Chapter 11
"What the fuck? Mewtwo?" The great Nathaniel Morgan looks even more taken aback by that than the idea you're related to the Champion. A moment later he's back to scowling. "So you are an experiment, then. I was right in the first fucking place!"
"I am not an experiment. I told you that already."
"What, that's it? Come the fuck on, what the hell are you, then?" You go for the remote. "Hey, douchebag! I'm fucking talking to you!"
With stony-faced purpose you call up the channel index. You really hope there's something loud and violent on right now.
"Oh, think you're going to fucking ignore me, do you? Fat fucking chance, Freak. You want me to shut up, you're going to have to come over here and make me."
"See what I'm talking about?" you say, turning to Absol. To your dismay, she's dozed off with her head on her paws. "Absolllll!"
"That's right, she totally don't give a shit. Gonna have to deal with this by your fucking self. So what'll it be? You gonna talk or are you gonna pull the whole 'I'mma zap you with my bullshit pokémon powers' thing?"
You can't find anything to watch. Maybe the great Nathaniel Morgan's constant noise is making you too annoyed to concentrate. You sit through a few minutes of rerun coverage from a local pokémon contest, but a prinplup fumbling through a surf appeal can't distract you from the continued whining in the background. Finally you throw the remote aside and snarl, "If I explain about my brother, will you shut up?"
"Yeah."
You turn and stare at the great Nathaniel Morgan. He gives you a faint shrug.
You growl and close your eyes, rubbing at the bridge of your nose. "Fine fine fine fine fine fine fine." How on earth are you going to explain this? "Okay." You stare blankly at the television. "Have you ever heard of the Mewtwo project?"
"Nawwwww." He smirks as he traces an invisible "R" over his chest. "The fuck is that? How the hell would I know, huh?"
"Really? I thought you were the one who brought it up in the first place." You frown. This is going to take even longer than you thought. "Several years ago there was a scientific expedition to South America..."
"No, no, no. Skip it, Freak. I was fucking joking, God."
"What?" You narrow your eyes at him. "Joking about what?"
"I mean I know what the goddamn Mewtwo project is, okay? For Christ's sake."
"That was a joke? It was a lie. How is lying funny?"
"Okay, so it was a lie. I'm a huge fucking liar. Now will you please get to the fucking point? As you were so fucking kind to remind me the other day, I ain't getting any younger over here."
You could strangle him, you really could. You glance down at Absol. No doubt she'll miraculously awaken the very second you threaten violence.
You take a deep breath and try to calm down. So he knows about the Mewtwo project. There's not much to know, just a story spun out of scattered diary fragments and the confused accounts of a few shell-shocked survivors. It's true enough, as far as it goes: Mew captured, taken to a lab for research, Rocket infiltration, the creation of Mewtwo. Mewtwo, uncontrollable, brings the whole thing down in fire and ruin. He flies to the dark quiet of Cerulean Cave, wailing for his mother, and later is captured by Red, the Champion. So: a captive, a clone, and a conflagration. But what people forget, what the media was never told, is that at the beginning of it all, before the flames and death, there was also a child.
You can see her now, lying in bed with a hand-held video game propped on her chest, annoyed by her mother's intrusion. It's an old memory, well-worn and fraying at the edges, threatening to fade back into blank forgetfulness. The child's mother is at the door, but you know it's her only in the way of dreams, without real recognition. There's the impression of a smile, dark hair falling about the face, but the face itself--that you can't recall. In that far-off moment, the mother speaks nonetheless:
"I thought you loved the rainforest! I practically had to pry you off me the last time we went. Dad and I thought we were going to open our luggage in Peru and find you stowed away inside."
"But the whole summer?" She's aghast, that human child. Summer meant something to her then, the word steeped in even older, vaguer memories: long days, no school, roaming the island with friends. It wasn't a time for grownups and their dreary plans. "Meimei's gonna be in the Junior Trainer Program, and Owen Michaels said I could come with him to visit his grandma in Johto. I don't wanna go to the stupid forest!"
"Well," there's sternness in the mother's voice, but a touch of laughter, too. "Isn't that exciting? But are Meimei and Owen going to get to spend the summer with a pokémon of their very own?"
The child forgets her scorn. "A pokémon...?"
"Well, the forest is a dangerous place. There's wild pokémon, plus snakes and rivers and quicksand and things. Dad and I thought you ought to have something to protect you, and we asked Dr. Oak--you remember him, don't you? You met him at the Institute Christmas party a couple years back."
An even dimmer memory, hardly more than passing sensation. The gruff voice, the cool, calloused feel of the hand she was shaking--all she remembers of the professor. Mostly she recalls weird reddish lighting, the dull mutter of adult conversation, boredom.
"Well, we arranged so you could have one of his old pokémon, a special one. He hasn't got many left. And of course you'd be getting it a whole year early, so by the time you started your journey it'd already be stronger than anyone else's..."
Meimei would get loaners from the Junior Trainer program, and Owen would spend his days badgering his grandma's old fighters, trying to rouse the ancient chesnaught from one of his naps. But neither of them would be getting a pokémon of their very own, not one to keep. She doesn't know what to say, can only stare open-mouthed while her mother rests a finger on her chin and tilts her head. "Of course, if you don't want to go, we can just tell him the deal's off. I'm sure it'll be no problem."
That's enough to get her out of bed. "No, wait. I changed my mind! Are you serious? A real pokémon?"
"You can stay with your aunts. I'm sure they'd be happy to have you, and I hear they have some new broccoli recipes they're itching to try out."
"No, I'll go, I'll go! I want to go! I changed my mind!" The child catches at her mother's arm as the woman starts to stroll off down the hall. She keeps on talking in a too-loud voice, ignoring the pleas of her daughter. "Maybe he'll give it to someone else instead. Maybe Meimei's family would like it for her? Then she could start the training program with her own pokémon..."
"Please, Mom? Pleeeease?" She whines and wheedles and pleads until her mother drops the act and they laugh together, and the child presses her with eager questions. What kind of pokémon? When do they leave? Will she really get to keep it?
It's a hazy memory, as much speculation as fact. Still, there are details scattered about, little here-and-there things that stand out clear despite time and distance, trinkets your mind has hoarded at random: the feel of the carpeting under stocking feet, the faint musty smell of the old house, and on the child's windowsill, a little statue of Rayquaza. It's a cheap thing, bought at some fair or other. In this memory gray afternoon light falls through the window, glinting off the statue's glaze and barring it with the dark shadows of the blinds. That's what you remember: some worthless bauble, not the face of someone that child used to love.
Not everything important has been lost. You recall, too, the morning of their first meeting. The forest is steaming hot after the morning rain but still dim, the light leeched out of the air by rank on rank of leaves overhead. The child wanders in aimless boredom, bullying the charmander along while he whines and slices at the undergrowth with his claws. The umbrella rigged to his tail keeps getting caught on things, and he's wet and irritable, big for a charmander and clumsy in his bigness. Titan. "Now there's a name to grow into," the child's father said once, like it was a joke, and she'd been deeply offended.
By now the novelty of the rainforest has worn off. The child left camp solely to avoid the grownups, who see idle hands and suggest that she go out and collect butterflies, or count different kinds of trees, or any number of other little chores. They always make it sound like it's going to be a grand adventure, but the child knows work when she sees it and escapes into the forest instead. That's where, that gloomy day, she meets the pokémon.
