Chapter 53
Only two nights later you come upon an empty home. Whose? You hardly care. Mewtwo’s working off Tyranitar’s list of names, interrogating each new Cipher agent for locations, aliases, anything that might give your targets away. He’s learned, you think, at least a little more about most of them. Not enough to find anybody, but enough to get you closer. Maybe. You assume. Mewtwo’s made it clear he has no interest in your input, so it’s not really relevant one way or another.
One other thing you must assume is that he didn’t expect to find this place empty. Where is it? Mewtwo rages, as though the empty house, a little pile of cinderblocks in Agate’s foothills, might somehow answer.
It’s not the house, it’s you, you idiot, Mewtwo snarls. Find the human! Where did it go?
“I don’t know.” Mewtwo’s the one who’s supposed to understand human habits. “She could be anywhere.” She? Mewtwo doesn’t care, and it’s not like it matters.
Don’t just stand there! Use your nose!
You suppose that’s easy enough. You focus until the smell of the dim, sandy yard grows thick on the air, the aroma of sparse desert flowers and mold from somewhere within the house, dander and sweat from Mewtwo. You kneel beside the doorway, sinking into the scent map of the place. Three humans that live here, you think, or lived here in quick succession. One smoker, one fond of some perfume or lotion that stings your nose with vanilla. Two males and one female. No pokémon–a feral watchog seems to frequent the yard, but there’s no sign that she’s ever approached the house. Faint woody traces of the comings and goings of a grotle, maybe… delivering things? Gardening? You wish Mewtwo wouldn’t make you try to speculate on what all could have happened here.
“No one’s been here for at least two days,” you report. Moving towards the dusty track that’s as close as Orre gets to a road, you follow the thread of the female human. It will be Mewtwo’s fault if that’s the wrong one.
How on earth do you expect me to tell? the clone snaps. After a moment of blessed silence, he decides, “Yes. It should be female.”
“It doesn’t really matter,” you say, coming to a blasted circle of scrub a few meters from the house. “They all left. Probably on hover cycles, from the way the sand looks.”
Perhaps they are taking, a, a vacation, Mewtwo says.
Maybe. You stand and wait for him to make up his mind. Giving up that easily? Mewtwo asks with a surge of frustration. Go on, follow them! Where did their hover cycles go?
“I can’t tell. They don’t leave much scent behind, and the trail’s all blown away.”
Then go look in the house. Find clues! Figure it out!
“I can look,” you say indifferently. “The other me would have a better chance of figuring out what happened.” Bitter truth. It’s irritating when not understanding human things causes you problems, the way it does now, but other than that, humans simply don’t interest you. The other you only specializes in such irrelevant things.
Worthless, Mewtwo snarls. He’s getting angry. That won’t help anything. It won’t help you work, that’s for sure. How much effort does he want to expend to find one Cipher agent who got away? One who isn’t even important?
Not important, no, of course not, Mewtwo says bitterly. That tyranitar couldn’t actually tell us where any of those supposed executives are. Of course not. That would be too easy!
Sand gusts and eddies around him the way it did around the tyranitar he’s disparaged. He is angry. You wait for him to calm down and actually do something.
Very well, Mewtwo says after long seconds of boiling the air with impotent fury. You are correct. This Pellim is irrelevant. We will return later to see whether it has returned, or any of its associates. There are other names.
And how many of them will you find gone? Fled before Mewtwo could do to them what he’s done to their colleagues?
We don’t know that they ran! Mewtwo snaps. They may simply have gone on a ‘trip.’ For pleasure. Or perhaps they went off to steal more hover-cycles. Or pokémon. Those seem like favorite hobbies for these Cipher scum.
If that’s what he thinks. It would bring you no joy if you’re correct and Mewtwo’s sloppiness is going to make this investigation even harder than it would be otherwise. That will only mean more of these nights, more of Mewtwo’s directionless rage. You can only hope you’re wrong. But you doubt it.
The psychic blow makes your head ring, multicolored lights exploding across your vision. You snort in the iron smell of blood–it’s as though Mewtwo actually punched you in the nose without so much as twitching a muscle. You may be marginally less irritating than your other form, Mewtwo says, but it seems your memory’s just as poor. You’re correct. Any inconvenience to me is also an inconvenience to you. Remember that next time. Now. The next human.
