Maria Graham is not really sure how she got here. Under a casino, during an earthquake, heart beating a painful rhythm in her throat. It’s all very far from the girl she thought she would be.

She was raised with every luxury money could buy. Her parents stressed the importance of her studies, which she did well in. They wanted her to live a life of clean glass and fresh linens, a life of soft couches and heartbeats that could be used to measure time.

And she thought she would always live that life. Almost let herself be poured into the mold they cast for her, and never questioned it too much… if not for a music video she watched shortly after her tenth birthday.

Normally her parents had filters on the net to keep her from seeing anything not appropriate to her age, but this video must not have tripped any of those sensitive wires. It had no curse words in it, no provocative dress, no violence, no drug use. It was just a song, and a backdrop of a city at night, and a young woman with hair an unnatural shade of pink, a pink that was too loud, louder than any color in Maria’s life up until that point.

She was fascinated. Not just by the song, which was catchy enough, or the dance, captivating as the movements were.

It was the window it opened in her soul, just a crack, just enough to let a glimpse of light in, a smell of the outside world. It was the way it made her approach that window, nudge the heavy drapes aside, to peer at that other world. That other life, a life of neon, of rained-on-pavement scent, of dancing through a city as if, no matter how big it was or how many others lived in it, it all was meant for her.

That was when she began to look, really look, at the people outside her family and friends. To understand that many have lives of sweat and burning muscles, of insect bites and starry nights, of blood and fear and the tightrope balance between life and death, and so much more. In the face of that knowledge, her suddenly previously full life felt empty. What her parents molded for her, what was sitting in easy reach, was like the life of a stranger that she was being mistaken for. She needed to know what her life could be, and knew she would never find it living in theirs.

That was the true wisdom she glimpsed, without fully grasping it right away. That all those people, all those different lives, they don’t see each other, not really. They don’t know that there’s another way to live, that there are whole parts of reality as alien to them as other planets.

It wasn’t an immediate change, of course. The window opened a crack, the curtains parted to let in a glimpse, but it still took a year for her to slowly learn what called to her and what didn’t, and another year to get her trainer’s license, with the assistance of a cousin in the Rangers who helped teach and guide her to the online forms.

She was thirteen before she informed her parents that she was leaving. Not just the home, but the region. They tried to stop her, but only with words, with concern and guilt and fear. They didn’t offer her anything else, didn’t show her a life she could be excited to live if she stayed, and so she looked for what she needed online, and left.

In the year since, she’s found some parts of herself, at least.

She’s sure her friends have wondered why she has no online presence, why she wears her big, wide hat all the time, even during pokemon battles, why she avoided cameras during all the media attention in Vermilion, and maybe most of all, why she only ever gives her initials for her name.

But they don’t dig. They don’t press her to reveal more of herself. They accept her for who she is with them, for what they’ve done together. She doesn’t have to be anyone else.

And who she is with them, apparently, is a girl who will run into the depths of a collapsed building during an ongoing earthquake. She was surprised to find this part of herself; not the part that ignored fear, but the part that had friends to save. Blue, whose life is burning eyes and cold, round metal, and Lizzy, who grew up in a glass cage of her own, a fellow bird flown free, feet gripping rubber cables humming with energy so she could find new things to plug them in to. And friends to help her save them, like Bretta, a trumpet call and a flag planted, Elaine, all tickling bubbles and soul-filling smiles, and Glen, who’s with her now, sunlit green grass around a refreshing spring, with deep, dark soil she can curl her toes in.

They need her. And she needs them. To have a life with warm laughter, with arms that will hold her tight without clutching. To find more parts of herself, perhaps even here, in these red and broken hallways.

“-lo? Can anyone—lp, please!”

Glen slows to a stop, and MG presses her ear to the wall where the voices came from. “Hello?!”

“Hello! Help, please, I’m stuck!”

Glen is pressed to the wall beside her, now. “Are you up against the wall, or is there something between you?”

“What? I… I’m not sure… please, it’s hard… to breathe…”

Glen steps back and summons his primeape. “Hold on,” MG says, and stands clear as her friend orders his pokemon to carefully tear down the drywall. She has a sudden, strong memory of their first scenario in Vermilion, of the “civilian” she “rescued” who started “crying” all over her. It was deeply uncomfortable, even knowing that it wasn’t real, and she steels herself for something similar to happen again, to lend not just aid but comfort if needed.

It takes a bit of care, but eventually the primeape damages the wall enough that the rubble on the other side starts to break through. Maria and Glen were standing clear, and he quickly withdraws his pokemon as a small landslide begins. A cloud of dust rises up, and Maria has a moment to realize they probably should have taken a minute to think this through, even with the time pressure…

After a moment, however, the rubble stops flowing out, and it doesn’t seem to have upset anything else. They can see the person that had been in it now, an older woman who was caught between a slot machine and a section of the carpeted floor that had collapsed under her.

She gasps in several deep breaths, weakly shifting to pull herself free. “Careful,” Glen says, rushing forward to help. The red emergency lights make the blood matting her hair look black, and Maria quickly gets a potion bottle out to spray on any wounds.

“Do you need anything?” Maria asks as she watches a gash on the woman’s leg close. “Food, water?” A moment later she realizes the questions probably don’t make much sense in this context, and tries to think of something more she can offer. “…air tank?”

“I’m alright,” the woman says, and coughs, dust visibly stirring. “Thank you, thank you so much…”

“Hold still, there could be internal injuries,” Glen says as he starts clearing some space for her to lie down beside the rubble. “Were there others with you?”

“N-no… no, I was alone…” She looks around at the red, dusty halls. “Where are we?”

“Under the casino, some office area.” Glen finishes positioning her comfortably, then looks at the hole she came through, and Maria follows his gaze. It’s an impassable mess.

Maria felt fear for herself when the Stormbringer came to Vermilion, but it was a soft and distant thing through the dissociation of the Pressure, moth wings fluttering in the dark. Here it’s an ever-present litany of anxious thoughts, a rising and falling wave that she’s submerged in momentarily each time a tremor goes through the walls and ceiling around them.

But Glen is braver. Her fear for Blue is a rawness along certain tracks in her mind that make thoughts connected to them painful and skittish, but she suspects that for Glen, the fear for Blue is overpowering his own safety.

“He might be near a wall too,” she says, voice low.

Glen looks at her, at the hope she offers, and takes a breath to master his own fear. “We need to go, to try to help others. There are stairs that lead back up that way, if you feel strong enough to move. If not we’ll be back with help when we can.”

The woman looks the way he pointed, then back at where she was trapped and shudders before turning back to them. “I’ll be fine… go, save whoever you can!”

They leave without another word, jogging through the halls. Glen pauses every so often and listens at the walls for any sounds of survivors, calling out and knocking to try and get a response, but they don’t hear anyone else that isn’t already being helped by others, employees of the casino who look dazed and in shock. They try asking where the Casino’s generator is and are ignored other than being told to get back upstairs where it’s safe.

Eventually they reach another flight of stairs, and Glen curses and leads the way further down. “How deep does this place go?”

“The hole at the surface was deep,” Maria points out as she hurries to keep pace with him.

“But if that lady was trapped at the floor below, and Blue was also at a slot machine…”

“We don’t know where he was, can’t assume—”

Maria stumbles as she abruptly feels a presence in the stairway with them (no, not with them, in her mind, with her), and Glen’s hand is suddenly on her shoulder to keep her steady.

alarm-panic-urgency

“What’s wrong?!”

