Chapter 39

The child has to go home eventually. It teleports straight to its doorstep like always, but stops there, prickling unease seeping in over its apathy. The house looms darkly overhead, thrumming with psychic power. Mewtwo’s still awake.

Yes, I am. The clone’s voice rings clear in the child’s head. Where is the human?

The child backs up, forgetting where it is and having to make a wild grab for something before it falls backwards off the porch. The door creaks slowly open to show black void beyond, psychic pressure pouring out. The child swallows hard, gathering courage. “Gone,” it says to the dark behind the door. “Gone. I…” It loses its train of thought when something pale resolves in the black of the entryway, Mewtwo’s grayish fur almost glowing as he moves closer and then steps out into moonlight.

Gone? What do you mean, gone? Mewtwo looks as calm as ever, but his mental words crackle so that the child flinches from them.

“I sent him to look for his steelix,” the child says. “He’s gone.” With a bitter afterthought, “You won’t have to listen to him whine anymore.”

Mewtwo’s head snaps up, and he looks up and down the beach, like the great Nathaniel Morgan might simply be lurking somewhere, watching them. The child’s heart starts to pound, and fear-sweat coats its palms, the last of its numbness evaporating before a wave of adrenaline. It’s only barely realized where the fear is coming from when Mewtwo asks, What did you do? WHAT DID YOU DO?

“I, I took him, to find–”

YOU ABSOLUTE IMBECILE! The child hurtles backwards and lands hard in the sand yards away, like the sheer venom of the words was enough to send it flying. It gasps soundlessly, the breath forced from its lungs, and a second later Mewtwo’s there, hovering now with eyes blazing purple. The sand beneath him crawls away like a living thing, piling up coldly against the child’s feet.

Go! Mewtwo snarls. Go back! Find it!

“Why?” The child despises how weak and terrified the word comes out. It hates how it can’t keep track of its own emotions with Mewtwo’s blaring in its head, how it sweats and trembles in the grip of rage and fear and confusion, not even sure which belong to it.

Idiot! The child’s head snaps to the side from a telekinetic blow, and its vision flickers. It gasps, pressing unconsciously at its face. It will tell them everything! And you simply let it go free?

“No!” An icy moment of realization, the beginning glimmer of just how big a mistake it’s made. “No, he won’t tell anybody. He won’t, how could he, he hates the police, they’d just lock him up, he’d never–”

Mewtwo leans closer, near horizontal in the air, and the child is pressed down into the sand. It desires its steelix, doesn’t it?

Well, yes, but–“No, no,” the child repeats, eyes hot with building tears. “No, he wouldn’t.” Except of course he absolutely would.

Yes, absolutely, Mewtwo sneers. Especially if it realized it could exchange what it knows about us for money, or for information about where that steelix went. Now go back there and retrieve it and let this be the end of your idiocy.

The child’s thoughts race. The great Nathaniel Morgan has to be in Viridian City by now. Or maybe not, maybe he’s done there already, if he looked and found the Viridian base empty like the child told him it would be. He could have found a way to teleport. To fly. He could be anywhere in Kanto now.

Then you had better get started, Mewtwo snarls, if you have all the region to search.

The child takes deep breaths, trying to think. It helps that Mewtwo’s at least subsided from panic to something cold and seething. “No,” the child says after a moment. “That would be a waste of time. He could be anywhere. So what if he tells people where we are? We’re leaving, aren’t we? We have to go to Orre. So let’s go already.”

Mewtwo doesn’t move. He hovers there, eyes glowing, not even angry anymore. All he is is cold. The child begins to feel afraid, afraid with its own fear now. You seem to think I’m making a request, Mewtwo finally says. For some time, you’ve acted as though you are the one in charge. Tell me, why is that?

“What do you mean?”

Is it because of this? The master ball? It’s floating close by the clone, as it always has to be. Do you think you control me because some other human had me trapped? Do you believe yourself the leader simply because you call yourself ‘trainer?’

“Mewtwo, there’s no point looking for the great Nathaniel Morgan. That’s all I’m saying.”

It was not a suggestion. It is not up for debate. This is the problem. You will do as I say.

“It’s not my fault what you want me to do is stupid. Telling me to do it anyway won’t make it less dumb.”

