Chapter 55
You appear on the factory rooftop with sand ground into every pore and sunburn beginning to itch from those rare patches of you that aren’t covered in grit. You haven’t slept in what has to be at least forty hours, and you slump over on the hot metal as the world resolves around you with the teleport’s end, not caring how the roof burns the side of your cheek. You did it. You giggle, rolling over on your side but feeling no inclination to try standing. You did it.
“Boss! Hey, Boss! Are you okay?” Rats is by your side in an instant. “What happened?!” The heavy clangs of Titan’s footsteps and the tingle of Thunder’s static haze follow.
You try to answer. You want to answer. Because they’re free now, them the same as you. You try to speak but all that comes out is a gasping laugh, tears leaking from your eyes.
Rats noses in under your arm, and you roll over on your back, wheezing, choking on laughter. She starts busily grooming your hair, and Thunder hovers above you, buzzing nervously.
“What’s going on?” Titan asks, standing back, too large to reach you between his teammates. “Are you okay? What’s funny?”
What’s funny… What’s funny is that you did it. You did it. “I got rid of Mewtwo,” you gasp out. “I got rid of him. He’s gone forever.”
“Whoah, boss.” Rats’ licking stops. “You killed Mewtwo? Are you saying you killed Mewtwo?”
“I buried his master ball in the desert,” you say dreamily. “Just like you told me to. He’s never coming out again. He’s gone, Rats. I’m done.”
Rats shakes her head, a gesture that swings her whole body side to side. “Okay, nope, Boss, not getting it. Back it up to the beginning for me and let’s try this again. What happened?”
“I decided I was done,” you say firmly, “and I buried his master ball underground. And I’m not guilty about it.”
“No, no, I wasn’t saying you should be,” Rats says, although her tone suggests that she’s not entirely sure about that. “But why, Boss? Did something happen?”
“I got tired of all the… all the murders. That’s all.”
“Murders?” Titan asks, his flame leaping.
“Don’t worry about it, Titan. It’s all over now. Nobody has to worry about Mewtwo anymore.”
“I dunno, Boss. If somebody finds it…”
“I buried it deep! In the middle of nowhere!” But Rats’ words put a thrill of fear through you. She has a point. There’s one other thing. Just one more thing you need to do before you can rest. “But I thought of that anyway. We’ll need psychic dampers. If we put those up all around here, then even if Mewtwo comes back somehow, we’ll be protected. Thunder, you know how to make them, don’t you?”
“The psychic suppressors? I know the design, I suppose. We could probably find the parts around here.”
“Yes.” You can’t suppress a giggle. Mewtwo’s gone for good. “Then let’s start. Just in case.”
Even with a noctowl’s insomnia filling you with restless late-night energy, it’s a trial to peel yourself up from the roof. You have to make it, though. One more job, and then you can rest.
Rats follows you, still trying to talk. Titan brings up the rear, gaze drifting this way and that, looking for something to latch onto. “It’ll be okay, Titan,” you say. “The important thing is Mewtwo won’t be able to boss anyone around anymore. Things will be better now, you’ll see.”
“Boss, I can tell when there’s something you aren’t telling me,” Rats says. She’s panting a little. Thunder glides out in front of you, indefatigable, but the look their three eyes are giving you is suspicious.
“We’ll have plenty of time to talk after we make some psychic dampers,” you say grimly. You’ll feel safer once they’re in place. Yes, you will.
Down into the dark of the factory. Scavengers stole most of the good stuff long ago, but there are still machines left, the ones too broken or cumbersome to bother with. Random extra wires, cables nobody could remember what they were for. Like Thunder says, what you need’s bound to be around here somewhere.
“Well, maybe we can do both. Talk and work and all that,” Rats says. Thunder directs you to an old computer bank with broken screens and begins listing off exactly what you’ll need to pull out of it. Thunder’s great like that. You can rely on it not asking irrelevant questions when there’s work to be done. You know what’s going to happen if Rats makes you think back on last night. You’ll be able to take as much time as you need for grieving once you know you and your friends are really safe.