The information deposits itself in your aching head, the same way it always does. Another name, another flurry of locations. Blurry memories stitched together from the dying brain of some other human who knew too much, but not enough all the same. You raise Mewtwo’s master ball. Perhaps this one will be the last. Or perhaps they’re all gone, you think once the clone’s vanished and you have privacy in your own head. Maybe it’s too late. Maybe you never will be able to find another Cipher agent, whether one of Tyranitar’s few or not.
The thought might trouble you, if you were your other self. But now, as you are, you only turn from the empty, useless home and set out into the night. There is no way to know but to go look, and no reason to worry about what you cannot change.
Rats is waiting. She was there when the child returned to the factory, bright-eyed where it was dragging, not seeming to care that sunrise was imminent. It was all the child could do to put her off until morning, and now she’s here again, far too early, brimming with questions and a perverse energy. The child doesn’t even know if she’s slept.
“No, I mean really, what happened?” Rats asks, nudging the child’s arm while it listlessly contemplates the prospect of breakfast. It needs food. And unfortunately there’s no food here. It will need to return to human places.
“Mewtwo murdered someone again, didn’t he? More than one person this time?” Rats is impossible to put off.
“Just one,” the child says mildly. “It wasn’t any worse than before.”
“Right, just one little murder, no big deal there,” Rats says, with an angry tut and toss of her head. “And I suppose it was all worth it? You got the information you’re so desperate for?”
The child shrugs. “Mewtwo learned some new things. He always does. But we didn’t find Mew, if that’s what you mean. I don’t think we learned anything about any of Tyranitar’s people, either.”
“Well, we did,” Rats says. She hisses a breath between her teeth, whiskers quivering. “You know, someone with half a brain would take that to mean that maybe they should stop with the killing and try a different tack. Better results and less murder. It’s really a great deal.”
The child doesn’t say anything. Rats knows as well as it does that Mewtwo doesn’t care about anything like that.
Rats sighs. “What, that’s it? Come on, Boss, I know you say you’re fine when you’re like that, but I find it pretty hard to believe when you don’t even ask me what we found out.”
“What did you find out?”
“Oh, nice catch,” Rats says. “Snap out of it, Boss. How are we supposed to talk when you’re being all distant, huh?”
“I don’t want to talk. I want to get food.” The child will need to change to be safe around humans, and then Rats will really start in with her questions. That will be its other self’s problem, but the child doesn’t want to go just yet.
“You can’t put me off forever, Boss. You know it. Why don’t you save us both some time and do your thing, huh? Let me talk to the real you. We got stuff to catch up on, here.”
The “real” you. The child tips its head back, luxuriating in a hot, dusty breeze. That’s what Rats thinks. The child probably can’t convince her otherwise. Not that it matters in any case.
Maybe the child does need to change, but not just yet. One more minute of peace, one more minute to enjoy the sun and think of nothing but the warmth and the sand and the clear sky overhead. Rats fidgets, making gummy noises as she nibbles on her fur.
One more minute of peace, and then the child’s stomach growls. Reluctantly, it changes.
For a moment the child’s disoriented, as always. It’s dangerous to go paging back through recent memories. But Rats is there, looking up at it, eager and bright-eyed. She’ll help it figure out what’s going on.
“Feeling more like yourself, Boss?”
The child smiles weakly. “Yes. What did you want to tell me, Rats?”
For a long moment Rats considers the child, looking solemn. “You know, Boss, the more often you go into those funks, the more I start to worry that you won’t be coming back.”
“I’ll always come back, Rats,” the child says, projecting every ounce of certainty it can. It’s still so tired.
Fortunately Rats can’t stay serious for long. She has something she’s bursting to tell. “Anyway, we did some investigating around that Pyrite Town place. It’s the shadiest place we’ve seen here–probably still the best spot to find your Cipher agents and things. We had a few fights, asked around with the pokémon if they recognized any of those names you told me. At least a few of them must have been shadow pokémon at some point themselves.” So basically the same sort of thing the Musketeers have been doing. “Anyway, a whole lot of ‘nos,’ but there was one dewpider who said he’d heard of the twin humans! Said they used to frequent some club or other out in Gateon Port with a few Cipherish people. And when we headed out there…” Rats slaps her tail against the roof. “Bingo! No humans there at the time, but the krabby said they knew who we were talking about. If we keep going back, we’ll probably catch them.”