We’ll battle, then. I’ll prove I am your superior. The clone rises higher, the air around him flashing with purple sparks, his psychic pressure growing to bend trees and flatten bushes against the ground.

He’s trying to scare the child. No, it has to be honest–he’s already scared it. He knows, so the child has to know, too. But being scared doesn’t mean it’s wrong. “We don’t have to fight. I know you’re stronger than me, Mewtwo. It doesn’t matter who’s st–”

You say you know, but you don’t act like it. You think you’re worthy of ordering me around? Prove it. Battle me. Now.

“No. Leave me alone, Mewtwo.” He can feel the child’s heart pounding. He knows how hard it is for it to speak.

He doesn’t care. That wasn’t a suggestion, either.

The first attack hits before the child’s fully transitioned to dark-type, an unformed psychic blast that sears its skin and sends up a choking cloud of sand. The child grits its teeth and reaches for shadow, the awful hum of Mewtwo’s psychic field receding, the bloodlust and vicious amusement that threaten to become wild laughter fading away to nothing.

Mewtwo deflects a rippling dark pulse with the flick of a finger, and the child’s vision dazzles with rainbow light as a miracle eye sweeps over it. A moment later crushing psychic pressure returns, its veil of darkness dissolved before the clone’s power. No sooner has the miracle eye faded than Mewtwo hits the child with a concussive burst of psychic energy, and it turns and runs, fleeing across the beach. Mewtwo stalks after, taking his long, graceful strides.

The child’s not going to do this. It’s not going to fight Mewtwo–that’s insane. It knows it has no chance. The child spins around and fires a shadow ball as a distraction, then focuses on an image of Fuchsia City–only for its entire body to erupt in agony, pain so intense that it wipes out all thought and blanks the child’s vision. The next it can think it’s somehow ended up on the ground in a horrid rictus, mouth full of blood from its stinging bitten tongue.

I don’t remember saying you could go, Mewtwo says. You’re the one who started this. Stand and fight.

The child can only stare at him, mute with panic, and then Mewtwo sends a psycho cut slashing across the beach. The child isn’t fast enough in dodging, but all it feels when the attack cuts a gash across its leg is the warmth of welling blood. It runs, and Mewtwo follows lazily, firing off attacks one at a time. In its confusion the child can’t even manage to block them all. It reaches desperately for wonder guard, keeps flitting between types, but Mewtwo catches on after only a couple of attacks, then pauses, eyes glowing. The child’s caught in a strange sinking feeling, like it’s being dragged down even though it isn’t moving. A halo flickers briefly over Mewtwo’s head as the skill swap takes hold. Not fun, but at least some of his mind’s awful pressure lifts, radiating from the child now instead. And that was a moment when he wasn’t attacking, a moment the child could spend thinking.

That’s what it has to do–think. It can’t possibly win through strength, so its only hope is to outsmart Mewtwo. But how are you supposed to outsmart someone who can peer into your thoughts?

Not to mention a fool like you has no chance of outwitting me, Mewtwo says. He follows his skill swap with a casual flamethrower, a thunderbolt–simply slinging attacks, maybe practicing some he doesn’t use often. Not really trying to win, but only to prolong the battle. The child has no doubt that he could keep this up all night, would probably be glad to.

The air around the child flickers and blurs with power. Reflect, light screen, anything to take the worst of the bite out of Mewtwo’s attacks. Still the clone strides forward, raising a fist and cracking it against thin air, the brick break releasing a pulse of energy that rattles through the child’s defenses. A second strike, and another, and the barriers explode in sparkling, fading shards.

They did help, though. A few seconds’ respite from the worst of the clone’s assault is enough to form the beginnings of a plan. The child has to get out of here, needs to, can’t fight. Can’t teleport. But there are other ways of running.

Again Mewtwo sees what the child’s about to do and blasts it with pure psychic agony, but the pain only lasts a second, eaten through and defeated as darkness closes in. The child looks out on a black-and-white film-negative world, where trees sprout and grow and thrust up branches, then topple and decay and sprout again. Mewtwo is small and then tall, at the height of his power, then no more than cracked and powdering bones, for even he must perish someday. The very island the child seems to stand on shifts to sea and then boiling rock-slab before eroding back to nothing. And everything is cold, cold, cold. The child’s in the dark ways now, the inverse world tucked into the back of the light, where everything is always happening, all at once.

