Pokémon: Nemesis [PG-13]

[Kentucky Fried Torchic]

Chapter Thirteen
“I guess it all started off simply enough,” I said. “I was a wild Pokémon and he was a trainer travelling through the forest I called home. Back then, I was younger and more reckless. You could call it cockiness, if you wanted to. I took stupid risks and never planned too far ahead because I was convinced that no one could ever hope to catch me.” I chuckled a little bit at the follies of my youth. “When he entered the woods, every Pokémon knew it and only the weak and the stupid stayed behind. I should have thought more about why I was the only Pokémon who wanted to test themselves against a human opponent in battle. Sure, I had some experience fighting, but it was mostly small scrapes and scuffles with my buddies, nothing serious. When I fought him, however, it was completely different.”

“How so?” Amie asked.

“Well, for starters, he had a plan. Up until then, my experience of fighting was all instinct. Acting in the moment and seizing opportunities as they arose, that was my style. But he was masterful. Used the environment against me, gauged my strengths and limits early on in the fight, and lured me into a number of traps. I wish I could say that I held my own, but in all honesty, I know he was taking it easy on me. And that was the other big difference. Even though I was a wild Pokémon and he was a human, it was a sporting battle. It made more sense when he captured me after I had been weakened enough, but there was still something almost honorable about the way that he and his Pokémon matched wits and skills against my own.

“After he had caught me, he explained to me that he was on a quest to become a great Pokémon trainer. I did not know what that all entailed, but I was more than happy to help out. I had dreams of glory and I wanted to learn more from the training that this human could give me, and for a while everything worked out. We fought as partners in more battles than I can remember, against Gym Leaders, other trainers, wild Pokémon, you name it. After we had completed our trek through the country and placed respectably enough in his division of the League Championships, he told me that there was far more to the world than what I had known. There were other countries across vast oceans, with new Pokémon and new challenges to face. I was hooked on the life. I would have followed him anywhere and I nearly did.”

Amie cocked her pink head to the side at that. “What do you mean ‘nearly’?”

“Well, a Pokémon trainer is only allowed to have six battling Pokémon with them at any time for some reason. So some years I would be left with his parents while he traveled and trained, before rejoining him to lend a helping hand during big tournaments. I missed being part of the team terribly, but I was hardly the only Pokémon he left behind so there was plenty of company. Plus, I got to spend some time with his parents, going with them when they ran errands, went to church, and the like.”

“Church?”

“It’s not important. Anyways, I had the chance to join him again as we set off to the country of Orre, where they had finally succeeded in establishing their own Pokémon League and were offering huge incentives for trainers to come and be the first to take on the challenge. Things were going well at first, but then during one of the gym battles, my trainer collapsed. At first they thought it was stress or dehydration or something, but it wasn’t. He was sick. Really sick.

“That put an end to his traveling and his dreams. He moved back home with his parents, and, a few months after that, into a hospital. He was dying and every day that went by saw him getting weaker and weaker, no matter what the doctors tried. It felt wrong, still feels wrong, that I had to watch him slowly waste away to nothing. He wasn’t even full-grown and had to face the fact that he never would be.”

“Zeke, I’m sorry,” Amie started, but I continued on without hearing her.

“His whole family basically moved into the hospital they spent so much time there, and because he insisted, they brought his Pokémon to visit him. A couple of them refused to go back after the first time they saw him lying in that bed hooked up to all kinds of machines, his hair all gone. They didn’t want to see their beloved master and friend like that, and I don’t blame them. But I kept going back. I felt I owed it to him.

“That’s when I taught myself how to read actually. While I had picked some of it up from our travels and my time around his house while he was gone, there was never really a need. Every e-mail he sent home was read aloud to us Pokémon by his parents and we dissected every word. But once he got sick, no one wanted to share information with his Pokémon anymore. In order to know what was going on, I had to be able to read the charts and reports of the doctors, even if I had to steal some of them from under the nose of the hospital staff, and that meant I had to struggle to figure out what all of these strange symbols and pictures meant. It wasn’t easy, and it meant a lot of time spent pouring over books in the lounge while he slept. It was a lot of hard work, but I did it. Ended up not helping a lick with most of the medical terms, but by then it didn’t matter. Soon it wasn’t just the words on paper but the whispers among the nurses and the doctors outside of his room that sounded dire. All of my work ended up being for nothing because there was no hiding what was plain to see.

