Chapter 32

The great Nathaniel Morgan explains his plan the next morning between bites of breakfast. "It's our last battle, see? And it ain't even a real fight. We ain't trying to win, we're trying to get Mewtwo on the field. So as long as you don't do nothing obviously illegal, we're good. Ain't gonna matter if they can pick it up on the replay." He demolishes a piece of toast, giving you a slim window to get in a reply.

"Like what? You keep telling me I am bad at pretending."

The great Nathaniel Morgan wipes away crumbs with the back of his hand and reaches for more toast. "Well, nothing like using hydro pump, but anything they can't see. Ability'd be good, like what that fucking cradily did. Change to moody and grab some free boosts or something. Or speed boost, that's a good one. Shit like that."

"Is that it? Do things they can't see and we win?"

"Yeah, basically. That's enough, ain't it?"

"I guess." You crunch on your own piece of toast while the great Nathaniel Morgan reduces his to crumbs and looks around wistfully for more. "So you will not be telling me what to do. I will have to think of my own strategy."

"I'll still be giving you normal commands. You see an opening, you just slide in something extra, that's all." The great Nathaniel Morgan frowns at you. "Ain't scared, are you, Freak? Didn't you say you were like the most badass to ever badass or some shit? A couple good attacks on the sly and you'll have these bastards no problem."

"I am not scared," you say. Of course you're the strongest. Outside of Mewtwo, you can beat any pokémon, easy. Even if they're champions, people you've seen on TV. "I am just annoyed that your strategy is to make me do all the work."

"Anytime, Freak." The great Nathaniel Morgan studies you for a second, then continues. "But let's go over the lineup at least. Red's gonna lead Pikachu, then probably use Blastoise, maybe Charizard. If we're lucky he'll get pissed at you and go for Mewtwo early, but worst case you're probably gonna fight those three. So let's see. Pikachu and Charizard, those guys like to go up high, so gravity might be good, slow 'em down a bit and throw off their game. You want to get a little damage in first so people think they're slow 'cause they're hurting, but--"

"What about me?" Raticate asks. He's perched on the seat next to the great Nathaniel Morgan and has been gnawing on the edge of the table since he finished his breakfast.

"You?" the great Nathaniel Morgan asks once you relay the words to him. "You don't gotta fight if you don't want to. The freak's got this."

"You don't want me to fight?" Raticate stares at his trainer.

"No, I mean, you can if you want to, but you don't gotta," the great Nathaniel Morgan says. "Same goes for you, Graveler. Your choice."

"I don't get it, Nate. It's the championship. Why wouldn't I want to fight?" Raticate asks. "You don't even want me? You didn't even come up with anything for me to do?"

"I dunno, I just thought maybe you wouldn't want to get the shit kicked outta you if it wasn't gonna make a difference." The great Nathaniel Morgan reaches over and scratches at the base of Raticate's skull. "Red's out of our league, buddy. No reason to fight him if you don't gotta."

Raticate pulls away from him, hunching his shoulders. "I can't believe you," he says. "You think we're not strong enough? You're not even going to try?"

The great Nathaniel Morgan frowns, studying Raticate uncertainly. "I mean, no," he says. "We ain't strong enough. Not being a dick or nothing, you're strong as shit, but that pikachu's something else. It's fucking insane. Even the whole team together couldn't beat it. Maybe if we had Steelix, but no. We ain't that strong."

Raticate turns away from the great Nathaniel Morgan completely. "I seriously can't believe you."

"It's just facts, Raticate!" The great Nathaniel Morgan spreads his hands. "I don't mean you're weak or nothing. Seriously. Don't mean you could never be that strong, neither, like maybe with a few years of training, but right now? No. That's just how it is. You want to fight? Fine, then you fucking fight. I'm just saying we got it, you don't need to, you know?"

Raticate stares dully at the edge of the table. The great Nathaniel Morgan growls something to himself and looks away. "Jesus Christ, what's got everybody so pissy all of a sudden? Graveler, you in or out? You want to fucking fight?"

Graveler grunts and punches a fist into her open palm, and the great Nathaniel Morgan throws up his hands. "For fuck's sake! Whatever! You want to get fucking electrocuted, you can get fucking electrocuted. Let's get out of here." He storms away from the table, leaving his pokémon behind. Raticate stays where he is even after Graveler's stomped off to collect her trainer, who's clinging to the door frame, already out of breath.

"We have to go," you say to Raticate. "We can't be late."

For a second you think you'll have to carry him off yourself, but finally he jumps down and waddles after Graveler. You follow, thinking about the pokémon you're going to beat today. It doesn't matter what Raticate does. You can win all by yourself, even without the great Nathaniel Morgan's help. It's the last battle, and you're going to win. No matter what.

---

Somehow you make it to the arena not just on time, but actually early. The great Nathaniel Morgan leans against the wall of the tunnel under the stands, arms crossed over chest and scuffing one foot across the ground. Graveler and Raticate are resting on his belt, so it's just the two of you until Mightyena does a passable Absol impression and quietly steps from a shady corner.

The great Nathaniel Morgan straightens immediately, pushing himself up to stand free of the wall. He and Mightyena stare at each other for so long you're forced to let out the breath you were holding, slowly, painfully. You suck another one in as quietly as you can, terrified of drawing attention to yourself. Neither of them so much as glances at you.

At last the great Nathaniel Morgan takes the pokéball from the front clip on his belt and holds it up on an open palm. Mightyena keeps her gaze focused on the great Nathaniel Morgan's face while she says, "Tell him I'm not doing this for him, I'm doing it for Steelix. I came back for this battle only." She turns her head slightly in your direction, though her gaze still rests on her trainer. "Tell him."

A dark expression flashes across his face when you do, and then it's back to what must be a very carefully-maintained blank. The great Nathaniel Morgan flicks the pokéball's front button and recalls Mightyena. He holds the pokéball a while longer, looking down at it in his hand, then returns it to his belt and slouches against the wall again. You watch him watching the ground and feel like you want to say something, without knowing why or even what it would be. You turn away and try to think about how excited you are for the upcoming battle instead. Soon enough the great Nathaniel Morgan's snarling at the prep woman sent to give you your final pre-match instructions, and then you're on.

