Operation GEAR: The Angel of Reckoning

by The Great Butler

A girl and her friends set out on a search for truth in a land torn apart by political and religious strife. However, they are unaware of what they are stepping into: the grasp of a terrifying, inescapable enemy that aims to bring down mankind's greatest achievement, the Pokemon League. Soon, the truth becomes clouded, and a desperate struggle for survival begins.

29. Runaway

This chapter will have scenes of more intense violence in it. Also, be advised there is some disturbing content.

-:-

CHAPTER 28: Runaway

-:-

Even with the weight of all of their worries, Matt, Anabel and Amanda were able to settle into a sort of routine over the next nine days.

Of utmost importance was keeping an eye on Olivia. Luckily for them, she hadn't made it difficult. As she pressed on through Route 39 and Route 38, past Ecruteak City and then Mt. Mortar to Ecruteak's east, she never ceased posting pictures of her activity on RChannel. Her doggedly persistent documentation of her training was a gift to the others, since it allowed them to keep abreast of her situation while giving her the space Anabel insisted she needed. Olivia's training had paid off significantly even in that short time, with Herdier and Krabby evolving and her Pokémon picking up several new moves as well.

When she wasn't monitoring her daughter, Anabel tried to punctuate each day with more leisurely activities that Amanda eagerly joined her in. Whether it was taking care of their Pokémon, raiding Matt's bookshelf for things to read or watching Pokémon Baccer matches and battles on Victory Station, they were rarely apart for those nine days.

Matt on the other hand, was rather withdrawn for that period, choosing to leave them to their own devices for the most part. He didn't go out of his way to avoid his companions, and was more than happy to cook whatever they asked for to eat, but his worries were eating him alive. He couldn't shake a feeling of lingering dread that something would happen to Olivia, but given that they were on track to arrive in Mahogany Town and reunite with her the next morning, he maintained some hope that his worry would be unfounded. No, it was Nekou who truly troubled him. He couldn't imagine the pain she was in after losing Ariana, and her uncharacteristic behavior both leading up to and after the drunken night they spent together only compounded his suspicions of what she must have been going through. Had he only made it worse? No matter how hard he tried to think that they could talk it out, without knowing what she felt, all he could do as he sat alone in HR-E's cockpit that night was to drown in nervous thoughts about it all. He knew how he felt, or at least he thought he did, but that just was not enough. Knowledge of the scars all over her back certainly didn't help soothe his concerns.

While he was lost in his thoughts, the cockpit door slid open and Anabel stepped inside. "Hey," she greeted him, her words reaching his ears right after the aromatic scent of the tea in the cup she carried reached his nose. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah," he listlessly answered, making little to no physical reaction to her presence or her question.

Anabel furrowed her brow and curled her mouth into a frown. "You know, you're not exactly a convincing liar," she said, her subtle annoyance coming through in her voice. Her manner soon softened, though, and she added, "There's clearly something on your mind… I would be more alarmed if there wasn't."

"You're always so perceptive."

"It wasn't hard to tell." Sitting on the arm of his sofa bed, Anabel sipped from her tea and pressed further, suggesting, "It might help to talk about it."

"Yeah, you're right…" Matt sighed. When Anabel was in her right state of mind, she really was a perceptive person. Yet, he knew she could make many of the same mistakes he did if she tried too hard to act on her perceptions. Was that not the reason they had spent over a week tailing Olivia in the first place? Maybe that made her the ideal person to confide in, he reasoned. Maybe she'd understand. "I just… I think something's wrong with Nekou and I don't know what to do to help. I don't even know what to say to her when we see her again, whether it's tomorrow or later on. There's no… I can't turn my back now. There's just no way."

Matt stared down at his right hand, opening and closing it repeatedly while he continued. "But you know what's funny?" he bitterly posed to her. "I get it now… Nekou would never need me to try and protect her from harm the way I keep doing for everyone else, no matter how badly I want to. She would never want me to, either. But that's why I understand now just how wrong doing that was… I should have understood from how Amanda made her own life for herself, but no. I kept obsessing over trying to protect people important to me from harm, only for harm to keep coming to them anyways. It took me starting to care about someone like her to realize what I did wrong." Matt sardonically chuckled at his own foolishness and pressed his hand into his forehead. "I don't even know where I'm going with this anymore. There are so many people I hurt by trying to make myself into some sort of hero… and you and your family are chief among them, Anabel. I'm sorry."

"I thought so. Something did happen between you and Nekou in Olivine, didn't it?" Anabel contemplated as she drew more of the fragrant liquid out of the cup and into her mouth. Lowering the porcelain from her lips, she replied, "You don't owe me anything, at least not anymore. I'll be honest, there might have been a time when we could have done things differently…"

Rising from her seat on the sofa's arm, Anabel made her way over to a window at the back of HR's cockpit and peered out at the mountainous, wooded terrain beyond.

"...but that time's long since passed. Anything that happens now is my responsibility, and I have to do better." Anabel narrowed her eyes at the nature beyond the window. Somewhere out there, not far from where she was, Olivia was still suffering alone for her mother's mistakes. "That's why we're here right now, after all. What I will say now is…" Turning, she approached the sofa again but did not sit down. "...I don't know Nekou like you do, but I think she's someone you can trust to tell you what she needs. Just listen to her, and if she needs something that's within reason for you to do, be ready to help her."

Matt sat back and considered what Anabel was telling him. "It's true, she certainly does say what she wants… but on the other hand, after the way she was acting withdrawn that day, I just don't know… yet, I can't act like I know what she needs, either. That would just be making the same mistakes all over again. So if I just wait to find out, then… what if she still is out of sorts?"

-:-

A sense of tension permeated the cold, still air in Mahogany Town when the group arrived the next morning. Matt, Anabel and Amanda all could sense it, and it made them shiver just as much as the temperature did. Few others were out on the stone roads with them as they made their way toward the Pokémon Center at the southeast edge of the small community.

"It feels like this entire town is on edge," Matt thought to himself, pulling his scarf as tightly around his neck and mouth as he could. "Not like that's surprising."

Mahogany's lack of modernization compared to other cities on the continent didn't only mean it retained its rustic appeal. It also hadn't expanded much at all beyond its familiar borders - anyone searching for Pokémon League or Battle Frontier-related activity would instead head for the cities to the west. That was especially true following the death of Mahogany's Gym Leader, which meant the trainers who did pass through the town mostly did so only to reach Blackthorn City beyond it. All of that added up to their trek being a short one, landing them squarely in front of the Pokémon Center after only a short time. It too hadn't modernized, instead keeping its traditional log cabin structure.

"So what's the plan?" Amanda asked the others as they approached the building, alerted to their impending arrival by her Arcanine at her side.

"Same as it was at Olivine Port," Anabel answered, turning her right hand aside. "We'll split up, you and Matt in one direction and myself in another, and ask as many people as we can if they've seen Olivia. She's definitely somewhere nearby, the most recent photo she posted was from right outside Mahogany."

They might have had a well thought out plan in place for approaching their situation, but as it is said, the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray. Accordingly, fate had other plans for them that day. They'd barely managed to enter the Pokémon Center before three younger trainers barged in past them, nearly knocking them down in their frantic haste.

"Please, help us!" one of them cried out to the nurse, who was already emerging from behind her desk with her Chansey following closely behind. In the boy's arms, a bruised and battered Maractus shuddered while gasping for breath. The Grass-type Pokémon was in no better state than those carried by the other two trainers, a Komala and Dedenne bearing highly similar injuries.

Suspicious of what was going on, Matt, Anabel and Amanda stopped nearby to listen in on the conversation.

"Oh no, what happened?" questioned the nurse. Lowering herself to better see the Pokémon, she carefully inspected Maractus's wounds. "Impact injuries and burns, but also… signs of frostbite? Just like all the others who have encountered that Pokémon…"

"That's right, we all ran into it!" the schoolgirl with the Komala exclaimed. "We didn't even want to fight it! We all tried to run but it came after us and cornered us!"

Just then, Chansey arrived pushing a stretcher large enough to fit all three Pokémon. The nurse helped the trainers put their teammates on it, then said to her own partner, "Chansey, bring them to the back." Chansey chirped a cry of acknowledgment and did so, leaving the nurse to turn back to the trainers. "We'll take care of them, don't any of you worry. Just be patient, please."

The nurse then took her leave, accompanying Chansey in taking the stretcher to the back of the Pokémon Center. Sensing her opportunity, Anabel moved to approach them with Matt and Amanda in tow.

"Excuse me, might you have a moment?" she asked them.

"I don't think we're going anywhere anytime soon," answered the Maractus's trainer. It took a second before he realized who he was talking to, but when he did, his eyes widened. "Wait, aren't you Anabel, the Battle Frontier's commissioner?"

"It's pretty brave of you to be out here with everything that Polaris group is spreading around," the schoolgirl added. "There's a lot of people getting pretty upset with Gym Leaders, Frontier Brains, the whole system."

Anabel grimaced, and behind her, Matt did as well. With everything else that had been going on, especially keeping track of Olivia, she had little opportunity to worry about Polaris peddling its poison. When her attention was called to it, though, there was no avoiding acknowledgement of the increasingly vitriolic response to their rhetoric. Any hopes that Ghetsis's disappearance would deradicalize their movement - any that survived Father's hijacking of Gabriella and Lysandre's broadcast, at least - died off when she saw television coverage of Polaris's message and the way it was being received by those susceptible to it.

There were two things she considered herself lucky for, though. One was that the three young trainers, and by extension the few others in the Pokémon Center, didn't appear to be among those swayed to Polaris's cause. Second, they hadn't noticed her physical reaction to the schoolgirl's comment, either.

"Yes, that is me," Anabel finally answered them. That she needed to get out her phone anyway provided her with a convenient excuse for her hesitation in replying. Holding the device out toward the three with a picture of Olivia on its screen, she questioned, "When you were up on Route 43, did you see anyone who looked like this? She might have had shorter hair than this, but…"

"Now that you say it, I did see someone like that," the Dedenne trainer, a blonde in a fancy white dress who to that point had remained silent, spoke up. She reached up and removed her sun hat as she continued, "There was a person matching that description battling a lot of wild Pokémon before that monster attacked us… I believe I saw her using a Stoutland, a Kingler, and this really vicious looking Flaaffy…"

"Yeah, that's her," Matt interrupted, putting his hand on Anabel's shoulder to get her attention. "Come on, we need to get up there right away."

"You're right," Anabel agreed. Before joining Matt and Amanda on their way back out, she said to the three trainers, "Thank you so much for your help. I hope your Pokémon all end up okay."

"Wait…" Maractus's trainer tried to call after her, but it ended up being in vain as they had already passed through the door and disappeared. Turning to his two companions, he wondered aloud, "Do you guys think even she can beat that thing?"

-:-

Meanwhile, Team Rocket's helicopter touched down at the edge of Mt. Mortar's terrain. Its optical camouflage couldn't mask the wind from its rotors, so to avoid any risk of prying eyes discovering them, they stayed well enough away from where people were likely to be.

Once they landed, Proton exited the cockpit to join Petrel, Jessie, James, Meowth, Ada and Nekou in the back. Pierce's continuing absence left piloting the craft up to him, and as soon as he rejoined his teammates, Ada shakily asked him, "Are we ready to go here?"

