Chapter 34
The child takes its time about returning to the beach. It’s not like the great Nathaniel Morgan’s going far. It follows his footprints into the jungle and finds him sitting by a small stream, eyes focused on nothing-distance while he fiddles with a splinter of wood jammed into his handcuffs’ lock, manipulating it without being able to see it.
“How long have you been doing that?” the child asks. The great Nathaniel Morgan comes out of his daze with a start and lets out a heartfelt string of curses when he realizes the motion snapped his lock-pick off in the mechanism.
“Stay the fuck away from–oh my God, put on some fucking clothes!”
The child frowns. “Why? It is hot.”
“Because your face is freaky enough, I really don’t want to know about all the rest of you.”
“Why do you care? I have not been wearing clothes for the past two weeks.”
It takes him a moment to work that out. “Yeah, but you were all looking like a pokémon and shit, it ain’t weird. Besides, infernape have, like, fur. They ain’t really naked. So grow some fur or some shit.” The handcuff chain clinks as he gives his hand an awkward wave.
“It is hot,” the child repeats. “And I did not come out here to talk about this.”
“So why the fuck did you, then? And don’t think for one fucking second you can con me in on another one of your batshit schemes. We’re fucking done, get me?”
“I know. I do not want to work with you anymore, either.”
“Then why the fuck am I here?” the great Nathaniel Morgan snaps. He’s glaring at the child like it’s hideously inconvenienced him somehow, instead of saved his life. It’s not like it was expecting gratitude, definitely not, but it can’t suppress an annoyed frown.
“Because Eskar went back on our deal, so she should not get to have what she wanted.”
“Like I fucking told you she would,” the great Nathaniel Morgan mutters. The child carries on over him.
“Besides, you were distracting me.”
“I was what?”
“Now, come on, unless you want to sit around in the jungle all day. You can stay at my house if you want. I do not know how long it will be before Absol gets back.”
“Your house?”
“Yes.” What kind of question is that?
The great Nathaniel Morgan snorts and looks away, like he might catch sight of the place between the trees. After a moment he says, “You got a healing machine in this fucking house of yours?”
“No. But I have potions and stuff.”
“That ain’t good enough,” the great Nathaniel Morgan snaps. “They need a healer.”
It needs a second to figure out who “they” are, but the child supposes he’s right. They did get hurt pretty bad, fighting Pikachu. “Fine. I will take them to a pokémon center,” it says, and reaches for the great Nathaniel Morgan’s pokéballs.
He clumsily twists away, showing broken teeth. “Go get one.”
The child snatches its hand away, stung, and grits its teeth against an angry retort. It’s not worth arguing. It only takes a few minutes to teleport to Cinnabar and find a portable healer; most trainers rely on pokémon centers and potions, but scientists and diplomats and everybody who wants to go to the deepwilds needs one, and a lot of older trainers like the convenience of having one at home. The child does have to be more careful about snagging one than usual, though; other humans can be just as bad as the great Nathaniel Morgan about clothes.
The child dumps the healer on the ground in front of the great Nathaniel Morgan, resolved to let him figure it out himself. But then he takes ages to even get his pokéballs in it, working against clumsy handcuffed arms. The child steps towards him. The great Nathaniel Morgan jerks away so violently he nearly falls over, but the child manages to catch the handcuff chain anyway and shatter it with a pulse of energy. The great Nathaniel Morgan throws his arms out to either side before he goes over for real.
He spends a moment vigorously massaging his arms, stretching them one at a time while staring narrow-eyed at the child. Whatever his suspicions, he punches the healer’s “Go” button as soon as the machine shows green, its solar battery charged, and then he’s trying to pry the top up even while it’s playing its cheery finished jingle. A second later his pokémon are standing in front of him.
“Raticate,” the great Nathaniel Morgan says, “are you–?”
Raticate turns his back on his trainer and starts grooming a shoulder, which the great Nathaniel Morgan must decide means he’s fine. The great Nathaniel Morgan turns to Mightyena, who’s already staring at him, tense and alert with tail up straight.
“What happened to you?” she says.
“You okay?” the great Nathaniel Morgan asks, running his fingers through the fur along Mightyena’s jaw. She stares into his face, which is half covered in crusted blood, one eye starting to swell shut. Then she whirls on the child, fur bristling.
“You! What did I say I would do if you hurt my trainer?”
“I didn’t do that.”
“Hey!” The great Nathaniel Morgan gets to his feet. “Mightyena!”
“I’m sure you didn’t,” Mightyena rumbles, taking a stiff-legged step towards the child. “I’m sure you being here is a total coincidence!”
“Mightyena! Stop!” the great Nathaniel Morgan barks in a classic trainer voice, loud but not desperate, stern rather than angry. Mightyena freezes, then throws a brief glance at him before dashing into the jungle.