And then you leave the fuzzy comfort of the child's memories and fall into a psychedelic dreamscape where all the colors are brighter and the air is oversaturated with scents, the perfume of tropical flowers mingling with the endless rot and wet of the forest floor over top of smells you can't name, the scent trails of insects and animal pheromones. At the very base of it all is the pokémon's own sensory map, the sketchy black-and-white outlines atop which everything is painted, the dim impression of wind through her own fur almost drowned out by tactile awareness of leaf-surfaces gleaned from a strutting lizard and the cool, smooth curve of the pokéball under the child's fingers.
A psychic lives a gestalt life, drawing on all the minds around her, from the tiny sparks of awareness in creeping insects to the fountains of information roaring through the brains of animals and pokémon. The pokémon's experiences are a dizzying amalgam of the perceptions of all the living things around her, all those with a nervous system, anyway. She gathers bits of others' lives and uses them to build her own.
That's how you have a memory not just of the human child turning, surprised, to see the pokémon, but a second and a third: that pokémon's memory of encountering the human child, seeing her start and look around from a multitude of angles. Then there's the echo of the child's awareness filtered through the pokémon's mind, a memory within a memory, weirdly distorted by its translation into the psychic's mental language.
Your brain is still mostly human, though, and it was never meant to hold a psychic's memories. They come crammed together in a kaleidoscope of sensory overload, blaring noise and impossible colors and a tangled mess of all the senses you don't have mapped imperfectly onto the ones you do. They stretch back an impossible distance beyond where your human recollections begin. The world was different in those far-off memories, and for the most part you leave them alone. It's hard enough to make sense of the ones fallen in between the cracks of your human memories, telling their strange sideways version of events. This is the first, lying at the point where your disparate pasts collide and twine together. To the best of your understanding, it goes something like this:
So long since there's been any humans in the forest, ages and ages. She'd assumed them long gone, like the bladed creatures that once sparred in the warm, shallow waters of the great river's delta. But now here they are again--humans. Industrious, swarming over the ruins of the old hive, picking through bits of trash and waving strange toys about, busy, busy, as humans tend to be. They've brought a kit, too, and let it go wandering, some dull pokémon the likes of which she hasn't seen before stumbling after.
She can't resist. There are such strange and wonderful pictures floating at the edges of the kit's thoughts, and she wants to know how it is that humans still walk this world. One day she gets too close and the little one sees her, mind lighting up equal parts fear and joy.
The kit tries to make its lizard fight her, but that's all right. It's no threat to her, and the kit gives up soon enough, deciding it wants to play instead. It chatters at her in its weird mouth-language, a different one than she learned from its ancestors, utterly incomprehensible. That's all right, though, because the language of its mind is close enough to what she remembers, the weird, clipped dialect of humans.
The child's thoughts wend through the pokémon's memories like a strain of music. Not a pleasant tune, they're high and thin and squeaky, like the strained noise of violins pushed to the very top of their range. The pokémon can't get enough of them, enchanted by the far-off world that takes shape out of their strange melody.
They play together as days unravel into weeks, funny human games she always wins. She's stronger and faster than any human, and no matter how the kit hides its body, tucking itself into root crevices or crawling under shading leaves, it's betrayed by the constant bubbling of its thoughts. Sometimes when she hides herself, becoming bird or lizard or simply drifting high out of reach, she waits for much longer than necessary, just watching the dance of thoughts through the kit's head. Once she even becomes the kit itself, and it shrieks with fright and then sudden laughter when it realizes who she is, and they chase each other around the ancient trees and play tricks on the fire-lizard until she gets tired being stuck to the ground and floats off and is herself again.
She's starting to remember why she found humans so fascinating, starting to consider making contact with the adults, when one day the kit comes to her buzzing with nerves. It holds up some strange round thing and makes a request.
She doesn't understand much of it, only that it's going away and travel and fight and the images she pulls from the kit's mind are stranger than ever. She watches as it uses another ball to make the lizard appear, then disappear again. From him all she can get about the thing is that it means home, safety, family... No, she has no idea, really.
But the essence of what the kit wants is clear enough. Come away with me. And why not? She loves the forest, yes, has flown its farthest reaches, will never grow bored of its ever-shifting tapestry of light and shade and life. But perhaps it's time to go beyond once more. It seems the world outside has grown far more interesting in her absence.
You watch her watch the child's face, smell the sweat on her skin and see the blush of heat she radiates into the humid air, and then you're that child again, looking up at the pokémon's inscrutable blue eyes.
The child watches as the pokémon scoops the pokéball out of her hand, balancing it on the tip of its tail. The ball stays steady while the pokémon spins around it, inspecting it from every angle. It flicks the ball up, bounces it off foot and nose, its mental laughter filling the child with the reflection of joy, making her forget her nerves for a spare moment. The pokémon gives her one last long look, blue eyes wide, then flicks the ball high into the air. It catches the ball as it comes back down, daintily, on the very tip of its tail and square on the button. The ball springs open, and in a flash the pokémon is gone.
There are no secrets before psychics, only those things brought to mind and those not. The right trigger will lay anything bare. So to the pokémon at least it is no surprise that the kit has no luck keeping its new companion from the others of its kind. By the time they reach the island, word has gotten out, and there's a veritable circus waiting to greet them.
The pokémon is overjoyed. It's more than she'd dreamed, even more than she'd seen in the kit's mind, and most of that she hadn't believed. Humans are odd, keeping things in their head they know aren't true. But these are true, the nests stretching taller and wider than the greatest tree, standing shoulder to shoulder, a rank of giants. Here are the crowded perceptions of a thousand thousand people, humans and pokémon alike, giving the world a riotous depth like she's never known. And here too are human wonder-toys, even moving pictures of people that can laugh and speak in squawk-talk tongue but which have no mind, an invention as fascinating as it is disturbing. For weeks she swims through that fascinating world, absorbing its wonders, following the human kit as it shows her new places, new foods, an endless procession of people to meet.
In some of these she recognizes thoughts that betray less than virtuous intent. There was trouble, once, when enough such humans got together, back in their hive in her forest. But now creepers grow on the broken sides of their great stone nests and snakes slither in the dirt grown up over their scattered bones. They're only humans, after all--lots of them, a hellish-noisy bunch, but nothing to be afraid of. So she sheds apprehension and spends her days in play.
That's what they do: "nonhuman interaction sessions," psychological experiments, nonsense games played out before a video camera and a team of scientists behind one-way glass. The child convinces the pokémon to provide a little blood, to perform various acrobatics for their audience, to give them their precious data. She basks in the pokémon's delight at this new world, in her sudden importance at the Institute, in thoughts of her upcoming journey.
She's deferring for a year at her parents' insistence: research comes first, this is an incredible discovery, we can't just let it go, but after a year, yes, she and the pokémon would be free and they could journey together, exactly as she'd planned. She spends her days at the lab, playing with the pokémon, doing odd jobs for cash. The researchers send her to catch wild pokémon they need for their experiments, and she sometimes grabs one for herself as well. She assembles a little team and works with them in her free time, challenging traveling trainers to fights or chasing down local rattata and scruffy meowth.
