Content warnings: Blood, death, not graphically described
"Sir? Did you hear me, sir?"
Nate came back to himself with a start. It was
bright. What had he just been... something to do with water? But the thought slid away from him before he could do more than brush his fingers against him. Someone harrumphed and brought him back to what was definitely the present. He was sitting at a counter across from some kind of clerk or other. Just that clerk-ish sort of look, nondescript clothes, tiny little glasses, severe expression. Definitely the harrumpher. And there was a piece of paper in front of him, a form with blank lines and loads of writing in tiny letters. "What the hell is this?"
"That would be your proof of ownership, sir. For the mightyena."
Nate's gut clenched. What about Mightyena? He reached down and found the clips on his belt empty. "Where is she?"
The clerk made no attempt to stifle a small, dry sigh. The exasperated look he sent Nate through his tiny spectacles was exactly the one a teacher would give to a particularly slow student, and a hot flush spread down Nate's back. God, but he wanted to wring this guy's fucking neck. "Once again, the mightyena is in the custody of Pokémon Control until an owner can be located or it is determined that she is wild. If you are her rightful owner, please fill out the form in front of you and we will release her into her care."
Nate looked down at the form and, without thinking about it, grabbed the cheap-ass pen sitting on the desk. It was the kind attached there by a chain, like anybody would even want a pen this shitty anyhow. How--how in--what in the fuck had
happened? Job gone bad somehow? How the hell would Pokémon Control even get their hands on Mightyena? Like they'd be able to catch her even if she was right the fuck in front of him.
He started to look around--endless counter, endless clerks, people seated in front of them each with their own documents, row on row of them off into space--when the man in front of him said, "Did you need help with something, sir?"
Right. The form. The fucking form. Nate stared down at the minute font. Look at all those long words. Fuck.
Okay. He could do this. Just needed to slow down and concentrate. Look for words he actually recognized. He only needed to get enough to understand what was going on here. Write down whatever bullshit it took to get Mightyena back. Sure. He could do that.
Nate squinted at the dense block of text, but it felt like it was sliding out from under his eyes, like it was all nonsense,
all of it. It couldn't all be legalese gibberish, right? Could he get an "and" or a "the" at least, somewhere?
He realized he'd been clicking the pen against the table, faster and faster the longer he tried to decipher the form, and forced himself to stop. Right, forget all that for now. Who gave a shit about the instructions? What was he actually going to need to put on this thing? His name, right? There had to be a line for that.
But none of the lines made sense, either. There were so fucking *many*. Why the hell did they need a fucking essay? What the fuck did they do with Mightyena?
"Look, I've got my pokédex right here. It shows Mightyena belongs to me, right? Can I just show you that?"
"You're welcome to submit your trainer's license as evidence under Section C, but you still need to fill out the rest. We need to make sure everything goes to the correct department."
This was insane. This was fucking insane. He was clicking the pen again and it was taking all his self-control not to chuck it straight into the clerk's weaselly face. The words on the page stared up at him, mocking.
Just fill it out. It's not that hard. You fucking moron.
"What... what's going to happen to her? If nobody comes to get her in time?"
"Well, sir, space at the Pokémon Control shelter is limited. If no one claims the mightyena, she may have to be put down."
Nate's head snapped up. "I--you can't be fucking serious. That ain't fucking legal, you--" But he remembered then, suddenly. What had happened to that (drampa?) they'd caught. Rampaging around, causing problems, and then they'd caught it and the pictures in the paper, it was just a sad crumpled heap. A warning. Pokémon that made trouble were put down.
"But..." Nate started. And then left it hanging, distracted by the possibilities playing out before his mind's eye. Mightyena trapped, helpless. Killed for fucking nothing, and thinking it was because no one had bothered to come for her.
The clerk gave a dry little sigh, the sort of noise that precisely conveyed his utter exhaustion with the entirety of the human race and most especially the member of it sitting right in front of him. "Just fill out the form, sir. We'll take it from there."
---
Mightyena came to abruptly. She'd been asleep? What? But what she opened her eyes to suggested something much worse than that.
Piled bodies. The reek of blood. Mightyena knew who must be responsible all too well, and her heart had begun to race even before she saw him standing there near the middle of what was, yes, a room. He was tall and pale and the only upright thing left in a mess of blood and broken bodies.
And where was Nate?
Mightyena surged to her feet, teeth pulled back in a desperate snarl, and hurled herself forward, roaring, "You! Where's my trainer? What did you do?"