“By then, the hospital bills were mounting and his parents resorted to selling off his Pokémon in order to pay for them. They started with the bigger and more impressive ones, but when they couldn’t make up the difference, they moved onto the less rare ones. Like me.

“What made it worse that, by then, he had already given up even if his folks hadn’t. He was barely awake for most days, and I don’t think he ever knew what was going on. Still they kept trying to keep him alive, prolonging his life. I don’t think he was in pain or suffering too much by then, I think he as just resigned to it.

“By the time it came down to selling a Pikachu to keep a dying boy alive, I didn’t complain. I was resigned to it in a way as well. But as soon as the money changed hands, I split from my new owner and headed back to the forest where I had first been found so many years before. But things were different now. I had been changed too much from my time among humans and I didn’t fit in with the wild ones. There were habits and tastes that were incredibly hard to break. Fitting in with the others was no longer an option, but that was fine by me. I was unique among these Pokémon, and that gave me a new sense of pride.

“It was lonely. All of the other Pokémon, even the ones I had grown up with, seemed like strangers to me, and of course I was even stranger to them. I thought about waiting for another trainer to come along, or even going out and looking for one, but I couldn’t. The thought of going through all of the experiences again was awful to comprehend. There was a boy, about the same age as my trainer when he found me, but far less confident and far less skillful. Three times he entered the Viridian Forest searching for a Pikachu and three times I was the lone Pokémon who stood before him. Just like before, I was the only Pokémon who didn’t run as soon as the trainer entered the forest, and just like before it was out of my own pride. Except now, it was tinged with confidence borne not out of petty scuffles and youthful arrogance but out of hard-fought trials.

“Every one of our clashes went largely the same way. He had a few Pokémon, but he was not very good at using them well. It didn’t help that the Pokémon and their trainer both gave off an aura of being used to failure and coming up short, sad as it sounds. After running circles around him, he would take his Pokémon with him and leave the forest with his frizzy red head of hair hung low in disappointment. It was sad, but in a way kind of refreshing to have my routine broken up by his efforts. Maybe some part of me was hoping each fight would be the one where he finally triumphed over me, but I never got the chance to find out.”

“Why is that?” Amie asked.

“Because you showed up and changed everything,” I said, allowing myself to smile.

Not long after I had finished talking, the same automated female voice from before came on over the speaker system, announcing, “Arriving in Saffron City. Transfers to the Green, Purple, and Red Lines are available.”

After the locomotive slowed down to a halt at the Saffron station, my ears perked up in relief after the harsh screeching of metal had ceased. I could hear the doors open and people getting on and off of the train. The door before us did not open, however. “Looks like we have to make our own way out,” I grunted and leapt to the floor of the car. A small panel was next to the exit, slightly above my head. I concentrated, feeling the surge of power in my cheeks, before releasing a small arc of electricity at the display. The screen was overcome with static and the keyboard began to smoke as the smell of burning plastic filled my nose. The important thing was that, with a strained hissing sound, the door slid open, allowing Amie and I to escape the confines of the train.

“Ready?” I queried, turning my head back to my travel companion.

“Ready,” she said, already transformed from a Mew back into a Pikachu. The two of us sprung from the car, far from the bulk of the passengers who were still boarding actual passenger cars rather than attempting to stow away with the cargo. “Do you think it’ll be okay with a door hanging open like that?” Amie asked.

“Yeah, I’m sure it’s fine,” I said as my eyes scanned the electronic board of arrivals and departures hung up on the wall of the station. My excitement was replaced with shock as I found that every time that the express between Saffron and Goldenrod was listed, the area where the time of arrival would normally be listed was reading “out of service” in crimson uppercase letters instead of a time. “No, no, no,” I whispered to myself.

“Zeke, what’s wrong?”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I continued. The Saffron-Goldenrod Express was the main line of the Magnet Train. It was how the whole rail line got started. There was no reason why it should be out of commission. I felt nauseous and stumbled as I walked away from the board. Overestimating just how much support I needed, I leaned into a small nearby waste bin and it toppled over with a clatter. Various pieces of trash fell out of the receptacle; leftover food, cigarettes, and all of the other hallmarks of humans. But what caught my eye was the dirtied newspaper that was now laying half in and half out of the garbage can.

“We should go, Zeke,” Amie said urgently. “People are looking at us.”