The child doesn't think much of the influx of unfamiliar scientists. After all, the pokémon's arrival is a huge draw, and whole new research groups are being formed around it. Grant money is flowing in. Why would she be suspicious of this bright-eyed crop of researchers hoping to be a part of the cutting edge of the field?
So when the ultimatum comes it seems impossibly sudden. They tell her there will be no more play-dates, no more seeing the pokémon at all. And why not? She isn't well, she shouldn't be disturbed. The doctors are taking care of her, don't worry. But she's in no condition to see the child.
The pokémon isn't well for a very long time. And now when the child looks around she finds herself surrounded by strangers. The people she knows are taking on a new look, haggard and hunted. Her own parents are suddenly old and exhausted, don't smile or laugh like they used to. Late at night, when she's supposed to be asleep--but who can sleep at times like these?--she hears them whispering, tearful quiet arguments that go on for hours. During the day they give her fake, tired smiles, play like everything is normal. But where once they encouraged her to spend time at the lab, had been delighted at the faintest sign of interest, now they hint that perhaps she'd better stay away.
The child's memories are fragmented things, moments here and there connected by no more than confusion and a sense of creeping dread, but the pokémon's are just incoherent tatters. She hangs suspended in a haze of nightmare and delirium, and you can make out only a horrible sense of restraint, a heaviness of limbs and mind that leaves her too weak to concentrate and consider the swelling wrongness growing beneath it all. She spends scant waking hours in terror of hallucinations that turn the mirrors of others' minds dark and disjointed, so senses no longer line up and reality distorts along manifold planes.
By the time she realizes she's pregnant, impossibly, grotesquely so, it's too late. She's aware of a new mind taking shape inside her, but it's growing wrong, taking on a form she doesn't recognize. She tries to guide its budding awareness the way a mother should, tries to mold it back into the right shape, but her confused reaching only makes things worse, when she even has the strength to try. As the alien mind stirs inside her, scared and horribly alone, she grows more anxious and her attempts at contact become more desperate. And as her agitation increases, the drugs get stronger, until all the rest is lost in a gray blanket of unawareness.
The child comes into the lab one day and notices a new feeling in the air. There's something grating at her just below the level of awareness, a persistent ringing in her ears, goosebumps rising on her arms. All throughout the day she's caught in sudden lurches of panic as she gasps for air, realizing she's been holding her breath with no idea why.
The pokémon's still nowhere to be seen, but soon, now, they tell her. Just another couple weeks. She's frantically excited up until they they actually meet, and then she's horrified, sick, runs away and cries so hard not even Titan can console her. It's only then she learns that the tension in the air, the sense of festering wrongness, is a sign there's been a new arrival.
"No, but you don't understand!" In her memory the woman's all teeth and smirk with a badge somewhere on the periphery. She's sitting there hoping for that indulgent grin to falter. She pleads. "It's Team--it's Team Rocket. I know it is. They took over the whole lab and made the scientists work on their projects. And now they made--they made a monster. I don't know what it is, but it's horrible, and it's dangerous, and--"
"Sweetie," the police officer interrupts in her singsong, talking-to-children voice. "The scientists at the Institute are doing very important work. We can't just send a bunch of people over to bother them because you think something might be wrong."
"But it is wrong! I just told you, Team Rocket took over and they're holding everybody hostage. You have to send someone to look. You have to make them stop!"
"Now, I know you're upset, honey, but what proof--"
"Please!" She feels tears welling and hates them, hates herself for being so pathetic. She tries to force the rest out before she truly begins to cry. "Please, we need your help. I swear it's true, really. Just send some people out there, you'll see, it's all real. If I'm lying you can, you can lock me up or something, just do it. Please!"
The child digs her nails into her palms, trying to force herself to stop. She can feel the officer's eyes on her, watching while she shakes and sobs, and the shame makes her cry even harder. "Here, Sweetie... You want me to call your parents so they can come and get you? I can see you're really upset."
"No!" she chokes. "No, I, I'll... You have to!" She looks up, peering through tear-blurred eyes, and forces herself to be strong. "Please, you have to do something. You can't just let them get away with it, you can't!"
But the woman's just pursing her lips, her brow creasing, all sympathy for the distressed little girl. "Hey, Mike," she calls to another cop lurking by the door. "You think maybe you can get some tissues in here?"
She can't do it. She's on her feet, still crying, and makes a half-blind run for the door, ignoring the officer's yells.
"Oh, no--Sweetie, wait! It's okay, just--dammit, Mike, stop her--"
They don't catch her. She's back out in the afternoon sunshine before the slow-moving adults can react, thoughts shrunk to just the shock of each footfall against the hot asphalt, panting for air through a throat ragged from crying and from running as hard as she can. She hides on the empty school playground, tucked away in the shadow of the slide where no one can see and cries and cries until finally she can't anymore.
That night her mother lingers a moment as she puts the child to bed, brushing a curl of hair away from the child's face. "That was a very brave thing you did today," she murmurs. The child feels a cold jerk of guilt and fear. She's about to ask how, how did you know...? But then her mother adds, even softer, "But please don't do something like that ever again." The frightened catch in her voice keeps the child awake that night, keeps her silent through the next day, and the next.
She stays silent for long weeks as life falls apart around her. There's faint whispering in her head whenever she's in the lab, and slowly it grows from half-heard muttering to painful chatter to headache-inducing screaming. It's a constant hateful monologue that drowns out all attempt at thought. Researchers work in shifts of no more than a couple of hours, and even then there are incidents, sudden spikes of power that leave people gibbering, frothing zombies. In between stretch uneasy lulls, as though the clone is waiting, biding its time. It grows stronger and it grows cleverer and still the weeks go by.
She goes willingly to her sessions with the pokémon. Anyone would beg for it to stop if they'd been made to listen to the hateful sneering of their own brains, suffered through eye-watering headaches that flare into migraines at uncertain moments. The child wants it to end as much as anyone, and she pleads and cajoles and promises everything, whatever might make the pokémon intervene. But after all the child thinks the pokémon wants it to stop, too, and can do nothing.
Then one day she arrives to find the air inside the Institute no stuffier than than that outside. At first she thinks it's just another trick, that the clone's withdrawn only with the intent of coming smashing back once they let their guard down. Then she comes upon a janitor up on a ladder, mounting a black plastic box like a wireless router above the door. It's got a row of little lights on it, dancing green and yellow.
Seeing the child's curiosity, the woman grins down and says, "They're callin' 'em 'psychic dampers.' Team's been working on 'em for weeks now, and they finally got a batch that does the trick. Nice, innit? Not having that bastard in your head all the time, talkin' like how he'll peel the flesh from your bones and may-you-rot-in-torment?"
It is nice. She grins, too, elated beyond caring. It's a horrible thing, an awful thing, to steal the psychic's voice, but after all the grating hours under the pressure of his hate it's hard, somehow, not to begin hating in return.
That's the year she begins her pokémon journey, but not by choice. "I'm not going! I said I wasn't going without Mew, and I'm not! How could I leave her behind when--when--you know!"
