PKMN2K10

by Mr. Dynasty

After a crushing defeat, Ash returns home to rediscover his ambitions as a trainer. Friends and foes both new and old surround him on all sides, but can he find the way to forge ahead and emerge victorious, even as the world grows darker and ever more sinister around him? Language/Violence

25. Chapter XXV

Disclaimer: I do not own pokemon.

Chapter Summary: Sabrina's foray into the mind of Ash Ketchum may not be quite as it seems. As she delves into deeper secrets than Ash has ever shared, growing ever closer to the thing which lurks inside him, will she turn out to be the hunter or the hunted?

A/N: I appreciate everyone's indulgence/sarcasm in the most recent poll. Stay classy, FFNet.

---

PKMN2K10

Chapter XXV

"Hubris"

Her toil almost through, Sabrina sat quietly in the Ketchum Family kitchen, hands folded on the table and eyes gently shut against the pale sun-glow of what threatened to be daybreak.

It was a quiet, peaceful place, in Ash's remembrance of it. The distant smell of seafoam crept in right alongside the earthy scents of overturned soil. Together, they seeped in under the sill of the window above the sink, and lended a level of groundedness to the place as as he recalled it in the still hours of morning, when not even the Spearow had woken, and all you could hear was the gentle far-away shushing sound of the ocean, still soothing the earth in it's sleep.

Ultimately though, for all the viscera that Ash could recall about the place, his memory of it was hollow. The constructs of recollection that normally resided here were nowhere to be found. This was not the real place. Just a hollow memory of it, devoid of even the most one-dimensional pretense of occupancy.

His beautiful mother as she had been ten years ago, hugging a five-year old son to her hip as she tended to the domestic tasks unseen on the counter-tops above, one-handed, she was not there.

The gigantic figure of a father that had once filled the big chair at the end of the table closest to the back door and told stories of battles and adventures and daring-do, he was not there.

A tiny Chikorita that had once orbited the room strode on tiny hoof and about the son of the master like a son of her own, she was not there either.

Sabrina knew what those things looked like, just as he did, but they were not here because Ash could not fill this place with the ideas and supposition of his remembrance, in his current state. He was diminished. Weakened, both by her, and his miserable external situation.

She looked at the dull fragment of him, slumped in the seat, quietly inert. She wondered how someone so small and simple could have been host to something so big and important. Ash's drug-induced overload had caused a major brain-function shutdown. The light was on, but there was nobody home, so to speak.

It wouldn't really hurt him, at least not over the long-term, but with her psychic exertions, she'd turned the defenseless opening into a hand-crafted opportunity. She had assumed control here with the Suppressing the body and mind's natural ability to recover and lashing him over and over with disrupting waves of telepathic energy, she'd succeeded in locking him into this dream-like state. Hers was a dream from which he could not wake, until she allowed it.

She was nestled inside of his brain, the sole occupants being herself, and this husk of what remained of Ash's high-functioning intellect. All of his memory was open to her. From the most well-recalled remembrance such as this one, to the darkest, most abstract shame, she could see all of it, and he could do next to nothing to prevent that.

Which wasn't to say that he hadn't tried to deny her. Time and time again, Ash's stunted force of will had risen to dislodge her but she had battled it down, with minimal effort. In doing so, she'd driven Ash's emotional core, the cumulative parts of him that comprised his self-identity, to their shearing point. Through subversion and force she'd split them apart and routed them from the structured ego, forcing every aspect of Ash back into the territories beyond the primal mind, where complex urges and instinctual motivations existed alongside one another, without compromise and without negation.

There, in that mire of thought, was the origin of abstraction, spontaneity and creativity, but in such a chaotic slurry, those aspects would be powerless to mount meaningful resistance against her. She'd effectively rested complete

control of Ash's structured mind from him, and she did not need his superlatives to get in her way. There was still something of Ash here, of course, but it was nearly intangible by comparison, and certainly no longer Ash as the world knew him

The Ash before her, gently sleeping where she had left him propped in a chair, was nothing more than a guide to her aplomb exploration into his mind. A measly facet that was essentially powerless so long as he remained cut off from whole structure of "Ash" which was visible to the outside world. All other emotional qualities that defined him as a person driven into exile, Sabrina had, by design, left only the shriveled and pliant self-preservation instinct, Abdication. Divide et impera. He was her servant, her slave so long as she made assurances that he would not be destroyed, but he was a miserable excuse even for that.

Abdication was the absolute weakest facet that Ash possessed. Not because he was the least in standing, though he'd only very recently had his strongest influences over the whole, Abdication was in fact one of the oldest facets of Ash, forged in the hot crucible of his earliest years; the blackened coal left behind in the fires that had forged Ambition and Adventure, the two strongest facets.

Abdication was warden to all the things Ash felt he did not deserve, and could not hope to obtain, or reclaim once he had lost them. Abdication was the broker of all things relinquished, the two largest of which had been his friendship with Gary, once the deepest boyhood bond, and only now re-emerging under the custodianship of the facet Ambivalence as a rocky but hopeful venture, and the confusing relationship with his Father, now shared between the facets Abdication and Antipathy in equal portions.

Abdication was master over everything that Ash had ruefully let go of, but not forgotten. As such, he presided over broken things, old things, and unwanted things, of which Ash did not retain many. The cheerful disposition the boy had was no facade, and so though Abdication had made his power-play and grabbed for much, he controlled very little. Months ago, he had nearly swept into power, but now, Abdication was back at the bottom, and Abdication was all that was left to stand before her, of the many complexities of emotion Ash had at his disposal.

Sabrina watched him closely as he sat there, head lolling. Abdication, like all the other facets, did appear to be Ash, but different in striking ways. For his own part, Abdication was just a very shrunken version of Ash, rail thin, and having none of the verve or pep for which the boy he helped comprise was characteristic. His eyes were always wet and downcast, and he never raised his voice, barely maintaining a crackle of whisper. Abdication did not play at some delusion of gainful negotiation with her, though she doubted he would've been capable of such, even in the presence of all his allies. Instead, Abdication was lachrymose and sullen, and these qualities were not diminished in the slightest by his defeat.

The fight was over. Now, she knew, he would listen to every command she gave, rather than face a wrath she'd proven he could not overcome. It was a slavery of the mind deeper than any hypnotic surface suggestion even her most able Pokemon contemporaries might've been capable of. Only a weak facet such as this could ever be bent in such a way, of course, but Abdication still possessed all the capacities she required. He was still a core facet to the whole, and as such he was still tapped straight into the ego. Using Abdication, she could shape and mold the overall person just as surely as she could with any other. That was the nature of corruption, after all.

If she wanted to, she could plant any idea she chose, and he would internalize it as a core tenet of his psyche following this event, whether he actually wanted to or not. She could re-write the book that was Ash, if she chose to. Right this moment, if she said Ash is a Guardian now, she didn't doubt that with Abdication carrying that deadly message back to the whole, Ash would wake up tomorrow, abandon his quest for Indigo Plateau, and march for Rota, as though it had always been the dream of his life.

But that was not why she had done this. It was not her intention to leave some notion of her own behind. Rather, she intended to expose something that was already present. Something buried. Something that was part of a legacy much larger than it's carrier. His mind was a prison, not just for him in the here and now, but for the thing that she'd come here seeking, and she could not open those doors with brute strength, because they had been sealed shut since Ash's birth.

Even if she knew where to find the sealed-over place where the hidden power of Ash's Aura was hidden, Sabrina could pick at it, like a scab, and perhaps examine the minute trickles that seeped forth in response, but no more. Not without doing real damage to his brain-manifest psychic damage he would never recover from. The sort that would see him hooked to machines, permanently.

This, the more structured part of the mind, Ash's Memory and reflective consciousness was utterly hers so long as she was able to keep it stripped of it's emotional facets, but this thing was hidden far deeper even than that, in a place she could not enter, without being led there. It wasn't a matter of navigation, so much, she knew, as it was a matter of need.

What she was part that was isolated, and totally closed off to her probing, deep down inside Ash's repressed self which existed more like an underground magma chamber. It was there, nearby, certainly, but it was totally closed off, until it decided to roil up to the surface. Which was not to say that she couldn't get to it, but the process would be too intrusive, too damaging to the psyche. Instead, she would need force Ash to let it out, to relieve the pressure. A slow leak, rather than a sudden explosion.

This was not just for her benefit, either. His recent ventures had set off something that would do him great harm if she didn't make this happen. A fire within that would make him ashen and hollow, slowly but surely, if it was allowed to burn. It was a subtle thing now, after it's first huge conflagration, but those embers that smoldered on, would beget a type of illness that no respite or wonder of medical science could counteract. She would force him to expose this inner secret as much for his own safety as her peace of mind.