For a few moments the child stands and simply enjoys safety, the total absence of psychic threat. Even the piercing cold, warning of what will happen if it remains too long, is so much more pleasant than the buzz of Mewtwo’s power in its head. The child watches the dance of time, its house rising up in skeletal beams that grow windows and siding, that weather and crack and sag, and then go up in ghostly flame.

The child tears its gaze away, uneasy. How does the house burn down? Lightning strike, maybe? It’s not something to worry about now, anyway.

It’s dangerous to walk the dark ways without Absol for a guide, dangerous especially to travel far. But anything, the child thinks, absolutely anything is better than going back to Mewtwo. And he can’t come here. For once there’s a talent that the scientists didn’t give him. Which way is the mainland? The child tries to see a direction through the chaos, and moves.

The trees melt and blur around the child as it passes between them with no more than a thought. Traveling this way is much faster than flying. The island speeds away beneath the child, and up ahead is where island never was, the open ocean beyond which is the mainland and safety, at least for a while. The child doesn’t speed up, precisely, doesn’t even know if it’s possible to move any faster than it is, but strains towards the wavering end of land and the ocean waves beyond.

Something slams into it from behind, and it’s catapulted flailing back into reality, straight into the side of a tree. Mewtwo’s psychic field comes down like a suffocating blanket. The child moves before even catching its breath, battle training coming to its aid, and a blade of psychic energy digs into the tree trunk behind it, opening a sappy bleeding rent.

Running again! Mewtwo says, hovering overhead. How is he here? How is he even here, almost all the way across the island from where the child left him? The child seizes up as the clone sends a knifing blast of psychic energy into its skull. And you thought you would be safe, did you? Because the scientists never taught me about the dark? I grow tired of this game. I told you not to run. So, here. Perhaps this will encourage you to remain where you are. Mewtwo flexes his fingers, and the child yells, the bone in one leg crunching, grinding together, maybe exploding, sending shards piercing everything around. That’s what it feels like, for sure. With tears in its eyes the child focuses on recovering, sundered bone knitting slowly back together, but Mewtwo’s already gathering power.

The child scrambles away in something halfway between a crawl and a shuffle, scattering sand in all directions. Mewtwo knocks it forward on its face with an aura sphere, and now it really is crawling, acting on instinct with no more desire than to get away. It kicks sand back in Mewtwo’s face, which strikes eyes already closed against it; it fires a thunderbolt at where Mewtwo, a second ago, was.

What happened? What happened? No time to figure it out. The child lunges again towards shadow, and makes it, cutting off Mewtwo’s frustrated snarl.

Standing again in the dark, the child takes only a moment to catch its breath. Even here it isn’t safe. It turns again towards the ocean and races on its way, centuries flashing past on loop, the island disappearing behind it into ocean that barely even remembers being land.

A gleam from the corner of the child’s eye announces another walker of the dark ways who glows with reality’s light. But somehow that walker is Mewtwo, here where he can’t possibly be, sweeping across the seething ocean and straight at the child. The edges of his body look fuzzy, lacy, like they’re being eaten away by black mites, but that isn’t slowing him down. He crashes into the child despite its desperate sideways swerve, and then it’s splashing down in the ocean, in panic drowning only to be hauled up and hurled by psychic power clear back to the beach. The child lands hard and rolls, coughing up salty spray.

Think! Now, more than ever, it needs to. No good running where Mewtwo can follow. No good doing anything against that monster of a clone.

Mewtwo laughs and sends a thunderbolt racing the child’s way, deflected by a weary protect shield. No. The child can’t let that kind of thought win. There’s a way out of this somewhere. Has to be. And to find it, the child needs to think.

So maybe Mewtwo can follow it into shadow. The dark ways are still dark, though. The darkest of all. So dark even Mewtwo’s miracle eye can’t see into them. He can’t read the child’s mind there, so even if it can’t escape, at least its thoughts can be free. The child drags itself sideways, not entirely avoiding a flamethrower, and falls back into darkness.