“Mightyena!” The great Nathaniel Morgan stumbles a couple running steps after her, but she’s already gone.
“I’ll go, I’ll make sure she doesn’t get in trouble,” Raticate stammers, and then he vanishes after her.
“He said he is going to make sure she does not get in trouble,” the child says while the great Nathaniel Morgan hollers, pointlessly, after Raticate as well.
He rounds on the child. “What lives out there?” he demands. “What kind of pokémon?”
“Uhh, oddish, and some tangela,” the child says, caught off-guard. “There are some geodude up on the mountain, and krabby by the beach. Nothing scary. Those two have nothing to worry about,” it adds once it realizes why he asked.
The great Nathaniel Morgan stares into the trees where his pokémon disappeared. “So, are you coming with me? Or do you want to stay out here until Absol shows up with Mewtwo?” the child asks.
The great Nathaniel Morgan sighs. “The damn absol ain’t coming, Freak. Team Rocket’s got ahold of her by now. You want to come up with another one of your wacky plots to get Mewtwo back, you’d better get cracking. And this time I ain’t fucking going along with it, so don’t even bother fucking asking.”
“They will not catch her.”
“Oh, yeah? Real damn confident, ain’t you? What makes you so sure, Freak?”
The child shrugs. “Because she is Absol.”
The great Nathaniel Morgan snorts and starts stripping off his jacket, which comes away stickily. The bottom’s all shredded from your talons, which cut through his shirt and the skin under it, too. All down his stomach is dark with blood. But the child’s sure they’re just big scratches, nothing bad, not like when it was actually trying to hurt him. Most of his injuries are from fighting with the Rockets, even if the claw ones are the biggest.
The great Nathaniel Morgan’s oblivious to the child’s scrutiny. He looks down at the broken lengths of chain dangling from his now-useless handcuffs. “Almost dislocated both my thumbs trying to get these bastards off,” he mutters.
“Do you want a softboiled? You look like you need healing.”
“No!” the great Nathaniel Morgan barks. “Fuck no. I am so done with your shitty healing shit. Or did you forget about the part where it nearly fucking killed me?”
“It will be fine. You are not hurt that bad this time.”
“Fuck off,” the great Nathaniel Morgan says, and the child clenches a fist against a hot burst of anger. “Graveler? Where are you going?”
The child forgot about Graveler completely. She’s been doing as she usually does, standing off to one side and watching calmly while her teammates have meltdowns. Now she’s trundling off into the jungle herself.
“I’m going to the mountain,” she rumbles.
The great Nathaniel Morgan watches her go, scratching at one of the cuts on his face. “Well, okay. Whatever,” he grumbles. And when he catches the child’s look: “So where’s this fucking stupid house thing?”
“It is not far. Are you sure you do not want–?”
“Fuck no. Get moving already. I done enough standing around in the motherfucking jungle.”
Well, if he wants to wander around all bleeding, let him. The child follows the great Nathaniel Morgan’s footprints back to the beach and then walks the curve of the shore. It ignores the sounds of the great Nathaniel Morgan struggling behind–he was the one complaining like the child was too slow.
It’s not a long walk, anyway, to reach the inlet where the child’s house was built. Presumably it’s a good place for tying up boats, but the child wouldn’t know; none have visited since it got here, and what part of the pier hasn’t been washed away is warped and brittle from long days in the sun.
“Whoah,” the great Nathaniel Morgan says as the child’s house comes into view. “Damn. That’s your place?”
“Yes,” it says, grinning despite itself at the awe in his voice.
“It’s fucking huge!” the great Nathaniel Morgan says. “But, uh…” The child turns to look back at him, and he flicks an uneasy glance in its direction. “I mean, you really live there? It looks like some kinda fucking haunted house or some shit. Like, it’s fucking falling apart.”
“Yes, of course I live there. A tree fell on it a few years ago, that is all. It does not matter. I just do not use those rooms.”
“Yeah, that’s… totally fucking reasonable, right. So how in the fuck did a freak like you end up with a goddamn mansion and, what, your own fucking private island?”
“Somebody on Cinnabar used to own it, but they died. Now it is mine.”
“Definitely fucking haunted,” the great Nathaniel Morgan mutters. He stares at the child’s house with an odd expression, like maybe he’s kind of sad, maybe, or maybe walking made him feel all those nasty bruises. The child doesn’t bother trying to figure it out and runs on ahead again. The great Nathaniel Morgan might not be a great audience, but there’s still something exciting about getting to show off its home. It’s never had a real human visitor before.
The child sprints up the saggy front steps and waits while the great Nathaniel Morgan creaks up after it. Even skinny like he is now, he still manages to be louder than the child. He’s so stompy all the time.
