Chapter 58
Time passes.
The sun rises. The sun sets. At night, Mewtwo always has something new for you to do. Some new place to investigate, some new human to kill. It comes down to a fight, sometimes. Mewtwo’s prepared, now, for unexpected humans to show up, bringing tools that cloud his mind. They still can’t hope to best him, or you, in battle. What they’re trying for, you don’t really know. It doesn’t matter. Mewtwo tells you where to go and what to do, and that’s enough.
The sun rises, and the sun sets. Again and again, the oldest cycle that exists. Mostly you spend your time warming yourself in the heat of the day, dozing now and then, waiting for something to happen. Sometimes Absol comes to join you. She’s always been content to sit and watch, even when there’s nothing worth seeing. She’s the expert at waiting for things to happen. “Are you well?” she’ll ask. “You’ve been like this for a long time.”
“Yes,” you’ll reply, and she’ll study you, as though she doesn’t believe you, as though your wellness isn’t self-evident.
There’s nothing wrong with you. This is the way any wild creature is supposed to live, enjoying sleep and sun, concerned with nothing more than food and shelter and being alive. Things will happen. They always do. You don’t need all the frivolous distractions your other self so enjoys. You take your peace where you can get it and leave the planning to Mewtwo. He doesn’t want your input anyhow.
At night, you clash again with Team Rocket. You can’t remember how long it’s been since you’ve actually encountered someone from Cipher, someone you set out to find. You let Mewtwo keep track of that. But it feels like it must be a long time.
Not that it matters now. Team Rocket’s here, and Cipher’s not. As always, you try to push past the pokémon to get at the trainers. Easier to kill, harder to replace.
Though Mewtwo doesn’t want you to kill these ones, not right away. He wants you to take one for him to question. He wants Team Rocket’s information more than their deaths. But Team Rocket doesn’t want you to have their agents. If you drag one away, still kicking, they’ll turn their weapons on your prisoner. So far, you haven’t managed to steal one like Mewtwo wants. It’s easier just to kill them, anyway.
Tonight the Rockets melt away before you, and more and more pokémon rush in, trying to slow you down. Trying to drag Mewtwo under. They haven’t captured him before. You don’t know why they think tonight will be any different, especially with you walking into their attack with eyes wide open, not surprised at all.
They retreat before you can kill more than two. Their troops must be limited. How many is two to them? Perhaps you’ll simply kill all of the Team Rocket members here in Orre, and then you can look for Cipher agents again. Probably that’s Mewtwo’s plan.
You retreat yourself, looking for the way to clear air and a teleport home. Then Mewtwo’s head snaps around; even without the power of his mind, he notices the humans–some sound they made, presumably. They huddle warily against the side of an abandoned building, not Team Rocket, not Cipher, either.
Mewtwo can’t speak, but he can gesture. There’s only ever one thing he tells you to do anyway. By now you’re familiar with his tenets. No witnesses.
You’ve registered your objections before, not that Mewtwo’s ever listened.
And the sun rises again, the same as it always does. In some hours it will set. You lean back against the metal of the factory’s ziggurat, slowly warming as the day creeps over you.
I’m going to see the shadow pokémon, Mewtwo says. That’s not uncommon. The shadow pokémon remain his best informants, after all. What you don’t understand is why he keeps going alone, without you. Not that you mind. If you went with him, you’d need to change yourself, and you like you better the way you are. Your other self doesn’t want to deal with the burden of Mewtwo’s plans anyway. This works best for everyone.
Still, it’s odd how often Mewtwo goes to see the shadow pokémon, when he always complains they’re stupid. Perhaps he’s going and doing something else out there, on his own time. It’s none of your concern. He’ll be careful, be discreet, or he won’t. It’s not like you can stop him, one way or another.
And so, you wait. The sun slides down the sky, and the shadows turn as it does, always fleeing. Absol emerges from them. She never lies about what she’s been up to. She takes the much more sensible path of never saying anything about it in the first place. By this point she doesn’t bother asking you anything, either. She merely sits with you, watching the sky change, observing the empty expanse of the desert, as though it makes any difference whether or not she’s there.
Nothing else interesting happens for that entire day. And when the sun sets, you have work to do.
Another dark building, another quiet night. You’ve been all over Orre, but recently your travels have mostly taken you to Phenac City or to dusty compounds in the desert, where the homes are sprawling and isolated. You suppose it’s because you’ve been looking for humans who are important. They have the status to demand more living space, to make their constructions grand. It’s something the other you would care about, probably. For you the difference is merely a curiosity.
Mewtwo follows behind you, needling you forward with psychic commands. He’s wrapped in a long cloak and can almost pass for human, at least in the dark, in the middle of the night. So long as he minds his tail.
You start towards the apartment complex, ignoring Mewtwo’s whispering in your head. You know the important things already: the number that will be on the door and the fact that the place you want is near the top of the building. It always takes you some work to understand the geometry of these places, how the numbers tell you where to find something, but with practice you’ve gotten better. You’ll get to be just as good at that as your other self, surely. All you need is practice.
A broad parking lot rings the apartment complex, filled with hover-cars and -cycles. Probably in Kanto there would be some kid of energy shield around this place, but in Orre, there’s hardly more than a sturdy wall and security cameras. They aren’t too worried about pokémon causing problems.
You don’t even make it halfway across before Mewtwo’s voice cuts out. You’re used to that by now, but that doesn’t make it better, the sudden encroachment of silence, the way your ears whine at the abrupt loss of phantom sound. Your heart supplies a new soundtrack, thundering inside your head, and then other sounds crowd in around it–a pokéball release, the scuff of a shoe against asphalt. A voice.
“Cordierite-eyes, Cordierite-eyes,” the shadows hiss at you. “So good to see you again.”
Eskar’s here tonight. You don’t know why she appears sometimes, why she doesn’t others. You suppose it doesn’t matter. What you need to do now is deal with it.