Mewtwo’s going to be here in a moment, impossible as it is. The child watches him from this side of the divide, where he’s merely part of the landscape, growing and shrinking as time fluctuates all around. And now the child thinks. It really is easier, without Mewtwo’s psychic power pressing down on it.

How can it win? In one hit, with something that can stop anyone. Mewtwo’s not immune to everything. Lock on, then sheer cold, maybe. Guillotine or fissure. But no. Too obvious. He’d suspect something, would probably guess what the child was up to immediately. That sort of combo is baby stuff.

What would the great Nathaniel Morgan say? Mewtwo’s too powerful. No way to win if it’s strength against strength. So then what? Weaken him. Poison, fire spin, whatever. But he can heal himself much faster than any of that could work, slough off whatever status conditions the child uses. Other ideas? Make him think he has the upper hand when he doesn’t. Act weak, so he gets overconfident and sloppy. When he leaves himself open, strike. Well, okay. But what strike is even going make a difference?

Time’s up. Mewtwo’s flickering white ghost flares into existence behind the child even as it flings itself back to the light and takes a gulp of humid island-air. Then turn, stagger, and brace for impact when Mewtwo comes raging out of darkness himself, smacking the child away with his own feint attack.

Hold still, the clone says, pointing, and suddenly the child can’t remember what it was doing. It knows, somehow, that it was trying to get to the dark, but what that means or how to do it is utterly beyond comprehension. It would be even more terrifying if it didn’t recognize the symptoms. Disabled. Mewtwo knocked out… whatever attack it was trying to use.

Of course. I’m tired of you running. This entire battle has been boring, Mewtwo says. Psychic power tightens like a vise around the child’s body, and its head screams with migraine.

“How did you do that?” it asks through gritted teeth. “How did you…?” Do what? It can’t remember that, either. But maybe the child can keep Mewtwo talking until the disable runs out.

Stalling? Oh, but I’ll indulge you, Mewtwo says. He oozes smugness. Copycat, of course. Anything you do, I can do right back. An excellent little joke by my designers, isn’t it? Perhaps you even laughed at it, back when they suggested it.

The child struggles mightily to remember what attack it was that Mewtwo would have copied, but it’s like some word it knows it knows, hanging on the tip of its tongue–only just out of reach, but out of reach enough. Maybe what Mewtwo said will make sense once it remembers.

The clone lazily gathers shadows between his fingers, and the child dreads what must come next, attack after attack until the child’s exhausted, makes a mistake, and one of them hits home. It gathers its own shadow ball, teasing wisps of darkness between its fingers, and the attacks meet midair, exploding in clots of black energy.

Not bad, Mewtwo says. And this? His aura sphere seethes dark purple, flecked here and there with specks of golden brown. It’s at least a third bigger than the child’s own blue one, but the smaller aura sphere still deflects the clone’s attack, sending it spinning away to dissipate among the trees. Who’s copying now? Mewtwo asks. But poorly, you’ll note. I was made better than my predecessor. The air stirs around him, gathering into a ripping cyclone shot through with silvery flashes of energy.

The child’s reluctant, knows Mewtwo wants the child to conjure its own storm to throw at him, clashing like against like. It can’t win by doing this. It can’t win by doing anything. Petulantly the child sends a bolt of lightning into the heart of Mewtwo’s storm, and it crashes uselessly against a protect. All it receives for its trouble is the razor wind howling down at it while it ducks behind its own energy shield. The cutting winds beat against its protect, seemingly forever, and the child tries to think of nothing but keeping the attack going, sweat trickling down its forehead, aching chest rising and falling with tired, gasping breaths.

You’re not even trying anymore, Mewtwo says as the winds die down and the child lets go of its protect. For a second there I thought you might do something mildly interesting, but you’re always a disappointment.

“So knock me out already,” the child says between pants. Its whole body aches, with fatigue, with barely-healed wounds, with a strange lingering chill. “I didn’t want to fight in the first place.”

Oh, no, no, Mewtwo says. Here you are, arguing again. I don’t think you’ve learned your lesson. If I say you’ll fight, you’ll fight.