“I felt…”

familiarity-greeting-danger-warning

“…someone is… a psychic is talking to me,” she says, trying to concentrate on the sensations as she speaks. “And it’s… I think it’s someone who knows me?”

Glen looks at her with wide eyes. “You’re Gifted?”

“No, just sensitive.” It’s hard to speak while the emotions continue to run through her, danger-greeting-familiarity-down… “There’s danger under us?”

“Someone’s telling you that?” Glen asks

“It’s just emotions… it’s hard to explain, but yeah, someone’s projecting them at me.”

“But who?“

“I don’t know, but they know me. Hang on, let me…” She concentrates on the feeling, and gets a sense of… curiosity, and fussiness, and attention to detail… “Lizzy?“

“But… she’s not psychic either!”

“I know, I don’t understand…” There’s a sense of frustration that she thinks is more than just hers, but then the projected feelings focus on danger again, and a tug downward. “But I think somehow she’s telling me she’s below us, and… she’s in danger! I think some pokemon got in, somehow!”

“How do you—”

“It’s hard to describe, just a vague feeling!” Maria’s heart is pounding in her throat, limbs shaking as she pulls out of his grasp and hurries down the stairs again. “Come on!”

She hears his feet start pounding down after her, and once they reach the intersection under the stairs she looks around, trying to understand where they are. It looks like more standard office space, but one of the halls has been crushed by the ceiling, leaving two directions to go… she picks one at random and starts running.

Only to stop a moment later, and run back in the opposite direction.

“What’s—”

“It’s like a compass,” she explains as she tries to focus on the mental pull. “It’s… down, that way!” She points through the floor and wall.

“Shit, there’s another floor? Why don’t the stairs go all the way down?” Glen looks around. “There has to be another staircase…”

If so, the mental guide isn’t helpful in finding it. Which way? she tries asking, concentrating as hard as she can on the feeling of the other mind that’s with hers. Which way is down?

All she gets is more panic, more concern, more that sense of the other mind that’s trying to get her to hurry downstairs and save Lizzy… wait, no, the sense is definitely to save someone else, not the person whose emotions she’s sharing.

Another rumble goes through the walls, and Glen curses. “You keep going this way, I’ll run that way, we’ll call out if we find stairs, okay?”

Maria gives a distracted nod, unsure of why Lizzy wants her to save someone other than herself, and starts running through the outer halls, pausing to open every door she comes across. There are portions of the wall that have collapsed inward, requiring her to slow down and navigate through the piles of rubble while constantly aware that she’s moving further away from the direction Lizzy (assuming it is Lizzy) wants her to go in.

“I know,” she mutters as the presence in her head sends another pulse of insistence and fear through her thoughts. “I’m trying…”

There’s a sudden surge of horror-fear-despair and then the presence retreats for a moment. Maria stops running, trying to sort through what she felt, assuring herself that Lizzy can’t be dead, that she’s not too late. “Come back,” she whispers as tears burn her eyes, and in that moment she wishes for the soft couches, the clean linen, the general, unacknowledged safety of a world where nothing bad could happen and nothing she did mattered. “Please, come back…”

But there’s nothing, and she starts running again, and within a minute finds another stairway behind a door that looks like any of the others. “Glen!” she yells, so loud it feels like something tears in her throat, and hears “Coming!” before she can draw another full breath. A moment later he’s in sight, and she’s racing down the stairs ahead of him.

“MG!” She hears him leaping down the stairs behind her to catch up. “What’s wrong?”

Before she can answer she feels the other mind with hers again, and lets out a sound of relief that feels like a sob. “It’s Lizzy, I thought she…”

She stops in confusion as the mental sense starts directing her somewhere again, still full of fear and a sense of urgency… but the direction she feels her attention being tugged in is different from before. “The direction changed?”

“Where is she now?”

“It’s not her, I don’t think…” Maria sees Glen’s confusion but ignores it, paying attention to where they are. This floor looks like it’s full of more administrative offices. “This way!” she says as she feels the mental tug again, and leads him toward a hallway that runs more or less in the same direction as it, hoping it will lead to a nearby section of the wall.

Glen has stopped questioning her, thankfully, and just follows. They move from one hall to another, skirting around the broken walls and rubble that fills the center of the basement and occasionally hearing muffled, pained voices of people calling out for help. It’s hard to ignore them, but after a moment Maria is sure of what she felt and stops to rest against a wall, panting. “They’re below us.”

“Of course there’s another floor,” Glen mutters, and punches the wall. They can both hear someone nearby, their muffled coughs interspersed with the sound of shifting rubble. “MG, all these people—”

“I know. You do what you can for them. I… can’t explain it, but I just know that Lizzy, or someone, is in danger too, and I have to find them—”

“I get it.” Glen takes a deep breath, then coughs, grimaces, and starts walking again. “Let’s go. If Lizzy can get the lights back on that will help rescue the others faster, but if something happens to her…” He shakes his head. “By Calyrex’s bobbly crown, I hate this feeling. Thought I got over it after the scenario, but there’s more at stake here than a badge.”

Maria can only nod, feeling glad (and like a coward for the gladness) that he’s making the call to help her. Her hand against the wall slides down, palm pressed flat against it, and she murmurs an apology to everyone else that might be trapped here, then follows Glen.

They reach the outer halls that wrap around the floor and split up in search of stairs going down again. Maria opens door after door, but this time finds nothing, and when she finds Glen she sees her frustration echoed on his face.

“I know there’s another floor below us,” she says, trying to convince herself as much as him. She can still feel the tug, of attention, distinctly downward… “Maybe the stairway isn’t against one of the walls, maybe it’s… in the middle of the floor somewhere?”

“If it is, I’m not sure how we could reach it through the collapse… and how would Lizzy have done it to get down there in the first place?”

“I don’t know.” MG leans against the wall, feeling overwhelmed by the despair and fear and insistent need to get down to where the next murder is going to happen… murder?

She focuses on the feeling again, eyes closed, and feels the psychic impressions mixing with her own… emergency-danger-pokemon-hurry-victim- searching-KILLINGINTENT… MG’s eyes snap open as she sucks in a shocked breath at the surge of violent focus she felt, for just a moment. She thought a pokemon had gotten in, somehow, but no, this is something more deliberate…

“Okay,” Glen mutters, and starts pacing. “Okay, okay. This is a stupid idea, but…” He moves to a part of the hall where there’s more open space, then unclips his primape’s greatball again and summons it. “Focus Energy,” he commands, and his pokemon begins to take deep breaths, flexing its limbs and rocking back and forth.

“Glen, what are you—”

“Brick Break,” he says, pointing to the ground, and his primeape leaps up and slams its fists into the ground hard enough to send a crack through the tile.

“Oh,” she says, voice small, and steps back.

“Good boy! Focus Energy! Brick Break! Focus Energy! Brick Break! Focus Energy…”

Thud. Thud. Crack. Thud. Crack. CRACK!

“Focus—” The last crack continues into a series of them as the floor buckles. “Return!” Glen yells, and his pokemon is pulled back into its ball as the ground beneath it crashes in pieces to the floor below.

