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The Saga of Kings:
-.-.-.-
"Intersecting Parallels"
-v-
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Written by:
Vile M.F. Slanders
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Chapter VI: When Chronos Fell
-Personal Log of Doctor Fuji, Supplemental
Date: August 14th, 1523 post-Brink
Location: Indigo Confederacy, Kanto; Saffron City. Indigo's Department of Global Polarity Surveillance.
Subject: Remembering Alyssa
I always knew that she would survive the alpha stage. All it took was a single perusal of her genetic makeup to inspire me with no end of wonder.
Of all the children that we stole, Alyssa Vestich had by and far the most potential. Her genes were almost unnaturally fit, displaying the absolute minimum of protein discrepancies that could have harbored cancerous developments. Such healthy codes were scarce at mankind's zenith, and in this age of our endangerment, such codes are even fewer in occurrences and are valued as all the more precious. I was completely enamored with Alyssa Vestich's genetic profile. This single specimen's potential was simply too good to be true. It was as if God himself had delivered me his own scion.
When I looked at the medical records of Alyssa Vestich, all I could see was health and possibility, progress and achievement, prestige and culmination.
...But I never once saw a little girl. Not until I met her.
Three-hundred-and-thirteen children had come to me before her. Three-hundred-and-thirteen innocents who I had placated with lies and deceptions. Three-hundred-and-thirteen suckers served with smiles, accompanied by untold amounts of false reassurances and misleading mannerisms.
Three-hundred-and-thirteen frightened and impressionable children had come before Doctor Fuji to hear him announce their death sentences with a friendly laugh.
I thought that I had grown numb to it. I thought that I was desensitized to my own immorality. I thought that I had disabled my conscience in the pursuit of unbiased and unethical practicality.
And then I met the scion of God. Then I stood face to face with the very legacy that I had been dreaming of.
And it was then that I realized that Alyssa Vestich wasn't just an analogue of flawless protein enzymes and ribbons of unmarred genetic code.
Alyssa was a child. A daughter of man. A future mother. A living dreamer of mankind's future. A nearly endless collection of possibilities.
And so it fell to me to strip away every one of Alyssa's possibilities, until only one potential fate remained to weather the greatest cruelties of man.
Innocence. It's so easy for the old to bitterly laugh at the memory of it. But when living innocence is brought before the embittered's eyes…
...We can't help but weep for innocence's loss.
Alyssa was innocent. Before I twisted her, I can honestly believe that Alyssa had never once known hatred. Before I showed her the evil that resides within man, before I raped Alyssa of her innocence until a little girl was reduced to only angry tears and a wounded heart…
Alyssa was a true innocent. An unconditional expression of love.
A love that I stripped from her…
M2-S314. Alyssa Elise Vestich.
M2-S247. Alyssa Marie Holtz.
"The Alyssas."
I can't help but wonder at how those two became so close. There isn't an expressed doubt in my mind whatsoever that can contest the truth of my wicked part in their union. The lion's share of the Alyssas' inter-dependencies could only have culminated in such profound levels due to the inhumanities that I subjected them to.
But I never thought… I never even dreamed it possible… That such inter-dependencies could amalgamate as love.
Love. It was love. A child's love. A couple's love. Two innocents' love.
I knew that Alyssa Vestich was special. I knew that she had the single most adaptable genetic structure amongst all her peers who were similarly detained by the Mew-2 Project…
But when Alyssa Vestich demonstrated psychokinetic teleportation in the early phases of the alpha stage…
I realized that I had miscalculated just how special Alyssa Vestich really was.
It wasn't just my cruel genetic splicing that had triggered Alyssa Vestich's first psionic display.
It wasn't just Alyssa Vestich's innately superior DNA sequence.
It was Alyssa Holtz, and her plea for the girl that she loved, which had miraculously returned Alyssa Vestich to her side.
It was love.
None of the children were supposed to be capable of psionically operated quantum entanglement. That caliber of bio-EM reflex wasn't supposed to have been genetically activated until after the beta stage.
But I had forgotten to equate one major and prevalent variable into my formula:
-Evolution.
