Chapter 59
You can’t relax in Hypno’s apartment. You certainly can’t sleep, though this time Hypno did get the chance to put the blankets out on her couch. You don’t know if you’ll ever sleep again.
The TV’s right there, too. You keep it tuned to the news, only waiting for the first reports that Mewtwo’s rampaging through Phenac, or the Cipher Factory’s blown up, or something’s happened, something that you’ll be able to watch unfold even as it moves your way, Mewtwo or Team Rocket or Cipher or all three converging on Hypno’s apartment.
You can’t focus on the news.
If there’s one glimmer of a silver lining in all of this, it’s that you can’t focus on everything you’ve done, either, what Mewtwo’s been making you into. You have far too much anxiety about the immediate future to get stuck into ruminating now.
Whenever you look up at the clock above the television, it never tells you that more than a minute’s gone by. Sometimes not even that; it remains stuck on the same digits, trapping you in an endless suspended moment of waiting. Still, all those endless minutes somehow add up, mutating into hours. Hours. How many will you stay here? How many before you decide that yes, Hypno’s dead, and there’s nothing more for you here? How many before you flee?
Three hours. That seems like a good place to start. Three hours and you’ll leave. If Hypno’s gone that long, there’s no way it can mean anything good.
They pass, of course. Second by sludgy second. The bedding Hypno gave you is disheveled, rucked by your restless shifting, bunched and sweaty where you hands have clutched it. You lie for some time not looking at the clock, because you know that if you look you’ll see how long it’s been, and then you’ll need to leave. It might not be a lot of fun in here, but outside is much worse.
One more hour, you tell yourself. If Hypno’s not back in another hour, you’ll go. There are perfectly innocent reasons she might have been delayed. It takes over an hour to get between her home and the factory by scooter anyhow. You lie in place, ramrod-straight under the blankets, and dread. Occasionally you hear faint sounds of Hypno’s trainer moving about, though she stays well away from you, only once poking her head in to peer at you and retreat again right after. You don’t have the energy to act nonthreatening at her. You’ve been too long pretending your way out of distress.
Another hour goes by, and you can’t pry yourself off the couch. You should leave. You should leave instead of simply lying here, waiting for Mewtwo to find you. You should draw him away from Hypno’s trainer, if there’s any chance that that might save her, so you won’t have to tally yet another death in the column of Mewtwo’s destruction.
Instead, the more time that goes by, the more paralyzed you feel. You’ve rendered yourself nonfunctional through worry. You can’t even imagine the level of disdain your other self would feel for you right now. And they would be right, too. You’re worse than useless like this.
You could change. That’s an option that beckons ever stronger now. There’s no reason for you to feel this. You could make it all stop in the matter of a moment.
And what would happen next? It’s not knowing that keeps you poised here, balanced between the terror of Mewtwo’s sure return and the terror of what you might do if you let go of that fear. You’re more afraid of Mewtwo than yourself, even your other self, even now. But it’s become a rather close margin.
In the end your inaction is probably for the best. Hypno pushes open the front door more than five hours after she left you, eyes shadowed and grave, her tread weary.
You sit up immediately, heart pounding. “You! Did you…?”
Hypno turns a grim expression on you. “You’ll be staying here a little longer. Unless you’d like to go elsewhere. I’m sure Heracross wouldn’t mind if you’d prefer her cave.”
“No. I mean, I can stay here, that’s okay.” Hypno’s already turned and is heading for the kitchen. You shove away sweat-soaked blankets and follow. “What about Mewtwo? You talked to him, didn’t you? Did he tell you about… everything?”
Hypno’s preparing tea. Not like you she did last time, with the kettle and all. She seems intently focused on getting everything together and into the microwave, as though even this is some difficult chore. “We talked,” she says, and it sounds like a curse.
She’s in a bad mood. You can tell she’s in a bad mood. She’s never anything but mild, and now here she is, scowling, banging around with her mug. But she’s alive, and she doesn’t even look hurt. You don’t know how she can possibly have talked to Mewtwo about anything. Unless maybe she visited the Pokémon Center on the way back? Maybe that explains why she took so long.
Hypno sits at the table with her tea and doesn’t even offer you anything. You sit down opposite, stymied by all the questions backing up your throat, so many that you can’t choose which one to loose first.
“Did Mewtwo tell you, then? About all the people he’s killed?” Hypno doesn’t look at you, instead taking a sip of her steaming tea. Isn’t it still too hot? “Because if he didn’t, he’s lying,” you plow on, unable to stop yourself. That must be it. He lied and made it all your fault somehow, and now Hypno’s acting like this because she’s mad at you, and she’s never going to believe you over him. “I’m telling the truth. You can tell, can’t you? You know! It was hi–”
“He told me about it.”