“Umm, can I help?” Titan asks from behind you, tapping his claws together.
“You can find electronic things and bring them up to the roof! That would be great!” You give Rats a pointed look. “You can help too, if you want. It will make things go faster, and then maybe we can talk.”
Rats snorts. “Subtle, Boss.” She turns and scrabbles off, yelling for Titan to wait up–he’s already on his merry way, tail blazing, happy to have something he can help with.
You turn back to the computer and pry off the front panel. Mewtwo’s gone forever. Somehow it doesn’t feel possible. At the back of your mind there’s a shadow, doubting, looming. But it’s true. You did it. You’re free.
“Come on, Thunder. What next?”
You concentrate as hard as you can on Thunderstorm’s instructions, up on the roof with circuit boards and switches and colorful little bits scattered all around you. One second it feels impossible that you can have won, that everything was so simple all along. You struggle to hold back bursts of hysteric laughter, focusing hard on Thunder’s light-show words and the texture of tiny plastic pieces between your fingers. Then just as suddenly you’re shaking with anxiety, feeling that any second Mewtwo’s bound to reappear, cloaked in storm clouds, lightning, all the trappings of his anger, and find you playing engineer with your dead wires and screws. Back and forth, lurching from elation to despair.
But the minutes tick on, and on, and still Mewtwo doesn’t come. You should have thrown the master ball in the ocean way before you even got to Orre.
“Well, Boss,” Rats says while she hands you a battery. “I’ve been thinking…”
“I need to concentrate, Rats. Let me finish this first.” One psychic damper won’t protect the whole building, and the battery won’t keep it running all the time, but you’ll be able to activate it when you need to. That’s enough for now. Later you’ll build more, a whole array of them, get them hooked to the solar generator. For now you only need one. But you do need it.
Behind Rats is Titan, still lurking around, drooping. Telling him what happened–that somehow feels even worse than talking to Rats about it. Meanwhile, Thunder’s still broadcasting its instructions, patient as ever. You doubt it’s doing that to ground you–that’s just how Thunder always is. But it feels like exactly what you need now, to be doing what someone tells you, connecting this thing to that thing, soldering here and here. One step at a time. The pile of parts around you gets crazier for a bit, then comes back together into something new.
There’s a remote control to turn the psychic damper on, probably for a TV, you think; someone took the TV but forgot the remote. You press the power button now, and nothing seems to happen besides the glow of an indicator light on one of your commandeered circuit boards. But when you try to call on psychic power, just a minor confusion aimed to stir up a bit of dust, nothing happens. You push harder, try to raise a proper psychic, or psyshock. Still nothing. Psycho boost? It feels like you burst something in your brain from focusing so hard. Still, nothing happens.
It’s working, then. It’s strong enough to keep you out. That has to mean it will work on Mewtwo, too. You click the remote again, then let a light screen dance between your fingers. It’s all working. You’re safe, as long as you don’t go far.
The pokémon are gathered here around you, waiting. You open your mouth to tell Rats not now, later. Before she can ask the inevitable. But Titan’s there, looking like a gigantic lost charmander. Thunder has all three eyes trained on you, perfectly attentive. You close your mouth again and swallow back bile.
“I didn’t want to,” you say, because somehow that seems like where you have to start. “I didn’t want to, but he made me do it anyway. He knew it would be easy because I… because I wouldn’t be able to fight him.”
He made me. But did he? All he did was wheedle. He didn’t even hurt you. When you were tired, when you were not yourself, it just seemed… easier. That’s the only explanation you can give now, looking back into a mind not quite your own.
“What, Boss? What did he make you do?” Rats presses herself against your side, dark eyes huge and innocent. You know how she’s going to look at you when you tell her what you did.
“We went out to another Cipher person’s place, and Mewtwo was going to, you know… except he didn’t.”
“No, I don’t know. What was he going to do?” Titan asks, blinking at you in bewilderment.
Rats waves a paw at him. “Titan, shh. Later.”