Maria waits to see if more of the ground will collapse, then carefully walks over to the edge of the hole, testing the ground with her foot before settling her weight on it. Hoping an earthquake doesn’t come soon, she quickly checks down the hole and sees that the chunks of floor/ceiling look mostly intact below, and it’s not too far down. She quickly kneels down and begins to shimmy through it.

“MG, wait—”

“No time!” The projected fear is growing, overwhelming her own emotions as she tries to lower herself carefully down. Glen kneels beside her and grabs her arms, then slowly leans forward until he’s lying on his belly and she’s hovering just a few feet above the ground. She looks down and makes sure her feet aren’t above any awkwardly angled pieces that might twist her ankle. “It’s fine, drop me!”

He does, and she does her best to clear the ground as he shimmies down after her. Only then does she take a moment to look around.

The floor seems similar to the others in layout, but the rooms she can see are full of high tech equipment. She only has a moment to wonder what it’s all doing here before the mental sense tugs at her again, and she starts running, Glen close behind. They turn a corner, then run down the hall toward anoth-

STOP

DANGER

POKEMON

DANGER

QUIET

DANGER

Maria gasps and stumbles, and for the second time Glen keeps her from falling as she tries to make sense of the feelings flowing through her.

dangerpokemonquietforwardangerquietquietquietnownownow

“Pokemon,” she whispers, hands moving to her belt. “Quiet, there’s… danger, ahead. Dangerous pokemon.” Her hand skims from one ball to the next as she considers her options… They’re indoors, so no pokemon that need a lot of maneuverability, and no fire pokemon… though on second thought there’s nothing apparently flammable around them…

dangerearthypokemondirtgroundhardround

Maria blinks, and her hand moves to her poliwhirl’s ball. She hears Glen unclip a ball from his belt, and murmurs, “I think it’s a Ground type. Maybe Rock/Ground?”

He doesn’t question her, just reclips his ball and unclips another. They summon their pokemon together, and the flashes chase away the red emergency lights for a moment as her poliwhirl, Slippy, and his gloom, Sweets, are in front of them. Glen puts his facemask on and Maria follows suit as another quake vibrates the walls and ceiling prompting a distant cry of pain that she does her best to ignore. Soon they’re moving quickly forward again, breaths fogging the lower parts of their masks.

They nearly stumble over the body before they see it, chunks of broken wall surrounding what looks like an older man with a pot belly. It’s hard to tell his age because his head has been crushed by a thick shard of stone.

Maria feels the realization of what she’s seeing like a slap directly to the front of her brain, shockwaves propagating through her mind and upending entire substructures of thought and perspective. A new type of life is immediately encoded, one that smells of dust and blood and shit, an anti-life that’s etched in her soul in the shape of a dark maroon R.

The body is next to a hole in the nearby collapsed ceiling, where it was clearly pulled from the way they pulled out the woman upstairs. She can finally understand what Lizzy has been telling her.

“Renegade,” she whispers.

“MG…. we can’t know that for sure, they might have…” Glen stops, and when she looks at him he’s gazing up at the ceiling.

The cracked, but unbroken, ceiling.

“Okay,” he whispers, and raises an arm to wipe the sweat from his face. “Okay. Renegade. What do we do? We need to get help.”

“No time,” she whispers back, fear making her voice shake. “Someone else is about to be killed.”

Glen takes a deep breath, then lets it out. “Then we hurry,” he whispers. “Quietly. Wish I had room in here to bring out my snorlax, but… we have to take whatever it’s using down quickly, then take down the renegade ourselves, together. If we can just get their belt away from them, we can run.”

The thought of physically attacking someone adds a queasy feeling to her stomach, but she nods. Glen suddenly points to some patch of ground and says, “Sleep Powder.” His gloom sprays the area with spores, and he steps forward and carefully scoops some of it up into one palm before he starts walking forward.

Their steps are quick and quiet, and Maria does her best to keep her attention on the emotional impressions guiding her as her own fear threatens to blot them out. The urgency in the psychic message is increasing, and eventually they hear something just around the corner… something that sounds like digging.

waitwaitwait

Maria stops and holds a hand out to keep Glen from moving forward as she closes her eyes, focusing on the mental impressions.

waitwaitwaitprepareprepareprepare

“Get ready,” she whispers as the digging gets louder, and then with a final crackle and snapping of stone and plywood…

preparepreparePREPARE

“Hey lady, can you hear me?”

Maria jumps at the sudden voice, adult and authoritative, from just around the corner.

“Yes,” comes a breathless response. “Thank you… I thought I was… going to die…”

The man doesn’t say anything else, and Maria feels the tension building in her… what if she was wrong, what if—

There’s a snapping sound, and the emotions flood through her in a torrent.

ATTACKDANGERATTACKNOWATTACK

“Ahhhh!” she cries out, in shock and anger not her own, anger sent by Lizzy along with a mix of desperate fear and concern, and Maria dashes around the corner and yells, “Snipe! Snipe! Snipe!”

Slippy came with her and immediately begins to shoot bubblebeams out, the sharp hiss and rapid pops filling the hall as each shot nails a golem that has its back turned on them. The golem had a chunk of rubble in its hand, which falls to the ground as it staggers against the wall, stony hide mottling as it’s sprayed with water.

The man beside it whirls around, staring in shock, and Glen is already rushing forward, flinging the spores at his face.

The man ducks the attack and kicks straight outward hard enough to send Glen flying back into the opposite wall, then unclips and points a greatball all in the same motion, before Maria can do more than take a hesitant step forward. Out pops a luxray, who glows with electricity and dashes forward at another snapped command—

“Nap!” Glen yells in a choked voice, and a cloud of sleep powder bursts from Sweets. The luxray blows through it and collides with Slippy before collapsing into a heap, and her pokemon’s body jolts back and hits the wall, electricity arcing through its twitching limbs.

Before she can rush to heal her poliwhirl the man is already summoning another pokemon, and her hand flies to her belt instead as she tries to calm herself, to focus. This is just a pokemon battle. It’s against a renegade, in an underground lab, during a series of earthquakes, but it’s just a pokemon battle like any other.

Or so she thinks, until the renegade’s magmar materializes and, with a snap of its master’s fingers, sends a stream of fire at them.

“Dodge!” Glen yells as she ducks and scrambles to the side, the intense heat burning her skin. Sweets is too slow, and by the time Glen finishes rolling to smother the flames on his clothing and turns to withdraw his pokemon it looks like a lump of charcoal, the bittersweet smell of cooked gloom filling the hall.

fearregretfear

It comes through the psychic link, mirrors to her own feelings beneath the shock, and Maria struggles to think of what she can summon against a magmar… they came from Erika’s gym, neither of them have any Rock or Ground or Water pokemon besides her poliwhirl, which she brought for the surprise Ice Beam potential…

The glow of the approaching magmar grows, and she scrambles back and pulls a ball at random from her belt. When she throws, it turns out to be the newly acquired vulpix she hasn’t even had the chance to name. It won’t be able to do much against the magmar, but perhaps if Glen brings out his own, then together they could…

When the magmar turns the corner, it’s followed by the golem, its injuries mostly healed, and in that moment Maria realizes she’s going to die, just like Aiko. She’s often wondered what drove the other girl so hard to leave her own home, if she’d had her own girl with bright pink hair, dancing through a rainy city like it belonged to her.

