Mewtwo left Gary to grasp his fist in celebration of their encounter; he was not interested in a session of postcoital mutual congratulation. Instead, contemplating the aftermath of his annihilation of Ash, he abandoned the group and headed into the forest. Drifting under his own psychic energies, he found himself raising his eyes toward the broad-leefed trees. Above him and about him they stretched, quietly persisting in ignorance of everything but sunlight, soil, and clichéd descriptions of nature. They were old and untouched enough to have become monuments unto themselves, reaching dozens of feet into the air and advancing up the gentle incline along which Mewtwo ascended. He slowed, then gingerly touched his feet to the ground and started physically walking. Carefully, he picked his way through branches, over rocks, around scrub. He fought the impulse to telekinetically brush aside the branches that interfered with his meandering, arbitrary progress. Rather, without thinking about why he chose to do so, he tried using the meat of his limbs to clear his path. He heard the sound of a stream in the distance, and decided to angle toward it.
Eventually, he reached a clearing: a small ellipse of dirt and leaves, dominated by a protrusion of limestone jutting forth several feet from the earth, surrounded by the old beech and elm and oak forestry as far as he could see. He saw that the stream he had been looking for passed through the clearing, a couple feet wide and a couple inches deep, carving its own space through the forest. He walked to the stream and crouched next to it, looking at the tiny whorls of water as they passed over the small rocks underneath. He stepped into the cool water, closed his eyes, focused on the feeling of the rocks underneath his tender feet. His feet, of course, were not hardened by decades of supporting the weight of the rest of his flesh. As Mewtwo avoided the few rocks whose sharp edges had not been worn away by the eternal caress of the stream, he enjoyed the novel sensations of cool stone on his soles.
After some minutes of this new experience, Mewtwo elected to climb onto the rock and sit. He looked out upon the clearing, then closed his eyes and looked within himself.
It was to the sight of a cross-legged Mewtwo perched on a stone that Erika emerged from the forest. Breathing heavily, sweating enough to have necessitated the makeshift creation of an aperture in her kimono to expose her flesh to the cool air of the forest, she exclaimed expaseratedly at the sight of Mewtwo.
"So there you are," she said, putting her hands on her knees and catching her breath.
Mewtwo opened one eye, then another. "So I am," he replied. He looked her up and down, felt stirrings within him, mentally registered the incongruity of Erika's sturdy hiking boots with the rest of her attire.
"I've been searching for you," she said. "The others have too, actually. I'm glad I got to you first. What have you been doing?"
He took some time before replying. "Not a great deal," he admitted. "It is…calmer, here."
Erika thought about that and looked away from Mewtwo toward the stream. She took her boots off, stepped into it and sighed with relief. It was shallow enough for her to strip nude and lie down in it, so she did. Mewtwo smiled. He climbed down and lied next to her, then set his hand on hers. Together, they remained still and silent.
The tranquility did not last indefinitely. The pleasure of Mewtwo's hand on Erika's led him to inveigle his arm under her head and cradle her shoulder. Drawn closer, Erika cautiously rolled over (ignoring the pebbles' minute jabs and jostles) and curled up and pressed warmly into Mewtwo's side.
This pleasant re-eruption of life into Mewtwo's brief isolation kindled a smouldering tempest of burning stormwinds deep within him, though slowly. He lifted the two of them into the air, above the river, and listened to the accumulated water on their bodies succumb to gravity and return to the flow from which they came. Erika started in surprise, then smiled and ran her fingers along Mewtwo's chest.
When Mewtwo shifted his arm down from Erika's shoulders to her back to the small of her back to her butt, Erika bucked in the air. Awkwardly, charmingly, she splayed her legs out and stretched her toes, curving her feet down in a bodywide flex. Once she regained control, she reciprocated by turning herself around. She pushed off Mewtwo's thighs with her feet to rotate herself in midair, sliding her legs up toward Mewtwo's face and her torso toward his midregion.
Yet before they could begin, they were rudely interrupted by the belated appearance of Brock, Nurse Joy, Ash, and a sheepfaced Gary Oak. Brock's arms were crossed, rippling tangles of musculature virtually bristling with testesteroney rage. Ash had one hand hovering at his Pokébelt and another hovering over his anus; his tortured expression indicated that Nurse Joy's jury-rigged Pokécenter had only been able to heal a certain extent of his anus's physical devastation (and had proved nearly useless at repairing the mental wounds). The healthcare professional, who had served Ash even though he had no Pokéinsurance, was doing her best to glower intimidatingly while periodically flitting her gaze back to Ash, yet she was too adorable to be intimidating. Gary Oak hung toward the back, trying to hide his face between his cap and his collars.
"Mewtwo!" bellowed Brock fistfully, "We have come to attack you, to defeat you, to make amends for the grievous infractions committed again—"
"Keep your ugly fuckin' fight-pickin' ass out of my clearing, Brock," interrupted Mewtwo. "I've got a nice, quiet little clearing here, and I am to keep it nice and quiet. So let me make something plain," he hissed. "I don't like you sucking around, bothering me and Erika, Brock. I don't like your jerk-off name. I don't like your jerk-off face. I don't like your jerk-off behavior, and I don't like you, jerk-off. Do I make myself clear?"
Mewtwo punctuated his rhetorical conflagration by hurling a fist-sized rock at Brock's head. To his mild surprise, it didn't bounce, but lodged itself in his forehead raising ugly rifts of skin and gouts of blood. He turned to address the rest of the invaders and prepared to make himself heard over Brock's manly, baritone shrieks of pain.
TO BE CONTINUED