You thought you'd be ready this time. You've battled in front of a big audience twice now, in this stadium, even. But if the stands were packed then, they're absolutely crammed now, crammed and roaring, and he's already waiting for you: the Champion, watching you with one hand resting on the railing of his trainer's box. Pikachu perches on his shoulder, sniffing the air with tiny button nose, lightning-bolt tail twitching. You stop and stare, but the great Nathaniel Morgan keeps up his heads-down march to the field, and you have to jog to catch up. You wish, just this once, that he could act like he's happy to be here, instead of like he's walking out in front of a firing squad.

You study the Champion as your trainer's box rattles upwards. He's shorter than he looks on TV, wearing his usual bright red vest and the signature hat that sits mass-produced in souvenir stands across the region. Those aren't the clothes of someone who spends months off in the mountains, all crisply bright and neat. You wonder if the Champion keeps them set aside, unused and pristine until he needs to make an official appearance. You wonder if it's his mother who holds on to them, his mother who is surely up in the stands, watching. You wonder whether she's rooting for her son to win, to carry the championship for another year, or if she's hoping he might somehow fail, fall in defeat, and finally come home.

The referee announces the match, and the great Nathaniel Morgan moves without hesitation, knowing full well what the first matchup has to be. Graveler takes shape down below, and Pikachu leaps from the Champion's shoulder to land lightly across from her. Graveler waits, silent and unmoved, while the stands erupt for the crowd favorite. Pikachu himself doesn't appear to notice, kicking at an ear with one hind paw.

Then the referee's signal comes, and Pikachu's gone, a yellow smear of motion rocketing across the arena. You lean over the railing, heart hammering already. He's fast. Even faster than you thought from watching him battle on TV. The great Nathaniel Morgan's shouting commands, but neither he nor Graveler can keep up with Pikachu, who races along like a furry thunderbolt, sparking and flashing nose-tip to metal-glinting tail.

Graveler makes the arena shake, hurls rocks in all directions, swings all four fists whenever Pikachu comes close. Her opponent bounces and zips around every attack, in the air as often as he's on the ground. You can't see Graveler inside the blur of dust and debris, but you can hear her roars. Your stomach clenches as chips of stone bounce and skip across the ground, carved out of her hide.

It can't be more than two minutes before the great Nathaniel Morgan raises Graveler's pokéball to call her back, which feels short even with adrenaline drawing out the seconds. The great Nathaniel Morgan unclips another ball from his belt, moving slowly with jaw clenched, and you look down at the arena. Pikachu's a little scuffed up, but aside from one thin cut on his flank you don't see any sign of damage. That's who you're going to fight, him and maybe two more.

It's okay. The great Nathaniel Morgan's right, if you turn on volt absorb or something it'll be no problem. You don't know why he's relying on you after calling you stupid for so long, but it's nice that he's finally starting to catch on. And he's right. You're going to show everyone how strong you are.

Mightyena takes shape on the field, and you shift around, trying to loosen your death-grip on the railing. Then the referee raises her flags and announces the next round.

You squint and reflexively hunker down as lightning blossoms in earnest for the first time. Unlike Graveler, Mightyena's at the mercy of Pikachu's element. You struggle to make sense of what's happening, eyes watering as you stare into strobing flashes of white electrical light, looking for the dark splash of Mightyena's fur. You wonder whether the great Nathaniel Morgan's having any more luck or if he's not even trying, standing next to you screaming, "Yawn! Yawn! Yawn!" at the crackling mess in front of him.

The Champion isn't yelling. He isn't saying anything at all, leaning lightly against the railing with a neutral expression on his face, lit erratically by bursts of Pikachu's lightning. Is he letting Pikachu fight unassisted, or is he giving orders by some means only he and his pokémon understand? Experts have argued the question back and forth on battle TV, in documentaries, wherever the Champion shows up to fight. Seeing him now, utterly calm, completely relaxed, and entirely silent, you almost feel like there's something supernatural going on, some link between him and his pokémon that goes beyond hidden messages.

The Champion is silent even as the lightning flickers and dies. Pikachu falls to all fours, fizzing and blinking drowsily, then curls into a ball with his tail shielding his eyes.

You let out a grateful breath and hear the great Nathaniel Morgan do the same beside you. For all his strength, for all his speed, Pikachu falls to yawn the same as any other pokémon. "Now super fang," the great Nathaniel Morgan says. This is last ditch, you think, the strategy he uses when none of his clever tricks avail him.

Mightyena trots up to Pikachu, keeping her tail pennant-high and jaunty even though you can see her muscles seizing with paralysis, the limp she's trying to hide. She picks Pikachu up, the electric-type dangling halfway out of her mouth so one arm sways grotesquely just above the dirt. You wince. Even having seen the rest of the battle, even knowing Pikachu's hardly helpless, it's a horrifying image: the wolf with the mouse in her jaws, ready to swallow him whole. Pikachu's peacefully sleeping face fills the battle screen overhead, peeking from the cage of Mightyena's teeth. Those teeth glow as she prepares her attack, and then she bites down hard.

Pikachu's black-button eyes pop open, but he doesn't cringe, or struggle, or even cry out; his free paw whips up and slaps Mightyena on the nose. She snorts and rears back instinctively, Pikachu falling from her jaws. His tail's already glowing when he lands, perfect on his feet despite the blood spattering the dirt around him. Before Mightyena can recover he swings an iron tail into her jaw with a crunch that makes you flinch. The great Nathaniel Morgan fumbles her pokéball off his belt, nearly dropping it in his haste to recall her. He stares down at the field, face even more gaunt-looking than usual as it's drawn into worried lines.

Pikachu's up on his haunches, putting the punctures running down his belly and across his back on full display. If he's in any pain, he doesn't show it. He isn't sniffing around now, though, not twitching his little ears. He's doing the exact same thing as his trainer, staring straight at the great Nathaniel Morgan, silent, unblinking. What happened to the smiling boy who won the Championship seven years ago, the pikachu that squirmed in his arms, never more than a blur in photographs?