There’s a long, uncertain pause. “So you know, then? You know about how he’s been murdering people?”
“I know.”
That doesn’t make any sense. Why would Mewtwo tell her? Maybe he still lied somehow. Made it sound less bad than it is. He must have. You sit in flailing silence, unable to focus on what to ask next. Where can you even go from here? “Is everybody okay?”
Hypno does look at you then, expression both tired and sour. “I don’t know if I would call it ‘okay.’”
“I’m sorry,” you blurt. “He hurts people. He always does. I didn’t want you to get hurt, but I couldn’t keep doing what he wants any longer. Do you need help? I don’t know if I can help, but–”
“No, no.” Hypno sets her mug down with a loud clack. “No one is hurt. I meant it wasn’t a fun conversation, that’s all. You don’t have to apologize.”
You don’t know about that. You still feel like you need to say sorry for the set of her shoulders and the way she grips her pendant too tight. But you also don’t want to say anything that will set her off. The fear that choked you is fading, but tension still clutches your chest. This isn’t what you were expecting. You don’t want Hypno to be dead, but you at least would have understood that better.
Hypno seems like she’d be okay with never talking to you again, but you can’t help it. You have to point out the obvious. Just in case it isn’t obvious to her. In case she still doesn’t understand. “You know I can’t stay here. Mewtwo will come looking for me. He’ll never let me go,” you say at last.
“Well, I suppose there’s not much we can do about it if he changes his mind,” Hypno says. “But he agreed that you could stay here. I think he understands why you wouldn’t want to go back.”
Well, of course he understands. It’s just that he doesn’t care. “It’s a trick,” you say immediately. “He must be up to something.”
Hypno slams a fist down beside her mug, and now you see real anger, anger like you’ve never witnessed in her before. In the following silence Hypno visibly forces herself to sit back in her chair, uncurls her fist one finger at a time. “Look, it’s been a long day, all right? We can talk this over in the morning. You’re good to stay here tonight. I promise.”
“But I can’t be.” Why would Mewtwo lie about that? What does he stand to gain? Maybe he’s going to try and sneak out here in the dead of night and spirit you away, then tell Hypno you left on your own? And keep you away from the Musketeers from now on. Yes, that would work. He’d probably want to do that.
“If you want to go, go,” Hypno says, voice so harsh it makes you flinch. “I’m not dealing with more of this tonight.”
You huddle down in your seat. “Sorry,” you say again, before you can stop yourself. Hypno scowls, but she makes no response other than to take another drink of tea. You can only sit there feeling miserable, thinking you should leave but not wanting to draw attention to yourself by getting up from the table.
At last Hypno’s emptied her mug, and she sighs, rubbing at her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I know this isn’t your fault. It’s just… a lot. To deal with. I need some time to think.”
“Oh,” you say. “I guess I can… leave.” Leave the table or leave the apartment? Flee out into the night? You could go see Heracross, you suppose. You don’t think that would be any easier. Maybe spend the night by the Relic Stone, instead.
One way or another, you know the way to the door. But when you push back your chair and stand to go, you nearly trip over Absol.
“Absol!” you squeak, heart once more madly hammering.
“I came to see you,” she says matter-of-factly. “You’ve remembered who you are, haven’t you?”
“I don’t know what that means.” You shoot a frantic look at Hypno, who merely glowers back. It’s Absol, here, and though she’s not acting worried, her appearance means danger.
“You’re talking,” Absol says. “And you’re acting agitated. You haven’t for a long time.”
“Oh, if you mean…” You eye Hypno askance. “Yes, I’m me. For now.”
“And you’ve come back, have you?” Hypno asks. Absol turns a polite blank look on her. “My understanding was that all you pokémon had gone off to fight Cipher on your own.”
“Oh, no,” you say hastily. “All my other friends–pokémon–I was their trainer. Well, not really Togetic and Duskull, they’re special, but Absol isn’t, she’s… she’s not with them.” Always apart from your team, respected but never especially close.
Hypno rests her chin on her palm, gazing emptily at the wall. “I wonder why we haven’t run across them when we’ve been out looking for information on Cipher.”
That makes you pause. That makes cold settle deep, deep in your bones. Why not? Unless…
It’s too much to think about right now. “We’ll leave you alone,” you say to Hypno. “Like you wanted.” For Absol’s benefit, in case she’s going to hang around and be cryptic at Hypno. Instead she follows you, silent and impassive, back into the living room.