Her mother kneels down and smiles at her, tries to put a hand on top of her head. The child steps back and glares betrayal, arms crossed over her chest. "Sara, honey, I know you're worried about Mew. But she's going to be fine without you, really. You're already a year late starting your journey--if you wait again, you're going to be older than all the other new trainers. All your friends will be done training and doing other things. You shouldn't wait. Mew can join you later, once the lab is done--"
"No she can't! That's a lie! They're never gonna let her go, and you know it. How can you say things like that? You know it's wrong and you don't do anything and you lie and pretend it's okay. I can't leave Mew behind. I promised. I'm not going to break my promise, not like you."
"Sara..."
"No! I'm not going. I don't care what you say, you can't make me. I'm not going without Mew!"
"You're going. This is not up for discussion," her father snaps. You can almost get a complete picture of him in this memory, and the mother too. The two of them move slower now, more carefully, like they're afraid of waking something dark and toothy. Here what the child remembers best is the sound of the father's voice, raised like the child's almost never heard it--angry. "Two days from now you are going down to the registration office to pick up your license, and right after that you are getting on the boat to Sinnoh to begin your journey. Do I make myself clear?"
"Sinnoh? But--but why not...?"
"Sara, listen to me." Her mother puts a hand on her shoulder and gives her a tired smile. The expression sits uneasy on her face, like it knows it doesn't belong. There are lines around the edges of her eyes where there weren't any before. "You can't stay here, honey. It's not safe. The best thing for you to do right now is to go off on your journey and not worry about the lab at all, okay? Owen's younger brother's going to go with you, too, so you'll have a friend. It'll be an adventure, you'll see."
"No." She pulls back again, glancing between her parents. Her anger is soured with an acid edge of fear, deep in the pit of her stomach. "No, I don't want to go. Why are you doing this? Why won't you just tell the truth? What's going to happen to Mew?"
"Listen to your mother!" her father roars, and she jumps in shock. "This is what you have to do, do you understand? You're going if I have to drag you down to the registration office myself, and that's final." He abruptly turns away.
Her mother starts to say something, then only sighs and shakes her head. The fear has climbed out of the child's chest and taken over her whole body, a cold, spreading burn.
"Dad?"
He stays where he is, and the child can only stare at his back, disbelieving. It's been bad, but she'd still had faith. She'd thought that in the end it would be okay, that her parents would find a way to stop it. She'd be fine, because they'd always protect her. But now here they are, her father with tears in his eyes, not able to look her in the face. Her mother quiet, at a loss. They don't know anymore, either. This is all they have left.
So she goes. She gets on the boat to Sinnoh, where it's all cold and piney and old. She travels with the younger sibling, and they mostly stay out in the wilderness, away from cities and the real League challenge. It is an adventure, and maybe given enough time she could have forgotten about everything she left behind in Cinnabar.
But it's barely a month before the agent finds them, defeats their teams, brings them with honeyed force back to Kanto. For surely there must have been some misunderstanding, the two of them running off like that. Didn't they know their parents were worried sick? And you, little miss, what were you thinking? You know how Mew gets when you're not around to cheer her up. How could you go and leave her all alone?
After that the child's parents don't talk about her going away anymore. Her mother walks with a limp, and her father can't quite conceal the bruises under his sleeves. She goes back to working at the lab because, after all, she's important. Owen's brother wasn't important, not to anyone but his friends and family, and her parents don't talk about him anymore either. No one does.
It's hard to think. She's alone in her head, the minds that used to fill her world gone, vanished--taken? She doesn't know. Every now and then she catches a glimpse, sees a snatch of color or feels the jump of another's emotion, but that's all. All that's left is a strange droning buzz that goes on and on forever. She can see only through her own tired eyes, hear only the vibrations against her own dull ears. It takes all her effort to keep herself floating, and even then her tail nearly brushes the floor.
Her son--for whatever else he is, he is that--is stronger than her. He can still see through others' eyes, at least a little bit, but that isn't what they want from him; that isn't what he's learning. He's growing strange and solitary, off in his own world, aloof from the thoughts of the people around him. He's learning to understand the yapping human language, to listen to what comes out of people's mouths rather than what's hidden in their heads.
He's learning to kill, of course. That's why they made me, he tells her. I'm a weapon. I'm the strongest ever. And you know what? Those purple eyes widen, the mouth twists up in an imitation of a human smile. I will. I'll be the strongest there ever was, and I'll be their weapon. One day I'm going to be so strong that they can't stop me anymore, and then I'll kill every last one of them, and then we can be free.
She tries to object, but her words aren't strong enough to get through. The vague messages her son receives only make him angry, raging despite her best attempts to calm him down. Such a powerful mind, and such a terrible one. In what little time she has for herself, when she's not locked in the long, strange sleep of her prison, she runs these thoughts ragged in her empty head. She doesn't know if how much she loves him outweighs how much he frightens her.
As far as she knows the only reason the humans keep her around is as a threat to him. "Do well, and you'll get to see your mother. Do poorly, and you might not see her ever again." She fights them, sometimes, with whatever power she can muster, but she is far too weak, and they don't even seem annoyed by her resistance.
Now and again they send one of their kits to wheedle and plead, to make her eat, to calm her down enough to face her son again. Maybe it's the same one each time, maybe not--she doesn't know how to tell humans apart by anything but the texture of their thoughts. What the kit says she doesn't know either, since all she can hear is the nonsense braying of its mouth.
Still she gets the sense of desperation from it, an unhappiness to mirror her own. It comes in scraps and flashes, the edge of its mind brushing hers. She doesn't know why it happens more often with these kits, and she doesn't care. She does what they ask, as best she can understand, and strains to pick up those faint transmissions from their minds, to see colors again, just for a moment, to hear something other than the echo of her painful, tired thoughts.
It's uneasy companionship, this camaraderie of prisoners. She wonders sometimes what would happen if her power was restored. Would she punish this small human as well? Does she want all of them to die, really? She can't tell whether she does not hate or is simply too tired to hate. She's alone in her own head. It's hard to think.
The child presses herself deeper into the alcove under the desk, laying her cheek against the cool wood. She's too shaken to care if anyone saw her duck in here, simmering in despair and disappointment. She'd been overjoyed when she first saw him and recognition leapt in her chest. A gym leader, here? She didn't know why, she couldn't imagine how, but for a few wild seconds she believed they were delivered at last, that here was someone who would see what was happening the lab and, finally, have the power to make it right.
But then--no. No, no, and no. She presses herself deeper into her hiding place and tries to listen over the pounding of her heart.
"Unacceptable," he's saying to some nervous, stuttering scientist. "A weapon I can't control is worthless. No matter how powerful it is, it's of no use to me if it won't follow orders."
"But sir! We're had great success with the psychic dampers, and the team's about to release an even more advanced system. I think you'll find the level of control to be as precise as--"
"And what? So it will murder on command, then turn around and kill me the moment there's a mechanical failure? No, Fuji. I want a weapon I can rely on, not one that's as dangerous to me as it is to everyone else."
There is an outburst of sputtering protests, but the gym leader cuts them off in the same smooth, unhurried voice. "No need to worry, Doctor. This specimen is certainly impressive. Its power is more than adequate, and I commend you for having produced a prototype in such a small amount of time."