Mewtwo turned slowly, and Mightyena slammed into an invisible wall long before she reached him, chewing and slobbering against empty air, every muscle straining to press forward, to rip past the barrier and sink her teeth into the clone. She shook herself, shedding dark instead of water from her fur, but the pulse of energy fizzed away to nothingness
"There's no need for such dramatics," Mewtwo said.
"You monster!" she snarled, barely able to get the words out for how her lips curled, every tooth wanting to bury itself in the clone's throat. She shoved hard against the barrier again, and it didn't give a centimeter.
Mewtwo gave her a slow blink, perhaps his greatest expression of derision. "Humans call us all monsters, you know. It's in the name."
"Shut up! Where is he? Where's Nate?"
"Right here." The clone made a faint gesture with one bony hand, and yes, Mightyena saw him now, crumpled on the floor right in front of the clone. Facedown, unmoving, blood spattered across his armor.
Mightyena remained where she was for one moment of frozen realization, and then she was at her trainer's side, Mewtwo completely forgotten, nosing at Nate, searching for any sign of life. "It's entirely fine," Mewtwo said from somewhere distant, but Mightyena wasn't paying attention. Nate was still warm, still breating. The blood on his armor didn't seem to be his own. If anything, he appeared to be asleep--if unhappily so, going by his expression. But no matter what she did, he wouldn't rouse.
"What did you do to him?" Mightyena rounded on Mewtwo, all teeth gleaming once again. "What's wrong with him? Why won't he wake up?"
"I am merely keeping it asleep for the moment. I thought it would be easier for us to talk without its interference."
"Stop it. Leave him alone! I don't want to talk to you." Mightyena stood over her trainer with fur bristling, yellow eyes furious.
The faintest crease appeared on the clone's brow. "Yes, I can see I was too optimistic about the potential for conversation."
"I know you," Mightyena growled from deep in her throat. "You're torturing him somehow, aren't you? Just because you didn't hurt him physically doesn't mean you didn't do something to his mind."
"No point in torturing this one. It manages that perfectly well on its own." Mewtwo's face had smoothed to blank again. Mightyena couldn't feel what he was feeling, couldn't sense the psychic pressure in the air around her, but she could see dust and pooling blood and bits of broken plastic edging ever so slowly away from him, pushed by ambient psychic force. "I'll be brief. I want to know why you claim this...
individual for your trainer. Out of all the humans in the world, why this one? I've been told I don't understand the
bond between human and pokémon, and to be frank, your particular case has me baffled."
Mightyena almost managed a laugh. "What would be the point?
"Surely you wish for the opportunity to defend your trainer," Mewtwo said. "It won't be hard, will it? As wonderful as the human must be?"
"Nate would die for me," Mightyena snarled, pride rising in her chest alongside anger.
"I don't doubt that." Mewtwo's gaze slid from Mightyena over to the comatose Nate. "But would he live for you?"
"What's that supposed to mean?" But no,
no, she didn't care. Mewtwo was insane. There was no point even trying to understand him. She couldn't stand around and play games with Mewtwo until he got bored and decided to kill Nate. That was what he always did. She had to figure out some way to get Nate out.
"You don't want to be here, do you?" Mewtwo asked. And no, of course not, she was never happy to find herself in a room full of corpses with a deranged psychic who wanted to play mind games. Where
was this place? How had they ever ended up here? Dead humans all around the perimeter, anonymous in white armor, here or there an unconscious pokémon. The middle of the room was scraped bare, blackened and pitted by energy burns, with Mewtwo standing at the obvious epicenter. She could imagine it well enough--a burst of power from the clone hurling everything to the edges of the room, crushing, shredding, leaving nothing alive but Mewtwo himself. And her, and Nate, and--no. Nate's belt was empty. What were they doing here? "And yet you find yourself in these places again and again. Why?"
Mightyena looked up and suddenly understood. The Viridian base, of course. Rubble from a half-collapsed ceiling, thick dust still eddying through the air. Back here again. (When had she ever been here?) "Why does your trainer keep bringing you back to these places?" Mewtwo asked. "Surely he know you don't enjoy it. All this... unpleasantness. So why do you keep finding yourself here?"
"Don't put this on Nate.
You're the reason we're all here. People like you! Nate doesn't like places like this, either, but people keep dragging us into them!"
"Oh? Is that so?" Mewtwo inclined his head the faintest amount. "So when you told your trainer you didn't want to be a part of Team Rocket, he left, didn't he?"
"It's not easy to leave Team Rocket. It took him a long time, but yes, he did." Or Team Rocket left him.
"I see. And if you told him to stop hunting me now, would he? Would he walk away and give up his chase, if you told him what you feared? If you told him you didn't want to do it anymore?"
Mightyena's lips curled back. "I may not like it, but I understand why he does it.
