Chapter 61
“Eskar!” You choke on the name as a wave of psychic power washes over you, strangling you with Mewtwo’s fear. Somehow it’s Hypno who steps forward before anyone else.
“Who are you?” she asks. “What are you doing here? And where’s Judy?”
“So many questions,” Eskar purrs. “Perhaps your friends can introduce us, hmmm?”
“What do you want, Eskar?” you say. “We don’t have time for games.”
“No games?” She clutches at the jewel in her chest and swoons across the desk. “Cordierite-eyes, Cordierite-eyes! When did you ever become so serious?”
We do have an appointment, Mewtwo says. And no time for you. Leave.
“Oh, Amethyst-eyes,” Eskar says, “don’t you want to know about Team Rocket? Everything they’ve been up to? All their little hiding places?” She taps a bright jewel-eye with a claw. “Eskar knows! Eskar knows it all. Perhaps Eskar’s friends would like to know as well?”
“You think we’re going to fall for that? Do you think I don’t remember what happened the last time I made a deal with you?”
“Oh, that was just a little misunderstanding,” Eskar says, smiling all the wider. “Are you still mad about that, Cordierite-eyes? Such a small thing to come between us!”
“Little misunderstanding?!”
Hypno clears her throat and steps forward. “We’re here to see the professor,” she says. “Perhaps you can talk about this later?”
“Oh, go ahead if you like, Melanite-eyes, go ahead.” Eskar waves a claw airily. “But no professor will you find.”
Hypno freezes a moment, uncomprehending, then all three Musketeers erupt with, “What do you mean?” “What happened to him?” “Who are you, anyway?”
Mewtwo’s eyes blaze purple, and all chatter immediately dies. Enough of this. The three of you, go find the human. We will deal with this one. He gestures, and the desk below Eskar cracks with a sound like a gunshot while the ghost leaps free, cackling laughter. She dodges a shadow ball from Mewtwo, a moonblast from you, and zips away in a streak of shadow to emerge in front of Hypno, swiping a shadow claw at her face. Hypno stumbles back with a gasp, and you know Eskar missed on purpose, just to make Hypno squirm.
Mewtwo catches Eskar in the sweep of a miracle eye, the wispy edges of her body hardening solid. Eskar dives behind the desk, still laughing. The desk itself groans, shudders, and then rises slowly into the air, borne up by Mewtwo’s mind to reveal: nothing at all.
“Why are you really here?” you ask the space where Eskar isn’t. “Just to taunt us? You know no one was going to take you up on your ‘offer.’”
“Oh, Cordierite-eyes.” Eskar’s head pops out below the desk, then immediately disappears from sight when two shadow balls sail straight at her. She reappears while you’re recharging. “Of course I know that. Eskar understands, Cordierite-eyes. I so hoped we could be friends again, but, well… Eskar is not stupid.”
“No?” you yell recklessly. “Well, it sure seems like you are! Because whatever you’re trying to do, it’s pointless! Leave, Eskar. Unless you want us to hurt you so bad that you can’t!”
You’re vaguely aware of the Musketeers slipping off down the hallway towards Professor Krane’s office. Mewtwo clenches his fist, and the desk shatters into a whole constellation of detritus: ragged hunks of wood, memos and pencils and pens, a half-eaten sandwich. Floating on the fringe is Eskar, looking as unconcerned as ever. She favors you with a sparkling grin.
“Pointless? Oh, no, Cordierite-eyes. Not at all. This is what we like to call ‘stalling.’”
Mewtwo’s gaze snaps up towards the ceiling, and the bits of desk come crashing back to earth as his psychic field winks out. Eskar lands lightly amidst the debris, smiling wider than ever. “You were early for your appointment today, weren’t you, Amethyst-eyes? So rude! We didn’t have time to get a proper welcome ready for you!”
A chorus of roars and growls echoes from deeper within the lab, and the Musketeers reappear, running ahead of a tide of snarling pokémon. Hypno lags behind her friends, stumbling with her head in her hands. After her come the Rockets, at least half of them armed with crude replicas of snag machines, all metal struts and exposed wiring.
Mewtwo stares a moment, frozen in shock. Then he turns and runs.
Eskar lets out a whoop of startled laughter. “What’s this? Amethyst-eyes, surely you aren’t afraid of a few little humans! Aren’t you the humansbane?”
You and Eskar dive in opposite directions, she towards Mewtwo, you towards the Musketeers. You grab Hypno by the shoulder and drag her towards the doors, shouting for the others to follow. “Do you feel it, too?” Hypno mumbles. “Why is everything so quiet?”
Rockets and their pokémon flow past you towards Mewtwo, and a primeape leaps from the crowd to grab Heracross, only for the both of them to be caught up in the fire of an overeager houndour.
Noctowl’s eyes stretch wide and dark, his breathing shallow, his wings dragging on the tiles to either side of him while he runs. Hypno’s still getting her bearings, shaking her head while she tries to pull herself out of your grasp. A spike of irritation cuts through your fear. They said they wanted to help, but here they are, only giving you more people you have to protect. You should have pushed them harder to learn some proper battle skills. You should have never let them get involved in all this from the start.
You dispatch the primeape with a point-blank thunderbolt, and an aura sphere does for the houndour. Heracross swings and claws at you, too, when you grab her, but you haul her along by the horn anyway. “Let’s go! Let’s go! This way!”
Hypno struggles against you. “But Professor Krane…”
Professor Krane’s probably dead, you think grimly, but for now you only steer Hypno along. “We’ll come back for him!” Or his corpse. “Right now we need to get Mewtwo out of here.”
That seems to revive Hypno somewhat. She stops making you drag her and instead runs ahead with pendulum swinging, threatening to send anyone who looks too close to sleep.
Noctowl’s the one forcing you to drag him now. You wish you had his pokéball here and could just recall him and deal with the other Musketeers being mad at you later. Maybe you ought to knock him out yourself, just to be sure he stays out of the way for this fight.
You can’t even see Mewtwo up ahead, so densely are pokémon and Rockets packed in around him. Just beyond is the lab’s huge bubble window. Even as you fantasize about grabbing Mewtwo and smashing your way to freedom in a wave of glass shards, you watch a deflected energy ball bounce solidly off them. They’re reinforced somehow. It might be easier to try the door.
Something seizes your ankle in a painful grip. “Hello, Cordierite-eyes,” Eskar says, her face only half protruding from the floor. “Come to join the fun? Over here! Reinforcements, now!” Her scratchy voice is hard to hear above the melee, but a couple of Rockets turn your way, and pokéballs release even more opponents.