"Yeah," Proton replied, "bring it up."

Grimacing nervously, Ada looked down at her laptop, which she was holding up with her left arm. She hit several of its keys with her right hand, and in response, two video feeds appeared on a larger screen mounted on the wall nearby. One was of Rosalie, while the other showed footage of the mysterious trainer directing Genesect in battle against a Beedrill and a Poliwrath. The Poliwrath stretched out his arms and spun into Genesect at a high speed, only for the bionic Bug-type to be stunned for a brief moment before retaliating with Electroweb, bringing Poliwrath to his knees.

"Y-You can see exactly what's going on, Rosalie," Ada explained. "The Woobat drone has been recording things like this for some time now."

"Luckily, you have the advantage of numbers. I just pray it's enough." On her end of the transmission, Rosalie shifted in her wheelchair. "No matter what it takes, you have to defeat Genesect and save him. Consider it a bonus if you can steal Genesect away from Polaris, but it's not the mission, he is. Once you secure him, bring him to our backup headquarters at the old Rocket Game Corner and Resort in Celadon. Trevor and I will meet you there."

Of all the Rockets gathered in the helicopter, Nekou was the only one not fully paying attention to Rosalie's briefing. She stood at the very back of the group, still biting her fingernails as she tried to sort through the deluge of worries she carried. Genesect and the rest of the mission had her concerned, no doubt, but just burying herself in her job wasn't working to alleviate the others. She'd tried. No matter how much she tried to forget, she knew in her bones that Olivia was going to be there. And if that wasn't already a sufficient source of anxiety, Olivia being there inevitably meant Matt and Anabel would be following close behind.

The prospect of having to explain herself and her failings made her feel unspeakable shame. It was starting to dawn on her that for all of her past bluster, she somehow truly cared about what they thought of her. On top of it all, she could feel the presence of her other self, biting right at the edges of her consciousness.

Feeling like the walls were closing in on her from all sides, Nekou crunched down on her nail.

-:-

Route 43 remained in the grips of chaos from Genesect's latest rampage. Having folded its body up into a compact, saucer-like shape, it rammed the silvery-blue Sandslash fighting it with Flame Charge, the tongues of fire licking at Sandslash's icy body and spikes. The Ice-and-Steel-type Pokémon collapsed beside its partner fighting the seemingly unstoppable menace, a Meganium that Genesect easily felled with the icy blasts from its cannon.

As the two trainers recalled their fallen Pokémon and fled, Genesect unfurled from its folded-up stance and deftly landed amidst the ravaged landscape its savage fighting style left behind. It was surrounded by countless snapped trees, many of which had sections held above the ground by the sticky threads left over from Genesect's Electroweb. Starkly defined lines of frozen earth traced the paths where its icy blasts hit the ground, dotted by unnatural, stalagmite-like pillars of ice and powdery snowbanks that were periodically picked up and scattered by the winds.

Behind Genesect, the robotic-looking trainer again tucked its left hand into the pocket on its coat and touched its head with its right. The habit was so deeply ingrained into it that even though its opponents had already run away, it was still compelled to act. While performing its gesture of dominance, it surveyed the area spread out before it. The heads-up display provided by its digital mask scanned for potential opponents, and when it spotted a single person walking in its user's direction, informed the robot with the message 'Targets found: 1.' Genesect reacted accordingly, adopting a battle-ready stance in response to the signal from its master.

"Yo, I've been looking for you!" Olivia called out as she arrived to confront the pair. When it came to her new look, her cropped hair turned out to be the least of her changes. The black leather coat and matching tights she'd adopted, both accented with red, provided a striking backdrop for the white shirt that stuck out from underneath the zipped up jacket.

The robot's system took a moment to analyze the meaning of what it heard, and when it understood that Olivia was directly challenging it, generated the message 'battle mode' onto the display. Immediately upon that notice appearing, Genesect's eyes flashed a bright red and it braced itself for combat.

Olivia reached for one of her Poké Balls, but as her fingers brushed the sphere's surface, she took a look around. A shiver ran through her, not from the wintry air but from the sight of the devastation Genesect had already wrought. "No!" she thought, gritting her teeth as she fought back her fear. "If I don't face this, I won't be able to prove them wrong!"

Grinding her boot into the dirt beneath her feet, Olivia steeled her nerves for what she knew was coming. She flung the ball she'd selected, and from it, her Stoutland burst forth. His fur had grown even longer since his evolution from Herdier, forming a shaggy coat over his body and a magnificent mustache flowing from his face. Upon spotting Genesect and the robot, he lowered himself and started growling at them. Olivia had informed him and the rest of her team about what they would be facing the night before, so they were all on the same page.

"I better not give it a chance to get the drop on me," Olivia thought. Throwing her hand in Genesect's direction, she called out, "Stoutland, use Crunch!"

Stoutland bounded toward Genesect with his fangs bared. As he approached, the robot tracked his every move, its readouts constantly analyzing the threat Stoutland posed. Determining Crunch to not be much of a danger, it - and Genesect by extension - stood still, allowing the Normal-type Pokémon to try sinking his teeth into Genesect's metal armor.

With the gap between them now closed, Genesect began charging energy in its cannon, causing the powder-blue memory cassette installed in the back of the weapon to glow. Due to the close proximity of its target, its attack blew up into a cloud of snow as soon as it fired and separated them.

Stoutland flipped through the air and landed on his feet, his thick fur protecting him from the worst of the icy blast. He shook the remnant flakes from his coat just in time for Olivia to tell him, "If we got one hit in, just keep going! One step at a time!"

That was all the urging Stoutland needed to rush his target again, feeling no fear whatsoever of what it might be capable of. Unfortunately for him and Olivia, the robot's constant analysis allowed it to read their patterns like a book.

Since it already had its cannon charged, Genesect was able to fire multiple icy shots at Stoutland as he drew closer. He managed to weave through the assault, causing each of Genesect's rays to freeze the ground where they hit instead of any other effect, What neither he nor Olivia realized, however, was that Genesect actually wasn't aiming to hit him. It was aiming to box him in, and once he entered the trajectory the robot calculated, Genesect abruptly switched tactics. Ceasing the blasts from its cannon, it instead extended its arms and expelled sticky threads from its claws, leaving Stoutland hopelessly entangled in mere seconds. Their situation only worsened when Genesect sent an electric pulse through the silk, shocking Stoutland.

"No! Stoutland!" Olivia cried out, though her voice could barely be heard over her Pokémon's pained howls.

The robot raised its hand into the air, signaling Genesect to release the threads. Once separated from their creator, the electric current ceased flowing through them, letting up on Stoutland even as he remained tangled in the silk.

What happened next occurred so quickly Olivia almost couldn't see it. Genesect folded back up into its flight configuration and shot straight at its target like a bullet, its body completely surrounded by a veil of fire. The threads holding Stoutland down ignited upon Genesect's impact with him, and by the time the mythical Pokémon returned to its master, the webbing was completely aflame.

Olivia could do nothing but watch in horror as the blaze engulfed her Pokémon. "Is this… this is my fault, isn't it… maybe I bit off more than we could chew, and Stoutland's paying the price for it…"

It was then that, much to Olivia's surprise, the robot spoke for the first time. Although electronically distorted past the point of recognition, there was no mistaking what she heard was a deep, male voice. "Genesect, Techno Blast."

Genesect trained its cannon upon the inferno, free to charge Techno Blast to its full strength. Realizing that the only way to protect Stoutland was to recall him, Olivia rushed to grab his Poké Ball, but in her haste she slipped and dropped it. Her sense of time slowed to a crawl as she stared at the falling sphere, eyes widening and mouth falling open in sheer terror over her mistake.

Two things then happened simultaneously. The Poké Ball landed on the dirt path, and a huge explosion from in front of her nearly knocked Olivia off her feet. In the case of the latter, it was from the full might of Genesect's ice ray tearing into the core of the fire and hitting Stoutland. Techno Blast's freezing energy nullified the flames, leaving Stoutland unconscious atop a pile of charred threads.

Before she knew what she was doing, Olivia snatched up the Poké Ball and held it out, bringing Stoutland back to safety. She then stared at the red-and-white orb in her hand, finding unexpected difficulty in deciding upon the right words to say.

"I'm sorry I dragged you into this, Stoutland… I'm sorry… I'm…" Suddenly, something in Olivia's mind snapped. She threw her head back, and despite her being much shorter than the robot and of roughly similar height to Genesect, tried to look down on them as if she were the tallest of the three. "I'll destroy you just like I'm gonna destroy everything else that stands in my way!" she shrieked, her features taking on an increasingly frenzied state. Without even looking or considering her choice at all, she picked a Poké Ball and flung it, only discovering who she'd picked when Kingler emerged. "Fine, we'll go with that!" she snarled. "Kingler, Liquidation!"

Kingler swiftly crossed and uncrossed his pincers, wrapping them in shrouds of water. His way of advancing on Genesect was far less reckless than Stoutland's had been; whereas Arcanine simply attacked it head-on, Kingler instead chose to skitter back and forth, moving forward only about a foot or so on each pass as he warily searched for an opening to strike.

Between Genesect's natural hunting instincts and the assistance it received from the robot's systems, it was able to read Kingler's moves fairly easily. "Electroweb," the mysterious trainer commanded, his display showing him Genesect's aim in real time.

"I hoped you would do that!" Olivia yelled, making a fist with her right hand while Genesect raised its claws. "Go for it, Kingler! Slice right through 'em!"

Knowing that he would only get gravely hurt by letting Genesect catch him, Kingler sidestepped the first wave of silk thrown his way. Genesect, seeing that it missed, cut those threads loose and launched more after retraining his aim on his target.

If Genesect had been able to fully think for itself, it would surely have been surprised at what Kingler did next. Instead of trying to evade Electroweb again, Kingler jumped straight into it, slashing repeatedly at the silk with his water-wrapped pincers. Some of the current did flow into him, but only enough to give him a tingling sensation in his body instead of any sort of true pain. Sparks flew between the droplets of water he shed as he cut his way closer and closer to Genesect. Finally, he got within reach and shoved his giant left claw straight into the source of Genesect's webbing, the mixture of water and electricity combining to cause a smoky explosion.

Both Kingler and Genesect were thrown apart by the backfire. Small burn marks covered Kingler's claws and dotted his shell, each telling the tale of where a stray thread had brushed him. Genesect bore little in the way of corresponding signs of injury, but the force that threw it back left it hissing and clicking in its semi-mechanical voice.

"Techno Blast."

Genesect fell forward, bracing itself against the ground with both its arms and legs as it powered up for a full-force Techno Blast. So much freezing energy gathered in its cannon that the earth around it began to frost over, Genesect itself protected from the cold by its steel armor.

Seeing all of this, Olivia knew she and Kingler were in trouble. It didn't even matter that an Ice-type move like Techno Blast wouldn't be a good match against a Water-type Pokémon like Kingler. She'd gotten a good look at just how strong Genesect really was, and between that and the sheer power of its cannon, the threat Techno Blast posed was plain to see. What she would do about it was another question entirely.

"One foot in front of the other," she thought, staring down at her trembling hands. "I have to do something, because if I don't, then I won't get anything! It's not like I'll get what I want from anyone else!"