The TV’s still going. Nothing about Mewtwo or Team Rocket. You need to turn that off. There’s little chance you’re getting any sleep even with it gone dark, but that’s better than absolutely no chance.
Absol makes herself comfortable on the far end of the couch, and you settle down with knees pulled up to chest. You assume Absol’s going to wait for you to speak. You don’t even know if she wants to talk or only showed up out of some idea of moral support.
You’re far too exhausted to play her games tonight. “Did you know about what Mewtwo does? What he did to the Champion?”
“The Champion?” Absol kneads her claws in Hypno’s sofa. Nervous? You think that means nervous. “Your brother changed him, yes. I think without intending to.”
“He did it to me. Did you know he was doing it to me?”
“No,” Absol says. “You have been strange. I did wonder. But… no. I did not see it, if that’s what you mean.”
“So it’s not going to happen? I’m not going to turn into him?” Any more than you already have.
“I don’t know. I can’t say what I don’t see.”
“But when you see me, am I the same? Am I still normal?”
“I don’t know.”
You slump back against the cushions, letting out a grunt of frustration. Not that it’s a surprise. Absol never sees anything about what you really need to know.
“You’re not going to try and make me go back to Mewtwo?” you ask at last.
“No,” Absol says. “This is not disaster.”
You guess that’s good. Not that you care much about stupid Fate right now. “Then you can stay,” you decide. “As long as Hypno’s okay with it.”
There’s no sound from the kitchen. You wonder if Hypno’s gone to bed. Or maybe she just didn’t hear you.
You think you’ve lived with Absol long enough to properly understand her, all the nuances in her silence and the blankness of her expression. This one is easy. Since when do you decide whether I stay or go?
Well, you could make her leave if you wanted. Or go yourself, teleport away so she’d have to come out and find you. You could annoy her, if nothing else. You can choose, too. Maybe it’s been too long since you exercised that right. If you ever did, properly.
You don’t know if you can really end all this. Hypno seems to think you can. That you can reason with Mewtwo, somehow. For now, at least, you can be yourself, for whatever that costs.
You curl up with Absol on the couch, the blankets drawn over both of you. She stays still and quiet for you, two things she’s very good at. And perhaps you even sleep, in fits and snatches and scant minutes, once or twice in the long night.
In the morning Hypno looks better, though her eyes are sad while she brews tea and scrapes eggs around a pan. It’s later than you expected her to be starting her day, almost as late as the great Nathaniel Morgan’s idea of morning. Her trainer fled at the crack of dawn, citing “class” like she did the last time.
“Does she really go to school?” you ask Hypno.
She gives you a troubled look. “Yes, of course.” So maybe her trainer really is that weird and excited for learning.
You do Hypno a favor after that by not saying anything for a while, not until she’s put breakfast on the table. “So what you were saying about Mewtwo–”
“Not now.” Again that snappish tone. “I want the others to be here to discuss, too. We’ll get together this afternoon.”
“Okay, I guess,” you say reluctantly. “What do you think, Absol?”
But of course Absol’s already gone. Off to darken somebody else’s doorstep. Hypno twiddles her pendant between her fingers, maybe holding back a comment. “The breakfast is very good,” you say politely about the eggs, which are in fact not very good, but you don’t want Hypno to get mad at you.
“Thank you,” she says quietly. She shoves her own food around on her plate. Not interested. “I’m sorry I didn’t see it before,” she says after a long pause. “What was happening with Mewtwo. Obviously there were signs, but you never like to believe those sorts of things about a person.”
It’s your turn to jab at your eggs and not say anything. All she had to do was to listen to the stories about him. It’s not like his murders are some kind of secret. Why else did the Champion go after him in the first place?
“Obviously you don’t have to see him again. He won’t be able to do much at this point, either, with the fear of Team Rocket hanging over him.”
Mewtwo may not be here, but his objections ring in your mind as clearly as though he was. I’m not afraid of those scum. I’m more valuable staying here, directing, while you go out and do the grunt work. Haven’t you been pestering me the whole time about how I need to be more discreet?
“You’re still going to talk to him?”
The look Hypno gives you is weary. “Yes. You didn’t imagine we’d just leave him out there, did you? He’s in danger.”
Yes, real danger. What’s he going to do without you waiting on him and bringing him food all the time? He couldn’t possibly survive.
You think again about the great Nathaniel Morgan, and how he likes to talk in opposites, and feel like you might understand him a little bit.
You suppose that means the Musketeers will be bringing Mewtwo food now. Maybe he’ll eventually annoy them enough that they’ll stop doing even that.