Still, there were certain limitations to her ability to inspire him to so. To Ash's most helpless facet, she represented a singular massive threat, that much was true. She'd made it very clear to Abdication in just what way she could damage him. Even if his miserable countenance did not betray any true fear at being destroyed utterly, wiped away from Ash's mind like a chalk-stain, her threat against the whole inspired very real fear, as it would've to any facet. Death of the whole was permanent. Death of the whole was true death, and Abdication could not shrug that off in the same manner as his own destruction.

For all Abdication knew, her threat was solid. She could stop dead his heart, his breathing. Like the limbs and larynx of the late Archer, those simple functions of the body were very much under her control, and it would be her who decided if they should cease or persist. The autonomic responses of the mind were only tinker-toys in comparison to the deeper, nigh-unknowable machinations of the psyche and all those things, were well within her purview.

If she wanted, she could be the death of him with little to no effort invested. So naturally, he feared her leveling of threat, even though the threat she actually posed was was hollow. Abdication wanted to cave, wanted to give in, she could tell, but this thing he was helping to hide, he feared it so much more than her by comparison, that he continued to refuse her this one final request.

It was illogical, but that was the stuff of primal fear. Instinct, bred over millions of years borne out the fears of ancient man into modernity. In that it was unknown, a portent threat was somehow greater than a threat that was fully quantified, to the instinctual self. Even if Abdication believed that the end result would be the same, that letting out the hidden power Ash guarded would destroy him, he would still take the flavor of destruction that Sabrina offered, over one he couldn't conceptualize. She was the lesser of two evils, and Abdication responded accordingly.

"Show me where you keep it," she asked again, even in both tone and inflection for she knew that he would deny her.

"I can't," Abdication said, not opening his eyes, barely moving but to form the words vapidly with his mouth.

She needed a new tack. For all the sweeping successes she'd had so far in annexing Ash Ketchum's deepest self, she'd been ground to a standstill here. She'd already levied the fullest measure of threat against him, and he would not budge. Perhaps, on some subtle level, Abdication truly knew that she would not make good on her threats, even though she'd not openly shown him any real quarter since her arrival to this sanctum of thought.

He was right of course. She was not here to kill Ash. She would certainly do everything up until that, if it became necessary, but that was not her intent at all. The opposite, in fact. She needed to force the boy to face what was inside of him. He must embrace it, for the sake of much more than just himself. There would come a time when all he and the rest of them cared about would solely depend upon it.

Still, for all of her efforts thus, Abdication had only been driven to the edge of the precipice, and no further. At every subtle nudge he only knuckled down deeper. As it stood he should've given her everything she wanted, without hesitation and still he did not yield to her. To his very last fiber, he resisted. Though part of her screamed to tear her way down into the pits of him, and bare the incredible power with her own two hands, an ugly impatience that was borne of vast foresight, she knew that the act itself would leave him irreparably broken, and she would not do that.

Still, she was not stymied.

Sabrina stood from her seat in the kitchen and took him by the arm. He allowed himself to be led, like a sleepwalker, out the kitchen storm-door.

Unlike the true Ketchum home, the door did not open into a back yard of lush gardens and vista view but to a different place, familiar, but strange in it's juxtoposition, such as dreams oftentimes were. A claustrophobic hallway stretched off at at the perpendiculars, weaving off at right angles, so that she could not see very far in either direction. She didn't have as great a sense of direction here as Abdication did, but it didn't matter. She pushed him out ahead a bit, indicating the closed door just across the way.

"Go inside. Wait for me."

Abdication did as he was instructed, though it was a laboriously slow process, as he fumbled weakly with the knob before managing to get it open. Even more bizarrely, the door opened into what looked like an mountain-side gazebo, strung with orange paper lanterns, but he closed the door behind himself without complaint, leaving her alone to her machination.

She needed to attack the problem from multiple angles. Chiefly, this meant that she needed more manpower. In a place where any help would need come from herself alone, she was left with only one option. Allies would need to come from within.

Needing more than one than one representative, Sabrina splintered herself, just as she had the facets of Ash. Even for her, it was a disorienting thing to separate yourself from a quality which comprised you; loosing connection with it, while giving it form.

Letting a facet run free meant forsaking it's connection to the whole, by necessity. While it did allow her- or at least pieces thereof-to be many places at once, the unity, the whole of which it had previously been part, did become weaker for it. An ally gained meant a part of herself lost.

It was for that reason that she did not choose Sympathy for the job. Sympathy had never been the strongest of her facets, but it held much of her in check, and she needed it to remain internalized. Without it, the other qualities of her would run wild, and this task was too delicate to undertake without balances.

Scorn would do. The job she required of it specifically was not a delicate one, and she was better off without Scorn anyways. She was a large part of the whole, but she had never been a beloved facet.

Scorn poured from her like a thick and heavy slime that oozed from her skin and clung heavily, not wanting to depart. Scorn was towering and deformed, a personification of the cruelty she'd faced and felt throughout her life. Scorn was everything she'd felt for Team Rocket, and for her own cruel fate. A feral thing that had turned on her and those around her many times throughout her life, contesting control of her, on more than one occasion. Scorn was all the hatred she had, so it made sense that Scorn leaned over her like a mountain. She felt a suffocating weight leave her as Scorn's terrible form took shape before her.

She also needed someone to subjugate Scorn without her interference, and the choice was a natural one. Strength did not look all that different than she did, being a core facet. Perhaps a bit firmer and straighter than she typically carried herself, but not so vastly unlike the whole of her as Scorn was. She did not feel the same relief when Strength took her leave, bursting free of the total command of the inner self with confidence and drive.

She could not feel strong without Strength, even if the sum of her remaining parts made up the difference, and with so much at stake, that was worrisome. She knew the facets would always act toward the goals of the whole, even if their methods were flavored by their own intent, but losing Strength put her at an emotional disadvantage.

She ignored the feeling, knowing that it would only work in her favor. She detailed her plan to Strength, who in turn explained the working components of that plan to Scorn. It was a short explanation, that would rely somewhat on what was now happening outside of Ash, but all would culminate as she saw it in her mind's eye, of that she was certain.

---

Duplica frowned when she tried the door, finding it shut tight. Why in the world had Roxie locked him in? The young madame and actress could only wonder scornfully.

She passed the glass of water over into her other hand and pulled a ring of keys from her pocket. She thumbed up the one for this particular room, and jiggled it in the lock. Strangely, it met with some resistance, and even when she had managed to revolve the tumbler completely, it did nothing. She shouldered the door, and cranked the knob, but it didn't budge.

Her frown deepened. At first, she resisted the urge to knock. That was just not the sort of thing a proper hostess did, after all. You didn't disturb a paying customer's good time. It was just a force of habit, but still it stopped her short.

Ash wasn't just some john, though, she reminded herself. She was sure that was who the boy was, close-crop haircut or not. So, she rapped her knuckles against the door, gently at first, her tone inquisitive. "Hey, are you alright? Do you need anything?"

There was no answer.

She sighed. She didn't feel just right about this from the jump. Roxie was a hard-partying international rock-star with a penchant for heavy substance abuse, an appetite for sexual deviance that if anything, made her male contemporaries look like blushing school-boys. Aside from that, the woman boasted a distinctly noticeable departure from certain social mores. In short, the woman was a freak and a degenerate, even by the standards of freaks and degenerates. What in the hell was Ash doing with a person like that? She couldn't even guess.

She fumed for a few minutes, trying to come up with some sort of connection. Ash was a brutally honest, and wholesome sort of kid, who'd helped her and Ditto with their craft, if inadvertently, and chased away those two Team Rocket thugs with a vehemence and contempt for their trouble-making that stood well at odds with where he'd found himself today.

By contrast, Roxie had never been anything but trouble since Duplica had first met her. Hell, during her last visit the crazy bitch had come in here strung out on stimulants and high on her own ego. She'd bought the place out and ran through the entire stable of girls employed here in a weekend long display of her monstrous libido. Granted, she'd brought to bear any number of phallic toys and illegal dissociatives introduced every place they would fit in, as well, so it wasn't as though she'd performed the feat alone, but she'd had a couple girls until they passed out in the hallways, and were no more use to her. Shamefully, she had been among them, she remembered, though that particular recollection only just barely came to her..

"You've never had a boof in the middle of a shag before? Well, I know one little bird who's about to have the night of their life," she remembered the rock star saying over her shoulder, right before thumbing a small, cold capsule into an entrance that was more typically an exit.

She'd cried out in a sick sort of surprised ecstasy that she wasn't proud to recall, but the world had went all wobbly and slantways shortly thereafter, and she didn't remember a whole lot more than the taste of Roxie's sweat and spit and the hard, repeated slap of the wall against her face for a long time following. She had woke up in a pile of drool with her ass stuck up in the air, just where Roxie had left her.

The former Virbank Gym leader had similarly torn through several other girls following that, before ending her final night's stay in a pile of young, spent bodies strewn across the lobby.

Duplica hadn't run this establishment her whole life, but she'd been at it long enough to know that it took more than just an appetite for sexual pleasure to come at this sort of place with a full head of steam the way Roxie did. There were some who turned to a good hard fuck just the same as others took up a stiff drink or things even more illicit, in order to forget. They were actually a very numerous bunch if the small percentage that trickled through her doors was any indication.