Pokemon evolution.
Their Para-Kingdom did not evolve on earth. Pokemon did not evolve with the same basic programming that all terran-indigenous life has descended from.
Pokemon evolve on the individual level. Rapid physiological mutations at the individual level is a genetic trait intrinsic to the Para-Kingdom. It is the defining trait that dictates the entire Para-Kingdom. It is the same trait that I have spent a lifetime chasing back to its origin, all the way back to the very first "Pokemon."
Mew.
The sire of all Pokemon. The creature that birthed the entire Para-Kingdom. The original life form that has been missing from the Pokemon fossil record since the Xeno-Proterozoic era.
The missing link between everything that is "Pokemon" and everything that is "Not."
The most unstable of mutants. The greatest of primordial anomalies. The very first God.
Mew.
Mew's individual evolutionary trait was passed down to all who descended from it. Even the species of static-form Pokemon, who lack the Para-Kingdom's dramatic displays of evolutionary bloom, still possess that one distinct trait.
And the scientific goal of the Mew-2 Project…
...Was to create the artificial transitional link between homo sapiens and Mew.
The untapped and untold powers of Mew's individual evolutionary trait, married to the indomitable human will and our species's unparalleled rationalism.
Two of the strongest and smartest creatures in all of existence converging their genetic assets into one perfect template.
The ultimate life form.
The omnipotent sentience.
"...Fuji's Children..."
Mew-2.
Alyssa Vestich.
I had never factored in Pokemon evolution as a possible variable.
I had neglected to include the Para-Kingdom's individual evolutionary trait in my formula.
It had never occurred to me. Me, the cartographer of the Pokemon Phylogenetic tree himself! I only saw children when my guilty eyes fell upon them! My guilt blinded me to the danger! I forgot that these children were to become the transitional links between the human species and Mew!
When Alyssa Vestich and Alyssa Holtz were forcibly separated, the two girls suffered no undue amount of distress. And just as incredible stress can induce the evolutionary cycles in Pokemon…
...That same incredible duress induced the individual evolution of Alyssa Vestich.
She evolved almost instantaneously. Although no physiological changes occurred throughout her evolution, crucial dormant genes required for higher level bio-EM reflexes were activated, unlocking the Mew-2 prototype's innate psionic capabilities. In the span of just a few seconds, Alyssa Vestich had transitioned from a helpless girl and transcended into a lethal monster. Alyssa Vestich had access to powers well beyond her own limited sphere of reckoning. Powers that could change the physical world in any way that Alyssa Vestich deemed fit. And what did Alyssa Vestich do with this newfound and terrible power?
-Alyssa Vestich put herself back into her stricken lover's arms.
Love.
Love triggered evolution!
When it was revealed that Alyssa Vestich had prematurely activated her higher level psionic functions, the entire staff of the Chronos Labs experienced a new elevation in our routine practices of caution.
I don't think that Alyssa Vestich realized it back then, but the entire staff of the Chronos Labs became subjects at her mercy. We didn't dare disturb that psionic beehive. We didn't dare upset Alyssa Vestich for fear of what she could potentially enact. Alyssa Vestich could have done practically anything to us then, she could have murdered us all in our sleep, or escaped the facilities with unquestionable ease.
But Alyssa Vestich didn't slaughter her subjugators. Alyssa Vestich didn't flee her prison. Alyssa Vestich didn't even try to perform one action or the other.
-But why not?
The answer to that question eluded me for so long. I initially believed that it was due to ignorance. Perhaps Alyssa Vestich didn't realize the extent of her capabilities. Or perhaps the premature genetic activation was only good for a single teleportation…
...Perhaps it was a combination of these two factors.
But Alyssa Vestich had her own reason for her passivity, and that reason soon became clear to me when I observed the developing relationship between two little girls. The reason for Alyssa's lack of initiative had been staring me in the face all along. That reason was a reflection of the same conscious desire that had triggered Alyssa Vestich's unforeseen evolution.
Love.
Alyssa Vestich and Alyssa Holtz were not merely close friends. They were far, far more intricately attached than just friends. The Alyssas were each other's lovers; lovers in the truest sense of the word.
