Chapter 60
“It’s like, the fuck, man? What’s that asshole doing out here in Orre, you know?”
Rocket grunts scuff in the sand outside the Outskirt Stand, waiting for the rest of their crew to return. They don’t see you, cloaked by zoroark-illusion and pretending to be a wheel leaned up against the old locomotive’s side.
Now that you see them up close, in daylight, you wonder if you couldn’t have found them by lurking Orre’s streets and spotting people out of place. They sport Orrean accoutrements, leather jackets and gloves and in one case some big weird sunglasses, but they’re pasty and sweating beneath. They don’t look like people who’ve spent their life under the sun, sand ground into them so deep it’ll never wash off.
“All mixed up with the Mewtwo thing, ain’t he? Working with it and all?”
The first speaker shrugs. “I thought he was supposed to be dead.”
“Yeah, like twice.”
“You know him at all?”
“I dunno, saw him in the halls maybe a couple times. I don’t think we ever talked or nothing.” The grunt leans back against her bike, squinting into the sky. There’s nothing to see up there but blue and blue and the hot ring of the sun. “You?”
“Nah.” Her companion fidgets with the hem of one sleeve. “Wild, isn’t it? Like who the hell even is he, and now he’s in the middle of all this shit?”
You resist the urge to drum your fingers against the side of the locomotive. You’re ready to fly.
The grunts stand at attention as the Outskirt Stand’s door opens and the other half of their squad comes tramping out, Eskar leading the way. You strain to hear but can’t quite catch the words she hisses to herself as she goes along. “Learn anything?” one of the grunts calls up to their leader.
She raises one shoulder in a half shrug. “He showed up, made some noise, drove off that way. That’s pretty much all there is to say.”
“Shit, man, that’s the entire region ‘off that way.’”
“Tell me about it.” The commander shakes her head. “Well, let’s get heading back. Not much we can do but report that there’s nothing to report.”
“My favorite,” one grunt grumbles, but no one objects. There’s a general shuffle towards the hover-bikes.
Only Eskar stays where she is, gemstone eyes glowing in the desert sun as she looks up at the old locomotive. “Can you hear me, Lazurite-eyes?” she asks. “Or perhaps my special friend?”
It suddenly seems very cold in the shadow of the Outskirt Stand. Eskar can’t see through illusion, though. You’re sure. Her eyes don’t work like that.
“I think Lazurite-eyes would not be seen like this unless he wanted to be seen,” Eskar says conversationally.
Behind her, the Rocket commander clears her throat. “Uh, Eskar? We’re leaving.”
“If you want to talk, all we have to do is talk,” Eskar goes on. “Talk to Eskar, yes? It’s not too late, whichever-eyes. We would so hate for something bad to happen to you.”
She stands there a few seconds more, maybe waiting for a response, maybe just making the grunts uncomfortable. Did she insist on coming out here with the rest of them? Did they bring her because she hung around with the great Nathaniel Morgan at Indigo? Is that the whole reason she’s in Orre at all?
Who’s in charge of them? How many of them are there? It’s crazy that you’ve been fighting them for weeks and still have no idea.
Eskar turns and scuttles for the hover-bikes, leaping and then clawing her way up the commander’s back to her shoulder. The woman tries and fails to suppress a flinch when Eskar hits her side. You doubt the sableye’s minding her claws.
Only when the hover-cycles go roaring away do you spread your wings. Your leap into the air blows sand in all directions, the clap of your downstroke lost in the roar of engines.
It’s been a long time since you’ve flown anywhere far. It’s tricky, balancing the movement of your wings with the psychic boost that speeds you along and the illusion that hides you in the vast and empty sky. At least this time you aren’t dragging an unconscious human with you.
Even so, the hover-cycles creep farther and farther ahead. You aren’t too worried. You can see for miles across the desert, and there’s nowhere they can vanish to. Even if they somehow get so far ahead that you lose them, the blasted furrows from their thrusters would be easy enough to follow.
They’re going the same way the great Nathaniel Morgan did–it’s the entire region over there, after all. But while the great Nathaniel Morgan carelessly parked his stolen cycle outside the gates to Phenac City, walked into a public restroom, and came out someone else, the Rockets pass north of the city, still riding west. Pyrite Town? Probably. No one would look twice at them in Pyrite Town. Everyone there has their own problems to worry about.
Your wings are screaming with fatigue by the time you let yourself fall into a steep and graceless dive, staying aloft only long enough to watch the specks of riders converge on a grimy fenced-in industrial building.
It takes almost an hour for you to pick your way over to the place through Pyrite’s ill-defined back streets, on high alert all the while for anyone lurking. There’s no one you want to meet out here besides Team Rocket themselves.
You stop well short of the fence and cloak yourself in illusion before quietly pacing the perimeter. What kind of defenses do they have? Surely psychic dampers. Do they have anything that could prevent your illusions? Stop Absol’s shadow walking? The building doesn’t look like much, although the chaotic mess of gleaming bikes outside it seems like it would be a beacon for thieves, barbed wire or no.
You count five, ten… thirteen bikes. Thirteen bikes for how many people? And how many are elsewhere, out and about on Rocket business?
Those are the sorts of things you need to find out. And to do that, you’ll need to watch.
“All right, we got the soda, we got the ’cross; now it’s time to get this party started,” Heracross says. She thumps a couple twelve-packs of soda down on the crumbling floor, looking immensely pleased with herself.
“It’s not a party, Heracross. We have to be quiet.” You haven’t taken your eyes from your peephole, the gap between two boards nailed over the window of an old warehouse near the Rockets’ hideout.
Is it likely that anyone’s going to pass by and notice voices coming from this old place? No, especially if Team Rocket’s been hanging around here without anyone caring. But it’s not worth the risk.
“Just a little joke, Keldeo,” Heracross says, but the slurp she takes of her soda sounds like an admonishment.
“Heracross, let’s save the jokes for later,” Noctowl says gently.
Hypno and Noctowl have been chattering away all afternoon, apparently delighted to be on a stakeout. It doesn’t help for you to remind them of the danger. It doesn’t help for you to emphasize that you could be sitting around for days just waiting for something interesting to happen.