As the two pokemon face them, Maria wishes for the last time that she’d had the chance to meet her, and ask.

horrordenialanger

…

…

…

D-E-T-E-R-M-I-N-A-T-I-O-N

Her paralysis breaks, and she dives out of the way of the double attack, barely avoiding Glen as he does the same. When she finishes rolling and checks to make sure she’s not on fire, she looks up expecting to see her vulpix crushed by the golem’s rocks… but instead it’s just gone.

So is the feel of Lizzy’s mind and emotions.

And…

The renegade is screaming, horrible high pitched sounds of pain as light bursts from around the corner.

Maria stares in shock as the two pokemon turn toward their master, still trying to process what’s happening before she realizes this is her chance.

Normally, capturing another trainer’s pokemon rather than using the trading deprogramming would be a massive breach of League guidelines; the damage to the pokemon’s psychology are often permanent. In this case, given that the trainer in question is a renegade and the pokemon are trained to murder people, she’s not particularly worried about sanctions.

Instead of unclipping one of her pokemon, she feels through her beltpouch for a greatball and ultraball, then enlarges one in each hand as she scrambles forward, aims, locks on, and throws both. They connect just as the pokemon rush around the corner, sucking them inside.

Maria lets out a breath and turns to Glen to make sure he’s okay… and feels her heart stutter in her chest.

He’s lying still, a pool of blood spreading from his head. The chunk of rock that the golem hurled at them is lying a few feet away, its edge stained red.

A flash of wilted grass, a pond, dark with blood…

“No,” she gasps as she stumbles forward and unclips the potion from her waist. “Glen, no, wake up,” light, she needs light to see what she’s doing as she sprays the potion, it’s hard to make out where the wound is in the red emergency lights…

A moment later they shut off, and she nearly screams in fear and frustration before the building’s regular lights come on, blindingly bright after the red gloom that she feels she’s been in for hours. She rapidly blinks, then takes a closer look at Glen’s head. His red hair is matted with blood, and she carefully brushes it aside to find the gash beneath it, some of his scalp coming up as fresh blood leaks out. She nearly gags, at both the coppery smell and the sight of bone beneath, but even as tears fracture her vision she sprays the potion over the wound and wipes her eyes until she can confirm that it’s closing.

She sobs in relief, fingers quickly searching for his pulse. Thready, too slow, but there. “You’re okay, Glen, just rest,” she whispers, unsure if he’s conscious. “I’m sorry, I froze up, I should have…” She remembers the renegade, then, and her head whips back toward the empty intersection.

The screaming has stopped.

And her vulpix has returned, its tails wagging as it approaches her. For a moment she stops worrying about Glen and wonders how it got past the two pokemon in the first place… and then she smells something different than the lingering scent of the cooked gloom.

Something like cooking meat.

Feeling like she’s in a dream, Maria slowly gets up and walks around the corner to stare at the horrible sight before her; first the woman she’d failed to save, whose head must have been crushed by the golem before it was sent after them, then the man her vulpix had killed, clothes still smoldering around his burnt body. There’s a potion bottle and a pokeball on the ground beside him, and his face is unrecognizable.

Maria feels her gorge rise, and turns away to throw up against the wall before she forces herself to return to Glen through the fog of disgust and confusion and fear, because right now Glen needs her, and she needs him, needs the distraction from the worry that she’s going to be branded a Renegade, or that her pokemon will be taken and killed for attacking a human.

She returns Slippy and her vulpix to their balls on the way, not even checking to see if her poliwhirl is alive before she unpacks her first-aid kit and cleans the blood from Glen’s hair and neck as best she can while checking him over for any other injuries. She treats some burns and removes his mask to check his pupils, which is when she notices fluid leaking from his ear.

Concussion, severe. She needs to get him to a hospital, but she can’t move him on her own, let alone get him up the stairs…

She has to treat him here. Her hands shake as she takes out her phone and opens the first-aid app, then navigates to the right condition and follows its guidelines, finding the proper nasal spray in her kit. A sudden quake nearly makes her drop it, and she waits for the shaking to end before she gently sticks the long nozzle up his nostrils one at time, triggering it with each of his breaths until the small bottle is empty.

Maria hears other noises through the building, the sounds of rubble shifting, of voices through the walls, of running steps. She ignores it all, focusing on one step after another to do whatever she can for Glen, until—

“MG! Glen!”

She looks up and sees… Lizzy, rushing over to check their friend, face horrified. “Is all this blood his? Is he okay?”

“I-I think he’s stable, I don’t know w-what else to do…”

Lizzy wraps her arms around MG in a tight hug. “Thank Arceus, MG, I thought I was too late. How did you do all that, anyway?”

“Do what?”

“Guide me to you!”

Maria blinks, then blinks again, feeling slow. “I didn’t… you were the one guiding me. Weren’t you?”

Lizzy frowns at her in confusion. “Me? I’m not psychic, I’ve been in the maintenance area trying to get the power back on, but there was a renegade there, she tried to kill me… it wasn’t you?”

“What wasn’t me?”

“There was something in my head, like my attention kept being forced elsewhere. It saved me from being taken by surprise, and then led me down here to you…”

“It wasn’t me. I felt something similar… I thought it was you.”

“What? Why?”

“It was… it felt like you, a little, and…” She shakes her head. Why had she been so convinced it was Lizzy? Because she couldn’t think of anyone else it might be?

She turns back to Glen, whose breathing and pulse are steady, at least, and who doesn’t seem to be showing any new signs of worsening injury. He still won’t wake up, however. “What do we do now?”

“Now we get him out of here…” She looks around. “You came in through the hole in the ceiling back there?”

“Glen made it.”

“Well, there has to be another way up. I’m going to go find it, you stay with him.”

Maria almost tells her not to leave, almost mentions the dead renegade around the corner… Lizzy said she encountered one too, how did that end? But getting help for Glen is more important so she just nods, and hugs her friend before she dashes off. MG takes Glen’s hand in hers as she sits with him, and tries to contact whoever was sending her the mental impressions before.

Eventually she feels their mind touch hers again, and can’t help the flood of curiosity that fills her. In response, she feels relief that she’s okay, and guilt, and… reassurance, somehow, that everything will be alright. It feels particularly directed at her confusion and guilt over what happened to the Renegade.

She wraps the feeling around herself like a blanket as she squeezes Glen’s hand, hoping that the person is right, whoever they are.

“My name is Maria,” she whispers, and closes her eyes as another quake vibrates through the floor and walls.

---

Steven was never much for spirituality, or belief in Fate, or the unseen guidance of great powers. He hasn’t had strong opinions against them either, he just never saw much reason to think that anything that happened wasn’t the result of chance; sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes coincidental, but often random.

Today has certainly been a day to test that ambivalence, but it wasn’t until his pokemon began to glow, began to evolve into entirely new forms, that he felt like his life was not his own. That he felt like a character in a movie, where some writer put otherwise innocuous things into his backstory that somehow became relevant at this, the most important day in his life.

It should get easier to wrap his mind around yet another thing he thought he understood about the world turning out to be wrong, but somehow his final-stage pokemon evolving has been the hardest to. Probably because it seems directly related to him. He imagines the two teenagers riding around on Latias and Latios feel the same.

A fourth form, he marvels for the tenth time at least as his aggron(?) thunders forward and slams its horns into Groudon’s stomach, along with a new, sharp fin that’s grown between them. The legendary earth god is nearly twice his aggron’s size, but still struggles to shove Steven’s pokemon away, particularly since his metagross(?) is climbing its body at the same time, clawed arms digging into its ruby scales. Two pokemon, each with a fourth form.