Someone needs to stop you. I'm not about to abandon Nate over something like that."
"How lucky this human is, to have someone so eager to make all his excuses for him," Mewtwo said. "But it's strange, isn't it? How much you've had to tolerate simply for the pleasure of accompanying him on his misadventures. But I'm sure he's given up just as much for you."
"Of course," Mightyena said with the edge of a growl. "Nate tries hard for me. For all of us. He got punished loads of times when he was in Team Rocket for doing nice things for us instead of what he was supposed to be doing."
"How interesting. And how easily that all could have been avoided if he'd listened to you and parted ways with the Rocket scum in the first place."
"Do you have a point?" Mightyena growled, her fur bristling. "What do you want out of me?"
"Only to understand. I look at a pokémon like you, who could leave at any time, so she says, and yet seems to see no future for herself beyond a human who's sure to get itself killed in no short order. Aren't you tired of being hurt? Aren't you tired of being... disappointed?" Mewtwo's eyes narrowed faintly. "Is what you want for yourself really to keep cleaning up some human's messes?"
"What is this?" Mightyena snarled. "What are all these questions?" And then she realized--a distraction, obviously. She'd fallen for it. She'd fallen for it even knowing, even realizing the clone was doing this. She shot a desperate look at Nate, and he was still asleep, still breathing, still frowning into some bad dream. She couldn't forget about him. She widened her stance, glaring hatefully up at Mewtwo. "Get out of here. Leave me alone. Leave both of us alone!"
"Yes. I can see we aren't getting anywhere." Mewtwo took a slow look around the room, brilliant purple eyes roving back and forth, unhurried.
"I love my trainer. And he loves me! I know you don't understand. You never will. Get out of here." Mightyena bared her teeth again, for whatever good it would do. What could she do against someone like Mewtwo? What could anyone do?
"Yes. It's clear we aren't about to understand each other," Mewtwo said. "I have work to do." He flicked a finger, and the wall caved, then tore, metal shell peeling back to show darkness beyond. Mewtwo started towards the new opening, calm and unhurried. "You can keep your love, little puppy," he said as he went along. "But what about your life?"
"And don't come back!" Mightyena yelled after him, then subsided with a frustrated growl. There was no point. What she needed to focus on now was getting both of them out of here.
Out of here... and into what? Why did they come here in the first place? Was there any way out that didn't just lead to another pile of bodies.
The dark hole the clone had disappeared through was the only opening she could see, and she was
not going there. She wanted out. She didn't want to keep waking up like she had, wondering what had happened, wondering if Nate was alive or dead.
He was still sleeping, if that was really what it was. She couldn't worry about that now. She couldn't worry about what would come after. If all roads led back here again. If that's what being with Nate really meant.
This one tortures itself perfectly well on its own. Mightyena bared her teeth at nothing and set out to walk the room's grisly perimeter, looking for a way out.
---
This was stupid. This was fucking stupid. Nate stared down at the innocuous sheet of paper in front of him. This wasn't fucking
hard, he just needed to get a fucking
grip.
No good. His head was jangling and his heart was pounding and he couldn't even make out the letters in front of him, much less the whole of the words. No fucking good.
Desperate, Nate threw a look over his shoulder. Fuck this. He just needed to get out of here, go find wherever they were keeping Mightyena, bust in there and get her out. Without no fucking
paperwork involved.
Oh, great, there was a line of people standing behind him, waiting for their turn at the asshole across the counter. Just fucking swell. But no sign of a
door or nothing, no way out of this shithole. Just row on row of desks, chairs, people, paperwork. Where the hell was this place, anyway? How had Mightyena gotten--
"Are you done?" the woman behind him in line asked, and he shot her a glare and swung back around to face the counter again, hot anger rising in his chest. Okay, fine, the form. The fucking
form.
One word at a time. He was going to get this one word at a time.
He wasn't going to do this. He wasn't going to have, have a fucking breakdown over a fucking sheet of paper in front of all these fucking
pricks.
"Is there some sort of problem?" the clerk asked, and Nate squeezed the pen so hard he was distantly surprised it didn't snap.
"There ain't no fucking problem!" he snarled. He just needed to
think! He needed to concentrate instead of thinking about how he was fucking this all up, again, and how Mightyena, she was going to die--she was't going to die! He was going to get this! She was going to die because he was too fucking stupid to figure out something any first-grader could handle, she was going to be all alone and she was going to
die and she never deserved to have someone like him as a trainer, she was going to die and here he was practically fucking
crying over a fucking sheet of paper.