That sounds good. And, like Rats said, a lot more concrete than anything Mewtwo’s found. “Are you going to go back there, then?”
“Well, yeah. What, you think when we finally find a lead we’re just going to give up on it?”
“Well, no, but what will you do if you find them?”
“If we find them, we’re going after them, of course! If we’re lucky, they’re still working with Cipher and lead us straight to one of their bases.”
“And then what? Are you going to tell Mewtwo so he can deal with it?” She won’t want to. But she probably has to. A handful of pokémon to take down an entire criminal base? Even with the child’s help, well. It caused a lot of trouble for Team Rocket, but despite having Mewtwo it nearly got caught.
“Well, no. I mean, it does get a bit trickier then.” Rats combs her claws through her whiskers. “More dangerous. I mean, we can try sneaking in… Just me, I guess, and Duskull if I can get him to come along. The rest of us aren’t really sneaking types. Well, and you. You’ll help, right, Boss?”
“I’ll help. If Mewtwo lets me.”
Rats grimaces. “Put a pin in it, Boss. We’ll get you where you need to go. And see if we can’t do something about Mewtwo while we’re at it.” She settles back on one leg and scratches her side with a hind foot, seeming pleased. “There’s another interesting thing. Something’s going around in Cipher circles. People are nervous. I think they realize someone’s after them.”
There’s the evidence that Mewtwo’s clumsy approach is having consequences. He’ll keep denying it, of course. “Making your job harder,” the child ventures.
“Maybe. But scared people do dumb things, right? Maybe we can make it work for us.” Rats stops scratching and twists to look behind her, towards the generator where Thunder’s lurking, arguing with itself about something or other. “Three-eyes has a couple good ideas about how we might be able to listen in on Cipher communications; it’s pretty good at picking up signals, you know? Just got to find the right one. Even Titan’s getting in on the espionage. Makes him feel cool.”
She’s enjoying this, the child realizes. When has Rats ever been this enthusiastic about anything? “You like it?” it hazards. “You like… catching the bad guys?”
“Oh, what’s that?” Rats says, whiskers quivering in a smile. “Trying to turn that one back on me, huh? Well, I don’t know.” She grinds her teeth a moment, thinking. “I mean, I don’t want to get people to get people, like what I meant when I said that. But it does feel kind of good, you know? Trying to work through stuff, figure it all out. It’s kind of fun. Thrilling, I guess. And it feels like I’m really doing something, you know? Like I’m actually making a difference. So, I don’t know. Maybe once all this is over, maybe I’d like to keep it up.”
Once all this is over. It’s like a dark pit’s opened up in front of the child, bottomless and black. Once all this is over. It’s thought about what it will do after it finds Mew, of course. But it’s been so long. The end feels so far away, and now… Now when the child looks at it, it doesn’t know what it wants anymore. Taking on the League with Mew, becoming the best trainer in the world–it feels hollow. Could it really happen? Would it even make the child happy if it did?
“Hey, Boss.” Rats prods the child gently with a claw. “Duskull pop up and spook you or something?”
It shakes itself. “No. I’m okay.” Still teetering, with that question suddenly painted across the roof in invisible, bloody letters. What happens next? “Rats?” the child asks, voice quavering.
“Yeah, Boss?”
“Are you going to come with me, afterwards? And be my pokémon? I thought we were going to do the League together, but…”
“Hey, hey.” Rats pats the side of the child’s leg, looking up at it with a buck-toothed grin. “Don’t worry, huh? I’m not going anywhere. Maybe I’d like to try some new things in the future, sure. But it’s not like I’m going to just, I don’t know, run off and found my own detective agency two minutes after Mew shows up. We’ll still be friends, Boss. We’ll still do things together.”
That’s good. The child tells itself it’s good, and it tries to believe it. But the question still lurks just over the horizon, a spot of chill in the desert heat. What next? What next? What next? The child doesn’t even want to think about what will happen next day.
“Here. Let’s get some grub, right?” Rats says. “That was the point of all this, wasn’t it? You’ll feel better after some food.” She tugs on the child’s pants leg.
“Okay,” it says. It tries to focus on that. Food. There will be time later for worrying about what will happen after Mew. There will be time later to decide what its life will be about, once its mission is done. There will be time later, all the time in the world.