The great Nathaniel Morgan returns Mightyena's ball to his belt but doesn't take the next, leaving his hand resting on it as he thinks. Only Raticate left. The great Nathaniel Morgan has to send him out now or not at all; once you're on the field, there's no going back.

Finally the great Nathaniel Morgan bows his head and takes the ball off his belt. "Raticate," he says wearily, but once the next round's called he livens up, shouting, "Behind the rock! Swift!"

Raticate ducks around one of the boulders Graveler left behind, and though Pikachu's immediate thunderbolt roars with destructive power, it strikes only stone. Raticate shakes a flurry of glowing lights from his fur, and Pikachu blasts lightning through the center of them. Some detonate, but most whirl in and strike him. Pikachu shakes them off and bounds around the side of Raticate's rock, his cheeks fizzing with the beginning of another attack.

But Raticate's the great Nathaniel Morgan's fastest pokémon, with quick attack if he needs even more speed. Pikachu's still fast, but he's not the madcap ball of lightning he was at the start of the match. He must feel the wounds left by Mightyena's teeth, which drip blood as his running strides tear them wider. Raticate stays ahead of him, darting from the cover of one rock to the next and sending swift stars spinning in all directions.

This is what the great Nathaniel Morgan does: running, hiding. He's trained his pokémon to be good at it, too. You watch all Pikachu's strength mean nothing as his thunderbolts glance off boulders and scorch empty earth. Raticate can't run forever, but he's not the one bleeding, pummeled by wave after wave of swift attacks--weak ones, but relentless.

Pikachu looses another thunderbolt that strikes where Raticate just was and gets slapped in the face by a swift attack. He stops, and at first you think he's cringing, but no, he's just standing, waiting.

Red's grip tightens on his box's railing, and his chin tips up as he looks imperiously down at the arena. Pikachu lets out a battle cry that's absurd in his tiny, high-pitched voice, and lets go his lightning.

Some electric attacks are unavoidable, or nearly so. The most common is shock wave, which spreads interlocking tendrils of electricity across the arena in an inescapable net. But there's no need to bother with a special move when you can simply fill the entire battlefield with lightning.

The energy barrier drones with terrible bass feedback as the attack strikes all four walls at once, the battlefield a curtain of light too painful to look at, even with eyes closed. The great Nathaniel Morgan really does drop his pokéball this time, unloading a long string of curses as he gets down on one knee, left arm shielding his face while the other gropes around in blind search. You cover your face with your hands and look down until the light and the noise stop, leaving sudden and ominous silence. Raticate lies on his side on earth scarred by crisscross scorch marks, fur smoking gently. You swallow hard. Clever tricks don't matter in the face of overwhelming power.

"Return," the great Nathaniel Morgan says, pokéball finally in hand. The red beam lances out, but Raticate shivers, uncurls, rolls sideways at the last second so the beam hits the ground like one of Pikachu's thunderbolts. "Raticate!" The great Nathaniel Morgan raises the ball higher. Raticate gets to his feet and makes an unsteady run at Pikachu.

"Raticate, goddammit!" the great Nathaniel Morgan yells, the end of his sentence drowned out by a crash of thunder. When your vision clears, Raticate's standing with head down and feet firmly planted, fur poofed and blackened by the electricity. Pikachu's fur stands up, too, bristling and fizzing with static discharge. More sparks dance around his cheeks as he charges another attack. The thunderbolts aren't coming as fast as they used to, and the great Nathaniel Morgan has the chance to fire the recall beam again, only for Raticate to lurch forward and out of the way. He shudders towards Pikachu with brief jolts of quick attack, jumping erratically across the field.

The great Nathaniel Morgan curses expressively when he misses again and ignores the referee's warning to shout, "Get the fuck back here! You trying to get yourself fucking killed?"

Pikachu looses another thunderbolt, but Raticate stutter-steps past it. He dodges his pokéball's beam again, closing in on Pikachu with huge teeth parted, ready to bite. Pikachu snaps out another thunderbolt, and Raticate sidesteps--too slow. He crumples, and this time the referee actually calls him out. He lies still while the recall beam finally dissolves him into red light, within a yard of Pikachu but still down, still defeated before he could land his final blow.

The great Nathaniel Morgan holds Raticate's pokéball tight in both hands, the muscles in his neck standing out as he looks down at Pikachu. "The fuck're you waiting for?" he says without looking at you. "Get out there."

It isn't the most rousing send-off, but that's all right. You hit the ground on all fours, adrenaline bringing the battlefield around you to life in high definition. On this side of the energy barrier the air is thick with ozone and the hideous organic stench of cooked dirt. There's the smell of blood, too, hanging thick around Pikachu.

The electric-type hasn't moved since Raticate was recalled. He stares at you with those flat black eyes, expressionless, the fur on his lower body matted with blood. Even though he must be hurting, must be tired, he launches a thunderbolt straight at you the very moment the referee calls the round.

You would have fallen over if you hadn't been ready. The world goes white, the air burns in your throat, and you lose a couple seconds as electricity surges through your skull. Power flows into your muscles, which twitch and buzz with energy. Your heart patters excitement, speed. You want to move, you need to move, and when you do it's so easy, so fast, it's like you're floating.

"Finish it," the great Nathaniel Morgan says dully. "Heat wave. Spread it around if you have to."

You raise a hand towards Pikachu, palm flat and fingers spread, and your gauntlet heats to a warm red-orange. Pikachu responds by frying you with a thunderbolt, and you struggle to keep your arm steady, heat flowing down your fingers while electricity surges in the opposite direction. Lightning races through your body, harmless but tickling madly, like thousands of ants are marching over every inch of your skin and down inside your bones.

The heat wave sets the air to boiling, Pikachu shimmering and rippling in the middle of it. He's panting now, tiny pink tongue lolling and ears drooping back.