“He also agreed to at least talk to Professor Krane,” Hypno says. “I don’t know if the professor will be able to help him, but it’s worth a try. We aren’t going to let him keep on doing what he’s… been doing. He at least has to try to change.”
“He what?!” No, he can’t. That doesn’t make any sense. Out of everything, he’d never–“How is he even going to get to the lab? He can’t go anywhere! He can’t let people see him!” With snag machines in play, he finally actually believes that.
“We’ll take him,” Hypno says. “In his master ball, of course.”
It takes you a moment to catch up. Yes, of course. He doesn’t trust you to have the master ball, but Hypno and the rest? No problem. They’ll do anything he says.
You don’t know why that stings. If you got your hands on the master ball you’d try to keep Mewtwo in it. That would be the right thing to do. But still. You’re offended, somehow.
“I imagine you’re not happy about that,” Hypno says quietly. Wow! It’s almost like she’s psychic! “It’s not something you have to worry about anymore.”
“It won’t work.”
“It’s not something you need to worry about,” Hypno says again.
You sit back in your chair, scowling. She learns about how many people Mewtwo’s killed, and she still thinks he’s the one who needs help. And now that he’s agreed to try getting help… He can’t have, though. That has to be a lie somehow. A trap. Why? Why pretend he’s going to let some professor pschoanalyze him?
You don’t know. You don’t really want to think about it anymore. You don’t want to think about Mewtwo at all. All you know is the arrangement sounds like a great way to end up with a dead Professor Krane.
“He’s going to keep killing people,” you say.
Hypno’s fingers tighten around her teacup. “I don’t think so,” she says. “I understand why you’re upset. I don’t blame you for not wanting Mewtwo to get any help. In your place, I might not want him to, either. But he deserves help anyway. It would be better for everyone if he could let go of his anger, don’t you think?”
Of course it would. That doesn’t mean it will ever happen. “You didn’t listen to me before,” you say. “You still aren’t listening to me.”
Hypno rubs her eyes, letting out one of her gusty nose-sighs. “I know. I know. You were right about how bad it was. But still. I do know about this sort of thing. I’ve seen it before. So at least let me try to fix it, okay? I’m not ready to give up hope yet.”
You try to keep your glare on your tea instead of on Hypno. You don’t want to talk about this anymore. Let her think whatever she wants. The most important thing is that Mewtwo stays away from you.
“What I’m going to do after we’ve had breakfast is I’m going to take Mewtwo to spend some time with Professor Krane,” Hypno says, slowly and deliberately like she’s daring you to object. “Then this afternoon we’ll talk about next steps with Heracross and Noctowl, like I said.”
Meaning she has no idea what the next steps are going to be. You’re exhausted already at breakfast.
“You can wait here if you want,” Hypno prompts.
“Okay.” What next, then? More hours on Hypno’s sofa not paying attention to the news? If only you could sleep. Maybe you should ask Hypno to help you out with that. Later, when she’s done with her highest priority, being nice to a mass murderer.
There isn’t a lot to say after that. Hypno finishes her drink and makes ready to leave. She says good-bye. You probably say something back, but it really doesn’t matter. Hypno knows what she’s going to do, and you–you’ll be on your own to figure things out regardless.
The tea cools and the sun rises higher in the sky, but you don’t get up from the table, not even when you hear Hypno’s scooter putt-putt-putt away into the distance. You’re cold and agitated by turns, stomach churning at the thought of Mewtwo out there doing whatever he wants, maybe killing Professor Krane, maybe killing Hypno this time. Who knows? The one thing that’s sure is he can’t really be serious about changing. Especially not if it was some human helping him do it. What’s his plan? Why even bother lying?
You don’t think you can stand it, another day stuck in this apartment, only waiting for something awful to happen. You make for the door, where the peephole gives you a view of hot, golden midday light, the street outside where people pass, where the world is the same today as it was yesterday, as it was the day before. Where are you going to go? Wander randomly and hope that takes your mind off things for a while?
No. You know where you need to be, don’t you?
But it’s pointless. It’s pointless to go. You couldn’t stop anything, if anything happened. It’s risk with no reward. Get a little too close and Mewtwo will feel you, he’ll come get you, and then you may never get free again. If you stay far enough to be safe, you won’t be able to tell what’s happening anyway.
Pointless. But you want to see. You want to know. You can’t believe the Musketeers are still alive. You can’t believe Mewtwo agreed to anything. If it really happened, if he’s really going to visit Professor Krane for any reason but destruction, then you need to be there. You won’t be able to get it out of your heaad otherwise.
You go over and lean against the back of the door for a moment, warm where the light spills in through the peephole. You remember when you went to see Professor Krane yourself. You remember the grass and the trees in the middle of all the sand. You remember meeting Hypno for the first time, and how she didn’t trust you.
