Chapter seven, huh? This updates faster than anything else I've ever worked on. Mew's a smart ass... Damn, I hope I pulled this one off well... Just a note, you all might want to read Tales of Flame soon. It's really, really good and it's getting longer every day. Now let's go!

Anyone who's ever taken a psychology class, and many people who have not, will tell you that there are certain instincts ingrained into us all, human and inhuman alike. One of the most basic of these instincts is fight versus flight. When faced with something that threatens us, two instincts will set in at once; the instinct to flee to safety, or the instinct to stand our ground and defend what's ours. Sometimes it ends cleanly, without conflict, as both sides prefer to avoid confrontation. But other times, if even one party tends towards violence, things can get very, very messy indeed...

Everyone had gone into the city.

Well, not everyone. Mew was still with her. But the humans had all gone down into Goldenrod. Evetwo sat staring out over the city, watching the sun set into the ocean beyond. The kitten had told her that if she wanted, they could venture into the city after dark, but only if they stayed on the rooftops and out of sight. The clone still hadn't decided if she wanted to or not.

"Hey, Mew?"

Mew looked up from the grass she was rooting around in. "Yeah?"

Eve was silent for a moment. "I think... what they told me yesterday... I think I already knew."

The kitten's full attention was on her now. "Why do you say that?"

"I've been having these dreams lately, about a human child. I think it's me..."

Mew made a sad sound. "It is."

"You know everything, huh?"

"No, but I know that, at least."

Evetwo ran her tail back and forth through the grass. "I don't think I want to go into the city."

"Alright. Well, in that case, follow me. I need to show you the plans for tomorrow."

"So, let me get this straight." Even after thinking it over for a few hours that evening, Evetwo was still a little uncertain as to Mew's scheme. "We're going to wait for the train to go by, and then we're going to hitch a ride on top of it all the way to Kanto. And you can honestly say we won't get caught?"

"Normally we would, but right now the surveillance systems in the tunnels are down."

"And I'm to believe that you had absolutely nothing to do with this convenient turn of events?"

Mew became very interested in tugging at one of Angie's curls. The little girl was hugging the kitten to her. "Just call it destiny."

"Uh-huh." Evetwo stared into the little camp fire. Come morning, the humans would board the train to Saffron, and apparently she and Mew would stow away and go with them, although whether or not they actually met up in the city was undecided. Sea sat brushing Jolteon, the last on her list of six, and Eve wondered what was running through the electric animal's mind as the human tended to him. He had a dreamily content look on his face. Evetwo envied him. He knew who he was, and where he belonged. It wasn't fair...

"Eve!" The Pokémon's head snapped up. Cheryl looked at her strangely. "I've been calling you for five minutes now! Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Fine." Evetwo stood and headed for the tree line. "I'm going to get some sleep. See you in the morning."

"Ow... that hurts..."

"Quit your whining, Ray. It's your own fault."

Poochie opened one eye. Buwaro-master was dabbing at Ray-friend's black eye again, the product of being beaten up by the Eevee trainer. The Poochyena thought it sad that the young man had been beaten up by a girl half his size that didn't even have a type advantage. Growling softly to himself, the dog touched his own face with a paw, where the bandages were. He would have taken down the Eevee, and the stupid psychic, if that damn Persian hadn't interfered. The next time he saw that cat, he decided, he would bite it in the neck for sure. Maybe then it'd mind it's own damn business.

Poochie knew his trainer worked for an evil man, but that didn't matter to the dark puppy. After all, Buwaro-master took good care of him and Mudkip, and that was more than could be said for a lot of Rockets. Even Ray-friend wasn't as bad as most of his co-workers, despite the lapses in judgement that the human seemed to suffer when in the presence of the female of the species. Actually, that was something the two boys shared. Female problems. Poochie imagined that's what made them such good friends in the first place.

Buwaro-master finished taking care of his friend's eye. Ray-friend had been in a constant sulk ever since his humiliating defeat, whereas Buwaro-master had been quiet and introspective. Poochie knew what was on his mind. Whenever they lost a battle, his master would brood over what they could have possibly done differently. Poochie got up and padded over to lick the man's hand. There hadn't been anything they could have done differently; they'd been caught off guard. Next time, they'd just have to be ready.

Buwaro-master looked down at the little pup, and Poochie yipped and licked his hand again. The human smiled. "Thanks, little guy. Don't you worry, we'll get that thing next time."

"You're absolutely, positively certain we're not going to get caught."

"Yes, for the millionth time."