It’s been three days, and the Musketeers have invited you to a concert. You’re nearly as excited as you are apprehensive. Picnics are supposed to be fun, but they aren’t fun enough to withstand Mewtwo. You can only hope he likes music better than swimming.
You ask Rats if she wants to come. “Well, I would like to compare notes with those three,” she says thoughtfully. “They know this place better than any of us. On the other hand, I could do without getting psy-blasted into next week if Mewtwo has another moment. How about you make an excuse for me and tell that lot that we’ll catch up offline, huh?” She scampers off to join the rest of your pokémon, all huddled together, awash in their own plans. You watch them for a few seconds, wistful. So they aren’t coming, and you’d be surprised if Absol showed up, either.
Mewtwo tries to get out of it, even though he said he’d come. He doesn’t even really know what a concert is, and he’s nervous about it.
Nervous! Mewtwo’s glare actually stings, waking pins and needles where it sweeps over your skin. I am not nervous. I am irritated that we need to entertain this idiocy still. What good has these pokémon’s information been? We’ve learned nothing from it.
“The sooner you get in your ball, the sooner it will be over,” you say, which does nothing but earn you a lecture about what a stupid statement that is. Mewtwo can’t stall forever, though, not without backing out entirely–and he can’t do that without admitting how scared he is. It takes far too long, but at last you’re alone with the desert, putting along on your scooter.
You’re supposed to meet the Musketeers at Heracross’ cave, which might be even more interesting than the concert itself. What sort of heracross would live in a cave, of all places?
You don’t even know how she found herself out here. A weathered jut of rock rises before you, poking incongruously from level sand like the tip-top of some buried mountain. It’s not so far from Phenac City, but not close enough that Heracross could fly on her buzzy little wings. If it weren’t for the cluster of folding chairs beside it you probably would have sailed right past the place.
“Oh, there you are!” Hypno says. Her gaze is already roaming, looking for the shape that should be looming behind you. You sigh and click the button on the master ball, and then the Musketeers are all falling over themselves to welcome Mewtwo, offering him a seat, pressing a blanket into his hands.
I thought we were going to a “concert,” Mewtwo says, eyeing the chairs with naked suspicion. I had expected music.
“The concert’s in Phenac City. In the colosseum,” Hypno says. “It’s very hard to get tickets.”
“Yeah, you can hear fine from here. Plus we’ve got your own snacks and everything,” Heracross says. There’s a cooler next to her and a space heater glowing in the middle of the half-moon of chairs. You’ll need it; the night is bracing cold, pierced by frigid starlight. Phenac itself looks warm, spilling golden light in all directions. You can see the huge dome of its colosseum lit up bright against the sky, hear immensely distant cheering and applause.
“You can hear the music from way out here? It must be loud.”
“You know it,” Heracross says with a chuckle. “Noctowl and I sometimes go for some real front-row action. Fly right over and perch up on the actual dome. Believe me, you can really feel the music up there.”
Mewtwo sulks, sipping water while Heracross downs her ubiquitous soda. Noctowl and Hypno have coffee, and thankfully there’s hot chocolate for you. For a few minutes it’s cozy, and Mewtwo’s practically behaving himself. Then the music starts up, a wild cascade of crashes and squeals and lots and lots of drums, and the feeling Mewtwo’s brain radiates makes your face shrivel up like you licked a lemon. What is that noise ? he demands. That’s supposed to be music?
“That ‘noise’ is lead drummer Stenton Slammer, the Four-Armed Phenom,” Heracross says cheerfully. “Machamp drummers are powerful, am I right? You won’t hear this sort of thing just anywhere.”
I would have been perfectly content not having heard it at all, Mewtwo says sourly. Heracross laughs, and the irritation that spikes in your chest isn’t Mewtwo’s alone. The Musketeers keep acting like it’s funny when Mewtwo’s a jerk.
“Well, that’s fair. If this isn’t your thing, the next set should be more rock-y at least.”
“Who’s the main act? Redress?” Hypno asks. “That would still be a lot.” Meanwhile the guitar has really picked up, wailing away across the empty sand. There are lyrics, but they’re too muddy for your to make out.
“You just don’t appreciate good music. It’s not about being easy to listen to. Feel that emotion! This is raw shit because life is raw shit.”
“Well, okay, life being raw shit is why I like to spend my time off listening to catchy things instead of things that remind me of how much everything sucks,” Hypno says. Her tone is light; it’s almost like she isn’t really disagreeing. Meanwhile Noctowl sits and looks quietly out over the desert, utterly still aside from the constant tick-tick-tick of his head twitching back and forth.