Of course Titan doesn’t know. You don’t want him to know, to have to know. About any of it.
You try to talk, but the words stick in your throat. “It’s all right, you know,” Thunderstorm says, its sparking words murky through your haze of unshed tears. “You don’t have to tell us. Now. Or ever.”
You could say nothing. Spare Titan the truth. Spare all of them. But now the truth is pressing up on the back of your throat, which is stuck, paralyzed by the impossibility of saying it. You do want to say it, need to, need everyone else to hear it and know how horrible it is, how horrible you are. Still you don’t know how.
“It’s okay, Boss. You can say it. We’re here for you.”
“I truly don’t know that this is wise,” Thunderstorm buzzes, two out of three eyes narrowed at Rats.
“What are we talking about?” Titan asks again.
Rats rubs the side of her snout, whiskers quivering. “Titan…”
“He made me kill the person instead,” you say all in a rush. “I didn’t want to, but he kept pushing”–and I didn’t really care–“and then I… but I didn’t want to!”
The silence is every bit as awful as you expected. “What?” Titan rears back, wings folding and unfolding like he wants to take off. “I don’t–but how could you ever kill someone?”
“Oh, Boss,” Rats says, and it makes the anxiety twist even tighter in your chest. You don’t know if saying that was good or not or what’s going to happen next. Rats bumps her head against your chin, then licks at your face, more roughly than you’d like. “That bastard,” she mutters. “That bastard. I should have known–helping someone out with their murders is already beyond, why I didn’t stop it–”
Thunderstorm puts out random showers of electricity, not saying anything, a long burst of nonsense light. “I will admit, I had not… expected…” it hums after a moment.
“Bastard,” Rats growls. She turns a meaningful look on Thunder. “We should have–”
“Don’t,” you say breathlessly. “It’s over now. Don’t go talking about what you should have done differently.” All the multifarious paths you could have taken to end up somewhere other than here, barely holding down sick and bloated memories.
“You killed someone?” Titan’s flame sputters, throwing anxious sparks in all directions. “I don’t understand. What are all of you talking about? Why doesn’t anyone ever tell me what’s going on?”
“Titan, I…” Rats sighs and glances at Thunderstorm. “Can you…?”
The magneton rolls its eyes, but it does drift over to Titan. “We will explain it for you, Titan. Please wait. Right now our trainer requires emotional support.”
Poor Titan. You should talk to him, too. Later. Right now Rats is grooming you so aggressively that it actually hurts, with her tongue as rough as it is. She drags on your hair, drags some of it out. But you don’t want to push her away. “You got rid of him, though, Boss?” Rats asks between nips. “You dumped the master ball somewhere no one’s going to find it?”
“I couldn’t find it again, even if I really wanted to. I don’t want anybody to ever find him. I didn’t put a marker around where I was digging or anything.”
Rats nods slowly. “That makes sense, I guess. Yeah.”
Cold threads of fear creep through your chest. That’s not a bad thing, right? You aren’t going to take it back. You know you aren’t going to regret it. You don’t want, you don’t think you could bear, Rats saying you’ve done a bad thing, that you shouldn’t have gotten rid of Mewtwo after all. Because he’ll be lonely, won’t he, trapped in his master ball forever? He’ll go even more crazy than he already is.
“We can worry about that later,” Rats says. “I don’t know if I really feel… Well. It doesn’t matter. We need that guy out of the way until we find Mew at least. Maybe after that we can talk about if there’s anything else we should do.”
“We’re still going to look for Mew?” you ask weakly. “It’s pointless without Mewtwo. We’ll never find her.”
“Says who? Absol? I don’t know that I believe any of her prophecy crap anyhow, Boss. I made a promise, a long time ago, that I would free Mew, and I don’t intend to stop until I’ve done it. Not after we’ve come this far.”
Titan swings his great head down and nudges your shoulder with his snout, his eyes deep and dark and soft. “I promised, too. And I promised to do everything I could to help my trainer. That’s what a starter is for.”
“As did I,” Thunderstorm buzzes. “I don’t entirely understand why our course would change without Mewtwo involved, but I have no intention of turning aside.”