Evetwo watched, safely out of sight, as the train approached. "You're positive."

"I jammed a fork into the power supply, okay?"

"So you did have something to do with it!"

"Well, yeah, what did you expect?"

"And that destiny line was a load of bull!"

"Not exactly."

"But you just said you killed the surveillance."

"It was destiny. I was destined to kill the surveillance. Get ready to move." Mew's body tensed up like a coil. "Remember, wait for the luggage cars, they have no windows... NOW!" The cat shot out of the bush once the passenger cars had passed, and Evetwo followed, landing on the roof of the train only to go skidding back. She shot off over the back of the train, and then stopped abruptly when something seized her by the wrist. Mew had lassoed Eve's arm with her tail. "You know, you're supposed to try holding on."

The clone reached desperately for some sort of handhold. "Pull me up, damn it!"

"Yeah, yeah." Mew tugged a bit, trying to drag Evetwo in far enough that the clone could pull herself up. "You know, you're really, really heavy."

Evetwo clung to the top of the train and glared up at the cat. "You knew that was going to happen."

"I kind of figured as much, yeah." Mew's tail slapped the top of the train, and Eve realized that the kitten was just sitting there, not hanging on to anything.

"How are you doing that?"

"I'm psychic."

"I hate you."

"Now, now, you know it's not nice to lie to mind-readers."

Down inside the train, Eevee let the world blow by with little interest paid to the outside. Of more concern to her were the two human men not even half a car length ahead of them, lanky young guys in scruffy, nondescript clothing. Both of them had hats pulled down over most of their faces, but Eevee had seen, looking up at them as they walked by, a black eye, not more than three days old. The two Rockets that had been after the psychic clone. Now Eevee sat for all appearances looking out the window, mutely watching the reflection of the two men in the glass. If they started anything on the train, in such enclosed spaces, a lot of people could get hurt. Fortunately, the two Rockets seemed content to sit and enjoy the ride without giving anyone a hard time, for now, anyway.
"Evetwo... Hey, Evetwo... I know you can hear me..." Evetwo lay flat across the top of the car with her face pressed against the cool painted metal. She's been laying like that for the whole trip. If she raised her head, she thought she might throw up. Mew persisted. "Evetwo, it's almost our stop. Come on, don't ignore me. I know you can hear me. I can hear you trying to ignore me right now."

"Go away before I puke on you."

"If we don't get off the train real soon, you're going to get caught."

"Just me, huh?"

"Yep. Just you. I'll have bailed long before that."

Evetwo raised her head grudgingly. Mew looked... fine. The train might as well have not been moving for the tiny psychic. If only her own stomach could be that calm. "How are we getting off of this thing?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"Do I have a choice?"

"Good point. Let's go."

And then Mew bent down and viciously bit Evetwo on the wrist. The clone squealed and jerked her hand away, inadvertently letting go of the handhold that was keeping her on the train. Sliding backwards, she clambered for a new place to grasp the vehicle, only to go shooting off the back of the train. "Mew!"

The psychic clone landed, quite abruptly, on a very bouncy pink bubble. Mew glided over to her as she sat trying to get her head to stop spinning. "What? You didn't really think I was just going to let you hit the ground, did you?"

"You could have killed me!"

"I was in full control of the situation the whole time."

"I could have died!" The bubble popped, and Eve landed, quite hard, on the ground below. She whimpered slightly and shifted so that she was no longer sitting on her tail.

"I was right here, I wasn't going to let you die." Mew licked at the bitten wrist, and the pain ebbed just a bit. "You're family, Evetwo. Even if I'm not always around, I'm not about to let you get hurt." Eve looked away, her ego more bruised than anything else. "Come on, don't be that way. If I'd have told you we had to jump off the train, you wouldn't have been able to do it, would you?" The clone stubbornly refused to meet the original's eyes. "You wouldn't have done it in time, and you know it. You would have hesitated too long."

"You make my head hurt sometimes."

"You know I'm right."

"Well... yeah."

Mew did a little flip. "See? Don't I just know you so well? Now, you be a good girl and wait here. I have to go hunt someone down." Evetwo nodded numbly, and Mew settled onto the ground. Her whole body seemed to lengthen, and soon the Persian stood there in her place. The clone stared.

"How'd you do that?"

"It's called transform. Bloody useful technique, I can become any Pokémon I want to. Excellent camouflage."

"Oh... Can you teach me to do that?"

The Persian looked up at Evetwo with her head tilted to one side before shaking her head. "Nope. Won't work. You'd never be able to do it."