Mewtwo’s swaddled himself in his blanket so only his nose and the very tip of his tail poke out, quietly fuming. You can’t relax when he’s like that, clearly up to something, bound to explode eventually, but the Musketeers act like they don’t notice.
“Well, life sucks, but at least we aren’t the only ones who feel that way, right? At least there’s somebody else out there who’ll say it. At the top of their lungs. Above a killer bassline.”
“I think I recognize this one. Isn’t this ‘Springfield Blows?’ I thought that one was supposed to be inspired by a cartoon the lead singer thought was funny.”
“Shhh. You wouldn’t get it.”
What is the point of all this? Mewtwo snaps. You flinch. The shadow pokémon turn towards him, tense but unafraid while Mewtwo’s anger makes your heart do backflips in your chest. This sound, this noise.
“Well, as Heracross was saying, it’s actually a really deep meditation on–”
I don’t care! It sounds terrible! How could anyone enjoy this garbage?
Heracross looks like she’s about to speak up, but she won’t be able to explain. There’s no defense that won’t make this worse. “You can tell why they like it, can’t you?” you ask desperately. “You can see what they’re thinking. If you listen to that, maybe you’ll start to like it, too!”
You can feel the scorn that’s going to lace Mewtwo’s words before he even speaks, but Hypno comments first. “That’s a good point,” she says. “I’m sorry you aren’t enjoying yourself, Mewtwo. I understand if you’d rather leave. But if stick around, well, you might learn something, just like your friend said.” Her smile is lopsided and wistful. “I can’t understand what’s going on in people’s heads nearly as well as you can, but even with what I have it’s nice to understand what people are really feeling, you know?”
Heracross taps her claws together. “I mean, we could always go inside if you wanted,” she says. You’ve never seen her looking less like Virizion. “If you’d rather do something else…”
“Come on, Heracross, get back to explaining how anything with melody is lowbrow.”
It’s Hypno who does most of the talking after that. Heracross’ replies are muted, and you can see the lines of tension in Hypno’s shoulders. She’s putting in a lot of effort to stay upright and confident and not look back while behind her Mewtwo’s anger glows like a hot ember. She gave him a choice, and apparently she intends to stick to it.
You want to go. Of course you do. It’s better than staying and hoping Mewtwo doesn’t hurt anyone and listening to Heracross’ weird music. And Mewtwo has never wanted to understand. He thinks he’s right. Why would he want to understand other people’s wrong feelings?
He isn’t leaving, though. Not making anyone’s head explode, either. Maybe he’s just too proud to leave if a regular pokémon tells him to get lost. Maybe he knows you want to go and doesn’t want to humor you. Who can say? You’re not the one who can read minds.
The desert’s peaceful beneath the stars, stretching on forever in all directions. You snuggle deeper in your blanket, feeling the pleasant glow of the space heater’s radiance against your face. The far-off music changes, but it’s still nothing like what you hear in TV commercials. It’s nothing you could dance to. Isn’t the point of music to dance? It’s strange to be out here with people who are only listening to the far, far-off sounds as though someone’s telling them a story.
Hypno keeps trying to act normal, and eventually Heracross begins to push back against her teasing. Noctowl is as quiet as ever, and eventually Mewtwo’s anger fades, though his psychic field still sings with tension. He sits hunched in a folding chair that’s too small for him, drink floating to one side and his master ball the other, and remains remarkably, mercifully quiet even as the music transitions into another drum-crashing phase.
It’s a very long concert, you think, but at last the distant music dies away, and the sigh of applause after. “Well, that’s it,” Heracross says. “No more reason to stay out here.” She hefts her chair and the cooler easily. The other Musketeers are gathering and stowing, too, carrying their setup into the narrow fissure in the rock that Heracross evidently calls home. “We’re going to hang out and play cards for a bit,” Heracross adds. “You’re welcome to join us if you want.”
You expect Mewtwo to make some kind of sarcastic remark, at best. He was invited out here for the concert. He’s heard the concert. He can leave without losing face.