You wrench your leg free of Eskar’s claws and conjure an icy wind to clear a path through the pokémon coming your way. Heracross squawks and manages to mostly get out of the way, but Hypno takes the attack full on, shivering. Then you’re engulfed by the Rockets’ pokémon and can think of nothing but strike and counterstrike, letting your body react before your mind can catch up, letting your senses guide you. There’s too much going on for your thoughts to keep up.
There’s a magmar. Water. And toxel. Mud. You give yourself a shake to dislodge spines, claws, all manner of clinging things, and carve a little space for yourself with a blizzard. Amidst the ice sculptures that result, there’s Heracross with a cramorant in a headlock. There’s Hypno headbutting a gloom, the fur of her ruff glittering with ice crystals. And what’s pressing up behind you is Noctowl. He cowers away from attacks, and most pokémon aren’t even trying to hit him, but he’s bleeding, feathers torn out and one spoke of his crest burned away completely.
“Go help Mewtwo!” you yell, giving Hypno a quick shove to free her from the snow. “Take care of Noctowl!” You push the bird at her, and then turn to claw at the weird rectangle pokémon from Paldea that’s crushing your leg beneath its inert weight. No time to worry about the Musketeers. They’ll take care of themselves, or they won’t. You have to keep yourself and Mewtwo safe first. Everything comes apart if one of you falls.
There’s nothing in your way now. Nothing to stop you from unleashing your fullets abilities, bursts of burning light, great thunderbolts, waves of slicing, stabbing earth. Enemies rise before you and fall away just as quickly. Impossible to say how much time has elapsed. There’s only this moment, and then this, this, this.
Another dazzling gleam, and as the air clears of sparkling motes, stillness greets you. The air is clear. Brief reprieve. The lab has plenty of healing machines, so even if Team Rocket didn’t come prepared with portable healers, you’re sure all those pokémon will be back on their feet and fighting again in a few minutes. You have to move now while you have the opportunity.
You can see fear in the Rockets’ eyes as they fumble for more pokéballs, and your thoughts stutter to a halt. You dimly remember pushing meat shields aside. Lunging for necks, backs, stomachs. Why fight the pokémon when you can fight the humans instead?
It was effective. These Rockets know exactly how effective, from the way they’re acting. And even thinking of it, considering all the ways you could kill them, you gag and turn aside instead.
Ahead, the Musketeers are barely visible in the thick of the battle. You wade in after them, keeping your gaze straight ahead, thinking of nothing but getting to them and then getting all of you out of here.
The Musketeers stand grim and bloody at the edge of a great dark patch–Mewtwo, you realize with a jolt, with one of those awful nets thrown over him. Hypno and Heracross face outwards towards the Rockets and their pokémon, while Noctowl faces Mewtwo, tearing at the net with his beak.
You are wearily glad both Heracross and Hypno are still up and fighting. Hypno seems to be doing fine without her psychic powers, her fists trailing frost or sparks as the occasion demands, and the odd fierce headbutt sends attackers staggering back. She leaps on fliers that give Heracross trouble, and Heracross weaves back and forth around her partner, using her horn to scoop and fling enemies into each other. They look completely confident in one another, going through familiar motions despite the overwhelming number of opponents.
Your allow yourself a brief moment of hope and leave the fighting to them for now, rushing up next to Noctowl. Close up you can see the net’s covered in awful barbs, just like the last one, set so close together it’s a wonder any air can get through. You slide hooked claws into the weave and heave the net into the air.
It’s heavy. Like trying to lift a rhydon. What did they even make this out of? You struggle and strain, and the net slips sideways so its teeth dig into your arm. The scratches hardly hurt at first, but then a burning spreads from where the thorny little claws dug in. Poison? They poisoned this?
You let the net fall back for a moment, resting aching arms, and shift yourself towards poison-typed. The burning dies away, and the wounds in your arms slowly close. The lumpen form of Mewtwo moves feebly under the net, and blood seeps from beneath it, pooling on the floor.
Then a master ball bounces off the tile next to your leg, and you leap back, nerves jangling with alarm. A glance at the Rockets finds them readying snag machines, and for a second you can’t think of anything but the buckets of balls they must have ready, dozens and dozens of them, a cascade of pink and purple, the stark white “M” that spells danger.
They’ve been weakening you, you realize. Waiting for you to tire before they strike. It’s the first strategy any trainer learns for catching pokémon, but you’ve never had it turned against you before.
Another master ball whizzes at you, and you swat it away with a burst of wind, then sweep your arms wide, conjuring a swirling wall of fire between yourself and the Rockets. Heracross yelps and jumps back as flames lick her face, barely within the fire spin’s perimeter. The heat and the swirling air currents it creates should keep any master balls from getting through. And when it dies back, you’ll make another one.
You probably only have a few seconds before Rocket pokémon come burrowing through the floor or something. You’re weary just at the thought of more fighting, fighting and dodging and somehow getting everyone away from here alive. You flinch when something touches your arm, but it’s only Hypno. “Are you all right?” she asks.
You nod and shake her off, wearily forcing your energy into a recover. Cuts and scrapes seal over, transmuted to webbed scarring that will disappear when you next change your skin.
With a wave of your hand you renew the fire spin, then bend to seize the net. This time you’ve wrapped yourself in steel, poisoned hooks glancing uselessly off armor as you grab a double handful of the netting. You’re prepared now for its weight, and while it doesn’t come up easily, it does move, making an awful high-pitched scraping noise as it goes. Mewtwo peels up with it, stuck to the net’s underside by a thousand tiny claws. With a shake and more of a fall forward than anything he pulls himself free, leaving long strips of flesh behind. The glimmer of healing energy closes the worst of the wounds, but Mewtwo’s left bloodied, his smaller cuts still oozing.
For a second he stands hunched, tail low and whipping behind. He’s tired. It’s not that you like when he goes crazy and kills people, but it’s unsettling to see him like this, head bent and breathing heavily.
Then Mewtwo’s gaze snaps up, and he clenches a fist over his head. You flinch at the roar of thunder, but a desperate check finds no pokémon overhead, hoping to sneak past your fire spin. A new hole in the roof lets afternoon sunlight shine in, horribly far away.
“Mewtwo, we have to get out of here!” you whisper at him, sweeping your arms out to renew the dying fire spin. A last glimpse of shadowy figures on the far side of the rippling barrier, and then flames rise again to obscure them.
Mewtwo’s movements are slow and deliberate as he raises one long, pale arm to point directly upwards.
“What do you mean?” you hiss. “We aren’t going up!”
The musketeers pace around the perimeter of your flames, as cut off from the Rockets as they are from you. This can’t last. Team Rocket must be planning something out there.