Instead of answering, I picked up the soiled paper with trembling paws and looked at the front page. Above a color photo showing lines of grim-faced soldiers, menacing Pokémon, and imposing vehicles stretching off far into the horizon, in bold black letters still harsh against the no longer white paper, was the headline, “Johto Closes Border”, and beneath it, in smaller letters, “Is War Inevitable?”.

[Kentucky Fried Torchic]

Chapter Fourteen
"What's wrong?"

A whirlwind of thoughts tumbled through my head. It was not only more important to get Amie out of the country, but that had just gotten much more difficult. In the chaos of a war, a Pokémon unfamiliar with dealing with humans would maybe be able to blend in better, but whoever was after her would also have a freer hand in trying to capture the Legendary Pokémon. What was worse was the fact that if the war went on for too long, then bombs would start to fall on the cities of Kanto and Johto and no one would be safe. In Orre I had seen the aftershocks of war up close and personal, and even long after the dust had settled the land was still scarred and the inhabitants were still hardened by their experiences. No, Amie was not safe in Kanto, period. Escape was no longer possible by rail and attempting to cross the border separating the two members of the Tohjo Union would be suicidal during wartime. That left the sea. The islands to the south would not be safe enough, it would be necessary to go farther away, much farther away. With some semblance of a plan in mind, my resolve to protect my friend was hardened. "We have to get out of here," I said simply and led us out of the station.

The network of glass spires and concrete betrayed Saffron's status as the primary powerhouse of the Kantonese economy and government, hosting both a large number of multinational companies and independent tech start-ups and the halls of political power. We moved steadily south of the station, pausing to rest at a monument commemorating some famous general and his noble Rapidash steed in stone. "There's likely a war coming," I said to Amie. After all it was best to get that out of the way instead of dancing around it. "The trains aren't going in or out of Johto anymore because the humans here are going to fight with those humans."

To my surprise, the transformed Pokémon nodded in understanding. "That explains it."

"Explains what?"

"There's a kind of heaviness in the air, a sense of power," she elaborated with a shrug. It must be a kind of psychic broadcast given off by all of the humans here if you can't feel it."

Intrigued, I turned my attention to watch the pedestrians walking past the bench where we had chosen as our resting space. Many of them were dressed in crisp suits and business wear, carrying briefcases and talking hurriedly on their phones. It seemed like the prospect of civil war had woken up the capital of the country and sent all of the people in the city frantically scrambling in response to this looming catastrophe. A number of them were not making any attempt at multitasking by working and walking at the same time, instead they were clutching their heads or rubbing their temples, I assumed, in order to alleviate headaches. "This psychic thing, is it just you or could they pick it up?" I asked as I turned to Amie.

"Hmm," she responded as her own eyes started to follow the same humans I was watching. "I suppose if it's strong enough they could pick up traces of it."

"You said that it gave off this feeling of power. Why would it be coming off of the humans? They look more anxious than powerful."

Again, Amie shrugged her yellow shoulders. "I don't really understand it, but I guess with a large enough population there would be probably enough emotions to generate something like this. I can't imagine something else that could be giving off this kind of aura." Now it was her turn to ask something. "Why are you so worried about the humans fighting?"

"What?" I asked incredulously.

She gave me a curious look. "Well, if this human war is anything like the last one it won't last very long."

"When's the last war you remember?"

That gave her pause and she finally said, "Almost a century since I paid attention to one."

I could not help but grimace at that. "Amie, warfare has changed a lot. Humans have developed all kinds of weapons and strategies in the past hundred years. War is brutal and devastating now. No one is safe, that's why we have to get you out of here."

She looked skeptical but did not argue which I took as acquiescence if not outright argument. The only thing my companion said was, "Where to then?"

I laid out my thought process for turning to the sea for an escape route, ending by saying, "So we should head to Vermillion and try to catch a ship getting far away from here. There might be a blockade or something so the sooner we get there the better."

Amie got off of the bench where we were sitting and stretched out. "So, do we have a plan?"

I hopped off the bench and started to answer in the affirmative, when I saw something that stopped the word in my throat. Across the street, through the throngs of people, I saw three familiar shapes. "Oh no," I whispered.