The lights in the parking lot flicker and then go out. You suppose you won’t have to worry about people watching from all the blank windows overhead. Even at this time of night, light glows from a handful of them. At least there’s less risk of someone recognizing Mewtwo. Someone who doesn’t already know he’s here, at least.
“What do you say, Cordierite-eyes? A truce?” Eskar’s voice sounds closer now, but she’s a ghost; she could be anywhere. You wonder if her taunts would work on your other self. For you, as you are now, they’re trivial to ignore. You charge towards human footsteps, somewhere between a couple of parked speeders, and hope to catch them before whatever pokémon they summon get their bearings. Mewtwo follows, as silent on the Eskar problem as he is on everything right now. A shadow ball flickers between his fingers. When you vault over a car, leaving careless foot-dents in the hood, you catch a brilliant flash of light in the face and land messily, eyes watering and vision a sea of neon afterimages.
You can still hear fine, though. Chattering laughter, the scurrying claws of a small pokémon–there’s little doubt about who got you. Somehow Eskar’s there at every turn, always with a whisper and a smile and a stinging burst of darkness to throw you off your stride. There, behind a hover-cycle bristling with pipes. When you toss it aside to look: nothing. Or over there, a beat-up green car with mocking comments drifting from its grille, silent and empty when you arrive. You should have realized what a nightmare it would be to fight a ghost in a place like this, dense with shadows and offering five thousand hiding places.
There, now, there’s the gleam of a gemstone from behind a tire–careless mistake or intentional provocation? You put on a burst of speed and rip the wheel out of its well, leaving Eskar to grin up at you, teeth brightly glittering in the moonlight. “Oh, very good, Cordierite-eyes! Very good! You found me!”
Then several things happen very fast.
There’s a roar from somewhere behind you, a howling pokémon noise, desperate and pained. You turn instinctively, poised to deflect an attack, and something whizzes past your cheek, bouncing off the side of a parked car with a solid crack.
Eskar hisses. “Idiot!”
The thing that nearly struck you is round–a pokéball? It’s hard to tell color, but even in the star-lit parking lot you can see the stark white “M” in the center of its lid.
You don’t have time to stand and contemplate it, because the noise that distracted you came from Mewtwo. He’s far behind you–how did he get to be so far away? How could you have failed to notice the sounds of battle before now? He’s easy to see, perched on the roof of a car, but between you and him a solid rank of upright figures stands. Your stomach twists the way it always does whenever humans arrive on the scene.
The rockets are throwing things at Mewtwo while their pokémon keep him pinned down, bugs tangling him in string, electric-types blasting him with paralytic charge. More pokéballs–master balls? None of it makes sense, but it doesn’t really have to. Mewtwo roars again, that awful, raw sound from a throat that’s usually so silent. What you need to do now is move.
Into the thick of the fighting cloaked in a sheet of fire, blasting Eskar aside with a jet of flame when she leaps at you. You trample over one human who isn’t fast enough about getting away and bathe the whole area in heat as you come up beside Mewtwo. It seems like there are more pokémon here than ever, though none of them are very strong. But even as you’re clearing them aside with wave after wave of fire, more master balls come whizzing your way.
Mewtwo snarls, crouched and holding what must be his own master ball close against his chest. He hardly attacks the pokémon, instead swatting the balls away with wave after wave of swift stars. You crumple a beedrill with a fire punch, and Mewtwo leaps through the gap it leaves, leaps at you, grabbing you by the shoulder. You get one last glimpse of the Rockets and their pokémon, metal glinting up the humans’ arms in the firelight, and then Mewtwo drags you away.
The clone growls to himself as he pulls you along, speechless in the psychic blackout and breathing hard, his gaze roaming desperately around the minefield of parked vehicles. His eyesight is better than a human’s, but nothing like what he’s used to, where he can see from the angle of every observer at once. You let him drag you along in what can only be full retreat, off towards the edge of the parking lot.
Master balls ping in from all sides; one arcs perfectly towards Mewtwo’s unprotected back, but you reach up and swat it away with an air cutter. Mewtwo flinches at the sudden noise, then pulls you along all the faster. At a stumbling run you make it to the wall, and then with an explosion of heat and light are left to stagger through the hole left by a giga impact, the air dancing with particles of vaporized concrete.
There’s still no psychic on the far side, and Mewtwo’s gone, he’s pressing ahead into the mess of streets and shops and apartment complexes on the outskirts of Phenac City. You rush after, chased by whizzing master balls and the cries of pokémon now pouring through the hole in the wall, but Mewtwo’s strides are long and panicked. He disappears around a fast food place, the lights still on under its grinning squirtle mascot, and you cringe to think of who might have seen him through its great glowing windows.
You must be nearly at the limit of Team Rocket’s power by now. They can’t have covered the whole city in dampers. This was a trap, yes, but they couldn’t possibly have prepared something that big. You sprint to catch up with Mewtwo, taking the corner hard, but now you can’t even see him up ahead.
A sudden noise, the rattling of a kicked can. You freeze, swaying a little, but you can’t stop moving long. You need to get to a place where you can teleport. You stretch out your mind, trying to pull yourself along to somewhere else, but there’s nothing. Still nothing. Footsteps approach in your moment of hesitation, heavy and stumbling. Two humans lurching away from a bar down the street, laughing, drunk. Your heartbeat quickens with the surety of anger, your own anger, your own disgust. There’s no one else’s in the night’s crisp air.
The humans come to a messy halt, leaning wide-eyed against each other. All they see is a ragged and blood-soaked human staring back at them. Something they know means trouble, that means they should leave. And they start to, tripping over their own heels as they back up.
They can’t see Mewtwo, charged off down some dark alley somewhere. Can’t feel him with the inferno of his mind snuffed out.
But they could have.