The look in Mewtwo’s eyes wishes death upon you. Purple energy swirls and congeals around his fingers, and then an aura sphere shoots off to blow another hole in the ceiling. He can’t possibly be thinking of going up there. He can’t fly with his psychic turned off!
“Mewtwo, you–” you begin in a furious whisper, only to be interrupted by Heracross.
“Hey, I think there’s something–look out!”
Dark shapes leap through the fire spin, the flames spiraling in towards them and vanishing: a small pack of houndour and houndoom with a heatmor lumbering behind. Heracross goes down swearing in a fireball from at least three of them at once, and from the smoky darkness beyond come the master balls, a solid wall of them flying from every direction.
You throw up a protect by instinct, faster even than thought. Mewtwo does, too, but Hypno stumbles towards him anyway, prepared to block.
And block she does, a master ball striking one arm and pulling her into red light. It drops to the floor and disappears immediately into the chaos of the fight.
Everyone freezes, just for a moment. Heracross stops cursing. Noctowl stops trembling. Mewtwo’s eyes are wide behind his fading protect. You realize you aren’t moving, either, a roaring in your ears.
But nothing else stops. Team Rocket might not even notice that Hypno disappeared. Another wave of master balls flies, a vine whip lashes out and slaps the side of your leg, and suddenly you’re in the moment again, back in this awful battle.
Noctowl spreads his wings, maybe to flee, maybe to conjure another shield, and a master ball bounces off a pinion and drags him away, too.
Mewtwo yowls like some furious purrloin, a weird, warbling noise from such a big creature. It would be funny if the alien sound didn’t scrape your heart raw and make you turn your eyes away. Mewtwo lunges for the Rockets in a furious blur of motion, ripping them apart with teeth and naked fingers. You don’t even know how he isn’t getting captured, but maybe the Rockets are as petrified as you, by Mewtwo’s anger, by their teammates’ demise. Surely none of them care about–
You twist around, throwing out desperate bursts of air to deflect the master balls that must surely be coming. And there–Heracross, stumbling back with yellow eyes wide.
“Get behind me!” you yell, trying to put yourself between her and Team Rocket. “Get behind me!” Trying to wall her off from enemies on all sides.
Heracross says something inaudible over the hiss of wind and Mewtwo’s screaming. “What?” she looks too stunned to move, gaze still fixed on the spot where Noctowl disappeared. You jerk your head aside, a master ball sailing just past your ear. Then your gut wrenches in realization and you have to snap off a quick vacuum wave to deflect it away from Heracross.
She breathes deep, and her eyes finally focus on you. You can just barely catch what she says next. “I’m not going back.”
“What? What does that mean?” Heracross’ wing cases snap open, and she leaps into the air. “No! Stay behind–!”
Mewtwo’s howls peter out into hoarse whistling noises. He lashes out with blind punches and bites, a whirlwind of bloody death. You have to believe he can take care of himself. You can’t guard you and him and Heracross, who is lumbering away on her agonizingly slow wings, clawing at any flying pokémon that come near.
You track her upward progress with your eyes, caught in anxious indecision. Should you follow, or will that only draw more attention to her? Where is she going?
She’s running, isn’t she? That’s good. That would be the best thing, for at least her to escape.
She goes up and up–aiming for one of the holes Mewtwo blew in the ceiling? But no; she turns aside, horn glowing brilliant green, and rams a nearby joist instead. Cracks spider across it, and Heracross backs up before bulling forward to strike another.
The beam shudders. It buckles. Cracks race through the ceiling around it. You’re too tired to understand, your reason burnt away in twitchy adrenaline. All you know is that something bad’s about to happen. “Mewtwo!” you yell.
The sky roars. The ground trembles. And everything goes dark.
The world snaps back into focus. Maybe you passed out for a second. You cough until you gag on air hazy with dust. Around you, a clear circle. You must have done a protect without realizing it.
Everything’s dark. Rocks press in from all sides, interspersed with strips of metal, weird fluffy clumps of something like plastic. Did somebody use rock slide? This is a lot of boulders, more than you’d expect from just one attack.
Your head hurts. Not surprising. Your chest hurts and your legs hurt and your teeth hurt and your back hurts, too. You feel for blood in your hair, and there’s some, but less than you expected. You don’t realize the source of your headache until your mind’s filled by the blare of, I’ll kill every last one of you!
Your heart pounds, and instinctively you look for an escape. Faint light shines through gaps between the rocks. Shatter every bone! Mewtwo snarls. Drain every drop of blood!
You reach out, hands growing broad spade claws, but after a couple seconds tearing at stone–not stone, concrete?–to little effect, you realize what would be better.
It’s hard to concentrate with your head pounding and full of Mewtwo’s rants, but after what feels like decades of effort you manage to push up with your mind. Rubble falls away to either side of you, leaving a shaft up into light.
You think you can run? Mewtwo’s screaming as you pull yourself out of the wreckage. He’s barely recognizable under a pasty grayish coat of blood and dust. Run and hide! I’ll find you! Every last one of you! I’ll make your deaths slow!
But when a kirlia pops out of nowhere and teleports a grunt away, Mewtwo’s answering thunderbolt only chars a line across a wall. Too slow. He’s got two humans floating immobile in a psychic hold, though. You can hear running footsteps further out in the lab–more Rockets? Scientists fleeing? You don’t see anyone around.
It’s hot, somehow. This wing of the lab has become open-air, and as you look up you can see the ragged ends of floors above, ending abruptly above a slump of wreckage. In the quiet that settles with the Rockets’ departure you can hear movement in the rubble, faint cries. Something gives way and more masonry crashes down with a roar that makes you jump.
People trapped. Probably people dead, crushed under concrete. You remember the remains of the Rocket base below Viridian and gag as your stomach gives a spasm of disgust. “What happened?” you manage to get out.
Idiot. The psychic dampers were on the roof. I saw it just before they turned them on. Those broke when the heracross brought down the roof. The humans are gone. Save for these. Mewtwo examines the petrified terror on the faces of the grunts he’s captured.
“Heracross! We, we need…” Your hands are still modified for digging, and you scrabble at the wreckage beneath you. Where to start? Where would she have landed?
No.
“What do you mean, ‘no?’ We have to get her out!” You refuse to acknowledge the snarl of wrath unfolding in Mewtwo’s psychic field. “Getting hit by a few rocks wouldn’t have killed her,” you protest against the anger filling you up and setting your arms trembling. “Pokémon get hit by rocks all the time. We need to dig her out before she runs out of air.”
I can feel all the living things around me, Mewtwo reminds you.
“But–”
Do you think I lie? Mewtwo roars, and you freeze in terror as his bloodied face turns towards you, eyes burning with psychic light.