It was Blackjack, Scimitar, and Club. The three Pokémon who had been chasing Amie. I recognized them from the devices affixed to the side of the Snorlax's and Scyther's heads, but they seemed hardened compared to the last time that I had seen the trio, not just from the scars that marked their bodies but also their eyes which were absent of anything other than a cold determination that sent chills down my spine and caused the yellow fur at the back of my neck and on my arms to rise up. The three of them were moving through the crowd, pushing through the crowd and ignoring the numerous cries of indignation that rose up as a response.

"Amie, we have to go!" I whispered harshly, still watching the trio make their steady approach.

She had seen them as well then, and it was at that point that two staring Pikachu tipped them off that they had definitely found their targets and their pace quickened. She said nothing, but rather to my shock she began to dissolve into a pink goo before reforming into her true form as the Legendary Pokémon Mew faster than I had ever seen her do so before.

As soon as her transformation had begun, Scimitar launched into an attack, her angular green form leaping above the crowd and coming down with a heavy blow of her scythes aimed at my head. Her attack took me completely by surprise, but instead of being sliced in half, the polished blades glanced off of a pink barrier that had appeared in front of me. I shot a glance to my left and saw Amie floating a few inches above the ground, her pink paws stretched out towards me and her blue eyes filled with a kind of determination. Then, with a sweep of her limbs, the bubble became a wall that pushed Scimitar away and into the now scattering crowd. The reptilian Pokémon twisted in the air and caught herself on the paved street with a snarl. The humans had been torn by the twin desires to see Pokémon fight, especially one as strange as the pink one that appeared to be a powerful Psychic-type, and their own sense of self-preservation, but as soon as a creature covered in blades was hurtling towards them they quickly decided in favor of the latter.

Blackjack and Club had made their way over to join up with their fallen comrade. He reached out a red gloved hand to help Scimitar up, but she swatted it away with the flat side of one of her scythes as she rose back up to her feet. The trio of powerful Pokémon struck fighting poses readying an attack, I responded in kind by clenching my fists, widening my stance, and charging the pouches in my cheeks with electrical energy.

The only Pokémon who did not seem ready to fight was Mew, who dipped lower from her position in the air and clutched at her forehead as the pink wall in front of me flickered briefly before regaining a solid state.

Something drew the attention of some of our opponents away from this odd occurrence as Scimitar and Club had turned their heads to gaze up at the sky to the east as a series of numbers appeared to run across the red glass of their eyepieces. Their Hitmonchan ally, however, was still glaring daggers at Amie and I. "What is it?" he grunted.

"The scanners are picking up another source of psychic power moving rapidly towards us," Club said, attempting to fiddle with his device with his large clumsy paws. Scimitar nodded in agreement.

"Whatever it is, it can wait," Blackjack said. "We have Mew right here and its powers are on the fritz."

His two allies turned back to look at us in wordless agreement and I attempted to think a question at Amie. She did not respond, so I took the risk and asked, "Is everything okay?"

She gave a slight shake of her head and my blood ran cold. The last time we had fought these three I had gotten trounced just by Blackjack. In fact, if Amie had not intervened, Scimitar would have sliced and diced me already. If her powers were somehow not working this was going to be a brutally one-sided fight.

"What do we do?"

She gritted her teeth as another ripple ran through the barrier she was projecting. Then, the barrier returned to its previous shape as a bubble encapsulating me and without warning, the slight pink Pokémon took off like a shot down the streets of Saffron, dragging the pink bubble behind her. We made it around the first corner when I heard Blackjack yell, "Scimitar, after her! Club, head towards Vermillion to cut them off! Don't let anything get in your way!"

I glanced behind me and saw that, sure enough, the Scyther pursuing us had taken her last order literally as she barreled through the few remaining humans and Pokémon that got in her way, even scratching up a few parked cars in her dogged pursuit. Amie, on the other hand, was flying low to the ground and attempting to duck and weave between any of the obstacles that we encountered, although my bubble bumped into more than a coupe vehicles during this madcap chase. "Amie," I shouted, "can you take us any higher?"

"Sorry Zeke," she quickly replied, "I'm doing all I can just to stay airborne."

I briefly shut up after that to let her focus, but after taking a look at the sky I came to a realization. "Uh, why are we heading east?"

"If this force or whatever is throwing off those machines on their faces then maybe it can help us lose them," she replied with a voice that sounded far too strained with exertion for a self-proclaimed goddess of Pokémon.