You remember the world outside the nightmare you’ve been living in, and you go.
You rested here once before, preparing to walk up to the lab. With Mewtwo, of course; it’s like everything you’ve done in Orre has been under his shadow.
Even now, Mewtwo’s all you’re thinking about. How far away is safe? You know he can sense you even farther out than you can actually feel his psychic field. You’re at least four onix-lengths from the lab at this point. You should probably go farther. There are no prizes for undershooting besides Mewtwo catching you.
You lie amidst scrubby weeds on earth that’s not quite sand, dirt so parched it cracks and flakes away to bone-white dust. At least there’s some cover, while out in the desert proper there’s usually nothing but sand. You aren’t worried about anyone seeing you so much as Mewtwo sensing you, but it still wouldn’t be good for Hypno to catch sight of you crouched and watching.
This has to be far enough, right? Surely it must be. Even if he felt you at this distance, Mewtwo would assume you were a wild pokémon or something. He wouldn’t recognize you.
Three minutes later and farther back yet. The glassy front of Professor Krane’s lab gleams in the ever-sunlight, reflections blocking your view of what’s going on within. What are you going to do if Hypno takes Mewtwo to some windowless inner room?
One thing at a time. First you want to see that Mewtwo truly does show up. And that he doesn’t murder anybody. At least the lab being on fire is something that should be perfectly obvious from where you’re lying.
For now, you hone your senses the best you can. Cramorant can see half a dozen meters through the surface of the water when they scan for fish. You make your eyes like theirs and lie where you are, tracking what moves behind the lab’s glass. Turning up your hearing works less well. All it gets you is a sort of heavy rumbling, like constant tectonic activity. Noise from lab equipment, or the climate control, you’d guess.
Here you are waiting for a certain pink scooter to arrive on the scene. Waiting, again. Exactly what you’d hoped to avoid. Perhaps you should have considered how long it would take Hypno to make it to the factory and then back out this way. Worry’s much better than actual pain, but you didn’t realize how agonizing it would be to simply not know what Mewtwo’s up to. Back at the factory what he was up to was always something bad, but it never snuck up on you.
At least you’re out in the sunshine. In Orre the sun doesn’t feel nice, as such, but it does feel safe, its heat too great for anyone to think of causing mischief. In daytime it’s quiet, a sleepy quiet rather than the furtive hush of nighttime, when the silence holds a hundred concealed sounds.
Of course your enhanced vision means you see Hypo coming ages out, so it feels like she’s on her way for days on end. Your heart pounds in your throat when she at last pulls up beside the lab, parking her scooter neatly in a designated spot. Then you have to wait for her to take off and stow her ridiculous helmet.
You don’t see Mewtwo’s master ball–probably it’s in the fanny pack buckled around Hypno’s waist. Hypno’s pendant flashes carelessly in the sun, and you avert your eyes. It would be the dumbest thing ever to fall asleep after getting hypnotized at such range.
Time slows as Hypno enters the lab, stepping behind the blue-green distortion of glass. She raises a hand to the receptionist, walks right past–you scramble sideways, trying to keep an eye on her as she moves through the building. The back part doesn’t have the same huge windows as the front, so you’re left peering into each new room in turn, raising yourself, craning your neck to try to get an angle into windows set high up in the walls. You glimpse Hypno in brief flashes; she’s unhurried, showing no sign of nerves.
Of course Professor Krane’s office has windows. It’s the biggest and fanciest in the building. You have to push yourself up on your elbows to peer in, and even that only lets you see Hypno from the waist up. It’s enough to tell what’s going on, though. It’s not like Mewtwo’s going to be subtle.
Professor Krane is all smiles when he lays eyes on Hypno. He gives you the impression of someone who smiles a lot, even though his posture is slumped and his eyes are tired. And Hypno smiles back at him, what feels like the first smile you’ve seen from her in a long time. But it’s only been a day, hasn’t it?
Hypno pulls the master ball from her fanny pack and holds it up to Professor Krane, who leans forward for a closer look. He can’t know what’s in there, can he? There’s no way he’d be so excited if he knew Mewtwo was about to appear.
Professor Krane nods, gestures what can only mean go ahead, and it does your heart no good to see the smile wilt away from his face as Mewtwo takes shape. There’s no way he could have anticipated that crushing wave of psychic force. You can’t feel anything, no matter how you strain to, how you’re convinced you can’t be far enough, you can’t be beyond his power.
But there’s nothing. You’re sure there’s nothing.