All his life he’s heard people in both academic and casual contexts debate what was so special about the number three, that no pokemon has ever been found to have had more consecutive forms. Some pokemon, like eevee, have far more than three total possible evolutions, and others like wurmple have multiple different branching paths, but none ever goes through a permanent change more than twice in its lifetime. Even pokemon that have multiple different forms that they change between, don’t evolve into those forms, and what he witnessed looked like evolution, shining glow and all.

The massive increase in strength and endurance that his pokemon are showing back that impression up. Even with the careful training and conditioning he gave his pokemon to help them against their weaknesses, they should have already fallen against a monster as powerful as Groudon. A few hits was the most he could have hoped for, something that would buy everyone else some time to attack… but of all the pokemon on the field, his are the only two that have taken more than that and are still fighting it. As long as he keeps them avoiding any of Groudon’s fire attacks, everything else is healable.

If this were a movie, that would be enough. His pokemon would have revealed their newfound, unearned power by some coincidence between the stones on his rings and the red orb, and he would be the hero who saved the day.

Unfortunately, as surreal as the day has been, reality can never be that simple. While Groudon seems to have stopped growing as soon as the red orb was destroyed, it also seems to have grown strong enough to be nearly impervious to their attacks.

And not just his pokemon’s attacks, but everything the collective leaders, elites, rangers, and renegades can throw at it. Meanwhile its attacks are as devastating to them as he feared; in just five minutes they’ve lost dozens of pokemon and a quarter of their trainers, and no amount of coordination seems to help. Whether by spikes of rock impaling people and pokemon from below, or sudden rising magma, or its oppressively fast beam attack, Groudon’s coverage is just too good to defend against.

It’s chilling to realize that, if it weren’t for Latios and Latias flying around its head and blasting it with a mix of dragon and psychic attacks, as well as psychics like Sabrina, Will, and Lucian using their pokemon to constantly confuse and disorient it, Groudon would have already laid waste to the lot of them. His pokemon can take a beating, but he’s running through potions quickly, and the living myth seems nowhere near its limit.

And as if all that’s not bad enough, it’s getting hotter.

Initially, Steven felt hope (or his version of it at least, which is more like a vague sense of optimism) upon arriving and realizing Groudon wasn’t emitting any Pressure. After maybe half an hour in its presence, he’s starting to wish it was, compared to the alternative. The sunlight has become so hot that a few of them went down to heatstroke before the rest realized the danger. Now they’re doing their best to stay hydrated while they fight, the heat evaporating the sweat straight off their burned skin.

His aggron and metagross (or whatever they are now) don’t seem to be affected, thankfully, but any water pokemon they try fighting with seems to fare the worst, which is a crippling loss considering how water attacks might actually hurt it more than anything else they’ve tried. Professor Oak’s blastoise used a Hydro Pump that looked more like a Water Gun, but the streams just boiled into steam when they got close to Groudon, which is just an absurd defensive power for something that’s already stacked with advantages.

All things considered, Steven’s coming to the conclusion that they may have backed the wrong horse after all.

Still, his heartbeat is slow and steady, his thoughts clear as he considers whether sounding a retreat would be justified. It’s possible Groudon will start to shrink again without the red orb, but there’s no telling how long that would take, and while defeating Kyogre has caused the storm to slowly start clearing, there’s also no telling what Groudon would do without the other legendary to keep it distracted. If they give up now it might cause some further calamity, like raise a volcano up from under Sootopolis.

And so Steven fights on, keeping tabs on how many trainers are still battling to ensure they don’t overcommit without some sign that Groudon is weakening. Hyper Beams from Lance’s dragonites fail to blast it to pieces, Cynthia’s garchomp’s claws just crack its scales rather than tear out bloody chunks of flesh, and even status moves don’t seem to do much. It burned away seeds and powders sent by Professor Oak’s venusaur before killing it with a blast of fire, which led to the older man taking a minute to pull out a storage ball, from which emerged a metal cone with a miniature hot-air balloon and a propeller attached.

Steven watches in amused fascination as the Professor sticks a jigglypuff into it, then sends the contraption up and toward Groudon (its occupant presumably singing at some point that Steven can’t hear thanks to the cone, or perhaps the rumbling earth, crashing waves, and other sounds of battle) only to be blasted out of the air without any apparent effect by an Omega Beam (he’s mostly settled on that as the name, it has a nice ring to it).

“It doesn’t have any ears!” he yells to Sam.

“Looks subterranean, likely relies more on vibrations,” Sam acknowledges as he unclips another ball and throws it. “But had to try!”

Steven nods and directs his metagross to aim for its eyes in case they can blind it, thinking all the while of how quickly they could fill some giant sacks with sleep powder and dump them over it from a direction it can’t see coming. Subterranean or not, it still has to breathe at some point, right? Though even if they got it to sleep, it’s so absurdly tough that they might not be able to kill it before it wakes…

At first the sound of thunder is lost in the general cacophany, the crack of earth and roars of pain or anger, but after a moment Steven realizes the thunder isn’t fading, and also that there hasn’t been any up until now. In fact the sound isn’t like thunder at all, but rather a series of echoing staccato booms, and Steven dares to tear his gaze from Groudon and looks up to see—

A ribbon of green against the sky, a flashing emerald serpent that undulates through the air as if it were water. It darts back and forth so fast that it’s like he’s watching some sped up video footage, a white cone of compressed air flaring around it every few seconds. There’s an expanding stretch of blue in the direction the dragon arrived from, the rain clouds having dispersed in its wake like smoke blown away by the breath of a giant.

Or a god.

SKREEeeerrAAAOOUrrooouu!

Rayquaza’s shriek seems to split the sky, an aural assault that freezes everyone in place, even Groudon. A number of pokemon immediately abandon their attacks and rush back to their trainer, instincts and training kicking in to defend them against the new threat.

After a moment Groudon rears its head up to roar back at the sky god, the golden light between its scales flaring so bright that Steven instinctively shields his eyes.

Finally, a “surprise” that he can wrap his mind around. He half expected the third of the weather myths would show up at some point, because why not? The prediction was vague and fatalistic in a way that didn’t lead him to any particular action because there wasn’t much in the way of spare resources for yet another potential region-destroying threat, but seeing it, hearing its shriek reverberate through the air, spreads real dread through him, so novel that for a moment he actually appreciates the sensation, the way the emotion seems to submerge him in itself and numb out everything else. He hears sounds of shock and horror from the others, and feels a moment of rare kinship with them.

Then the appreciation fades, distant and fleeting as most other emotions, and all that’s left is resignation. The myths… no, the legends portrayed Rayquaza as the strongest of the trio, the god assigned to rule above both Groudon and Kyogre’s domains. He can hope that part confused reality and metaphor, but even if it’s just as strong as the other two… as things stand, the island’s best can barely hold their own against a Groudon weakened by its fight with Kyogre. If a fresh god joins the battle, even if it’s to fight Groudon, he doubts they would fare better even if they repeat their last play of helping it only to turn on it after. Hell, from type interactions alone he doubts Rayquaza would even need their help to defeat Groudon.