You think you might have joined in their excitement, once. For sure you would have flown right over to the Rocket base to have a look. Probably would have broken a window and headed straight inside. You could have easily ended up captured or dead after trying something like that, but you wouldn’t have cared. You wouldn’t have even thought of failure.
You might have let your other self take over for your watching, too. They never get bored, and they’re very good at observation. But now, of course, no. Never again. Not unless your life depends on it.
“We need to learn how many Rockets there are and where they’re going,” you say. “We want them to lead us to Cipher people–maybe even to one of their bases. But they don’t go out and do that sort of thing every day. Or night. I don’t think.”
“That’s okay. We’ll take it in shifts,” Heracross says. “That’s the great thing about having a team, right?”
It’s better than being alone, but having a team means more people you need to worry about. The Musketeers are all cheerful, ebullient, happy to be doing something. Helping. It’s like they don’t think this is dangerous.
“You’ve been here for a while, haven’t you?” Hypno asks. “Why don’t I take this next shift, then?”
“I can volunteer after that,” Noctowl says. “I do my best watching overnight.”
“What about you, Terrakion?” Heracross asks. “Don’t you want to be up all night, snacking on dreams?”
“I have class in the morning,” Hypno says. “I need sleep.”
“Come on! Don’t tell me we’re on the most exciting stakeout of our lives, and you’re still worrying about some degree?”
“Are you surprised?”
“Of course not, but geeeeez.”
That’s exactly the kind of stupid joke that you can’t stand. “Fine. Hypno can go next,” you say, before anyone can comment further. Pointing at your peephole, you say, “You want to watch and see whether there are any Rockets who come out of there. See what they do and if you recognize anybody. If any of them leave, tell one of us so we can follow them and see where they go.”
“Yes, thank you,” Hypno says with a faint tinge of amusement. “It’s good to get some stakeout advice. I wouldn’t have known what to do, myself.”
Well, clearly not. Otherwise she wouldn’t be acting as though this was all somehow funny.
“Hey, come on, Keldeo. Lighten up,” Heracross says.
“I don’t need to lighten up! You need to take this more seriously!”
Noctowl spreads his wings. “I can tell you’re stressed…”
“I’m not stressed!” You realize you’re shouting and lower your voice to a hiss. “I’m worried about you! This is dangerous. Team Rocket’s dangerous! Do you want to end up snagged again?”
The merriness drops from the Musketeers’ faces. “I know Team Rocket’s dangerous,” Heracross mutters. She twists her soda can unhappily between her claws.
“Yes,” Noctowl says. “I’m sorry we gave you the impression that we don’t appreciate the danger here. We’re taking it seriously, I promise you. Sometimes people can act a bit silly when they’re trying to forget how dangerous something is.”
That’s stupid, but whatever. At least they’ve sobered up a bit. You look around for something to distract yourself, but of course there’s nothing. This building is hardly more than four walls and a roof, with a few rotting boxes and piles of old boards thrown in to add interest. There’s Heracross’ boxes of soda. There’s a folding chair that Hypno insisted on setting up for herself, and then an additional one she also insisted on for you. There’s the box fan Noctowl brought, since the place has no air conditioning, and which is currently not turned on because there’s no power out here.
“We have to figure out a plan,” you say. “At some point… At some point we’re probably going to need to fight Team Rocket. If we’re lucky they won’t try to snag anybody because they mostly just want Mewtwo, but we have to be prepared to deal with them if they do.”
“Well, what can we do?” Heracross asks. “Get good at dodging? I think if they bring out the snag machines, we pretty much just have to get out of there.”
“There’s things you can do. Protect, obviously, even if that won’t work for long. Do all of you know protect?”
“Yeah, sure,” Heracross says, and even Noctowl nods, though he looks somehow embarrassed to admit it. “Pretty handy in a double battle, you know?”
“That’s good. Reflect should work, too. It won’t totally block a master ball, but it’ll slow it way down. That would be a good thing for you to use, wouldn’t it?”
Noctowl shuffles his talons. “I do know reflect. But I…”
“I can learn reflect, I suppose,” Hypno supplies in that awkward pause. “If we can get ahold of a TM.”
“Those are some boring tricks,” Heracross says. “How about punching things? If we punch things good enough, maybe we don’t have to worry about the snagging nonsense, you know?” Before you can formulate a response, she puts her claws up in a defensive gesture. “Joke! It’s a joke! Come on, now. You don’t have to look at me like that.”
“This is serious,” you say for the thousandth time. “Do you want to help, or not? You can think up strategies, too. That would probably be the best thing for you. You shouldn’t come with us for the fighting part.”
“What? Why not?”
“You don’t have a pokéball. We’ll bring healing supplies, but if we run out and you get really hurt, you could die. If you faint, someone would have to carry you out. It’s too dangerous. Unless you’re willing to get a new pokéball.”
“No! Fuck that!”
“Then you should stay behind,” you say firmly. Then to Noctowl, “And you, too.”
“I…?” Noctowl shuffles back a little, alarmed.
“Yes, you. You don’t like fighting. You’re scared of it. If you freeze up in the middle of a battle and get snagged, then it’s only going to make things worse.”
Noctowl lowers his gaze, talons clutching in the crumbling concrete of the floor. “I want to help, though. I do, I… If this is to stop Cipher and Team Rocket for good, then I have to.”
“Hey, hey, hey! We are not leaving Noctowl behind!”
“Sorry, Keldeo,” Hypno says after a moment. “I know it’s dangerous, but we’re a team. That means we don’t leave anyone behind, even if it’s inconvenient.”
“It’s not inconvenient! You all could die!”
Hypno holds up a pacifying hand. “I know that. We all know that. We still want to help.”
“Noctowl can scout!” you snap. “He can follow the Rockets and see where they go! He’s super quiet when he flies. Just because he shouldn’t get in fights doesn’t mean he can’t help. But he shouldn’t go near Team Rocket. Neither should Heracross. It’s too dangerous. Me and Hypno can fight them together.”
