"Speech"
'Thoughts'
\Wide-range telepathy\
It is said that the wing beat of a single butterfree can cause a hurricane half a world away. Now, if you think about it realistically, that's highly improbable. Not impossible, however. Nothing is ever truly impossible. Sometimes, that single wing beat of a butterfree can cause just enough force to start that hurricane half a world away. And, as everyone knows, hurricanes can be very destructive, sometimes destroying entire civilizations in a matter of hours.
This is that kind of story.
The setting is a peaceful village, with a population no greater than three hundred. It's nestled at the end of a peninsula, encapsulated and protected by the waters. To the south is a shipping route that is the main way to get food in the town. To the north, there is a winding road leading on for many miles to the next closest city. Still further north is a vast forest, incalculable in size, with a single, narrow road cutting through it to the next town. To the east and west, an expanse of ocean, many miles across, a treacherous seascape too dangerous for all but the bravest or most foolhardy sailor to venture into.
Day in, day out, the people of the town stay there, living their idyllic little lives in an idyllic little seaside village. Every now and then, a ship will stop by with supplies for the town, and the villagers will absorb as much information as they can from the crew, before the ship continues on its journey. Some people in the village take to fishing, sometimes out in the deep ocean on small boats. Of course, every now and then a storm will come in and take away people who were foolish enough to go out when there was a storm warning, but that occurs only very rarely.
That, my friends, is where this story begins. This is the wing beat of the butterfree. This is what will change the history of the world as we know it, and will destroy everything.
Probably.
Our scene opens upon our aforementioned village. Can you see it? Good. Now, turn your attention to the house on the easternmost point of the town, atop the rock stack just off shore. In here, there sits a sleeping, white-haired man, with deep age lines crossing his face. This man is known only by one name, his title: Ekisha. He suddenly looks up, his bright, violet eyes gazing out the floor-to-ceiling windows that encircle this single-roomed top floor of his house.
As he looks out across the ocean, he knows that a storm is approaching. Not just any storm, though. This kind of storm would be the kind that would destroy everything in its path, not the very least of which would be any boats that would be out. He knows it will appear without any warning signs, save the one that he would give. As he walks across the bridge towards the town, he staggers as a wave of pure emotion comes crashing down on him from the south ocean. Dreading what he would see, he looks over to his left, towards the south.
As he sees the swirling mass of storm clouds, crackling with energy, he knows that his warning would come too late. He also knows what the emotional wave he felt was: the last cries of a dying psychic, turned to pure thought by their sudden death. As he looks out onto the coming storm, he slowly sinks to his knees, uttering a single word.
"No…"
Meanwhile, on a small fishing vessel in the south ocean
"John, I have a really bad feeling about this. We should go back right now."
"Nonsense, Delia. There's not a cloud in the sky! We'll be fine."
The woman, now revealed as Delia, started walking towards the helm of the boat, intent on returning to shore before whatever was giving her the awful sense of foreboding that drove through her to the very core of her soul. "No, John, we should really go. Something bad is about to happen. I can feel it."
The aforementioned John on the boat looked at Delia, eyes widening in fear as he truly registered what he had heard. He knew that Delia was more attuned to nature than many animals, so if she said something would happen, it would. All he said was one, single, fear-laden word:
"Go."
No sooner had Delia started the engine of the small boat back up and begun to gun back towards the shore did it happen. With a bright flash, the entire sky was illuminated with lightning, outlining hideous shapes in the swirling clouds that had appeared from nowhere above them. Lightning crackled, and thunder blasted through the air as the strange vortex of clouds threatened to pull in their boat and destroy them. Then, with two sudden screams from the deck of the Kakeru, there was nothing.
Three years ago, on a small island in the Great South Sea
It was a wonderful sensation, while it lasted. I had given it the most amazing name, too: flight. Or maybe that was one of the words I got from the small pink one who I knew somehow… or was it they knew me?
Nonetheless, I loved how it felt: the wind brushing through my fur, the feeling of complete control over everything, and just how I could see so far that it seemed as if I could see all the way to space.
Then, of course, something had to ruin it all.
Suddenly, instead of among the mountains that I had known all my life – or so I thought – I found myself suspended within some strange liquid.
'Where… am I? This… This is not the same! Was everything before… just a dream? …Why?'
Faintly, I could hear voices from outside the liquid.
"Doctor, look at this!"
"What?"
"Its brainwaves! They're surging!"
"Let me see!"
"She's right!"
"Let's run another scan!"
"Its mind is racing!"
I opened my eyes once again into the liquid. 'Those voices,' I realized, 'they're outside! Where I must be!'
I felt a power surging through me, eager to do my bidding. It pressed against the glass confines of my small chamber I was in, forcing outward, towards the voices. Towards freedom. The glass of the chamber began to crack as the relentless force began to build up inside it, before it shattered, sending small fragments flying across the room I was in.
"Radio Giovanni's helicopter! Tell him what's happened!"
