Chapter 29

We were back in Pallet Town in a matter of moments, but I calculated that approximately twenty hours passed since I first stormed out of Lilly's house.

My head was beginning to ache just anticipating what was about to transpire. I could foresee the exact events without looking into the future at all: Ash would enter the house first, Lilly would see him there with me and probably start crying again while making up some excuse for the things she said to me, and he would expect me to just accept her apology and move on as if nothing happened.

But even as I was playing out that scenario in my mind, the faintest sense of unease was beginning to come over me. The weather was warm, yet the neighborhood was eerily still with the exception of a faint, cool breeze that signaled the very beginning of autumn. There were no children playing with their family's Pokémon outside like I usually heard from the confines of the house.

As we drew nearer, I began to pick up the faint sound of a woman crying nearby. It only unsettled me further; I tried to ignore it by thinking about what Ash said earlier about not carefully considering the situation. There was absolutely no mistaking Lilly's intent; it was clear that she wanted to sell me back to Team Rocket. And hypothetically, if there was some kind of mistake, what then? Why would I go back to remaining in that house after all of the stress she caused Ash and me?

Even if that were the case, I thought to myself, even if this was a misunderstanding, she would not allow me to come back. Not after the way I reacted.

"Mewtwo? Are you coming?" I vaguely heard Ash ask.

I looked up and realized that I had stopped moving forward. He was looking at me expectantly over his shoulder, his eyes weary of any tricks I might pull to get out of going back to the house with him.

"That was a trick question, of course you're coming," he said, not waiting for me to answer.

I sighed before following him once again.

As we drew nearer to the house, the woman's crying grew louder. Ash stopped dead in his tracks when his weaker human ears finally picked up the sound.

"What is it?" I asked, stopping next to him.

He did not turn to look at me but continued to stare straight ahead, listening intently. Without answering my question, he took off running toward Lilly's house. I levitated closely behind and read his mind:

That's my Mom! Something serious must have happened, I knew it—

Stop thinking like that, we do not know what happened, I said to him.

He was too deep in his thoughts to listen to me; I had to stop reading them for my own sanity. I was able to keep myself in a calm frame of mind right up until we turned the corner to Lilly's street.

Sure enough, there was a woman weeping several feet away from the front door. In spite of her hands covering her face and having seen her only a handful of times, I recognized the woman as Ash's mother immediately from her brown hair that was pulled back into a ponytail. Her Mr. Mime was standing by her side, looking as though he was at a total loss.

She must have thought the Rockets took me, that must be what drove her to tears, I told myself.

I flew ahead of Ash and Pikachu to see if Lilly happened to be there with her. When I arrived in front of the house and opened my mouth to ask her what happened, something caught my eye and distracted me. I turned toward the house and stared at the sight of the front door on the ground.

Strange, I do not recall it falling off the hinges. It must have happened when she left the house.

Mr. Mime gently tugged at Mrs. Ketchum's denim pants, but she ignored him.

"Whatever happened here?" I quickly asked, pretending to be completely baffled by what I was seeing.

Ash's mother looked up when she heard me speak. Her eyes were red from crying, but her expression changed dramatically when she recognized who was addressing her. I did not have time to get a good look at the house before she demanded my attention.

"Mewtwo!" she bristled.

I flinched, not expecting to hear the anger that boiled in her voice.

She took a step in my direction and asked, "Wh-Where on Earth have you been?"

I had heard her use a stern voice with Ash before, but never in my life has someone used a voice filled with a much anger and pain toward me as hers was in that moment.

"I . . . I was with Ashton just now," I replied, still recovering from the hostile voice she used toward me.

Ash finally appeared just in time to save me from her wrath, walking past me and toward his distressed mother.

"What's going on, Mom?" he huffed, out of breath.

"Oh, Ash!" she sobbed, flinging her arms around her only son.

"Tell us what happened," I demanded.

She let go of Ash and faced me again.

"It . . . it's terrible! The house is a complete wreck!"

I averted my eyes for a moment, knowing that it was entirely my fault that the house was in the state it was in.

"T-Team Rocket—"

But I was not expecting her to say that.

"Team Rocket was here?" I asked, looking at her again.