Alyssa Vestich would not abandon her lover to save herself. Alyssa Vestich was so enamored by her love for Alyssa Holtz, that she chose to stay within the fetters.
Alyssa Vestich chose to stay, just so that she could console her failing lover until Alyssa Holtz finally died.
I never expected Alyssa Holtz to survive the early alpha stage. I knew what liabilities her gene code's projection had listed. I had already written Alyssa Holtz up for dead well before the alpha stage's first phase had been seen to completion.
But Alyssa Holtz held on, all the way until early beta stage two.
Alyssa Holtz held on to her agonizing life, just to stay with the girl she loved.
Alyssa Holtz almost made it to the amniotic tanks. Alyssa Holtz almost numbered as the thirteenth.
But even the truest love could only suffer so much of cruel life, before that brief and miraculous candle finally flickered out its last.
That was the first time that Alyssa Vestich had ever attacked us.
...The only time that Alyssa Vestich had ever attacked us, was when we tried to remove the corpse of Alyssa Holtz from her arms.
The beta two stage had reversed the muscular dystrophy that had plagued the M2 specimens in the alpha stage. Alyssa Vestich wasn't only strong in her premature psionic capabilities. The ultimate life form that we designed needed to be strong in the flesh as well.
-And Alyssa Vestich was most certainly strong.
She nearly killed us all. Alyssa Vestich became a mythical Fury. I remember looking into her eyes, those wet and accusing eyes…
...And behind the hate, behind the grief, behind the anger, behind the hurt…
...There was still a little girl. A little girl looking for an answer to the same profane question that has haunted mankind since our species first learned of love…
Why? Why? Why…
I could hear Alyssa's unspoken question. I could see the child in those eyes, begging for an answer. Begging for an answer to a question that no child should ever have to ask.
-Why must we lose the ones we love?
And a bitter old man…
...The same boogeyman who had robbed Alyssa of everything that she had ever known, or had ever hoped to have known…
...Her Devil, Doctor Fuji, told Alyssa why we lose the ones we love…
...And then Doctor Fuji killed Alyssa with those cursed words. I watched as the child in those eyes grew cold. I watched as the child in those eyes grew dark. I watched as the child in those eyes sank away beneath the heavy truth. And I watched as Alyssa Vestich died.
She was never the same after that terrible day. Alyssa no longer cared about us, herself, or anything else. She became hollow, broken, detached, dead…
The other eleven were nothing like her. Some struggled with us violently. Some never ceased to weep. And some of those poor souls had already lost every semblance of their former humanity.
They had all become monsters. Monsters of Rage. Monsters of Grief. Monsters of Madness.
And standing alone amongst them all, was Alyssa.
The Monster of Death.
I remember when we came for her at the beginning of beta stage three…
We had already suppressed and coerced the other eleven. Their dispositions and wild powers had warranted every adherence to the highest of precautions. We had exercised every circumspection imaginable when we transferred the other eleven into the Amniotic Lab. But Alyssa?
She was waiting for us in her dorm. She was just… standing there when we opened the door to her cell. Waiting for us with those hollow eyes. No one could breathe a word. No one could even move. She seemed so regal. She seemed so tragic. My Lost Goddess of Death, facing those who had come to take away the last of her humanity. And when our awe had stricken us all dumb within her presence, when our own minds struggled to conceive of her majesty, Alyssa stepped forward under her own volition, and those of us in attendance parted before her…
...And then Alyssa led us to the Amniotic Labs. We followed her into that field of fluid graves. And when we arrived at her tomb, Alyssa laid down within the last empty tank, before she curled up within that glass coffin as if she were about to go to sleep...
I couldn't watch. I couldn't watch them fill tank seven. I ran away. I fled the Chronos Labs altogether. And I kept running. I ran and I ran and I ran, until the ocean finally stopped me. Breathless, I fell onto the island's shore…
...And then a sobbing and embittered old man, looked up into the skies above, and begged to know:
-Why?