You keep your hand pointed at Pikachu, letting a steady heat waft from it, content to simply cook Pikachu into unconsciousness. He wilts--and then he's on you, rocketing into your midsection. The lightning he unloads on impact only tickles, but the force of the volt tackle is enough to knock you over. Your head cracks against one of Graveler's boulders, and you lie dazed while the great Nathaniel Morgan yells, "Catch it! Catch it, mach punch and grab it!"

Pikachu roasts you with more lightning while you're down, and it's the jolt of energy more than anything that brings you back to your feet. You hardly even need the mach punch's acceleration, your energized muscles fire so fast, but it's powerfully satisfying to land a solid punch on Pikachu. The attack sends him flying into a boulder, and you rush in while he recovers, grabbing him by the tail and swinging him up over your head.

Suddenly there's lightning everywhere and Pikachu's shrieking, screaming far too loud for the size of his lungs. Sheer surprise makes you drop him, and he shoots away, skidding to a halt with fur bristling and teeth bared. At last there's some emotion in those flat black eyes, and that emotion is outrage, absolute outrage. You only get a second to marvel before Pikachu lights up the arena with another one of his nuclear-level thunder displays.

Your heart races as motor drive draws ever more electricity into your body, and you twitch and bounce in place, unable to suppress the need to move, to release even a tiny a bit of the energy storming through you. Still Pikachu pours on more power, until your heartbeat's almost a continuous buzz, until the tickling of electricity evolves to itch and then to burning. You begin to fear, just a little, that there might be a limit to how much electricity your motor drive can absorb, and that Pikachu might be powerful enough to overwhelm it.

But the curtain of lightning clears, and as your vision fades back in you see Pikachu crouched before you, hunched up over the tooth marks on his chest and breathing heavily. "Fire blast!" the great Nathaniel Morgan says. "Make it a good one!"

Not what you would have picked, maybe: too easy to dodge, even if it doesn't look like Pikachu's going anywhere. It's immensely satisfying to shape fire, though, to feel the heat of the flames on your palms as you swirl them into a dense ball. You let the attack go and watch it explode, jetting streamers of flame as it strikes Pikachu. He's knocked away, landing heavily on his side. You surround your fist with more fire and step forward only to halt, puzzled, at a blast from the referee's whistle.

"Red corner yields," the referee says, and you look up in surprise. The Champion has one hand raised, his eyes fixed on Pikachu. You turn to your opponent, not quite able to believe it. But Pikachu doesn't argue. He doesn't look angry, or resentful, or even relieved as he turns and staggers off the field. He only ever showed any emotion when you grabbed his tail, and even that was just blind, instinctive anger.

Doesn't matter. You smile hugely and settle back on your haunches, tapping your foot and lashing your tail. Doesn't matter, doesn't matter. What matters is you won, and it was easy. Pikachu's the toughest opponent you'll have to face, and he was no trouble at all. The great Nathaniel Morgan was right, this battle's going to be no problem. You knew that, of course, but still. Still it feels great, winning like this, with lightning bottled up inside of you.

Pikachu finishes his long walk to the sidelines while the announcer gushes about how rare it is for any team to knock him out. The Champion barely waits for Pikachu to be off the field before taking a pokéball from his belt and tossing it out over the arena. You were expecting the round, stocky form of Blastoise, but instead the pokéball's light rises up and out, stretching neck and tail and wings.

This charizard's smaller than Titan, more slender, but then again most of them are. He's still much taller than your infernape form, serpentine neck arcing down for a better look at his opponent. You can't tell what he makes of you. His face is as blank as Pikachu's was, as blank as the Champion's still is.

You draw on the heat of the earth below, the fire in your heart resonating with the fire at the heart of the planet, the blood in your veins as magma, your bones splinters of rock. You stand firmer than before, taking strength from the earth's rocky core, and meet Charizard's flat gaze with your own electric grin. He has no idea, he can't possibly imagine, how badly he's about to lose.

The referee gives the cue, and the great Nathaniel Morgan says, "Thunder punch."

Your body's heavier now, but there's too much lightning in you for that to matter. You sprint across the field before Charizard can finish drawing breath. He might be raising fire, or maybe wind. It doesn't matter. Your first thunder punch hits him in the gut, knocking the breath out of him, and then you land another, and another, body humming with adrenaline and stolen electricity so it seems like Charizard's hardly moving at all. He slaps at you with his tail, and you duck away, landing another punch on the way out. He claps both wings together, but the blast of air barely hurts. You are solid, you are of the earth; no gust of wind can move you.

This is easy, easy. The Champion watches from above, expressionless. Does he care? Does he care about the battle, about winning, at all? About his pokémon?

Charizard strikes with claws and teeth, wings and tail, but you can get in three thunder punches for every one of his attacks. He blows out clouds of obscuring smoke, trying to play a stealth game, but he can't hide from psychic abilities no true infernape has. He stomps up an earthquake, and you protect against it, annoyed, and seize his mind and simply remove all knowledge of that attack with a disable.

It's all you can do not to laugh while Charizard stands frozen, a faint haze of smoke drifting from his open mouth as he struggles to remember how to use earthquake, what an earthquake even is. This is power, the power to simply deny your opponent the ability to fight. You're powerful. Funny how you forgot that after so many battles won by the skin of your teeth, battles lost, even. When you don't have to play by human rules, when you aren't stuck doing what they think should be possible, that's when you're strong. You're the strongest ever.

Charizard breathes deeply, readying fire, and you smile wider, knowing you can take this, too, and just like Pikachu's lightning, use it for yourself. When Charizard exhales, though, it's crackling teal-and-golden dragonfire that spills from his jaws. You aren't ready to dodge, and your last-second leap can't get you out of the way entirely. The unnatural fire burns and then numbs what it touches, leaving half your body tingling pins and needles.

You push aside irritation at your mistake and punch upwards, summoning a forest of blade-edged stones. Charizard dodges by taking to the air, so you follow up with a rock slide, hoisting boulders up to swarm around him. He swerves and dips under spinning rocks, moving ever towards you. You smirk as one of the boulders clips him in the side, and another glances off his shoulder. You're still smirking while you somersault out of the way of a sweeping dragon breath.

