Chapter 44

“I don’t understand why I always have to be the one to rampage,” Steelix grumbles. Even coiled atop himself he takes up most of the Saffron back-alley you’re huddled in, spending a moment to organize before setting your plan in motion.

Raticate looks up at twenty feet of diamond-hard metal-spiked serpent and says, “Steelix, bud, some people are just born to rampage.”

Steelix lets out a sigh so immense it blows a curious pidgey off a nearby power line. “I suppose.”

“You’re good, then? All right. Let’s go!” Raticate shouts. He charges out of the alley, leading Mightyena and Graveler. Steelix waits behind, pressed flat against the ground, listening.

“Oh. Well. People are running away a lot faster this time,” he says after a moment. For your benefit. You stand well back from the excitement, wrapped in a new disguise, a new face to call your own. You don’t think you like this one, though. You haven’t liked anyone you’ve tried to be recently. Their skins don’t fit, their hair itches down at the roots, falls strangely, feels brittle. Their limbs are all the wrong lengths.

“They know what to expect when those three show up now,” you say. “That’s good. The whole idea is for people to recognize you, including your trainer.”

“I know,” Steelix says, morosely resting his chin on a dumpster. The metal groans under his weight, then buckles with an abrupt boom. Steelix hastily raises his head again. “I still don’t understand why Raticate thinks I’m meant to rampage. The other three seem like they actually enjoy it.”

“Steelix, get out here already!” It’s Raticate’s voice, distant. Steelix gives another gustily wistful sigh, then slithers out into the street. You move up to peer around the corner and finally get a look at the action.

The street’s deserted save for the woman Mightyena’s chasing down, who looks more interested in getting pictures with her pokénav than escaping danger. Another pidgey and a spearow have landed on a nearby rooftop to watch.

Steelix makes a grinding throat-clearing noise, then announces in his most stentorian bellow, “Excuse me! Excuse me, clear the way! I am going to rampage!”

You cringe, but after a moment have to smile. “We’ve talked to him about the thing,” Raticate’s told you. “We explained about the thing. He still does it. It’s just his thing. You kind of have to roll your eyes and go along with it.”

Steelix weaves back and forth across the street, here snaking through a restaurant patio, toppling tables and sandwich-board signs, there swinging his tail to send a mailbox into the stratosphere. Pivoting, he knocks over a streetlight. “Oh, excuse me. Terribly sorry,” he says, and while backing away from the sparking stump runs over a fire hydrant, which which pops and spews water into his undercarriage. Steelix roars, and his panicked thrashings flatten a tree and hurl a car into a building. You don’t agree with Raticate, personally; rampaging doesn’t seem like something Steelix was born to but rather something that kind of happens to him, accidentally.

After a moment to regain his composure, Steelix slams his tail into a storefront and drags it across the facade, scattering broken glass and brick and mangled shopping carts. He must have taken out some internal support, too, because further cracks and smashes emanate from within the building in the wake of his swing, and then a whole section of the ceiling collapses, dumping desks and office chairs from the real estate agency overhead onto collapsed shelves and scattered merchandise.

“Oh no, oh no. Sorry! I’m sorry!” Steelix holds his tail out away from the building and looks around guiltily, as if wondering whether he’ll be able to slip away without anyone noticing. He winces when another section of ceiling gives way, starting a second mini-avalanche.

“Nice one, Steelix!” Raticate laughs as he races past. “I think that’s good enough. Come on, before the cops get here!”

Steelix needs no further prodding, slithering hastily after his teammates as they come dashing back into the alley, Graveler rolling at the rear. You recall them but keep your place at the mouth of the alley, watching, waiting.

The police don’t take long to show up; like everyone else in Saffron, they’re on high alert for a vandalous group of pokémon. They don’t see you half-in, half-out of shadow, form blurred by illusion and kecleon-camouflage, but their searches are growing more thorough, more aggrieved. They’re getting tired of you smashing up their city.

And they’ll never guess where you’re going to show up next. It was tricky, trying to think of a pattern that the great Nathaniel Morgan would see and nobody else. It was Raticate who figured it out in the end: “Each place we’ve done a job. One at a time, in order.” It was an idea so good that even Mightyena couldn’t do more than grumble a couple halfhearted what-ifs. The police identified Steelix and the rest as belonging to the great Nathaniel Morgan, and perhaps they’ve figured out that they show up at the scenes of Rocket crimes, but they can’t know the criminal career of any particular grunt. The great Nathaniel Morgan will know, though, and with the media gleefully running stories about his pokémon tearing Saffron City apart, images of shattered storefronts and emptied streets, he’ll be able to predict where you’ll be. You’re impressed with Raticate for coming up with the idea, and a little guilty that you’re surprised he was the one to think of it.