Olivia could feel her vision beginning to blur, right at the edges of her sight. Before her condition could progress any further, however, the situation was completely upended by a sudden interruption. Just as Genesect fired its cannon, a pair of orders meant for other Pokémon reached Olivia's ears. Were they real or just a figment of her overly stressed mind? Something happening around her in real time, or merely another vision of things to come?

"Tanya, Flash Cannon!"

"Arcanine, follow that with Flare Blitz!"

A burst of silvery light shot from somewhere behind Olivia, cutting directly into the trajectory of Techno Blast and explosively offsetting it. Seconds later, before the residual smoke cleared, Amanda's Arcanine raced through the acrid cloud and delivered a flaming tackle directly to Genesect's body, flinging it back into a tree that snapped from the impact.

"I should've figured this would happen…" Olivia grumbled to herself as she watched Matt's Heatran lumber up to Kingler's side, joined soon thereafter by Arcanine and then Matt and Amanda themselves. She shared a look with them, but none of the three said anything. "Wait, where's-"

"Olivia, I'm so sorry…" Anabel profusely apologized, wrapping her arms around her daughter from behind. "I'm so, so sorry…"

"I don't even want to hear it anymore!" Olivia fumed, pushing herself out of Anabel's grip. The trembling that was previously isolated to her hands claimed her entire body, and while she had been able to suppress some of her emotions while traveling alone, seeing Anabel made them all come roaring up anew. In her anger, she ground her boot into the dirt, leaving a deep footprint behind. "I know what you were all going to do! You gave up on finding him! Gave up on me putting us back together like we should be! That's the one thing that's been keeping me going, and you didn't have faith in me to see it through! If even you don't care about putting everything back the way it was, why are you even here?!"

Hearing her daughter so angrily reproach her shook Anabel to her core, but on some level, she felt like the entire thing really was at least partially her fault. "I should have trusted you enough to convince Rosalie to let you hear the truth about your condition, I see that now and I'm sorry… but, please, Olivia, listen to me. You didn't hear the entire conversation, we weren't going to stop you from traveling. This is all a misunderstanding… I'll do better, I promise. Once we're somewhere safer I'll tell you everything."

Although it went against everything driving her, some part of Olivia wanted to give Anabel a chance. She still wanted to be furious at her mother's perceived betrayals but a small inner voice kept her from it, kept urging her to be forgiving. "Fine. But I can do this by myself."

"Olivia, I understand why you want to say that…" Anabel uttered, her voice turning deadly serious as she glared across the glade, "...I think now isn't the time for it."

The menacing sound of Genesect's hissing and clicking drew a powerful emphasis to Anabel's warning. As it pushed itself up onto its feet, the red glow in its eyes had only intensified, and although Matt, Amanda and Anabel weren't sure if they were just imagining it, Genesect's vocalizations seemed to have grown even more aggressive.

At the same time, the robot's analysis raised the number of identified targets from one to four, tagging all of Olivia's allies as enemies. He acted accordingly, pushing forward with both of his hands and saying, "Electroweb."

Genesect mimicked its master's motion, shooting its webbing from both of its claws. One thing that it hadn't been facing while battling Olivia was a Fire-type move, however, and Matt and Amanda both were well-armed to counteract it.

"Tanya, use Magma Storm!" Matt cried out, pointing at their shared opponent.

A great tornado of fire erupted from Tanya's vast mouth, consuming the threads within its vortex before moving on to threaten Genesect directly. Well aware of the danger such a move would pose even without his system informing him of the numbers behind it, the robot directed, "Flame Charge."

The mythical Pokémon jumped into the air, folded up and took flight, insulated from the flames it surrounded itself with in a way it wasn't from outside attacks. It banked tightly around the edge of the tornado, clicking all the while.

Matt called to his sister, "Amanda, you're up!"

"Got it!" she promptly replied. "Arcanine, Flare Blitz!"

Right as Genesect emerged on the other side of the Magma Storm, Arcanine was there to meet it. He broke through Flame Charge with a single blow, and the flames surrounding his body spread to Genesect's, badly singing it as it retreated.

"They really do work together well as a team," Olivia thought, observing the combat. "If only my siblings didn't get taken away…"

As the Magma Storm dissipated, the robot found himself stuck for the first time. Genesect wasn't equipped with moves effective against Fire-type opponents like Heatran and Arcanine. It would need a different cassette installed in its cannon for that. Falling back on the analysis his systems could provide, he hesitated, waiting for them to finish evaluating the numerous trajectories and movements needed to formulate a plan. Until then, all they could give him was the word 'searching' and nothing more.

He would not get that opportunity, for a second sudden interruption came, this time in the form of comically sinister laughing coming from overhead. His screen immediately identified a further trio of new targets coming down toward the scene, and when he could make out their features, a small burst of static caused a brief disruption in his functions.

"Prepare for trouble," Jessie announced as she, James and Meowth descended with their jetpacks, "but today we'll skip the rest!"

"And make it double," James added, "saving time is the best!"

"Yeah, that's right!" Meowth finished as the three of them set foot on the ground. Jabbing a paw directly toward the robot, he snarled, "Whoever's on the other end of that machine, I'm warnin' you, we're comin' for you and takin' back what's ours!"

"Taking back what's yours?" Anabel wondered, blinking through her confusion. She shared that emotion with Matt, Amanda and even Olivia, all of whom were completely distracted by the sudden intrusion.

"Don't worry about it," James assured her. "Thanks for giving us a head start, but this isn't your fight anymore. It's ours, because this is personal."

Pressing her hand against the center of her chest, Olivia angrily asserted, "It's personal for me, too! You can't tell me to walk away when I have something to prove!"

"Olivia, you don't have to…" Seeing that Olivia wasn't listening, Anabel trailed off and didn't finish her sentence.

While the conversation progressed, Genesect recovered enough to return to its battle-ready stance. The scenarios being presented to the robot certainly hadn't gotten any more favorable, so his system continued searching for the appropriate tactic to adopt. Lacking any sort of directives from him, Genesect simply stood by and waited for those orders to come.

"I hate to say it, but Olivia might have a point," Matt quietly observed. "I feel like strength in numbers is the only thing that's going to take this beast down."

"Good thing we've got that, then," Jessie smugly replied, dismissing Matt's concern with a sarcastic wave of her hand.

As if on cue, Proton, Petrel, Ada and Nekou emerged into the clearing, having walked through the surrounding forest while Jessie, James and Meowth flew to their destination instead. Nekou briefly locked eyes with Matt, only for her overwhelming feelings of shame and paranoia to force her into breaking their gaze. Her other self was still present and nipping at the edges of her consciousness, whispering poisonous words that she increasingly was falling under the sway of. They ate at everything she thought she believed until they convinced her she was so awful, so disgusting, that she looked away solely to avoid the chance of seeing him do the same. Something she had come to realize was that she didn't want him to see her as what she actually was, even if she hadn't quite figured out how exactly she wanted to be seen instead, so the mere prospect of him not looking at her at all made her fearful beyond belief. She ended up crunching on her thumbnail again before she even realized it, feeling so detached from reality that she had the sensation of being a puppet pulled along by strings.

To try and escape her own mind, she went over to Olivia and Anabel.

"Hey…" she greeted, her manner almost totally devoid of her usual personality. Or was that so-called 'personality' the lie, and this what she really was? Did she even know anymore? "Olivia, I like the new look."

"I guess I did take some inspiration from you," Olivia proudly said, smiling and giving a half-twirl to show off.

"At least something could make Olivia smile," Anabel thought, adjusting her tie.

"But I don't want help, even from you," Olivia bitterly added, her face falling as she turned away. "I have to do this alone."

"Take my advice, Olivia, accept the aid the people who care about you want to give." Nekou didn't miss the irony permeating her own words. "You don't know when they won't be around to help you anymore."

"I know that all too well," Olivia mumbled, shoving her hands into her pockets.

Had Nekou's fears not gotten the better of her, however, she would have seen that what she so dreaded never actually happened. Matt, in his concern and attempts to figure out what the right way to approach her, never looked away. Even though he'd thought over what he'd do the night before when he talked about it with Anabel, that preparation disappeared when the time came to put it into effect. It wasn't particularly hard to discern some idea of what she was going through, her slacking physical motions made that much clear to him. He just didn't know what to do about it. It was easy enough to remember not to try and intervene like some sort of hero as he usually would, that part of the plan remained obvious. But what could he do right then and there, standing in the bitter winds of early winter, to actually help? As it was, whatever the words that needed to be said between them were, they went unspoken at that moment.

It took the intervention of her colleagues to get him to focus on the situation at hand again. With Jessie, James and Meowth already standing to his right, Proton, Petrel and Ada positioned themselves to both his and Amanda's left.

"If you really want to be a part of this, you're toughing it out," Proton warned the siblings, clutching his belt as he spoke. "This ends only when we get our Boss back."

"It's for Olivia," Amanda responded, "and to restore order where Polaris has-"

The full meaning of what Proton said didn't sink in right away, but when it did, it hit Matt and Amanda simultaneously. "Boss?!" they both exclaimed in shock.

"T-That's right," Ada stuttered, pointing to direct Matt's attention to the robot, who was still standing by and analyzing the situation. Her nervous scowl only intensified as she elaborated, "We saw the way that thing acts, and there's no doubt. Inside that suit is our Boss, Giovanni!"

"That's not- How is that even possible?!" Matt loudly wondered, his surprise leaving him unable to check the volume of his voice. "Back in Ecruteak, during the battle there, Pierce said Ghetsis cut Giovanni down and took his body…"

"Well obviously Pierce was wrong!" Ada scolded him. "We were all wrong! They're using him for this instead, whatever the point of it is!"

"If that's the case, then…" Facing Genesect and its supposed 'trainer' again, Matt pondered what he'd been told. "No matter who he is, Polaris can't be allowed to keep doing this. But the question is, how do we stop it?"

-:-

"There's only one thing we can do. Defeat Genesect and take the Boss back by force!"

From his laboratory in an underground Polaris facility nearby, Colress observed the next actions his enemies took. After James told Matt what their goal had to be, he sent out his Octillery, soon joined by Jessie's Swoobat. Ada, Proton and Petrel added their Breloom, Weezing and Raticate to the mix respectively, forming a growing army that became even more formidable once Tanya and Arcanine stepped up as part of it.

And yet, despite facing such overwhelming opposition, Colress rejoiced. When he was a boy growing up in Unova, he always looked forward to holidays where gifts would be bestowed upon him, and the raw, unfiltered excitement he felt then was exactly what gripped him in the present. He'd been feeling like that a lot since earning Finansielle's favor, he realized, and never wanted it to stop.

"Oh, it's just precious you think you have a shot!" he beamed. Shifting his attention to the two other windows being projected by his computer - one that showed Giovanni's sight through the robotic suit, and the other a direct feed of Genesect's vision - and began typing. In an instant, the suit stopped trying to calculate a strategy for him, and instead reoriented its targeting system, a change underlined by the words 'Targeting Override' appearing on the screen. "Still, though, facing all those Pokémon at once might be a little too hot to handle, even for me. Might be a good idea to pull back and study what data I've got… which I think might just include you after all."

Because of Colress's interference, the suit forced Giovanni to break away from his struggle with Matt, Amanda and his Team Rocket subordinates. The number of targets identified by the program plummeted all the way back down to one, and that single remaining mark turned out to be Nekou, who was hanging back and shielding Olivia by standing in front of her.

