to, he gave us all the information we needed to know that Maxie was out in the open and ours for the taking."
Meanwhile…
A glow emanated from a grassy field, just outside of Goldenrod. In it, a blue dragon with a rainbow-colored belly stood. His rainbow glowed brightly as a human and pokémon suddenly materialized in front of him. Both of them seemed to be in shock, but the dragon wasn't surprised at all as this had been about the tenth person he'd restored to life in the past week. He was exhausted beyond belief but pressed on so he could at least make it to the next town.
Up in the air, Flare and the group were circling around the woodlike area just outside of the city and decided to land about a mile outside the outskirts to make sure they didn't spook anyone or make any locals nervous. Max was the first to see the light coming from the grass and didn't know what to make of it until he slid right off the charizard's back and across its tail, accidentally singing his rear end as he struggled to put out the fire on his pants. "Ack! I did not mean to do that!"
The Blue dragon burst into laughter at Max's goof up and walked over to the group. "You know...every ‘charmander’ species has a tail flame right? Probably not the smartest way to get off one of those things."
While Max was dealing with the flames on his backside, Fang's ears perked up as he started growling. "Oh great...the predator from New Bark is here...How'd you get here before us?!"
The blue dragon kept his laughter up a bit more before pointing to his wings. "I can fly, Mister Know-it-All." He smirked.
"Either way..." Max finally fixed himself up, walking over to RD, "It's been a long time since we've seen each other. Don't mind Fang, he's still a little...irked about what happened last time. Oh! We have a few more people here since our last meeting... RD I'd like to introduce you to Scavenger here...he's a pretty nice guy. And we have Flare." He pointed to both Scav and Flare as he addressed them.
"Wow...two dragons in one day...that's pretty low odds! I mean you guys aren't at all very common here..." Flare commented, taking a step forward then stopped when he spotted Charmeleon glaring at him, flames coming out of his nostrils in warning.
"Uhm...Am I missing something here? Why is your charmeleon giving you the evil eye? It's kind of freaking me out..." RD held his hand out, Flare shaking it cautiously.
"Well...the thing is I can get a little carried away. He's just trying to make sure I don't get into trouble..." He scratched the back of his neck. "The other day he kinda gave me the hot foot..."
RD laughed after he heard that. "Wish I could have seen that then. Must have really been something for him to do that." With a yawn, RD waved them off. "Anyway, I was about to go into town to take a nap. I'm wiped."
"Hold on RD!" he interupted, chuckling, "You seem to have some sort of magical power... I could use your hand with something. Any way you can help me out with this?" He pulled a tail out of his pants, right where he'd been burnt.
RainbowDragon's eyes went wide before blinking. "Uhm...well thing is I may be magical, but I don't know anything about your own powers... I'm still learning how to use my own."

"Oh...alright, well...how about this then: Can you teach my pokémon how to swallow their prey whole, kind of like how you did back in Newbark with me?" he asked, Bulbasaur's eyes going wide as he looked down at his trainer.
"Look Max... I admire your selflessness to feed yourself to your pokémon as a food source, but isn't that a bit...I dunno...extreme?" RD blinked, waiting for an answer as he crossed his arms.
"Not at all. You reformed me last time you ate me. You could teach them how to do the same thing, I’m sure, or even teach me how to reform myself! Look I just want to make sure I can take care of them in case something bad happens." Max pleaded, taking a deep breath.
RD nodded, sighing. "Well it isn't terribly difficult once you do it once. It's kind of like flexing a muscle. First, though...it depends on the evolutionary level that they're at...if they're as small as the bulbasaur on your head, then it won't exactly be possible. But if you had something a little bigger...around the same size as yourself or larger…"
Max started rubbing his head a bit, ending up putting his hand on Bulbasaur's snout instead though and started laughing as his partner began licking it. "Well…how about this guy? He's pretty big and I'm sure he could fit the bill. It'll be a useful skill if we're running low on food." Max took out one of the pokéballs strapped to his belt and called Pyre out, the massive arcanine shaking his fur the moment he was released from the capsule.
RD nodded, looking at the large arcanine infront of him. "As long as your friends approve...we'll make this fast because I need to take a nap." The dragon yawned, looking over at Max's company.
Fang was the first, casting a cautious glance at RD while his ears flattened to the sides, not really trusting RD one bit. Though Scav just waved a hand and smirked, looking pretty intrigued by this himself. It was Charmeleon that spoke up however.
"Hey mind teaching me as well? It'd be that much easier to keep my trainer out of trouble..." The reptilian pokémon glanced at his trainer, giving him a sort of impish grin, Though Max had to translate this for RD to understand, even making Flare's face go red.
RD looked at the charmeleon, confused until Max translated what he was saying. "If the charmeleon wants to join in, it's half the height needed for this. Wait to evolve into a charizard, then you can join in, alright?" he addressed Charmeleon, then looked back to Pyre. "OK...I didn't get your name...but go ahead. Once digestion starts, try to picture him right in front of you again."