The child turns its weary gaze up to the clone, who drifts easily above the ground, eyes aglow and haloed by his own power as he begins to charge a new attack. Maybe he can make the child fight, if only by threatening horrible things if it doesn’t, but he can’t make it fight with gusto. At some point it’s going to collapse, and then nothing Mewtwo says will be able to change things. There’s no point even thinking now, no point trying. Even with feint attack, it wouldn’t–

The child freezes in surprise. The disable’s worn off. And even as Mewtwo drags his hands through the air, orange-golden lances of energy raking from his fingers like claws, the child’s moving, ducking down into darkness, and is gone.

It takes a heaving breath on the far side of shadow, drawing in icy mirror-air. There’s no time. In a few seconds Mewtwo’s going to come bursting into the dark, and as soon as the child leaves its safety, he’ll make it forget again.

Think! What’s Mewtwo’s weakness? Everyone has one, even him. Except he doesn’t–or, well, humans made him with no weaknesses. That was the point, that was the point.

The humans realized their mistake, though, didn’t they? They saw what Mewtwo could do, then put limits on him the first chance they got. He does have a weakness, one he always has to carry with him, bobbing close at hand. He can’t go far from it, and he can’t destroy it–can’t even try, for fear of what it would do to him.

That could work, the child realizes with a painful speeding of its pulse. Attack the master ball instead of the clone. All it has to do is keep its mind blank and merely act.

Mewtwo bursts into existence in front of the child, blackened at the edges by borrowed power. The child can’t allow itself to think of anything while it jumps back into the light. Mewtwo emerges beside it, dark energy swirling around him and leaving strange blue-black burn marks along the child’s arms. He isn’t prepared for the child to spring at him, mind scrupulously blank and fingers turned to reaching claws, and he cringes, despite the finest battle training, despite his every instinct being tuned to fighting calm. When Mewtwo flinches aside from the astonish, the child turns and fires a thunderbolt directly into his master ball.

The clone screeches, back arching in pain. The master ball’s button flashes red, and Mewtwo does too, but the child schools itself not to look, to indulge no interest at all and simply leap and grab the master ball out of the air. Mewtwo rounds on the child with a wordless silent shout of fury, and the child crushes the ball between its hands.

Mewtwo screams again, and the child winces, the noise almost physically painful as it buffets the inside of the child’s skull. It keeps watering eyes closed and focuses everything it has into the master ball, which glows red and then white with power while Mewtwo howls. The clone’s psychic field grows stronger and stronger, so the child’s head feels like it might burst, until it’s convinced it must have burst and it’s basically dead, so blood runs from its ears and nose. There’s a flash of heat and light like a bomb going off, and the child’s hurled into the forest with trees snapping and toppling around it, in a cloud of sand and shredded vegetation and pinwheeling, disoriented hoothoot. The child hits the ground hard and slams sideways into the splintery now-stump of a tree and lies there, blinded by its own blood, dazed and drained of all motivation.

You dare? Mewtwo roars from somewhere off where the child can’t see him. Its head hurts too much for it to figure out what direction his psychic field is coming from, and it finds it can’t turn to look, either. You dare use those slavers’ tricks against me?

The child’s vaguely aware of Mewtwo’s master ball still caged between its fingers and presses weakly down on it. In the distance Mewtwo shrieks with rage. If the child could only pull itself together for a moment, if it could concentrate and teleport…

Something cracks and crashes through debris and shredded underbrush, coming closer. The child instinctively tenses, tries to rise, but only flops uselessly on the ground. Mewtwo charges into view, a tall pale blotch against the sky, and calls the master ball to himself with a gesture, wrenching it from the child’s grasp so violently that for a second the child wonders if its fingers went with it.

Trust a human, Mewtwo snarls. Trust a human to take the most underhanded–the most humiliating–despicable– He reaches down and grabs the child around the neck, lifting it easily, and the child’s random struggles abruptly take on more purpose. Its fingers scrabble over Mewtwo’s arm, leaving red scratches that the clone ignores. It thinks it might pass out right there, vision shrinking under the vise of Mewtwo’s fingers and psychic power alike.

Oh, no, the clone says. Oh, no. I’m not nearly done with you yet. I offered you a proper battle, and then you took it out of bounds. We’re only getting started.