"Yes! They came here and . . . and . . ."

She was not able to finish her sentence. I began to fill in the blanks myself, my pulse quickening with each passing second.

No, impossible. They would not have—

"Where is Lilly?" I asked quietly, trying to keep my thoughts under control.

"The police . . . went back to the station to begin an investigation . . ."

The police?!

"Where is she? Is she safe? Was there a battle?" I asked, unable to disguise the urgency in my voice.

"Th- . . . The police think they think they took her . . . she's not in the house or the neighborhood."

"What?!" Ash shouted.

I felt my eyes widen and a sense of dread creep over me.

That could not have happened. She had her Pokémon with her . . . right? She must have protected herself with them, they would not have been able to defeat her and her team . . .

Mrs. Ketchum was weeping too much to continue her explanation, but that did not stop me from asking her further questions.

"But how can they be certain? Perhaps she was gone when they broke into the house?" I asked in an effort to get more information out of her.

"Maybe she left with a Pokémon . . . and she's coming back later," Ash added hopefully.

Mrs. Ketchum quickly shook her head "no" and wiped her eyes.

"Her training bag . . . she l-left it over there . . . the police said there might be fingerprints," she replied, gesturing toward the doorway.

I looked in that direction once more and finally noticed it; the grey bag that Lilly used to carry her training supplies was slumped behind a potted plant near the front door.

"I will check for her Pokémon."

I quickly summoned the bag as Ash began to say, "I messaged her on her Pokénav right before dinner yesterday, but she seemed kind of busy with something."

"Yes, you mentioned that earlier. Can you elaborate further? What do you mean by 'kind of busy'?" I asked as I began to levitate things out of it, hoping to find some sort of clue.

"She just told me not to message her, and that she was busy . . ."

Ash's eyes widened, "That must have had something to do with it! And then she never responded to messages I sent after that . . ."

Mrs. Ketchum looked up, having realized something.

"I . . . thought I heard loud engines yesterday . . ."

She started crying again as she choked out, "But I didn't think anything of them!"

Ash tried to console his hysterical mother as I continued to fish about Lilly's possessions. I sensed that nobody had touched the pack for several hours as I tossed empty Pokéballs, berries, and some clothes onto the grass below.

"Wait . . . why would Lilly have clothes in her bag?" Ash asked quietly, acknowledging the small bundle of clothing lying on the ground.

"What?" I asked absentmindedly, still rummaging through the bag.

"Lilly never packs clothes when she goes training. She comes home every night because she wanted to keep you hidden, you know that," Ash said a little louder.

"Well, she did not have to look after me any longer since I left," I muttered.

"But look at them, those clothes don't even match," he insisted, "it's like . . . she was in a rush or something, right?"

I ignored him, vainly trying to shut out the concerns that were beginning to set in.

"Mewtwo, why did you leave Lilly?" Ash's mother asked a second time.

"She intended to sell me back to Team Rocket."

I said this as though she asked me how the weather was in Hoenn, though I was beginning to feel nauseated by the evidence and the narrative that was being presented to me.

"What? But she hates Team Rocket! She would never allow them to take any of her Pokémon."

"That's what I said, it doesn't make sense!" Ash blurted out.

While those two were discussing my response, I could no longer ignore the questions that were being formed in my own head.

Why did Lilly pack a bag full of provisions, then leave it outside for hours?

After I drew out yet another shirt, it was then that I saw it. I did not know what they were at that moment, but that was when I experienced what humans call "goosebumps" for the first time.

"Mewtwo?" Ash asked, startled by my expression.

I was unable to respond, so I simply pulled the small picture frame out of the bag for him to see. Ash's face grew pale when he realized what the photo was.

"That . . . that isn't . . ."

"It's the only photo Lilly has of her parents," I said quietly, still looking at it.

Ash took it out of the air and stared at it.

"I knew she had one, but . . . I've never seen it before," he said in a voice barely louder than a whisper.

I was afraid to keep going through the bag, though at that point there was not much left to remove from it. I came across more Pokéballs and immediately knew that there were Pokémon inside them.

I levitated them and released the Pokémon all at once. As soon as they appeared, my fears were confirmed; it was Lilly's primary team.