You don’t need to be told what to do about them.
The sun will rise again, but Mewtwo wants to talk to you first.
Snag machines! he snarls. He paces the roof in front of you, and now you feel his anger, the anger that was absent when Team Rocket attacked. Anger and fear. You understand what that means, don’t you? Snag machines and master balls!
“They could catch you. If they have master balls, you would not be able to escape. You would belong to them.”
Yes, thank you. It’s so reassuring to know you’re semi-conscious, Mewtwo sneers. You don’t know why he’s mad at you for answering his question, and correctly, at that. But he will get mad about anything.
Enough. Now that you’ve so handily identified the problem, what do you suggest to solve it?
Solve it? You thought that was Mewtwo’s job.
And I thought you were forever itching to make it your own. You’re always bursting with ideas, aren’t you? Thoughts, opinions. So what have you got to say this time? How do you plan to stop Team Rocket if they can capture me with the touch of one master ball? And I without my mind to shield me.
Well, you don’t have any thoughts about that. Not that you’ve reflected on it much. You were just getting ready to sleep.
It is bad, though. Considering it now, it’s a difficult problem. Mewtwo is vulnerable without his psychic field, and Team Rocket has proven very good at disabling it. You can’t relax, either. A snag ball could take you as easily as Mewtwo.
It could catch you? You’re vulnerable to pokéballs as well?
“Yes,” you say aloud, though obviously Mewtwo’s watching every thought that flits through your skull. “Some humans caught me before. In Kanto.”
And I’m only hearing about this now? Mewtwo’s tail slashes the air, his anger pulsing through you. Wonderful. So sending you in my stead won’t work.
Sending you in his stead would never have worked.
We need information, Mewtwo fumes. We’ve always needed information. And now even those, those shadow pokémon can’t help us.
You suppose that’s true. They were snagged once, after all. No reason they couldn’t be caught like that again.
You think about it. How are you supposed to predict what Team Rocket will do? Or Cipher? They have snag machines. Then… you need to get rid of them. How? Well, Mewtwo could blow them up with his mind. If Team Rocket would let him. You could break them, too. That would mean getting very close to them, though, and like Mewtwo just figured out, that would be dangerous.
This isn’t a job for a pokémon, or for you. It’s a job for a human. You don’t know any humans around here, and you don’t know how you could get one to rid you of the snag machine problem even if you did.
You shrug. “I don’t know what to do.”
Oh, after such an astonishing amount of thought? Try harder. The word’s accompanied by an increase in the power of Mewtwo’s psychic field, so it feels like your molars are vibrating in your skull. You don’t know how that’s supposed to help.
Idiot! And you act as though I’m unreasonable for not listening to your inane opinions.
Mewtwo stalks back and forth, one more transit of the roof. Then he rounds on you, eyes glowing with power. I want to speak to the other one.
You hesitate. “Why?”
Because there’s at least a chance I might wring some useful idea from them. You have your uses when it comes to fighting, but you’re utterly worthless for dealing with humans. You know that as well as I do. Now let me speak to the other one.
Another treacherous second, another wayward thought. The psychic pressure intensifies, spiking pain behind your temples. You want to hold on, even a second longer, even in pain. But what good will it do, anyway? Your other self won’t hold sway for long. And you’re perfectly aware that you can’t resist Mewtwo.
It’s only one second, one second more. Then you make yourself focus on another way of thinking, and change.
You return to yourself sluggishly, as though coming to after a deep slumber. Has it been a long time since you’ve been yourself? You think it must have. There’s no calendar here, no seasons to the desert that might give you a clue to how long you’ve been away. Sleeping, waiting for everything to be over. All you know is that you’re waking up as the sun’s prelude stains the eastern sky yellow and orange.
It’s been three weeks. Quit your whining and concentrate. Believe me when I say I wouldn’t have called upon your idiot side unless I believed it truly necessary.
You flinch, but of course Mewtwo’s here. That realization ushers in a torrent of unwelcome thoughts, of memories. You don’t want to think about those right now. Or ever. You already have a good idea of what they contain.
Good. Let’s focus on the future, Mewtwo says, pure disdain radiating through his psychic field. Team Rocket has snag machines. What are we going to do about it?
“What?! Snag machines? So that means–”
And master balls.
So that means a lot. Your stomach drops, and fear you surely haven’t felt for three weeks–three weeks?–tightens your chest. After so long not yourself, it would have been nice to have at least a few minutes to enjoy simply being able to enjoy things again. Nothing for it now. Your mind’s already off, racing ahead with possibilities. “They must have got them from Cipher, then. Or Snagem?”
Or maybe the black market. Something like that. You thought all the snag machines were destroyed, but Professor Krane managed to make one. If someone could rediscover the technology once, it could happen again. Or somebody stole Professor Krane’s blueprints or something.
Who cares where they came from? The point is to get rid of them.
“I don’t know if we can! If they have the plans for them, they can always make more.”
Then we’ll destroy those as well.
Sometimes you think it would actually be nice to be Mewtwo. His world seems so straightfoward.
Mewtwo’s eyes narrow. I could do it. The question is how. I can’t afford to expose myself to that sort of risk. One lucky strike, and I’m theirs.
The problem is, none of you are safe around snag machines. You can disguise yourself as a normal human, but Team Rocket knows you can do that, and even so, one ball happening to hit you in the chaos of a fight would be the end for you as surely as for Mewtwo. The shadow pokémon would be in even more danger. Your best bet would be an actual human with a lot of weapons, but it’s not like you can conjure one of those up out of nowhere.
Maybe pay somebody to deal with Team Rocket? Like a mercenary? Surely they have those in Orre. You’d probably need a lot of them, though.
Good, good, Mewtwo says. That’s more like it. Anything you can think of. We’ll explore whatever avenues we have.