Mewtwo tosses the child to the ground, and it doesn’t really feel the impact; it’s more like things disconnect for a second instead. There’s no hope of recovering before Mewtwo’s mind compresses its whole body, crushing organs and splintering bones. All the while the clone’s raving, sweating and shaking and spewing glowing arcs of psychic energy in all directions. You thought you could get the better of me? Truly? You think you even understand what I’m capable of? Do you know how gentle I have to be not to crush a pathetic thing like you?

The child tries to recover, pure energy knitting together vessels spilling bruises beneath its skin, reinflating cavities collapsed under psychic pressure, repairing damage near as fast as it happens. It can’t stop, can’t let up for an instant because if it falls behind there will be only seconds before Mewtwo crushes it entire, before the black around the edges of its vision comes flooding in.

Stay awake! Mewtwo snaps and deals a blow with his tail that somehow does jolt life into the child, the bright shock of pain wrenching it back to alertness. You’re not going to faint, Mewtwo snarls. I have so much more to show you. Keep yourself together or this will be only the beginning.

The child curls in on itself, growing smaller and smaller so there’s less of it to hurt. It armors with steel and bone, rock and whatever hardness it can think of until it resembles little more than a craggy sort of egg, presenting no targets, crushed down small by Mewtwo’s psychic power.

Not that it’s any good, of course. Mewtwo’s blows will crater metal and crack rock, and there can be no shield against the penetrating power of his mind. He’s grown more careful, though, or maybe remembered his technique. There’s a lot that can hurt without being damage, many ways to injure a pokémon without bringing it closer to fainting. The child hangs in a hallucinatory haze of pain, not even trying to escape anymore but only to endure, too tired to recover. It only wants this to be over, for Mewtwo to mess up and finally strike a blow that sends it into unconsciousness.

He doesn’t. It takes the child sludgy seconds to realize that he’s stopped attacking, actually, his psychic field receding to suffocating discomfort from spiking pain. It’s pathetic how fast hope returns, hope that he might be done, finally. The child doesn’t even notice Absol’s there until she speaks. “What are you doing?”

Once the child’s lagging brain finally recognizes the voice, its relief evaporates into panic, a rush of energy it can’t believe it still has. Surely Mewtwo wouldn’t kill–he’s complained often enough that he can’t kill the child. And yet here Absol is, standing between it and Mewtwo, a quiet white omen.

I’m teaching this creature a lesson, Mewtwo says. Stand aside, guardian.

“How do you expect this to help?” Absol asks. At least the child knows she won’t back down. Whatever Mewtwo does, she can stand there and make cryptic remarks all day.

I’m in charge. The creature doesn’t recognize that.

The child struggles to find its voice. “You can’t be in charge if you do things that mess up our mission. Absol, tell him–tell him why–”

You see? Mewtwo unleashes a blast of pain so the child can’t hear for screaming, can’t tell if Absol says something or tries to do anything at all. When it ends and the child can hear again, Absol says, “Have you considered another way of doing this?” and that’s such a perfect example of her unhelpful not-questions that the child tries to laugh.

Like what? Mewtwo snarls. An appeal to reason? To its–to its humanity? None of that works! He lashes out with another harsh bolt of pain, and when the child comes to it finds itself resting against Absol’s side, staining her fur red. Absol stares at Mewtwo, body curled into a protective barrier between the child and the clone. “Child!” she snaps, and for a moment the child is confused. “Think! What choice are you making?”

Stand aside, Mewtwo says. Or would you interfere? This looks like interference to me, guardian. How many times have you stood aside from me? When the human captured me, when they condemned me to the dark? Where were you then?

“It’s true that I can do nothing to stop you, if this is what you want. Even if I turned from Fate I could do nothing. All I can do is ask you to reconsider.”

Did you ask the others to reconsider? Did you ever even try? Mewtwo snarls. Meanwhile the child struggles to unmoor itself from its slough of pain and exhaustion. If it could only concentrate, perhaps it would have an opening to telepor–

Mewtwo blasts it with pain again, and the child tries to ride it out, to frame a clear picture in its head for just the moment necessary to be gone, but it’s no use. It manages to hold onto itself for a couple of seconds, and then even that is lost in agony.

That’s what you’ve aligned yourself with, Mewtwo says while the child lies on the ground and sobs, choking on blood and spit. And this is none of your concern. Now stand aside.