Instead he stands, the blanket still wound tight around him, and follows. The low tunnel in the rock forces the clone to stoop–it’s barely higher than your head–but then it expands into a warmly-lit space. Spartan, certainly craggy, but pleasantly crowded with the Musketeers packed around its one small table. There’s the hum of a generator from somewhere, a few big lights, and a small, bubble-screened television. There’s also the table and its chairs, which are the ones you were sitting on outside, now neatly returned to their places, and then boxes and boxes and boxes of soda stacked all around the perimeter.
“Make yourself at home,” Heracross says brightly, waving you over to the table, where Hypno’s already shuffling a deck of cards.
Mewtwo hesitates. He’s in danger of getting a faceful of ceiling light, and you aren’t sure if he’ll fit at the table. It’s a kids’ table, you think, which makes it a good size for the Musketeers.
“Come on,” Heracross says. “You know how to play Poker? I think you’ll like it.”
“I don’t know about that, Heracross,” Hypno says. “I think he’ll be able to see everybody’s cards.”
Heracross laughs and elbows Noctowl’s feathery side. “Yeah? Maybe that’s for the best. Cobalion here could stand to get taken down a peg or two.”
Noctowl fluffs up with evident pleasure, but Hypno’s still looking pensive. “Maybe some kind of cooperative game? I’m trying to think of one without hidden information.”
“You think too much, Terrakion,” Heracross says. “Come on, let’s play.”
Except they can’t, not until Mewtwo’s questioned every rule. And when they do start, it’s not like he cares about the rules anyway–it’s so much easier to win if you cheat and draw extra, so why wouldn’t you? Hypno was right, the fact that he knows everybody’s cards makes it all feel pointless, and Mewtwo refuses to take even the tiniest step towards handicapping himself.
That you expected, and by now it shouldn’t be a surprise that the Musketeers take it all as a joke, either. They laugh when Mewtwo makes a blatantly illegal play, let him get away with all his wins. They don’t care about the game at all! It’s like the only person not having fun at the table is you, and you actually like playing cards.
You have to focus on other things because there’s clearly no point paying attention to the game. “Why do you have all this soda?” you ask Heracross, your gaze drifting across the ranks of identical boxes.
“You think you know about pokémon, don’t you?” Heracross asks. “Most trainers seem to.”
“I do know a lot about pokémon. A lot.”
“Okay. What do heracross eat?”
“Tree sap, duh.”
“And do you see any trees around here?” Heracross spreads her arms expansively, so Hypno has to lean away to avoid her claws.
“But there are trees in Orre. Like in Agate Village.”
“Oh, they do have them there, yes,” Heracross says. “And they’re mighty protective of them, too. Overly protective. You’ll be trying to enjoy your breakfast and some lady with a broom comes up and assaults you for no reason.”
“A human with a broom was enough to keep you away from the sap?”
“She had a combusken, too,” Heracross says, and takes a grumpy sip of the can beside her on the table. “Anyhow. Soda. Sugar water. It’s basically the same thing.”
“Except one tastes like muk,” Hypno says, and Heracross takes another extra-loud slurp, as if in rebuke.
Mewtwo has a straight flush again. Somehow. I think I enjoy this game, he says smugly, sweeping the chips over to himself and arranging them in neat stacks without touching a single one. It’s less interesting than a battle, but in some ways it’s similar.
He would think that. He’s used to winning all his battles, too.
“Oh, I’m sure it is,” Heracross says, raking cards into a pile so she can deal them out again. “Sounds like something Hypno could go on about for hours. This is going to have to be the last hand, though. Some of us have work at an ungodly hour tomorrow.” A clock tucked on a rocky outcropping reads 11:16 PM.
The last? Mewtwo’s words inflect indignation. You think he’s resentful of the remaining chips lying around the table that he won’t be able to add to his hoard.
“The last,” Heracross says. “Glad you’re having a good time, though. Up for a game of cards whenever you like.”
I have more important things to be doing than playing games, Mewtwo says, but nonetheless looks hungrily down at the cards Heracross is sliding out across the table.
“I’m grateful you could take the time to meet with us tonight, at least,” Noctowl says.
He’s only here because he thinks this is work. Cultivating relationships with valuable informants. Mewtwo ignores Noctowl and pushes a not-inconsiderable portion of his chips into the middle of the table with a mental nudge.
“I’m glad you like games, even if music isn’t your thing,” Hypno says, scattering a few of her own chips. “Did you end up figuring anything out? While you were listening, I mean?”