You were already feeling wobbly after Titan’s nuzzle, but somehow it’s Thunder’s vaguely exasperated reply that gets you crying, tears of relief, tears of sorrow, of laughter–at this absurd place you’ve come to, at how strange and yet familiar your old friends are. Everything’s mixed-up topsy-turvy, and you almost feel good.
Duskull pokes his head halfway out of the roof, grumbling about the sunshine, and you have to laugh in earnest, laugh even though you’re still crying, for no reason, for no reason at all other than that everything is new now, and somehow still the same as it’s always been.
Rats shoves herself under your arm, her long whiskers jabbing, and nibbles affectionately on your sleeve. “Just like old times, huh?” she asks. “We’ve got your back, Boss. We always have.”
They always have, even if it hasn’t always felt like it. They’ve never abandoned you. Whether they’re doing this for you, who you are now, or who you once were, it’s still true.
The laughter shakes you, painfully. You don’t know how you even feel anymore, besides exhausted. You need to sleep. The whole world is brittle with your mimicked insomnia. Nothing makes sense. How can you laugh when–“You really don’t care that I–that I killed somebody?”
“Wasn’t your fault, Boss,” Rats says immediately. “It’s obvious you didn’t want to. That’s on the asshole clone, you know? He was the one who did that to you.”
Thunderstorm buzzes agreement, but Titan… Titan won’t look at you straight on. You wish you didn’t feel that wrench, that stab of sorrow. Of course he wouldn’t be okay with it. He’s supposed to help his trainer. But who wants to help a murderer? You know yourself how bad that feels.
Didn’t want to do it. Rats says it so confidently, like it’s self-evident. Like you could never possibly have wanted to kill someone. Despite all the times you’ve wanted to before. Or maybe actually did. You weren’t very careful about hurting Rockets. Why are you crying now, unmoored? What’s changed from when you waited for deaths with Absol, feeling nothing but annoyance if things took longer than expected?
“Here, come on,” Rats says, nudging you again with her snout. “Why don’t we get out of the sun for a bit, Boss? You look like you could use some sleep.”
Yes. Sleep. You’re set. You’re safe. You can figure everything else out later. You get up and stagger after Rats, letting your insomnia fall away. Maybe a mistake. You’re too weary even to reenter the factory, only making it to the cool shade of the ziggurat before you collapse. You don’t think of anything for a long time afterwards.
The nightmare suffocates you in burning anger, and you choke on nothing, heart pounding in your throat. And when you wake, the nightmare doesn’t end.
It’s impossible, is the first coherent thought to surface out of your panic. This was never going to happen again. Because Mewtwo is…
At the far end of the roof, two shapes, silhouetted against the desert sky. One tall, thin, crooked. Eyes glowing blue, baking the air with fury. Beside it one small and asymmetrical, completely silent, betraying nothing at all.
Absol. You forgot about Absol.
She found Mewtwo. Already. And now you’re never going to get him back in his ball.
Where is–no! You try to squash the thought as soon as you’ve formed it. You can’t think about it. You have to find it without thinking about it. You feel all around you, struggling mightily to keep your mind blank. Mewtwo’s burning gaze seems to register a hint of amusement.
“Boss,” Rats says, a tight hiss through her bared teeth. She’s curled against your side, tense as a wire after being woken in the same way you were.
I think I’ll stop you there, Mewtwo says, throwing out a lazy arm. Rats seems to leap into his grasp, eyes white-rimmed with terror. She squirms furiously, hind legs kicking and tail flailing. “Put me down!”
I’ve had more than enough talk from you, Mewtwo says. I’ve been lenient. But my patience wears thin. He turns his gaze to you, eyes glowing with demonic psychic light. All of you have tried me beyond measure. And where has restraint got me? What of my kindness? This is how you repay me?