"Seriously! What's the hold-up?" Someone said from behind him. He could feel the clerk's judgemental gaze boring into him. The guy had to be thinking this was the most pathetic scene he'd ever seen. Probably thought it was hilarious. Hilarious how stupid some people could be.
Nate looked down at the form again. The words were still there, as indecipherable as ever. The barrel of the pen was hot and sweat-slick under his fingers. What was he going to do? What the fuck was he going to do?
He wasn't really even thinking anymore, his brain a mess of fearful thoughts and half-realized plans, awareness of the pointed whispers rising around him, the unfriendly glances turned his way. He put the pen to the paper and wrote without any care for the lines, letters scratching and only half-there thanks to the shitty pen's shitty ink flow, "Please give her back. I'll do whatever you want.
---
What would Mewtwo ever understand anyway? He hadn't liked a single person in his entire life. Mightyena knew there were going to be difficult times when she decided to find a trainer. That was the point, wasn't it? You looked after your trainer, and they looked after you. That didn't mean you both got to do everything you wanted all of the time. That wasn't the point. That wasn't a
bad thing.
There didn't seem to be any way out. Mightyena paced along the perimeter of corpses, trying to see any indication of a door on the wall. No use trying to smell a change in the air. The scent of blood and offal overwhelmed everything else. Even if she did find something, she'd have to dig through corpses to get to it. Her stomach churned, and she turned away from the wall a moment, grimacing.
Back here again. And how many more times? How long was she going to have to tell herself that it would get better, that Nate was going to find a way out this time, that they wouldn't have to go through everything again? He was done with Team Rocket. They could go, now, finally. Find something better. They both deserved something better. But she knew what he was thinking. She knew he didn't see another way out, only more of
this, and how long was she going to put up with it?
What else was she going to do?
Mightyena gave herself a shake and set off again, prowling, trying to distract herself from her thoughts. The problem was that she didn't want to be thinking about what she saw, either. There were pokémon in amongst the dead humans, as bloodied and broken as any of them but still alive, still alive, she was sure. Mewtwo didn't kill pokémon, although that wasn't the same thing as treating them well. How many of them were here by choice? And how many had been forced into this? She'd known enough Rocket pokémon who didn't have a choice in what they did, whose only options were to obey or die or something worse. She had always stayed with Nate by choice, even when he'd try to convince her not to. And was that better or worse? Could she really say she didn't condone what Rocket did, when she had been a part of it?
It was pointless thinking about that. It was in the past. Unless it wasn't. Unless Nate was going to find some other gang of criminals who'd take him in. Then what would she do? Would she join them, too, and go back to waiting for something to change?
There was no way out. No way but the dark portal Mewtwo had left behind. No one here but her and Nate. Mightyena growled and shook herself again. There was something wrong here. How had they gotten here, if there weren't any doors until Mewtwo made one? And Viridian Base... that had been months ago now, at best. Had all that happened again?
She was tired. Whatever had brought them here, whatever insane thing Mewtwo had been doing, she didn't want to deal with it. She wanted to go somewhere where she and the rest of the team could relax, finally. Not be running for their lives, not be fighting, not be worrying about being discovered. She didn't want Nate to be worrying about money or about taking care of them all. That was how most trainers lived, wasn't it? Traveling from place to place, seeing the world, meeting new people. Not hiding, not fleeing, not fighting one desperate battle after another only for the privilege of fighting again the next day.
Mightyena sat down heavily next to Nate. And now here she was, doubting her trainer. Mewtwo and all his questions.
This one tortures itself perfectly well on its own. He couldn't bear to see something good without trying to pick it apart, without ruining it. Whether it was jealousy or sadism or just some awful quirk of how he was, he was only ever trying to break things apart.
She couldn't let him get to her. Not here, not now, not when they were in such danger. She could ask those sorts of questions later, when it was safe.
How long had she been telling herself that?
Nate twitched in his sleep, fingers clutching for something that wasn't there. Mightyena looked down at him sadly. Neither of them wanted to be here, and yet here they were, once again.
She bent down and stuck her nose in Nate's ear, licked the side of his face, and this time he did wake up, instinctively pulling away from her tongue, grimacing. "Mightyena?" he said. "What's going--?"
But then he must have caught sight of the mess Mewtwo had left behind, because his eyes widened, his face going pale. "W-what? What
happened? Where are?"
"Nate," Mightyena said, but he pushed himself up into a crouch, not even glancing her way.
"What the fuck," he breathed. "That bastard. He must still--I can feel him!" He scanned the room again, even more wild-eyed than before.
"Nate, hold on a minute," Mightyena said. "Something isn't right here."