“Anything you can think of.” Of course now he cares about your opinion. Now that he needs you for something, he’ll pay attention to what you say. He’ll treat you horribly up until the very moment he might be able to get something from you, and he’ll go right back to treating you horribly after you give him what he wants.
Oh? I thought you didn’t want to be called upon unless it was urgent. I thought you didn’t care for the work we need to do.
“The work you decided we need to do. You know it doesn’t have to be like this. There’s no reason I need to kill anybody! That’s you! You keep making everything awful!”
Are you going to refuse, then? Mewtwo asks, taking a menacing step towards you. Will you hide away again and leave me to figure this out for myself? I think you know what sort of solution I prefer. I’m offering you the opportunity to suggest a different path.
Will you? It’s not like you actually know how to solve the problem of Team Rocket having snag machines. But you can’t let Mewtwo fail. Even if you could turn your back on Mew, you can’t even imagine what Team Rocket might do with him under their power, what they’ve wanted from the very beginning.
“No, I, I’m going to try,” you say. “But you have to leave me alone. Don’t hurt me. Don’t push me around. Just let me think.” You close your eyes and put your hands up to the sides of your head, trying to block out everything besides the problem in front of you.
It’s never easy around Mewtwo. You crack open one eye and squint at him. “Can you go away for a while? You’re making my head hurt.”
So delicate. But he actually does leave, or at least go over to the far end of the roof so he can moodily look out at the full sweep of the desert. His mind lingers as nothing more than an itch at the back of your skull. It’s refreshing. And now you have no excuse not to plunge back into your memory to examine these “Team Rocket snag machines” for yourself. Your other self probably missed at least something useful about them.
It’s not such a bad memory, at least. More embarrassing than anything. You walked into such an obvious trap, and of course you didn’t even properly see any of the snag machines. Were they more like the one that Wes used, or the one that Michael had? You press your palms against the sides of your head, supplying the pressure that Mewtwo’s mind no longer does. Mewtwo running away like that–it would be funny, if it wasn’t so serious. Your other self wasn’t even really trying to dodge the master balls. You could have been caught, right then and there. Caught by Team Rocket.
At least you did get away. You barely even got hurt. But as you follow yourself back to this moment–more humans. Rockets? But no, they weren’t. You killed them–you did kill them. You recall in some detail. But why? Mewtwo wasn’t there. It wasn’t dangerous. You wouldn’t just kill random people–but they couldn’t have been. You missed something. Your other self never remembers things properly, not the parts that are important.
You go through one more time. What are you missing? It was a mistake. Maybe. Three more weeks stretch behind you, shrouded in a veil of indifference. It was just one mistake, right? One time. Obviously you killed other people, Mewtwo would have made you, that was the whole reason you stayed away, but–not like that. You aren’t… like that.
Your fingers are digging into your skin now. The psychic pressure around you intensifies, and you shudder beneath Mewtwo’s displeasure. He must have felt your distress even from where he was standing. What’s wrong with you now? he asks, and you don’t bother answering.
Frantically you chase back through nightmare reels of long nights and bloody encounters. Three weeks’ worth of memories. Three weeks all muddled by your other self’s strange distance, the abstraction that makes it hard to recognize faces, to understand what even happened, why you were fighting besides the knowledge that enemies had arrived. You’d need to sit and decode the memories, running them slowly back and forth before your mind’s eye, trying to recognize important details that your other self discounted. Little things like Why did you do that, why would you kill them, who told you to? Who told you?
Mewtwo’s saying something in your head, but it can’t break through that torrent of bloodstained memories. He was the one, wasn’t he? Always there. Always goading your forward. Until he wasn’t. But he had to be, didn’t he? You wouldn’t murder people, unless–well, you know they’re bad, they’re Team Rocket, or Cipher, and even so it’s Mewtwo–but it’s not always Team Rocket. It’s not always Cipher. It’s not always Mewtwo. Is it? It has to be. Because otherwise, why?
You dig your fingers in harder, like you can crack open your skull and understand what’s going on inside. There was no reason for you to have killed those humans. Nobody told you to. So why? Why?
Mewtwo paces again, the restless energy of his psychic field enough to put butterflies in your stomach despite your utter dread. He looks up at the sun, now resolutely climbing. We don’t have time for this, he says, wheeling on you again. I was supposed to meet he shadow pokémon this morning. That will no longer be possible. You will go in my stead and tell them to come here. Tell them it is no longer possible for me to meet them as I have been.
No longer possible? Where has he been going, that he’s worried Team Rocket’s going to show up? He really must be scared.
A psychic blow rocks you backwards, leaving your head ringing. Scared, Mewtwo sneers. It’s a tactical consideration, nothing more. You said it yourself: I’m too valuable to risk. He turns back to the sun, anxiety threading through his psychic field. You slowly rub your aching skull. I’m not in the mood for your nonsense. If you’re too distressed to even think of a way out of this mess, you can at least pass the news on to our informants. Go meet them. Deliver the message. And… act normal.
“Normal? What do you mean?” Nothing is normal. You try to catch the thread of Mewtwo’s words, for once glad he’s talking to you, for some argument to take your mind away from half-forgotten murders.
Strange how Mewtwo’s mental voice can carry reluctance, the slow drag of impressions he would rather not transmit. The shadow pokémon have been asking after you. They are concerned for your well-being. I informed them that your pokémon had been captured by Cipher and that you were in mourning, but they begin to worry that something might be seriously wrong. You should reassure them that there’s no cause for concern.
The hot flash of anger that rises when Mewtwo mentions your pokémon comes from you, for once, not him. “You’re the reason they’re gone!”
Far easier to offer a polite excuse for their absence than to explain how your constitutional insufficiency for the work we have to do means that you’ve been in no fit state to visit with them, Mewtwo says. If you were more cooperative, there would be no need for deception.