"Th-thank you, Sir, ah, I--"
"Nevertheless, I cannot accept it. It does not satisfy my requirements. But I am not an unreasonable man, Doctor. I understand the way that science progresses. I couldn't expect you to find complete success on your first attempt."
He pauses, and the scientist babbles something incoherent that goes completely ignored. "Another year's worth of funding. I trust that will be enough."
"A year? S-sir, I don't--"
"Very good. As I said, Fuji, I'm impressed by what you've shown me so far," he goes on over the scientist's whimpering. "But let us be honest, Fuji. This experiment is a failure. Study it, learn from it, extract as much value as you can--and then destroy it. And do better the next time."
They're moving away, the scientist's breathless simpering growing ever more indistinct. The child sits where she is until long, long after their conversation fades, biting her knuckle to keep herself from whimpering.
They're going to make another one. After everything, after all that's happened, they're going to make another one. It's never going to end.
She sits in the dark and hugs her knees against her chest and makes no noise and thinks, oh, what can she do? What is she ever going to do now?
It's dim and close in the space under the play structure, lit only by the flickering glow of Titan's tail. They can barely all fit, Thunderstorm hovering low over Rats' head. The child herself is tucked into a crouch, back pressed against plastic so hard she can feel the edges of the graffiti carved into it. Another couple years and she probably won't fit under here at all. If she makes it another couple years.
"So I just want to ask," she says in a rush, trying to get it all out and over with before she loses her nerve, "if you'll help. You don't have to, it's okay. But I'm the only person left who'll do anything about it, and it's my fault Mew's here in the first place. So I have to at least try to stop it. You don't have to help if you don't want to, it's fine. But--will you? Is anybody with me?"
She grins as Titan punches a clawed fist in the air and lets out a battle cry. No surprise there--she doesn't know what she would have done if Titan had said no, really.
War is more of a surprise. He's slouched up against one wall of the play structure, tentacles sprawled limply on the dusty gravel. He raises one in a weak sign of assent, eyes glinting inscrutable from under the heavy hang of his bell.
Rats is not so eager. She chatters an angry question at the child, who can guess what's being said. "You'll get food, Rats, I promise. Whatever you want."
The rattata sniffs, tail flicking back and forth as she considers. "Please?"
With an exasperated huff, Rats puts up her paws and jabbers a curt reply. The child can't help but smile. "Thanks, Rats. It'll be worth it, you'll see." There's one left, the one she's most worried about. She tries to keep the apprehension out of her voice as she asks, "Thunder?"
The magnemite is quiet, floating as far from Titan's flame as the small space allows, hard edges softened by shadow. The electric-type's quiet, bobbing gently on the electromagnetic tides washing through their hiding place. She can see the great glassy eye sliding open and shut as it thinks.
The other pokémon are watching too. The child's about to say something--maybe beg, maybe apologize for even asking--when Thunderstorm's eye snaps full open and it lets out a brief shower of sparks, painful-bright in the dimness and leaving purple and green afterimages floating in their wake. She blinks them away and laughs, laughs as Titan lets out another excited crow, as she reaches out to rearrange War before he topples forward on his face.
"Thanks," she says, wiping away tears. "Thanks, all of you. We're--we're gonna do it. We're gonna save Mew and get rid of the Rockets together, okay? We're a team." Even Rats looks caught up in the moment, buck teeth gleaming in the half-light as she grins.
For a few seconds the child lets herself enjoy it, but only a few. She has to get back to the apartment before she's missed, and her mother's a light sleeper these days. So she puts up her hands and makes calming motions until even Titan is quiet. He's bouncing on the balls of his feet, tail swishing back and forth in excitement and coming dangerously close to hitting Rats. The child takes a deep breath, lets it out, tries to feel calm and authoritative. "Okay. Here's what we're gonna do..."
"I want to see Mew."
Kelly scrabbles off her headphones as she turns in her chair. "Huh?"
"I want to see Mew. Now." The child makes herself stand as tall as she can and look Kelly straight in the face.
The researcher looks confused, like the child's someone she's never met, even though they've both been working in the lab for years. "What?"
One more time. "I want to see Mew now. Please." Her voice goes all funny on the last word as she tries too late to squash habitual politeness.
Kelly is too wrapped up in her own anxiety to notice. She sets the headphones down on the table, where they lie spitting staccato beats into the air. "Look, Sara... You know you can't just, ah..." She rubs at the end of her nose. "Mew isn't feeling well, okay? She's resting. You can see her again later, when she's feeling better."
It's the same old fiction. Once, so long ago, the child actually believed it. "I know. I'm worried about her. She seemed really weird last time I saw her, and I want to make sure she's okay."
Kelly gives her a bewildered look, like, why aren't you playing along? You and I both know... "I don't think that's, uh, a good idea. The techs, you know, they'll take good care of her. I'm sure she'll be... fine."
"I want to make sure," the child says. "It's my job to make sure, remember? I'm supposed to take care of Mew, and I want to see her so I know she's all right." No luck keeping the bitterness out of the last two words.
Kelly frowns, brow crinkling in confusion. "No, look. I mean... You can't, right? You'll just have to wait until they send for you, that's the way it--"
"I'm worried about her. Something isn't right." The child looks straight at the bewildered woman and says as firmly as she can, "And you know, if there really is something wrong, and I don't get a chance to figure it out, something bad might happen to Mew. I don't think anybody would like that very much, and I don't think they'd like you stopping me from helping, either."
Kelly's eyebrows go up, and the child rides out a rush of shame at the fear on the researcher's face. But this is what she has to do, and it's too late to call the words back.
Kelly's face sets grim and thin-lipped. She shoves her chair back and stands up. "Look, I'll ask, all right? It's not like I have any actual say in the matter." She stalks off and leaves the child leaning against the desk for support, wiping sweaty palms across its surface and watching her foggy handprints slowly disappear.
The child stands before the pokémon one last time, ignoring the wall she knows is one-way glass. (It's different this time somehow. Different time? Different human?) They'll be watching her extra-carefully, of course, but she doesn't know how long she has before they start over again and the pokémon disappears into the bowels of the lab. She couldn't just wait and see if they'd summon her first.
The pokémon floats at waist height now, and the child bends down to pick it up, hands under the little creature's armpits. It's weightless, its fur only just brushing the child's fingers as what psychic powers it has left keep it hovering inside her grasp. The big blue eyes focus on her face, but their gaze is slack, uninterested. The winding tail hangs down loose, as if forgotten.
"Mew?" the child asks. There's a burst of static in her head, fuzzy and faint like a radio tuned to the wrong channel. (She can almost catch what it's thinking, a cobweb brush of apprehension and uncertainty.) The pokémon's tail twitches once, involuntary.
The child wasn't really hoping for a response--she wouldn't even have to talk out loud for the pokémon to hear. She's speaking for her own benefit more than anything else. "In a second," she whispers, "we're going to get out of here. I need you to trust me, okay? I need you to stay with me." She keeps her eyes locked with the pokémon's as she shifts her grip to one hand and with the other goes for the pokéballs in her pocket.
Three flashes and Titan and Rats are running for the door while Thunder hovers up high. A boost from Titan and Rats is clinging to the door handle, chewing at the lock. Thunderstorm takes only a moment to inspect the plastic box, maybe even reading the message its little lights are blinking. A burst of electricity and the psychic damper explodes in a shower of sparks and an acrid puff of smoke.