Lie so you’ll leave instead of spending time searching? For Heracross? For Heracross… No. You don’t think so, if it’s her. Even if that feels strange. Even if that means something even worse.
Heracross never wanted to go in a pokéball again. Enough to… But did she realize? Did she think she’d be able to dodge somehow, after knocking down the pillar? Was this really what she wanted?
“Noctowl,” you choke around rising tears. Again you scrabble at the concrete beneath you, sending a few fist-sized chunks of debris bouncing down the side of the pile. “Hypno. We have to find them.”
We will. We’ll search every inch of this wretched place. First we need to eliminate the rest of Team Rocket while we have the chance. Which is why you will tell me everything. The last to his captives. The one on the left is already taking on a grayish, mottled sort of cast, like he isn’t getting enough oxygen.
You can’t listen. You don’t want to know. It’s bad enough that Mewtwo broadcasts everything he’s doing directly into your head. You go as far away from him as you can, and you dig.
There’s no real purpose to it. Maybe someone’s down there, or maybe not. Maybe it’ll be a master ball containing one of the Musketeers. For a second you think of all the tons of rubble strewn around, the impossibility of finding one little ball amidst all of it–of the possibility of a master ball getting crushed and releasing its occupant into smothering darkness–but no. You force your awareness away from speculation and from the screams that gnaw at the edges of your perception to focus on the rubble beneath you, and you dig.
You don’t get very far. You can sweep small bits of concrete away, no problem, but moving anything large makes the whole pile shift. When you tug at the corner of a section of what looks to be wall, a big pile halfway across what used to be the lobby falls with a tooth-rattling crash and a plume of dust.
Mewtwo doesn’t even scold you for that, absorbed in his work. Your mind recoils from the thought of it like you’ve touched a hot stove. You almost manage to forget he’s there until a furious screech rises well above the background noise of his gory work. That human!
You jerk your head around, heart fluttering in your chest as you expect to see the Champion, or Lance, or someone come to make everything worse.
The only people here are Mewtwo and his captives, now dripping, now gone as Mewtwo tosses them aside like used tissues. He takes off running, steps unerring even in the chaotic mess the lab has become.
You aren’t so lucky, stumbling and sliding the whole way over to him. You can’t catch the thread of what he’s mad about, but his thoughts all seem to swirl around–Professor Krane?
“Mewtwo, wait! What’s wrong?”
Why were they here? Mewtwo screams into your head. Why did Team Rocket come here?
“Because they knew you were coming?” you murmur to no one but yourself, uncertain. “Because someone told them you were going to see the Professor?”
The rubble near Mewtwo shudders and rises slowly into the air, piece by piece forming a miniature asteroid field that orbits gently around him. Amid the debris floats a cracked half of a coffee mug, a couple ballpoint pens, the remains of an office chair. And a monferno, out cold. You grab her out of the air and put her down carefully, even though she looks peaceful, slowly floating with eyes closed.
Your heart leaps with hope when you see what Mewtwo’s excavated. Professor Krane’s white coat is stained with blood and grime, but he’s moving woozily now that Mewtwo’s pulled the rubble off him.
Mewtwo sends his debris field flying into a far corner of the room with a flick of his hand and hauls Professor Krane up instead. Well? Mewtwo asks while the professor feebly kicks and claws at the air around his neck. What’s this? Aren’t you pleased to see me?
“Mewtwo, stop!” You move forward without thinking. “What are you doing? He’s our friend!”
Friend? Friend?! You aren’t prepared for the sheer force of Mewtwo’s anger. It buffets you like a physical wave, actually sweeps you off your feet. What sort of friend keeps secrets? Look how it squirms now that it doesn’t have its tinfoil hat to hide the truth from me.
You start to croak out an objection, but Mewtwo’s searing reply overwhelms you. You want to believe humans can be righteous, is that it? You want to believe your precious friendship? Idiot. It was in front of you the entire time.
A scrap of paper picks itself off the rubble and flings itself at you, and you reach to catch it instinctively. It’s a photograph, dusty but still legible. This must be Professor Krane. The floppy hair’s the same, though he looks much younger. He’s standing together with a woman and a man.
Is this from Professor Krane’s desk? You suppose this must be the remains of his office.
Turn it over!
On the back in sprawling cursive: Summer 1986. Graduation with Lily and Rixor.
Rixor. The bottom drops out of your stomach. That was one of Tyranitar’s names, wasn’t it? But that’s not right. Cipher even kidnapped Professor Krane before. There’s no way he has anything to do with them.
Oh, you so underestimate humans, Mewtwo sneers. To Professor Krane, That Rixor’s a Cipher executive, isn’t it? And your old friend!
Professor Krane wheezes and gurgles, then drops roughly to the floor while Mewtwo paces in front of him, eyes blazing purple. You keep working on your purification system because you know it will be needed. You knew after the Snagem thief disappeared, you know now. More shadow pokémon are coming soon, aren’t they?
Professor Krane coughs pathetically in the dusty air, but finally manages to choke out, “I don’t… no. I don’t know anything like that.”
Perhaps there’s always been an arrangement between you and Cipher. They make the shadow pokémon, you get paid to purify them. How neat.
“No! I would never work with them!”
Why are you lying? Mewtwo snarls. I’ll tear your mind apart! You’ll never work in your precious lab again! You’ll spend your days drooling and wishing for someone to come and turn you towards the sun!
Professor Krane slowly pushes himself to a seated position, face set in a pained grimace. “I don’t know anything about Cipher,” he says. “That won’t change, no matter what you do to me.”
Perhaps, Mewtwo says mock-sweetly. But why stop with you? What about that other scientist you’re so fond of? Perhaps it can tell me what you can’t.
“Leave Lily out of this! She has no idea what Rixor’s been doing!”
Is that so? That’s surprising. After all, that other… woman is the Cipher head’s mate, isn’t that right? And you mean to tell me it has no knowledge of Cipher?
“She doesn’t!” Professor Krane balls his hands into fists in his lap. “That’s the entire point! She thinks he’s dead! Everybody thinks he’s dead!”
Tell me about my mother, then! Mewtwo’s anger is so stifling you’re surprised it doesn’t physically pin Professor Krane to the ground. What does any of this have do with my mother?
“A few years… Ten, nearly ten…” Professor Krane chokes out. “There were rumors… legendary pokémon. In the desert. More common than you might think.” Mewtwo watches, eyes aglow, but it seems like he’s easing up; Professor Krane’s voice gathers strength as he carries on. “Orre doesn’t offer… much. For normal pokémon. But strong ones, they… sometimes they like the solitude. Regardless, when Rixor heard about Mew, he was determined to capture it. He was Orre’s premiere trainer, after all. So he did. He caught it–her,” he says, correctly interpreting the spike in Mewtwo’s irritation.