We only just made it past the outskirts of Saffron when Amie collapsed. We were almost to the suburbs when she decided to take a detour through a children's park, out of some desire to trip up Scimitar with some metal obstacles I suspect. The remains of the jungle gym and swing sets bore testament to the failure of that strategy. First, Amie's soft pink body seemed to just fall out of the sky even as she kept her momentum, causing her to skid through the grass of a sports field until she came to a stop. The pink bubble I was in lasted only a fraction of a second longer and I fell to a position not too far from her. Hearing her shallow and ragged breathes hurt, and I stood up and began preparing for a fight to hold Scimitar off while Amie recovered.

The green Scyther seemed to sense my intentions as she came to a professional if not graceful stop about a yard away from Amie's fallen form. "There's no point resisting you little rat," she said with a sinister grin as she rubbed her blades together in anticipation. "My coworkers already know where you've led me. I expect that they'll be here shortly to help secure your little friend. But in the meantime, if you want to die standing up I'd be more than happy to grant your wish." With that, she shifted her right foot backwards and spread her scythes and wings in a fighting stance. I had already begun charging my cheeks and was about to let loose with everything I had in order to buy Amie some chance to escape when Scimitar's head jerked up suddenly, all pretense of combat readiness vanishing in a moment, and I followed suit.

Above the field was a powerful feline creature, with skin colored a sickly gray save for a purple underbelly. As it descended to the ground, I noticed that it was tall, about the size of an adult human and its spindly arms seemed oddly matched to its powerful legs. A tube ran out of the back of its head to its back and its face was empty and expressionless. This strange creature touched down on the balls of its feet before lowering itself down to take a closer look at Amie.

"Get away from her," I cried and made a lunge for it. The creature did not look even dignify me with a look, but rather gave a gentle but swift downward swipe of one of its three-fingered hands that sent me face first into a mouthful of grass and dirt. I spat the foreign substances out, but any attempt to get up was being resisted by an invisible force keeping me down. Its attention was focused entirely on Amie who seemed to shudder more and more violently the closer that the creature got to her. When it touched her however, her struggling stopped and her body went nearly limp.

Are you Mew? I heard a deep masculine voice echo in my head, much louder than anything Amie had ever used.

Yes, came the weak reply.

I am Mew too.

[Kentucky Fried Torchic]

Chapter Fifteen
All of us were silent. Scimitar’s anger now appeared to be tinged with an undercurrent of confusion and Amie looked like she was going to throw up at any second, although whether this was because of this strange new foe’s announcement or the effect that close proximity to him was having on her body I could not say. As for myself, I had managed to pull myself back onto my feet after the towering creature pushed me into the ground of the park with a wave of psychic energy. I tried to catch Amie’s attention, but her usually bright and expressive blue eyes were scrunched up tightly as her breaths came in ragged gasps. Figuring that the best thing I could do would be to distract this powerful Pokémon however I could so that my companion, my friend, could make her mistake, I began charging my cheeks with electricity, ignoring the lingering buzz in the back of my head that seemed to be a symptom of the psychic Pokémon who had seized Amie’s sheer power.

Before I could unleash so much as a single spark, however, a sound broke through the eerie quiet of the scene. A beaten-up truck pulled jerkily into the open area of the park. Behind the wheel was Blackjack the Hitmonchan and in the flatbed sat Club the Snorlax. As the vehicle lurched to a stop, the former pulled himself out of the cabin and the latter crawled over the side, causing the vehicle to lean perilously to one side and the metal to whine under the weight and strain being exerted on it. “Scimitar, report!” Blackjack barked as he and Club rushed to their comrade’s side, the heavy Normal-type fiddling with the red device affixed to the side of his head which was now beeping frantically and urgently.

“This…Pokémon,” Scimitar grunted, hesitating a bit at what to term the stranger before all of us I thought, “calls himself ‘Mewtwo’. He’s a powerful psychic. Its driving my scanner crazy.”

“Yeah, mine won’t shut up,” Club muttered as he delivered a smack to the still beeping metal, glass, and plastic contraption that he wore.

Blackjack absentmindedly rubbed one of his red gloves at the side of his head where he had worn his own scanner before I had destroyed it, all the while keeping his glare trained on the gray and purple Pokémon that held Amie in his strange three-fingered grip. This odd creature watched the discussion among the trio with a look of idle curiosity, its expression betraying nothing. “Why does it have our Mew?” the tan Fighting-type finally said to the others.

“Because he grabbed him, Blackjack,” the Scyther replied with a roll of her eyes.