Mewtwo’s silence grows tight, the cards in his hands shivering with tremors of psychic power. You grip the edge of the table so it creaks warningly beneath your fingers. I don’t know, Mewtwo says, as venomously as though it’s a personal affront. The Heracross enjoyed the noise. Why I could never hope to explain. But you and the noctowl, you… His tail clanks against a box of soda at the end of an irritated swish. You don’t care for noise any more than I do. But you were happy to be there because, what? The others were suffering the same?
Hypno laughs. “Come on, now, not suffering. It was a beautiful night out there. Who doesn’t enjoy a night out with friends? Plus I always get to hear something interesting about whatever alt-grunge-progressive thing Heracross is listening to at the time.”
“Indeed,” Noctowl says. “Sometimes the most enjoyable thing about something is how happy it makes someone else, isn’t it?”
Mewtwo’s mind hovers like a dark cloud above the table. I understand, I suppose, being happy for others’ happiness, he says grudgingly.
“It’s like the Purification Chamber,” Hypno says with a small smile. “Good feelings are contagious.”
The dancing thing? You guess that makes sense. If other people were having fun dancing, maybe you would, too, even if you didn’t like the music.
Mewtwo is not amused. His psychic field ripples, but he doesn’t raise his gaze from his cards. Being with “friends”… I could have done that somewhere where my ears weren’t being assaulted.
“I mean, nobody has to listen to concerts with me,” Heracross says, likewise intently focused on her hand.
“Oh, come on, Heracross. It’s only fair if you let me drag you to the symphony now and again. Besides, Mewtwo said himself I was having a good time.” She smiles across at the clone. “I’m glad we found something you appreciate, anyway. If Heracross would like to take her turn?”
“Right,” Heracross says gruffly. “I fold, anyhow.”
You start breathing again as Mewtwo’s attention turns back to the game. His eyes go wide with anticipation, his tail twitching, just the smallest bit, as one by one the hands are revealed. You don’t know why he’s excited. He knows all of them already. His victory was never in doubt.
“Well, how about that?” Heracross says with a knowing smile at the cards laid out on the table. “Guess the cat takes the last hand, too. All right. Pack it in, everybody.”
Mewtwo watches quietly while the rest tidy up, Heracross reassembling the deck and Hypno neatly racking chips. His eyes follow them as they disappear into a box, perhaps longingly. “Heracross was telling the truth, you know,” Noctowl says. His wings make it a bit difficult for him to manage all the little pieces, but he helps out where he can with his beak. “We can play again sometime, if you’d like.”
Mewtwo’s psychic field buzzes with energy, and your heart races–not from fear this time. Mewtwo’s thinking about something. Very hard. And… with excitement. Yes, he says at length. Yes, perhaps. We might be able to find the time.
Another night, another name. Someone else who worked for Cipher, directly or indirectly. This must be the last for tonight. Mewtwo would keep going, you’re sure, would not stop for sleep, would not stop for anything. But you–you need to sleep. If you don’t, you make mistakes. More than usual, Mewtwo would put it. Even more than usual.
So this will be the last. Then back to the Cipher factory to sleep, sleep as your other self, untroubled by nightmare or spiraling thought. In the morning Mewtwo might have somewhere new for you to go. Or maybe you’ll leave him with Absol and go see the shadow pokémon again. Maybe. Probably. You’re so tired. You’ll figure it out in the morning.
This is maybe the nicest place you’ve brought Mewtwo so far, an apartment building in Phenac City. The outer doors are locked to keep people who don’t live there out, and you spend long, weary seconds considering the merits of simply ripping one off its hinges before a man comes down the hall and opens it from the inside. An absol trails at his heels, and you feel a cold shock of horror as the pokémon gives you a piercing look, but it’s definitely someone different, someone you don’t know.
The man frowns at you as he goes past, but he doesn’t linger, turns and jogs off with his absol and doesn’t care that you jam your foot into the doorway behind him.
You suppose it’s so late it’s wrapped around to early and people are starting to wake up, the ones who aren’t like the great Nathaniel Morgan and actually care about doing things in the morning. You lever the door back open and venture down the hall, searching for the number Mewtwo extracted from some unwilling mind. Who would have known the number? A friend, probably. Someone who had been here before.
You try not to hunch while you stand outside knocking. Mewtwo’s in your head the whole time, exhorting you to not slouch, not glance around like that, not attract attention. Your knocking sounds horribly loud in the early-morning hush, and despite Mewtwo’s complaints the rare person passing in the hallway gets what must be an unnerving look from you.