You wait at the mouth of the alley for a few minutes longer in case the great Nathaniel Morgan tries to sneak onto the scene after the police leave. Then just ten more minutes, why not, and then until the top of the hour, since it’s so close anyway.

In the end it’s nearly two hours later that you teleport back to your camp. City smells linger a second in your nose, damp concrete and oil slick and the complex rankness of rotting garbage. By the time you’ve shed your nobody-skin and become the child again, they’re replaced with campfire-char and the earthy scent of rotting leaves. The air’s cooler here, blessed quiet. Blessed quiet for exactly four seconds before Rats asks, “No luck, Boss?”

The child sighs and releases the great Nathaniel Morgan’s pokémon. They glance around, gazes fixing hopefully on the child. Only for a moment, long enough to see that it’s alone. Even Graveler droops, stony arms bouncing listlessly at her sides while she stumps away after the rest of her team, off to the far side of the clearing where they can pretend to ignore the child and its pokémon. Graveler settles into the scrape in the forest floor she calls her own and goes still, same as she has every night for over a week now.

Ten days. That’s how long you’ve been at this plan. Today was the fourth foray into the city, and every time it’s a closer call. How long until somebody gets caught? How long will be enough?

You start when something silky brushes against your leg. Rats. “Come on, take a load off, Boss. Eat something. Titan got chicken.”

Rats makes small talk while everyone eats, joking with Titan about a fancy furfrou he saw while he was out getting dinner, challenging Thunderstorm to solve brain-teasers. Togetic hovers at the edge of the group, licking honey off her feathers and humming a nonsense tune that the child thinks sounds strained.

No one looks over to where the great Nathaniel Morgan’s pokémon lie without a fire of their own. Titan offered to make one, more than once, and you think Raticate would have accepted. Mightyena, though? No. The most they’ll do is take the chicken Titan put out as a peace offering. It’s like there’s a fragile meniscus between the two sides of the clearing that no one’s willing to breach.

“Hey, Boss.”

The child starts guiltily and glances Rats’ way. She’s already gnawed her chicken to the bone, which means she’s going to try and corner the child with questions. She or Absol, the dark-type lounging like a warning under a nearby tree, the immaculately cleaned bones from her meal piled neatly in front of her. They’re both convinced the child needs to go find Mewtwo. Thunderstorm thinks the same, the child’s pretty sure, but it’s at least polite enough not to press the issue. Or maybe smart enough to see that arguing is pointless.

“Not now, Rats. I’m eating,” the child says.

“All right, Boss, I get it. You don’t want to hear from me,” Rats says, when twenty minutes later the child is still picking at a drumstick. “No worries about the food. You don’t gotta say anything, all right? You just gotta listen.”

Yeah, right. The child takes a minute mouthful of lukewarm chicken by way of reply.

“Right. So, a few years back I was enjoying my retirement, you know? Cush gig, housepet with light battle duties, entertain the kids a bit, that kind of thing. But I’d had a trainer before, and we’d gotten involved in some pretty heavy stuff. Like, legendary stuff. Rescuing Mew and all. It was crazy! I mean, I was just a rattata! Who’d expect me to get caught up in something like that, right?”

“I know all this. You don’t have to tell me,” the child snaps.

“What’s that? I thought you were eating, Boss.”

The child glares and takes a defiant bite.

“Anyway, I never really pegged myself for the indoors type, you know? I always thought I wanted a trainer, battle, fame, glory, all that. Except, you know, it turned out that the trained life kind of sucks. The whole thing with Mew didn’t exactly end well. I failed, and the consequences… weren’t pretty. So, yeah, I wasn’t exactly thrilled when a couple nutjobs came around, telling me I needed to go and get up to my neck in legendary destiny nonsense again.”

“I’m not a nutjob!”

“Oh, gonna leave Absol out to dry on that one?” Rats asks. She passes Absol a wink, and Absol stares serenely back. “I mean, no offense, but when someone shows up out of nowhere, going on about Mew and fate and everything, it’s kind of tough to swallow. You two did have a hell of a backdrop, though, with the ruins and the ash and them still pulling corpses out of everywhere. That was my first time out of the ball since the eruption, and it kind of made an impression, you know?”