The child hurries on inside, but the great Nathaniel Morgan doesn’t follow. The child looks back to find him staring at the faded bloodstain on the stoop, the place it stood when it came back with Thunderstorm. “Do not worry, that is not my blood,” it says. “Now come on. Do you want to sleep or not?”
The great Nathaniel Morgan doesn’t look up from the old stain, but he reaches out to catch the screen door before it can slap shut. He takes a cautious step inside, his eyes roaming like he’s expecting something to jump out and bite him. “It’s fucking dark in here,” he says. “Don’t you ever turn on a fucking light?”
“I do not need to. You can if you want. The switch is right there.”
Most of the bulbs still work. The wallpaper’s blue even in the orangey light of the lamp; it’s been so long since the child even bothered to look that it didn’t remember. It’s blue with some funny designs on it, like leaves and some kind of shield. But there isn’t anything interesting in here.
“Come on, come on. The rooms are this way,” the child says, racing on deeper, light-footed on a path it knows by heart. The great Nathaniel Morgan follows at a distance, swearing and tripping over things.
“Jesus Christ, it’s like some kind of bullshit ninja training thing, like you gotta make it to the other side of the room without tripping over a shitty toy,” he grumbles, kicking aside a dusty vaporeon plush. “I nearly broke my fucking neck on those goddamn tiny cars out in the hall.”
“Do not mess with my toys!”
“I don’t want to fuck with your shitty toys, they keep trying to fucking kill me!”
“Would you keep it down? Some of us have work to do.”
The great Nathaniel Morgan jumps at the unexpected voice. “Holy fuck! What’re you doing here?”
Leonard Kerrigan stands in the door to the study, his porygon-Z floating just behind. It scoots out of sight when it catches the child looking–it tried to defend its trainer, back when the child first brought him here, but then the child punched it through a wall, and it’s been avoiding the child ever since.
“See? I told you I did not kill him! I have been feeding him and everything!”
“I suppose if you consider a package of uncooked hot dogs and one cupcake a meal.”
“Well of course I was not going to give you both cupcakes. The other one was for me,” the child says.
“Oh. Uh, well, I guess it’s nice to see you with, uh, pants on this time,” the great Nathaniel Morgan says with a crooked sort of smile.
“Mmm,” is all Leonard Kerrigan says, and the long silence seems to make the great Nathaniel Morgan anxious.
“Look, just what in the fuck is he doing here?” he snaps.
“He is a hacker! He is hacking the computer we got from Team Rocket,” the child says. “So we can find out where Mew is and go save her!”
“Yes. Well. At the moment what I’m trying to do is find unpatched vulnerabilities in the computer’s software, which has been difficult without being able to look anything up on the internet.”
“No internet for you. I am not stupid.”
“So you keep saying,” Leonard Kerrigan says dryly. “I need you to go back to the library, unless your accomplice here is going to be in charge of fetching things. Maybe I can finally get some books without having to listen to fifteen minutes of complaining and then spend an hour giving precise instructions on where to look for it.” He holds out a scrap of paper with a list scribbled on it, offering it to the great Nathaniel Morgan and the child in turn.
The great Nathaniel Morgan recoils like Leonard Kerrigan’s holding a viper. “Fuck no! I ain’t your fucking gopher!”
“No? I thought fetching things was the only thing Rocket grunts were good for.”
“I will take care of it,” the child grumbles, grabbing the list and stuffing it in a pocket to deal with later. “Get back to work.”
“Yes, I suppose I’ll go back to staring at a blank screen until you bring me those books and I can actually continue my work,” Leonard Kerrigan says blandly. The great Nathaniel Morgan’s brow creases in a frown as he watches Leonard Kerrigan disappear back into the study.
“Okay, you can pick a room,” the child says. “Mine is the one right at the top of the stairs, and I think Leonard Kerrigan took the one at the far end of the hall, so not those. But any of the other–”
“Whoah, whoah, hang the fuck on. You know I’m totally fucking stoked to check into the fucking Hoarder Hotel, here, but how long is this gonna take? I told you, I’m done with your bullshit. You lost Mewtwo, and that means you ain’t got no way to know where Steelix is, so we’re done.”
“Absol will bring Mewtwo soon. Then you can talk to him and leave whenever you want.”
The great Nathaniel Morgan snorts. “Yeah, sure.” But he rubs his face with a hand, staring down the hall and its long line of doorways with a wistful expression on his face. He must be tired, and the child doubts he really wants to sleep out on the ground. “One night, okay? Your fucking absol doesn’t show up tomorrow, I’m out.”
The child shrugs. “Fine. I do not want you hanging around here, either.”