"You know what happens when a cuckoo hatches in another bird's nest?" Colress raved, delighting in his madness. "It forces the other eggs out. Now, dance for me! Cuckoo, cuckoo!"

-:-

"Weezing, use Flamethrower!" Proton commanded.

"Octillery, put yourself into the game too! Octazooka!"

Weezing breathed twin streams of fire from his two mouths, but before either could reach Genesect, the mythical Pokémon jumped high into the air. Its great leap also caused the first lump of black ink James's Octillery spat at it to go astray, splattering against a tree behind Giovanni and staining the surrounding plants. Incensed by missing his mark, Octillery recklessly spewed several more Octazooka shots, only for Genesect's flight path to guide it around most of them. Only one managed to connect, blemishing the armor on Genesect's abdomen.

By that point, Weezing sent two more Flamethrowers up at Genesect, forcing the mythical Pokémon to fold up and weave between the twin flares. It then dive-bombed the group opposing it, crashing into their midst with Iron Head. They had to scramble out of its trajectory, leaving them scattered and their counterattack at least temporarily fractured. In the absence of any orders, Raticate curled up and tumbled into Genesect with a Flame Wheel, only for Genesect to shrug it off and stand back up.

Now focusing squarely on Nekou, Genesect sprang towards her, covering a good half-dozen feet with each jump. It wasn't until then that Nekou finally understood what Ariana must have been thinking before her act of self-sacrifice at the Adenosine Base. She'd been protected by Ariana shoving her out of the way of the Mirage Mewtwo's stabbing attack, and in kind, her own worries as Genesect neared were overwhelmingly for Anabel and Olivia instead of herself. Acting on sheer instinct, Nekou pushed them as far away from herself as she could. They both screamed out to her, but her tunnel vision extended to her other senses, and she didn't hear what they said. The only thing that mattered was keeping them safe, and to that end, she pulled two knives from her coat and brandished them. They surely wouldn't have much of an effect on Genesect's steel armor, but they made her feel like she had a chance to do something, so they were good enough. There would be no fear, she decided. That was about the only thing she had left.

Then, as fast as it started, Genesect halted right in front of her, causing her to tilt her head in confusion. Matt and her Team Rocket colleagues were just as bewildered about it as she was, as were Anabel and Olivia. Why had it stopped? That was the question on all of their minds. It had a clear shot to attack her and yet it was making absolutely no effort to do so.

Yet, as they questioned what they were seeing, they had no idea that Genesect diverting their attention was exactly what Colress wanted. None of them noticed that Giovanni had seemingly disappeared. The robotic suit both enabled and forced him to leap high into the air, passing over Genesect's opponents on his way to landing right next to the cybernetic Pokémon. His crash landing so close to her made Nekou jump, and without allowing her a chance to recover and defend herself, he pointed his right arm at her and closed his fist. A small gun hidden in the suit popped up above his wrist and shot three darts into her neck.

"Fuck!" she screeched. "Screw it, I'll cut that thing off you piece by piece if I have to!"

Nekou fumbled to pull the darts out, but she was already too late. Only when her head started to spin did she realize the suit wasn't just equipped with any ordinary dart. No, what had hit her were the same poison darts the Shadow Triad used on Nikolai on Route 30. Back then, it only took one of them to fell him. She'd taken a triple dose of their venom.

Screaming in an incoherent, nearly inhuman manner, Nekou recklessly swiped at Giovanni, desperate to resist the poison long enough to accomplish something. Yet, her ability to control her movements rapidly deteriorated, and Giovanni easily sidestepped every one of her slashes. Her vision continued to blur as the toxin from the darts pulled her further and further under water, drowning her consciousness under its influence.

Finally, her body could no longer hold itself up. She collapsed to the ground, convulsing as she lost the last of her grip on consciousness. Her blacking out led Colress to send a new command to Giovanni through the suit, and the word 'Acquire' appeared on the screen. Giovanni and Genesect accordingly advanced on Nekou's still form.

"Stop!" Matt yelled, having pushed himself back up on his feet. Despite his hopes, it felt like a foregone conclusion that his plea would be in vain. Racing to do something, he turned to Tanya and said, "Flash Cannon!"

"B-Breloom, Seed Bomb!" Ada sputtered.

"Swoobat, if we're gonna save the Boss, we gotta stop him first!" Jessie asserted. "Charge Beam!"

Tanya was the first of the three Pokémon to act, firing another blast of light from her mouth. Her Flash Cannon forced Colress to have Giovanni stop to re-engage them, and Genesect responded by shooting a Techno Blast back at its attacker. The two rays canceled each other out, but before the smoke from their explosive combination faded, the seeds spit by Breloom and Swoobat's electrical beam broke through. Genesect covered its head with its arms to guard against the Seed Bomb, but such a defense didn't help against Charge Beam, which sent a small surge through the mythical Pokémon's cybernetic body. The display over Giovanni's face broke up with static again, but it returned to normal in tandem with Genesect's quick recovery.

"Kingler, Liquidation!" Olivia shouted, her voice cracking under the influence of her desperation.

Having been lost in the chaos following Team Rocket's arrival, Kingler had a prime opportunity to intervene. He skittered up between Genesect and Nekou, swung his water-wrapped claws into the former with all the strength he could muster, and started to push. Small piles of dirt built up around the bottoms of Genesect's legs as it lost ground, but even those slight gains proved to be temporary. Genesect spun an Electroweb straight into Kingler's face at point-blank range, and after weakening him with the electrical shock, used the webbing to spin and throw him across the clearing.

Anabel, moved to act by her daughter's courage, pulled an Ultra Ball from her jacket and expanded it in her hand. "Medicham, come out and-"

She would never get the chance to act. Genesect nipped her potential interference in the bud by launching its Techno Blast into the terrain just in front of her and Olivia, erecting a pillar of ice to block them. Right as it seemed to have closed that angle of attack, however, Tanya's Flash Cannon, Octillery's Signal Beam, Swoobat's Air Slash and Breloom's Seed Bomb all hit it in the head one after another, sending it crashing to the ground before Weezing's Flamethrower engulfed it. Genesect burned for several long seconds before neutralizing the flames into harmless steam using the cold from its cannon and hissing viciously at its assailants.

Little did any of them suspect, forcing Genesect onto defense inadvertently opened up a much simpler tactic to it. Instead of trying to figure out some way to take on all its opponents at once, it turned Techno Blast on its immediate surroundings, tracing a wide circle around itself, Giovanni and Nekou. The resulting wall of snow and ice presented enough of an obstacle to delay those outside its boundary, human and Pokémon alike, from interfering for just as long as Colress needed them to.

No longer having to worry about their attackers, Giovanni and Genesect turned their attention back to their true target. Genesect cast its webs over Nekou to ensnare her, without sending any charge through them. Once it firmly had her, it folded up and hit the snowbanks around it with Flame Charge, providing a cloud of steam to cover for its escape. Giovanni jumped on its back and it grabbed the web with Nekou tangled up within, then shot up into the air and disappeared. By the time the steam from the melting snow dissipated, all three were gone.

"Wh-what happened?!" Olivia demanded, coughing on a remnant of the vapors. "Where'd they go?!"

"I don't know, Olivia… I don't know," Matt uttered. He barely had the strength to take two steps forward before falling back to his knees, staring helplessly up at the sky. "I don't know!" he exclaimed again, driving his fist into the ground in frustration. Yet again, someone close to him had fallen into harm's way, and just like every other time, the thought that it was his fault invaded every corner of his mind like a terrible, creeping mold. "I couldn't do it, no matter how hard I tried! If I could have stopped Genesect, if I would have worked harder… I could have protected her!"

Matt hadn't been in control of his thoughts, they were running rampant in whatever directions they wished. But when that specific idea - protecting Nekou - entered his head, it gave him a sudden moment of clarity. Just the night earlier, during his talk with Anabel, he recognized that Nekou didn't need to be treated in that way. "I get it now… Nekou would never need me to try and protect her from harm the way I keep doing for everyone else, no matter how badly I want to. She would never want me to, either. It took me starting to care about someone like her to realize what I did wrong." How could he have forgotten those words? How could he have forgotten Anabel's wise response? Of course Nekou was someone who he could trust to make her needs known, he just needed to put that trust in her to start.

"Even now, in a circumstance like this…" he told himself, "I need to give her more credit. I bet she can handle this… but just in case she can't, we have to do something to help. I'm better than doing this again..."

"Get yourself together!" Ada scolded him, bringing him back to reality. The other members of Team Rocket had clustered around him and Amanda, and both Anabel and Olivia were on their way over. "This isn't over yet. Far from it. In fact, Polaris just made a huge mistake, because we can track them now."

"Track them?" Amanda wondered. "How?"

"With this." Opening her laptop in her arms, Ada punched in a command that led the Woobat drone to descend and hover next to her. "Oh, right, y-you can't… you can't see what I'm talking about. Sorry. This thing… this thing I've got, it looks like a Woobat, but it's really a drone packed with the cutting edge of Team Rocket technology. All I have to do is send it up and tell it what to do, and we'll find them in no time."

To put emphasis on her point, Ada entered another command into her laptop. The drone ascended back into the sky, and while it was on its way up, her laptop's Matori materialized on the screen.

"Hello, Ada," the artificial intelligence greeted her user. "How may I be of assistance today?"

"Matori, connect with your counterpart on Nekou's phone," Ada instructed the program, "and then transmit that location both to me and to the drone I have flying. I want live footage of the location you track her to."

"Very well," Matori acquiesced with a bow of respect. "Currently connecting and calculating geolocation data."

When a map appeared on Ada's screen after only a short time passed, both Matt and Anabel looked at each other in surprise. Neither had expected the process to be as fast as it was.

"That's them, isn't it?" Olivia questioned, reaching over and pointing at the blinking red dot on the map.

"That's right," Ada confirmed. "You're pretty sharp, kid. No wonder Nekou likes you so much." Raising her head, she explained to the others, "This map is the Lake of Rage, no doubt about it. It looks like they haven't actually gone that far… just to the northwest shore of the lake, in fact."

"I have already sent the drone to that location. I will have the live feed you requested momentarily." Matori wasn't joking when she said that, as the group clustering around her soon learned. She'd barely finished speaking when another window popped open, partially obscuring her form. Its video was blurry at first, but the drone quickly focused and brought it into sharper relief.

Nestled among the trees surrounding the lake, there was a relatively unassuming cabin. Most observers would think nothing of it. Ada and the others certainly wouldn't have thought it had anything significant about it at a glance. The fact that Giovanni and Genesect were there, carrying Nekou in Genesect's webbing gave away its relevance to their mission. When several scientists, all wearing identical lab coats and visors that identified them as Polaris members, stepped outside, that importance only became more apparent.

"That ain't any old cabin, that's for sure," Petrel said, putting what they were all thinking into words. "Given where we are, I think it's safe to say this is the last of Polaris's Johto bases… the Guanosine Base."

-:-

Indeed, what the cabin concealed was an underground facility that, while smaller than the Adenosine Base, had more than enough space for Colress's needs. He was there to meet his enslaved test subjects as an elevator brought them down into the hangar right beneath the cabin. Archer, who had been sent by Father to replace Jeunes as his partner, stood at the scientist's side with his hands clasped behind his back.