Charizard banks around to face you, and you dig up a double handful of dirt, transmuting it to rock as Charizard makes another sweeping pass. You stare down the oncoming dragon, undaunted by the blue flames dancing around his jaws, and take your time judging the shot. The hurled rock strikes Charizard at the base of one wing. He rolls crazily, injured wing flopping and useless, and crashes in a spray of loose dirt.

"Okay, now stone edge," the great Nathaniel Morgan says, and you saw the opportunity, too, are already preparing the attack. More needle-spires of rock lance up, but pain isn't enough to keep Charizard down, and he lunges away from them and straight at you, dislocated wing dragging beside him. You dart to the side, but he trips you with his tail, and you gasp as a rock smash crunches into your side. Then a dragon claw rakes sparkling flames across your shoulder.

He caught you off-guard again, but he's still moving so slowly, his swings like the exaggerated pantomime of an amateur actor. You dodge his next dragon claw completely and land another thunder punch square in Charizard's face. He doesn't cry out, but there's a loud huff of air as he takes in a sharp breath.

You yank your arm away from the resulting dragon flames, but they catch its edge and turn it to a numbed and useless log. Charizard keeps attacking despite a couple smart thunder punches: dragon claw, and dragon claw, and honestly, what's wrong with his good wing? Where are the flying attacks? Doesn't he know you're supposed to be a fighting-type?

"Grass knot and back off," the great Nathaniel Morgan says as another dragon breath billows your way. "Tie him down."

It'll only work for a second. The vines can drag Charizard down, but all he has to do is breathe on them to free himself. That's enough time to change, though, and when Charizard wrenches himself free and showers you with another dragon breath, you don't even feel it.

Your affinity for earth is gone, the stony core that kept you grounded dissolved into an airy, sparkling glow, all moonlight and fey mischief. You thunder punch again, and though Charizard's return dragon claw leaves scratches behind, its brilliant fire has no effect.

Another thunder punch knocks Charizard on his heels, wheezing. You lean in to attack again, but his tail slaps you away before the punch connects. You land hard, breath knocked clean out of you and skin itching like you've been splashed with acid. It's not acid on Charizard's tail, though, but a last flash of metallic sheen.

Does he know you're a fairy-type?

The thoughtful moment costs you as you're slow in bringing your arms up to block. This time when Charizard slashes down at you, you feel it properly. His claws sparkle silver in the sunlight, and the metal claw hurts, leaving three deep cuts down your forearm.

You jump to your feet, meet another metal claw with protect to give yourself a second to think, and then return to the rhythm of punching and ducking and driving Charizard back, one blow at a time. Now, though, you're really watching. You need to figure out what's going on.

You change one more time, switching from fairy to steel, and Charizard switches over to fighting attacks after only a couple unimpressive metal claws. He swings a dangerous series of power-up-punches at you, even though he really should be flagging after everything you've hit him with.

Charizard fights on, unhurried and methodical. Calm. Expressionless. That's what you should call it. He makes small noises of exertion, sometimes gasps or grunts or flinches away from your attacks, all instinctive reactions. If he's tired he doesn't show it, if he's smug at having figured you out, if he's triumphant, thinking he has this now, you can't tell. His face is blank as he attacks, attacks, attacks. It's like he's here, fighting, but his mind is somewhere else. For sure his heart isn't in it.

How could he know? You don't look different when you change types, or not enough that anyone who wasn't looking for it would see. He must have been able to tell his attacks weren't doing as much damage as they should, but to go from that to deciding you'd changed types? Something that shouldn't even be possible?

You don't realize you're standing idle, fists raised but slack, until Charizard grabs you with his comically stubby arms and more or less falls on you, driving you hard into the ground with a submission attack.

You roar in pain, and along with your howl comes another yell, "No! I said get back!"

Oh, right. The great Nathaniel Morgan's here. Puzzling about Charizard made you tune him out, too. And you're still a bit preoccupied, for that matter. You struggle under Charizard's weight, trying to force him away while his claws rake at your sides.

""Quit d--doing stupid sh--stuff and pay attention! Hey, hey, hey!" the great Nathaniel Morgan roars, a bit hoarse, like he's been yelling for quite some time now. "Finish it! Just finish it! Stone edge, now, now, he can't fly away!"

You grit your teeth and push up hard, the motion accompanied by the crunch and creak of breaking earth. Rocky spires shoot up all around you, and you tip Charizard's weight directly into the path of the stones, perhaps with a little psychic assistance. The great Nathaniel Morgan's right--there's no dodging for him now, not with a ruined wing, and the stone edge cuts and bruises and pierces. Charizard lies still at last, silent and unmoved to the end.

You get to your feet and watch Charizard vanish in red light, not quite sure how to feel. You won. You won, and it was easy. You flex aching arms, opening and closing your fingers and massaging bruised knuckles. Yes. It was easy. You look back over your shoulder at the great Nathaniel Morgan.

"Oh, now you're looking at me," the great Nathaniel Morgan grumbles. "What, you were all complaining about how I wasn't gonna help or something, then you go nuts doing whatever you want? I mean, it worked and all, but..."

How could you explain? It's not about the battle, not really. There's something else going on here.

Even if he knew about it, the great Nathaniel Morgan would probably just tell you to focus on the battle for now. He'd probably be right. What matters is that you get Mewtwo back, and to do that, you have to win. Whatever else this is, you can think about it when the battle's done, if you even still care. Once you've got Mewtwo back, you can wash your hands of the Champion forever.

The Champion sends out Blastoise, who's tiny compared to the one who fought for Aanya Singh. That blastoise was so large her shell alone must have weighed three times as much as you. The Champion's blastoise looks like most of the ones you see in high-level matches: small, which means young, less than thirty years old.

You look down the barrels of Blastoise's cannons and shift your ability to water absorb. That was definitely a good idea last time. Even with that protection, it's hard to feel confident in the face of Blastoise's silence, the blankly intimidating look on his face.