“Thank you for your contribution, Scimitar,” the Hitmochan said with a hard edge in his voice. “Let me try again. Why does it still have our Mew?”

Getting the hint, both Scimitar and Club began to fan out to better surround the Pokémon holding Mewtwo. Blackjack headed up the middle and dropped into a fighting stance. “Drop the Mew, or prepare to fight,” he said in a tone that conveyed all of the interest of a disinterested bureaucrat.

Can we do both? the creature’s voice echoed in my mind with a kind of vacant disinterest before Mewtwo tossed Amie toward me with a whip-like flick of his wrist. I caught her in my arms, but the force of her body hitting mine still sent me tumbling over, but at least I cushioned Amie’s pink-furred body with my own. I have seen so many of these so-called Pokémon battles, Mewtwo’s telepathic broadcast continued as he dropped into a stance that mimicked Blackjack’s, and I would very much like to try one out for myself.

“You’ve never been in a Pokémon battle?” Scimitar asked incredulously.

Club grinned at the news however. “Good,” the Snorlax rumbled, “he’ll be a fun main course.”

Blackjack’s own countenance betrayed some mirth as well. “Then please let us be the first to introduce you to a world of pain!”

With that, the three powerful Pokémon launched themselves at Mewtwo. Scimitar with her scythes gleaming menacingly, Club licking his lips as his massive bulk ran forward to meet his foe, and Blackjack with one fist pulled back ready to deliver a devastating haymaker. Instead of meeting the psychic Pokémon, however, the trio’s respective assaults fizzled out as their target had used his powerful legs to leap high up in the air. My turn, was all Mewtwo said telepathically as he held up one of his hands and a small black sphere, about the size of a baseball, that crackled with streams of blue electricity appeared between his three digits. With an unnerving silence, his whole body dipped forward as the gray and purple Pokémon dunked the ball of sinister energy at the ground where he had been standing just moments before.

Despite the small size of the missile, the effect was tremendous. A powerful explosion rocked the whole field, leaving my ears ringing. When the dust had cleared a little bit, I saw a crater of shocking size and depth, centered on where the black sphere had made it impact. Blackjack, Club, and Scimitar had all been thrown backwards by the explosion and looked to be not only bruised and scuffed up by the force of Mewtwo’s attack but also dazed at the sheer power this Pokémon who claimed no prior battling experience had wielded. Blackjack was trying to shout something, but being all that much closer to the detonation must have left their senses of hearing even more damaged than mine which was coming back slowly. The Hitmonchan was yelling over and over again, “Get the Mew and retreat! Get the Mew and retreat!” When the message failed to be conveyed verbally, he caught the other dazed Pokémon’s sights and gestured to them with his long arms in a series of complicated gestures. Both Scimitar and Club nodded in response although the latter seemed less sure on his feet than the former.

The trio began to advance on Amie and I so I once again began charging my red cheek pouches with electricity. They did not get more than a few yards away, however, when Mewtwo’s voice echoed in my head again, No, we are not finished yet. Now back on the ground the powerful creature extended his spindly arms and made a quick tugging motion, pulling his opponents into a makeshift arena formed by the crater. They landed in a crumpled heap and, in spite of my biological instincts screaming at me to get out of there as fast as possible, I crept closer to see what was about to transpire.

The trio managed to disentangle themselves and resume their combat stances, but the cockiness was gone. Instead their faces looked worried, with eyes darting around in search of an exit. Mewtwo cocked his head at this change in attitude. Are you not enjoying yourselves? he asked with a loud telepathic broadcast. I tried taking it easy on you, but if you would rather I finish this quickly I can oblige.

With that, the psychic Pokémon curled his strange hands into fists and widened his powerfully-built legs. He lowered his head and began to shiver. A wave of invisible force pushed out from the center of the crater where Mewtwo stood, sending another flurry of dust flying, laying all of the blades of grass in the field flat, and nearly knocking me off of my feet. The eyepieces that Scimitar and Club were wearing began to beep even more frantically than they had been before with smoke rising out of their interiors. Finally, Amie’s eyes opened suddenly and she jerked upwards from my arms where I had been cradling her. All of these events occurred in a rapid string that made it seem like everything was happening all at once, all the events overlapping and building off one another to add to the sense of something being horribly wrong in the air. But things were only about to get much worse