"Welcome back, my dear experiments!" Colress crowed to Giovanni and Genesect, the pair stiffly stepping off the lift after the scientists accompanying them. Genesect was still dragging Nekou behind it, and when she entered Colress's vision, his tone turned more overtly sinister. He approached her unconscious form and lifted her head by the chin, finding himself mildly disappointed she didn't wake up and try to bite or otherwise hurt him. "And you... I may have been too hasty in deciding you had no more purpose in my work. Now I'll finally have a chance to get a look at what you really are. Who knows what we'll learn working together? I can't wait to get started!"

With Colress lost in his own delusions of grandeur, Archer took charge. He pointed to two of the scientists and told them, "You two, go back topside and resume your usual posts. I don't want Guanosine Base's entrance left totally unguarded."

"Yes, sir!" both men responded in unison.

"Aww, now you're giving my people orders?" Colress complained, twisting his face into an exaggerated pout. "You're no fun!"

"Technically, they are still Polaris's people, not yours," Archer reminded him. "That didn't change just because Finansielle put them under your command."

"Oh, fine, split hairs like that. Be that way." As soon as it appeared, Colress's childish whining vanished, and he reverted to his usual personality. "It doesn't matter," he said to the remaining scientists. "The rest of you, take Genesect and test subject RB-3 and send their newest data to Finansielle. As for us, Archer…" Colress cast his gaze back onto Nekou. Behind his visor, his eyes glimmered with excitement. For him, it really was like receiving gifts on one of the Unovan holidays, and he never wanted that feeling to end. "We'll take her to my laboratory. I think you might be curious about her, too."

-:-

Team Rocket took off in the direction of Nekou's tracking signal as soon as they found it, so Matt, Amanda, Anabel and Olivia followed closely behind them. After navigating the winding forest paths surrounding the Lake of Rage with help from the Matori on Ada's laptop, the two groups arrived together at a place where they could see the cabin while still remaining out of sight.

"They're gone…" Matt observed, noting the absence of Nekou, Genesect and Giovanni, "but there's two of those scientists we saw earlier."

"Is there any way you can tell if there are more waiting in there?" Olivia suggested to Ada. "Like, you said that Woobat was a drone. Does it have X-ray or infrared or anything like that?"

"Another astute observation." Though she didn't say it openly, Ada liked the way Olivia stoked her ego via interest in her technology. It gave her the exact kind of appreciation she'd joined Team Rocket for in the first place. "Matori, give me thermal imaging from the drone."

"Right away." Matori motioned to the window displaying the drone's video feed, and it switched to show the thermal imagining Ada had requested. There were only two heat signatures, those of the two men standing outside the cabin. No other people were present.

"It's only them," Ada confirmed.

"In that case, I have an idea for getting the drop on them." Proton drew one of his Poké Balls from his belt and narrowed his eyes, glaring icily at the two scientists.

-:-

"So how long do you think we're going to be staying here?" one of the scientists asked the other, resting his hands against the back of his head.

"You know our post is until sundown tonight," his partner replied. "We went over this before coming up here, don't you remember?"

"I'm not talking about our shift!" Sighing, the scientist clarified, "I mean, how long are we going to use this base? Colress is attracting a lot of attention by testing Genesect here, and now that Team Rocket took notice of it… what if they found out where we are?"

"I wouldn't worry about it." He walked over and clapped his partner on the back, a gesture meant to soothe the man's concerns. "Listen, we've got Genesect, and Archer's here too. Anyone who tries to mess with us will regr-"

A sudden rustling in the bushes nearby made both scientists jump. Both moved for the Poké Balls in their pockets, anticipating some sort of attack, but when a Dusclops emerged from the brush, they relaxed.

"Oh, it's just a Dusclops," the more confident of the two said, a wave of relief washing over him. Even when the Ghost-type Pokémon stopped and stared at them, he remained sure of himself. "Run along now."

"Isn't it kind of weird to see a Dusclops all the way out here?" ventured the more timid scientist. "Maybe something is unusual about this."

"Hmm, you have a point. In that case, let's catch it. Colress should give us a nice reward if we bring him a new-"

That proposal never got a chance to take shape. Dusclops started waving her hands at the pair as soon as they began conversing about her, but at first, nothing happened and they thought little of it. That was not a luxury they could enjoy for long. A purple light flickered in Dusclops's eye, and the scientists found themselves seized by an invisible force. Try as they might, they couldn't resist its strength and were both pulled to the ground.

"G-Gravity?!" the cocky member of the duo sputtered, the scale of his mistake dawning on him as he crumpled.

"I told you there was something strange about this!" said his ally.

"That's right." Assuming that the Dusclops was wild was the point where the two scientists went wrong. Proton emerged from the trees to join his Pokémon, with his teammates and Matt's group following him. "My Dusclops made fools out of you both."

"I tried to tell you we needed to worry about Team Rocket…" The timid scientist reached for his visor, which had fallen off his face when he collapsed. Seeing him make this move, Dusclops snapped her fist shut, further manipulating Gravity's effect around the duo to keep him still.

"Good job, Dusclops," Proton praised her, earning happy chatter from the mummy-like spirit. Firmly grasping his ridged belt with both of his gloved hands, he glowered down upon the two guards, sneering, "I'm often labeled as the scariest and cruelest guy in Team Rocket, and that's for a reason."

"Oh please," Jessie mumbled, rolling her eyes. "Says the man who wanted his issues of Team Rocket Gazette to come with trading cards of himself for all the girls to collect."

One of the guards moved to fetch a Poké Ball from his pocket, but Proton caught him in the act. "Evidently you still haven't learned your lesson. Dusclops, Bind!"

Dusclops punched the air in her enemies' direction, shooting numerous bandages out of her wrists. The two scientists, still held in place by Gravity, were powerless to avoid being wrapped up in the bandages. Thanks to Dusclops's adept handwork, they were tightly tied up before they even realized it.

"That ought to take care of that," Petrel said to Proton. "Then again, what if more of 'em come here to help their comrades?"

"You have a point there," Proton conceded. "Someone's going to have to stay behind and stand guard to keep them out." After considering his options for a moment, he made a decision and turned to inform the others. "I think the right move is for Petrel and I to be the ones who stay to protect the entrance. Jessie, James, Meowth, you three are obsessed with Giovanni in ways we can't hope to match, so you go in and save him."

"You got it!" all three of them declared in response to the order.

Continuing, Proton explained, "Matt, Anabel, Amanda… you might not be with us but we have a shared interest in defeating Polaris this time. Take Ada with you and help free Nekou from them."

"The irony of people in our position helping Team Rocket at the Lake of Rage, after Lance helped stop you here in the past," Anabel noted, adjusting her sunglasses.

"Wait, I didn't hear my name." Olivia pushed to the front of Matt's group, placing herself firmly between them and Proton. "I didn't hear my name!" she repeated, her escalating anger making her objections louder and louder. "You are not leaving me behind for this! She's my friend too! And besides, I'm going to show you that I don't need to stop traveling. I can keep going and nobody, not you, not Polaris, is going to stop me!"

Anabel hesitated. Obviously, what they were walking into was dangerous. Nekou being captured so easily certainly proved that. Ordinarily, when faced with the prospect of allowing Olivia to get involved in such a risky situation, Anabel would have done anything and everything to keep her safe. But that would just mean she was making the same mistake Matt finally recognized he was making, she realized, and she'd been the one to help him reach that illumination. Was she really the same after all? Or was she ready to take the step she increasingly saw as necessary, to place that level of trust in Olivia?

"I can be better than this. I have to have faith in her…" It felt like the world had gone completely mad, so maybe a little madness of her own was the answer. Lowering herself and removing her sunglasses so she could be eye-to-eye with her daughter, she said, "Alright, you can come, but you have to stay with me the whole time."

"Fine. Let's get going, then."

-:-

Colress, meanwhile, had more than gotten his own plans rolling along. His subordinates had taken Genesect and Giovanni off his hands, so he was free to dedicate all his time to what really had him fascinated - studying Nekou.

"You've exhibited quite a number of abilities the ordinary human does not possess," he explained to her while pacing with his hands behind his back. It didn't matter to him that his captive was still unconscious, floating in the oxygenated liquid filling the tank he put her in. All that mattered was getting to finish his monologue. "Your great physical strength is simply terrifying, and your capacity for regeneration stuns me. If we could understand what you are, what it is that makes you tick, we could help draw out those attributes in all humans! Think of the possibilities!"

"Colress, why do you have this?" Archer interrupted him to ask, picking up a spherical object from a nearby table. It was a Poké Ball, but not just any ordinary one. Its purple top emblazoned with a white 'M' identified it as Silph Co.'s magnum opus, an exceptionally rare and valuable Master Ball.

"Do not interrupt me when I'm talking!" Even though he feigned anger, Colress really relished the opportunity to indulge his own madness even further. "Although, since you asked, I'll tell you. Research indicates that a Pokémon captured in a Poké Ball cannot use one hundred percent of its power. That's one component of my experiments to draw out the true potential all Pokémon possess, the objective being to circumvent this limit. So, for now I am using Genesect's unchecked abilities so I can observe its capability. Once we're done in this base, I'll capture it in that Master Ball and transport it out of here. Does that satisfy your curiosity?" Without waiting for Archer to reply, Colress pivoted back to his computer console and started typing. "The path to a new stage of evolution begins here, with you, my ideal test subject! Our collaboration will prove to be quite fruitful, I suspect. Now why don't you show me all your deepest, darkest secrets?"

Green light filtered into the tank from above, illuminating Nekou as she floated within. She stirred, groaning faintly and opening her eyes ever so slightly before the fact she was submerged dawned on her.

"I'm… not drowning? Wait, where am I? What is this? The last thing I remember is… but this, this is like..." The more she thought, the more her returning memories gave her a sense of deja vu. "I've felt this before. I've been here before. This is…"

"That's right. Open your eyes and see where you have returned to."

Nekou didn't want to indulge the urges pushed on her by her other self, but before she could mount any sort of resistance against them, she succumbed and opened her eyes a bit further. Every centimeter her eyelids rose only led her closer to the conclusion she already knew deep in her soul to be true, even if she refused to accept it. Indeed, like the sun rising above the horizon and filling the sky at the beginning of a new day, the truth lit up every corner of her mind.

The tank. The glass prison that once held her captive like a Pidgey in a birdcage surrounded her once again. And with it came the crippling isolation, the feeling of being trapped alone in an eternal void, that she'd spent the entirety of the life she could remember running from. It was all back, like nothing ever changed.

"No, I can't… not this… no, not this again!" Nekou wanted to fight back, she truly did. If she had her way, she would have punched her way out of the tank already, but she couldn't muster the strength to even move her arms or legs. Whether that was due to the lingering aftereffects of the tranquilizer darts or the influence of her other self, she couldn't tell. She couldn't even discern where one ended and the other began. But did it matter? Did any of it matter? Was anything of the half of her life she actually could remember even real, or had she really been in Zager's tank the entire time?

"For all the strength you draw out of me, all the power, you were unable to prevent your worst nightmare from coming true. You refused me, you would not listen to me when I told you what we could be, and now you're back in the last place you ever wanted to be. Do you think those humans will let you out this time?"