Roxie was that special kind of heart-sick that even a mixed cocktail of all three, taken in heavy and repeated doses didn't seem to do anything for. She was just as bent out of shape now, as she had been those two years ago, when they'd first made acquaintance. Briefly, Duplica wondered who this new "ladyfriend" of Roxie's was, and how long it would take the rock star to run through her.

Not long, she wagered. Roxie had a way of growing on people, but then, so did ringworm. One of those things became a chafing, burning, irritation over time, and the other was minor skin infection.

"And now she brings Ash, of all people, to vomit and shit himself all over my fuckin' house," Duplica snarled, pretending she wasn't as concerned with anyone's well-being as her thoughts might've betrayed. "Now I can't even get the damn door open, seriously, what the hell is wrong with me? Should never have answered the fucking phone." She stood up straight to keep from losing her temper.

"Ditto," she said evenly, allowing the pink boa to slither off her shoulders and coil into a pile on the floor. "I know I said last time was the last time, but I really need you to kick this door in."

Ditto merited only a small complaint, to which she sighed and responded with "Yes, I do remember how much it cost to get a repairman out here to fix it." This incident too had fallen squarely at Roxie's feet. She'd forwarded the bill, to no avail, of course.

"Ditto?"

"She'd locked the door from the inside and leapt off the balcony into the pool. What was I supposed to do, never use this room again?"

"Ditto."

"I know she convinced me to do it too, and in hindsight, yes, that was a poor judgement call, but you know how she is."

"Diiiitto."

"Are you gonna kick the door in or lecture me all morning?"

Ditto flashed into shape, taking on the form of a Mienshao, as it's features warped and bubbled into the perfect shape. Tensing like a drawn bowstring, the pokemon sprang at the door, in a sudden Jump Kick, lashing out with it's right leg. The contact reported like a gunshot in the otherwise silent hallway, but Ditto was deflected, landing in an awkward stance that melted back into the goo-pile of Ditto's true form.

Both Duplica and her Ditto seemed puzzled, but with a shrug, Duplica gestured for a second attempt. This time Ditto took on a more substantial form, this time of a Hitmonlee. Ditto took several steps back and went for a High Jump Kick this time, but still, the door did not give way.

Duplica crossed her arms. "I'm beginning to see why the repair job cost so much. The guy must've replaced it with a blast door," she offered sarcastically. She huffed through her nose, some of her ire seeping through now. "Alright, Ditto, enough games. Lets break out the big guns."

Ditto's form boiled up big and tall into a Machamp, who's four-way Cross Chop was no more effective than the Force Palm of the Hariyama it Transformed into next. Each subsequent attempt was louder and more violent than the next, and by the time Ditto had tried a Sawk, a Medicham, and finally a Golurk form they'd just recently learned from a trainer who'd come to study abroad in Kanto, every one of Duplica's girls, and at least a few paying customers were beginning to filter out into the hall.

Duplica pinched the bridge of her nose. She didn't have a whole lot of options here, being that she ran the sort of establishment that blurred the lines of legality. Of course, there were Saffron officials on the take, in order to placate the powers that be. She had to pay her dues and grease the wheels of the legal system, same as anyone, but getting somebody like the police out here was a troublesome business. More so, if it was patrons making the call, and not herself.

She extended her hands placatingly. "Everything is fine. Please don't concern yourself. Sorry for the disturbance."

She knew that her explanation had left much to be desired, so she signaled silently to her girls that it would be best to see to their customer's every need. She didn't need anyone thinking she was shaking down some John who'd expressed hesitance about paying, which was certainly what it looked like.

When all the commotion receded back into their rooms, she did not find that she was any closer to making her way inside, which deepened her frown even further. She tried squeezing Ditto under the door jamb, which was yet another thing that she was unconsciously hesitant to do. It was gauche to interrupt a john while he was at his business, but you certainly didn't peek on him. That proved no more effective than their first course of action. Ditto could get into just about anything that wasn't water-tight, the jambs of the door proved likewise unassailable.

Just when she'd about given in to the notion that they were going to have to fast-rope from the room onto the balcony, she felt an odd pressure against her foot. Looking down, she noticed a normal-looking poke ball rolling slowly away, as if it had deflected off the side of her sneaker. Curiously, it stopped dead, when she made eye-contact with it, and she heard a strange noise in the absence of all the chatter that had previously filled the hallway.

"Haw-Haw-Haaaaaw."

Within the room, all was still and black and silent, save for two twitching pairs of ears. They alone had been roused by the disturbance outside. They had perked and swiveled at the repeated banging, drawing their owner out of heavy slumber. Pikachu labored heavily within the cocoon of Ash's doubled hood, made sluggish by both his own lethargy and his trainer's relatively great weight pinning down his body.

Once Pikachu had gotten his face free of the thick cloth, he looked around in confusion. Eyelids heavy with sleep, he nearly returned to slumber, but what looked like pair of clawed hands coming through the bedroom door caught his gaze and held it fast. Pikachu's eyes went from wide, to saucer-like, to threatening to escape the confines of his face as a wide, inhuman grin followed through the solid surface of the door, as if emerging from the grain like oil rises to the surface of water.

Together, the three detached features of Haunter drove the delirious pokemon over the edge. Instinct prompted an immediate selection between two choices. Pikachu could either faint immediately, or attack with everything he had. In an instant, he'd made his choice.

In a blinding flash of light, he poured hundreds of thousands of volts into the room. It was a poorly thought out defensive effort. The arcs of electricity did not travel well through the dry air of the room, blooming effects turning much of the discharge into light and sound, but It conducted well through the cold, sweaty sheets into the body of his trainer.

Ash's body, recumbent and motionless, seemed to spring to life, back arching high and rigid off of the bed.

---

Ghetsis did not come apart, even as everything seemed to fall to ribbons around him. Ein, their lead research scientist and the most important half of their two-pronged approach to the Sayda Island discovery, had been abducted. One of the triplets was only now beginning to fully recover from the ordeal, and he'd never so much as seen anyone able to put a scratch on them before.

It was clear that they were dealing with an unprecedented internal threat. This was but one of their worries at the moment, however, and It was hardly the most pressing.

The Explorer One was too badly damaged in the assault to limp back to the continental shelf. In fact, the cheif engineer had very nearly convinced Ghetsis to scuttle the vessel, and allow it to sink into the abyss. It did, after all, contain a great deal of things that could serve to incriminate the cause, should it fall into the wrong hands. He'd refused, after some thought and council, but it was beginning to look more and more like a lost cause as things went on.

Main propulsion was on full emergency shutdown, which was standard procedure in the event of an on-board fire. That made sense by any reckoning Ghetsis could offer. The damage a fire could do on board a tightly confined undersea vessel was one thing. The megaton-range explosion that a runaway CNF reactor could result in was another thing entirely. The reactor was still in a long cool-down mode, and would not be ready to recycle into a useful state for the next 24 hours. He was in no greater hurry to override the failsafes, than were the engineers.

Fire had gutted the vessel from three-quarters astern, burning three members of the crew to death, before they could get the blaze under control. A skeleton crew had seemed the wisest choice for this transoceanic dry-run, but it had made the firefighting efforts all the more arduous. It was a consideration that would need to be included in the final draft of the plan, to be sure.

The explosion amidships had also perforated the outer pressure hull of the vessel. Explorer One was leaking like like a sieve, and the sump system was struggling to keep up. Without dry dock repair, and soon, the boat would swamp itself and sink anyways, with or without his consent.

Auxiliary propulsion, through the diesel-electric system was impossible as well. The warning shot fired upon them by J's massive airship had pumped the surrounding waters full of ionized particles, frying the motors and shorting out on-board electronics.

Explorer One was blind, deaf and disabled. On the verge of vanishing beneath the waves as the hours went on, the vessel groaned and rocked in the black waves He'd debated on sending out a radio distress signal using the broadband antennae, or firing off the emergency signal flares, both of which were by and large the most likely means of hailing a rescue vessel, which was really their only option at this point.

Still, he had held onto some reticence, in that regard. The contents of Ein's laboratory even burned and blown apart as they were, were simply too valuable to condemn to the bottom of the ocean, and too sensitive to chance that the crew of another vessel might see it. He needed inside help, and there were scant few places to call for it. Sayda, of course, and perhaps Canalave. Black City was also host to many former Team Plasma members and PLF sympathizers.

All of those places were so far away, however, that he doubted help would come from them in time. Still, he'd ordered the tight, narrow-band telex signals be sent out. The microwave emitters could be focused in until they were practically line-of-sight. Bounced off the correct com-sat relays, they could reach those enclaves without anyone being wise to the messages being passed about. Five short bursts had gone out, simple designations only.

Condition, Name, Location, Condition again. It was signals protocol, but more than just that, it was good sense. Less was more in the world of clandestine terrorist ventures.