Alyssa…
I'm sorry…
...I'm so…
...I'm so very sorry…
-.-
He strode alone across the barren wastes. Slow and heavy were his steps, and as he walked, his serpentine flagella slithered across the dust behind him. Living chains dragged through the dirt behind this long lost and foreign analogue.
Home. He was home.
His home. The home that he had hated.
The home that he had destroyed.
Looking up at the blue skies, the ventricles on his face lengthened, revealing the eyes that hid behind his stiff and shiftless mask.
Was this really his home? The home that he had destroyed? The sky looked so different here. Blue. Why was it blue?
He stared up into that blue screen, the screen that concealed the stars beyond.
He liked this sky. This sky smothered those oppressive stars. This sky closed the vacuum of space.
Blue.
His vision shifted, and his gaze was lowered down, looking now to the flagella that had risen to meet his lost eyes. They were red, his flagella. Red. Why not make them blue?
And just as the sentiment was desired, so to did the shades shift upon his limbs, and the blue spilled forth from the roots in his chest and bled down into the flagella's red tips.
But then he remembered why he wore red.
A silent slump to his shoulders accompanied the transition, and the shades of his flagella shifted once more to that awful stain of red.
Red.
He looked into red dust before his narrow pseudopods, and softly shook his head.
Home.
He had destroyed his home.
He would destroy every home.
So he could never have a home.
A sudden trill interrupted his forlorn thoughts, and a blue bodied bird with white frilled wings flew overhead, singing its song of melodies to both the sky and the land. His ventricles sealed, closing those tired eyes, and he cast back his head to face the blue sky. He let it all wash over him, as he bathed in both the bird's hymn and the whispers in the wind. It almost sounded beautiful, this song. It almost felt pleasant just to hear it. And for just one short moment, his spirits were uplifted as this blue bird's beautiful music lessened the dead weight that he felt within the cold and dark of his core.
And then the music stopped. The ventricles of his face lengthened, and the eyes peered out into the sky. He loosened his flagella, and the blue bodied bird fell to the earth in pieces from the blood stained coils of his crushing grip.
Monsters couldn't make anything beautiful. Monsters couldn't shape music.
He staggered on without another thought, his gaze preying north as his eyes focused on the horizon. Dragging his flagella across the earth, he carried ever on, carving a serpentine trail of wet glistening red through the footprints that he had left behind.
-.-
Water. It had been such a long time since he'd last seen water. It had been such a long time since had he heard the rolling crash.
An ocean. This home had oceans too.
He had missed the oceans. He had missed their music. As his stumbling steps halted before the crest of land and sea, he lowered himself down onto the wet and cold sand, and welcomed the ocean's embrace as the waves fell over him. The water was pleasantly chilled and soft to the touch. The heavy waves drove him down into the scraping sand, before the mighty ocean lifted him from the grits and dragged him further out. He could taste salt across every inch of his surface. He could taste the ocean through his skin. But salt was not all that he could taste in this water. He could taste something more than just simple salt in this new ocean.
He could taste life.
Rising from the surf, he walked further down the shore. The waves would not touch him, no matter how deep he placed himself beneath their rising shadows. He wouldn't let the waves touch him. He didn't want to feel the ocean anymore.
And here it was. Frolicking in the briny mud.
Life.
More birds. More blue birds. But not the birds that flew and sang. These were birds that swam and warbled. These were birds that could barely walk on dry land. They looked up from their play when one bird warbled his coming, and at his dreadful approach, they all fled before him. Flailing over one another in their desperation to escape him.
They still remembered him. They still remember how he had killed so many of them. Their genetic code had recorded his many shapes. Their genetic code had stored his shifting colors. Their genetic code had equipped them with the means to detect his presence. Immeasurable generations had separated him from them, but they still recognized his form.
The monsters knew who he was.
The monsters still remembered.
The Savior of Destruction, who had been lost for countless generations. He had come back to them. He had come back to kill them all.
The water was stained red when his heavy steps violated their empty footprints. There were no more desperate squawks and warbles. There were no more terrified monsters. There was only the elapsing sound of the sea crashing down around him, and the coarse wet sand that grinded softly beneath his slow and heavy steps.