The pokémon twitches, blinks, and the child only just catches it before it can surge up out of her grip like a helium balloon. (Colors, there's colors again, faint and shifting but there, after she'd almost forgotten what they look like.) The child runs and kicks the door open as Rats, complaining mightily, launches herself at her trainer's shoulder, spitting splinters of plastic and bits of metal.
Kelly confronts them in the hall, breathless after dashing from the little observation room, but Titan growls at her, flashing his claws, and she falls back against the wall and tries to disappear. The child pushes past her, and now she's out in the hall, down the hall, in the lab area proper, and people look up from row on row of cubicles.
(The kit's thoughts are louder now, beating inside her head in a chorus of run, run, escape. She struggles a little, moving with slow effort as if trying to swim through deep waters, but the human only grips tighter, making a cage with its fingers.)
Thunderstorm swoops in after the child, blowing out another damper, then floats up, eye rolling back and forth as it looks for the next. She keeps running, Titan out ahead of her, ignoring the yells and the sudden psychic pressure in her head.
People are up and moving. The ones without pokémon fall back, shoved aside by others hoping to intercept her, coming forward with the flash of opening pokéballs.
"Out of the way!" one woman roars. "If you can't fight, get to the containment area. Shut it down!" There's a scramble behind the child as people start to pour towards the heart of the lab, where the clone has sensed the disturbance. His confused awareness is stirring in the child's head. She has to keep going, has to hope the distraction will keep them busy while she escapes.
"The magnemite! Get the magnemite!" Thunderstorm blows out another damper then swoops down and away, firing bursts of electricity at its pursuers.
There's more desks behind her than in front now, and in a head-down sprint she's at the door, slamming clean into it, stuffing the pokémon under one arm and scrambling for the handle while Titan cries out and spits fire at an approaching pidgey.
Then she's through. Hallway again, and her running down it. The seething anger in her head is turning to words. Mother! What are you doing? Let her go! Stop! The pokémon struggles in the child's arms.
"No, Mew! Listen!" The child tries to keep going, but then a doduo dashes up from behind. It breaks around Titan and rams into her, knocking her to the floor. "Mew, you have to listen to me," she chokes, kicking backwards at the bird while Rats leaps from her shoulder, hissing and seizing onto one of the its ropy necks. "We're almost there. Just let me get you out of here!"
(My son! She can hear him clearly now, yelling for her. Let me go! I have to get him out! I can't leave him behind!)
The child releases War over her shoulder and tells him to keep sending surfs down the hallway behind her. Titan only just manages to limp past the tentacool before pipes start bursting and a surge of water sweeps humans and pokémon alike back down the hall.
The child gets up and staggers into a run, only to be yanked off her feet when the pokémon jerks sideways in her arms, dragging her hard into the wall. She claws at it as she tries to stay upright, struggling to stuff the pokémon back under her arm and get her bearings while a whirl of images and emotions batters the inside of her skull. "That's the wrong way," she gasps. "Please just stop struggling. We're almost there."
(I'm coming for you! she yells, trying to force her voice through the heaviness that separates them like a veil. Don't worry, I'm not going to leave you behind! He's too far, he's too angry. He doesn't hear, but she keeps shouting anyway.)
The child staggers down the hall, fumbling with her pokéballs. Rats is down, and War is beset on all sides. He manages a final surf, knocking humans off their feet and slamming pokémon against one another, then falls to a pikachu's determined thunder shocking. She only just manages to recall him before the pokémon makes another lunge, this time back in the direction they came. The child's pokéballs scatter everywhere while she struggles to keep her hold on the writhing creature. Overhead Thunder bursts another damper, only to clatter to the floor in a buzzing heap, struck by a jet of water fired from somewhere in the mass of pursuers.
The child is almost sent to her knees as a renewed wave of anger hits her. Bring her back! Mewtwo's raging. Let her go now! I'll kill you! I'll kill you! I'll--
(She can almost fly, is nearly strong enough to break the kit's grip. As another leaden layer of unfeeling falls away, though, she is brought up short as she hears the human's thoughts clearly. She not only hears them--she recognizes them. It's you!)
The child is sent skidding as the pokémon kicks out with hind feet and a burst of psychic power, rocketing up and away. She rolls onto her back, clutching at empty air. The pokémon's floating in erratic loops, bouncing off the ceiling and spiraling down again, but definitely moving--in the opposite direction of the doors. "Mew!" she screams. "No! This way!"
(She orients herself to the frantic reaching of the kit's thoughts. You! You brought me here! And now you think you'll steal me away again and leave my son to die?)
The pokémon twists around to face her, its eyes sparking with fitful blue light. Whatever it's trying to do, it doesn't manage to raise enough power before there's a yell of, "There! Get it!"
An absol bounds out of the wet chaos and leaps high, swatting the pokémon down with one broad paw. The psychic lands heavily beside the child, and a second later the absol lands on top of it, pinning it to the floor.
For a moment the child just lies there, aching and confused. As soon as she works out what's going on she scrambles up and throws herself against the absol's side, trying to push it off. "Let her go! Get out of here!"
The absol takes a step sideways, bracing itself, and turns a blank look on the sobbing human pushing at its shoulder. Under its paws the pokémon struggles and cries out with its mind, battering the child with its thoughts.
(Leave me! Take my son, not me! Don't leave him behind! The world is starting to intrude on her mind again, but viewed through the eyes of the terrified and desperate it's little more than a nauseating blur. It's been too long since she's been able to see properly, and she can't filter it, can't sieve the real out of the confusion. She strikes out blindly at the pokémon holding her down and gets no response; she pushes at the hateful kit's mind, tries to drive it off, but goes unrewarded.)
The child struggles to see through her tears and think through the sudden deluge of the pokémon's thoughts and the background seething of Mewtwo's broadcasts. The pokémon's saying something about the clone, and it's sending shocks of despair through the child's already ragged nerves. "I know, I know," she mutters to no one in particular. "Don't worry, we're almost out of here. You won't have to listen to him anymore." All the while she keeps shoving at the Absol, trying to push it aside. For her trouble she gets a look she can only interpret as irritated.
She's so distracted that she doesn't even notice the man until he speaks. "Get away from there." She searches blindly at first, until he repeats himself, and then she turns full around, trying to concentrate despite the screaming in her head.
The corridor behind her is obscured by jets of water from broken ceiling pipes, but through the mist of droplets she can see the outlines of people and pokémon, some lying unconscious or curled in pained balls, clutching their heads. Others are fighting, maybe in confused efforts to escape, or perhaps for no reason at all, acting on the wrath being pumped into their minds.
Out ahead of them is a man, soaked to dripping with one shoulder braced against the wall for support. His teeth are gritted and veins stand out in his neck and forehead as he fights against Mewtwo's influence. Despite it all he holds a gun steady in two hands, pointed directly at the child.
"Get away from Mew," the man says. "Now."
She hesitates, as much from confusion as anything else, and his face darkens. "Get away or I'll shoot," he says.
The child stands slowly, knees aching. Water is starting to pool around her shoes, and she splashes as she stumbles backward, keeps going until her shoulders bump up against the wall.