SOS - E1- LON28.010448 - LAT129.539108 - SOS.

They got nothing at first, which did little that was positive for morale, though Ghetsis himself kept a firm chin in front of the men. Then, there was a communication burst from the Fast Ship S.S. Aqua that began with the unofficially official PLF motto:

PEOPLE AND POKEMON - BOTH FREE.

That had been a pleasant surprise, but the Aqua was practically on the other side of the globe, as it made quite clear in it's follow up.

ETA 31HRS.

That simply would not do. In thirty-one hours the boat would be long since sank, with them bobbing there in the water like spent corks. Another message from what was purportedly a fishing trawler off the coast of Johto. Eight hours, which Ghetsis regarded as highly optimistic, considering. A trawler might be able to rescue the crew, but it was hardly going to tow away a multi-thousand ton vessel.

The most confusing response, and to Ghetsis, the most troublesome, was from a source calling itself the S.S. Libra. Most of the crew had disregarded the message as gibberish. Nonsense, perhaps a garbled signal passed to them had muted and downplayed it's importance as well, lending credibility to these evaluations.

ICU - EZ.

Ghetsis frowned deeply at that. It was certainly not an obscure set of acronyms or foreign syntax, to which most of the engineers had attributed the seemingly useless message. It was simple phonetic shorthand for a taunt at his expense. The S.S. Libra designation the source had given was just a thin facade, that added to his certainty about what the message truly meant.

That ship, a fast, sleek all-electric cargo freighter designed by Gateon Heavy Industrial Works which had taken it's maiden voyage just two scant months before it had been gone missing in the South Orran Sea, was no longer sea-worthy, much less capable of sending noteworthy ship-borne messages. It had been found not too long after it's disappearance, not just aground, but deep inland, jabbed into the earth amidst the forbidding sands of the Great desert of Orre, spirited away by some sinister goings on surrounding none other than Cipher Inc.

A corporate entity now headed by a former compatriot turned betrayer.

The call sign S.S. Libra was just a subtle jab by Kazuo, who was laughing at his otherwise desperate attempt to go unnoticed in his distress. That, much Ghetsis did not doubt. With all else that was going wrong, it was not the ill portent it might've otherwise seemed. He doubted very much that Kazuo would or even could take any action beyond this insult. Still, it was irksome to think that his former servant was able to keep such a close eye on his comings and goings.

It was all rather moot, however, when a great hulking shape crashed through the waves very near the port side of their boat, and cast an equally huge searchlight down onto them. It was the Ice-breaker S.S. Spiral, down from it's tri-annual voyage across the sub-arctics, through the Snowpoint Sounds and entirely around the Sinnohan penninsula.

Well suited for the voyage through waters that froze over solid for eight months of the year, the Spiral boasted enormous twin drills on her bow that bit into and literally dragged the ship through hard-packed ice floes if necessary. It was from these features that the Spiral drew her namesake, and though they made her terribly uneconomical in these temperate waters, they were a sight that had his men roaring in approval and relief.

They were taken aboard, as engineering teams from both vessels worked out a way to tow the ailing submarine back to port, perhaps even couple their pump systems and make her somewhat more sea-worthy in the meantime.

Ghetsis had allowed himself to be showed the finest quarters available on the ship, which was captained by a former rank and file ex-Plasma grunt who'd professed to have known the best and most fulfilling years of his life with the team. Ghetsis did not doubt it from his enthusiasm, but all the same, he professed that he remembered the depth of the man's courage and beliefs, which was, of course, a gross overstatement if not outright lie.

All the same, he was savior to the cause in one capacity or another, so he deigned share a drink with the man and be encroached upon by his auspices of the PLFs grand future which he was entirely ignorant of, before excusing himself.

Ghetsis allowed himself to heave a great sigh once the hatch had sealed behind him, but nothing more. He was allowed a bit of relief, but he would permit himself to be blinded by it.

"Tell me how this happened," he demanded of the shadows.

The shadows of the afforded chamber gave it's reply, birthing forth the two triplets.

"Ein's robotic pet corpse," answered one, "broke from her leash, apparently."

"Stronger than we imagined." the other said, rubbing his abraded neck.

"Faster too," added the first, with something like indignance.

The second nodded. "Still, she is reckless."

"Desperate," amended his brother.

Ghetsis frowned. "How do we find her? Ein is essential to our great work."

Both triplets shook their heads, and answered in unison. "We don't."

"Her ship is nuclear," the first brother illuminated, "so her range and longevity are indefinite."

The other, crossed his arms."The ocean is large, but the sky is larger by far."

He'd nearly barked out a defiant rebuke before the triplets went on, but his exasperation with the events that had precipitated in the last twenty-four hours stayed his tongue, by means of exhaustion, if nothing else. It was true, what was being said. They themselves had chosen to hide in the vastness of the ocean, and lurk unseen. One could argue that yes, they had been found, and so to could anything else, but J's chosen hiding spot was ten thousand times larger by volume, and in that medium, she could be just as invisible as they were.

"I don't believe we will need to, however," the first argued. "We are confident she will bring terms."

Ghetsis' frown deepened, and now he crossed his own arms. "How can you be sure?"

"She did not kill Ein. She abducted him," explained one.

"This means that he serves a purpose," professed the other.

"Whether the purpose is to serve as hostage, or as means to another end is irrelevant," the first, clarified, taking over the threat of conversation.

"She will make clear that intent once the heat is blown over," the second followed, taking his turn again as well

"When she contacts us, she will present terms your lordship will find agreeable," they both declared in flattened unison.

"And if I do not?" Ghetsis countered, with much scorn in reservation.

"Then her mistake will be having contacted us in the first place," the triplets promised.

One continued in a patient solo. "My brother and I will triangulate on the source of the communique."

"From there it will be a small matter to find her," concluded the second.

"And then kill her," the first added, in denouement.

Ghetsis grunted. He had grown used to accepting set-backs. What was the history of Team Plasma but a long series of setbacks, laid aright by these two?

He seated himself in a wooden chair that rested in the corner of the rather spacious shipboard quarters. The captain's own stateroom, from the looks of it. "What of Ein's work with the Berserk Gene? The genetic sample from Sayda. He's spent the last six months trying to alter it for our purposes. Will we be able to get anything useful back to Black City, or is it a total loss?"

"It should not pose a problem either way," one triplet offered in a way that almost seemed hopeful, in spite of it's bland delivery.

His brother, casually gestured in a sweeping motion, to suggest a total loss. "Even if the samples from Ein's laboratory are non-viable, we know where to find an en vivo test subject."

"A subject from which the Berserk Gene can be readily extracted, if need be." The first to speak reminded Ghetsis.

Ghetsis nodded in appreciation, not having thought of that. "That boy's Onix," he recalled. An impromptu field test had been his idea, but it had been the triplets who'd seen to its execution, following the boy to where he had released the rock-snake and then introducing the nucleotide into Onix's bloodstream via carbide-tipped hypodermic dart. "I assume the test turned out positive?"

"Difficult to say," One brother admitted.

"Aggression was definitely heightened to some extent, but there were too many variables in play." The other sibling noted, guardedly.

At Ghetsis' expectant look, the first triplet expanded his annotation. "The Onix was tending to an unhatched egg when we found her."

Picking up from there, the other sibling resumed. "So she was naturally defensive to begin with. We were not able to commit much time to studying the situation, being that we were so soon underway."

"Conjecture, then," Ghetsis proded.

"If the Berserk Gene works as well as Ein believed it would, then like as not Onix will attempt to drive off any human being who comes near it," the triplet he'd questioned offered.

The other, tempering his brother's notion, went on. "Again, the brooding instinct does draw this notion into question, but based on Onix's reaction toward us, it does seem likely that she will attack anyone who comes near."

Ghetsis let out a tentative harrumph. "Violently?"

"Lethally, seems more likely, given it's size," Both triplets assured him.

Ghetsis nodded his approval. It wasn't proven outright, but it seemed that the Berserk Gene was the closest thing to a solution to one of the symptomatic problems which beset the Cause: the indoctrination of pokemon themselves to accept, love and defend the yoke of their own slavery at the hand of humanity.

He would have to commit himself to seeing how this test bared out. "Keep me posted."

The two triplets nodded, and in a blink, departed, leaving him to his privacy.

---

Abdication felt the floor of the gazebo shift beneath his feet, as though it were suddenly the deck of a ship, propagating the waves of the ocean through a much stiffer medium. Then came the sudden surge, where the light and colors and sounds seemed frightful and loud, bending toward him in the way a reflection against the glassy surface of water ripples when a stone is cast into it. He crashed to the ground hard, and tried to hold on as everything shuddered and quaked.

It did stop, probably as quickly as it began, but for Abdication it felt like a lifetime. When it was done, the facet found himself lying face down on the hardwood planking of that same hillside gazebo where Ash had first worn a traditional Kantonese kimono, and danced with his new friend Misty. He tried to stand from where he lay sprawled, in the same place where ash had seen her with her hair let down, looking like a much nicer version of herself. Cute almost, if Misty could even be such a thing.