“Why are you telling me this?” the child asks. Belatedly it remembers it’s supposed to be eating and takes a halfhearted bite.

“I’m just reminding you, Boss. I put up with a lot to get the both of us here. I’m putting up with a lot right now, and who knows what’s coming next? I’m not real into this whole fate thing, get me? I’d rather be hanging out at home, having a snack or watching TV or something. So why am I doing all this?”

“Because I’m your trainer. And you made a promise.”

“Yeah, well, saving Mew, that’s a big deal. Fair enough. But it’s more than that, Boss. The whole volcano thing was kind of a lot to take in, and Absol said it all happened because humans went against fate, because they tried to create their own god. And she said it would happen again, too, if nobody stopped it. And who was supposed to stop it? Me. She’d seen me. She’d seen Titan. She’d seen all of us. We were supposed to find Mew, we were supposed to save her. And if we didn’t? Well, shit would go down. Real shit even worse than what happened to Cinnabar. I could have ignored her, yeah. I wasn’t happy to have to go out questing and everything. But if I didn’t, a ton more people would end up dying.”

“What’s your point?”

“Her point is that this is what it means to be a hero. Sacrifice.” It’s Absol. The child starts in alarm.

“Oh, uh, no, I mean, I don’t think I’m a hero or anything,” Rats says. “What I meant was, sometimes you gotta do something you don’t like because what happens otherwise is worse. It sucks, but that’s life.”

“I know that. I still don’t understand why you keep telling me things I already know.”

“Do you know? Do you remember?” Absol’s voice is flat and cold. “Did you think this journey was going to be easy?”

“No, but what–” Oh. Of course. Of course this is all about Mewtwo. What have the two of them even been talking about literally forever? And why couldn’t they just say what they meant in the first place? “Mewtwo’s crazy! You know it! You even said he isn’t right.”

“Be that as it may. What do you think will happen if you turn aside from your path?”

“Oh, something bad. Something real bad,” the child says, gesturing at Rats with its ragged piece of chicken. “Like she said, something even worse than Cinnabar. Whatever that means.”

“Even I can’t say for sure. All that’s certain is that it would be a punishment,” Absol says. “And a punishment that would fall not only upon you. Would you condemn others by your own weakness?” The child starts to make an angry retort, but is cut off, to its immense surprise, when Absol answers her own question. “I suppose you would. For even now you let others suffer for your fear.”

“Not helping!” Rats hisses. “Listen, Boss, we aren’t saying you’re a bad person for not wanting to see Mewtwo, we’re just–”

“Yes, you are!” The child faces Absol full on now, the remains of the chicken clenched in one fist. “You think I need to go talk to Mewtwo right this minute, and I’m wasting time looking for the great Nathaniel Morgan.”

“The raticate may have no interest, but you’ve spoken often of your wish to be a hero,” Absol says. She lies apart from the other pokémon at the very edge of the firelight’s glow, the tapetum glint of red eyes eerie against her dark face. “This is what it means to be a hero. To take up the burdens of others instead of adding to them. To suffer that others might be saved from suffering. It is to do what you don’t wish to do, because none wish to, and yet it must be done. You desire to be a hero. Here now is your chance. What will you choose?”

“Wow, okay,” Rats says. “There’s a lot to unpack there, but for now how about we–”

“You want to talk about being a hero?” the child yells. “Where were you when Mewtwo attacked me? Oh, right, you were there the entire time, and you didn’t do anything about it!”

The child shouldn’t have brought that up. Now it has to remember giving up, the way it felt to not care whether Mewtwo killed it, how it couldn’t do anything at all when the clone burned its home to the ground. Just like he did on Cinnabar Island, when he made the child homeless the first time.

It’s not like Absol cares. All she says is, “What do you think I could have done against your brother?”

“Anything!” the child says. “Anything but standing there doing nothing.”

“I tried to bring your brother back to himself. That was all I could do.”

“Yeah, you tried. You tried really hard! That’s the hardest I’ve seen you try at anything!” Unfair. She did step in, which is so much more than she did for all Cinnabar’s other doomed souls. But it hurts, and the child’s in no mood to be either fair or calm.

“I do whatever I can. I understand my duty. Do you?”

“All right, Absol, can we just…?” Rats makes a tucking motion in the air, like she’s trying to shut a door on Absol. Then she nudges the child away from the fire. “Come on, let’s go talk, just the two of us.”