The man keeps eyes and gun trained on her as he says, "Absol. Bring that back here." The dark-type bends down and carefully takes the pokémon's neck in its jaws. It lifts the psychic up, ignoring the thrashing limbs and the tail that wraps around its throat.
In the child's head Mewtwo's words are an unending nightmare chant. I'll kill you, I'll kill you all, all of you, I'll kill you, I'll kill--
(There's some change in the kit's mind, a shift from agitation to blank resolve. She tries to concentrate over its suddenly pointed thoughts. Promised. We promised we would save you. The pokémon shudders, tail lashing, trying to drive out the images flooding in from the human's mind. She can't think, she can't concentrate with all this noise. She shoves as hard as she can at her captor, some black-hole creature whose mind is like an endless dark pond, not even a ripple passing over its surface. She pushes as hard as she can and it does no good, months of neglect and apathy leaving her with little more power in her mind than in her wasted muscles. All along the kit's blaring memories into her head, washing out her view of the world-as-now.)
She doesn't see any way around it. Her team is done for, and the pokémon itself can't fight, not that absol, not with the dampers still going. But if she can knock the man down, if she can get the absol's pokéball away from him and recall it--it has to be her. She's the only one left who can do it. And she promised... She promised, no matter what it takes. She tries to breathe easy and stares down the barrel of the gun and waits for the man to look away.
There's a psychic damper on the wall above his head. The lights on its front are flashing orange and red now, weak, stuttering bursts. Mewtwo sends another surge of hatred rolling through her mind, and they sputter on and off in a ragged counterpoint. Let her go!
"Don't move," says the man through gritted teeth, glancing towards the absol as it pads up to his side. It looks back at the child for the briefest of moments, calm as death.
Flash, flash, flash. There's just one light left on the damper now, fluttering with frantic energy like the beating of some terrified rodent's heart. The pokémon stops struggling and hangs limp, blue light sparking in the air around it. The absol doesn't react. It's still too weak.
The child inches half a step forward, hoping to go unnoticed.
The gunman's gaze jumps back to her again. "I said don't move!"
She has to try. She has to try or it's never going to stop. The child takes a deep breath, then throws herself forward at a run.
The light goes out.
I'LL KILL YOU ALL!
There's only one memory left from that before-life, back when you were another person. Mew's contribution disappears; she's already left for wherever it is that's hiding her. Only the human child remains.
She wakes that last time in pain and terror and finds the world on fire. Her lower body's trapped under a litter of concrete and splayed wire, and she can see sky through the ripple of heat and haze of smoke. She can't feel anything from her waist down, but there's stabbing pain in her chest every time she draws breath, some kind of block in her throat so no matter how she gasps she can't get enough air. She's choking on ash and dust, pain flaring behind her temples with each shallow breath.
She lies there dying in the awful heat and can't think of anything but wanting to be gone, wanting to be away and safe and to wake up and find this was nothing but a dream.
And then, suddenly, she's home. She's lying on her back on carpeting in the cool, silent house, staring up at the light coming in through the window. On the windowsill there's a little Rayquaza figurine, glaze reflecting a flickering orange-red. The window's open and the blinds dance on a warm, ash-smelling breeze.
She doesn't question how she came to be there. She doesn't wonder what happened in the gulf since she was last awake. She's too tired to care about logic or danger. The child closes her eyes to sleep and never opens them again.
By that time, Mew's power had already saved her life, dissolved the bullet and restarted her heart. It continued to spread, and as it did she changed, in brain as much as in body. The person who would eventually awake was someone else entirely.
For a good two years after that you remember nothing but splinters: staring down at your arm as it shifts out of control, skin to scale to feather to fur, fingers fusing and splitting anew, crying with terror and the pain of transformation you haven't yet learned to ignore; wandering kaleidoscope landscapes, lonely routes and trackless forests and even, briefly, city streets, inhabiting each only until an errant thought, an unchecked dream, blinks you somewhere else. There's a memory dark and pulse-pounding, where you've lost your eyes and don't know how to get them back. Once you tasted pidgey blood, feathers between your teeth, as you stared into the eyes of the young trainer who'd cornered you, no doubt thinking he'd been tracking some new species--and what happened to him, you cannot say.
The first full memory you have from your new life, showing up clear and sharp-edged, not like the hazy half-dream of your former selves, is cold. You're huddled in a tangle of tree roots, woody coils jabbing into your back, naked and whimpering with pain. You'd been trying to make a flame sac, something to keep you warm, but it's gone wrong and now there's a searing lump in your chest like a white-hot piece of metal trapped under your ribcage. Overhead, Duskull's got his tail wrapped around a scraggly bare branch, red eye watchful, swaying in a chill breeze.
Many more come after, disjointed memories of your miserable, lonely time in the wild. You can't actually recall how you met Duskull, where you found the egg that would become Togetic. They were your only companions until Absol arrived, and without them you would probably have gone mad.
Absol did arrive, of course, as abruptly and mysteriously as she always does. She taught you how to be a person again, how to use your pokémon abilities, how to look after yourself. More importantly, she reminded you of your purpose, of the promise you'd made and your failure to fulfill it. You had a mission, and she had one, too. Mew herself had told her to protect you that day so many years ago, after your death and just before the lab went up in flames.
"What happened to her?" you asked Absol. "Where did she go after that?"
"I don't know," and, "Why would I ask?" Sometimes, Absol is a frustration. But she got you through your growing pains alive, helped you find your friends, and assisted you in untangling the nonsense mess of your memories, helped you get them in their proper order and puzzle out what they meant. That brings you through the last five years, past the eruption on Cinnabar and your home on the island, past the start of your journey, past your first (and seventh) badge, and at last to this very moment, sitting on a bed in the Pokémon Center with your voice gone scratchy with talking and a Team Rocket member glaring at you and saying, "But that's complete bullshit!"
You swallow to wash some of the dryness from your mouth, pulling yourself back into the present. It takes a few seconds for you to register what the human said. "No. It is the truth."
"Come the fuck on, I wasn't born yesterday," the great Nathaniel Morgan growls. "Look, first, it's Ho-Oh who does the resurrection thing, not fucking Mew. Get your goddamn fairy tales straight, for fuck's sake. Second, what the fuck even is this? 'I was running while I tried to get away from me, and the whole time Mewtwo was yelling he was going to kill me so I tried to tell him I was coming for him but I could not and I would not let me go.' The hell kind of drugs are you even on? And third, you don't even know half that shit, you just think the fucking pokémon are telling you you're the goddamn chosen one." He waves a hand at Absol, who is still in repose.
It's not so strange as all that, really. You have some memories of the you that used to be, the human child that died, fragments of a person trapped in your head. But all humans have that, in a way; they change and grow, and so their memories are from a different person than the one they are now. You've changed more than most, made a bigger jump, but it's easy enough to follow: once, you were a living human; then, briefly, you were a dead human; and then abruptly you were... well, you. The now-you that's the great Nathaniel Morgan and also not.
Now, it's true that your human-speak isn't quite up to the task of explaining your past lives. Still, that's the longest speech you've ever given in it, and you think you did a good job, all things considered. "It is true," you say. "It happened. I remember it twice. And you said you were going to be quiet."