Simultaneously, the scanners exploded in fire and smoke, showering the left side of their wearers’ faces in glass and metal fragments, including, most horribly, both of their left eyes. Both the Scyther and the Snorlax screamed, first in surprise and then in agony, as the malfunctioning machines ravaged their visages. The final member of the group could only watch in horror as his allies’ doubled over in pain with blood pouring from their wounds. The lean green insectoid Pokémon was uttering a string of curses without any force behind them and the larger mammalian was only moaning in horror as his clumsy paws clutched at the crimson-streaked wounds on his face. Even in the moment, underneath my own dread, I was working through what this meant. Those devices had not only been designed to sense psychic energy being given off, but were probably specifically calibrated to handle the amount of power given off by the Legendary Pokémon Mew. But even when Amie had been overcome with emptiness and handily defeated the trio, their scanners had not overloaded and been destroyed. All of this pointed to a very unsettling conclusion that this Pokémon calling himself Mewtwo could be far stronger than the psychic who I held in my arms.

“Zeke,” she whispered softly. “What is happening?” She shifted away from my grasp but fell back towards me when she could not keep her balance on her own. “There’s too much energy in the air right now. It’s not right. I can’t see.”

Words did not come to me. How was I supposed to convey the scene playing out behind her in the crater below? Even as I struggled with words, I saw the Mewtwo approach the battered and broken Pokémon. Strange, he broadcast, I did not even have to launch an attack before two of you fell. I thought that Pokémon with your level of experience would have proved more of a challenge. With slow, measured strides, the gray and purple brute stepped closer and closer to Blackjack. The Hitmonchan was keeping up his gloved fists in the barest pretense of being ready for a fight, but his face and tired eyes betrayed that he had already been beaten. The Mewtwo reached up one hand and touched the tan Pokémon’s forehead, meeting no resistance until contact was made. At the touch of the bulbous digits, Blackjack shuddered involuntarily and his fists rose weakly to try and bat away the Mewtwo’s limb, but quickly dropped to his sides. You’re being lied to, the psychic said telepathically somehow managing to convey this thought with all of the interest of someone describing the weather.

“Who are you?” Blackjack spat out through gritted teeth.

My creators dubbed me “Nemesis”, the Mewtwo replied, still broadcasting with the same bored tone, but it is not important. With that, the strange Pokémon removed his hand from Blackjack’s forehead, causing the Fighting-type Pokémon to crumble to the ground in an inglorious heap. Now which one of you shall I play with first?

“Amie,” I whispered with as much urgency as I could, “are you feeling okay to move?”

“I can push myself a little more,” she replied after a worryingly long pause.

The way she said that did not exactly inspire confidence, but our best chance to escape might be when this terrifying Pokémon, Nemesis apparently, decided to “play” with one of the Pokémon he had at his mercy, although I shivered at the thought of what that would entail. “On my mark,” I said, “we run, okay?”

Amie nodded her pink head, and I turned my attention back to the drama unfolding below.

Nemesis was now alternating between looking at Scimitar and Club. The former seemed more formidable despite her injuries, while the other Pokémon was sitting on the ground still groaning in pain. It was the latter that the Mewtwo decided to approach. As he stepped closer, the Normal-type shot his head up and opened his mouth in an attempt to launch a stream of flame at his tormentor. No sooner had the first licks of fire emerged from his mouth that the psychic Pokémon held out his hand and, with a gentle flick, pushed the flame back inside of Club, blocking his mouth as the Snorlax began to sweat and scream silently. Exhausted at the counter-attack to his last-ditch effort at saving himself, Club fell over on his side, looking vacantly ahead, looking for all intents and purposes to have given up the ghost.

As the Mewtwo loomed over his fallen victim and examined him with the curiosity of a child, I whispered to Amie, “Now.”

She levitated out of my arms and surrounded us both with a protective pink sphere just as Nemesis psychically directed Club into the air with one arm as he idly broadcast, I wonder what you look like inside-out. We shot off to the east, and I had the choice of focusing more on the pained expression on Amie’s face as she propelled us forward less by her telekinetic gifts and more by sheer willpower or on the screams of Club as the latest round of torment proved that there was still some part of him alive after all, or at least for now. Both of these were horrible to be a witness too, but both were inescapable. Even after we had gotten as far away as Amie’s remaining strength could take us, the miserable sound of a mutilated and burned Snorlax being flayed alive still echoed in my head.