“Who’s there?” from the far side of the door, quaking and nervous. That’s all you need. Shadow tendrils slide across the sill, and the dark void pulls the human down into slumber. You listen for the thump of a fallen body, then reach your hand out and through the door, ghost-insubstantial.
The hard part is keeping part of your arm incorporeal while you turn your fingers solid again, seeking blindly for the latch. It burns so badly it actually wakes you up a bit, so when you turn the last bolt and then the handle to let yourself in you’re no longer feeling dull.
Not that it matters much. You don’t even wait for Mewtwo to materialize to take up the mantle of a different way of thought, all your inconvenient feelings receding until the fatigue is simply a fact to be dealt with, just like the woman on the floor. And she’s Mewtwo’s job, not yours. Your job is to stay by the door and prepare a teleport retreat in case anyone takes an interest in what might be going on in the apartment.
Mewtwo feels strange tonight, mind sizzling with some inner fire. Some turmoil that brushes you on the fringes of his mind. Even now, on the brink of dawn.
You don’t care. You stand, idle but not bored, while Mewtwo goes about his business. A large tank takes up most of one wall of the living room, alive with pink and orange and blue coral, darting fish and shrimp and even a couple of frogs. You watch creatures undulate through the water, mesmerized and a little tempted besides. No one’s going to care now if you dine on a few of those.
Enough of that, Mewtwo says by the time you’ve decided that the black triangular fish looks like the best snack option. Come here.
You do. Mewtwo’s taken the woman, whatever her name is, into the kitchen for some inscrutable reason. She appears confused, making feeble attempts at crawling away from Mewtwo but then seeming to forget what she was doing a moment later.
Finish this, Mewtwo says.
“What do you mean?”
I want you to deal with the human.
You wait for Mewtwo to explain. It takes him several seconds to do so, his contagious irritation rising in you all the while. I can’t believe I need to spell it out for you, he says at last. Kill this human.
The human who is perhaps recovering. She’s still making vague swimming motions with her arms, but now she seems to be actually pulling herself along. Without turning his attention from you Mewtwo sets a foot between the woman’s shoulder blades and forces her back to the floor.
“Why?”
Why not? Why do you stay by the door playing lookout instead of taking care of the real business? You think these humans should die, don’t you? Why do you always leave that work to me?
“It’s a bad idea to kill the humans. Someone will notice.”
You have no desire, then? No sense of justice? No longing for revenge?
You look down at the human now whimpering confused, directionless pleas beneath Mewtwo’s foot. She’s no threat to you, and although her behavior is a bit like prey, you’re too tired for a hunt. “No. You know I don’t.”
Fascinating. And he does sound fascinated, like you’re an exotic pokémon he’s never encountered before. A base pokémon’s instincts, I suppose. Unconcerned beyond the hunt.
You have no idea what he’s going on about, and you don’t care. All you want is for him to wrap this up so you can leave and get some sleep.
Yes, yes, Mewtwo says with a thrill of amusement that turns the corners of your mouth upward. You’re impatient. Very well, then. Kill this human and the both of us can leave.
“I already told you I don’t want to.”
It will end up dead either way. What difference does it make? The human under his foot protests, and he leans on her harder.
No difference. But allowing Mewtwo to push you around is never a good thing.
I’m not pushing you around. This is what I need from you right now. A sign that you’ll get stronger. That you’ll actually be of some use. It won’t be hard, will it?
It won’t be hard.
Then finish the job, Mewtwo says, an undeniable strain of annoyance running through his silent voice. Or are you going to make us wait here all night?
Wearily you consider the trapped human. Mewtwo isn’t doing anything to stifle her cries. You don’t know what game he’s playing, but you know you don’t like it.
On the other hand, there’s no real point in arguing. Either way the human ends up dead.
And Mewtwo’s right about another thing, too.
It’s no trouble at all.
Afterwards you can feel Mewtwo’s attention turn hopefully towards the fish tank, but you’ve had enough of him tonight. You’re leaving.
Mewtwo doesn’t push his luck. He lets you recall him, and you linger only a moment more, sucking the taste of salt and metal off one claw while you look for anything left out of place, any hint that you’ve been here. A thought’s-breadth later you’re gone.