She didn't give the dignity of an answer to her other self's prodding, but really, it didn't change anything. That being was deeply rooted in her brain, even in parts she herself didn't understand, so it surely knew how she felt. Had she not been floating in the strange fluid, she probably would have started to cry, but her tears would only have drifted away as soon as they took form, so what would the point even be? At least she could breathe in it. Or was that a bad thing, too? Considering what she felt death to be, would drowning in the liquid be any different from surviving in it?

With what little strength she had, Nekou raised her head a tiny bit. She could see Colress at his computer, speaking to another person whose image remained beyond her limited line of sight, but she couldn't make out what they were saying to each other. "At least it wasn't all a dream…"

Outside the tank, Colress's study had been disrupted by a security alarm in his system, alerting him to Team Rocket and Matt's group breaching Guanosine Base's entrance. "So another of Finansielle's predictions comes true… I must say, her wisdom certainly is helpful. Archer, my personnel will take care of the robot and his friends, so you go and take out your friends. My work must not be interrupted!"

Understanding what Colress meant, Archer nodded. "I've wanted to dispose of them for ages now. It does put a smile on my face to get this chance."

Nekou couldn't see Archer at all, but from the way Colress turned back to his computer, she was able to infer that whoever he was speaking to had left. That didn't help her situation at all, though.

"You're getting it now, aren't you?" her other self whispered to her. "The humans, they see you as nothing but an experiment. They see how much better you are than them, and they want our attributes for themselves. You were cast down to their world, but you will never belong there. It's time to accept that."

"You're wrong…" Despite her protestations, Nekou could feel her ability to resist what the demon in her mind was telling her fading. Maybe the reality of her situation wasn't like the sun rising at the dawn of a new day. Maybe it was instead night claiming dominance over daytime at dusk, her desperately constructed identity nothing but the sun vanishing beneath the horizon.

-:-

It wasn't long before Matt, Amanda, Anabel, Olivia and Ada ran into a further group of identically-clothed Polaris scientists. They quickly discovered, however, that the phalanx of Guanosine Base personnel was not the only obstacle they had to overcome. Space in the underground corridor was at a premium, and between all the larger Pokémon in their collective possession and the defenders' Pokémon being chosen to fit their environs, the cramped quarters proved to be a stubborn thorn in their sides. Anabel, Amanda and Olivia ended up playing the main offense against the Polaris members, using their Espeon, Scizor and Cinccino respectively against the Pokémon deployed by the scientists. Matt and Ada, meanwhile, chose to hang back for the time being.

"Chandelure, use Will-O-Wisp on that Scizor!" called one of the researchers, a woman whose visor and extremely cropped red hair left her gender unclear until she spoke. Acting accordingly, her Chandelure floated to the head of the pack of Pokémon and spread his arms, creating a ring of five blue fireballs around himself.

"Cut them off with Triple Axel!" Olivia told Cinccino, her sustained anger turning her voice into a ragged growl.

Right as Chandelure spun around and flung the fireballs in Scizor's direction, Cinccino skated and jumped into their path, her feet encased in ice. She countered Chandelure's move with a whirl of her own, catching and destroying three of the fireballs with well-placed kicks. Those three had no effect outside of melting the ice from Cinccino's paws, but the last two managed to pass her by.

"I missed a couple!" Olivia shouted to Amanda.

"Don't worry about it!" Amanda answered. "Scizor, dodge the best you can, then hit Chandelure with Dual Wingbeat!"

Tearing forward on Amanda's command, Scizor bobbed and weaved around the last pieces of her target's Will-O-Wisp. She then jumped and swatted Chandelure with her right wing before pivoting in midair, clipping him on the back with her left.

Scizor landed and retreated from their enemies' line, but Cinccino remained vulnerable. Another of the scientists, distinguished by shaggy brown hair that made him look almost cartoonishly unkempt, seized the opportunity to strike. "Unown, Hidden Power!" he ordered his Pokémon, a Y-shaped Unown that reacted by casting orange orbs down upon Cinccino. She squeaked a cry of pain as the Fighting-type attack buffeted her body, hitting her only elemental weakness and knocking her back.

Suddenly, a Durant skittered out of the pack without any apparent order. Anabel, Olivia and the others hadn't seen her before she emerged, owing to her diminutive size. Her mandibles took on a green glow as she aimed to further punish Cinccino using X-Scissor.

"Espeon, Zap Cannon!" Anabel cut in, spurred to instinctive action by Olivia's Pokémon being endangered.

Electricity crackled from the gem on Espeon's forehead, which he quickly shaped into an orb with his psychic powers before launching it at Durant. It fell short of reaching the ironclad insect, but its explosive impact against the floor left a gust in its wake that upended Durant, turning her onto her back.

"I could have dealt with that on my own…" Olivia grumbled under her breath.

Despite Olivia's attempts to conceal what she said, however, Anabel did hear it. Her complaint made her mother flinch, and that brief moment of hesitation left Anabel open.

"Stunfisk, Crunch!" commanded yet another female scientist.

The Stunfisk that flopped out of the crowd was unlike any that Anabel had seen before. He certainly resembled the familiar flat fish, but certain details were somehow off, namely the footprint-like shapes on his body and spiky fins lining his front and tail. And on further examination, the fact his mouth was colored like a Poké Ball struck her as strange, too. Between her surprise over the unusual Stunfisk and her worry over Olivia's sulking, she blanked and failed to react to Espeon being targeted.

Luckily for them all, Ada was there to pick up the slack. Her Breloom burst into the midst of the struggle as soon as she released him, punching the Stunfisk back at the scientist who had sent him out.

"L-look, maybe I'm not the one who should be saying this, but get yourselves together!" Ada sputtered frustratedly. "We've got to get through this roadblock to reach her signal. Those other three are taking the only other path that could lead there, so this one is our only shot!"

"Wait, what did you just say?" Anabel asked, snapping back to reality and thinking about the implications of Ada's words. "Tell me if I understand correctly. Are you saying there's another way we can get back to the exit besides where we are now?"

"Only if we make it through to the end of this hall first," the analyst confirmed.

"Fine then, I've got an idea. Buy me some time."

At first, Olivia and Ada didn't understand what Anabel was getting at, but when she pulled back her sleeve, the sight of the black bracelet she wore helped them catch up.

"Amanda," Olivia said to her friend, "do what Mom said. Help me push 'em back and buy her some time."

"You got it."

"Good." Shifting her head slightly, Olivia then asked, "Ada, what is that Stunfisk's type?"

"It's a Galarian Stunfisk," Ada replied, "So Ground and Steel."

"So still part-Ground." Olivia took a breath, trying to calm herself down. "Good, that means this should work. Cinccino, Triple Axel!"

"None of you are passing this point and bothering Doctor Colress!" Stunfisk's master angrily countered, unaware of the trap she was walking into. "Stunfisk, Sucker Punch!"

Recovering from Breloom's Brick Break with stunning speed, Stunfisk flopped against the floor, propelling himself in Cinccino's direction. Cinccino didn't back down, and right before Stunfisk reached her, she used her ice-covered feet to swerve abruptly, taking her out of his trajectory. He landed harmlessly on the metal tiles as Cinccino skated back around, taking advantage of his vulnerability to kick him back into his group.

A male scientist with a build so thin that his lab coat and visor hung on him stepped forward to freshly join the battle, his Masquerain flitting around his head."Masquerain, would you use Air Cutter?"

With a sharp beat of her wings, Masquerain cast a number of crescent-shaped gusts of wind down upon Cinccino, Scizor, Espeon and Breloom. Espeon avoided those that came close to him by jumping around them, but Cinccino and especially Breloom failed to do the same and suffered under their harsh onslaught.

Scizor, by contrast, took the blows to her body and remained stoic, refusing to be weakened by them. Sensing her chance, Amanda called out, "Scizor, take Masquerain down with Dual Wingbeat!"

Much as she had with Chandelure, Scizor darted forth, leapt up and battered Masquerain with her wings, first the right and then the left. Together, the twin impacts grounded the Bug-and-Flying-type Pokémon at the scientist's feet. Ada's Breloom followed up without being prompted, showering the entire battalion with Seed Bombs to keep them in check.

"That's it, that'll do it!" Anabel crossed her arms in front of her face, and a shadow in the shape of an eye appeared from the crystal set into her bracelet. A plume of energy flared around her body as she pointed to her head with both hands. That power flowed from her into Espeon upon her holding out her left palm toward the scientists, and in turn, an arrow of light made up of interlocking triangles flashed in front of him. "Awaken the full potential that lurks within your mind, my friend! Hit Chandelure with Shattered Psyche!"

Espeon let out a shrill, ear-splitting scream that echoed down the corridor, making both friend and foe alike cringe from the noise. Psychic energy erupted from both his eyes and the jewel on his brow, soon engulfing and taking full hold of Chandelure. The Ghost-and-Fire-type Pokémon couldn't move at all under its influence, try as he might. He put all his strength into attempting to merely move his arms, but even that minor motion proved to be impossible.

Howling anew, Espeon pulled his head back, telekinetically smashing Chandelure into the ceiling. Flicking left and right, he kept up his assault by repeatedly slamming his nemesis into the walls, each impact only making Chandelure's cries of pain grow louder.

Finally, after numerous hits against the walls, Anabel told Espeon, "Finish it off!"

In accordance with Anabel's direction, Espeon dragged Chandelure into the ceiling once more before driving him into the floor right in the midst of the Polaris members. That final downward strike had such force that the floor buckled from it, and as a result of Espeon's dead-on accuracy, knocked the scientists down and stunned their Pokémon.

"Now's our chance to end this!" Anabel declared, not letting up on her pace even a little bit. Pointing down the hallway in the direction of the Guanosine Base's entrance, she said, "Use Psychic and send them that way!"

Matt, Olivia and Ada watched in awe as Espeon employed his telekinesis to lift the entire Polaris battalion into the air. Human and Pokémon alike could do nothing but flail desperately, hoping that one of their helpless jabs might somehow break the hold Espeon had on them. Matt and Olivia had seen what Anabel and her Pokémon were truly capable of plenty of times before, but for Ada, the Battle Frontier commissioner's formidable might proved an almost terrifying thing to behold. Even Amanda, who could only listen as Espeon mentally hefted the squadron over their heads and flung them the opposite way down the hall, could picture perfectly what was happening.

"There's the old you again," Amanda thought with a wry grin.

Still, though, Anabel's relentless attack upon the brigade was not yet done. "Box them in by collapsing the ceiling with Zap Cannon!" she cried out, extending her right hand just to snap it closed into a fist.

Shifting away from the scientists and their Pokémon themselves, Espeon launched an electric orb into the ceiling beyond them, followed by a second aimed at that between the two groups. Both shots exploded on impact, jarring loose countless chunks of heavy iron wreckage that surrounded the Polaris members, pinning them down where they stood.

"Even if they use their Pokémon, that should bog them down long enough," Anabel said, clapping her hands together to wipe away some stray dust that had gotten on her gloves. "Chandelure was the biggest problem, but it won't be doing anything soon."

"I gotta admit, only you could do that, Mom," Olivia acknowledged, shoving her hands into her pockets. "But we have to figure out how we're going to work together, if it's going to keep being like this."

"We will, I promise." Narrowing her eyes, Anabel glared down the unobstructed part of the corridor. "Now is not the time and here is not the place, though."

"So what now?" Matt asked.