"We have to stop," Nate muttered. His eyes fell on a long gun, an energy weapon dropped by some other hapless human, and he made a lunge for it. (Since when had that been there? Since when was Nate wearing armor?) "That bastard, we have to stop him." He checked the gun over for a second, then got to his feet.
"Nate!" Mightyena said, and couldn't help the frustration building in her chest. "Hang on. We need to talk." Why was she expecting him to understand? When had he ever been able to understand like that?
"Come on, Mightyena," Nate said. He started forward towards the hole Mewtwo had torn in the wall, and Mightyena threw herself forward, seizing his arm in her jaws and dragging him back.
"Nate, stop! Listen to me!"
He did stop, then, and turned to her, looking slightly dazed. "I'm listening," he said. Then the room split apart along dark fissures, the blood and rebar vanished, and Nate was sitting down, somehow, at a desk, and there were people here, and it was no more real than the other room had been, was it?
"Nate? What's going on?" she asked, but even as she said it, she knew. She understood. (She'd been here the entire time, hadn't she?)
"Nothing important," Nate said, like she couldn't see his reddened eyes, the way he was strangling the pen in his hand.
Behind the counter the clerk gave Mightyena a disapproving look over his spectacles. "Pokémon Control will be along shortly to collect the mightyena," he said. "If you wish to have a pokémon released from their custody, you need to fill out--"
"Shut up about your fucking form!" Nate screamed at him.
"Nate," Mightyena said, and he hugged her around the neck, burying his fingers in her fur.
"Come on, let's get out of here," he said. "We don't need to do none of this bullshit." He was looking around for a way out, but he wouldn't find one. Mightyena was sure of that. The way out wasn't going to be through any sort of door.
"Nate. I don't think it's going to work. I think you need to finish what you were doing."
"What, this?" Nate glanced back at the piece of paper in disgust. "None of that matters. We're leaving."
"I think you have to. I don't think there's another way out."
He looked like he wanted to argue, but something made him hesitate. Maybe he felt it as well. Maybe he was starting to suspect what was going on. "I mean, I can't," he said after a long moment, the words final with defeat. "I've been staring at this shit for God knows how long, and it just ain't fucking going to happen. Plus you, I mean, you can't--you can't do this, neither." But he gave her a hopeful look, as though being able to speak in a way he could understand might somehow mean she'd know how these strange human things worked.
"No, Nate, I can't help you with that. But maybe someone else here can."
"In this place? You've got to be fucking joking."
"Just try, Nate. Try asking. Maybe no one can help. But if you don't even ask, you definitely won't find any."
Nate stared at her a moment, then looked back at the pathetic piece of paper on the desk. And back to her. Mightyena tried to ignore the way the floor rippled under her paws; she wasn't even going to look at what the people over Nate's shoulder had become, had only the impression of something darkening, spreading. "Try, Nate," she said again. "Please."
Nate gazed at her a moment longer, then turned back to the clerk behind the counter, something still reasonably human looking. "Look. I don't got the first fucking clue what's going on with this shit," definitely came out through gritted teeth.
The clerk's eyebrows couldn't possibly have risen further. "I beg your pardon? You're having difficulty? With the form?"
Nate's face flushed, and the tendons stood out on the side of his neck. "Yeah. Just tell me what shit to write and I'll write it. I don't got the first fucking clue what this says."
The clerk's face screwed up for a moment, in disbelief, maybe, or disdain. "Well, I suppose since you've finally
asked," he said, and then he broke apart in dark, creeping fissures. The room shattered like a mirror, and its shards dissolved away to nothing, leaving Nate and Mightyena in a blank and quiet void.
Nate sighed and ran a hand over his head, glancing down at Mightyena. "Don't know what the fuck the point of all
that was. I guess Darkrai gets off on humiliating people or something, huh?"
"I don't know about that," Mightyena said. The dark stretched on in all directions, but she doubted it would stay peaceful for long. "Nate, we have to talk."
"I know, right? Clink gets everything set up for us, and then like immediately some other bullshit comes our way." He sat down on the nothingness. "Come on. Guess we better make every moment count. Ain't like things are about to calm down after this."
"No, they're not." Mightyena leaned against Nate's side, and he scratched the side of her neck. "They aren't back home, either."
"Back home, huh?" Nate's expression darkened. "Yeah. Some vacation this turned out to be."
"Yes." Someday, they would get a break. It couldn't be like this forever. She wouldn't let it. "I know you don't want to talk about Mewtwo, Nate, but really..."
"That fucking guy, huh?" Nate rested his head against Mightyena's neck. "Well, I guess you got me stuck in the middle of the fucking void now, Pooch. Lay it on me."
And for once, finally, they had all the time they needed.