Heracross starts yelling at you, brandishing her soda, and you feel a pang of longing for your team, your real team, to be here with you now instead of the Musketeers. Hypno gets to her feet and makes soothing gestures.
“Okay, let’s everybody calm down,” she says. “We’re on the same side, here. Fighting like this isn’t going to help anything.”
“Neither is being stupid and trying to do things you can’t!”
“Keldeo, if you could please–”
“No!”
Noctowl leans so far away from the two of you that it looks as though he might go over in the dust, his feathers sucked in tight.
“All right!” Heracross yells, with a buzz of her wings that momentarily startles you into silence. “Keldeo. Let’s take a walk.”
“What? I don’t want to. This is important, I–”
“Let’s take a walk.” Heracross steps forward, reaching for your arm, and you instinctively pull back. “Unless you want to have another little duel. Do you need me to beat you up first?”
“Heracross–” Hypno starts.
“If you want to fight again, fine! You cheated last time, but this time I’ll beat you up! And then you won’t fight Team Rocket with us because–”
“No fighting!” Hypno stands between you, arms out to separate you both. “Keldeo, I think you should go with Heracross. Get us some supplies. More water would be nice.”
“I don’t want to go! This is stupid!”
“Well, no one’s going to make you.” Hypno gives Heracross a meaningful look. “But we do need more water.”
Heracross sighs, almost slumping with her soda held loose down by her side. “Okay. Come on, Keldeo. Let’s grab stuff. You want some binoculars, so you don’t have to keep squinting out of that little hole?”
“I don’t need binoculars.” Your eyes will give you excellent magnification, if you tune them right.
“Well, okay. I guess I’ll have to see what cool stuff they’ve got at the store myself. Maybe pick up some ice cream just for me.”
You watch her leave, fuming. Noctowl has his eyes squeezed shut, shoulders hunched and beak buried in his feathers. Hypno’s watching you, working the thread of her pendant back and forth between her fingers. Watching you like you’re a problem that needs to be solved.
“You want me to go? Fine. I’ll go.” It’s not like you want to be here right now anyway. Maybe you’ll leave and instead of following Heracross you’ll just go to Agate Village or something. You won’t care if the Musketeers get hurt. They obviously don’t, so why should you?
You should have realized nothing was going to change. Nobody listened to you before, nobody’s going to listen to you now. They’ll ignore you, and they’ll have to deal with the consequences. Not your fault. Theirs. All theirs.
You catch up with Heracross in under ten steps. She’s lollygagging along the decaying sidewalk, swigging soda as she goes. “See, isn’t this nice?” she asks. The sun presses down from above, the same as it always does. “Sunshine, fresh air. Only thing that’d make this better would be a tree to suck. A change of scenery really helps the old mood, doesn’t it?”
“No.” You can already feel sweat trickling out from under your hair.
Heracross laughs and waves her soda can at no one. “All right, all right. But out here you’re at least worried about different problems than back there, aren’t you?”
“No.” It’s not like you forgot everything that just happened.
“Okay, well. At least there’ll be food.” Heracross leads the way into a dingy building plastered with sun-faded signs for soft drinks and cigarettes. Again you think of leaving, letting Heracross tromp on in there and taking off while her back’s turned. Then a gush of air-conditioned air rolls out of the automatic doors and convinces you to follow, at least for now.
Heracross grabs a plastic basket and breezes along, talking like you’re not sure if it’s supposed to be for you or just for her. “Let’s see, some cold drinks, obviously. Snacks. Hmm. Don’t know where in the hell you go to get binoculars; we’ll probably need to make a separate trip for those.” She mutters and putters and you trail silently behind, watching her browse the shelves. “Remind me to pick up some ice on the way out. We can grab my big cooler for it.”
You know what this is. You’ve seen this before. Heracross is going along like there’s nothing wrong between you. She’s letting you stew in your feelings until you finally crack. Just like Absol always does, never making the first move. She probably wants you to talk about why you got mad or something, but she won’t say it.
And you do stew. This is so stupid. You hate this.
And if you hate this, you’re going to make Heracross hate it, too.
“You don’t like humans.”
“What makes you say that?” Heracross asks, rattling around amidst the canned goods.
“You always agree with Mewtwo. You think Hypno’s weird for having a trainer and never want one yourself. You hate pokéballs.”
A woman in bright workout clothes stares at you from the end of the aisle, and you realize you’ve been speaking Pokémon. You glare at the her until she shrinks away and around the corner.
“Not wanting a trainer’s different than not liking humans,” Heracross says. “There’s a difference between liking somebody and wanting to share your life with them, you know?”
“But you don’t, though,” you say. “Come on.”
“Where the heck is this coming from?” Heracross heads for a new aisle, bumping you unceremoniously with her basket.
“You killed somebody, didn’t you?”
“What?” Heracross’ wings give an angry buzz, and now she stops to look dead at you. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Hypno told me. One of you Musketeers killed somebody. It was you, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, so that’s how it is?” Heracross’ wings stutter again, and she lowers herself into something like a battle stance. “Hypno says somebody went out and did some murder, and you just assume it was me?”
“Well, it wasn’t her.”
“Ha!” It’s not really a laugh, just a huff of air. An angry exclamation. Heracross punctuates it by crumpling her soda in one claw, sticky brown dripping down her armor from burst seams. “You really are on a roll today, aren’t you?”
“So it’s true.” You cross your arms over your chest. “You really do hate humans. You want them to die.”
“No, you idiot. And I’ve never killed anyone.”
“Oh, is that right? Who was it, then?” Heracross gives you a look that you could only describe as murderous, and for a second it all becomes absurd, this scowling bug with her basket, in some run-down Orre convenience store where the girl behind the counter keeps shooting you nervous looks.
Heracross stares death at you a second longer, then turns away, taking a deep breath. “Okay. This was a bad idea. Does that make you feel better?”
“No.”
“Okay. Okay, let me just… pay for this.”
You watch her go, then return, never meeting your eyes. “Let’s go back,” she says.
You won. Heracross even admitted to it. She trundles ahead of you now, hunched over her bag of supplies as if protecting it from the desert sun.
You don’t point out that she didn’t get her ice. It’s not like you want to go back for it.