"Hi," you say. "You're not very scary. I beat a way bigger blastoise a couple days ago, and it wasn't even hard."

There's absolutely no response. Blastoise stands there and breathes and acts like he didn't understand a word you just said, or even that you were trying to talk to him at all.

"Hey!" you say as a cold, uncertain chill ripples through you. "Can't you hear me, stupid? I'm talking to you!"

Still nothing, and the referee announces the next round before you can try anything else. "Grass knot," the great Nathaniel Morgan says, and you're slower than you should be to raise energy, still preoccupied.

That, and you weren't expecting Blastoise to be fast. Nothing the size of a car with legs like tree stumps should be nimble. But when the grass knot lashes out at Blastoise's ankle he's already well past, flat-out running in your direction. He tucks his limbs up into his shell and slides on his belly, crashing towards you with a double-edge, and you barely make the dodge.

You watch the big shell rush past, grimacing. This might be harder than you thought. It's all you can do to dodge again when twin bursts of swirling turquoise and purple shoot from Blastoise's cannons, slicing towards you at waist height while Blastoise's shell spins.

Dragon pulse. No water. It was the Champion who figured things out, then, not Charizard. It's too soon for Blastoise to have realized anything on his own, so the Champion must have told him not to use water. But if the Champion knows something's up, maybe even that you're not a real infernape, why hasn't he done anything about it? Why is he still fighting?

Blastoise extends his back legs, flipping himself into the air and landing upright without a single wobble. "Enough running, Infernape! Use power-up punch. Go nuts," the great Nathaniel Morgan says, and his oblivious confidence gets you moving at last. Yes, focus on this. Focus on what's ahead of you, and let the rest come later. You fall on Blastoise with a flurry of punches, and he withdraws, your attacks cracking off his shell without apparent effect. Still they energize you, each punch leaving you stronger than the one before.

With a faint hiss, a dark mist spills from Blastoise's cannons. You back up to stay ahead of the billowing cloud of haze, but it soon expands to fill the whole arena. The chilly fog dampens your flame and leeches the strength from your limbs. Your speed goes, too, the last of Pikachu's stolen electricity bleeding into empty air. You're cold and sluggish, surrounded by dark fog. And your opponent, your opponent's somewhere out there, hidden by the mist.

"No problem. You can find it, can't you, Infernape?" the great Nathaniel Morgan says.

Of course you can. You channel energy into a giga drain, trusting the haze to hide its green glow from the battle cameras. The life-sense the grass energy lends you overlays your vision, coronas of living power pocking the dark cloud around you. There's no way to describe it other than to say grass beneath your feet glows, showing faint green through the haze. Blastoise shines brighter yet, a huge well of power and life.

Except there are dark spots peppering Blastoise's aura, dull purple-brown in your energy sight, like Blastoise is some kind of overripe fruit, bruised and starting to ferment. You hold grass energy ready, not following through with giga drain like you'd been planning. Do you even want to drain that energy, with that weird whatever-it-is floating in it? What is it? The side effect of some attack, or maybe something like liquid ooze, some of defense against energy drain? Blastoise don't have that ability, though, and anyway you don't think it would look like that, and you've never--

A swirling globe of blue light rockets towards you, bubbling with its own slick of sickly brown and black. You jump aside instinctively, but the attack easily swerves to follow. It bursts against your chest with a flash of blue light that dissipates your energy sight. Once more all you can see is gray fog, stretching out in all directions.

Aura sphere. An aura sphere you would have seen coming, if you'd been paying attention to what Blastoise was doing and not how weird he looks. Giga drain would heal back the aura sphere's damage and more, but when you summon grass energy you again you find yourself staring at the dark stains shimmering across Blastoise's energy signature. You still don't want to absorb that, really. And then, at one terrified, inspired thought, you look down into the glow of your own life's power, and yes, blue spatters left over from the aura sphere still cling to your body, and in among them are droplets that don't so much glow as fume, bubbling with strange dark colors. Poison? Is it poison? But you don't feel sick, well, you do, a bit, clammy and dazed because you're getting worked up over nothing and you need to focus.

Another aura sphere comes, and you block it with a protect. You can't, you can't think about this now. You brush anxiously at your fur, trying to dislodge the discolored blots of energy.

"All right, Infernape?" the great Nathaniel Morgan says, still sounding perfectly cheerful. He can't see what's going on. You grit your teeth and send a focus blast towards Blastoise, getting in an easy hit while he's busy forming another aura sphere. You simply blow this one up with a bit of psychic power, confident that if the great Nathaniel Morgan can't see, the referee can't, either.

As the haze dissipates you fire off a couple more focus blasts, a quiet lock-on making sure they don't stray from their mark. Blastoise doesn't flinch, doesn't acknowledge the strikes beyond swaying a bit to keep his balance. He growls and spreads his hands, calling boulders up in a wave. You dodge them with a series of acrobatic jumps and rolls, which look difficult but are easy for you, so easy that you do them on autopilot while you mull over more difficult things in your head.

What could corrupt a pokémon's life energy? If it is corruption, you're just guessing. Whatever it is, it doesn't look right, and Blastoise has been acting strange--the Champion's whole team has been acting strange--the Champion's been acting strange, this entire time. Almost like they're robots. Or zombies.

Blastoise charges out of the last shreds of the haze, and you trip him with a grass knot. He falls and slides on his plastron, but he doesn't act surprised, or irritated, or even like he finds it funny. His expression isn't so much grim as empty.

While he's getting up again, you blurt out, "Blastoise? Can you talk? Can you say something? Just--just, I mean, hey, good battle so far, are you excited to be in the Championship, I mean I guess you've done it before but--"

Then you have to dodge because he's running at you, claws clenched into fists, ice frosting his knuckles. You jump lightly aside, feeling sluggish and fatigued without Pikachu's electricity to buoy you up. Then you call on electricity of your own and leap on Blastoise with a volley of thunder punches, slower than before but made fierce by your frustration.

"Come on," you grunt, knocked sideways by a graze to your shoulder. "Come on, say something! Stop being weird!"

Attack, attack, attack. Blastoise says nothing.