“Let her go! I’m the one you’re mad at, so I’m the one you should be fighting!” Your pulse hammers in your throat, and you can’t tear your eyes from Mewtwo’s hand, buried roughly in Rats’ thin fur, waiting for it to squeeze, or to spark with some horrible energy. You keep pawing at the roof around you, desperate. Where did you put it? Where on earth did you put it?
Yes, that’s what you’d like, isn’t it? To nobly throw yourself in harm’s way so I might spare this one? You think you’re prepared for pain, well. I think it’s time I find some more effective motivation. The clone’s fingers clench, and Rats gasps, back arching and paws kicking with renewed vigor. You feel more than hear the rumble of Titan’s snarl, barely register his presence, and Thunderstorm’s, too. Of course they’d come, feeling this pressing down on their minds.
Your vision fizzes red and black, but at last your questing fingers bump up against plastic. Now, what is this sorry plan you’ve–
The clone’s words cut off when you slam the remote’s power button, not thinking about it, thinking of nothing but the fact that Mewtwo’s hurting your pokémon now. He’s not holding back anymore. Any time you displease him, any time you contradict him, he’s going to hurt them, and then again, and again.
Mewtwo’s eyes widen as the air around you goes dead, suddenly no more than inert gas. You surge forward before he can get his bearings, extreme speed carrying you past him in the blink of an eye, and tear Rats out of his grasp as you go.
You come to a halt with Rats squirming in your arms, and Mewtwo turns slowly to face you. You can imagine his fury, how it would wake anger and pain in your own chest; it’s strange to feel none of that while he stares you down, expression blank, so you could almost imagine him as serene as his unlined face.
What now? You don’t know how long the damper’s power will last. If you fly outside its range, you can teleport somewhere, anywhere far away. But Absol’s still standing behind Mewtwo, watching the scene unfold, a black and white rebuke. Where can you run that she won’t know? Where can you go that Mewtwo won’t be able to follow?
You can’t, you realize, your heart pumping icewater through your veins. You can never escape Mewtwo. Never had a chance. And if you try, if you do a really good job of it, all it will mean is that he’ll kill even more people while he tries to find you.
“Boss, come on!” Rats kicks her way out of your grasp, and you let her go, not even thinking, not realizing–until of course she throws herself straight at Mewtwo.
“Rats, no!”
“We can fight him, Boss!” Rats calls over her shoulder. “We just have to knock him out, and–”
And what? Teleport him somewhere and leave him there? If you can get more psychic dampers set up, make a proper defense… then maybe. Maybe you’d be able to keep him away, at least if you beat him up whenever he inevitably came barging back in.
Maybe that’s what Rats is thinking, if she’s thinking at all and not simply following the old pokémon battle-instinct, which always knows exactly what to do when confronted by threat. She charges, and with a roar Titan follows, Thunderstorm floating behind, sheeted with sparks. They’re going to fight Mewtwo. Can they win? Mewtwo without his mind is less than half his full strength. Is that enough? It has to be. It’s your last hope.
Another extreme speed shoves Mewtwo back, disrupting the lightning bolt he’d been about to fire at Titan, and Rats leaps past you to sink her teeth into the clone’s leg. Mewtwo pivots smoothly–not as smoothly as he usually does, without his telekinesis lending him otherworldly grace–and punches her in the side of the head. A kick sends her flying free in a spray of blood.
Sparkling energy’s already sealing the ragged hole in Mewtwo’s leg when your night slash opens another across his shoulder. You have to duck away from the wash of fire that sweeps across his back, courtesy Titan. Mewtwo’s purple gaze remains on you, even while he fires an aura sphere at Thunder, barely flinching when a bolt of electricity slams into him in response.
You leap forward again, lashing out with a quick-burst barrage of fury cutters, another strike every time it looks like Mewtwo might be shifting his attention to one of your friends. Then a low sweep takes your legs out from under you, and you hit the roof hard but grab for Mewtwo’s injured leg before you even get your breath back, fingers clawed and dripping poison.