Heracross stops in the middle of the sidewalk, and for a moment you tense, thinking she heard some danger. But instead she says, “Listen,” without turning to look back at you. “Do I think some people should die for what they did to me? What they did to any of us? Yeah, actually. And I’m not ashamed of that. There’s some crimes there’s no coming back from.”
“But you didn’t–”
“No.” Heracross just stands there. So do you. “Sometimes I wonder if that’s a good thing,” she mutters, and then finally sets off again.
You watch her go, unsure what she meant by that. You don’t think you want to figure it out. At least this time, you think it’s better not to understand.
–
For a few days an uneasy peace holds. The Musketeers laugh, joke, treat this as an opportunity to catch up with friends. It’s like a slumber party you’d see on TV, except the venue is a gritty floor in an abandoned building. There are sleeping bags, though.
You try not to let your mouth pull down in a grimace whenever things get too jolly. The Musketeers try to make sure you’re included, oh, yes. They’re nice. You aren’t one of them, though, and twice they’ve gone out in a group to visit Mewtwo and take him to Professor Krane. You stew alone in your hiding place, eyes on the Rocket hideout but mind far away, imagining all of them huddled around Mewtwo, telling him how great he is, eating up his latest murderous plan.
You’ve been able to avoid reopening the question of how you’ll confront Team Rocket because Team Rocket isn’t doing anything, as far as you can tell. Pyrite lies quiet, baking under the sun, and the Rocket base does likewise. At night, people come and go in ones and twos.
You follow them, the only person fast enough to keep their bikes in sight, but it hardly matters: they’re not going anywhere important. Pyrite Colosseum. The nightclub at the base of Realgam Tower. A machine shop in Gateon Port. The grocery store. All these and more mundane errands, personal business, utterly unimportant trips near or far. You don’t even catch them stealing anything. And though you linger on at the places they visit, eavesdropping on conversations, following the people they meet up with, all you overhear are complaints about the desert and petty gossip about their teammates.
You grow to recognize a handful of the Rockets. You decide there are between twenty and twenty-five. Not a single one of them is interesting, and they have only eighteen hover-cycles between them. You’re not sure what to make of that, but it doesn’t seem to cause any problems. What are they all doing down there, in the hours when they aren’t picking up take-out? Aren’t they even looking for Mewtwo? Where’s Cipher?
Hypno seems to have decided she needs to keep a close eye on you. She plops her folding chair next to you while you’re on lookout; she makes conversation about your favorite television shows, about what you’d like to do when it’s someone else’s turn to watch, where you want to go in Orre.
Where you want to go in Orre is nowhere. You want to go home. Even if you don’t have one to go back to.
After nearly a week you’re starting to wonder whether this might be some kind of front operation, like Team Rocket lured you to this location but their actual work is getting done elsewhere. And then they finally do something interesting.
A big group of them this time, six Rockets in close formation. You follow far back, relying on the glow of taillights to keep track of them. This time they’re not headed for the red light district, or some department store open late. They ditch their bikes on the outskirts of Agate Village, then prowl deeper into the little town, all on foot.
It puts a shiver down your spine, watching them. Are they going to rip off some septuagenerian? Nothing is open at this time of night; they can’t have any legitimate reason to be here.
Maybe they’re finally meeting Cipher? Cipher, here, in the town of the Relic Stone, where shadow pokémon were healed? It seems too wrong to think about, but you suppose that’s what it means to be evil. To not care about disrespecting something like that.
Three members of the group disappear inside a small house on the upper slopes of the mountain. The rest loiter outside, keeping watch for trouble, you suppose. Eskar is not with them.
You curl yourself tighter in the shelter of a garbage can across the street. What to do now? Creep closer to eavesdrop? Go back and tell the others? Bring them here?
What good would it do to bring the Musketeers? They’ll only get in your way. You can tell them what happened later. This is safer. This is the best way to do things, even if they won’t like it.
You start forward, changing as you go into something almost liepard, dark and quiet to match the night. You’re considering what to do about the guards, but then the front door of the house swings wide and the Rockets reappear, moving with the exaggerated care of people trying to be quiet. Without much luck–the woman they’re pulling with them struggles and twists in her bonds and makes choked cries that seem to travel miles through the peaceful night air. Rocket might have done better to make as much noise as they could, pretend to be having a big party or something, just to cover that up.
You hunch frozen in the shadows. They’re kidnapping somebody? They weren’t out here for Cipher at all? What would they even want in Orre, besides Cipher?
Mewtwo, you suppose. But you can’t conjure any connection between the thrashing young woman and the clone.
You have several agonizing minutes to contemplate while the Rockets wrestle their victim down the hill and into a sidecar. The hover-cycles set out again with a roar that distance renders a moody grumble. Two of the team remain behind, standing tense and watchful in the moonlit yard. Why? Are more people still inside?
You wait, and wait, and nothing more happens. The sound of bikes has long since faded, but you saw what direction they were going, and surely they’re returning to their base. You could teleport back to your hideout and beat them to the punch. And then–what? Ambush them? What?
Long seconds filled with nerves, and then you force yourself to calm, or close enough, center your thoughts, and teleport.
Noctowl startles when you appear yelling, “Wake up! Wake up! Team Rocket’s coming!”
“They’re coming?” Hypno raises herself off the floor on one elbow, instantly alert. Heracross is flailing around and cursing to herself in her sleeping bag. “What? What’s happening?”
“I went after some Rockets that drove off earlier. I thought they were going to meet up with Cipher, but they kidnapped somebody instead! And now they’re coming back here with her!”
“Kidnapped somebody?” Hypno glances at the wall like she can somehow see the approaching hover-cycles through it, grip tightening on her pendant.
“Yes! Some random lady.”
“They went where?” Noctowl asks.
“A little house in Agate Village. Just like all the other places Mewtwo and I–” Your momentum almost carries you through the sentence, but you have just a little too long to think. Too long to remember. “It was the sort of place we used to go,” you finish eventually, a sick hollowness in your chest.
“So who the hell knows what they were doing there?” Heracross mutters.