“Cool. Fuck you,” he says, and picks his way down the hallway, slipping on a rogue marble despite his care and having to grab the wall to save himself. The child waits until a slamming door confirms that he’s made a selection, then wanders out to the living room, where it curls on the couch to watch television.
It’s almost funny. Somehow the child’s friends have gone, and its house is full of enemies instead. It draws its knees up to its chest while the light of a Transformozords rerun flickers across its face, not really paying attention. At least Absol will get back soon. With Mewtwo. So it will have friends again.
The child hugs its knees tighter against its chest and tries to concentrate on what it’s watching. Yes. Friends. It will be good to be with friends again.
The child wakes in groggy stages the next morning, slowly coming to realize that what it’s hearing is television-noise. The sun’s barely risen, flashing golden through the trees, and the child fumes, lets itself stomp as it goes to see what’s happening. There’s only one person who’d put the TV on that loud when other people are trying to sleep.
The great Nathaniel Morgan’s sprawled luxuriously across the couch with what looks like the child’s entire stock of milk and cereal arrayed around him, messily crunching through an overflowing bowl of Sugar Rowlets while he watches the news. Raticate’s curled up by his feet with his own box of cereal, eating food and cardboard indiscriminately.
“Why could you not get up this early when we were supposed to be battling?” the child snaps.
“Oh hey, Freak,” the great Nathaniel Morgan says with a hideous gap-toothed smile. “Morning to you too. Couldn’t sleep so great in your fucking haunted mansion, I guess. All kinds of weird rustling and running feet and shit. Fucking creepy.”
“It is not haunted. Those are just wild pokémon and animals and things. They live in some of the empty rooms.” Rats used to keep them away, but they must have come creeping back. The child heard them, too, lying awake last night. Waiting.
The great Nathaniel Morgan leans back with his arms behind his head, looking entirely too content for someone covered in half-healed cuts and one eye blacked shut. “Ain’t a bad TV you got here, Freak. Been thinking I might get one exactly like it.”
The child scoffs. “It is so big you would never be able to steal it.”
The great Nathaniel Morgan smiles lazily and murmurs, “Try me.”
On television the newscaster says, “The whereabouts of Mewtwo remain unknown. Prime Minister Arai addressed the region earlier today, urging gym leaders to remain on high alert and emphasizing that the regional government would be working closely with the Indigo League to recover the super-clone.
“Although Team Rocket has denied any involvement in the incident, calls for inquiry have resumed after the revelation that the trainer whose pokémon assaulted Red may have had ties to the team.”
A picture of the great Nathaniel Morgan, looking especially sinister with one of his nasty smirks on his face, appears on screen. The real thing lets out a whoop of laughter. “Look at that, I’m fucking famous! All those losers back at base can suck it.” He grabs the box of Sugar Rowlets and pours them directly into his mouth, cheeks bulging grotesquely as he chews, watching the newscaster discuss his exploits with undisguised amusement.
The child hovers beside the couch, watching footage of its own battle against Blastoise with growing unease. “Great Nathaniel Morgan, there was something I wanted to ask you about the battle against the Champion,” it blurts at last, but the great Nathaniel Morgan waves it off.
“Later. First, me and Raticate gotta talk.”
Raticate raises his head from the cardboard carnage in front of him, ears flicking in surprise. The great Nathaniel Morgan scrabbles for the remote to turn off the TV and sits up straight, his perverse amusement falling away.
Nervousness clutches the child’s stomach, and it wishes it hadn’t spoken up. It really, really doesn’t want to get caught in the middle of another fight between the great Nathaniel Morgan and his pokémon, and it already knows things are going to turn bad when Raticate says, “This is about the battle with Pikachu, isn’t it? You really want to hear me say it? Fine. You were right. I wasn’t strong enough. I lost. Are you happy now?”
The great Nathaniel Morgan scowls at the child while it hesitates. If only someone else could be his stupid translator. The child repeats Raticate’s words, fast, trying to get it over with.
At least the great Nathaniel Morgan stops glaring at it after that. It’s Raticate who gets his look of open-mouthed shock. “No! I mean, Jesus, no, that ain’t it. I’m talking about the thing where you wouldn’t come back when I told you to. What the fuck was up with that?”
“Like I said, Nate, I wasn’t strong enough. I wanted to keep fighting, but you were right, it didn’t make a difference. Are we done?”
“No,” the great Nathaniel Morgan says. Raticate’s staring pointedly at the blank television screen instead. “Listen,” the great Nathaniel Morgan says, “you can’t do that shit, okay? It’s dangerous. Like, you could’ve fucking died.”
“Oh, get over it, Nate. I’m not going to die in some stupid tournament match.”