Charmeleon crossed his arms, grumbling to himself. Flare chuckled and patted Charmeleon on the head. "No need to put him down, I'm sure that, even if it's a smaller pokémon, he could definitely try it!" Charmeleon looked up at Flare, giving him a small bap on the back of his head before hugging his trainer’s leg.
Pyre stood tall, keeping his composure as he walked over to Max and RainbowDragon. "You want me to eat Max? You better make sure he's safe and it does work. Otherwise, I won't hesitate to make you my next meal! Got that?" He bared his fangs briefly at RD and turned to Max, opening his jaws nice and wide and stuffing the boy already halfway into his mouth on the first go, tilting his head back. He began to swallow the boy, only taking a couple of attempts before the young trainer was a bulge traveling down his furred neck and then into his stomach.
Max felt every muscle inside of Pyre's gullet tug him down. It was quite a ride, and different from RD's in that, once he plopped into the stomach, he found that he had a lot more room as opposed to when he was in the dragon. It was a slick, wet and…stinky place. But, then again, it was a stomach. He couldn't see very much in the dark space but he could feel the massive canine's heartbeat and the stomach contracting around him. From outside, he could hear Pyre talking to RD. Muffled were his words but he could make them out easy enough. The fire type asked RD in a little more detail how this all worked. And moments later he heard a loud gurgling sound coming from every corner of the space as digestive fluids started entering the acidic stomach.
"Okay...here we go." Pyre took a deep breath as he tried imagining Max back outside along with them. There was a faint glow to his side, as Max suddenly reappeared in front of them, perfectly fine and slime-free. Everyone could see the relief in the fire type's face as he leaned down to nuzzle Max. "Are you okay? It didn't hurt did it?"
Max laughed as Pyre's nose tickled him and he started rubbing it with a big smile on his face. "Nah, it was a more comfortable bed than the one I slept on back on the island! Don't worry, digestion was only just initiating when you brought me back, so I'm safe." Though so close to Pyre, he could hear the stomach doing its primary job, able the gurgling from within as it gleefully digested its meaty treat. "Uh oh..." He started looking at his clothes and was relieved when the pokéballs reformed with him. He also found his bulbasaur resting on his head just as he was before he was ingested. "Thank goodness...I thought everyone else would be in big trouble."
RD simply yawned, waving to the group. "Flare had a good point...Charmeleon could still do it. Anyway, Pyre, teach this to the other pokémon. It'll work for pretty much any species if they train their bodies to do so. Now, I need a meal myself and a nap... See you in the next town…" With that, RD began walking towards Goldenrod.
Max continued rubbing Pyre's nose when RD started walking off. "Sure thing. Hey! When we meet next time, I'll treat you to a bigger meal than I had back in Newbark town alright?!" He shouted, but the dragon had already gone too far off to hear him.
Fang splayed his ears, checking on both Max and his bulbasaur, the latter of which was a little annoyed that he hadn't had enough time to jump off Max before he was engulfed. With a sigh of relief, Fang started grabbing Max's hands with his paws and growled, his nose touching Max's as he cast an angry glare at the trainers face. "Don't ever scare me like that again, you hear me?!" the wolf shouted, clearly upset.
Max sweat-dropped as he backed up a bit, hearing the growling tone in Fang's voice. He knew he'd pissed off the wolf. "Hey...at least this time you were around for it...now you know that it's completely safe...right?" he asked, only to realize that Fang was crying.
"Yes...I know that it's safe now that Pyre knows what he's doing...but please...you're really the only friend I have left so…don't do these reckless things...I don't want to lose you..." Fang then suddenly pulled Max into a hug, nuzzling into him.
Max didn't know what to say just then. He didn't expect what he was doing to affect Fang so much. He wrapped his arms around the wolf and sighed. "You're not gonna lose me...and I won't stand to lose you either, you got me? Let's...just go into Goldenrod and get this next badge." He held Fang in the hug a bit longer before pulling away, scratching his neck a bit and started walking into the town, the rest of the group following along.
"So...what do you think? Think you're ready to pounce on your prey yet?" asked a red dragon, hiding inside of the thick grass, right next to him. Chaos was laying down on his belly, watching the action as it took place.
"With a crowd like that, it'd be kind of stupid to get close to him yet... We'll wait ‘til that red-headed trainer leaves...then I'll go for it." Chaos licked his lips a bit, though he seemed happier than when Delta had found him earlier. "It looks like he's finally made some ‘good’ friends though... So then...what's your name, dragon?"
The red dragon smirked. Once Max and the group were inside of the city, he finally got out of the grass and wiped off what dirt was on his red scales. "My name's Duke. It's a pleasure to be working alongside ya."
To be continued...