The child shakes her off, fists clenched so tight its arms shake. “It’s not my fault Mewtwo’s killing people! He won’t stop even if I go back to him. He’ll come up with some other excuse to do it. He likes doing it!” it yells at Absol.

“Perhaps. How many lives are you willing to bet that you’re right?”

“If you want people to stop dying, maybe you should go bother the person who actually kills people!”

“Okay, okay, okay. That’s enough, Absol,” Rats says and once again tries to draw the child away. This time it lets her lead it out into the cold forest, tear-swimming eyes averted from Titan and Thunderstorm as it goes.

“Okay,” Rats says once the fire’s well behind. “That’s better, right, Boss? Don’t let her get to you, she’s just a weirdo.”

The child breathes hard, face feeling even hotter in the cold night air. “I hate Mewtwo,” it says. “I hate him, Rats. Why did we have to rescue him in the first place?”

“I don’t know, Boss. All the fate stuff’s way above my pay grade.” Rats presses herself against the child’s side, and even though it turns away, it can still feel her there, warm and solid. “It’s not worth worrying about now, right? What’s done is done. What matters is how we’re going to deal with it.”

“You don’t understand.” The child rubs its face, taking hitching breaths. “I don’t like this, either. I don’t want–I don’t want him killing people because of me. I know I should try to stop it, but you don’t… You don’t know what it’s like. You never met him. He’s… terrible, Rats. He’s worse than terrible. And he’s mad at me. I don’t think he would kill me, but… It would be bad.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I don’t know,” Rats says. After a moment she adds, “You want to tell me, Boss? Help me out, here? I mean, you mentioned before you and Mewtwo had a battle, but what you were going on about with Absol, you being attacked and all… What happened?”

The child shakes its head and gulps down more air. No. It’s almost feeling okay now. It’s not going to think about that more.

“Boss, what do you want me to do?” Rats says after a while. She rests a paw on the child’s leg, a blush of warmth and the smooth, dry curve of her claws. The child doesn’t turn to look at her. “I can’t just stand by and let this all go on, you know? I think if you won’t go talk to Mewtwo, it’ll have to be me.”

“What?” Now the child looks. “What are you talking about? How are you even going to find him? Or get to him? You aren’t going to walk…?”

“Absol knows where he is. She’ll tell me. And Titan will fly me there.” Rats sighs. “Sorry, Boss, I should have said it right out. I’ve been thinking about this for a while.”

For a moment the child can only stare, dumbstruck at this betrayal. “But you can’t,” it says hopelessly. “Why? Do you really think it’ll help?” In the wake of mute shock comes the creeping, acid prickle of despair. “He–I don’t know if he–I don’t think Mewtwo’ll hurt you.” No more than a battle, anyhow. “But he’s not going to listen to you. And he’ll take you away again, just like he did before.”

“Yeah, I know. And if I can convince him that hanging onto me has a better chance of bringing you back than murdering people, then that’s enough. He knows you’d do a lot to get me back. So maybe I can make the killing stop. I’ve got to try.”

The child only just got her back. It hasn’t even gotten to spend any time with her, not good time. And already she wants to leave. “You’re–you’re going to make me go back to Mewtwo. Asking won’t work, so you’re going to make me.”

“I don’t like doing this, Boss,” Rats says. “I know what kind of position it puts you in. But I have to do something, and I don’t know what else there is.”

“It won’t even work!” The tears are coming back. Why can’t the child stop crying? For weeks now, for months, it’s been weeping. “He’ll say he’ll stop killing people if you stay with him, then he’ll put you in your pokéball and keep killing them anyway.”

“Yeah, he might. But I still have to try.”

“No, you don’t! It won’t do any good, and you know it. It’s only going to make things worse. You don’t have to do things that are stupid.”

“Well, okay, Boss. I guess I don’t have to. But I’m going to anyway.”

The child opens its mouth, but there are no words. What can it even say? Rats isn’t about to change her mind. When has she ever done that?

And if she’s having Titan take her to Mewtwo… Will he let her go on alone, just leave her there and come winging back? Titan, who’s nothing above loyal? Will Thunderstorm go with her, too? The child knows it agrees with Rats, even though it rarely talks about it. What about War, who’d probably couldn’t even imagine a place he’d like less than Orre? If Rats goes, they could all could go. And then where would the child be? Scouring Orre with only Togetic and Duskull at its side? Its friends gone again, even farther away than before? The longer the child thinks, the more tears well up.