Rats is on her feet but wobbling; she dashes in, only to be repelled by a crackling shock wave. Titan roars and dips in the air, sparks fizzing around him; Thunder hardly notices and takes the opportunity to send a tri attack spinning Mewtwo’s way. The clone’s head turns slowly, but you strike him square in the chest with a rage fist, and though he barely flinches, his attention returns, inexorably, to you.
Rats seizes Mewtwo’s leg with another fearsome crunch, but this time she lets go before he can strike back, flattening herself against the roof. She’s back up again a second later, leaping to grab and hang from Mewtwo’s side by her teeth. You block the clone’s reaching arm, taking a blow that you feel all down into your gut. Mewtwo’s eyes bore into yours, and though he’s still mute, muzzled by the power of the psychic damper, you know what he’s saying as clearly as though the words were etched into your brain: I’m going to make this one pay.
A harsh wind stirs around you, tearing at your face like a desperate animal. It rises higher and higher, a hurricane centered on Mewtwo that hurls you away, topples Titan from the air, even repels Thunderstorm. Rats is ripped free and sent flying, and while you struggle to rise, head reeling with endless spinning gusts, Mewtwo leaps through the wall of air and with one vicious kick propels Rats all the way across the roof and into its far retaining wall. She falls back unconscious, and you stagger forward, fighting nausea, trying to aim her pokéball. You don’t want to find out if Mewtwo intends to follow up with another attack, to strike while she’s defenseless.
Rats dissolves away into safety–temporary safety. She’ll only be safe as long as Mewtwo’s occupied. If he’s determined to get back at her, he can simply take her ball from you. Release her and hurt her as much as he wants. He can do that to any of your pokémon, any time he likes. The only thing that stopped him in the past was whatever faint shred of honor he still had, whatever made him spare pokémon while he vented all his wrath on humans.
An angry buzz from Thunderstorm brings you back to the battle with a jolt. Mewtwo stomps his foot, sending seismic energy rattling across the roof with a noise like an accelerating train, knocking Thunderstorm from the air and bouncing it farther and farther away. The dripping wound in Mewtwo’s side’s already sealed and vanished, and the clone gamely ignores Titan’s fire, all intent on Thunderstorm now. You don’t have time to think, not when you’re fighting him.
You can’t help it, though. Through shadow ball and kowtow cleave, parrying with mirror coat and stinging with twineedle you keep thinking, thinking. Of how this fight isn’t just about beating Mewtwo back again but about saving your friends. Of how you’re losing, when Mewtwo blocks yet another desperate night slash. Of how this might be your friends’ last chance to flee.
“Titan!” you yell. The charizard’s dipping and swooping in the air, harried by dazzling power gems. “You need to get out of here! Take everyone and go!” You struggle to pull the pokéball belt off your waist, almost fail to raise a protect shield before an aura sphere crashes against it.
Thunderstorm sees what’s coming and lets out an angry buzz, but the recall beam takes it anyway. Duskull’s been watching the fight from the ziggurat’s shadow, eye rolling crazily back and forth. He disappears, too, and then only Titan’s left. Titan, and Absol, of course, grim, eternal, uncompromising.
“I want to fight!” Titan roars. “We can win!”
You grit your teeth. Mewtwo’s weathering your attacks grimly, not unscathed but far from stopped. His own strikes are implacable. He only needs to land a couple good hits to knock out Titan and Thunderstorm, and you can’t beat him on your own. Not even with his greatest weapon taken from him. That’s the truth throbbing in your chest like a wound, the one that’s been creeping over you through the entire fight. You never even had a chance.
“You need to go, Titan! I’m going to give everyone to you, and then you need to leave!” Your bones grow light and hollow, arms extending, fingers growing long and webbed even as you grab your belt with newly-taloned toes.
The fact that you’ve had respite doesn’t register until Titan’s howl cuts through your concentration. You spin around, only to find Mewtwo aiming two arms’ worth of power gems at him, filling the air with glowing shards.
Of course he heard you yelling as well as Titan did, and is as uninterested in seeing anyone leave as the charizard himself. “Over here! Titan!” You haul yourself into the air with great swooping wingbeats, reaching desperately for a tailwind to give you some lift.