It wasn't the answer Eve had expected. "Why the hell not? Anything you can do, I should be able to do, too!"

"Nope. You're DNA is too unstable. It'd never work." Persian batted her with a paw. "Now you wait here for me, and stay out of trouble. I'll be back just as soon as I find who I'm looking for." The cat started off towards the city in the distance.

Evetwo sat and waited for Mew for what had to be several hours. At first, she didn't mind the solitude. It let her think. Unfortunately, all she could really think about was her own place in the world, or if she even had one at all. After a while, that got to be depressing, so she banished any thoughts from her head and watched the sun go down. Mew still didn't return. The lights came on in the city as twilight gave way to night, and Eve began to wonder if maybe the kitten had decided to leave her until morning again. If she had, then maybe it would be okay to go exploring, right? All she had to do was stay high up on the rooftops, out of sight. So Evetwo stood up and took to the air, heading for the city.

For a while she stood on a rooftop on the edge of town, looking down into the metropolitan jungle. Then, slowly, she worked her way inward one building at a time. The tops of the highest buildings were dark; all the people who worked in them seemed to have gone home. Her goal was a tall, tall tower in the heart of the city. Eve figured she should be able to see everything from there. But she never made it that far, because turning a corner around a dark office building, Evetwo found herself face to face with the last thing she had ever, ever expected to see.

One of her own kind.

They stood in mid-air, staring at each other. Evetwo noticed right off that this one was bigger than she was. The features were more masculine than hers were. He was taller, heavier, more angled than she was. He gave off a more imposing aura than she ever could. And as his eyes narrowed at the sight of her, she realized that he was very, very hostile.

She turned tail and fled.

The little one was fast, but he was faster. Mewtwo darted across the skyline in pursuit of the smaller clone, determined to catch up to it, bring it down, and find out who created it, who sent it here. In his mind, there was only one explanation for why another would have ever been created- to defeat him. And of course, someone associated with Team Rocket had to have made it, but who? Who would remember how to do it?

The fact that the little one fled told him that it hadn't been ready for him, that it had been caught just as off guard as he had. For a moment, he entertained the idea that perhaps it hadn't even known about him, but he shoved any benevolent thoughts out of his head quickly. It was far better to be safe than sorry, after all. Better to let suspicion rule than to relax his guard and become captured.

The little one curved sharply around another building, and Mewtwo smiled grimly. It had just turned into an alleyway, cornering itself. He cut it off just as it turned to try and backtrack, and it shot upwards instead. He flung a shadow ball up after it, missing it by inches. The other took off towards the outskirts of the city, probably intending to take shelter in a real forest instead of a man-made maze of concrete and glass. Mewtwo went after it intently. Catch up to it. Bring it down. Question it at his leisure. Simple enough.

It turned blindly into another dead end, the buildings too close to fly between at such a rate of speed, and Mewtwo angled higher. This time when it tried to backtrack and go over his head, he met it from above and fired down at it. The blow caught it head on, and it plummeted down to one of the roofs below. Mewtwo heard a sharp wail of pain as the shadow ball hit. It was, to his surprise, distinctly feminine. The super-psychic blinked. Was that their plan, to catch him off guard with a little female and ensnare him that way? Team Rocket was badly underestimating him if it was.

Below him, the female pushed herself up and took off again. So, she had some stamina. But that attack and the resulting crash had taken a lot out of her, he could tell. He darted around another corner after her...

And was nearly hit by a ball of black light. The tiny female had tried to meet him off guard with a small, indistinct shadow ball of her own. He could hear it impact one of the buildings behind him as she streaked off around another turn, obviously hoping to loose him that way. Unfortunately, the pathetically weak female didn't seem to have the slightest idea where she was going, and, after a few more turns, had cornered herself yet again. And this time, high above her and ready for it, Mewtwo had the advantage. He readied the shot that would bring her down...

And stopped short as a small pink blur darted in between them. "Stop this now, both of you! That's enough!"

She'd never been so glad to see Mew before. Panting, gasping for air, Evetwo wavered at what had to be several hundred feet off the ground. The urge to bolt was still strong, but as long as Mew was there, she was protected, wasn't she? Evetwo took a shaky breath and winced. Her stomach hurt where she'd been hit, and her energy was drained from taking a shot with such an unfamiliar attack as... whatever that had been she'd ended up throwing at him. She wasn't entirely sure what she had done; she'd simply copied her assailant. She felt like she was just going to fall out of the air right there.