“You thought Team Rocket was going to meet someone from Cipher,” Noctowl says slowly. You can tell he’s thinking things through while he’s talking. “Would they be kidnapping a Cipher agent, then?”
“I don’t know! Maybe she is. Maybe they got in a fight or something.”
The Musketeers stare at each other. “So, what do we do now?” Heracross asks after a moment.
“We get this person away from Team Rocket,” Hypno says.
“There’s four of them, right?” Heracross asks. “Four on bikes.”
“Yes, how would we…?” Noctowl lets the question hang.
“Some kind of ambush,” Hypno says. “With the four of us, I think we’d be able to pull one person away.”
“Yeah! We’ve been waiting how long to properly stick it to Rocket? Let’s do it!” Heracross adds an exuberant buzz of her wings.
It’s that more than anything that makes you say, “Maybe it’s not a good plan. I could go back to Agate and see what else happens there instead. Maybe the meeting’s still going on.”
“I think most meetings would be pretty over after somebody got dragged out the door,” Hypno says. “There might be something interesting there. We know there’s something interesting going on with this kidnapped woman.”
Noctowl catches you with his wide, soft eyes. “Let’s figure things out before you go anywhere. You’re our strongest fighter. We might need you here.”
“Exactly! You could take all of them yourself, couldn’t you?”
“If I hit all the bikes at once, definitely. It would be hard to do it without hitting the person they kidnapped, though.” You consider. “I could probably run in and grab just her and then teleport away somewhere.”
“How probable is ‘probably?’” Noctowl asks. “What if they have pokémon?”
“They must have pokémon,” you say without thinking. “It’s okay, though. I’m not worried.”
“I mean, can’t we just do something to try and make them crash?” Heracross asks. “Like put a chain across an alleyway or something? Blow out their tires?”
Noctowl shakes his head slowly. “That sounds dangerous. We don’t want to kill anybody.”
“What’re you looking at me for?” Heracross demands of you.
“I wasn’t looking!”
Heracross’ yellow eyes burn with anger as she shifts her gaze between you and Noctowl. “I didn’t say anything about murder,” she says. “But this is Team Rocket we’re talking about. I don’t know if I’m that worried if they get hurt, you know?”
“We have to stay safe,” Noctowl says. “Rushing in now would be reckless.”
“We knew we wouldn’t be safe going into this!” Heracross says. “Come on, you can’t have expected that we’d fight Rockets without actually fighting any Rockets.”
Noctowl’s about to say something else, but he straightens up abruptly instead. “I hear engines.”
You focus, and–yes, you can, too. Hard to say how far away, with how the sound echoes around the derelict buildings on Pyrite’s outskirts.
“Not much time,” Heracross mutters, drumming her claws on the side of her soda. Finally she lowers her gaze. “Add ‘dealing with hover-cycles’ as something we’ve got to figure out from here. We can’t afford to waste another opportunity like this.”
You let out a great breath, even though you wouldn’t have had a problem fighting the Rockets yourself. Noctowl’s nodding. “Yes. We need to prepare. We’ve probably left it too long, and we won’t be able to avoid a confrontation forever.”
“I guess I’m going back to Agate, th–”
A roar and squeal of tires, followed by a horrible metal crunch, cuts you off mid-sentence. The growing snarl of engines is replaced by silence, and you and the Musketeers are left staring at each other in consternation.
“Where’s Hypno?” Heracross asks with sudden urgency.
Hypno is, fortunately, several streets away from your hideout. You can’t even imagine what you’d do if she’d decided to crash the Rockets right outside the warehouse. She stands silhouetted by a headlight gone askew, her pendant twisting and gleaming from her upraised hand. At her feet one bike’s tipped completely, leaving a long furrow in the unpaved ground. Its driver’s slumped over, impossibly asleep at the wheel despite the road rash all down the dirt-side of his body.
Hypno steps carelessly over him, making for a bike that ran up against a wall and now balances at a precarious angle. The restrained maybe-Cipher woman’s tipped half onto the ground, making little abortive movements, like she keeps forgetting what she’s doing in the middle of it. Strips of plastic and loose metal litter the ground around Hypno, but she ignores them, apparently unharmed beside a couple long scratches across her forehead and chest. Her pendant flashes bright in the light of frozen high-beams, and you avert your eyes with a sick lurch in your gut.
“Hypno! Why did you do that?” The words come out in a squeal.
“Team Rocket wants this person. I don’t want them to get what they want.”
“But she might be Cipher! We don’t want her to get what she wants, either!”
Hypno starts towards the woman, but you grab her shoulder. “What are you doing?” you hiss.
“I’m going to cut the ropes and see what happens.”
“What?! No, stop!”
“Uhh, Terrakion, I think I gotta side with Keldeo on this one,” Heracross says. Great. That makes you feel just great.
The Cipher agent lies where she fell, blood smeared where she hit her head on the ground. Her gaze is distant. You have no idea how much she’s taking in of any of this. At least she can’t understand what you’re saying.
“We should go,” you say. “If we’re lucky, nobody will remember seeing us.”
“It would be pretty shitty to leave her on the ground until Team Rocket comes back to get her. Who knows what would happen to her after that?” Hypno says.
“Okay, well, let’s take her with us,” Heracross says.
“No!” That’s you.
“And do what, Heracross?” Noctowl asks, soft and gentle as ever.
“You know, interview her. See what she knows.”
“You mean like torture?” you ask.
“What? Why the hell is your head going there?”
“We’re not torturing anyone.” There’s an unusual steel beneath Noctowl’s words.
You barely register movement beneath your fingers before Hypno’s wrenched herself away. You claws at the air behind her, but it’s too late. “Hypno, we can’t!” you hiss at her. “She saw you! How many hypno even are there in Orre? She’ll tell someone.”
Hypno looks at you. It’s a long, appraising stare. “What are you suggesting, then?” she says. “That we leave her for Team Rocket to find? We make her forget, somehow?” Hypno takes a step towards you, head low and shoulders set. “Kill her?”
Your fingers twitch. One shadow ball is all it would take. You could bring Hypno back with you unconscious. As many of the other Musketeers as necessary, too. And the kidnapped woman, well…
Don’t want Team Rocket to have her. Can’t let her go.