“No! I’m not leaving!” Titan swoops around a shimmering beam of rock energy, firing off a flamethrower that Mewtwo casually deflects.
“Yes, you are! Titan!” You try to keep half your attention on him and half on Mewtwo. The clone’s sending rocks your way now, too, and you think he’s aiming for the pokéballs. You tuck your legs against your chest, bones reshaping, muscles slithering to new positions to let you keep hold and shield at once. Titan drops below you, straight into the beam of a power gem, and you grit your teeth against a curse.
“Titan, take the belt and go! Titan!”
“I won’t!” The charizard roars. He’s crying tears that evaporate in the heat of his own fire. He must see that he can’t win. You dip down, too, a weary protect taking the brunt of another power gem. The air around Titan is a minefield of glittering gemstones, and his wings are dangerously ragged. Still he insists on flying, wind rattling through the holes in his wing-membranes.
“I’m not leaving you behind!”
“Yes, you are. That’s an order, Titan. I’m your trainer, remember? I’m telling you to leave. Now! While you still can!” You hiss as a stream of lightning from Mewtwo forces you into a hard bank, strained muscles screaming. You don’t evade completely, and electricity sears down one arm and makes those same muscles seize, so you lose air and then have to flap even harder to regain your position. “Take the pokéballs! Get out of here!”
Titan doesn’t resist as you thrust the belt into his arms. “I order you to leave, Titan. Get healing. And don’t come back.”
He stares back at you tearfully. “Please…” he mumbles, hovering where he is.
You don’t have time to let your heart crack. You can’t feel what that word means, not now. “Go! Get out of here! I’ll cover you!” You turn around and force yourself to dive towards Mewtwo. Force yourself to not look back.
You can hear Titan leaving. He doesn’t go immediately, but he does go, his wingbeats receding into the distance. You tell yourself you’re happy he’s gone, that he and the rest of your friends will be safe, even if you don’t get to be.
You can’t think about Absol, can’t meet her red gaze. She hasn’t moved a centimeter. Was she watching while you dug the pit for Mewtwo’s ball, measuring its depth, only waiting for you to leave so that she could sink her claws into the earth and begin its exhumation?
Maybe she didn’t bother. Maybe there was no reason for her to show up at all. Maybe she knew all along what you’d do, had already seen precisely where the master ball would come to rest. Of course she would. How could something as small as you ever stand in the way of her Fate?
She’s seen this, too. She’ll know where Titan flees, if he gets away. She’s seen all your pokémon, there at the end, and she’ll do everything she can to ensure they arrive exactly as her vision foretold.
You land hard in front of Mewtwo, already swapping your elongated frame for something more compact. Armored. Prepared to take punishment. But it’s not Mewtwo you speak to now, though your eyes must always be on the clone, at every moment braced for his next attack. There’s only one person who can keep your friends hidden from Mewtwo.
“Let them go, okay?” you begin, and then you have to raise your arms to block Mewtwo’s brick break. He presses forward, face inches from your own, but you raise your voice and force yourself to go on, now, while you still have any voice at all. “You don’t need them. You won’t need them until the end. So let them go. I’m the only one you need.”
You can’t look to see if Absol hears you. It would be pointless anyway. There’d be no hint of an answer in her flat red eyes.
Mewtwo bashes at your protect shield, expressionless, implacable. You keep talking, voice rising higher and higher in time with your desperation. “I know I can’t leave, but let them go, please! At least for now. Let them stay away. Let them stay away for as long as they can. Don’t make them do this, too!”
Mewtwo’s fists flash with fire, with ice, with lightning. He keeps coming, driving you back, hardly noticing the attacks you slip in around his own. You start to speak again, to send Absol one last plea, when something in the air changes. There’s a moment of stillness, the calm before the storm. Mewtwo pauses as if to listen, and you stop, too, afraid without understanding why. The whole world holds its breath.
Then Mewtwo’s mind comes crashing down on you once again, and there’s no more speaking for you. Not now, not ever, maybe. Never, ever, ever again.