Misty wasn't there. Instead, he heard Sabrina's voice, insistent and close. "Get up."

His voice didn't come in response, and Abdication wasn't entirely sure that he wanted it to. To one extent or another, he was comfortable as he was and his body wished to resist her summons as though being pulled up from a long rest. A good rest, which he had been laid to by the sudden jolt, and one that it seemed like she was disturbing. Let the shuddering and the shaking continue, Abdication though, as he let his eyes close once more.

His hesitance seemed to bother Sabrina, where before she'd been calm and sure. When her voice came next, it was louder. "Get up!" she demanded, shaking him harshly."Something has happened outside. I've lost control. We are in grave danger now."

Abdication allowed himself to be prodded to action, and as he looked behind himself, he could see the door he came through at the edge of the gazebo, shutting it off from what should logically have been a stony path leading up the side of the mountain, even though he'd walked here from Ash's kitchen, through a disjointed hallway. A loud thunk told him it had just slammed shut. He felt himself approaching it, and strangely, Sabrina allowed this in spite of her earlier insistence of haste.

Abdication reached out to touch the neaby door, at least in whatever sense he could do so, but a soft hand caught him by the shoulder. It was Sabrina herself, he realized as she turned on her, though she was just as different as Ash's house or this place. Canny, but off in important ways. She seemed smaller, in the way that he'd once known all those years ago. A little girl who was angry and confused and friendless, not the confident psychic who'd met him for supper a night hence.

A bloody gouge scored her cheek, and her eyes were wide with panic. "We have to go. Through this memory. To somewhere else." She grabbed his hand. "Show me where. "

Abdication wondered if he was being confused for a different facet. One who might've been of some use to her. All the same, he wanted to ask what was wrong, what had happened. More than that, he wanted to close his eyes. He was so sleeepy that he nearly did just that, but her pull rocked him fully back to his sensibilities. "You've just been electrocuted, and your heart has stopped, but those are the least of our problems."

He failed to see how those could really could be the least of his erstwhile problems. Those sounded considerable indeed. So his drowsiness wasn't just symptomatic, but causal. This was not the call of some restful slumber, but the final sleep, the forever and endless one!

He pried his eyes open wide and grimaced. In turn, Sabrina called him into action. "Ash, I have lost control of your mind. More importantly, the ones who now control it comprise my more aggressive nature. Facets, like you. I let them out to help me, but the shock broke my control over them. We need to leave, and we need to leave now, or-"

Something tested itself against the door. The door, being a manifestation of Ash's ability to separate ideas, was powerful in that simplicity. It did hold, but only just. Huge cracks worked out radially from the center of it and the force of the blow itself knocked them both off their feet in surprise. Ash could see the wood of the jamb beginning to splinter around the edges, though there was no wall around it, and it appeared for all purposes free-standing. He felt the urge to angle his head to see what was behind it, but Sabrina was pulling him along before he could.

"Find another way out. Ash, we have to hide," she urged, shaking him, shoving him, thrusting him ahead.

Abdication spun, fearfully. "I can't do this. I'm not Ash. You know I'm not Ash. I'm just a small piece of-"

Sabrina slapped him hard across the mouth, knocking the next works aside with anger. "If you fail to act, Ash will die. Not just you, Abdication, but Ash the whole! You're Ash insofar as it matters, now go!"

Heart thumping, Abdication scrambled for the edge of the gazebo, and ran down a different path that led away from the belvedere, this one leading up the ascent. He felt as though Sabrina must've been following him, but all he could really do was run. He was no savior, no courageous facet, like Adventure or Ardor, so how could she expect him to be.

He powered up the trail, weak legs screaming, toward a painted blue archway that stood alone against greenery in a way that seemed plainly out of place. As he heard the door behind finally give way, and a shrill, inhuman shriek came up the mountain after him, he didn't care. He leapt through it, and though it's threshold had suggested only the mountaintop beyond, Abdication found himself in an entirely different sort of place.

He slammed into a wall that was suddenly in front of him, as he found himself in a confusing hallway once more. Sabrina, straight on behind him, spun and locked the passage behind them, before shoving him onward. "Someplace to hide. Now!"

"W-what are we running from?" Abdication coughed out, tears brimming in his eyes.

She looked like she was about to answer him, but then, with a sound like screaming brakes, something foul crashed through the door they'd just came out of, like it was made of paper, and Sabrina was gone. Wrapped in two enormous and heavy arms, and pulled violently back out of the hallway, the psychic vanished with a fearful wail.

A braver facet might've given chase, and tried to save Sabrina. A braver facet might've at least looked back, but Abdication ran with everything that he had. It did not amount to much, he realized, after crashing down the hall, turning at every corner, and pushing himself to the limit. It wasn't felt tired again, so tired that he wanted to sit or lay down, even with whatever was chasing him hot on his heels, but he knew that if he didn't it would be the end of him, and the end of Ash. He screamed both in fear, and in desperation to keep himself going.

What had happened to make everything go so wrong?!

---

Duplica finally managed to shoulder her way through the door, and she shrieked as she saw the state of him.

The covers smoldered near where his Pikachu had discharged it's current into the bed, and Ash, who was failing to turn aside, even as he choked on vomit, lay in a vile pretzel of sodden bed linen. Some of the pearly liquid seemed to be making up and out of his mouth, but the majority of the stuff that had nowhere to go, but to back down his nose and throat even as a disgusting amount oozed out and puddled on his face and neck.

She didn't think to curse. She flew to the bed, and gave the boy a huge shove with all the force the could muster. It did not amount to much, as Ash was a bit larger than she was in terms of sheer mass. It was enough to roll him aside, though, and she felt a mixture of relief and disgust as the puke spilled from his mouth onto the sheets like an overturned champagne flute filled with vanilla cake-batter.

Boling, she hissed out a curse between bared fangs. "Damnit, Roxie, you're fucking me over and you're not even here!"

When Pikachu tried to come to Ash's rescue, her frustration nearly had her swiping the little pokemon aside, but to do so would have been foolish, not to mention pointless. There was only one thing that either of them could do for Ash now. She got up and briskly walked out of the room, and made a beeline for a nearby bathroom, where she procured a single item from the locked cabinet. She had an pen of adrenaline that she kept for just this sort of thing, of course. It was bad business to let a patron croak while he was under your roof, even if he did it to his own damn self, after all.

She came back, checking for a pulse, wondering if it the pen would be of any significant consequence against a delirium like this. He was clammy and hot, and his breath came out in murmurs. She didn't waste any time in popping the cap off the auto-injector and slamming the shrouded sharp down hard into Ash's outer thigh through his damp jeans.

He didn't react, as the epinephrine trickled into his leg muscles. A twinge of panic crept into Duplica, and she hugged Ditto unconsciously under one arm, frustrated and scared. She didn't even know what Ash had taken! All she could do was wait! Why wasn't this working!

Then he groaned. She searched again for a pulse, and felt his heart thundering under her hands as she touched his neck. That was good, right? She wasn't sure. She made a strangled noise, and laid her head in her hands.

She'd spent a few weeks shadowing Nurse Joy in the hopes of picking up the demeanor of a true physician to better enhance the act, but while the bedside manner was all well and good for pillow-play, it wasn't worth a damn when it came to actual nursing.

Maybe she should get a few of her girls in here, and see if one of them had a better notion of what she should do. Hell, maybe she should phone for an ambulance, and call the whole night a wash. Sure she'd take a huge dip in business, and she could kiss goodbye any profits she was in the process of making tonight, but it wasn't worth watching Ash croak in a pool of his own throw-up just to hold on to a few extra gs, right?

No, she assured herself. She could handle this. It was part of the responsibilities and risks she'd decided to take on when she'd gone into this business. She took a deep breath, and tried to re-evaluate the situation with a clear head.

Ash was a mess, and was still very much unconscious, but his breathing had evened out, and he wasn't spasming or anything, which was a good sign. Ash would have a tough time of it no matter what, and the only real help they would give him at the hospital would be to flush him with charcoal and saline, which wouldn't do anything for the symptoms except lessen their duration.

Pikachu was still freaking out, which she supposed was normal enough, and she scooped the Pokemon into an embrace. She remembered this little Pokemon, though she doubted Pikachu remembered her, amid the panic. She eased the mouse into a seated position at Ash's side, and tried to provide what little assurance she could, in the face of what seemed a total wreck of humanity.

"He'll be alright," Duplica assured, and although she wasn't sure herself, there was only one thing that seemed to stand as evidence to that effect. The Pokemon she'd unleashed to finally gain entry to the room, the mysterious Haunter, seemed oddly at ease, given what was happening. The ghost floated near Ash, interested, but not at all urgent. Truthfully, she wasn't sure that should put her at ease, since it seemed like just the sort of thing that might befit a spirit welcoming another of it's kind to the afterlife, but somehow she didn't get that impression at all.