"I think… I think we should take a couple minutes to regroup, then press on," Ada suggested. "I don't really have any information on what Colress has waiting for us, and even if it's only Genesect, we need to be on top of our game. We'll regroup, go in, free Giovanni and Nekou and escape through the other path."

"Good, because I want another shot at Genesect, plus anything else they've got." Matt and Anabel glanced worriedly at each other when Olivia voiced this desire. "Maybe I can't do it alone, but I'm going to show you I can hold my own out there."

-:-

Over in the other wing of the base, Jessie, James and Meowth were facing their own roadblock in the form of Archer. Their treacherous former superior accosted them in the facility's lounge, and few words were exchanged before both sides deployed multiple Pokémon and a brawl broke out.

Acting on his trainer's orders, Archer's Houndoom leapt over a table and ground his paws against the floor, casting lumps of burning-hot sand at James's Klefki. The Steel-and-Fairy-type key ring Pokémon frantically fled, his keys jingling as he floated away from the attack. In the end, he barely managed to escape, the sand passing so close to him that he could feel its heat on his body, and if its strength wasn't already clear enough, the searing grit partially melted the table it ended up landing on.

"Take this!" Meowth screeched, flinging a folding chair in Houndoom's direction. It was bigger than him and would normally have been too heavy for him to throw in such a way, but the adrenaline flowing through him pushed his body beyond its usual limits.

For all his effort, however, throwing the chair proved to be a fruitless endeavor. Another of Archer's Pokémon, a purple lizard with a sky-blue underside and frills of silvery electricity running down her back, shattered it to pieces with a single Poison Jab to protect Houndoom.

"This isn't a wrestling match," Archer smugly mocked them as Houndoom and the electric lizard lined up with his third Pokémon, a Granbull. "Where did you pick that up, the trash TV you were exposed to in Unova?"

"All that trash TV and we've still got more class than you, traitor," Jessie shot back. Her Vivillon joined James's Klefki and Garbodor in protecting their side from Archer's forces. "Get out of our way!"

"Ah ha, I don't think so." Archer further taunted them by dismissively wagging a finger in their direction. "By the way, I take offense to that 'traitor' comment. I wasn't ever loyal to that short-sighted fool Giovanni. Can't say I subscribe to that saying 'honor among thieves.'"

James was aghast at Archer's words. "You, lecturing about honor after what you did? And insulting the Boss's honor, no less? Now we have even more reason to take you down! Garbodor, use Sludge Bomb on Granbull!"

"Toxtricity, block it with Overdrive!"

The lumpy-bodied garbage bag Pokémon coughed up a wad of brown sludge from deep in his stomach, aiming to swamp the Fairy-type Granbull with it. Archer recognized the threat it posed, and quickly bade his Toxtricity to again step up to defend her teammates. This time, she ran her fingers across the four organs on her chest, generating a tremendous, vibrating shockwave that pierced through the air in all directions. It easily sliced the Sludge Bomb apart on its way to washing over Team Rocket and their Pokémon, overturning several tables and shattering glasses and bottles behind the nearby bar in the process.

"You three are always so destructive," Archer scoffed, scratching his chin. "Luckily we don't have to worry about budgeting for repairs here. Still, though, you three annoy me more than you amuse me. Hit that Klefki with Fire Punch, Granbull!"

"Vivillon, scatter some Powder!" Jessie

A fireball erupted around Granbull's right fist as he lunged at Klefki, but before he could swing it and land his blow, Vivillon fluttered between him and his target. The Bug-and-Flying-type threw a cloud of red dust over Granbull, which explosively reacted upon contact with the flames. His momentum disappeared nearly instantly, and instead of getting to strike Klefki, Granbull found himself thrown through a blue plastic barrier into a lower area of the lounge.

"You three truly are most annoying." Archer's mood had undergone a shift after Vivillon turned Granbull back. His trademark arrogance gave way to an irritability that was plain to see, a change also reflected in the way his voice started to slip into a growl. "Why do you get in my way like this? Some misplaced sense of loyalty to a man who could never think of things in the bigger picture?"

"What are you even talking about?" Jessie questioned, her lip curling in disgust.

"Giovanni, Ariana, Stacia, you three, that monster girl… all of you wanted to control the world, but for what?" Shutting his eyes, Archer began to pace back and forth. "You wanted to control the world just so you could keep it exactly the way it is now, just with you in control and profiting from it. How could you all fail to appreciate what such power could be used for? Why preserve the corrupt state of things as they are now, when you could make the world [i]better?[/i] That's why Polaris erases groups like Team Rocket on the way to accomplishing Father's goals. We're going to make the world a better place."

"Listen to yourself, Archer!" James argued back. "Do you hear what you're saying? You really believe that crazy claptrap? What happened to you?!"

"Hmph. It's far from 'crazy claptrap,' as you put it. And nothing happened to me. I am merely who I always have been. It's not my place to question Father's designs." Pausing, Archer again put his hand on his chin and sneered over at Jessie and James. "But getting back to the point, Giovanni was nothing but a small-minded fool, but Colress still felt he had a use. The man was still a Gym Leader, after all. That mind contains a great amount of battling knowledge, so to tap into that resource for testing Genesect, Colress created the suit to control him."

"So that's it," James spat, "that's what you lot did… now we definitely have to get through."

"Hah. Don't count on it."

While Archer had been monologuing, however, Meowth took advantage of the apparent chance to slip away. He quietly slinked over to the stairs leading to the lounge's lower level and made his way down, pausing to wait for Granbull to climb out of the pit without noticing him. "Whew, I just gotta get over to that door over there," he thought once the Fairy-type Pokémon rejoined the battle. There was an exit past the lower level's tables, all he had to do was run to it.

Little did he expect that Archer had already anticipated such a tactic. As soon as he stepped off the staircase and started his sprint, a fourth Pokémon jumped out seemingly from nowhere to ambush him. The new Pokémon's mere appearance shook Meowth to his core. She looked almost like some horrible funhouse mirror version of him, standing roughly a foot taller and sporting a horned helmet made of hardened, dark-brown hair, a lighter brown body, and a long, shaggy gray beard beneath a pair of orange eyes and a jagged-toothed smile.

"What are you?!" he shrieked.

Refusing to offer any sort of answer, the Pokémon pulled her paw back. Her black claws emerged and joined together, forming a metal dagger that she used to slash him with strength that belied her small stature. Meowth screamed as he was sent flying from the pit and crashed to the floor, sliding until he bumped into Jessie's foot.

"Did you really think you could fool me with such a simple ruse?" Archer derided his dumbfounded opponents. "Perrserker here is quite the scrappy fighter, so she does well on cleanup duty."

"If our plan isn't going to work, we've only got two choices then," James whispered to Jessie. "Either we actually manage to defeat Archer, or we wait for those others to come back around and help us."

Jessie scowled and replied through clenched teeth, "I don't know which one I like less."

-:-

For Nekou, the world outside the tank might as well have just been a black void, a nonexistent world of oblivion. After all, it wasn't like it really mattered what was out there, not anymore. She was all alone, isolated in a place where even time itself didn't seem to apply.

"Why… how am I back here?" Even then, she could feel her consciousness slipping away, far more than she could feel the tiny machines prodding at her neck. Detaching herself from reality was the only act of defense she could muster, useless as it was. "After everything I did to be free, to live... "

"You don't know because you aren't willing to let yourself know." Again, that voice in her mind, whispering its temptations in honeyed words that looked more appealing by the second. Its presence slipped its way through her thoughts like terrible tendrils spreading and taking root. "You lied to them, and you lied to yourself. You built this fiction to make them consider you human… everything about you is false. You are back in this tank because they see through your lies."

"No… you're wrong! You have to be!" Nekou's innate nature spurred her to fight back, even as overwhelming as the odds against her were. She tried to fill her mind with images of her friends and loved ones, struggling to imagine Ariana, Matt, Ada, Olivia, Anabel, Amanda and others fighting against the creeping infection of her other self.

"And where are they now?" Just like that, the presence destroyed Nekou's imaginary defense, her friends turning into nothing but dust. Her so-called friends? "That's right, you know as well as I do they're not coming. That's why you're here in the first place. They couldn't save you, but I on the other hand can."

"You're wrong… no, you're wrong…" Even as she tried to push back, Nekou was very aware that her will to fight was fading. The demon inside her mind was winning, and both sides knew it.

"Is that how you really feel? Are you sure?" Had Nekou been able to more clearly look at what her other self was doing, she would have recognized it as the entity executing its final move, that which would place her in checkmate and force her surrender. With its poison thoroughly permeating her psyche, her other self reached deep into her memory to stimulate parts that had long been forgotten.

No, forgotten was not the right word. Those parts of Nekou's memory had long ago been locked away, but her other self broke those barriers as if they were nothing but flimsy paper.

The sight that greeted Nekou was that of a cold, nearly empty room. Both familiar and yet somehow not, its stark nature and the nagging sense of deja vu she felt frightened her. There was a bed, sure, but the mattress was flat and the sheets so thin they provided little in the way of comfort. On the other end of the room there was a desk upon which at least a dozen books were stacked, drawing her to move closer and investigate. When she got close enough to pick up one of the books, she froze at the sight of its cover.

'Linear Algebra and its Applications.' Just the mere mention of those words gave her pause. They put another crack in the barrier keeping her away from what had really happened back then, and more of the truth's dreadful light was shining through. All the books had similar subject matter, as she could tell from their spines - 'The Complete Kalosian Literary Primer,' 'A Comprehensive History of Kalos-Galar Relations, From the Ancient War to Today,' 'Studying the Architectural Works of Godey,' 'Languages of the World,' 'Anatomy and Physiology' - and all had numerous sticky notes protruding from their pages.

"Wh-what is this…?" she wondered, even as she was sure she knew. What really drove it home for her, though, was when she caught a glimpse of her hand.

It was much smaller and far more frail than it should have been. For that matter, she hadn't realized it at first but when she went to pick the mathematics text up, she had to reach for it as if the desk was taller than her.

"You know already, don't you?" By that point, Nekou had given up the struggle against her other self, allowing it to run rampant in her mind. What she was seeing was just too terrifying. "No child should have been put through all of that, not at that age…"

The words her other self spoke had grown gentler, almost caring. But mercy was far from being on its agenda, and with a proverbial snap of the entity's fingers, she found herself in a completely different scene. This time she was strapped down on a table and surrounded by researchers, all wearing identical visors that obscured their eyes, and in turn, their identities.

Suddenly, she became very aware of another detail - an IV attached to one of her small, frail arms, connecting her to a container of some inscrutable, green liquid. She could hear the scientists talking about something, but only certain words punched through the haze, words like 'Revival Herb,' 'serum' and 'regeneration.' Whatever was being pumped into her body burned like nothing she had ever felt before. Oh, did it ever burn, almost like the sun itself was coursing through her veins.

But before she could scream, that horror vanished as fast as it had come, only to be replaced by yet another. This time she was face down and couldn't see the researchers, but she could hear them. This time they were chattering about some matter she couldn't make out, something involving the words 'dark' and 'activate.' They didn't sound happy, either. She couldn't make sense of their intentions until two more words brought abrupt clarity to what was happening.

They were "Binacle" and "Cut."

She heard the squishy, wheezing voice of the twin-headed barnacle Pokémon only moments before a horrible pain raked across her back, again and again. The scream that forced its way out of her lungs remained unheard by her, even as she felt it escaping amidst her reflexive jerking against the restraints.