“There was something wrong with… her. Badly wrong. Lily and I study pokémon psychology. We work a lot with psychics, since they’re the pokémon best able to communicate what they’re thinking and feeling. Mew wasn’t able to make herself understood. She was listless, confused, and we couldn’t get much out of her besides that she was unhappy.”
Perhaps she was unhappy because you kidnapped her and confined her to a laboratory, again, Mewtwo snarls.
Mew’s memories crowd your head, Cinnabar and Mewtwo’s birth. You swallow thickly. No. It wouldn’t have been like that this time. No Team Rocket.
“I suppose,” Professor Krane says. “But it was more than that. You see, psychic-types like… your mother… can affect people by their moods. They can cause long-term damage, if conditions are right.”
I know that, Mewtwo says. Get to the point!
“I just want you to understand what I mean when I say your mother was dangerous. She was projecting an abnormal psychic profile, one that would almost certainly cause mental illness in anyone who interacted with her for any length of time. Me, Lily, the other members of the lab, we had protocols for handling that sort of thing. We were prepared. Rixor was a great trainer, yes, but he didn’t have our sort of experience. I warned him about overexposure. I tried to protect him. But even I didn’t realize how serious the issue was. After we started working with Mew, he began to change.”
Professor Krane sighs and looks up into the jagged-edged sky overhead. “Or that’s what I tell myself, anyway. He was already friends with Greevil. Knew all the movers and shakers in Orre, the people getting rich off the factories and mines. Of course I’d rather believe he wasn’t right in the head, rather than that he saw an opportunity and took it. Nobody wants to believe they were so wrong about a friend.”
Mewtwo slams Professor Krane to the ground with a burst of psychic force, and you jump, shocked by the sudden violence. I don’t care about your stupid friendship. What happened to my mother?
Professor Krane drags himself back to a seated position with the aid of a hunk of concrete. He wipes some blood out from under his nose and examines it blankly. “Rixor took her,” he says dully. “I didn’t want him to–he had changed, and I was worried. He kept saying he wanted his best team for an upcoming tournament. There was no way Mew should have been battling, the way she was. But Rixor insisted, and she was his pokémon.”
His property, Mewtwo interjects venomously.
“His pokémon.” Professor Krane rubs the blood off between his fingers. “I didn’t think I could object. Then, after, they never found her, or any of his other pokémon. They barely found anything that could constitute a body.”
Where is Rixor? Professor Krane stiffens, eyes going wide, and from the unnatural rigidity of his posture you know Mewtwo must be holding him with telekinesis. I know you know! Let me see it!
“I didn’t think he survived,” Professor Krane grates out around a jaw that can barely move. “I thought it was… freak accident. Maybe… suicide. After all, he was acting–strange. Lily thought so, too. She was distraught. She…”
Oh, spare me, Mewtwo says, and you wonder what he sees in Professor Krane’s head.
“We both thought he was dead. Until he sent me a message. Even then I thought it was a hoax. I’m no stranger to getting conspiratorial rants in the mail, so I ignored it, the same as usual. But Rixor didn’t like being ignored. He showed up here, at the lab. He said he wanted me to join him, that I’d be working on the sorts of projects I could only dream of, and I’d never want for funding again.
“I don’t know why he chose me instead of Lily. Maybe he didn’t want her and the kids getting tangled up with Cipher. One way or another, I was the one he came to, and he kept coming back, even after I said no.
“I wanted to tell Lily at first, even though of course he warned me not to. But when it became clear just what he’d gotten involved in, when shadow pokémon started appearing, I decided, what good would it do? Let Rixor’s family have their happy memories. I haven’t seen him in a long time now, and he won’t say where he is or what he’s been doing, but I still get letters. He’s still out there, and as far as I know, he still has Mew. If anyone does.”
You wretch, Mewtwo sneers. And perhaps the most galling thing is it’s creatures like you, weak, pathetic little meddlers, who have the audacity to poke and prod my mother like she’s some interesting animal.
“We were trying to help her!”
Some help, Mewtwo says. Is that how you’d treat a human you saw suffering? Put it in chains and drag it off to some researcher to figure out what makes it tick?
The pressure in the air redoubles. Tears squeeze from the corners of Professor Krane’s eyes, his chest struggling in and out. “I’m not… proud,” he gasps. “Made… mistakes… but…”
Yes, and you think your guilt makes you special, Mewtwo says. Like it’s a sign that you’re a good person. That you care. But it’s guilt for having failed your friend. Guilt for keeping secrets from that female human. Where’s the guilt–where’s the shame–for what you did to my mother?
Something gives in Professor Krane’s body with an audible crack. He can’t get enough air into his lungs for a scream, so all that comes out is a raspy wheeze. It shocks you into action. “Mewtwo, don’t kill him! He’s the only one who knows how to work the Purification Chamber! What if Mew’s shadow now? What if Cipher did that to her?”
A splitting migraine tears your head open back to front. It goes on forever, forever, and then your mind’s full of Mewtwo’s words. If it bothers you so much, then change. Become that other creature. The only problem here is your own weakness.
The air hums with psychic power, and your eyeballs feel like they’re rattling loose in their sockets. Professor Krane breathes noisily, a cracked and bubbling sound. You force air from your lungs and into the hostile atmosphere, yelling as hard as you can. “Hypno! Think about Hypno! She wouldn’t want you to do this! She loves Professor Krane, you know that!”
That fool Hypno! Mewtwo’s words come alongside another blast of pain, and an edge of anguish, too. You want to tell Mewtwo that it’s all right to be sad about Hypno, that killing Professor Krane won’t make it better. It will only make things worse. All of this, everything’s worse.
Imagine that Hypno’s disappointment to learn her hero was so pathetic. So disgusting. This liar. Mewtwo’s words are accompanied by horrid wet crunches. Professor Krane’s face distorts like he’s trying to scream. You can’t see what Mewtwo’s doing to him, but dark purple-blue creeps across his skin, like he’s turning into one giant bruise. What did that Hypno expect, placing her trust in a human?
“No,” you say, but that doesn’t stop Mewtwo. All you have are words, which have never meant anything to him at all. You can’t do anything except try to think of other things until Professor Krane finally stops breathing. The silence settles like new-fallen snow, pure white and unsullied. You suppress a whimper, the urge to pull into a ball, hands up over your face. Mewtwo’s psychic field thrums with one long note of vicious pleasure.
Something drips. Mewtwo’s triumph turns rancid. There’s nothing here now but a corpse.