In fact, the longer she watched Haunter, the more apparent it became that the ghost Pokemon was watching her as much as she was watching him. Too late she began to realize that perhaps she and the two other Pokemon in the room were the focus of Haunter's attention, for by that point, the Hypnosis was already in the height of it's potent effect.

Pikachu wobbled, then fell, face-first against Ash's thigh. Ditto, likewise, seemed to go lax, melting down into a formless puddle of sleep. Her own head swam as she tried to get up, tried to pull herself from where she was seated on the bed. The room spiraled around her evasively as she went for the door, which was once more bizzarely shut and sealed. She did not get the opportunity to test it. She slid against the door, snoring before she'd even buckled down to her knees.

---

Sabrina, even free as she was of Scorn's true vindictiveness, struggled to contain the inward smirk. Everything had worked out so perfectly. With only a bit of misdirection, and a helping hand from Haunter, she'd easily put to rest the biggest external threat to her plans, and with only a meager bit of dramatization, she'd set Abdication back onto his heels. The only thing that kept her from smiling outright, was that she felt it might be trite to feel so pleased at a foregone conclusion. She'd already known it would work itself out this way, after all.

Haunter would keep Ash, Pikachu and Sabrina from getting themselves into too much trouble, and work them around like marionettes for the benefit of the bordello staff and patrons in keeping with a wild night of debauchery. Nothing too wild, for Ash was still a naive young boy and she couldn't have him acting too out of keeping, but Haunter did have an obtuse sense of humor, and she was sure that would play itself out..

Which wasn't to say the matter was totally concluded, she had to remind herself, shaking her head to clear away the excitable uncertainty that Strength had left in its vacuous hollow, just as much as the long-hidden giddiness that Scorn normally kept smothered. There was still the small matter of squeezing what she wanted from Abdication, and while Strength and Scorn would see to that in the most general sense, the matter was up to her in the particular.

So, Sabrina watched like a spider from her hidden vantage of Ash's mind as Abdication throttled past without noticing, barreling down old corridors of thought, his panicked footsteps kicking up dust-clouds and the staleness of many years. He was headed for the repressed memory, propelled there by Scorn masquerading as the same monster that had supposedly devoured her.

Sabrina had subtly directed his course for the past several minutes, reaching out with thought to seal off doors that might've taken him back toward the conscious mind, barricading those that might've taken his flight off her intended course. She'd left him options, of course, so as to not tip him off to her influence, but even those options that did remain would take him unfailingly deeper, down toward the claustrophobic repressed mind.

Abdication, wouldn't have noticed Sabrina at any rate, racing along in a frenzy as he was. He hardly noticed where he was going at all. He only remembered Sabrina's words, all else blotted against the fear. He needed to hide. He needed to escape that terrible thing that was screaming through the halls after him, howling and thrashing, and calling out hungrily for him.

It chased him deeper and deeper still down the hall, until he could not see the way back, until the doors became vault hatches, and the looked like they were more to keep things in than keep things separate. Which was good, he reasoned. If they could keep things in, then surely they could keep things out.

It was only when he'd come to the first such massive portal to yield curiously to his pitiful tugging, and sealed it behind him that he calmed down enough to remember why this part of the mind was organized so rigidly.

Here was where Ash pushed down his nightmares. Most Dreamstuff, in fact, made its way here, usually shortly after he awoke. Ash did not often recall his dreams, and when he did, it was fleeting. A waking laugh, or a shudder, and then it vanished like smoke. Nightmares, however, were the most rigidly guarded dreamstuff, compacted and compartmentalized down here into cells and vaults where they would decompose and filter down over time into the id, according to their volatility. The composites that the mind assembled into nightmares sometimes contained such terrible and scarring thoughts that they would poison Ash if they were allowed to persist freely in the memory. Only when they were broken down into their dissociated base components by time and isolation, could they be reintroduced to Ash's primordial psyche.

This dream was not one that had been degraded by that process. The imagery was fresh and thick and sour with all the feelings of shame and humiliation that surrounded the icy core of fear that comprised most nightmares, like a brine. These signifiers told him that this dream was recent, deeply emotional, and among the most dangerous dreamstuff.

Abdication knew a fair deal about dreams, after all. Though dreams were the domain of no particular facet, and bore out all their fantasies and fears in equal, randomized, and ultimately meaningless portions, Abdication was one of the few who had dwelt in them for a significant portion of time. Adventure often came here as well, but not as Abdication did, not with real purpose.

Here, old things resurfaced, for good or for bad, assembled by the creative mind by purposeful conception, or sheer chance, and it was his role in things to see that they were collected and in some rare cases, preserved from the mash.

It was that curiosity that drew him forward, however foolish it might've proven.

He knew instantly what this dream was about. It's impetus, it's content, were all facile and obvious, the moment he stepped into it, and still, he felt compelled, in the same way a hideous accident on its way to inevitable occurrence drives some to stunned inaction.

Misty's sisters stood crowded by the locked door of her bedroom, each of them wringing their hands with concern and dismay and even though he knew that it was nothing he wanted to know, Abdication was soon alongside them, just as concerned, just as dismayed, though he did not yet know why.

Soft murmers came from beneath the door, belonging to two speakers he was sure he recognized. Abdication pressed his ear to the door. What met his ears turned his stomach, and at the same time magnetized his face to the wood.

"Stop," gasped a voice that couldn't belong to anyone but Misty, though it lacked any true conviction. "I said no kissing. We're not dating."

The other voice was equally known to him, and twice as troublesome. "You know you like it. Besides, it's not like what we're doing now isn't way worse than kissing," Gary Oak answered, in a sardonic drawl.

"I'm only doing this... To relieve my st- Stress." Misty complained. "You're just a dick with legs, and I've got needs like anybody else."

"If you say so." He could almost hear the shrug in Gary's voice.

Misty did not seems so convinced, however, and went on. "Once Ash's journey is over...This...Between you and me...It's over."

Gary didn't retreat, instead, adopting the thin facade of a pout. "Aw, don't say that. I'll get jealous."

"I mean it," Misty emphasized, though her words were punctuated with a low gutteral moan that made Abdication's hair stand on end.

"No you don't." Gary insisted, his voice becoming heavy and thick with exertion. "Just let me prove it to you. I'm way better than Ash is ever going to be. Especially at this."

This time Misty did not object, and her sudden cry of pleasure was anything but objecting.

"Say you'll go out with me." Gary commanded, his voice an animal grunt

Misty seemed to fold a bit in the face of his forwardness, but, as Misty often did, she posed a counter-offer more to her liking. "I-I'll see you on the side."

"No, that won't do. Gary Oak is nobody's number two. I want you to say you'll give up on Ketchum."

"I'll think about i-i-i-i-i-t!" Misty offered, the last word becoming a long, animal scream.

"No, no. Say you'll be with me, instead. Tell me how much you love this!" Gary demanded, his voice high and tight with the moment of utmost satisfaction.

And at last, she gave in, amidst the moaning and wailing, for Abdication and all her sisters to hear. "I will! Arceus, it's so good! Don't stop, Gary, PLEASE! I'll give up on Ash, I promise!"

Abdication felt his stomach churning as the fleshy, wet slap-slap-slap of body on body increased in tempo frantically. He heard those gasps and groans and grunts of primal satisfaction, each one knifing across his eardrums and straight into his brain. He braced himself on the door, and tried to regain his balance after the wave of nausea washed over him, but it did not support him as he hoped. Instead, it fell inward, revealing what lie within.

He spun away from the door just a split-second too late, wishing he could scour away his retinas, hoping madly that he'd somehow gone unnoticed by the fornication pair of mutual friends, who's triangular betrayal of him made him feel bizarrely hollow as the sight of it was laid bare. He pressed his back against the outside wall, and breathed heavily.

This was why these sorts of dreams could never be allowed to escape into the conscious mind. This sort of dream would wreak havoc on Ash. He had to leave here, and ensure that nothing from this place followed him out. More importantly, he needed to find the escape route that Sabrina had urged him to find. He certainly couldn't hide in this place forever, even if whatever it was chasing his steps couldn't get in. He certainly wouldn't even if that was the case.

He turned to do just that, but he was waylaid suddenly by Misty's three sisters, who had until then seemed like a backdrop and nothing more. Violet and Lily dug nails into him that were like talons, clenching his biceps so hard that he screamed aloud.

Disturbingly, the sex in the other room went on unabated. If anything, it only became louder as Daisy, at the head of the three sisters who had suddenly become banshee, clawed down his chest with both hands, voice full of acid as she snarled in his face. "You did this to her, Ash!"

"W-what?" Abdication gasped, trying pitifully to wrench free. He didn't see as how there was any way that could be the case. It was total nonsense, just like this dream, however disturbing it may've been. "I-I'm not Ash," he offered anyways, hoping that it would get him some leniency.