A flurry of movement in the lab. The professor ducks and covers, and Mewtwo looms over him, grim and expressionless. Your breath catches in your throat. Yes, exactly like you thought. Exactly like you thought. Mewtwo’s going to kill him, and then where will Hypno be?
Where will you be?
You watch, unbreathing, as Professor Krane pops up again. Was he groping for a weapon? Will he try to fight?
His hair’s crammed down under some kind of metal helmet. Idiot. What’s that supposed to do against Mewtwo?
The professor’s babbling–you can see how fast his words are coming. He holds his hands up in a placating gesture, he points at his stupid hat, he talks on and on.
Mewtwo doesn’t move. And of course you can’t feel his displeasure. But you can see Hypno take a step forward, one hand out like she wants to rest it on his arm or something. Oh, she wants to die, too?
Mewtwo sidesteps, for one moment resting his deadly blank stare on Hypno before returning it to Professor Krane. The professor appears to be running out of steam–or maybe out of breath. You’re starting to feel lightheaded from holding your own air in. You can’t look away, you can’t spare the moment to inhale, because any second now Mewtwo’s going to tire of Professor Krane and put an end to his breathing forever.
This moment. Or this one. Or the next. Mewtwo’s expression doesn’t change. Professor Krane laughs about something, a forced laugh, shallow and hitching. Nevertheless, Hypno relaxes behind Mewtwo, shoulders falling into an exhausted slump. Now she’s saying something. Now she’s leaving. Leaving them alone. Professor Krane and Mewtwo, and now this, this must be when it happens.
It keeps not happening. Professor Krane just… talks. Between there are silences, where nothing moves save the professor fidgeting with a pen. He writes things down, sometimes. But Mewtwo’s no help for figuring out what’s going on. He stands there, and presumably he says things, but that’s all. He keeps not killing, and not killing, and still not killing the professor. Not even smacking him around here and there. Standing there glaring, but hardly twitching otherwise. Professor Krane might not be smiling anymore, but he’s not cowering, either. Maybe his weird hat has something to do with it. Maybe he’s too dim to sense Mewtwo’s anger, the anger he always has.
You watch for a while, thinking there must be some trick. But the longer the conversation goes on, if that’s what it is, the less it seems like anything is going to happen.
Hypno waits in the lobby, seated in a cubey soft chair of the kind found in lobbies everywhere. She’s put earbuds in; no doubt they’ve been riding in the fanny pack right beside the master ball. What is she listening to? Maybe a book or a radio show, but if you had to guess you’d say she’s reviewing something for one of her classes. That’s it, isn’t it? Sometimes Hypno acts so hardworking and responsible that you want to scream. Look at her, sitting there thinking she’s right about everything, and also getting work done instead of playing with the other pokémon in the lab or something normal like that.
It just can’t be real. Why would Mewtwo stop being the worst now?
Why will he behave himself for Hypno when he never would for you? Or the Champion, for that matter? Are you just like some human to him? Is that it? But no, he’s in that room having an apparently-calm conversation with a human right now, isn’t he?
Something’s wrong here. Something’s going on. You don’t know what Mewtwo’s planning, or why he’s lying, or what he’s even doing, but it has to be something. Once again, it seems like you’re the only person who can see it, but that’s fine, you suppose. Or if not fine, then exactly what you’ve been dealing with all along. You’re used to it.
In the end, you leave, but you don’t go to Hypno’s apartment just yet. Hanging around its stuffy dimness with nothing to do but not watch TV is hardly better than lying belly-down in wasteland dust.
Instead you go to the ocean, to the place where the Musketeers had a picnic with you once. Maybe they’ve been back with Mewtwo, oh, many times. Perhaps. But not today. Today it’s just you.
You sit on a broad slab of rock, knees drawn up to your chest, and watch the waves roll in, one after another, over and over, and let the cold salt wind blow everything inside you away.
You do make sure to get back before Hypno does. You don’t think she’d suspect where you’d gone, but she’d probably worry.
When she finally comes through the door, you can tell from the jaunty, careless swaying of her pendulum that Professor Krane didn’t die in the end. Everything went according to plan for her, didn’t it? You wish that didn’t feel so bad. You’re supposed to be on the same side, after all.
“How are you feeling?” she asks when she lays eyes on you. “Have you been able to sleep at all?”
“I’m not sleepy. How did it go? With Mewtwo?” You have to be careful not to give away what you saw. Hypno is psychic, but she can’t read minds the way Mewtwo can. As long as you can keep your emotions in line, you should be okay.
“Well, there were no big breakthroughs or anything like that, but it’s a start,” Hypno says, unbearably cheerful. Her gaze is already drifting towards the kitchen; she’s lost in her own thoughts.
