2
Images flashed in and out of his vision, coupled with the sound of screaming. The world had become a mess of jumbled pictures, grainy, black and white. Beyond the screams and an ever growing pain that had begun at the very end of his tail and slowly made it's way upward, spreading to his back, arms, legs and chest, a voice was speaking. It was a horse whisper, barely audible, the words out of reach of comprehension.
Stop stop stop! Please be quiet! I can't hear!
As if hearing his please, it all stopped. The chaotic images came to a stop and everything came into a red tinted focus.. The screaming stopped, being replaced by an unsettling silence.
Then a voice spoke up, breaking through the silence. There was a presence and the sound of footsteps.
"Is it still alive?" demanded a deep masculine voice.
"Yes," another, more female, voice responded. "It is very durable, anything else would have expired."
"Excellent, but has it been able to tell you anything? Have you been able to probe it's mind for any useful information?"
"So far we've been able to pick up bits and pieces but it seems to have put up some kind of mental barrier. We cannot get past it."
"Keep trying!" the male voice snapped impatiently. "I will not allow this creature to hide things from me! Continue! If I can't get it willing; I will force it out of it!"
The pain returned and with it, the screaming and disjointed images.
The male voice raised above the chaos. "That's right! Scream! Scream until you can't anymore! I will learn everything about you and you will not deny me!"
The images grew more jumbled, the pain increased, piercing every part of his body. Pictures grew blurry and a static mess before bursting into an erray of colors then everything went black.
"Mewtwo! Mewtwo! Wake up!"
A voice broke into his mind as he struggled against unseen foes. The pokemon lashed out, grabbed onto the first thing his hands caught hold of.
"Mewtwo! Stop! You're hurting me!"
Mewtwo's eyes shot open and he found himself with his hands around Karen's neck. The girl's large green eyes were wide with terror as she stared up at his face.
{Karen!} The pokemon, realizing what he was doing, instantly released her. {I-I'm sorry!}
The girl sat up, grasping her neck as she tried to catch her breath. He watched her worriedly, afraid he'd hurt her.
{Karen?}
The girl turned her head sharply to look at him. He noticed her eyes didn't hold any type of fear, just questions. A sudden clattering caught both of their attention and they turned their heads in unison. The floor was littered with lose objects that had all fallen to the floor at the same time. Mewtwo realized he must have been making everything in the room levitate in his sleep. This made the girl turn back to the psychic pokemon, giving him a questioning look.
"What in the world were you dreaming about?" she asked.
Dreaming? He hadn't even realized he'd fallen alseep until Karen's voice had woken him up. He must have nodded off when he'd been sitting in the chair beside her bed the night before. He suddenly remembered the nightmare he'd been having. It hadn't felt like a dream at all, it was too realistic, like a memory.
But whose?
"Mewtwo?"
Karen's voice brought him out of his thoughts. The girl was sitting up in the bed, staring at him, waiting for him to give her an answer.
The horrible bloody images flashed through his mind again. There was no way he was going to tell her what his dream had been about, especially after she'd just regained consciousness.
{It was nothing,} he told her, deciding it was better to keep it to himself for now.
She didn't believe him. Obviously it had to be something if he'd been making things float around the room in his sleep and flailing around like he was trying to escape from some kind of restraints. The fact he'd grabbed her by the throat and tried to choke her made that clear.
"Then why did you try to kill me?"
Mewtwo looked away from her. {I'm sorry about that,} he apologized again. {Just a bad dream.}
"Was it about Giovanni?" she asked.
An out. Karen was full aware of the pokemon's history with the leader of Team Rocket as she found herself had been on the receiving end of the man's cruelty. He'd had nightmare's about his time being "partners" with him before so it made sense he'd have one now.
When Mewtwo nodded, her face soften. He must have been dreaming he was fighting with the mob boss. "You don't have to worry about him anymore," she assured him. "That man can't hurt you anymore."
She sounded so sure of herself and he wasn't in any mood to argue. He changed the subject. {I am relieved that you are awake,} he said. "{I was worried.}
Karen smiled, feeling happy he actually cared about her. A welcome change to how he'd felt about her in the past. "I'll be all right," she said. "I guess that fall didn't do as much damage as I thought."
Yes, there was that. He still had no idea how she'd managed not to be seriously injured from it. {Yes,} he said. {But I think you should stay here until the doctors get a chance to look at you and make sure.}
Karen sat back, resting her back against the pillows. "Yeah, you're right," she agreed. "I hope you don't mind. I know how you feel about doctors."
The pokemon got out of the chair and went over to the window. She knew indeed. He wouldn't even allow any nurses at the pokemon center look after him when he was injured. Anyone in a lab coat of any kind touching him brought back some horrible memories. It was why he'd learned Recover, so he wouldn't have to worry about it. Too bad Recover couldn't have been used on her, otherwise he wouldn't have brought her there.
"Mewtwo?" he looked back at her, seeing the girls face once again a mask of worry. "Are you all right?"
{I'm fine,} he told her. {I just need to get out of here for awhile.} he raised his hand to open the window then lifted himself off the floor and flew out of it but turned back to her. {I will be back later. You stay here and heal in the meantime. Don't go anywhere else until I get back, all right?}
Before Karen could answer he'd turned and flown away. The girl watched him disappear over the roof's of the houses before sighing and laying back on the bed. There he went again, hiding things from her. She would think he would fully trust her now that they'd been together for so long.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised, she thought, closing her eyes. he will never completely trust anybody.