You know what the answer has to be. No witnesses.
It’s like Mewtwo’s right there with you, standing in the dark behind the headlights, a shadow with purple-glowing eyes. His voice echoes in your head, words without sound.
You have to turn away from Hypno, stomach clenching, and reach out to catch yourself against a wall. “Do what you want,” you say, and then you leave it there, all of it, the blood and the Musketeers and the ruined cycles and everything, and the whole time Mewtwo’s words follow you. They’re a part of you now. You’re never going to escape him, not really.
It doesn’t mean anything. So what if Hypno wanted to let the Cipher person go, and you didn’t? That doesn’t make you a bad person. You didn’t say anybody should get killed, or tortured. You very explicitly didn’t say that. You even let Hypno have her way, even though it was stupid, and for all you know Cipher’s coming after you this very second.
You’re nothing at all like Mewtwo. You’ve never been like Mewtwo.
Not that it would matter if you were. The Musketeers still like him. Clearly they wouldn’t care even if you had said the woman should die. A little murder isn’t enough to make them give up their friendships.
You took Hypno and Heracross to the house in Agate Village the Cipher woman came from and had to listen to them speculate about what the cold mug of the coffee on the table could mean, where they could find the woman’s address books, see if she had any messages on her voicemail machine. Nothing there. There’s never anything that matters.
Days pass and all that’s changed is Team Rocket rides out in bigger groups now. They clearly fear some new attack, which is probably going to be a problem the next time you face them, but you don’t want to bring up how you should fight them. You don’t want to be the only one advocating for something that could really hurt people. Especially not for killing.
These are the thoughts that consume you four days after the kidnappee stumbled off into Pyrite’s night, while you sit through another dark hour with Noctowl, waiting for something to happen. Waiting for another Cipher raid and for the questions you’ve been avoiding to all come around.
Noctowl watches through your peephole, lost in his own thoughts. You tell yourself not to break the silence. You tell yourself you don’t want to talk about it anyway. But in the end, you can’t suffer the thought of another night of wondering.
“You killed somebody, didn’t you?”
Noctowl’s head snaps around while his body stays facing forward, and you can’t suppress a flinch. It’s too much like Eskar when he does that. “What makes you think that?”
“Hypno told me a while ago that she knew somebody who had. Heracross said she didn’t do it. So I thought…”
“That I was the sole other person Hypno knows and therefore the only one who could have done it, is that right?”
“But it was you, wasn’t it?”
Noctowl’s face spins away from you again, and his shoulders hunch. “Regrettably, yes. It was while I was shadowed. I hope you can understand it’s not something I like to talk about.”
You nod. There are all kinds of questions floating through your head, like “How did you do it?” and “Who was it?”, but you don’t ask. Nowadays you actually understand how some kinds of questions can cause pain. Instead you say, “I’m sorry. I was just surprised. If I had to guess, out of anyone… I never would have thought you could do something like that.”
Noctowl turns back to you, with his body this time, talons scuffling over each other in the sand. “Yes, well, you didn’t know me as I once was,” he says with a strange half smile. “Not that I was ever a killer. But certainly I’ve changed since the shadow. Some might say… been diminished. I’m gentler, yes. More fearful. Better or worse, well. People will disagree about that, I suppose.”
“You’re really nice,” you say uncertainly. “But you… you killed someone. And now… what? Do you still think about it?”
Noctowl laughs harshly, not a sound you’ve ever heard from him before. “Only every day. Only every day.”
You don’t think about what you’ve done every day. It sneaks up on you more than anything, when you’re listening to the Musketeers’ conversations, when you’re buying something at the store, when you’re stopped in Gateon Port, watching the TVs in a store window. A passing shadow or innocuous word will grab you and send you back to some Orrean night.
“So how do you… How do you…?” You gesture helplessly at the air.
Noctowl tips his head back, staring into the ceiling rather than at you. “Whatever way I can. I tell myself that it wasn’t really me who did it. I was made to. I do my best to be better. I remember kindness. I remember patience, for myself as well as others. I try to have no expectations.” He bows his head. “At the least I can know that it won’t happen again.”
That’s right. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t yours, either. It was the other you who killed. Not once, but several times. It wasn’t you. But all the same… Maybe that wasn’t the first time. You weren’t exactly gentle with the Rockets you used to fight. You thought you were doing the right thing. You thought that killing the bad guys was what heroes did.
“I understand if you need time to process this,” Noctowl says. “It’s not easy, learning that a friend did such a horrible thing.”
“You know what I did!” you blurt out. “It was even worse! So if what you did was horrible–!”
“Ah.” Noctowl’s eyes go wide, his feathers sucking in. “I forgot. I’m sorry–of course I forgot.” He reaches a wing out towards you, though he can only gently brush you with its tip. “I should have realized what would have brought you to ask that. I apologize. That sort of self-deprecation helps no one.”
How could anyone ever forget what you’ve done?
“It weighs on you, doesn’t it?” Noctowl asks softly. “Of course it would. Do you want to talk about it?”
You shake your head even though it makes you feel like a coward. You wanted to hear Noctowl talk. What is there to say? You killed people. Maybe it wasn’t your fault. Maybe you didn’t want to. But it’s still true.
“I’m sorry,” Noctowl says again. “What’s been done to you–it’s wrong. The same as what was done to me. It’s not an excuse, but it is a fact. The world is a very cruel place, sometimes. I’m sorry you had to learn that so young.”
Noctowl’s nice. He’s really, really nice. You almost don’t feel worthy of him talking to you, just now. You nod but can’t muster anything more. Noctowl moves closer to you, and now he can properly shelter you with his wing.
A long silence, and the wider it stretches, the more you feel words backing up your throat, threatening to spill into all that space. You don’t want that. You can’t. Not now. You need Noctowl to keep talking. “How do they even make shadow pokémon?” you ask, grasping for the first question that comes to mind. “What did they do to you?”
“I can’t remember it so well,” Noctowl says slowly. “My mind was changing, after all. But I recall a little, I suppose. Mostly the light. It was red, bright red. I don’t know why it was like that. Every machine, the inside was red.”