“How did Professor Krane even talk to Mewtwo? He’s so strong it’s hard to breathe around him.”
“Professor Krane has this…” Hypno sighs. “He calls it the ‘tinfoil hat.’ It’s a sort of one-way psychic suppressor that makes it hard to read his thoughts but still lets him hear what Mewtwo’s saying, just dimmed a bit. He built it when he was working with Lugia, and he’s very proud of it. And the name.” She shakes her head, but her grimace keeps trying to turn into a smile.
No surprise Mewtwo was angry about something like that. No surprise Mewtwo’s angry ever, but especially about a tool that would keep him out of someone’s mind. You wish you had a hat like that yourself. “I bet he was really surprised to see Mewtwo! You should have told the professor who you were bringing ahead of time.”
Hypno gives you an odd look. “I tried,” she says. “I drew a picture for him. I don’t know if he thought I was joking or if it just wasn’t very good. Now, I’ve got to get a few things ready before the others get here. Would you like to help? Or would you like to rest some more?”
With everything that’s happened, you’d completely forgotten the other Musketeers were going to visit. You let Hypno bustle around getting soda from the fridge, wrestling an extra chair in from her bedroom. You flop across the couch, deep in thouht, understanding nothing more than you did before. The knock on the door makes you start up in panic, but it’s fleeting terror. The clack of carapace is distinctive.
It’s Heracross and Noctowl together on the stoop. No one says anything as they file into the apartment. You don’t think you’ve ever seen Heracross this subdued. She and Noctowl can’t seem to hold your gaze.
There’s tea for Noctowl already on the table, and an unopened can of soda for Heracross. Cookies. “You two have been at this awhile already, haven’t you?” Heracross asks. She heaves herself into her chair with a brief buzz of wings. “Thick as thieves and all that?”
“I don’t know if I’d say that,” Hypno says. “We wanted to save the planning for a time when you two were around to hear it.”
“Oh, sure. Can’t get anything done without your idea girl here,” Heracross says. Foam bubbles messily around her claws when she pops the soda can open. “Definitely worth waiting for my input.”
“Heracross,” Noctowl says, as gently as he ever does. “We’re all feeling stressed right now. There’s no need to lash out about it.”
“I’m not stressed, you’re stressed,” Heracross mutters into her soda. But that’s all.
“So you want to plan… how we’re going to find Mew? Without Mewtwo?”
“How we’re going to bring down Cipher,” Hypno says firmly.
“Without Mewtwo,” Noctowl adds.
Heracross slurps loudly.
Noctowl turns to you, eyes wide and soft. “I’m sorry we didn’t understand what was going on earlier. Much, much earlier. You shouldn’t have had to go through any of that.”
You really wish you knew exactly what Mewtwo told them. You really, really do. You pick at the edge of the table and then take a cookie so you have something to fiddle with the same way Heracross has her soda.
“I don’t care. As long as I don’t have to see Mewtwo anymore, I don’t care.” Push away thoughts of what Absol’s visions. You can’t escape. But if he stays in the factory and leaves you alone until you actually need him, then fine. Whatever he’s up to, whatever he’s planning, it feels like your brain cells for caring about what might happen in the future finally all shriveled up and died.
Noctowl stretches his wing over you, and that’s fine. It doesn’t really help anything, but it’s fine. You crush the cookie to powder between your fingers.
“We can do this,” Hypno says, even though nobody ever said you couldn’t. “Let’s go over the facts. We know what we were telling Mewtwo, and now… now a little more of what he was doing. What the two of you were doing. But we still don’t know anything about Team Rocket. You have a much better idea of what’s going on right now.”
Maybe you will if you remember it all. You don’t really want to. A certain level of ignorance about what you’ve been doing for the past couple of months seems like the healthiest thing. But if you want to find Mew, if you want this all to be over, then you’ll have to remember.
This is what you wanted all along, isn’t it? You can do this yourself, without Mewtwo. And that’s what Rats wanted you to do, too. She didn’t want to work with Mewtwo, but she did want to help you find Mew. So if you won’t be working with Mewtwo anymore, and if you can find your friends again, then maybe…
You draw yourself up, as tall in your seat as you can be. You’ll think. You can think. And you’ll remember as much as you need to. “Team Rocket’s working with Cipher,” you say. “That means they know where the Cipher bases are. We need to follow them somehow, or listen in on their conversations. The easiest thing would be to…” Would be to impersonate one of them. But who? You haven’t exactly been paying attention to faces. The Rockets you’ve… fought… aren’t ones you recognize. The only one you know is Eskar, and you can’t look enough like a sableye to pretend to be her.