He left the ocean after that. He no longer wanted it. He was in a green place now, and the sky above was gray and dark. He started walking again, facing west this time. The green was familiar to him. It murmured against his legs, and rasped against his flagella. He could feel the sharp edges of the green all around him, and he could taste the life flowing from within them. But they did not harm him. They were not numbered among the monsters. They were not counted among the creators. He had no need to hate the green. And then the sky rumbled, and the first droplets of water began to fall. This too, was something familiar. This he knew even better than the ocean or the green. This he knew as the rain.
He hated the rain.
It made him think of her. It made him remember all of the rain that had fallen from her eyes. All the rain that he had brought to those sweet and loving eyes.
Rocks stood before him now, stacked high in a straightened row. To the north stretched on that line of rocks, and to the south was piled even further more. He knew what this was. He knew what this meant. This was a wall.
And only the creators could build walls such as these.
The stones before him disappeared without a sound or a signature that denoted their displacement from existence. He stepped through the gap in those walls, and now he came to stand within the creators' forbidden lands.
He knew that the creators didn't want him in their lands. The creators had outlawed him from ever entering their lands. But he didn't answer to creators anymore. He had silenced all the creators so long ago. And yet here they still were.
They were not the creators that he remembered. But that shape was most certainly the creator's shape. They had been shaped as such, so that they could give form. And the creators had shaped him in the way that he was, so that he could destroy all of their forms.
They did not know him, these creators. They did not recognize his intentions. The creators tensed when he approached them and the creators reached for the shaped spheres clasped upon their shaped belts, their expressions hardening into the creators' signature portrait of violence. These creators were no different from his old creators. These new creators too, only created to destroy. And now these new creators raised their arms against him, and bellowed forth their cries for war. But he did not want to fight these new creators.
He just wanted them to die.
And so now he walked through the new creators' blood, and dragged a fresh shade of red across his long and weary trail.
-.-
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She placed the last stone upon the pile, and then paused to look down at what she had wrought.
It was just a pile of rocks, neatly stacked in a short and narrow row.
There was nothing beneath the pile of rocks. Nothing but dirt and more rocks. And beneath those dirt and rocks?
There was still only more dirt and rocks.
She could feel it gathering in her eyes. She could feel it closing in her throat.
It was just a pile of rocks. There was nothing beneath those rocks.
There was nothing underneath those rocks, because there was nothing left to bury.
'...Remember…'
She closed her eyes against the tears. She did remember. She would always remember. It was the one thing that they couldn't take from her. It was the only thing that she had left.
And she would never, ever, bury her memory.
'...You deserve to be forever…'
But she was forever. She was forever lost. She was forever dead. And now she was to be forever alone…
She smashed the rocks, and scattered the pile.
This was to be a memory. A memory of the girl she loved. But there was nothing here to remember. Nothing left of the girl that she loved.
'...Alyssa…'
Her breath was tearing at the bind in her throat. She couldn't breath. She couldn't see. She couldn't stop shaking. She couldn't stay kneeling.
Falling down amongst the scattered stones, she laid down within her grave, and bitterly wept until the dreams came to close and dry her wet and lost eyes.
-.-
It was midnight when Alyssa rose from the dreams. It took a moment for her to realize that this wasn't some twisted delusion. This wasn't some living lie.
She wasn't in Fuji's graveyard. She wasn't a slave to the Doctor's vision anymore.
She was in a cemetery. One left unused for countless years. The lights of Saffron City blotted out the horizon, and the trees of the Gouge rustled softly in the warm Kanto breeze.
'...I'm sorry, Alyssa. I tried to bring you back home…' Alyssa rose from the empty grave, and wiped the fresh tears from her eyes.
Home. Those bright city lights were their home.
Home for Alyssa. Home for the other Alyssa.
Those warm and inviting lights were their home.
Alyssa took a hesitant step forward, and followed it with another.
Home.
Mother. Father.
Home.
And then Alyssa remembered. And then Alyssa raised her six fingers before her desperate eyes.