He's messing with you. He's playing with your head. But no--no, Charizard was like that, too, and Pikachu. Even the Champion himself, he doesn't talk anymore, he just looks at people all scary-like.

"You can't fool me," you say. "You think this is funny? You think I'll get scared?"

You land punch after punch, filling the air with the smell of ozone and scorched turtle-flesh. Blastoise's expression never changes. He doesn't flinch when a shocking punch lands, doesn't smile when one of his own connects, doesn't grimace or frown or ever look away. His eyes are on you, always on you, but there's nothing in them at all.

Zombies. Blastoise isn't dead, but something is wrong with him, wrong to the very life, if it's affecting his aura. So if he isn't dead, maybe he isn't quite alive, either, at least not the way you or a normal pokémon is. Your fur prickles up, and you're suddenly cold, despite that you're sweating with exertion.

"Can you hear me? Say something! Say something, you stupid turtle! I don't even think you can talk! I bet you can't, I bet you're so dumb you can't talk!"

Blastoise pivots smoothly, keeping eyes and cannons trained on you the whole time. His huge hind-claws dig into the earth, bracing him against recoil, and then he fires a double dragon pulse from his cannons. After that comes flash cannon, then dark pulse, then dragon pulse again. You run, keeping just ahead of his attacks.

"Block with rock slide," the great Nathaniel Morgan barks, and frazzled as you are he has to repeat the command twice before you figure out what he means. You raise boulders and let them fall in a rough line, blocking Blastoise's cannon volleys. You crouch behind the makeshift wall, firing focus blasts over the top. You even let one of them miss, just to make things more realistic. Then you throw yourself aside as Blastoise smashes into the barrier, spinning wildly in a metal-glinting shell and scattering fragments of rock in all directions. You jump from one side of the wall to the other to keep it between you and Blastoise, while he works on destroying it with sliding tackles, knocking boulders aside like bowling pins.

Running and hiding, just like Raticate, you think, but you don't mind. Staying away from Blastoise is what you want to do. You don't know if what he has is catching, and you're fine not finding out.

The great Nathaniel Morgan calls for a will-o-wisp, and you chuck a handful of blue ghostfire across the wall. Blastoise stops, expressionless as usual but now with a puckered red burn marring the side of his face. He glows briefly white, and the burn disappears.

"Refresh. Hell," the great Nathaniel Morgan mutters, but you don't get time to share his irritation. Blastoise rockets forward with an aqua jet, shattering the boulder you were hiding behind, and grazes the side of your head with an ice punch. The next few seconds are lost in confusion, and then the sun goes out as Blastoise's shell crashes down on top of you.

"Okay, great. Will-o-wisp then taunt," the great Nathaniel Morgan's saying while you struggle to gather your thoughts and muster sluggish, dragging limbs. The horrible smothering feeling of Blastoise's cadaverous weight lends a terror-edged clarity to your senses but makes it hard to think. You pump a full thunderbolt into Blastoise's shell, hardly caring whether you can pass it off as another thunder punch.

"Will-o-wisp, come on," the great Nathaniel Morgan says while you drag, scrape, squeeze yourself out from under a temporarily-stunned Blastoise. You stand unsteadily, panting with exertion and the fading dregs of panic, and try to concentrate. Okay. Will-o-wisp. Yes. Continuous damage, so you can focus on not getting hit instead of attacking. You're fine with that.

The will-o-wisp hits Blastoise in the face the second he emerges from his shell, leaving a burn in almost exactly in the same place as the last one. And now the taunt, before Blastoise heals again. You stop with mouth open, uncertain. Somehow Blastoise's stonily blank scowl doesn't invite ridicule, and simmering unease over what, exactly, is wrong with him doesn't put you in a mocking mood.

The words don't matter, you tell yourself firmly. The words don't matter, it's the darkness that counts, darkness that turns your breath cold across your tongue as you say, "I-I'm not scared of you. I'm not going to fall for your stupid tricks. I bet... I bet even if you were a zombie, you still wouldn't be able to beat me!"

Blastoise stands there, expression unchanged. You wonder if he didn't understand, if maybe he's so far gone that not even dark words can touch him. Then his face scrunches up, lips drawn back to show teeth and gums alike. His mouth's too wide, seeming to take up his whole face. Blastoise roars, the sound booming and resonant in the arch of his shell, and while you're still reeling from his transformation he slams a mega punch into your gut.

You fall, choking on swallowed air. Blastoise brings one heavy foot down, and the ground convulses. You stumble more than run from him, hunched over your aching gut and struggling to stay upright on the shuddering earth. The ground falls away beneath one unlucky step, and you twist your ankle badly, groaning with pain but forcing yourself to hobble on.

A blast of freezing wind knocks you down, rolling you over and filling your fur with ice and heavy, wet snow. "Looks like The Great Nathaniel Morgan got more than he bargained for with that taunt," the announcer says cheerfully while you curl in on yourself, trying to protect your inner flame from the horrible cold of the blizzard.

You can barely see anything, eyelids gumming shut with frozen tears. There's little to see anyway, just angry blowing white.

"Tie it down with grass knot, Infernape! Hold it back!"

You push yourself to your feet, groping out with a mind reader, but then Blastoise charges out of the whirling snow and grabs you, sturdy claws wrapping around your arm. You aren't sure if it's a proper attack, don't even notice if it hurts. What matters, what really, really matters here, is he's got you, he's touching you, he's touching you.

Blastoise's face hovers just in front of yours, still set in that incredible snarl. His eyes are empty of any kind of personality, lit only by blind, unthinking aggression. You broke whatever bonds of control were holding him back, and now he's got you. His hand burns where it touches your arm, full of wrongness, wrongness that's going to go into you now, that's going to make you like him.

"Infernape, listen! You have to listen. I need you to--"

But you can't listen. You can't possibly concentrate on his words now. Blastoise's mouth opens, hideously toothy. You realize what he's going to do a second before it happens, and it's only tucking your chin in that prevents Blastoise's teeth from closing on your neck. He bites your face instead, teeth grating against your jawbone, and you scream. No, no, no, he needs to get away! GET AWAY!