The voice of the one they called 'Doctor' cut through the clamor that ensued after the container was shattered. "Quiet! Let us hear its psychic powers!" After that, everyone turned towards me with bated breath, obviously waiting for me to… do something.
\Psychic… powers?\ I slowly formed the thoughts, somehow knowing that they would hear them as well.
This 'Doctor' person spoke to me, now. "For years we struggled to successfully clone a pokémon to prove our theories, but you are the first specimen to survive!" He continued, gesturing to a piece of stone hung upon the wall, "That is Mew, the rarest of all pokémon. From its DNA we created you, Mewtwo."
I shifted my eyes over to the tablet, with them widening in recognition. It may only have been a crude representation, but it looked just like the small pink creature I had seen before. That meant that, at least partly, that world I had seen was real, and they had dragged me out of it.
\Mew… two? Am I nothing more than a copy? Mew's shadow?\ I questioned this 'Doctor' with rising anger.
"You are greater than Mew. Improved through the power of human ingenuity!"
I turned back to him with barely disguised anger in my eyes. It was true. I was nothing but Mew's shadow with small improvements made by these… humans. The 'Doctor' person continued, my anger building with every word.
"We used the most advanced techniques to develop your awesome psychic powers."
\So, I am simply the end result of your experiment? What becomes of me now that your experiment is over?\ I questioned the… human… I believe I will come to hate that word very much… with my rising anger evident in my voice.
"Oh, our experiment isn't over yet; it's just beginning! Now the serious testing begins!"
He continued talking, but I tuned him, and all the other babbling scientists, out, lost in my own thoughts. 'These… humans… they care nothing for me… Is that my purpose?'
I looked up at the scientists, rejoicing over their success.
'Am I just an experiment?'
I could feel my rage building, just as I could feel the power I had commanded earlier building up inside me.
'A laboratory specimen?'
I remembered the wonderful place I had been in before they had brought me here.
'This cannot be my destiny!'
The power began manifesting itself, shattering glass tubes all around me, destroying whole swaths of the laboratory and its equipment. In a matter of seconds, all that was left of the team of seven scientists and their lab was a raging inferno, and the 'Doctor' person, cowering amidst the wreckage and flames. I began to levitate towards him, pushing all the flames that got in my way to the sides with my power.
"We dreamed of creating the world's strongest pokémon… and we succeeded."
I let off a huge blast of pure energy, destroying everything that was left on the island, and starting new fires so hot that they burned directly upon the bare rock of the island. I stood on the edge of the island, looking down at the waves crashing on the cliffs the island was built on.
\This cannot… no… this will not be my destiny!\ I declared to everyone in my vicinity. \I will find this… Mew that I was made from, and I will find my place in this world! This will be my purpose!\
With those extremely self-inspirational words, I flew off towards the setting sun, firm in the knowledge that it was the direction of my destination.
Minutes later, a helicopter landed at the site of the once-functioning laboratory, and a man in a dark orange suit stepped out, accompanied by a Persian. He gazed around at the destruction surrounding him, before turning back to the helicopter, and stepping inside. He looked over to the only other person onboard besides the pilot. He rubbed his hand softly against her pregnant belly as she spoke to him.
"We need to find him, Jonathan. For our son."
"I know, my sweet, I know."
With that, he gave the signal to the pilot to take them out of the wreckage, back home.
Ending notes:
Now, before anyone tries to eat my head off because I haven't updated The Pendulum Effect since March, I will say that I have got a good seven chapters lined up, and I'm just waiting for that on last useful review that will unleash the floodgates.
Okay, with that out of the way, I would like to introduce my new story: Ripples! Basically, school got out recently, and I got twitchy, so I started writing this. I had absolutely no idea that it would involve Mewtwo (much less a nicer one), or any of the other characters. Heck, I didn't even know that I would make Giovanni (of all people) a loving father. But hey, the imagination is a fickle mistress, loved by few, but those who do love her are blessed.
Unless you happen to be a Japanese manga/anime writer and/or game designer who is just pulling more and more unbelievable stuff out of your butt just to keep yourself and your franchise afloat. Then people hate you and your imagination.
Well, this is dragging on a lot, so I'll just wrap it up now!
R&R, lest I come and bite your heads off!
Also, I'm reducing my required useful review count to one review across all of my stories for a random update on one of them, so more reviews means more for you to read!
(Edit - 15/10/14: Changed the opening paragraph because I felt that this idea works better. If you really must have it though, here's the original:
If you drop a small stone into a smooth pond, it creates ripples. They spread out from the place they originated in, getting weaker with each passing moment. However, this is not always the case. Sometimes, one small event dropped into the relatively calm sea of time can send out its own ripples, but instead of getting smaller, they grow larger and larger, until they form a near-unstoppable wave that crashes down upon the shore of reality, wiping it out.
So yeah, I felt the whole "hurricanes by butterfly" thing was better. And no, I checked, Butterfree cannot learn Hurricane. Because that would be awkward for my paragraph.)