Above her, Mew was actually yelling at the other clone. "I can't believe you! Shoot first, ask question later, that's the story of your life, isn't it? She was running! Running, Mewtwo! I hardly think she constitutes a threat when she's more afraid of you than you are of her!" 'Mewtwo' said nothing, only looked to the side, and Mew spun on Eve. "And you! I told you to say outside the city, right where I left you! Did it ever occur to you, even once, that I had a reason for that? Did you ever stop to think that maybe I was trying to protect you from the likes of Mr. Act First, Think Later over here?"

"Sorry..." Evetwo was startled by how tiny her voice sounded. "I'm sorry..."

Mew stared at her for a moment before turning and heading towards the outskirts of town. "Come on, both of you. We've got some talking to do. Honestly, I've had to put up with enough crap lately without having to worry about you two trying to kill each other."

Evetwo grudgingly followed Mew, glancing uneasily at Mewtwo as she passed him before resolutely looking ahead of her. There was a coppery taste in her mouth and it still hurt to breath, but she decided to just go along with the angry kitten and worry about that later.

They landed maybe a couple of miles outside the city, in a thick grove of trees. Eve settled herself down leaning against a broad tree trunk and rested her head back against the bark. Mew moved over to her anxiously. "You're mouth is bleeding. Let me see where you got hit." Evetwo rested a hand gingerly on her stomach, and Mew nosed at the area, causing the injured clone to wince. "Yeah, I thought so. I would recommend not getting hit there again for a very, very long time, okay, kiddo?" Eve nodded as Mewtwo landed behind Mew. The kitten turned. "And as for you, buddy, what gives? You don't call, you don't write, I'd almost say you didn't like me any more."

Mewtwo stared at the little cat. "You are not the same. You are not the Mew that I first met." The tone of his voice made Eve shiver. Mew just looked amused.

"Sure I am. There's only one of me, you know."

"You are different."

Mew blinked, and then her eyes lit up. "Oh! You mean that! No, that's just something I can screw around with when I feel like it. Don't worry. It's still me."

Mewtwo seemed to consider that for a moment before looking past Mew and directly at Evetwo.

"Who is she?"

"Well, wouldn't you know, that's why I'm here. See, Team Rocket made this little girl with the data that you left behind."

"I left nothing."

"You left plenty, or at least enough for them to make her. And now, I need you to take care of her." Evetwo's head snapped up. Mew was going to leave her? With him?

Mew and Mewtwo were still arguing well over an hour later when Evetwo gave up and decided to try and sleep. It wasn't that she didn't have a few protests of her own; she did. She didn't want to just be dumped off like that. But, as Mew firmly pointed out, the little legend didn't have as much time as she needed to teach Eve everything she was supposed to know. Mew had others who needed her help; she simply could not be there to protect Evetwo every moment of every day. And every moment that Evetwo was alone was another moment in which she was vulnerable, at least until she learned to defend herself properly. Finally, the little female had to admit that Mew was right.

That hardly meant that Mewtwo agreed, though. Curled up into a ball with her back to them, Evetwo could still hear the two bickering. Mewtwo was dead set against looking after her; Mew was equally adamant that Eve stay with him, because who else could she trust with her precious, precious 'little sister'? Mewtwo said that Eve was a liability and would get him caught. Mew pointed out that she would be even more dangerous in Team Rocket's hands knowing as much as she did. Mewtwo looked Mew straight in the eye and said that he could easily fix that. Mew fixed him with an equally intent stare and said that if he tried, he would suddenly find himself suffering the worst migraine headache he'd ever had, enough so that he wouldn't be able to function. Mewtwo called the female a 'hindrance.' Mew said that she'd provide a good learning experience, maybe even teach him to be a little less selfish. There must have been a dozen more arguments that Mewtwo set forward for why he shouldn't have to take care of her. Mew shot each and every one down. Finally, and it must have been past midnight by this time, Mewtwo gave in. Evetwo would go with him, and he would teach her how to survive.

Curled up in her little ball, Eve felt ready to cry until she felt a soft touch on her shoulder. Mew was resting her chin there, looking down at you. "If you want, I can find your friends in the morning so you can say goodbye, okay? It's a long way to the Sevii islands, and you might not get to come back to the mainland for a while." The miserable clone nodded, glad, at least, that she could see the people that actually cared one more time. Mew nuzzled at her. "It's going to be okay, I promise. Remember, I won't let anything happen to you."

I hope I pulled that off... I really do... did I pull that off? Tell me I pulled that off...