You can’t believe the heat of your own fury. For once it feels good to be angry. To be angry for your reasons, for the right ones. “No, it’s because you know it’s wrong, don’t you? You know the Musketeers wouldn’t want to see you anymore if they knew what you really do. What you make me do. So you have to lie to them because you don’t want them to leave!”
Don’t call them that ridiculous name, Mewtwo says, outwardly calm but bristling with irritation inside his mind.
“Why not? Are you jealous they made me a Musketeer, but you don’t get to be one?”
Jealous? The word drips with scorn, but anger, anger, anger burns behind it. How could I ever be jealous of an insect like you? What do you think you have that I don’t?
“The shadow pokémon like me. More than you. Obviously.”
You should have been braced for the attack. Of course Mewtwo wouldn’t just let you say something like that. Not if it’s true. There’s a flash of pain, and you find yourself lying on your side, mouth tasting of blood from a bitten tongue. Just what are you accusing me of? Mewtwo demands. He always feels so terribly tall when you’re looking up at him from the ground. You think I care about the opinions of those common pokémon? They mean nothing to me! We need their information. Nothing more!
“They might be common pokémon, but they’re your friends. At least, you want them to be.” But they’re my friends more, is what you’re thinking, what you never get the chance to actually say because the crushing weight of psychic pressure clamps down from all sides, so your ears pop and your nose bleeds and your head feels like it’s going to explode, your vision stained red from burst blood vessels.
Mewtwo puts a foot on your chest and leans on it, so your ribs creak and each breath is a straining war against the weight of his body and his mind. You think you can talk about friendship with me? What do you think you understand of friendship? What do you think it even means?
You’re trapped in a sticky, red-rimmed moment where all you can think of is your next breath. To answer isn’t even a remote possibility.
Mewtwo leans more weight on his foot, sending a spike of pain through you. You can feel your heart beating against his toes, and still you can’t even move with the psychic force pinning you against the rooftop. Do you know who taught me about friendship? Mewtwo asks poisonously. Do you know who was my greatest friend?
Who? Who who who? Who would ever be friends with Mewtwo? Besides the Musketeers, maybe, in their way? You can’t think through the pain.
Why, that would be the Champion, of course, Mewtwo purrs. He eases up on his foot, ever so slightly, though you remain locked in his psychic hold. You try to catch your breath, weakly spitting blood between your teeth. Pay attention, now. You should find this quite educational.
You try. You do try to focus, despite the pain and the hopeless whirl of your thoughts. The champion? It doesn’t make sense. You can’t think of many less-friendly humans.
Oh, no. Mewtwo chuckles darkly. No, you should have seen him when he found me. All smiles and cheer. We’d be such great friends, he said. He knew humans had hurt me in the past, but he was different. He was a good trainer. Actually the best.
You’re dizzy in the whirlwind of emotions radiating off Mewtwo, anger and bitterness and something you would almost call guilt. He’s still pressing down on you, forcing you to fight for every painful breath. “Supposed to be a good trainer,” you gasp out. “Everyone says… loves his pokémon.”
Oh, he does, Mewtwo snarls. He does. So very eager to be friends. That pikachu adores him. So do all the rest. The worst sort of blind loyalty.
“Not…” Not when you battled them. They seemed like, like…
But Mewtwo’s not done reminiscing. Yes, so very eager to be friends. So once he captured me, what did I say? If you were really my friend, you’d let me go. And what did he say? That he couldn’t, obviously. That I’d been doing bad things to the humans in the city nearby, that I was too dangerous to let wander around on my own. But it was okay. I was going to love having a trainer. I’d get to fight all the strongest opponents. I’d get the finest food and the best care. I wouldn’t have to live out in a cave, in the dark. To trust him . Because he was a good trainer. And he was going to show me what good friends and partners humans and pokémon could be.
You swallow thickly. “You did something,” you wheeze. “What, what did you–you made him… like he is.”
Me? Mewtwo snarls. I never did anything to him. Never touched him once. He brought that on himself.
“Then what… What…?” Your vision swims as you strain to pull in air. You can barely even think over the pounding of your heartbeat in your skull.
Mewtwo finally takes his foot off your chest, his psychic hold relaxing. Then he kicks you in the side, hard enough that something snaps and another bright burst of pain has you curling in on yourself, newly mobile but in agony. You want to gasp in air, to fill your lungs over and over, but every time your chest expands that break stabs you again, a knife in your side. Instead you try to breathe shallowly, to calm your hindbrain’s panicked screams for oxygen long enough to heal the rest of you.
Mewtwo stands over you, disdain that makes your insides shrivel up pouring into your mind. What do you think it’s like, living with someone who hates you as much as I did him? Whose hate you can feel every second of every day? Even while you sleep? Your champion was wrong. He couldn’t show me how great it was to be a trainer’s pokémon because that was never something I wanted. All I desired was freedom, and that was the one thing he could not give me. Would not. For the safety of others. For my own good. So I hated him. For months and months, for years and years. And what do you know? In the end he stopped trying to become my friend. Or anybody’s friend.
You spit more bloody mucus onto the roof and wipe your mouth with the back of your hand. You’re beginning to heal, wearily. Warily. No guarantee Mewtwo isn’t going to tear into you again.
All he ever had to do was release me. I wouldn’t even have killed him afterwards. Certainly not after he took to wearing that pain device. Oh, he’s bitter. But he didn’t. What happened was entirely his fault. I never hurt him.
You think of the champion’s blank-eyed stare. The blind aggression of his pokémon, their corrupted aura. Somehow just being around Mewtwo did that to them?
Like the scientists in the lab, back on Cinnabar. The ones who went crazy. You knew Mewtwo could change people. Twist them. Drive them out of their minds. The Champion isn’t just scary, he’s wrong. His pokémon, too.