Mewtwo turns, and you flinch, convinced that his returning anger must be meant for you. But he walks right past you, seething but determined, mind all sharp, smooth edges of crystallized purpose.
“Mewtwo, no,” you croak. “Where are you going?”
I am going to finish Team Rocket. For good this time. I am going to find that idiot hypno and noctowl and then grind everything else into pieces so small no one will ever be able to tell what they used to be.
With that, Mewtwo leaps into the air, carried by psychic impulse into the sky that now stretches wide above the lab’s ruined atrium. For a moment he hangs overhead, glowing like a fallen star. Then he streaks away eastward, dragging a glowing contrail of psychic power behind him.
You let him go. No good thinking about what awaits him at the end of his journey, whether he has any chance of taking on whatever remains of Team Rocket by himself. Whether he’ll find Hypno and Noctowl. Whether him showing off to anyone who happens to look at the sky will cause even more problems than you already have.
You don’t care about any of that. Now, finally free of Mewtwo’s anger, your chest aches with spent emotion. You sit down in the middle of destruction, put your head in your hands, and let your tears water the dust that seems to coat everything in the remains of the lab.
You’re alone now. There’s no one to see you cry. Even if you manage to find Noctowl and Hypno again, Heracross… You’ll never see Heracross again.
Mewtwo’s probably right. If you’re going to get rid of Team Rocket, it should be now, before they bring in reinforcements. If you’re going to rescue Hypno and Noctowl, it has to be before Eskar ships them off to whatever horrible fate she might invent.
Or you could leave. This could be your last chance to escape. To not have to find out what Mewtwo will do after Team Rocket’s out of the picture.
Escape to where? The only place you had left to go was with the Musketeers, and that path wraps back around to Mewtwo’s bloody business.
You groan and grind the heels of your palms into your eyes, dragging wet streaks across your face. All you want to do now is rest. The idea of descending into another Rocket base is too horrible to contemplate, but it seems like the only way forward.
At least you don’t have to go now. Mewtwo has to fly. You can teleport. You can rest now and still get to the base before he does.
For a few minutes that’s what you do, letting the quiet of the lab’s desolation swallow you up.
The problem is that it doesn’t stay quiet. Slowly you become aware of the sounds of movement within the rubble. Faint cries from people still trapped. You should be helping, shouldn’t you? Digging whoever you can out of the debris, healing whatever injured people you find. You won’t be able to save everyone, but surely you have to try. Just like you have to try to save the Musketeers. Stop Mewtwo getting captured. Find Mew and fix everything and then solve whatever impossible task rises before you next.
The smell of death surrounds you, suddenly inescapable. Abruptly you can’t stand one second more of this. And so you leave.
You appear in the abandoned factory, just behind the half-circle of chairs facing towards the Rocket base. You sit down, hard, at the sight of them, right there on the decaying concrete. Just for a moment. Four chairs and now only one occupant.
Not forever, you have to remind yourself. Getting the Musketeers back is the whole reason you’re here. After everything, you can’t let Team Rocket have them. There’d be no one left. No one left but Absol, and even she isn’t there half the time.
Even if you find them–you’ll find them. Even then, one chair’s going to stay empty. Forever.
Dark smoke drifts from the Rocket compound, a messy, gaping hole where the door once was. So you Mewtwo beat you here.
A couple ragged starly and a pidove perch atop the compound’s high fence and dare each other to go closer. A gaggle of humans stands beside the fence, too, one talking into their pokégear while they watch the smoke drift. Another calls out to you as you approach, finally prying yourself away from that empty rank of chairs. Everyone falls silent when you grab the chain links and pull them apart with your bare hands, and then the person on the pokégear starts talking faster.
Ahead of you yawns the black, crumbling entrance to the base. You imagine it like some awful throat leading down into the earth, only waiting to swallow you.
Mewtwo’s down there. But the Musketeers are, too. Maybe.
Not maybe. For sure.
It’s quiet inside. Which has to mean the base has its own psychic suppression system. Not that that’s a surprise. Only an idiot would set out to chase Mewtwo without one.
Metal steps spiral down and down into an underground cavern, unfinished rock framing strip fluorescent lights. Maybe this used to be part of the Under. It looks a little bit like what you’ve seen on television. The air is cool and damp, and you wonder why it seems like only criminals build underground out here in the desert.
Corpses mark Mewtwo’s passage through the base, mangled heaps in ones and twos. There can’t be so many Rockets left, can there? You’d guessed around twenty, but that seems too few for such a big space.
The buzz of the lights is the only sound to fill the broad, still hallways, which seem made to accommodate all manner of bustle and life. You try to shove down unease as you pass deeper into the base, thinking only of the Musketeers, your reason for being here.
If the silence is creepy, it isn’t better when the echo of footsteps and sizzle of energy attacks start up from somewhere deep out of sight. Shrieks and harsh pokémon cries rebound from the bare stone walls, a confusion of distorted echoes clashing and redoubling.
Before you can decide whether to run towards or away from all the noise it cuts out with a last crackle of electricity. A moment later Mewtwo limps, actually limps, out from a side corridor. Your gut twists when his gaze settles on you, even though there’s none of the usual rising irritation from his psychic field.
He beckons you over, and you meekly obey. What other option do you have?
“How many of them are there?” you hiss at Mewtwo. “How many did you get already?”
Mewtwo waves a hand dismissively, then holds a couple fingers close together. What’s that supposed to mean? There aren’t many Rockets? He hasn’t seen many yet?
He leads you past the remains of his latest victim, a grunt collapsed in a charred sprawl with an unconscious bunnelby and golbat on the floor around them. On the floor, too, are shards of plastic in distinctive red and white.
Deep lines crease Mewtwo’s forehead, marring his usual neutral expression. Beneath his thin fur his skin is dark with bruising, his torso crisscrossed by unhealed cuts. You could never ask, because surely he’d choke you to death, but you wonder whether he really has it in him to finish Team Rocket off today.
The corridor’s lined by heavy metal doors of the sliding kind they seem to prefer in Orre, and Mewtwo stops to peer through the window of each as he goes past. You trail behind, babbling with nerves and knowing that you are but still unable to stop yourself. “Have you seen any of the people who were at the lab?” you ask. “Have you seen Eskar?”
Mewtwo probably wouldn’t have responded anyway, but a noise like a whole stack of metal chairs crashing over ensures you never get an answer. You spin to stare down the hall, and Mewtwo’s already off, sprinting silently on his padded toes. He stops outside a door up ahead, head raised and tail swishing gently, listening. He conjures a shadow ball in one palm, the attack sparking erratically before taking proper shape, then knuckle-punches the door release pad and plunges through.