“In the factory? Where Mewtwo…?”
Noctowl gives a quick, sharp nod. “There was a conveyor belt system. It felt endless. It carried you through one machine after the next. Between the machines it was dark. Inside they were red.”
“They put you on a conveyor belt?”
“They strapped pokémon down so they wouldn’t run. But that was just a precaution. They’d already drugged us, so we were paralyzed. We could breathe, of course, we could think, but we couldn’t move more than the smallest bit. And then there were the restraints for anyone whose dose began to wear off.”
“It was a large conveyor belt, but I still don’t know how they would have managed someone like Tyranitar. It doesn’t matter. What happened to me was I was drugged and I was strapped to the conveyor belt, and I went in and out of the red light.”
“But red lights aren’t enough to make somebody shadow,” you say, although the words feel doubtful. What isn’t possible anymore?
“No, but it was something more than light. Whenever the red touched you, it felt like the most awful fear, like pain. Like surely I was dying, second to second, again and again. It was the worst thing by far I’d ever felt. And then the red would be gone and you would be out again, but only for a few seconds. You knew you’d be sent back. Again and again you’d pass through the red, and again and again you’d feel that terror. Until you didn’t.”
“What does that mean?” you ask when Noctowl doesn’t go on.
“A body can only hold so much pain,” he says slowly. “The point of the system was to overwhelm us. To feed us pain until we shut down and stopped feeling anything at all. When you stopped reacting to the light, you were done. You could be released. Because at that point you wouldn’t even bother to run away.”
Your arms bead with goosebumps that no amount of rubbing can soothe. “Hypno said it had something to do with memory.”
Noctowl nods. “Yes. You’re released from your bonds, but in your head, you’ve never really left the red box. You take it with you wherever you go. By the time they take you off the conveyor, you’ve forgotten that there’s any world outside it.” He folds his wings with a decisive snap, blinking at you in a gentle sort of way. “That, then, is how you make a shadow pokémon.”
It’s simpler than you expected. No weird chemicals or mad science things. Nothing but hurting pokémon again and again until they can’t hurt any more.
“You’d be able to tell if you saw a shadow pokémon, wouldn’t you?” you ask. “Pokémon can feel it, even if humans can’t.”
“It depends. You have to know what to look for. Odd behavior anyone can see, if they’re willing to look properly. Most pokémon can sense auras well enough to tell that something’s very wrong with a person who’s been shadowed, even if they don’t know exactly what.”
“So you’d know,” you press. “You’d know if you’d seen a shadow pokémon.”
“Yes. I have some experience spotting them. Hypno can feel them out, too, even more reliably than I can. I’m confident we’d recognize one.”
“And you haven’t seen any since after Cipher fell. Not even one.”
What you don’t say is, Is Mewtwo one?
Am I?
Noctowl looks straight at you when he replies, like he’s gained Hypno’s mind-reading, just for a second. He looks straight at you and says, “Not even one.”
That has to be good enough. You have to make yourself believe that’s good enough.
You have a clock for your hideout, a desktop one Hypno brought from home whose red numbers you can see from far away across the room. It sits with your fans, of which there are now multiple, their cords snaking away to a power pack. Mostly you tell time without telling time, though. You know that when the sun sets Heracross and Hypno will wind down, and it will be time for you and Noctowl to start your watching. As light comes to the sky again, Heracross takes over, and Hypno leaves for her class. You sleep until the sun is high in the afternoon.
Two or three times a week, you’re awoken early. That’s bad enough. What’s worse is it’s because that’s the time when everyone goes to see Mewtwo.
You’re graceful about it. Hypno will bring you something to eat, and you won’t even complain much about whatever it is. Your comments about how awful Mewtwo is will not exceed three. Usually. Mostly you let the Musketeers know how much you don’t care about the fact that they’re going off to visit a mass-murderer like it’s a harmless hobby.
Maybe it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that Hypno would ask if you’d like to go with them.
“What? No, when I said ‘have fun making friends with the genocide cat,’ that didn’t mean I wanted to do it, too.” You’re about to explain how you learned humans’ opposite-speak, but Noctowl hastily raises a wing.
“We didn’t mean to meet Mewtwo,” he says. “You don’t have to go anywhere near him. But we have some time while he’s talking to Professor Krane. We could do something fun together. You’re right that it’s a bit unfair of us to make time to visit with Mewtwo and not do anything with you.”
“I never said it was unfair. Even though it is.” What you you really want is for them to stop seeing Mewtwo. Hanging out with you won’t change that.
“Oh, come on, Keldeo,” Heracross says. “It’ll do you good to get out of this place.”
“Someone has to stay behind and watch Team Rocket.”
“They never do anything this time of day. They’re all in there sleeping off the evil or whatever.”
“We could go back to the beach for a bit,” Hypno says. “I know you wanted to spend more time at the ocean.”
Stupid. You don’t want their stupid pity. You glance between the Musketeers and your spy hole to Team Rocket, your friend for the next three hours. “I don’t have to go near Mewtwo?”
“We can meet you at the lab. You stay out in the yard, for as long as you’d like. Then once we’ve dropped Mewtwo off, you can teleport us somewhere else.”
No good. What’s stopping Mewtwo from rushing you the first opportunity he gets? You can feel his psychic field crushing you, smothering you in hatred that you’ll never escape. “No,” you croak. “No. I… don’t want to.”
The Musketeers have the audacity to go solemn at that, their gazes solemn, like you’ve made them sad. You have to press your eye right up against the peephole and focus to ignore them moving around in the background, making last-minute ready to leave.
You still can’t even believe they asked you to come. They’re so friendly sometimes that it’s strange. You guess in the end you don’t have a lot of experience with nice people, not in this life. It’s hard to predict what they’ll do.
“We’ll be at the lab in an hour,” Noctowl says softly, the last one out of the building. “Just in case you change your mind.”
Change your mind. Change your mind. If anything, you’re left more determined to spy on Team Rocket than ever.
The Rocket compound lies just across the street, quiet, still, and boring. Sun glitters off waves in your mind’s eye.