They did it to themselves, Mewtwo says firmly. And that is what I know of friendship. Friends want something from you, whatever they claim about “your own good.” They think they can use you. And for as long as they can, perhaps they’re kind enough. The Champion wanted glory. He wanted to be the one to tame Mewtwo, the most powerful pokémon ever, the one no one else could touch. Our shadow “friends” may desire proximity to power, special treatment. To watch us at last do to the humans a shade of what was practiced on them. It’s perfectly understandable. But desire they do, and I have no patience for people who try to make such relationships more than what they are.
You’ve seen this. You’ve seen it before. You knew, you knew that Mewtwo drives people insane, literally, but you’d never realized–“That’s going to happen to me, isn’t it?”
What do you mean?
“What happened to the Champion. It’s going to happen to me, isn’t it? Because I’m around you so much. You’re going to turn me into something like him.”
Mewtwo laughs mirthlessly. Rest assured I don’t hate you nearly so much as that human.
“That’s not an answer!” You have to take a second to catch your breath, your still-tender chest heaving as you try to steady yourself. “I’m right, aren’t I? If I keep being around you, I’m going to turn out like the Champion did.” Or worse. Or worse. Your other self–they’ve been around Mewtwo much longer than you. Is that why? Is that why they’ll kill–?
Oh, stop being so dramatic.
You do, you do try to stop thinking about it. It’s no good worrying now. Maybe sometime later, when you have privacy, no one peering into your thoughts. But gooseflesh stands out on your arms, and you feel cold, horribly cold under the desert sun. Your treacherous memory keeps trying to replay those last murders. Of course Mewtwo’s making you sick. It makes too much sense to ignore. And what is your future, then? Becoming some blank-faced robot inhabited by nothing but Mewtwo’s grudge?
Enough! The clone snaps out a burst of psychic power that slams you down hard against the roof. I brought you out to accomplish one thing and one thing only. Tell the shadow pokémon about Team Rocket. Tell them to meet me here. Convince them that there’s nothing wrong with you. Be seen. Be normal. And then you can go back to the way you were. Can you do that?
It’s only the beginning. Everything you’ve done, it’s only going to get worse. Mewtwo’s going to force you into more and more awful situations. And all along, you’ll become more like him–and who knows how long it will be before you’re properly yourself again? Hidden under the mask of someone who’s supposed to be you but who’s grown farther and farther away, into someone you don’t even recognize. That’s the person who’ll replace you, while you slumber within your own mind.
Get up! Clean yourself up! And go out there and tell those three idiots that you’re fine. Mewtwo’s eyes glow, narrowed slits that suggest he’s holding back, that he’s summoned a whirlwind of psychic punishment and is only just restraining himself from letting it tear you apart.
It’s all you can do to scramble up, leaving the roof smeared and sticky. But membranes heal and tears dry. You find new clothes in the ziggurat–and how long has it been since you’ve changed your clothes? You doubt your other self cares about them. You can get clean. You can make up a new face, one that nothing bad has ever happened to. But you have to leave to find the Musketeers without changing your mind, and everything that’s happened is still right there inside your head, a dark, festering wound. You’ve never felt less okay in your life. And when you meet the Musketeers, it will have to be with a smile.
Heracross’ cave. It’s out in the middle of the desert–that’s practically the entire point of it. And Mewtwo thinks he can’t even come here without risking capture?
You suppose he’d have to fly, and there’s always the chance of someone seeing him, a lonely traveler or two. It’s probably for the best that he’s being overcautious for once. If he keeps flying in and out of the factory, someone’s eventually going to notice and trace him back to your hiding place.
This is what you’re thinking about while you stand outside Heracross’ cave with your hands balled up and shivering down at your sides. You’re fine. You’re thinking about all this very rationally. Mewtwo needs you to be fine, so that is what you are. Will be.
You have time. You clench and unclench your fists and take deep breaths. You can stay here a while to calm down. Cry a little, even. You won’t have all the time that you need, because that would be infinite time and never seeing Mewtwo again, but you can rest. For a few minutes.
But not forever. You have to muster your courage and go, go in where you can hear the faint voices of the Musketeers in boisterous discussion about something. Brave their questions. And be fine.
Once upon a time, you would have sneered at someone so weak they couldn’t even fake a smile.
You’re fine. This is fine. You can do this. It takes two deep breaths, not one, but you make yourself start forward. The entrance is narrow and barely visible in the wall of the rock formation Heracross has made a home, but once inside it’s only one, two strides and then you’re in the single room. It looks like it did last time with its stacks of soda boxes shoved up against the walls, and of course there’s food on the table, crackers and cheese and chips and, incongruous, some kind of small shiny fish in a pile. One chair left empty with an anticipation that sickens you. And then the musketeers.
They see you. They’re staring at you, this stranger intruding on their camaraderie, which in Orre can only mean threat.
“Hello,” you say. That doesn’t help. “It has been a long time,” you try next. You don’t know how to introduce yourself without talking about Mewtwo. You don’t want to mention him at all right now.
You almost think that’s not enough, that you’ll need to be even more explicit, but a second later Hypno breaks into a grin. “Keldeo! It is you, isn’t it?”
All of a sudden you’re using one arm to fend off Heracross’ attempts to slap you on the back and the other to block Hypno, who looks like she might want to give you a hug. Noctowl stays perched on his chair, but he has one of his quiet smiles on, however he manages it with a beak instead of lips. “What’ve you been up to, huh?” Heracross asks. “What, too cool to hang around with us these days?”
You think that was supposed to be a joke, but nothing could make you laugh just now. You feel brittle and unbalanced, apt to shatter at any moment, from any tiny provocation.
“Heracross,” Hypno says reproachfully. She can tell that one didn’t land well.
“What? Just trying to lighten the mood.” But Heracross backs away, wing casings flexing in what must be discomfort. You can’t have that. You need to be fine now. Fine. You try to focus only on this moment, and nothing else. It’s good to be here with the Musketeers. That is true. You try to feel like it’s a good thing.