You scramble to catch up, jabbing the door release repeatedly so the door rebounds halfway through its close. Before you is a kitchen, and two grunts in it, a couple of girls maybe in their late teens. A table’s overturned facing the door, and the pair of them are frozen in attitudes of shocked guilt, as though embarrassed to be caught going through the big industrial drawers. One girl clutches a large chef’s knife, and the other reaches a trembling hand towards a knife of her own.
Mewtwo’s shadow ball explodes against the wall behind the reaching girl, and the Rockets stumble apart, shielding their heads with their arms like that will do anything to save them.
You only have a moment to register the fact that you don’t want to be here. You don’t want to be seeing this. What good did you ever think it would do for you to come here?
Then Mewtwo hurdles over the table barricade and promptly disappears.
You shuffle forward nervously, keeping an eye on the grunts now uncurling from their cringing poses. What happened? Faint growls emanate from the far side of the table, and you skirt around its edge, too anxious even to breathe. Where did–?
The room goes dark. Immense weight flattens you against the metal floor, and you strike out blindly against whatever hit you, only for your arm to tangle and drag painfully through the blackness. This has to be a net, and now you’re the one who’s caught.
You try to lie still despite your heartbeat shaking your entire body, growing armor against the hooks that snag your every twitch, purging the poison already seeping into you from pricked wounds. This is okay. You’ll be okay. You just need to build up enough strength to push the net off of you, and then you can get out of here. You lie still and focus on reconfiguring your muscles, grafting a machamp’s strength onto your small human form.
You can see the Rockets through the net’s mesh. They approach warily, both now gripping knives. One puts out a foot as though to prod another net lying just behind the upturned table. It hisses and shakes and must contain Mewtwo, and the grunt thinks better of nudging it.
The Rockets jump when a gleaming smile blossoms on the side of a nearby cabinet, then pushes out into three dimensions, revealing itself to be attached to Eskar’s face. “Good, good,” she purrs, gemstone eyes gleaming and focused on the quivering lump beneath Mewtwo’s net. “Go get the others.”
The grunts hurry to comply. You lie still while they rush past, listen to the door behind you slide open and then shut. Eskar. Eskar, here. A trap you walked right into.
But now she’s alone with you and Mewtwo. If you’re going to get out of this, it has to be now.
You summon all the strength of your enhanced muscles, easily enough to lift a car, and with one wrench of effort you’re on your knees, then standing, dragging the net away from your armored skin.
Then a freezing glob of darkness explodes against your chest and you’re on the floor again.
“Do relax, Cordierite-eyes!” Eskar says. From the scraping and snarling sounds nearby you guess Mewtwo’s making a similar attempt to seize the moment. Between the weave of the net you faintly make out Eskar slashing a couple dark pulses in his direction, and he subsides into growling. “Both of you. Always so hasty!”
You try to relax, gathering yourself again. Eskar’s alone. You’ll find your moment, and when you do she’ll go down easy. You try to ignore how, even with fear lending you strength, the mere act of breathing is effortful, the net a constant wearying weight.
“Months ago, Illite-eyes gave me a task,” Eskar says. “She wanted our weapon back, and she trusted Eskar to recover it. And everything would have worked so well, Cordierite-eyes, so well, if you hadn’t decided we could no longer be friends.”
Even through the dark screen of netting, Eskar’s smile gleams. Your deepest instincts try to convince you she might forget you’re there if you don’t move.
“Illite-eyes was so frightfully angry,” Eskar says, her voice gone diamond-hard. “To lose Mewtwo a second time, well. And she’d trusted so much to Eskar, hadn’t she? Eskar would find Mewtwo for her. Except no, Cordierite-eyes. She was… disappointed.”
You understand. This is personal. Eskar’s going to enjoy herself.
This is good, isn’t it? In movies, the villain monologues until someone can come to the hero’s rescue, or until they figure out an escape on their own own. Now would be a good time for a burst of inspiration. Or someone could find you. Rats? She’s been searching, hasn’t she? She has to be somewhere.
“I gave you a choice, Cordierite-eyes,” Eskar says. “We could have been friends again. Eskar forgives! But it’s too late for that now. Illite-eyes will enjoy a second prize, won’t she? I’m sure we’ll learn so many interesting things about you.”
She turns, and again you lunge to your feet, unformed energy crackling around your fingers. But Eskar only slides out of sight in a streak of shadow, and a moment later black pain erupts in the back of your legs, sending you down again. “Good show, Cordierite-eyes!” Eskar laughs. “Try again, do. Surely you can hit Eskar one last time!”
Lying on the floor, feeling blood well from fresh wounds, you wonder. One good hit is all you’ll need. Just one.
Eskar trots out of your field of vision, and it doesn’t feel worth it to raise your head to keep an eye on her. You try to convince yourself that lying quietly is preparing yourself for another great effort. “You came looking for someone, didn’t you?” Eskar asks from somewhere to your left. “It’s a pity about the heracross. Perhaps the hypno can be useful, but the heracross, she was the real fighter, hmm?”
Hot anger rises in your chest, and for a second you marvel at the fact that it’s yours, not fury borrowed from Mewtwo. Your claws strain at the floor beneath you, digging furrows in the metal.
You try to school yourself to calm. Eskar’s doing this on purpose. She’s trying to make you mad.
“A noctowl, now, that’s not even worth the trouble of selling,” Eskar goes on. Something metal falls to the floor with a clatter. “Who’s going to want this one? Useless. No good for fighting. No good for anything but bait!”
You move without thinking, claws stretching wide to send a scythe of darkness sweeping at Eskar, who stands just beside a long counter. You charge after it, falling more than lunging at Eskar. All you can think of, all you can hope for, is to sink your claws into cold ghostly flesh and shatter that laughing crystal smile.
Eskar deflects the dark pulse with one of her own, then skips back from your clumsy lunge. The weight of the net drags you around, but you manage to stay upright and turn back towards Eskar, energy coursing through your aching arms to pool at the tips of your claws.
The sableye gestures, and your building attack fizzes away to nothing. The net across your shoulders weighs ten thousand pounds, and you struggle just to breathe. Spite. That must have been a spite attack. You don’t remember falling, but you’re on the floor again, and the act of turning your head to keep your eyes on Eskar leaves you limply exhausted.
Eskar grins and reaches behind the counter, dragging something to light with a long metal scrape. A snag machine, divorced from some person’s arm. An orange light glows ominously on its side.
“Ah, Cordierite-eyes,” Eskar purrs. “After Indigo–did you think Team Rocket would give up so easily? No, no. But to make us come all the way to Orre! Such a very long way. I’m impressed.”