Pressure builds inside your skull, gathering to a brief, stabbing headache, and then Blastoise is hurled away from you, tumbling over and over in the air. He crashes down on his back, and does not move.

You curl into a ball on the ground, holding your face with both hands and sending desperate healing energy into the wound, not caring whether anyone sees it close underneath all the blood. You lie there dizzy, hot and cold by turns, sobbing and wondering if this is what it feels like to turn into a zombie. An overwhelming desire for home comes over you, and for a moment you see it so clearly in your mind--warm, private, safe--that the only thing that stops you from teleporting right then and there is the energy barrier cutting you off from the outside world.

"Time out," the referee says. "Calling for a review of the last fifteen seconds of the round due to suspect attack usage."

"Are you shitting me?" the great Nathaniel Morgan says. "It's the fucking championship, asshole, you want to waste time dicking around with your stupid toys? Let's get with the fucking fight."

"Any more back-talk and it'll be a citation for you," the referee says. She's tapping away at her tablet, presumably calling up footage of the last round, energy readings from the sensors embedded around the arena. You curl in tighter, tail coiling up around your torso. You don't even know what attack you used, but it was powerful--maybe even a psycho boost.

The great Nathaniel Morgan sneers at the referee but doesn't press her further. Instead he turns to you. "Hey, Infernape," he says. "Good work. Are you okay? Do you want to keep going?"

A good act. You'd never guess he knows the referee's about to realize something's fishy and disqualify him. But he knows, of course, and he knows that means it was all for nothing. Good work. He's really loves saying the opposite of what he means, doesn't he?

"Sir!" You flinch away from the referee's shout, clutch your fingers in your fur. You feel cold and tingling as you wait for the verdict. "Sir, I said we're in time out!"

You glance over your shoulder at the great Nathaniel Morgan, filled with wild hope that he might have some other plan, that he might be fixing things even now. He's just standing there, though, not even looking at you.

It's the Champion who's moving. He fiddles with the keypad in his box's railing--healing Blastoise already? That's not allowed, not while the battle's still going on. There's a brief flash of light, and the Champion takes a pokéball with a dark purple top from the machine. The master ball. In storage until the very last second, where all the League's vast electronic might could protect it.

"Sir! Time! Time out!" The Champion's hefting the ball in his hand, looking down at the arena with no indication that he even hears the referee.

He knows you've been cheating. He doesn't care, then? Or perhaps this is his punishment. He let you go on long enough to reveal your secret to the whole world, and now he's going to send Mewtwo in to ensure disqualification is the least of your worries.

"Sir! You can't send out another pokémon!" the referee insists, but the Champion simply cocks his arm back and throws.

Maybe he's following through with the battle because that's all he knows how to do. Maybe he's as much of a husk as his pokémon, with no desire for anything but battle, or no desire at all, fighting on and on by instinct alone.

You watch the master ball spin through the air overhead, feeling sicker than ever and blinking more tears from your eyes. What if Mewtwo's like the rest of the Champion's team? You duck your head and squeeze your eyes shut. You don't want to know. You want to go home.

Mewtwo takes shape, and the announcer's excited but baffled commentary twines with the referee's yells to form a distant, babbling counterpoint to the pounding of your heart. The overwhelming blast of Mewtwo's psychic field comes even before the light from the master ball has faded, and your heart races faster as the clone's anxiety amplifies your own.

At leas he is anxious. If he can feel nervous, that means he can still feel, not like the--zombies. Whatever they were. It would be a relief, except Mewtwo's fear and anger still jangle through your head, so you're left trying to convince yourself you don't feel them after all. Mewtwo must have gone into the master ball like that. What happened? Has he not been out at all since Sabrina caught him?

Mewtwo's gaze snaps to you, and he straightens up, the fear ebbing from your head. What are you doing here? he asks, and of course there's no point replying. Within seconds he's extracted the answer from your mind. I see. Mewtwo's thoughts turn to rippling, smug pleasure. Go on, then. Unless you truly wish to fight me.

You look from him to the referee, who with gritted teeth has apparently decided to open the next round. No one stands in the way of the Champion, especially not when the instrument of his power is right there, on display for all to see. And the Champion... You look up at him while your fingers trace the spot on your jaw where Blastoise bit you, once more cold with apprehension.

What are you waiting for? Mewtwo snaps. What? Zombies? Don't be ridiculous. There's nothing wrong with you.

A psychic push makes you stagger sideways, and you turn angrily towards Mewtwo, whose eyes glow baleful purple. For a second you stand there, glaring, but honestly there's no point. You're tired. It's best to get this over with.

"It looks like Infernape isn't interested in fighting Mewtwo," the announcer says as you turn and walk to the sidelines. Vigorous booing rises from the crowd, and it rankles, even knowing this isn't a real battle, even knowing you're not running away. For a second something of your usual spirit returns, and you bare your teeth. Like any of those idiots would dare fight Mewtwo themselves.

The sideline lies directly in front of you, neatly separating the torn and lightning-scorched sod of the arena from the green, manicured grass beyond. You step across and feel the brief fizz of the energy barrier passing over you.

You pause a second, vertigo gripping you as the pressure of Mewtwo's mind vanishes. It's strange how fast you get used to it, and then once it's gone the whole world seems brighter, the air fresher, gravity somehow relaxed. The announcer's going nuts over you throwing the match, but he's really never going to believe what happens next.

A single thought takes you into the trainer's box next to the Champion. He's only just turning to face you as you snatch the master ball out of his hand, easily breaking his grip; he is only human, after all. Still, your skin ripples with goosebumps when you touch him. You suppress thoughts of Blastoise and his creeping wrongness and teleport again immediately.

This time you land next to the great Nathaniel Morgan, recalling Mewtwo with one hand and grabbing the great Nathaniel Morgan's arm with the other. And then, while the announcer's still reacting to the first teleport, with the crowd just beginning to bubble up to a confused clamor, before the referee or Champion or anyone can intervene, the both of you are gone.