The defeatism stirs something stubborn in him, and he chides himself for being stupid. Their best bet in that case would be to help Groudon once again, work all together to take down Rayquaza and hope that Groudon would finally be weakened enough by the end to be defeated…

Rayquaza lets out another shriek as it continues to dart around in the sky, and Steven wonders what it’s doing as he prepares to give the orders… but instead of flying down, it does one more series of twisting contortions in the air, then flies up and away, into the too-bright sky that Groudon created above them.

For the first time in what feels like hours, there’s a moment of blessed near-silence. No earth rumbles, no battling pokemon. Just the sea crashing distantly into the newly created coast, and the distant boom of the divine dragon achieving supersonic flight.

Distantly, Steven hears someone say, “Where’s it going?”

Their baffled, almost plaintive tone draws a weary smile from him; he can’t blame them for hoping for a savior at a time like this. He turns back to Groudon, preparing for the fight to restart… but Groudon is still staring after Rayquaza, its ruby body pulsing with golden light.

This is our chance. Steven looks behind him and takes in the sight of the others’ burnt skin and swaying stances, and quickly barks, “Recoup! Champs, on me!”

He leads by example, taking out a couple burn potions and spraying them over his exposed skin before attending to his pokemon. It’s hard not to marvel at them, up close; he wishes he had an hour to examine their every change, like the way his metagross has continued the pattern of its previous evolutions and doubled its limbs again, or the way his aggron’s metal shell has spread to completely cover the stony portions of its body…

“The most fascinating part is the mass they’ve gained,” Professor Oak says as he steps up beside Steven. His voice is calm, but his eyes are alive with a burning fascination, and Steven nods. Normally a pokemon would grow before they evolve, but in this case the fourth evolutionary stages have broken that pattern.

“Like Groudon and Kyogre’s changes,” Cynthia remarks as she approaches, and a moment later Lance is beside her.

“Theorize later, battle now,” the Indigo Champion says, giving Steven’s newly evolved pokemon a perfunctory glance before looking back at Groudon. Its ruby and gold body is slowly slumping forward onto all fours, then onto its belly as its eyes close. “Or… maybe not. It looks like it’s taking a nap.”

“Maybe Rayquaza scared it back into hibernation. It was said to be able to get the other two to stop fighting, wasn’t it?”

“Fuck,” Steven hears someone say, then realizes it was Professor Oak. He doesn’t think he’s ever heard the genial older man curse before. “It’s not napping, it’s Resting!“

Fuck, Steven thinks as he watches a cracked scale fall from the legendary pokemon’s body, a healthy one revealed in its place.

“We need to hit it now,” Lance says. “All together.”

“No,” Cynthia says. “If we fail to bring it down we’ll just be back where we were before. Brute force didn’t work, we need a plan, some way to trap or limit it.”

“Can it swim?” Professor Oak asks. “If we can knock it into the ocean… no, it would just raise more earth beneath it. If we reduce its mass enough…” Professor Oak hesitates. “Cut off its tail, maybe, and it could fit in a Heavy Ball. It’s about twice the size of Aoesis, but likely not as dense.”

The giant onix Brock has, Steven remembers, is near the limits of what any pokeball can hold; if it ever evolved into a steelix, it would be uncontainable. “It could work, if we could reliably cut through its scales… but even before this new evolution Argenta could shatter rocks, and now she’s just cracking the damn thing’s scales.” Technically metagross are genderless, but ever since he first caught his rare silver and gold beldum she’s given him the impression of a rather glamorous lady, even when tearing mercilessly into her enemies.

“Reign hasn’t been making much of a dent either,” Cynthia says as she finishes healing her garchomp. “Anyone here bring an aegislash?” She glances at Lance. “Or…”

The dragon master nods, hands quickly moving to return one of his dragonite to its ball before he summons his haxorus. “Worth a shot, but Sever is a sweeper. May not be able to take more than a hit, so if it fully wakes up before this works, we’ll need a backup plan.”

“Get it into the air!” They all look up to see the Eon Duo hovering above them, Professor Birch and Leader Norman’s kids leaning over the sides of their mounts. Steven wonders how long they’ve been there. “Drag it high enough and drop it,” May continues, hands cupped around her mouth. “Should break some bones at least!”

Professor Oak is rubbing his jaw as he looks back at Groudon. “Probably weighs a ton, but that just means we don’t have to raise it high to do real damage.”

“Can they do it?” Steven yells back, pointing at the legends they’re riding and shoving down all the questions he has about where they found them, and how they’re riding them without saddles.

The two look at each other, then their pokemon. Their pokemon… The thought has implications, and he shoves those aside too. Trainers wanting to capture legendary pokemon is what started this mess… according to Matsubusa, Groudon seemed tamed at first too. Would these two turn on them soon as well? It’s been that kind of day, but for now they’re too powerful a resource to not use.

“I think so!” Brendon yells. “But not for long! Better with help!”

“Okay, we’ve got a Plan A and Plan B,” Steven says as he looks around at the other trainers, who seem to have mostly finished healing themselves and their pokemon. A lot are just drinking water and checking others who went down during the fight. “Spread the word to the others, anyone with pokemon who know Sky Drop are to use it on Groudon on our mark. We’ll try cutting its tail off first.”

They nod and fly off, and Steven suddenly realizes that when he was looking at them he was looking at the sky without squinting. That leads to him noticing how, even beyond the healing from the potions he sprayed over his skin, the oppressive heat from before isn’t bothering him as much. He wonders if it’s because the sun is finally starting to set, but no, that’s still a while away… maybe it’s because Groudon is asleep?

If so he’s going to regret waking it up so soon, but they can’t let it fully recover itself, nice as it’s been not to have fresh earthquakes knocking him off balance every few seconds. Maybe water pokemon would able to be used now… Mark that as Plan C.

Cynthia and Lance set themselves and their pokemon up on either side of the sleeping legend, keeping as distant as they can while still guiding their pokemon with maximum precision on either side of Groudon’s spiked tail. Meanwhile a handful of Leaders, rangers, and other trainers approach, each with large Flying pokemon out. Steven makes sure everyone is in position, then raises his hands above his head, fingers extended. Starting with his right pinky he lowers them one at a time, counting down. Nine… eight… seven… six… five… four… three…

There’s absolutely no warning.

Faster than sound itself, a blur of green and gold and black fills Steven’s vision, and then the shockwave hits in a clap so loud it’s like a pair of spikes are driven into his ears. He barely hears his own cry of pain through the ringing that follows, and realizes he’s on his hands and knees when water crashes down on him, adding another layer of disorientation. He struggles to open eyes blurry with sea salt and tears of pain, and when he finally blinks them clear and looks up…

Groudon is gone.

He squints at the empty area where the earth god used to be, then looks around and distantly spots the tail end of a long, split wave that Rayquaza kicks up in its wake as it flies above the ocean. Its long emerald body suddenly rises up into the air, and even from this distance Steven can see that it’s bigger than before, its body more segmented and its head shaped like a wedge. As he watches it ascend into the sky he sees threads of gold light trailing around it, their color reminding him of the glow that came from within Groudon and Kyogre.

It rises high into the sky before a red shape detaches from it, and Steven watches in numb disbelief as Groudon plummets back to earth. If he could hear anything besides a distant ringing, perhaps he would hear it roar, or Rayquaza’s shriek of victory. Instead he watches in near silence as the legendary pokemon falls, twinkling like a ruby in the sunlight, until it touches the horizon.