"Only 'cause you said you were going to actually explain something for once. Doesn't count if you just give me some acid-trip bullshit about how you're actually Mew trapped in the body of a... a whatever-the-fuck you are."
"I am not Mew trapped in anything. She put a piece of her power in me to save my life, and some of her memories came with it. That is all."
He throws up his hands. "Well when you put it that way it's just so goddamn believable, isn't it?"
"Yes. Because it is the truth."
"Bull. Shit."
"So where is Mew, then?" you ask. "Where did she go after the lab burned down? How do you explain it, if you know so much?"
"I dunno, the fucking jungle maybe, like, where she came from in the first fucking place? What the fuck's that got to do with it?"
"So you think she just flew off somewhere and abandoned her son? You think she would not at least go looking for him?"
He stares at you for a moment, then shrugs helplessly. "Yeah, maybe? The hell kind of question is that?"
"Do not be stupid. Of course Mew would not abandon Mewtwo. She loves him. He is her son. Something stopped her from reaching him. And only humans could do that. It is not like all of Team Rocket got wiped out when Mewtwo destroyed the lab. They managed to recapture Mew, and that is why we have not heard about her for years." You pause for a moment to lick your lips. You could really use a drink of water. "And anyway, I know where she is being held. I see it in my dreams."
"You fucking what?"
"I am still connected to Mew. I share her dreams. So I see where she is when she dreams about it."
"No, no," he mutters, face twisting into a desperate smile. "Fucking... You're saying you're going on some kind of stupid quest because Mew gave you fucking superpowers and you're following some shitty dreams that are telling you what to do next?"
You pout. "It is a little more complicated than that."
"Oh God, I can't even handle this." He shakes with breathless laughter. "I am actually in the shittiest movie ever oh my God. What the fuck is wrong with my life? What the fuck?" You watch with disgust as he succumbs to another one of his cackling fits.
While he's choking and swearing and clutching at his ribs, Titan nudges your shoulder with his snout. "I thought you did a good job telling the story. I wish I'd gotten back sooner so I could have heard the first part. It's happier."
You grin and scratch at the base of his jaw. "Thanks, Titan."
"Yeah, well, I gotta disagree," Rats says from where she's parked herself in your lap. "You completely missed the best part, Boss. 'And then my pokémon helped distract the scientists so we could escape?' No mention of me being the most badass ever? What gives?"
"Sorry, Rats. I was getting tired of talking."
"Tch." She stretches luxuriously, then settles back into a lazy ball. You frown down at her. On the one hand, the interruption of her arriving with the rest of your pokémon gave you a little time to rest and gather your thoughts. On the other, you're losing sensation in your legs. "Guess I can't blame you. Not like there's much point trying to get anything through that guy's skull." She cranes her head up to watch the great Nathaniel Morgan for a couple of seconds. "You think one of these days he might laugh himself to death? Sounds like he's practically suffocating over there."
That's when it strikes you, and you have to resist the urge to smack yourself in the forehead. Of course, your pokémon--you should have thought of them earlier. "You. The great Nathaniel Morgan. Listen."
He pauses, wiping tears out of his eyes, and frowns. "The fuck'd you just call--"
"You do not believe me, but my pokémon were there, too. They know what happened. Everything I said is true, correct?" You cast a look around at your team. Titan nods enthusiastically, and Togetic, who's been preening atop the coffee maker, cheers. Rats grumbles and waves a paw in a gesture that could mean anything, and even Thunderstorm rocks its body in an awkward forward-and-back nod.
The great Nathaniel Morgan stares at them in narrow-eyed suspicion. "What? The lot of you think that fucked-up story is true?" Various gestures and noises of assent. For a moment the human is quiet, a stony look on his face. Then he snorts and says, "Well fuck me sideways with a rake. You managed to find a bunch of monsters just as batshit as you are, Freak. That or they got brainwashed too as a part of whatever actually happened to you."
"But it's true!" Titan exclaims.
"Never mind him, Titan. He's stupid." You grin up at the charizard as he huffs and shakes his head. To the human, "I suppose you have some other theory for how I can be sitting here, looking and sounding like you, if you do not believe what I just told you?"
"Sure. Like I said, obviously some kind of experiment thing. Maybe you do have something to do with Team Rocket, like I have any fucking clue what the fuck goes down in the labs. Don't know why the hell they'd want to make something like you or how the fuck you ended up wandering around loose, but little chosen one of Mew you ain't, I'll say that fucking much."
You have no idea how he can find that more plausible, but it's not worth arguing. "Okay."
"Yeah. Damn straight," he says to himself, smirking. He turns his injured hand palm-up and stares at it. The swelling's gone down, but a red line jags across his palm, the skin at its edges a mottled purple-gray. You start trying to figure out how to get Rats out of your lap with a minimum of complaining.
"Anyway." You look around in surprise, but the great Nathaniel Morgan's still inspecting his hand. "If any of that shit is actually true, well. Sorry about your parents and, you know. All that shit. That's pretty fucked up."
You tilt your head to the side. "It is fine. I am not sad about it. None of it happened to me anyway."
"Huh." He glances at you out of the corner of his eyes. "Well, one thing's for fucking sure. Whatever else you are, you're definitely one cold little bastard. Not to mention crazy, thinking you want to go looking for Mewtwo and shit."
"Why would I not want to find him? He is my brother, after all."
"Cute, but he sounds like one scary motherfucker to me. Plus I don't imagine he's real pleased by the fact that you, you know, totally fucking ditched him back there."
"It was not me who did that. It was the human from before."
"Yeah, sure, whatever. I'd love to see you try and explain that one to him while he turns your brains to fucking soup."
"He would not do that to me. To you, certainly. He is not very fond of Team Rocket."
The great Nathaniel Morgan snorts. "Yeah, or anybody. But whatever, it's your fucking funeral." He clenches and unclenches his hand a couple of times, grimacing, then turns a smirk on you. "Enough about that shit, though. Let's talk this fucking gym battle, huh? I was thinking, how long do you honestly think you're going to last against Blue before he kicks your fucking loser ass out on the curb? Ten minutes? I was thinking fifteen at most."
"Did you mean how long it will take me to win against him? I suppose it might take as long as fifteen minutes, if I was unlucky."
"Yeah? You wanna make a bet on it, Freak?"
You bare your teeth at him. "No bets."
"Real fucking confident, aren't we? No worries, I'll keep track of time for you anyways. Just so I can tell you exactly how much of a fucking loser you are afterwards."
"Good. I bet the match will be over so fast, it will be a record. Of me winning." You really do. You might have had some bad luck against Blaine, but this time, you'll be prepared. Blue--you can hardly believe you're really going to be fighting him, the legendary Blue--doesn't stand a chance.
The great Nathaniel Morgan rolls his eyes at you, but in the end it transpires that he'd rather sleep than make a nuisance of himself. You're left alone with your pokémon, who are especially chatty after hearing you tell the old tale again. You stay up late reminiscing about old times and sharing plans for the future--what you'll do after you've rescued Mew and are free to just be ordinary people again. Viridian City is still days away, but anticipation is firing your nerves again, keeping you jittery and on edge. It's hard to believe that you have your seventh badge now, that you're just a hop, skip, and a jump away from the Pokémon League and your brother. It's hard to believe that, after all this time, everything's finally going right.