You tense in surprise as Mewtwo makes a sudden effort at escape, snarling and thrashing, limbs and tail punching the net encasing him into exotic shapes like a piece of modern art. He can’t keep it up for long, though, and falls back still, the net quivering with the force of his exhausted breathing.
The snag machine makes a soft chime, and Eskar pulls a master ball from it, careful, and holds it up to inspect. Drawing things out. Enjoying them. You recognize that despite the empty ringing in your head. Your thoughts no longer have words, but somewhere you’re still inside your skull, thinking.
“You didn’t really think you could escape, did you? Not from Eskar.”
“Those–those don’t work on me,” you say, even though you know what must come next.
“Oh, is that so, Cordierite-eyes? You want to go first, hmm?” Eskar raises the master ball, and you can’t help how you shake. Somehow the roar of your heartbeat can’t drown out the faint snick of Eskar’s claws sliding over plastic, Mewtwo’s labored breathing beside you. Your muscles strain against the net and can do nothing, nothing.
Eskar laughs and tosses the ball to her other hand, grin gleaming bright and huge. “No, no. I already know, Cordierite-eyes. No need to test. It was you watching me in the desert, wasn’t it? Pretending to be Backstabby? Yes. I know you, Cordierite-eyes. We’ll have such fun together, won’t we? But not just yet. Wait your turn.”
For a second you entertain wild thoughts of goading Eskar into capturing you, just to get it over with.
And then what? It’ll be like it was with the Elites, if not worse. You have to hold out for as long as you can. There’s still a chance you’ll see a way out of this. There has to be hope you’ll escape.
Eskar’s bothering Mewtwo now. “You think you’re better than the rest of us, Amethyst-eyes?” she asks, lightly tossing the master ball from claw to claw. You don’t know if Mewtwo’s actually hearing any of this while he lies there and hyperventilates. “You think you can outsmart the humans? The ones that made you. And here you are, Amethyst-eyes. So smart.”
Mewtwo scuffles pitifully back from Eskar, who goes on like she doesn’t notice, voice bright and cheery. “We all make deals, Amethyst-eyes,” she says. “You can’t win against humans. No, no. Not for very long. But if you work with them, well. There’s so much to be gained. You’ll learn. We all learn eventually, Amethyst-eyes.”
The door bangs open, and the sounds of battle spill into the room, a jumble of shouts and crashes and running feet. After straining to hear Eskar’s whispered threats, the noise is as overwhelming as a ray of sunlight after hours in the dark. One of the grunts Eskar sent away is back, leaning heavily against the wall. “Eskar!”
The sableye bares glittering teeth. “What? I’m busy!”
You suppose that sentiment gets across the language barrier easily enough. “It’s Cipher! We need you!”
Cipher? You’re done trying to make sense of things. All that matters is that Eskar scowls and says, “Stay there, Cordierite-eyes. We have so much more to discuss.” And then your heart stops because she flicks the master ball at Mewtwo.
Even desperation can’t give you the strength to conjure a proper attack. To raise your arm, even. All you can do is stretch out your fingers and command enough energy for a formless burst of air, the sort of gust that would barely vex a candle-flame.
It can’t stop the master ball, but it bats it into a slightly different trajectory. The ball lands wide, bounces, and rolls away somewhere. Mewtwo slumps under his net–and so do you, so spent that you don’t know if you’ll ever be able to move again.
Eskar’s accosting the grunt for information in a language the girl doesn’t speak. Then the door slides open and Eskar jumps back, letting out an irritated hiss when an arc of electricity sends the grunt slumping to the floor.
For a second, you manage to hope. You held out through everything, and now here it is: help. Salvation. Someone’s come to rescue you at last.
But when a manectric and a white-armored trainer step through the doorway, you know this is no rescue. Cipher isn’t your friend any more than Rocket.
Another bolt of lightning sends Eskar dancing back. She fires dark pulses in return, and the manectric leaps to dodge once, twice. Then you have to avert your eyes when Eskar releases a brilliant flash of light. She jumps on the blinded manectric, whose instinctive sparking doesn’t do wonders for your vision, either.
Brief snarling conflict, lightning crackle and Eskar taunts. Then a screech and the unmistakable clunk of a pokéball opening, then clicking shut with dire finality. You raise your eyes again, staring through afterimages, to find the Cipher agent reaching to pick up a master ball from the floor. A bloodied manectric watches, panting.
That can’t be real. They snagged Eskar? And now the Cipher agent’s dark visor is turning towards you.
You shrink away from the faceless agent as they come closer, kneeling down to peer through the dark mesh of your net. Then the manectric yowls from behind them, letting out a brief burst of lightning before hitting the wall and sliding down unconscious. A moment later the trainer’s knocked aside by a blast of darkness, their yell silenced by the fall of a dark blade.
White fur seems to glow in the dim room. Black horn drips as red as the eyes that now turn to regard you.
“Absol!” A funny swoop and sink in your stomach. You knew you were in danger, obviously. You can believe that Absol’s disaster sense summoned her here, but she’s still a chilling and impressive omen. “Absol, over here!”
She steps forward, head low, examining the net that covers you. Mewtwo stirs weakly under his own. Running footsteps sound from the hallway outside.
Absol looks up at the noise. She pauses. Hesitates. “Absol?” you say. “Absol, come on! Get me out of here!” Beside you Mewtwo must be saying much the same, though with his psychic voice silenced he can only manage pathetic mewling noises.
Absol’s red gaze meets yours, only for a moment. Then she springs forward, shadows gathering around the claws she sinks into the dense mesh of Mewtwo’s net. She heaves, gathering folds of net between her teeth and wrenching her body sideways. The net scrapes and shrieks against the metal floor, inching slowly, slowly away into darkness, until Absol and Mewtwo both are gone.
Mewtwo. She saved Mewtwo. You lie where you are, uncomprehending. The only thing Absol’s ever cared about is defending you. Defending the child. That was Mew’s last wish. The wish of a god. Absol’s always saved you. That’s what she’s there for.
Defend the child. That has to be what she’s doing, somehow. Taking Mewtwo first must work out in your favor in Absol’s internal calculus. She must have seen it.
You lie still and wait for her to come back. Because she will come back. To defend you. To get you out of here. To do her duty, which is the only thing she really cares about.
Defend the child. Defend the child.
Yells and bestial roars filter in from the hallway. Slowly the Cipher agent pulls themself back to their feet, leaning heavily on the wall. Blood smears all down the left side of their armor, and they weave drunkenly as they come to stand over you.
You barely notice them, don’t even hear what they say, don’t know who they’re talking to when they speak. All you hear, as cold realization creeps over you, as no Absol reappears, is: defend the child. Defend the child.
All this time you’d assumed the child was you.