Absol doesn’t stand aside, but she doesn’t try to stop Mewtwo, either. He stalks around her to stand over the child, which can’t suppress a cringe. It’s still afraid, somehow, for the remains of its twisted, pathetically armored body, its ebbing mind. Mewtwo’s psychic field seethes with what feels like more anger than ever.

Oh, yes, the clone says. And here I thought I’d be able to enjoy a battle, even a poor one. Instead all you do is remind me how disgusting you are.

He kicks the child in what might be classified as its side, denting steel armor as though it were cardboard. I’ve had enough of this, the clone says. Now, do you understand? Who is it that makes the decisions?

“Mewtwo,” the child says hoarsely, “it doesn’t matter. If you have bad ideas, then–” Mewtwo’s eyes flash with power, and the child’s caught in another riptide of pain.

What was that? Mewtwo asks while the child coughs and chokes, after the screaming’s over and the clone’s eyes have dulled. It sounded as though you had some problem with my leadership.

It takes the child two tries to get something out. “Mewtwo, I… You know that–”

The clone lashes it with another burst of pain, longer this time, and when the child can finally stop yelling, or trying to, it rasps, “Okay! Okay… You win. I’ll do what you say. I’ll do what you say!”

After all that? Mewtwo asks. Such a change of heart. I don’t know that I believe it. The child’s pleas fall away into strained noises of pain; it’s too hoarse and tired to scream. Well? Are you convinced? Mewtwo asks while the child sobs. It’s only just groping towards sounds that approximate speech when the clone says, No. I don’t think I believe you.

The child convulses again in the grip of burning psychic power, and it seems to take a long time for the world to come back into focus afterwards, the moonlit forest a blurry monochrome, Absol’s white coat shining like a second moon where she lurks nearby, not interfering.

Don’t faint! Mewtwo snaps, lashing out with a hot, quick slash of pain so the child cringes. You want this to be over? Then say it. Who do you obey?

The child struggles to respond, to unstick its bitten tongue and clear parched and ragged throat. Don’t keep me waiting, Mewtwo says, and the child coughs, desperately, and tries until it can come up with rough-edged words, forcing everything out in a rush despite the pain.

“You! You’re in charge! I won’t do anything bad, I swear. I swear! Whatever you want, I’ll do whatever you want, I promise, I promise, whatever you say, I mean it, I mean it, I really mean it, I–”

Mmm, Mewtwo drawls while the child babbles on. Very well. I suppose that’s the best I can expect. And, ignoring the child’s tearful rambling thanks, he turns away. Now, we’re about to embark on a long journey, aren’t we? I wouldn’t want you to get distracted–thoughts of home, maybe, or perhaps escape. You won’t be needing this anymore.

He raises an arm, and the child flinches, pressing itself into the dirt and jabbering abasements. Mewtwo tosses a glowing ball of flame in a high arc–not at the child. It flinches again at the explosion and then lies still, wondering why Mewtwo did that. It’s not until it smells smoke that it jerks its head up, painfully, to see flames over the trees. Its house is burning.

“No!” it croaks. Mewtwo lobs another incinerate, which bursts against the siding of the ruined west wing, cracking windows. “No, no!”

The child drags itself forward, too tired to rise, and Mewtwo puts a foot on its back, forcing it down again. It watches through tear-blurred eyes while its home burns, shivering and coughing and trying to say “no.” In the smoke and darkness it starts to lose track of where it is, when it is. Sometimes it sees the house but sometimes it sees the Cinnabar Lab amidst the jetting flames instead. For the second time Mewtwo’s burning the child’s life.

Do you understand now? Mewtwo asks. This is what happens when you defy me. This or far, far worse.

The child whimpers, staring helplessly into the fire. Mewtwo kicks it, then stalks off somewhere, ranting at no one. His psychic field smothers everything, and for once the child reaches for it, would rather feel the clone’s jagged anger than its own despair. Its face is wet with tears, but it’s not crying anymore while it watches the flames climb higher, everything it owns going up in smoke. The world begins to feel gray and far off, even Mewtwo’s burning feelings sliding out of reach.

No! Don’t faint, you worthless… But even the blast of pain Mewtwo lobs at the child can’t drag it back awake.