Did we win? Steven vaguely wonders as the disorientation hits again, making him heave as he tries to stand. He looks around and realizes that he can’t see Cynthia or Lance. Something wet hits his ear, and he jerks away before he realizes it’s Professor Oak with a potion bottle in his hand.

“Wah uou eea ee? EeeEh? “

Steven shakes his head and unclips his own potion bottle for his other ear, having to spray three times before he hits it, then hurries as best he can on unsteady legs to the “shore” of Groudon’s fake beachhead…

Cynthia is there. The words seem to appear straight into his mind, and he looks around and sees Sabrina beside him, pointing down into the water. Before Steven can react Latios is hovering over the ocean while Brendan dives in. He surfaces shortly after with an arm around Cynthia’s limp figure, and the legendary dragon psychically lifts them both out of the water and onto the land. Sabrina has already rushed to another part of the shore, and a few moments later May is pulling Lance out of the water.

He looks back up at where Rayquaza went, and sees nothing. The sky is clear in nearly every direction now, and the setting sun is warm rather than harsh. It’s possible the third weather god will come back and attack, or wreak havoc elsewhere, but for now Steven lets himself sit on the rough ground and just breathe, eyes closed.

His body is still shaking, heart beating so fast and hard that it feels like it’s interfering with his breaths. He wonders if this is how others feel, at times like this. He wonders how long it will last. Assuming it’s all over, they still have to tally the dead and start repairing all the damage done across the island. The thought of facing all that without his usual calm makes the shaking worse, for a moment.

After all that is done, it may be time to take a break from the whole “Champion” thing, for a bit.

It’s been a hell of a day.

---

David Shaw walks with his eyes on the experiment, hands never leaving his pokebelt as he stays eight meters behind his charge at all times. Ultraball range is a little under ten, but the rain is heavy enough that he assumes a couple meters of lost efficacy to be safe. Scarlet prowls at his side, the weavile’s red feathers and gold gem the only parts of her that are clearly visible in the dim light.

They’ve already circled the manor twice now, walking slow and steady at the edge of the plateau it’s situated on. He brought his five top security trainers with him, leaving the rest to ensure the safety of the others in case wild pokemon attack the mansion. Or in case the experiment makes them. Or makes the normals start attacking each other. Or something.

Paranoia is more than a job description; it’s a sacred trust. A trust put in him by Giovanni himself, a trust with the fate of the human species potentially on the line.

He knows Dr. Light’s priority is opposed to his, but that doesn’t make them enemies; they’re just trying to save humanity from different angles. He from the godling she and the other scientists created, she from the gods it’s meant to fight.

But paranoia has to be a tool, deliberately used, a lens that can be swapped on and off. He was a police officer in his past life, spent every week talking to and investigating people who might have been guilty as sin, even as they wept like babies over whatever situation they found themselves in. There was a trick to it, a way to split your mind into two tracks: one in which every word, every expression, was genuine, and one where they were at least partially calculated to get you to feel a certain way.

It wasn’t about guilt or innocence. That wasn’t his job. He understood that an innocent person could be calm or angry or filled with nervous laughter, and that a guilty one could be genuinely tormented by what they’d done, or the consequences they’d face if convicted. His job was simply to get to the truth.

Sometimes that meant bullying someone, whether calm or in tears, until something useful shook loose. Innocent people can still hide data to try to protect the guilty, or have useful knowledge without even knowing it. Other times it meant acting friendly, understanding, sympathetic. It’s not hard. He’s never had trouble pitying even the worst offenders. Sometimes especially the worst ones… how fucked up must it be, to live in the kind of brain that could do such things? In those cases, the “Good Cop” routine is a mercy of sort; the last friendly face and sympathetic ear such people are likely to ever have outside of prison.

For the past decade, however, he’s been a perpetual Good Cop, at least around the experiment. That’s the fiction they’ve had to sell it, that they all believe its good intentions, and that he and his people are its protection against others, Dark so that they could avoid influence or subversion by anyone who tries to do it harm. And it’s not even a lie, really. Just a part of the truth.

He doesn’t know if Mewtwo really believes it. Sabrina says it used to be more suspicious until it was finally let out of the tube, and that it’s only grown more trusting since.

But still, he feels the two tracks in his head. Weighing every word, every movement, through the lens of honesty or manipulation, and acting on the former until he has evidence of the latter. He often wonders why other people don’t seem to be able to do the same, to consider both possibilities while still reserving judgement, but it’s obvious that they don’t, and he tries not to look down on them for it. Clearly he’s the weird one.

Nearly an hour after they got out of the lab, Shaw realizes the rain feels lighter. At first he thinks it’s his imagination, but after a minute he notices that it’s easier to make out the two figures of his charge and his boss, and easier to hear what they’re saying rather than just a random word here and there.

“-going to die?”

“There are a lot of different customs,” Dr. Light says as she walks slowly beside the experiment. Normally its strides are hard for a human to comfortably keep up with, but today it ambles, as if worried that moving too quickly will reduce the time it has left. Which it wouldn’t; Shaw has kept informed of all its suit’s specs, and remembers the debate over how many artificial limitations to put on it. One based on exertion was deemed too inhibiting and would add too much uncertainty. “Some try to experience things they’ve always wanted to but never had the chance. Others do their best to put their affairs in order, for those they leave behind. Most try to accomplish both, I imagine, as much as they reasonably can.”

“I see. I don’t suppose there’s much in the way of either that applies to me.”

Dr. Light stays silent. He’s not sure how long the experiment’s been talking about its own death as if it’s a given, or how the director feels about it. It’s easy to admire noble stoicism in someone’s final hours, but Shaw has spoken at length with Sabrina, who convinced him that whatever Mewtwo is, it feels things as much as any human does. Shaw doesn’t know many humans who would take their impending end this well, if they truly believed it was coming… but maybe more would if they had a long time to see it coming, which he has to admit that Mewtwo might have. It can’t have been easy living a life that’s always been a few technical mishaps away from sudden, painful death.

“What will happen to my body?” Mewtwo continues after a minute. The artificial voice is neutral without being flat, and Shaw wishes for the hundredth time that Sabrina were here to give some indication of its feelings. He’s tempted to push for another psychic to mentally connect to it, maybe under the cover of wanting to make sure it’s not lonely or something, just to get a peek at what it’s really feeling… “Will it be buried?”

“If you’d like,” Dr. Light says, the words coming out slow and measured. “We could also cremate you, if you prefer. Some enjoy the thought of their ashes being spread in a particular place, or over a wide range of places.”

“But first you would perform an autopsy.”

Shaw feels a ping of worry, though he’s not sure why, and hears Dr. Light’s brief hesitation. “Yes.”

“To help the others?”

Trap, Shaw thinks, but Dr. Light is just frowning. “Others?”

“The others, like me.”

“There are no others like you, Mewtwo. There never have been.” The lie is delivered flawlessly, likely because of the way she framed it. Not for the first time tonight, Shaw wonders how the other labs are faring in this mess.

“I meant those that will come, after. You won’t give up on the project, surely?”

“Ah, no, of course not.” She brushes wet hair from her face. “We don’t have to talk about this, if it makes you uncomfortable.”

“It does not. But it bothers you?”

“It’s sad, thinking that you may die soon. For many reasons. And it’s—oh!”