“Accidents happen,” the great Nathaniel Morgan says firmly. “And they happen especially when you’re dealing with something like that goddamned Pikachu. And even if you didn’t die, you could’ve ended up really hurt, like paralyzed for real or something. That’s why I told you to return, get me? It wasn’t safe. Like, that’s the entire fucking reason I’m there, to make sure you don’t get hurt. So when you don’t listen, it’s like what am I even fucking there for, you know? Like what’s the point?”
Raticate shifts a bit, tucking his front paws under his body with his chin resting on the edge of the seat cushion. “You don’t get it.”
The great Nathaniel Morgan sighs and leans back into the couch. “Get what?”
“It’s not the same for humans. You don’t battle. But for pokémon, being strong is everything. If you want anyone to take you seriously, if you want to live somewhere nice, if you even want to eat, sometimes, you have to be able to fight, and you have to be able to win. So if I can’t, what good am I?”
“What? It ain’t like that, you’re way more than–”
“And you know, raticate are weak pokémon,” Raticate says blandly. “Fine for starting trainers, but they’re no good for high-level competition. Newbie trash. What kind of trainer brings a raticate to the championship?”
“Don’t be fucking stupid,” the great Nathaniel Morgan says. “I mean, you were fighting Red. He has a fucking pikachu, and everybody knows those aren’t for serious trainers. But he’s still motherfucking terrifying.”
Raticate looks at him sidelong, whiskers tilted up in the beginning of a smile. “Oh, so there are some kinds of pokémon that aren’t meant for serious trainers?”
“What? No, that’s not what I–”
“Face it, Nate. You need strong pokémon, and I’m a raticate. I can work really hard, and I’ll get better, but I’m always going to be weak. And if I can’t fight, if I can’t win, then…”
“That’s bullshit!” the great Nathaniel Morgan snaps. “It don’t matter. Even if you never won a single goddamned match, I wouldn’t care.”
“Oh, really? When you were in Team Rocket, what would have happened if you failed a job because you couldn’t take out a guard or a trainer who got in your way? Or what if you got hurt because your pokémon couldn’t protect you? If you can’t do your job, you don’t get paid, and if you don’t get paid, we all don’t eat. You need strong pokémon.”
“Well, Rocket feeds you as long as you don’t fuck up too many times,” the great Nathaniel Morgan says automatically, then shakes his head and goes on, “And anyway, it don’t matter. Like I said, you’re fucking amazing. Ain’t nobody lasted as long as you did against Pikachu. Nobody!”
“Sure, maybe. But it’s always going to be harder for me than for other pokémon. I mean if you had, oh, if you had a metagross, and you put the same amount of effort into training it as you do for me, it would be way stronger than me by now. You probably could have beat Pikachu with your own team, if you had a metagross instead of a raticate.”
“But I don’t want a metagross!” the great Nathaniel Morgan says, an edge of hysteria in his voice. “Only rich assholes use those!” He hesitates, then gathers an unresisting Raticate up in his arms.
“I’m sorry, buddy,” the great Nathaniel Morgan says, rubbing his fingers through Raticate’s fur. “I had no idea… I didn’t know it meant that much to you. I didn’t mean nothing by it, I swear. And if I ever said anything, or if I ever, if I ever did anything to make you think I’d only like you if you were strong or shit like that, I’m sorry, I swear I didn’t mean it. I swear I wouldn’t care even if you were a lardass who ate all my food and napped in the sun all day.” A brief smile passes across the great Nathaniel Morgan’s face as he’s privy to some amusing mental image. “And that would be the best thing, wouldn’t it? To not have to fight no more?”
Raticate hangs in the great Nathaniel Morgan’s arms, ignoring his trainer’s stroking. “It’s nice of you to say that, Nate, but this is how it is. Pokémon battle. It’s what we’re for. And if you’re not good at battling, then you’re not a very good pokémon, either.”
The great Nathaniel Morgan sighs and hugs Raticate close under his chin, staring at the wreckage of half-empty cereal boxes strewn across the table. “This is… a lot more than I thought, Raticate,” he says. “We need to talk more later. We gotta talk.” But for a second his gaze slides over to you, and you know he must be thinking the same thing you are: there can’t be any later, not like this. Because he’s leaving.
“Nothing to talk about, Nate.”
“Later. But right now, I need you to promise me you won’t ignore me when I tell you to return again, okay? I’m only gonna do that when it’s serious, so if you don’t… If you do like you did against Pikachu, I can’t do it, okay? I can’t have nobody risking their life for me. If I say it’s time to stop, you stop, okay? Promise me.”
“Nobody’s risking their life–”
“Please,” the great Nathaniel Morgan says. “I’m serious, Raticate. I can’t do it. If you’re gonna be like that, we can’t work together. Simple as that.”