“Please,” it croaks. “Please, just let me finish this. After we find the great Nathaniel Morgan, then I’ll, I’ll… Maybe I can go see Mewtwo with you. I need more time, that’s all.”

Rats sighs and paws at her snout, regarding the child from one liquid-dark eye. “You realize you’re asking me to figure out how many more people I’m okay letting die before I try to do something about it, right? I’m sorry, Boss. I should have already been gone.”

“Two weeks!” the child pleads. “Two weeks, that’s all! Please. You can’t just leave now.”

“In the morning. It’s late.” Rats stands defiant, unmoved by the child’s tears. She doesn’t care. The child can tell she won’t back down.

She can’t do this. She can’t give herself up to Mewtwo and make the child have to come after her.

It doesn’t have to convince her to stay. It can make her. The child takes Rats’ pokéball from its belt and holds it in a deathgrip. “You can’t go. I just need more time. I’ll–”

It doesn’t know how to say what it will do, but it doesn’t need to. It raises the pokéball, and both of them know what that means.

Rats stares at her pokéball, held aloft but wobbling. “Really, Boss?” she says quietly. “Aren’t you always going on about what a good trainer you are?”

The child can’t do it. It curls the pokéball up against its chest, as if protecting something precious, and sobs and sobs. Rats watches dispassionately. “Help me understand one thing here, Boss,” she says when the worst of the tears are over. “You don’t want to go see Mewtwo. Fine. I get it. But what’s the whole deal with this Rocket guy and his pokémon, huh? Last time we were together you couldn’t shut up about how he eats puppies for breakfast or whatever. And now you want me to believe you actually care what happens to him?”

The child doesn’t care, it wants to say. It doesn’t care about the great Nathaniel Morgan, it doesn’t care what happens to him. But it has to show him. The child isn’t like Mewtwo. It can’t be. “I have to do this, Rats. I made a promise, and I… I…” How to say it? How to explain?

It can’t. “Maybe I just want to do something actually good for once!” it cries at last, a frustrated shout that rings back from solemn trees.

Rats meets the child’s teary gaze, dark eyes inscrutable. At last she says, “Two weeks, Boss. That’s the best I can do. And don’t say I’ve never done anything for you, huh?”

“Th-thank–” the child starts, but Rats has already turned away. She’s headed back to the fire, back to the other pokémon.

At first the child thinks it’s only waiting to gather strength, compose itself. It thinks it’ll follow her any moment now.

It doesn’t. The night is still and cold and lonely, but whenever the child starts to move, it thinks of the pokémon turning to look at it when it returns, wondering what went on, or maybe worse, knowing–if Rats told them. About the pokéball. The child wants to go back, it does, but it can only stand where it is, paralyzed by shame.

Its fingers clench around Rats’ pokéball, and then the child hurls it away into the darkness. The ball thuds down somewhere out of sight, and the child wedges itself down between the roots of a tree, uncomfortably cramped. It can’t go back to camp, not now. That’s all right. That’s fine. It can sleep right where it is, has weathered much colder nights than this. Furred and curled as tight as it can go, warmed by gentle inner flame, it could maybe even be comfortable if it didn’t see Absol’s red eyes glaring every time it tries to fall asleep. This is what it means to be a hero.

No sleep, then. Instead the child stares up at the stars, far away beyond the bare branches of the trees. Rats is going to leave, and maybe the rest of its friends, too. Especially if she tells them about… It was stupid. It was stupid to try that, the child knows. Sadness gnaws at its gut, and it tries to shift to a more comfortable position, but the cage of tree roots presses in on all sides.

Going to Orre alone is still better than seeing Mewtwo again. It makes the child’s chest ache to think of it, but it’s true. And it will get the great Nathaniel Morgan’s pokémon back to him. It looks up at the stars and thinks, and tries unhappily to find a comfortable position, until all the thinking actually turns up something useful. The child lies still, as if not wanting to scare the idea away, and examines it carefully.

Maybe all the child’s friends will leave, but that doesn’t mean it needs to go to Orre alone. Not necessarily. What it’s thinking would have seemed like a crazy idea, an awful idea, not so long ago… But it might work. It might actually work. And though the child doesn’t sleep, not through the whole night, not until even the stars abandon it and fade into pre-dawn gray, it has this one idea, at least, to keep it warm through the whole long, cold night.