Shaw’s head snaps around, adrenaline flooding his body, and sees that Mewtwo has come to an abrupt stop, body facing the eastern cliff so that its tail caught the director in the stomach as she kept stepping forward. “I’m sorry, Dr. Light,” the experiment says, curling its tail away as it turns to her. “Are you alright?”

“Yes, fine. It didn’t hurt, just startled me.” She glances at Shaw as she says it, no doubt telling him to relax. His pulse is still racing as he watches her rub her stomach and go to stand beside Mewtwo, who turns back to look out at the dark ocean. Shaw makes a subtle sign that his people probably won’t see in the rain, but that he knows Scarlet will, and they’ll see what she does and know what it means. A moment later she’s prowling closer to the experiment, her paws utterly silent on the wet grass as she stops close enough to be able to strike it on a moment’s notice. All around him his people and their pokemon go on higher alert, though without any obvious signs.

Mewtwo continues facing the ocean. “I’m glad. You were saying?”

“Hm? Ah, yes, that… well, it’s hard not to think of it being difficult, for you. If I’m mistaken in that, I can bear the discomfort.”

There’s a pause, and then… “It is difficult. I wish to do something of use, for my life to mean something by my choices, not just my existence. I feel regret, that I have not. And I wish to experience many more things. To swim. To fly. To see the world. Experience a city, or a forest. Snow. We’re just a few months away from it, aren’t we?”

“Yes.” Dr. Light rubs at her face. “I’m sorry, that we couldn’t give you more of… all that. Of life.”

“I understand.”

Shaw finally looks away from them, uneasy and tense. Maybe it was a distraction from something else the experiment did? Everyone around the mansion seems to be fine, and the woman he put on monitoring the area’s seismic activity seems calm, which he takes to mean there isn’t an army of subterranean pokemon approaching them, nor a steady weakening of the mountain to cause a landslide…

Shaw realizes the sky is growing lighter as well, and looks up to see the stormclouds are dispersing. The sun is just beginning to set, painting the edges of the clouds to the west with gold and pink. It’s a beautiful sight, and as he takes the moment to admire it he realizes he can’t remember how long ago the last earthquake was.

“I would like to try flying again,” Mewtwo says, causing Shaw to turn back to it.

“What, now?” Dr. Light sounds uncertain. “In these conditions? Your last test didn’t go well…” By Shaw’s recollection that would be the time it had tried to fly over the manor and had suffered intense vertigo before it even cleared the roof, which was a big relief to him and his people.

“Yes, it was quite unpleasant. But still, there was a freedom in it. As a thing I wish I could have done more of, it’s near the top.”

The director is silent, and Shaw feels obliged to step in. “I don’t think it would be a good idea, Mewtwo. It’s still dark even with the clouds clearing up a little, and will be getting darker as the sun continues to set. The ground is also slippery. If you come down at an angle, or tumble too far, you might fall off an edge.”

The experiment turns to him, and Scarlet gracefully shifts with it, staying out of its line of sight. “Of course, Mr. Shaw. I would try it near the manor, to reduce the risk that you can’t recover my body for autopsy.”

Shaw stares at the experiment, wondering if that was an attempt at humor, or self-deprecation, or just stoic pragmatism. “Have you really given up on yourself?” he asks, daring for the first time since the experiment became sapient to let himself slip into another mode.

“I do not think it is unreasonable, to believe at this point that my death is more likely than not.”

“So you’ll give up on that chance, however small?”

“Shaw—” Dr. Light begins, but Mewtwo is already responding, the tiny clicks of its helmet’s keyboard slightly audible over the weakened rainfall.

“You would not do similar, when the chance is so low?”

“No, and neither would anyone else I respect.”

“Shaw, that’s enough!”

He doesn’t take his eyes off the experiment’s visor, wishing he could see its expression, limited as it is. Eventually Mewtwo’s head shifts, a deferential lowering.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Shaw. You’re quite right. I didn’t mean to make your job more difficult, and appreciate the effort you and your people spend on my safety.”

It’s so easy to hear sarcasm in its words, bitterness or irony or some hidden message. But it seems so sincere, too, and he knows he could just be projecting. “Not about us,” he grunts after a moment. “It’s also about you. The kind of person you want to be. The stuff we’re asking of you isn’t easy, but if you’re not someone who can fight for a ten percent chance, a five percent chance, even a one percent chance, when it’s either that or death, then you won’t ever be what we need you to be. Hope you can be.”

Dr. Light is still glaring at him, but there’s a puzzled look in her eyes too, and Mewtwo seems to be considering him again. “Thank you, Mr. Shaw. I’ll remember that.”

An ominous feeling creeps up Shaw’s neck, and he itches to slide a hand into his pocket, where his own kill-switch for Mewtwo’s armor is. Each of his people have one, and he trusts any of them to press it if needed.

“Director!” They turn to see one of the engineers running up to them, Gyokusho’s smile obvious as he approaches. “We just got word that Groudon has been defeated, and the seismographs are showing no new quakes throughout the island.”

“Not even aftershocks?”

“No Ma’am, nothing. Sabrina also just contacted us, and will be teleporting here shortly.”

Dr. Light’s relief is obvious, and she smiles wide as she looks back in the direction of the mansion, where people are already preparing to dig out the stairwells and regain access to the lab. There’s still a chance that the damage is too severe to get Mewtwo back in its pod in time, but with at least a couple hours of backups for the suit remaining there’s at least a chance, so long as the pod room isn’t too badly damaged…

Shaw feels relieved too, and wonders if he should congratulate the director later on making the right call. The situation was uncertain enough that he doesn’t regret pushing for the decision he did, and this could have been either good judgement on her part or a lucky dice roll; he’s wary of reinforcing the latter in case she ends up overconfident next time.

“Ah,” Mewtwo says, the visor of its helmet reflecting the setting sunlight. “I suppose I was being pessimistic.”

“You weren’t alone,” Dr. Light reassures him, and turns back to Gyokusho just as Mewtwo turns back toward the cliffs, his tail bumping her torso again. “Oh, sor—”

The tail wraps tight, and in the blink of an eye, both Mewtwo and the director are airborne.

Not a single decision is made in the next seconds that pass. Later, Shaw will wonder if he even had any thoughts. He acts instead as a machine executing a program, each of his people moving in ways they’d been drilled to with barely a moment’s hesitation.

Scarlet attacks at his command, leaping at the experiment’s retreating figure only to get kicked out of the air by one of its powerful legs just as her claws flash out. Pasha’s greninja is next, having leapt just a moment after Scarlet did, tongue lashing out to wrap around Mewtwo. Dr. Light is in the way, however, and Mewtwo releases her as it plunges down the cliff and out of sight.

Vedant’s hydreigon launches itself after it, Dark energy spewing from its three mouths, and Shaw is running to the edge of the cliff as he simultaneously clicks the kill-switch in his pocket and summons his mandibuzz. “Catch!” he commands, sending his flier out after the plummeting armored figure, and a moment later three other Flying/Dark pokemon dive toward it and the pursuing hydreigon. Shaw releases the kill-switch, which he activated repeatedly already, and brings the whistle at his neck up to his lips, blowing hard to bring the rest of his people running.

Only then does he feel his heart galloping in his chest, feel the energy jumping through his body as he quickly summons his honchkrow and attaches its saddle. Less than thirty seconds later, the rest of the security team has arrived while those already with him mount their own fliers. They take off together, flying out of the dim light of the rain and sunset and diving into the mountain’s shadow.