It did not. Daisy's hand arced high, claws bared to scrape him deeply across the face. Abdication smashed his eyes shut, and flinched, but the blow never landed. Instead, a strong hand interceded on his behalf.

It was Sabrina. It must've been Sabrina, because who else could it be?

The Psychic met out Daisy's overhand strike with a clasping hand, and little other effort expended, as though she were catching a passing milkweed with an extended arm. The dream-Daisy resisted, struggled, but could not budge. The arm flexed, slowly at first, but then more forcefully, peeling Daisy away from Abdication, over and back like fruit rind. Her two other sisters were treated in kind, and as they were twisted and bent out of shape they seemed to dissolve into the dream like dissipated vapor, troubling him no more.

"Sabrina," he began, trying to express his gratitude, but she cut him off with a word.

"No." Strength said, her voice like the bending of heated metal, "Not quite."

Abdication understood then. This was one of the facets that Sabrina had mentioned earlier. Which meant that she had usurped control from the Gym Leader, just a short while ago. Abdication trembled, taking on precarious step away from her, but then stopped cold when he bumped into someone. He slowly turned.

It was Gary and Misty, who seemed not to notice him at all, only standing in the doorway as entangled lovers who didn't see any of the world around them. They'd gotten their clothes back on now, at least, and while Gary worked at the disheveled lapel button of the lab coat Ash had last seen him in, Misty was sweaty and cinched tight into the traveling outfit that Ash had first met her in, the high-cut shorts and small yellow top cutting a completely different figure than it had in the past.

She worked nervously at the red straps of her suspenders, as they stood together in the doorway, but Gary only laughed.

"Let me see it," he ordered, impetuously.

"N-now? Why?" Misty squeaked, seeming meek and submissive in light of Gary, which inspired both disbelief and a singular strain of sick jealousy. "He's watching, Gary." She didn't look right at Abdication, but he felt the hot, mortifying certainty that she was talking about him.

Gary, who was not nearly so tactful as his female counterpart, cast him a seedy look, and scoffed directly at Abdication. "So what? Let him watch."

Then, Misty shrugged off both of the suspender straps with exuberance, and stood on her tip-toes to kiss him sloppily on the mouth, her tongue tangling hungrily with his. When they parted, she slowly unzipped her jean shorts and shoved them down in increments, until bold black lettering was exposed just a scant inch above swollen pink vulva. The letters read, of course, as Abdication should have expected:

Gary was here. Ash is a Loser.

This was the part where Ash should've mercifully woken up, and the bubble of nightmarish reality should've popped and been blissfully forgotten forever more. This should not have been the part where Abdication was forced to watch Gary and Misty's lusts for one another in helpless, miserable voyeur as each decided that their farewell could be postponed a bit for another round of humping at his unique expense, right where they stood. Even a facet like him, who dealt in the currency of disgrace, could only stomach so much.

The muted pounding of flesh on flesh rang in his ears as he spun, eyes bleary on Strength. He did not have what it took to meet her head-on. Maybe another facet could've. Acrimony, Ardour, maybe even Ambition on his best days. Abdication, however, could not. For Abdication, all there ever would be, was surrender.

He held out both his hands, almost pleadingly. "Do whatever you want. Just so long as you don't do it here. I can't stand anymore of this."

Strength waved a hand dismissively and the dream, and all that was in it blew away like a beach-house in a hurricane. It faded from sight, into a spaceless gray void, and Abdication could only hope the scorching memory of it would follow. She took him by his shoulders, and peered into him, her deep sanguine eyes like the searching, inquisitive orbs of a flying type. "Sabrina did this to you. She made things this way."

Abdication nodded. "I know."

"She wants to make Ash a Gaurdian," Strength explained.

"Ash will never do that," Abdication said ruefully. "Not with Ambition in charge."

"You're wrong. Sabrina will make it so, even if she has to put someone like you in charge."

Abdication felt himself start to cry. "Then I don't understand the point of any of this. I can't stop her. I'm the weakest of all Ash's facets. Why doesn't she just get it over with?"

"Because even you won't take her to the place where it's hidden."

Abdication stiffened. "Because I can't."

Strength shrugged. "It makes no difference to me. I'm not the part of Sabrina who's interested in finding it."

"Why are you telling me this?"

Ignoring his question, Strength asked one of her own, "Do you want this to end?"

"Yes," Abdication moaned.

"Then you have to defeat Sabrina, and to do that you will need help."

"You'll help me?"

Strength shook her head, and Abdication knew that he should've known better. It would take a facet leaning very far from center to act in direct conflict with the whole. "No. But I can take you to a facet that will."

---

Scorns mouth was like a ring of daggers, all facing inward in the way of crushing insect mandibles and heavy machinery meant to grind big rocks into smaller ones. She vented coal-smoke breath into Sabrina's face, as she worked tight the bindings that would make ready she show for Strength and Abdication's arrival.

Scorn took great pleasure in the facade for what it was, since what it was was an execution, more or less. She lashed Sabrina to the table with all the satisfaction that had ever existed in all the hangmen in the world, pulling the rope so tight that it stung the back of her neck, and slapped her face to the table.

"Try not to make it look too staged," Sabrina offered sarcastically. For this she was spat on. Scorn, after all, could do nothing that was unhateful.

The guillotine loomed above, sharp and gleaming with intent. Were it up to Scorn, that prop would've already fallen again and again, on her neck, if not for effect then for simple symbolism. Scorn hated her. Scorn hated everything. That was all Scorn knew how to do.

If Scorn ever wanted anything, it was only so someone else could not have it. If Scorn ever rendered aid, it was only to usurp the actions of another in a way that would cause disproportionate grief. Her only pleasure was schadenfreude. Her only love was a love of betrayal, and that was the only reason she'd gone along with this. Scorn was vile and cruel, and in that simplicity, Scorn was everything that Sabrina hated about herself.

Sabrina did not have time to contemplate her demons further, however, for it was then that Abdication and Strength entered, and the game was on.

Scorn, the great hulking beast that she was, smashed Sabrina's face to the table, squelching her sudden cry for help and crunching her nose audibly against the medieval killing-device. It all seemed anachronistic, really, in this place that had been set aside for him, but it was all text-book psychology, really:

The massive black guillotine of Scorn's design sat in the midst of a grand arena, the battle-lines drawn. The crowd, nameless and faceless and distantly out of focus roared, but theirs was a hushed acclamation. The dusty chalk and clay clouded around them in the air, as the two groups closed on one another. Strength, who pushed her charge forward, stood behind in reserve, while Scorn watched Abdication's approach with blood-red eyes as big as dinner-plates.

The encounter would take place where Ash, and Abdication in turn would be at their most forthright and eager. And that was good, the way Sabrina saw it. This was little more than a proposition after all. Better than the ostensible gain out-weigh the potential risk in Abdication's eyes.

When Ash's facet made center-coliseum, the crowd faded, and the sound died to an impossible quiet. They spoke in whispers and muted snarls that would've been eaten by the open space, but transferred like a shout.

Strength, behind, watched with impassive eyes, as her whole was ground into the table by Scorn's massive claws. Where another facet would've blanched, she held. "I've brought him," she said simply, implying neither ownership nor intent. Hers was a facilitative role, and barely that.

Her counterpart seethed with satisfaction, pounding Sabrina's face over and over with the sharp movements of an excited toddler smacking a plaything against the table. "Yesssss," she hissed, venting black smoke between expansive teeth.

Sabrina, for her own part, could only weep and moan into the hard surface.

And Abdication, as only Abdication could, did exactly as she expected. He was silent. He was accepting. He was totally biased towards this outcome after all, and Scorn, almost entirely, was the reason. She was his diametric opposite, after all. In Sabrina, it was Scorn who propagated the hatred. In Ash, it was Abdication who reconciled it. She was an elemental force that in Abdication's natural environment, did not exist, for there simply was no raw antagonism in Ash, not in force and abundance.

As Sabrina watched him from one cracked, bleary eye, and saw the look Abdication was giving Scorn, she knew he saw her in a way that bespoke his neediness. He was the forest that awaited the fire, and she was the lit match and propellant.

But his was a naive wanting. Abdication was Ash's weakest facet, and Scorn was perhaps her strongest, present company excepted. Scorn could, would, and was almost certainly going to destroy him.

But Abdication was blind to what should've been obvious, as he looked at Scorn, now for the first time. She towered over him, somehow a caricature of both mother and monstrosity, tall and fierce and to Abdication, who truly wanted nothing more than to be dejected, she was wholly beautiful, with features like a well-honed razor. Long black hair framed her smelted steel eyes glowing such a fierce and anrgy red that he was sure that they would catch him on fire. A long brown cloak hung around her, distorting the shape of her body beneath it, in the same way that a paper sack hides the exact nature of it's contents, but suggests the nefarious, and he could not muscle down his sick curiosity.

Her smile was wide and eerie and wrong, and he was sure that the right action would have been to step away, to flee back to where he'd come and get well clear, he was sure that Strength would not let him leave.