Mewtwo guessed he should feel bad for not being completely honest with Karen as he flew over the town and away from the doctor's office. But what did he expect her to do about it? If he told her she would just get even more worried and he didn't need that right now. It was best she was kept in the dark until he was able to figure things out and get some answers.
Speaking of getting answers. An image of the young woman who'd helped them the night before flashed in his mind, he knew exactly who would be able to give them to him, he just had to find her.
Pausing, he hovered for a moment above the clock tower in the middle of the town, then turned and made a beeline for the woods.
Finding Platinum proved to be much harder than Mewtwo realized as she didn't seem to be anywhere in or near the forest. Because it was day time the place didn't look the least bit foreboding or that it hid an insane Darkrai. Surprisingly he didn't encounter the Ddarkrai no matter how far into the trees he went.
He must only show up at night, Mewtwo figured.
That was a relief at least, as he wouldn't have to worry about it until nightfall. Hopefully he'd be able to find the young woman beforehand.
The feline pokemon finally concluded that his target would not be found in the forest after all. He found a place to land in a clearing he spotted from above and touched down in the middle of it. Once on the ground he looked around himself at the trees lining the clearing in a circle. Some bug and plant pokemon caught sight of him and either moved away from where he stood or kept their distance watching. None made an attempt to challenge him.
Mewtwo looked at them all, frowning but making no attempt to communicate. What answers could these creatures give him anyway? Even if they knew about the insane Darkrai they wouldn't know anything about a human named Platinum.
Where are you, human?
An image came unbidden to his mind. It was similar to the one he'd gotten when the Darkrai had tried to attack him the night before, black and white and chaotic with screaming as the background sounds. Grunting he stumbled forward, hands grasping his head as pain shot through it.
More images flashed before his eyes, each one worse than the other. Brief glimpses of faceless humans in lab coats and a large building, black and foreboding. Then just like that they stopped and his vision cleared, returning him to the peaceful sunlit forest.
What in the world was that?
Deciding it was best not to spent a moment longer in those woods, Mewtwo lifted himself off the ground and flew out of the clearing, and back to the town. He figured he'd go and check on Karen to make sure she was doing ok. She was probably wondering why he'd flown off the way he had.
The psychic pokemon had nearly arrived at the doctor's office building when he caught sight of a familiar figure standing on the sidewalk below. He paused in mid air and looked toward the ground, seeing that the person he'd spotted was indeed who he thought it was. The young woman Platinum was standing in the middle of the sidewalk below and she was talking to a man with black hair and wearing a brown trench coat.
Mewtwo didn't know who the man was and he couldn't hear what he or Platinum was talking about but that wasn't important. He'd found the woman and now that he had, he was going to talk to her. But first he would have to wait until she was by herself because he didn't feel comfortable confronting her in front of an audience.
So he hovered there, watching the two conversing for the next ten minutes before the man in the coat nodded his head and the two humans parted ways. Mewtwo followed after the young woman, flying over her but not in a way to draw attention. She walked down the street to an older part of the town where she walked through an iron gate and up the driveway to a large but run down looking mansion. surrounded by an over grown lawn and shrubbery that obscured the windows.
Mewtwo flew up to the house and hovered in front of it, trying to see inside the windows. With the shrubbery growing over the glass it was hard to get a look inside. He frowned then teleport ed inside the building without a second thought. The pokemon appeared inside of what looked like a living room. Unlike the exterior of the house the place's interior was in pristine condition, every piece of furniture in its proper place and not a speck of dust anywhere.
The feline pokemon looked around the room, taking in the large book shelves, new looking sofa and recliner and the coffee table that looked like someone had gone to town using Pine sol on. On the far wall was a stone fire place and above it was a painting of a family. A young girl with bright green eyes and dark hair stood in front of a couple with similar features.
Mewtwo floated over to the picture to get a closer look.
"Ever heard of knocking?"
The pokemon nearly jumped out of his skin and he quickly spun around.
Standing in the arching doorway of the living room with her arms folded was the young woman who'd helped him and Karen get out of the forest the night before. The look on her face was a mixture of annoyance and acceptance like she'd been expecting him to come there. "You really should have listened to me," she said, raising a black gloved and snapping her fingers.
A sudden sense of danger filled the room. Mewtwo backed up a little, expecting an attack from someone in the room behind her. {You-} he started to say but he was hit by something from behind
Before he could figure out what had just happened his body was surrounded by a dark orb of energy. A second later everything went black and the orb vanished as he fell to the floor unconscious.
Platinum looked down at the senseless pokemon laying sprawled out on the carpeted floor. The painting above the fireplace spiraled and the white Darkrai came out of it. It flew down and hovered over Mewtwo, creating another dark orb just in case the pokemon got back up.
"No need for that," she told it, putting up her hand. She knelt down to get a closer look at him, placing a gloved hand on his face and lifting it for a better look. "He'll be out for hours. "
So similar to her yet so different, is he somehow related or- she froze, spotting something on his cheek. Her eyes widened and she let go of his face, allowing his head to flop back onto the floor.
Platinum stood back up and looked at her Darkrai who'd been silently watching her. Her eyes met his as she said in a voice that had started to shake. "Let's make our friend comfortable."