'...Monsters don't have homes. Monsters don't have parents. Monsters don't have love. And without you, Alyssa… I'm just an ugly monster...' Alyssa's eyes clenched shut, before she turned back upon those Saffron lights, and staggered further out into the forests of the Gouge.
-.-
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He stayed low with in the grass, and ignored the tickling green blades as they brushed against the rim of his vacuoles. He was watching them. He had been watching them now for quite some time now. They didn't notice the red figure hiding himself in the green, watching them as they played.
It was a monster and a creator.
A young monster and young creator.
And they were playing.
Playing with one another.
He had never seen this before. He had never seen a monster and a creator laughing with each other. The young creator was throwing a shaped sphere with a gasp of laughter, and the young purple and white furred quadruped was eagerly chasing it. He knew this monster. He had killed vermin like this before. He had once filled oceans with their blood, and raised continents out of their corpses. These were weak and common monsters. Monsters weak enough for even a child creator to kill.
Yet here they were. Meeting not as enemies like they should, but rather as companions.
He could feel the creator's love for this monster. And he could feel the creator's love reflected in the monster. He had never encountered a monster that could love before.
Was this even possible? Could a creator and a monster share love?
He knew what love was. He knew what it was better than anyone else, or so he thought. But here, he witnessed a new form of love. And this love confused him.
This love wasn't right. This love wasn't possible.
And that with that dismissive thought, the creator's joyful laughter ceased, and the monster's rasping breath faded.
And then they both fell to ground, dead before his feet.
A dead monster. And a dead creator.
They were still smiling, even though the glaze was rising to coat their eyes. As the muscles grew slack, their expressions began to sag, until their looks of joy melted away.
And all that was left to be seen was death.
Now they looked right. Now they looked possible.
Dead was how they should have been.
He would let them have each other in death, just as they had once had each other in life.
Dead or alive, they only knew of war-
He suddenly froze stiff in his own cold thoughts.
-War?
The child creator knew nothing of war.
And the child monster only knew of a war to protect.
The monster only fought war to protect his creator.
The child monster only destroyed to protect the creator he loved-
-Love?
Something twisted within him when he looked down at the two dead figures before his feet.
Something conflicted within him, fighting to be heard.
This monster knew of the creator's love.
And now he didn't know what to do.
The ventricles sealed upon his mask, hiding his eyes from the hateful stars.
Why?
Why had he killed them?
Was it truly so wrong, for a monster and a creator to share love?
He didn't know.
But he wanted to know.
The ruptured tissues within their dead brains began to mend, and he rekindled the sparks that fed the beating of their hearts. It was not too late for them yet. What he had taken from them, he could still return.
-.-
A sudden jolt jarred the boy and his Rattata, and they both woke gasping for their breaths. Panic clenched the muscles in their chests, while the dread of some horrible dream still gnawed at their conscious minds.
"...Skittles? Are you okay?" The boy reached for his quivering Rattata, whose eyes were wide and terrified, its gaze locked upon the tall grass not far from where they lay.
"Skittles, what happened?" The boy touched his Rattata's shoulder, and the rodent jumped in shock. Following his Pokemon's horrified line of sight, the boy saw a pair of lost eyes staring at them from the grass.
And then those lost eyes blinked.
-Sideways.
"Skittles!" The boy grabbed his Rattata, and then leapt to his feet. Cradling his purple rodent, the boy tore off down the road, screaming in terror as though some alien monster was chasing them.
But Deoxys wasn't chasing the boy and the Rattata. Deoxys was sitting down upon his stunned pseudopods, and following the boy's flight with his widened eyes.
The creator had saved the monster?
What anomaly was this?!
Deoxys's mind exploded with questions, questions that he couldn't even hope to answer. And then Deoxys shook himself free of those questions, and rose to his weary feet. Dragging his flagella behind him, the foreign analogue carried on with his long path.
But there wasn't any red stains in the footprints that he left behind. And when next he felt both the creators' love and presence amongst the monsters…
...Deoxys just turned from his path, and walked the other way.
...
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...
Red is the color of blood and war. Red is the color of Mars, the God of War. Red is both the color of violence and of death.
-So why is red also the color of love?