That means you need to find somebody. Maybe if you make up a person and pretend to be looking to join? But no, nobody’s even supposed to know Team Rocket is in Orre. That would be too suspicious.
“Wish we’d known about all this earlier,” Heracross says darkly, rocking her can of soda back and forth against the table. “We could have helped. Gotten rid of those guys before they got their hands on snag machines.”
“The three of us?” Hypno says wearily. “I’m sure we would have made such a big difference.”
“Well, one way or another, it’s too late now,” Heracross says. “Snag balls–master balls? We can’t do anything about those. None of us can.”
It’s true. You’re the only one who’s even a little bit safe. So long as you stay human. If you look human, and they believe you’re human, they won’t try to snag you.
You ought to believe you can pass as human. You’ve been doing it for years, after all. You remember what it’s like to really be one. But people get suspicious, a lot. And the last time you tried something like that on Team Rocket, it didn’t go well at all.
“You still know a few Cipher people that Mewtwo hasn’t tried to find, don’t you?” you ask.
“A couple, I guess,” is Heracross’ assessment.
You don’t even know that it will help. You do need to find Team Rocket again, for sure. Or Cipher themselves. But they’ll be prepared for you to keep looking for Cipher agents. That’s how they’ve been finding you. You need to surprise them somehow. Catch them off guard.
That means bait. Mewtwo. You can’t really be Mewtwo, but you could cast his illusion over yourself.
Except the first thing they’d do to deal with Mewtwo is throw a snag ball at him. If you’re lucky it would miss and go right through the illusion, but what if you weren’t lucky? Besides, what if they threw more than one ball?
No, if you’re going to be around Team Rocket, you’re going to need to look human. But what human would they even want? Maybe the Champion–or would they want to stay out of his way?
The thought creeps up on you slowly. There is one person you know they want to find. It’s someone you know pretty well, actually. You could be him, no problem, and Team Rocket would never even suspect you were anyone else. Easy.
You take a deep breath, flexing your fingers against the table in front of you. “I have an idea,” you tell the Musketeers.
You spend a long time on your face. How could you not? It’s been ages since you’ve needed to be someone you didn’t make up. Someone other people need to recognize, to feel like they know.
You don’t have your pokédex anymore to tell you how to be the great Nathaniel Morgan. It feels like years since the last time you tried. You have pictures of him, at least, from the newspapers. He looks on the verge of death in those, and he wasn’t in great shape when he came to find his pokémon, either, but he’d been running around in the wilderness searching for them for a while before that. Since he got them back he must be feeling better, right?
You don’t know how he should sound, either. Can’t quite catch the shape of his voice in your memories. A lot of the time it was scratchy or mucusy anyway. It’s strange to think about it now, but you’ve never really known the great Nathaniel Morgan when he’s been well.
There’s no help for it. All the time spent editing your face, stretching or squashing, adding fat or erasing it, changing bones and considering the precise degree of brokenness of a nose, and ultimately you’re relying on no more than old photographs and fraying memories. This will work, or it won’t. You can only hope that you remember well enough, that you’re prepared to play the role again. You add the scar over your nose, faded and subtle now, and decide that that will be the end of it. It has to be. It’s time for you to go.
You’ve visited the Outskirt Stand before, of course. With the Musketeers. It’s famous, the setting of so many crime dramas. It’s also the only place to get water for miles around.
You try to hold onto that familiarity as you push the door open. You should have taken more time to get used to the great Nathaniel Morgan’s body. You feel like your arms aren’t the right length, like you’re doing completely the wrong things with your face. This was a mistake. You’re going to mess this up, the same as you always do.
The Outskirt Stand doesn’t give you much time to stew in nerves. It’s cramped, crowded with booths and a short, stubby bar. Not bustling, but not empty, either. You have to hope at least one of these denizens of the desert, in their leather and their Day-Glo hair, is a Rocket, or knows Rocket, or knows you and how much Rocket might pay for information about you.
You can’t stand in the doorway forever. You want to attract attention, but blocking the door until somebody picks a fight about it is too much. Instead you have to keep moving, taking the three steps that will bring you up to the bar.
Deep breath. You can do this. Now you look the bartender straight in the eye and say, “Hey, fuck. I fucking want one of your goddamn fucking shitty fuck drinks, right the fuck fucking now.”
The man behind the counter, so immense he has to hunch down to avoid the old train car’s ceiling, stares back at you. After a long and poisonous second, he finally responds with, “What?”
“I said I fucking fuck want a fuck… goddamn… Oh, forget it. Just get me a drink already.”