Instead, he came forward when Scorn invited him, just as they had all planned, sweeping to the side as she indicated the action lever, that was far to large and heavy for him to pull on his own. "Yyyou and I," Scorn promised in a blast of hissing soot. "Togetherrrr."

Abdication looked down at Sabrina only once, in the moment before the grisly act was carried out, but that moment was all she needed. In that moment, suddenly it was no longer her there, face beaten and teeth chipped and bloody, but faces that Abdication could not so easily ignore.

She was Pikachu, the cartilage of his ears snapped and sagging, fur missing in huge, welt-covered tracks, crying for him to stop.

She was Deliah, hollow eye-socket gushing puss and blood, and screaming for a son who would not come.

She was Brock and Dawn and Max and Misty, and all the others in turn, begging for him to stop, begging for him to put an end to this in the only way he could.

She was all of them, demanding at once, selfishly: "Take my place. You, not me."

And then, she was Ash, eyes closed in acceptance of the fate to come. An example, Sabrina knew, Abdication would follow. Abdication was the weakest, most miserable part of Ash. But he was still part of Ash, and martyrdom was still a portion of heroism, when cast in the light she'd set it in. At least, from his perspective, his suffering and conclusion would come to a close either way.

Sure enough, Abdication let go, and turned with his hands shaking to face Scorn. "I can't. I'm sorry."

And like a slowly heated pot, Scorn began to simmer, quietly. It belied the true explosive heat of what would come, and must've seemd like contrition to Abdication, who stepped toward her offeringly.

"Me instead. Please."

Scorn smiled at this, teeth baring into a stitch-pattern of true pleasure as Abdication came closer into that spread embrace she offered, and touched his hands to hers. Scorn's elongated phalanges felt his with the surprise of a blind woman, the fingers creeping slowly up his arm, as though trying to obtain the nature of what it had come into contact with through tactile sense alone.

"I will take youuuu." The Sabrina-thing said, voice oddly muffled as it's grip seemed to become ever so slowly more urgent, in the breath of a few seconds. "I will take eeeeverything you have."

Abdication gasped, his voice tight. "I want you to."

It was then that Abdication's desire for her turned sour, for Scorn was on him, locked to him, her hands like vices, her grip inexorable.

Her neck lowered too far, and her jaw opened too wide and in her mouth, behind oscillating rows of shark like teeth, was the sharpest, shrillest, most invasive sound he'd ever heard. Like a whispered scream that didn't go away, but instead slowly filled the arena, like a massive balloon filling to burst. She made that sound straight into his face, and straight into his mouth, and straight down his throat as her maw dug inside of his with a insistent back and forth motion that spouted thick red across their cheeks. She ate into him like a tick, burrowing into the blood and the meat and the bone, until she was irremovable.

The roaring scream filled him like a sickness. He could not move or scream or even struggle as the horribly expelled sound turned to powerful suction. Tears welled and fell from his eyes as he hung there helpless in her embrace. She squeezed his middle so hard that he was sure he'd heard the horrific pop of his own stomach rupturing. She didn't stop, greedily, hungrily gulping down the surge of hot liquid that rushed up his throat, sucking and crushing him and swallowing what came out, blood and guts and all, as he began to crumple like a crushed soda-can. Even when there was no viscera left, she kept going, drinking the immaterial parts of him as well.

"Give it to meeeeee! I know you have it in here ssssssomewhere!" The voice in her mouth, the voice that filled him to the brim, seethed, searching him to the core. He wanted her to stop, he wanted everything back, but it all just kept coming out, vomited into her waiting maw.

She slurped out his feelings, and his memories, she sucked up his dreams and his desires, she swallowed his secrets and his hopes. She kept slugging down everything inside of him, until she hit something too solid to suck out. The sudden barricade only seemed to increase her lust for it, though, and she pulled harder, nursing at his mouth, slobbering hot and heavily across his face, and down his raw, collapsed throat.

Her tongue lashed into his throat like an auger, twisting and boring for what it wanted, deep in the bottom of his gut, and deeper still. Something hot, and tight, and lead-heavy, that he'd kept buried there. Something that didn't have a name. Something that frightened even him.

He was the one who kept the things that Ash didn't want, and didn't deserve, and could not deal with. In that, he unwittingly kept the darkest of all Ash's secrets. He couldn't lead Sabrina to what she wanted, because it wasn't something a person could be led to. The yolk of an egg could only be attained by cracking the shell. So too was Ash's hidden power.

If he didn't pull it away, Scorn would break in. Abdication knew that. But he also knew that there was nowhere further for him to pull it to. She had him. All of him. The only place for it to go was out. And though the two were largely the same in terms of consequence, Sabrina knew he would choose to expose it himself before she could. It was the same when people jumped out the windows of burning skyscrapers. Human nature demanded self-preservation, even if it was only to exercise a level of control over the certainty of death.

Abdication ripped open the pit of his diaphragm and the arena went white as it was consumed by a burst of sound, heat, and light. Where before there had been a crumpled child, now there was a supernova of agony and concussive force.

Abdication, the baleful things that were of Sabrina but not Sabrina, and the arena itself were all utterly obliterated. Instantly gone, instantly destroyed by something they could never hope to withstand. Sabrina felt herself thrown away from his mind, by the blast. As in all dreams, she awoke with a start just a split second before the gruesome impact.

The psychic bolted upright in bed, back in her own body for the first time in hours, her nightgown clinging with perspiration, and heaved in a shocked breath. Her skin felt alien, and her head swooned from the forcefulness of her ejection. She slumped sideways onto the bed, breathing ragged.

She had expected the revelation of Ash's power to be powerful in the extreme, and she had braced for it All the same, it had leveled her. Quantitatively, she was well aware of what Ash was capable of, of course, but it paled greatly to actually experiencing it first hand.

It was not ego to say that she was the most powerful human Psychic who'd ever lived. In every measurable way, that was true. She'd outstripped her parents abilities before she'd even hit puberty, and as an adult she continued to grow in power, though she kept the matter guarded and private, for the sake of propriety. After all, a person like her would get to be worrisome to those with more recognizable authority and prestige, if the full extent of her abilities became common knowledge.

The truth was that every day her strength grew, and there was no end in sight. She would outpace the full capacity and understanding of every other significant Psychic on earth by a significant margin before she was twenty. Even the Guardians in the North, with their lives of constant dedication and practice would fall far short of her, in terms of power.

Yet, all of that was nothing against Ash. Nothing of what she had now, or ever would have would be enough to merit comparison to just a scant portion of what he had. She couldn't even adequately describe her failing. There was just no parallel.

The things that people understood when talking about size and scope gave rise to pitiful comparison, and she was just as fallible as any other, in that regard. Ideas and concepts were associative. A notion required understanding to make it sensible to the mind, but those sorts of notions would forever remain out of the reach, limited such as human beings were.

What was a the weight of the Earth, to a creature that couldn't even lift a short ton? How did you describe the explosive, thermal energy of a star to a being that could be badly burned by heat that couldn't even boil water? What was a lightyear, to people who would probably never travel more than a few light-seconds distance in the frame of their entire lives? Those values were simply far too big.

In that same way, the unknowable, incomprehensible power that lay dormant inside Ash Ketchum was too big, and too far out of reach for her to know. She wouldn't test herself against it again, that much had been proven pointless, but the fact remained that she had not yet succeeded in doing what she'd set out to.

It was not her that needed to overcome that incredible power, it was Ash himself who needed to. He'd unleashed it all in one horrendous burst, but he still needed to come to grips with that power, still needed to be able to harness it when it would be needed, and that required more teaching. Fortunately, she knew Ash was still out there, mind still blank and wide-open, his body still shut down and defenseless.

She doubted that Abdication had survived, since not even Strength and Scorn had re-condensed yet, but any business she had now would need be with a stronger facet anyways. She would dredge up this lead facet, Ambition, and take him in hand for as many times as was required for him to get it right. She still had all night, and to Ash, that would feel like an eternity.

She shut her eyes, and lie back down, probing for his mind across the city, looking for a way back in. What she found was not a defenseless little boy at all. Instead, there was something huge, impossibly huge lurking in the darkness, waiting for her. The instant she abandoned her body, it enveloped her like a fist.

She stiffened at first, in surprise. Surprise was not an emotion she regularly felt. It was certainly a new experience, to be overpowered at this level, in a place where she'd always enjoyed total deific impunity. Then she felt something she'd not felt in a long time.

Pain.

Real pain, physical pain. Pain so deep and so wide that there was no room for anything else at all. Now, Sabrina screamed for her life and this time, it was not an act.

---

A/N: Thanks for reading, guys. I think the next chapter just about ought to wrap up all the psychonautics, and then maybe one more to complete this arc. Hard to tell. I just wanted to get this out while I could. Work is getting pretty heavy, so no promises on the timeline for the next chapter, but I'll keep chipping away at it.