“Fine,” Raticate says at length. “Whatever you say, Nate.”
“You mean it? Because if you’re just saying yes now to get me off your–”
“Yes, Nate, I promise,” Raticate says. He squirms out of the great Nathaniel Morgan’s embrace and crawls back to his spot on the couch, turning his back on his trainer. “Or are you going to tell me you don’t trust me to keep my word now, either?”
“Thanks, Raticate,” the great Nathaniel Morgan says softly. He sits there watching Raticate for so long that the child starts to consider how best to sneak off without getting noticed. Finally the great Nathaniel Morgan says, “It’s okay to fight, you know, if you want to. But it’s okay to stop, too.”
Raticate doesn’t say anything, and at last the great Nathaniel Morgan gets up to leave. After a moment’s indecision the child hurries after, only for the great Nathaniel Morgan to stop at the screened door. He hooks his fingers into the edge of the screen while he stares through it to the beach and the ocean beyond.
“Great Nathaniel Morgan…” the child says when he doesn’t do anything but stand there for a few minutes.
“And what about you, huh?” the great Nathaniel Morgan says. “Why the fuck did you flip out against that Blastoise? You shoulda had things in the bag.” He turns towards the child, and now it looks like he’s properly feeling his injuries. “Just please Christ don’t tell me it somehow has to do with your weird daddy issues or whatever the fuck, I can’t even deal with more of that bullshit right now.”
“That is what I wanted to ask you about,” the child says. “Did you notice anything strange about the blastoise? Or the rest of the Champion’s pokémon?”
“No,” the great Nathaniel Morgan says. “I mean, they’re freaky strong and all, but I already knew that.”
“Not that,” the child says. “They did not talk, I mean I think they did not know how, I tried but they would not say anything to me, and they were all weird and like they did not even feel pain or anything!”
The great Nathaniel Morgan shakes his head slowly. “No. I mean, I guess they were quiet and all, but it’s like a serious match, most people ain’t gonna talk much. And sure, they tanked pretty fucking well, but–”
“And when I looked at Blastoise like with aura he looked all wrong! Like he was rotting or something. So I thought… he might be a zombie. And then he bit me…”
The child’s expecting the great Nathaniel Morgan to make fun of it for that, is prepared to say it’s not stupid, it totally made sense, but the great Nathaniel Morgan just rubs the back of his neck slowly, face slack and vacant with thought. “Never heard of nothing like that, Freak. And I mean, sure, I guess Red’s pokémon were kinda weird, be he’s kinda fucking weird, and I don’t think it means nothing.”
“I saw! There is something wrong with them, all of them, and I think the Champion, too. And I was thinking, what if Mewtwo–”
“Oh, Jesus. Like I even give a shit if that bastard has aura cancer or whatever the fuck. Long as he gives Steelix back I don’t give one single ounce of a fuck what else.” The great Nathaniel Morgan examines the child a moment. “So the blastoise bit you, but you didn’t get, like, sick or nothing, did you?”
“No. But I do not get sick anyway, so that could be it. It was dumb to be afraid, I just got freaked out because I have never seen anything like it.”
The great Nathaniel Morgan nods slowly, expression still abstracted. “Well, it’s weird, I guess, but ain’t our problem, right? God knows I hope I never see Red again in my fucking life.”
“I guess not,” the child says. The great Nathaniel Morgan nods.
“I’m gonna go find Graveler,” he says. “She’s rolling around out there, I can hear her.”
The child can hear her, too, or feel more than hear, a rumble through the ground like heavy equipment moving somewhere not far off. Sometimes the jungle rings with the gunshot crack of a snapped tree, the ripping noise of something tearing through vegetation.
“Go on, then. You said you are leaving tonight?”
“At the latest. If that Absol actually fucking shows up, I’m getting Steelix, and then I’m gone.”
“Okay,” the child says. It stands watching by the door until the blare of the TV makes it jump, then hurries back to the living room to wrestle a box of cereal from Raticate before there’s nothing left at all for its breakfast.
The child’s on the couch again while the light outside turns orange-golden and the shadows grow, watching TV with a kind of desperate inattention. Despite itself, it might be worried. It knows Absol isn’t going to get caught by a bunch of Rockets–if absolutely nothing else, she would have seen that, would have warned the child. But maybe she got hurt, or maybe even Mewtwo’s done something. Maybe he decided he didn’t need the child after all and would be better off on his own.
All the while the child keeps expecting to hear the great Nathaniel Morgan’s footsteps as he comes to demand that it take him back to the mainland. It’s so busy listening for him that it doesn’t even notice Absol until she sweeps past the couch. She doesn’t acknowledge the child, either, doesn’t even slow down. The minimized master ball between her teeth sets up a mosquito whine of psychic energy at the back of the child’s skull.