Who needs the Musketeers? You can teleport. You can always just go to the beach.
A hero probably wouldn’t do it. A hero would keep being on guard duty, no matter how boring it was. But by now you think you’ve given up on being a real hero.
It’s the sound of the waves that tugs at you, before you even open your eyes to your new landscape. You could hear them all across Cinnabar, all across your little island in Sevii. You wouldn’t even notice, except in quiet moments, lying in bed and waiting for sleep. Only now do you realize it’s been weeks since you’ve heard the ocean, and how much you’ve missed it. You dig your toes into the sand and watch the waves roll in, not bothering to move when they gush up over your ankles, soak your clothes and throw up flecks of foam you taste on your tongue.
But in the end, all you’ve done is traded sitting alone in the warehouse for sitting alone on the beach. It’s definitely an upgrade, but your thoughts keep drifting back to the Musketeers. And Mewtwo.
It should be impossible for anyone to like him. And impossible for him to like them back. But you remember the buzz of anticipation that follows the Musketeers in the mornings before they make a trip out to the lab. You remember Mewtwo’s eagerness to meet with them in turn, so poorly disguised that even your other self could recognize its strangeness. The wrongness itches under your skin, infecting even your most peaceful moments. You won’t be able to let it go until you understand.
Besides, if Mewtwo wanted so desperately to find you, he could always have stolen the location of your warehouse straight from the Musketeers’ brains.
You stand and spend a last moment looking out over the waves. You can do this. You won’t let Mewtwo keep stealing your happiness, even when he’s not around.
You teleport so far from the lab that the Musketeers are hardly more than dots on the lawn. Mewtwo looms over them like a thunderhead, taller even than Heracross’ horn.
They don’t notice you, of course. You’re too far out for Mewtwo to sense. And too far out to hear, so for the moment you simply watch, cold even in the heat of the day. You keep having to shake off phantom tingles, your mind trying to convince you that you misjudged, that you’re inside Mewtwo’s sphere of influence after all.
Mewtwo keeps looking towards the lab, tail lashing. Heracross grins and makes some comment, arms spread wide. All laugh. You can never tell what Mewtwo’s thinking, expressionless as he is. There’s a pause; the Musketeers must be listening to silent words, the voice in their heads. Hypno reaches up and pats the side of Mewtwo’s leg, and he flinches, then hunches down in what must be embarrassment. The Musketeers lean in, once more silent, expressions all mournful, all sympathy.
Abruptly all you want is to make them stop. You can’t take one second more of them treating Mewtwo like he’s some poor, wretched kitten. You walk forward before your irritation fades and you remember your fear. You make it a good half dozen yards, maybe, before you know the fizzing in the air is real and ghostly impressions drift in from Mewtwo, feelings not your own.
The clone stands full upright now, rigid, staring in your direction. The Musketeers follow his gaze.
“Oh, there!” Noctowl’s voice, far off. “You stay… Heracross?”
He flies over with Heracross trundling behind on her buzzy little wings. You can’t force yourself a step closer to Mewtwo’s emotions. As always his anger buffets you, threatens to pull you in even at this distance. At least he isn’t any happier to see you than you are him.
“Thank you for coming,” Noctowl says, landing silently in a whirl of displaced sand. Heracross drops, winded, out of the air a few feet back. “It’ll just be a minute. Hypno will take Mewtwo in to the professor, and then the four of us can leave.”
You can see Hypno doing just that in the background. Mewtwo lags behind her, turning towards you again and again, and you can feel his malice reaching towards you. Then Hypno pauses, says something, and Mewtwo jerks his gaze aside and disappears into the building.
“So it’s beach time, then?” Heracross says, off in some other world. Your eyes stay fixed on the lab, still expecting its doors to open again and Mewtwo to emerge, raging. His psychic field shimmers around you, whispering resentment into your mind.
“I think so, unless you had some other idea?” It takes you a second to realize Noctowl’s addressing you, and another to organize something like a negative noise in reply. Is Mewtwo gone? Really?
“Great! Maybe we could visit Gateon Port on the way in? I’ve been meaning to hit up that imports shop. They’ve gotta have a copy of the latest Spyland movie in by–”
Heracross cuts off mid-sentence, wincing and putting a claw to her temple. A hot thread of pain unfurls behind your left eye. Everyone turns towards the lab, the base of the spike of Mewtwo’s anger. Anger and fear. Something in there has just gone bad.
“Mewtwo?” Heracross takes off for the lab, running this time.
“You can stay out here with me,” Noctowl says. “You don’t need to go in there.”
You barely hear him. The familiar rush of Mewtwo’s fury washes over you in paralyzing waves. All you can do is shake.
The emotions are so strong that you can even hear Mewtwo’s words, his shouting rage. …dare you… sableye… !
Sableye? You squeeze your eyes shut and try to breathe. “It’s okay,” Noctowl says when you stagger back to your feet. “Maybe you should go back to the warehouse. I don’t think we realized how badly you would be–”
“No,” you say, hoarse like you’ve been screaming, though you haven’t made a sound. “I need to go… need to see what’s happening.”
You move up the gradient of Mewtwo’s anger like a magikarp swimming up a waterfall, spikes of emotion slicing against you like the cold flicks of bullet-fast water droplets. Noctowl keeps up with you, easily, and you get the sense that he’s tracking you, making ready to catch you in case you fall.
For now sheer momentum keeps you on your feet. You worry the lab’s sliding doors won’t part fast enough, that you’ll collapse right against them, but at the last moment they swish back, and you’re enveloped in that arctic rush of air conditioning.
Professor Krane’s lab is quiet inside. That’s nothing new. It’s a big place with not a lot of people in it, and the climate control drowns out all the little sounds of life.
You wouldn’t even find the receptionist’s absence weird, under ordinary circumstances. Probably she takes breaks. If the lab’s not busy, who cares?
It’s the sableye perched on the edge of her desk that’s wrong. She leans back on her foreclaws, kicking her legs idly. Her crystal smile gleams deadly white. “Hello, Amethyst-eyes. And friends,” she says to Mewtwo, who stands glaring, thin fur on end. “Do you have an appointment?”