“Do you want to sit down?” Hypno gestures at the table. “Heracross, can you get another–?”
“Yes.” You sit before the pounding in your temples can send you to the ground. You land hard on a seat that’s too tall for you and find yourself directly in front of the fish. The smell makes your stomach roil.
“Would you like something to drink?” Hypno asks, and then, when you don’t respond, “How about some water?”
You numbly accept the cool glass thrust into your hand. “I am fine,” you mutter.
“It would be all right if you weren’t,” Noctowl says. “We’ve been worried about you. We heard about what happened to your pokémon.”
“It must be hard,” Hypno says gently. “I mean, if any of my friends got taken by Cipher, I don’t know how I’d ever, well… And for it to be all of them…”
“We’ll get them back, though,” Heracross says. “We’ve got some new leads, and we won’t stop following them until we’re done. And besides, you’ve got Mewtwo on your side. If anybody can get your pokémon back, it’s him.”
You actually gag when she mentions Mewtwo, a spasmodic reaction that seems to rise from your body instead of your mind. Mewtwo’s lies, and here they all are, casually believing him. Because of course, why would he lie? He’s the one who’s going to save the world from Cipher.
“Thank you,” you force yourself to say. “It will be okay. I will see them again.” You have to hold on to Absol’s visions now, more tightly than ever. Your only guarantee. You will live, and you will see your pokémon again.
“However it ends, I’m sure it feels awful right now,” Hypno says. “We don’t blame you for needing some time to yourself. And we’ll do everything we can to help you get them back.”
You nod, not sure anymore whether it’s worth holding back tears. You suppose if the Musketeers think you feel bad because of your pokémon, that’s still okay. That still has to satisfy Mewtwo. So long as no one can connect your mood back to him, it’s fine. It has to be, because you can’t do any better. It’s all you can do not to collapse, not to let your mind pry open that black canister of knowledge of what’s happening to you, what has to loom over you now for as long as you remain yourself, as long as you can understand what the future means. Which may not be much longer, now.
Maybe you’re going to survive to see Mew, but it won’t even matter, because you’ll be someone else entirely. Maybe you’ll see your pokémon again and not even care, because you won’t remember what it’s like to love anything.
You flinch when something brushes your back, heart taking off at eight hundred beats a minute. But it’s only Noctowl, with his wing extended across your shoulders. Hypno sits on your other side, hand on your back, too.
“Oh, sure, we can do this,” Heracross says, then reaches over to pat your hand a couple times. Her carapace is smooth and hard, and her claws are scratchy.
You open your mouth but aren’t sure what to say. Thank you? Something about how it’s okay, they don’t need to do this? It feels nice, but it doesn’t feel better. All you’re doing is lying to them. If anything, your shadow has gotten darker.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Hypno asks. “It’s okay if you don’t. We can just sit here for a bit if you’d like.”
“Or go off and do something fun,” Heracross says. “I know punching stuff always makes me feel better. We could go in for that rematch you wanted. Or we could watch somebody else get punched. You were talking about the Realgam tournaments before, well, tickets are pretty pricey, but–”
“I don’t know if going to watch a bunch of trainers is the best thing for someone who’s mourning their team,” Hypno cuts in.
“It’s whatever they want,” Noctowl says. “Whatever you want.” The last directed at you, not like you’re going to turn and look at him. You don’t want anything. Except to not be here. Make your change and not think about this ever again. “Why don’t we just wait for now?” Noctowl goes on after a silence. He shifts on his talons. “I don’t know if we’re, ah–we were expecting–”
“Mewtwo’s not coming,” you say, and try to keep your voice level, dull, blunt, despite the taste of that name in your mouth. “He’s never coming. He sent me to tell you–he can’t leave the factory anymore.”
“What?!” You aren’t even sure which one of them says that. Maybe all three. You feel Hypno pull away from you, just the slightest bit.
“Team Rocket has snag machines now,” you say wearily. “It’s not safe for Mewtwo to go near them.”
“Snag machines? So they really are working with Cipher?”
Noctowl doesn’t say anything. He just sucks in his feathers, eyes going wide.
“You saw these snag machines? Did Team Rocket try to catch him?” Hypno asks sharply.
“I mean, they couldn’t have caught him, right?” Heracross says. “Even with master balls, well, I guess Red did, but–”
“Snag machines with mater balls,” Noctowl says, his voice faint and his gaze distant. “Can you imagine? One mistake… Mewtwo has his psychic abilities, of course. That helps. Even so…”
“Brrr.” Heracross buzzes her wings for emphasis. “Even so. And this is Mewtwo we’re talking about, here.”
Mewtwo, Mewtwo, Mewtwo. How terrible this all must be for him. How frightening.
All you can think of now is how you’re going to have to leave here and change yourself again and go out and kill more people. And get worse. And worse. You’re dangerous now. You’ve lost control of your other self, or they’ve lost their grip on reality. This is the last time you have as yourself in who knows how long, and you’re going to have to waste it listening to people talk about Mewtwo.
“Stop,” you say, and then again, “Stop!” That at last is loud enough to cut through the Musketeers’ talk. “I told you why I’m here. Now I don’t want to talk about Mewtwo anymore,” you say into their politely puzzled expressions. Hypno’s ears droop–she probably feels bad for you, and that’s enough to make you angry. She likes Mewtwo better than anyone. She deliberately ignores how awful he is, and now she wants to feel bad for you, when how you feel is his fault in the first place?
“Sorry. Is there something going on between you two?” Hypno asks. “We kind of wondered, when we didn’t see you for so long. Was he not inviting you to come hang out with us? Even friends sometimes–”
“He’s not my friend! He’s never been my friend! And this isn’t about your stupid movie nights or whatever you’ve been doing!” Now that you’ve begun, everything comes rushing out like an undammed river. You don’t even try to stop it. Don’t want to. You’re tired of having to pretend like everything’s okay. It’s too late now to avoid whatever punishment Mewtwo has in store for you. If he’s going to hurt you either way, you’d rather actually earn it.