“Absol,” the child says, grinning, and reaches down to dig its fingers into her ruff. She turns and gives it a polite “were you talking to me?” look. “They didn’t catch you!”
“No.” There’s something smug in the way her eyes scrunch up, a bit of amusement or a smile. The child has to smile itself, relieved and exasperated at the same time. Not that it had ever really been worried. Absol is just Absol.
The child takes the master ball and cups it between its hands, feeling vaguely ridiculous hunched over and staring at it. “Mewtwo?”
Finally, he grouses, and though it comes freighted with annoyance and resentment, his tiny, squeaky voice makes the child work to suppress a laugh. Let me out.
The child swallows its amusement. In its head plays a memory of the great Nathaniel Morgan, breathless and desperate: Don’t let him out!
“Mewtwo, do you know what happened to the Champion’s pokémon?” the child finds itself asking.
What? Impatience crackles in his mental voice. This isn’t more of this zombie nonsense, is it?
“So you didn’t do anything to them? You don’t know… what happened?”
Do something to those morons? What would be the point? Now let. Me. OUT.
The child traces little circles on the master ball’s shiny top but keeps its fingers far away from the release button. Absol watches closely, inscrutable. Is this some kind of test? “Thank you… for not telling the great Nathaniel Morgan about his steelix,” the child says at last.
Hilarious, isn’t it? the clone says, and his amusement fills the child’s head, the kind of feeling it gets when it thinks of something funny at an inappropriate moment. So desperate and hopeful without the faintest clue what’s actually going on. It’s almost a pity. It would have been entertaining, seeing how far we could make him go to get his precious pokémon back, but in the end it’s better that Team Rocket take him.
The child’s starting to feel nauseous, Mewtwo’s good humor clashing weirdly with its own unease. “Mewtwo…”
You did WHAT? the master ball roars at it, so loud the child flinches even though Mewtwo still sounds like he’s on helium.
“Eskar lied! I couldn’t just–”
Yes, you could, you absolute imbecile. And then you brought the human here. Here! Now let me out. Let me out!
“But Mewtwo, it doesn’t matter. He’s all alone and sick anyway, he can’t do anything! Besides, it… it would be fun, wouldn’t it? Like you said. We can make him do whatever we–”
You absolute moron. He knows about this place now. He already knew too much about you, and me, and Mew, and now you go and hand him even more? Let me out.
“What are you going to do?” the child asks, and it can’t tell whether its heart is pounding with fear or with the gift of Mewtwo’s anger.
I’m going to correct your mistake, obviously, the clone says. The human has served its purpose. It’s not safe to keep around. I thought Team Rocket would take care of it, but no, you had to interfere. Now let me out.
“No!” the child says, with a wild glance at Absol. She looks back blankly. Of course. She can’t even hear what Mewtwo’s saying. Mewtwo’s curses echo inside the child’s skull. “Tell me where my pokémon are! Then I will let you out.”
You’re going to ignore me? Mewtwo rants back. You sit there and let that Rocket walk around free and leave me imprisoned? Have you forgotten what that human’s done? What all of Team Rocket’s done? To us? To our mother?
“Stop it!” Tears tickle the corners of the child’s eyes, and it’s gripping the master ball so hard the muscles stand out in its wrists. “Stop being mean! Just tell me where my pokémon are, you know you’ll need to eventually, Mewtwo, we have to have them. Please–”
Let me out! the clone bellows back, tinny and high-pitched. You worthless creature! You think I’m being mean and that justifies imprisonment? You don’t have any idea, you’ve never been in a pokéball–
“Stop it!” the child screams, and hurls the master ball across the room, so hard it dents the far wall. The clone’s raging cuts out abruptly, too far away now to feel.
Absol presses up against the child’s leg, looking up at it with narrowed eyes. “Are you all right?”
The child pants, trying to get its equilibrium back. It doesn’t want to try and explain to Absol, doesn’t want to start some kind of argument, but with a flash of resolve it knows what it does want to do. It wipes its eyes with the back of one hand and marches across the room to retrieve the master ball.
Mewtwo beams seething anger into its head, but it ignores that and all Mewtwo’s blistering mental invective while it carries the master ball out onto the beach. The great Nathaniel Morgan isn’t far away, napping in the shade at the edge of the jungle while Raticate and Mightyena play down by the water.
The child doesn’t even have to wake him up. Mewtwo’s anger sweeps out in front of it like a wave, and the great Nathaniel Morgan sits up before the child can even reach him, frowning groggily. “The fuck do you want?” he snaps.
The child holds the master ball out to him. “Absol brought Mewtwo. He won’t say where our pokémon are.”
The great Nathaniel Morgan leans forward, eagerly snatching the ball away from the child. “We’ll just see about that,” he growls, and the child stands back to watch the master work.
The great Nathaniel Morgan is the most stubborn, annoying person the child knows, so if there’s anyone who can out-frustrate Mewtwo, make the clone finally give up and tell the child where to find its pokémon, it would have to be him. At worst it thinks they might kind of cancel each other out, their unpleasant personalities colliding and annihilating each other like some kind of cosmic event. But while the great Nathaniel Morgan’s in top fuck-you form, Mewtwo acts like he doesn’t care about the human’s threats, his taunts, his endless string of curses. Finally the great Nathaniel Morgan’s reduced to screaming and shaking the master ball impotently. “You sick bastard, if all you’re going to do is sit in there and fuck with me, then fine, you can fucking rot!”
I can’t feel that, you know, Mewtwo says, and the great Nathaniel Morgan shakes him even more viciously, then slams the master ball down in the sand. The great Nathaniel Morgan crosses his arms, drawing his knees up to his chest and directing a furious scowl out across the ocean. The child, disappointed, picks up the now smugly-bubbling master ball and tosses it away, not so far that it’s out of sight, but far enough that it can’t hear Mewtwo and vice versa.
“What the fuck is this?” the great Nathaniel Morgan fumes. “First he acts like if we even think something he doesn’t like he’s going to pop out of there and fucking murder us, and now he’s going on like if not for us he’s never going to see the fucking sun again.”
“He was bluffing the last time,” the child says, giving the master ball a disapproving look. “There is no way he can break out of there. It is a master ball. That is the entire point.”
“Oh, yeah. It is, ain’t it?” The great Nathaniel Morgan rests his chin on his arms. “How the hell did Red catch the bastard in the first place, is what I want to know. Mewtwo would’ve felt him coming a mile off, wouldn’t he? He’d know what the master ball was. He could’ve like psy-crushed it from a thousand yards or some shit. So how the hell’d he end up caught?”
The child hadn’t really thought about it, but now with what it’s seen of Red, and his pokémon… maybe that had something to do with it.
“Musta just packed enough heat to knock Mewtwo out, then pulled the ball out of storage real fast and clocked him with it,” the great Nathaniel Morgan says. “Woulda taken more than just his team, though. Even that Pikachu would be pretty easy for Mewtwo to beat.”
“They always say Red did it by himself.”
The great Nathaniel Morgan waves the words away. “Yeah, yeah, they say.”
The child realizes the great Nathaniel Morgan is watching his pokémon. The play-fighting between Raticate and Mightyena’s escalated to real fighting, sand spraying in all directions and ribbons of dark energy twisting through the air. After a few minutes some winner must be decided because Raticate comes limping over to the great Nathaniel Morgan, who digs a couple of potions out of his backpack–those are the child’s potions, it realizes sourly–and passes them over without comment.
“A guy could get used to this, Freak,” the great Nathaniel Morgan says, looking out at the ocean, then up into the palm fronds overhead, swaying and clattering in the sea breeze.
“It is my island,” the child says warningly. “I thought you were going to leave.”
“No point. Mewtwo’s got Steelix, right? So ain’t going nowhere else is gonna help me find him.” The great Nathaniel Morgan sighs. “Less you’re saying you’re gonna kick me out, that is.”
“Yes, Mewtwo does have your steelix,” the child says immediately. “And I guess you can stay for a little bit. As long as you are not annoying.” But what are the chances of that?
“Works for me,” the great Nathaniel Morgan says. “You need me around anyway to keep an eye on Kerrigan, since you fucking suck at kidnapping. And I would know, you know?”
“I do not,” the child says and, narrowing its eyes. “How did you even get away last time, anyway?”
“Ah, yeah, that was pretty good, wasn’t it?” the great Nathaniel Morgan says cheerfully. “Bet if I was you, I’d really want to know, too.”
“Very funny,” the child says. It picks up the master ball, cradling the black hole of anger gingerly between its hands. “If you keep annoying me, I am going to send you back to the mainland, and good luck finding your steelix then.”
“Guess I better pack,” the great Nathaniel Morgan says, but smiling like it’s a joke.
“I mean it,” the child replies, trying to shove Mewtwo’s thoughts aside. The clone keeps blasting it with all the reasons it should murder the human right here and now, or even better let Mewtwo out to do it himself. The great Nathaniel Morgan raises a hand in acknowledgement, or perhaps a gesture of sarcastic farewell. After moment of thinking about punting him to some remote corner of Kanto the child decides it doesn’t care enough, and besides, letting the great Nathaniel Morgan hang around can’t be the worst decision ever if Mewtwo hates the idea that much. It holds the master ball delicately, as if hot, and goes back down to the house to think of what to do next.