No thought now for the mission. No thought for what happens if you turn the shadow pokémon away from you forever. All you want is for all of this to end.
“He’s not my friend,” you say again, for whatever reason. “He’s no one’s friend. He’s out there killing anybody who gets in his way. And he makes me, he makes me do it too. I don’t want to, but he keeps making me kill people, and it keeps getting worse.”
They’re stunned, of course. They all are. Hypno begins to say, “But I don’t–”
“Listen! Just listen!” When has anyone ever listened to you? You’ve spent the entire time in Orre trying to get people to shut up and stop acting like they know better than you. Mewtwo, and Absol, and… Rats. “My pokémon aren’t stolen! They left because of how bad Mewtwo is. I’m not sad about my pokémon, I’m sad about what he makes me do. He’s always been like this! He’s always hated everybody. And now he’s trying to make me just like him. He already did it to the Champion, and now he’s going to do it to me, and I can’t even be myself anymore, and he probably won’t even let me see you ever again. He sent me here to lie to you and make you think that everything was fine because he knows you’re worried about me, but I can’t. I won’t.” You clench your hands again, so hard that nails-growing-claws break your skin. If you’re not careful, you’re going to stop looking human. That’s what Mewtwo wants, isn’t it? For you to be a pokémon, all the way, except when it’s useful to him.
For a moment there’s silence. Then Heracross says, “You mean all this about Team Rocket being here is just something you made up?”
“No!” She doesn’t listen! Nobody ever listens! “Team Rocket are real and they’re here and Mewtwo can’t fight them anymore. That’s all true. But he doesn’t want you to know about how he’s fighting them. All the people you’ve been telling him about, he’s been going out and killing them! And torturing them, and killing anybody else who’s around. Or making me do it. If I say I won’t, he hurts me until I do. He hates humans. All he wants is for them to die.”
Hypno’s already shaking her head, arms crossed over her chest. “I’m sorry, but I really don’t understand,” she says. Of course not.
“I mean, you can’t deny that Mewtwo’s said some pretty creepy things,” Heracross says. She swirls her soda but doesn’t take a drink.
“But this is murder,” Noctowl says, in what for him is a deeply emphatic tone.
“Why would I lie to you?” you demand. “And you!” You round on Hypno. “You know I’m telling the truth. You can feel it. You do! Don’t act like you don’t!”
Hypno shakes her head again, but she doesn’t answer you, pinching the bridge of her nose between her fingers.
“Here, look,” Heracross says. “Why don’t you sit back down and talk us through this a bit, okay? When did all of this start?”
You laugh bitterly. “He’s always been killing people. What do you think he was made to do?”
“Stop!” Hypno snaps, and everyone’s so surprised that they do stop. “I’ll find out what’s going on. I can ask Mewtwo myself.” The look on her face is grim, and your stomach twists with anxiety. What will Mewtwo tell her? How much will she believe?
And if she doesn’t believe, what will he do to her?
“Be careful,” you say quietly. Hypno shoots you an unreadable look and then turns aside, her jaw tight.
“I’ll go with you,” Noctowl says.
“Yeah! And me too, obviously!”
For some reason they all look to you next. Expectant. In the end Noctowl has to prompt you. “Will you come with us? It would probably be best if Mewtwo heard what you had to say, too.”
Freezing horror engulfs you. You hadn’t thought about that.
Should you go? You should. Who knows what Mewtwo’s going to say, what lies he’ll try to spin?
But it won’t matter if you’re there. What could you even say to convince the Musketeers, your word against his?
Could you ever imagine doing it? Standing in front of Mewtwo and defying him to his face? If you go back, he’s never letting you walk away again. Not as yourself. That seems clear.
If Mewtwo’s going to try and make you into another one of him, you at least don’t need to walk into it willingly.
“No,” you say, slowly, putting the pieces together even as you speak. “I am going to leave. You can do what you want.”
“Leave? Where are you going to go?”
“I’m going to…” You stand up. There doesn’t seem to be a next step after that.
“Do you need somewhere to stay?” Hypno asks when you hang there, stuck.
“No,” you say immediately. “I can stay in…” In anywhere, really. In the Relic Forest or out in the desert, find a cave like Heracross and live there. Pick an abandoned building in Pyrite Town, an unwanted corner of Phenac. If anything there are too many options.
Hypno must take your silence to mean you’re stumped. “You can stay with me, then. At least for the night.” Before you can protest, she holds up a hand. “I told you you could stop by whenever you needed, didn’t I? I meant it. Let’s go get you settled, and then the rest of us will talk to Mewtwo for you.”
Now you do start to protest, and Hypno cuts you off again. “You didn’t really think we’d leave you on your own out in Orre, did you? Come on.”
Still you hesitate. Hypno’s shoulders are hunched, her expression stony. You’re almost worried she’s going to interrogate you the way Mewtwo might. She looks like she wants to fight someone.
Even if she does, she can’t actually hurt you. You’re much stronger. Still you feel like you’ve made a terrible mistake by exposing Mewtwo, and to these of all people. But there’s nothing to be done for it now.
“It’ll be okay, Keldeo,” Noctowl says. “We’ll figure out what’s going on. Let us handle it.” There’s nothing to figure out. You already told them what was going on.
“Yeah,” Heracross says, claws clinking discordantly against the side of her can. “Yeah, for sure we’ll talk to Mewtwo. We don’t want anything to be going like… like that, you know?”
You wish you could believe it. You really, truly do. “Come on,” Hypno says, looking back over her shoulder. And what can you do? At the end of everything, what can you do? You follow.