"You're getting it now," the demon whispered to her. "Even when you weren't in here, you have always been trapped in a tank, so to speak. Those humans, they look down upon us even as they seek to extract eternity from us for themselves. We truly are not like them. They experiment on us to understand what we are-"

Between her other self's words, another image briefly surfaced. It was the room with the bed and the desk again, but this time someone else was with her, smiling at her as he closed his empty hand and reopened it to reveal a coin had somehow appeared in it. His fluffy brown hair, thick mustache and soda-bottle glasses looked familiar, but it took her a minute to recognize who it was.

"Z-Zager…?"

Ignoring her question, the being continued, "-and how we can aid in their evolution, yet they fail to understand how much greater than them we truly are. If you ask me, it's time to make them understand. Time to show them what we are."

After everything she'd seen, everything she'd felt, Nekou's will to resist her fracturing psyche was no more. "A-Alright… please, just… get me out of here… make it all stop."

"Good girl. Don't worry, I'll take care of you so you never have to hurt again."

At long last, mental agony consuming Nekou began subsiding. The venom from her other self beat it back without any effort at all. Now there was just unchecked bliss, an exhilarating, liberating rush that freed her from all her pain. Her eyes rolled back in her head and her veins swelled as the intoxicating poison worked its way through her, consuming her humanity as its price. But who needed humanity anyway? After all, it was humanity that saw her as nothing but a science project for what she now realized was her entire life. Whether it was her own thought process or that of her other self telling her acting like humans was a waste didn't matter anymore. No, what mattered was losing herself in the eternal paradise given to her by the presence that was taking hold of her.

Finally, the horrific scenes of her childhood vanished, and were replaced by a much warmer vision. She stood in a golden field that stretched out as far as the eye could see, with a vast blue sky barely blemished by clouds overhead, and she wasn't alone. Ariana, Ada, Trevor, Rosalie, Matt, Olivia, Anabel and Amanda were all there and smiling warmly at her. Her Pokémon were there too, waiting alongside the humans. It wasn't reality, but it was better.

"Come with us, Nekou," Ariana said to her, extending a welcoming hand out to her.

"Yes, Maman, let's go…" She took Ariana's hand and closed her eyes, a comforting feeling of warmth and happiness embracing her. "Let's go somewhere beautiful, where you can all stay with me forever…"

-:-

"What's this?" Puzzled, Colress stopped his busy typing and stared at one of the holograms projected from his console. The tank he put Nekou in was equipped with tiny machines for extracting blood samples from her, and those samples revealed something he hadn't been able to anticipate. While searching for the factor in her genes that gave her her abilities, his system's analysis revealed what looked like a strange black static intertwined with the strands of her DNA. "I've never seen anything like this before…"

That was an understatement, to say the least. There was little that could get Colress to drop the mad scientist persona he so genuinely enjoyed embracing, but an unexpected discovery that defied his knowledge was one such thing. He stepped away from the console and tapped the screen on his left arm, saying as he went, "I'll have to record this and show it to Finansielle right away. Something's not right…"

Little did he know that turning his back on Nekou in that exact moment was a mistake.

The sound of shattering glass was the first sign that something was wrong. He sharply pivoted on his heel to discover that Nekou had broken clean through the tank with a single punch, and although the shards slashed up her hand, the cuts immediately closed back up. She fell forward onto the floor of the lab, the liquid she'd been contained in spilling all around her. Ghastly cracking sounds filled the air as her arms, legs and spine grew longer, much as they had when she transformed to fight the Shadow Triad, but since she wasn't putting up any resistance this time her movements were nothing but subtle twitches. And for the same reason, what came out on the other end was not the same as it had been back then. Taller and more toned, she had become far more proportional and balanced than the off-kilter, half complete transformation she'd undergone in the past.

Colress stepped back, half frightened by what he was seeing but also half fascinated by it. As far as he went, what Nekou's other self said was true. She held even more mysteries than he could have ever imagined, and he wanted - no, needed - to be the person who deciphered them.

Nekou - or at least the entity that now controlled Nekou's body - reached up to her neck and tore the tiny machines from her neck, snapping them in half like sticks. She then lashed her head up, allowing him to see the golden flames burning in her brightly glowing eyes. If there was any detail in her expression of raw, furious frenzy Colress couldn't make out from a distance, he ended up getting a good, close look when she barreled straight at him and lifted him by the collar.

"So th-this is how it ends for me, huh?" he choked out. That she was able to hold his entire weight up with only one hand didn't entirely surprise him, but it did tilt his mood enough to erase whatever fear was there. His mouth contorted into a wide, mad grin, and behind his visor, his eyes watered from the overwhelming sense of excitement he felt. "This is exactly how I always wanted it to be! To meet my end at the hands of something so beautiful, something beautiful that I got the chance to study… there is truly nothing better!"

"No, you live." Without putting Colress down, Nekou pulled him closer, so that their faces were only inches apart. Her voice sounded like it was coming from two places at once, both from herself and from some other point in the room Colress couldn't identify. "You live, and you tell them what I am. Tell those humans that if they want eternity for themselves, come and get it."

With that, Nekou flung Colress across the laboratory and into one of its walls. He did not immediately get back up, instead remaining sprawled on the floor.

-:-

Matt had just finished handing out Revival Herbs to Olivia, Anabel, Amanda and Ada for their Pokémon when the sound of a loud crash echoed down the corridor. At first there was only one, but when it was followed by a second and then a third in quick succession, the entire group was gripped by an ominous feeling. Even the Guanosine Base's personnel, still trapped by the collapsed sections of the ceiling, ceased their demands to be freed and went quiet.

"What was that?" Amanda asked the others, craning her neck in the direction of the noise.

"I haven't got a clue," Matt replied, the fact that he couldn't reassure his sister only making the whole situation feel worse. "But whatever it was, I don't think it's anything good…"

Clutching her laptop against her chest, Ada asserted, "We better get going. As far as I see it, our timetable just got moved up."

"Yeah, you're probably right about that." Olivia recalled Cinccino after giving her the Revival Herb, motions that were promptly matched by her mother, Amanda and Ada. "Let's step up and get this done already."

-:-

The repeated crashes were loud enough to reach Jessie, James, Meowth and Archer in the lounge as well, even over the din of their continued struggle. Garbodor was in the middle of shocking Perrserker with Thunderbolt when the racket first hit their ears, the battle halting with the presence of the new, unknown factor.

"Did you guys hear that?" Meowth asked Jessie and James, their other Pokémon closing a perimeter around the trio to protect them. "What d'ya think it was?"

Jessie let out an angry, exasperated sigh and rubbed her fingers against her temples. "You're asking me when I was about to ask you!"

"It's quite a perplexing problem, if you ask me," James considered. "They might have activated the Boss and Genesect again."

"Then we've gotta get through there and save him!" Meowth urged his teammates. "We can't be dealin' with this traitor anymore!"

Overhearing their conversation, Archer made a point of tapping his white leather shoe on the floor, creating enough of a sound to get the trio's attention. "You aren't going anywhere," he warned them. "Today is the day Team Rocket falls for good. We got Giovanni, and we'll soon be mopping up the remnants like you… and that's all you are, remnants with overinflated opinions of yourselves. I will finish what I started years ago and destroy all of you."

While Jessie, James and Meowth voiced their repulsion with his claim, however, a bead of sweat rolled down Archer's face. "I hope you know what you're doing, Doctor…" he thought, turning his eyes to the left even as he kept facing his foes. "That one always was trouble, don't underestimate her…"

-:-

Matt and the others' sprint down the corridor was straight and unobstructed. No further personnel emerged to block them, and it did not take long for them to reach Colress's lab. But when they finally passed through the sliding doors, the scene that they discovered could fittingly be called a disaster zone. Virtually every machine in the room had been reduced to smoldering scrap, the devices' metal constructs crumpled up like paper and leaking thick, acrid smoke into the air. The group began coughing as soon as they entered, having not expected their breaths to be so fouled.

Amanda, who couldn't see what was happening, took the sudden irritation of her lungs the worst. "What… what is that?!" she wheezed, choking on her words.

Taking care to cover her mouth, Olivia exclaimed, "Something totally trashed this place!"

Before they could speculate any further, the answer to their unspoken questions came into view when Nekou appeared from behind some of the wreckage, carrying huge chunks of scrap metal and glass from the shattered tank as if it was all as light as a feather. They could see her, but she didn't notice them, and before Matt or any of the others could call to her she pitched the wreckage in her hands across the room and darted out, breaking through a different set of doors than the ones the group had entered from.

"That something might be more of a someone…" Anabel ominously noted.

"Even so, everything about this is wrong." Clutching her laptop against herself with one arm and waving the other hand in front of her mouth to keep the air clear, Ada persisted, "It's all wrong. I know Nekou's capable of this, but something had to have set her off…"

Matt shut his eyes and grit his teeth in frustration. The thoughts of personal failure were coming back again, that nagging voice at the back of his head that told him he should have done a better job protecting her. She was right there in the same room, and yet, when he arrived to give her his aid, it was already too late. "No, I can't keep falling in that trap!" he mentally chided himself. "I'm going to stop doing that! But right now, what do I do?"

A crazed laugh wafted in with the fumes, distracting Matt and the others from focusing on Nekou. It belonged to Colress, who let his madness run completely unchecked as he stumbled toward them. His visor was cracked enough to expose his left eye, and the edges of his lab coat were tattered and singed, leaving him in a state befitting his ravaged laboratory.

"I've found it…" he raved, acting like he didn't see Matt's group even as he addressed them. "And what is it I've found? The answer! I've found the answer, after all this time! Whatever she is, she's the one who holds the key to the peak of evolution! She's beautiful, oh so beautiful…"

"What are you saying?!" Olivia, Anabel, Amanda and Ada all turned to Matt in surprise, caught off guard by how genuinely incensed he was by Colress's rambling. "She's a person, not some experiment!"

Nothing Matt or anyone else said could have possibly pierced through Colress's insanity. "She is ugly, and yet beautiful in ways humanity has never seen before… that's why, no matter what I do, I cannot allow her to escape from me. The time for talking is over! It's time to push buttons!"

Acting on his threat, Colress frantically entered commands into the computer on his left arm, not even slowing down to look at what he was doing.

-:-

Elsewhere in the base, Genesect's eyes illuminated its dark surroundings as the cybernetic Pokémon came online. Giovanni had been seated in a chair right next to it, but stood up when his mask lit up. The cables connecting both to Polaris's computers detached and fell away.

'Target identified,' the suit's display alerted its enslaved user before showing an image of Nekou.

-:-

"What did you just do?" Matt demanded, slamming his boot on the metal floor as he took a step toward Colress. "Tell me!"

"Yeah, talk!" Olivia backed him up. Behind her, Ada, Anabel and Amanda all glared daggers at the scientist.

Colress, however, had no intention of indulging them. "Is it what I did, or what I didn't do? Maybe it's what she did instead?" Smirking, he added, "If you want to bask in her glory while you still can, I encourage you to go follow her. Don't waste your chance by staying here with me. Witness how far mere humans like us have to go… until next time, adieu!"

Sweeping his fingers across the computer on his sleeve, Colress brought up a single red button that he then pressed, causing a hidden door to slide open in the wall behind him. For all his faults, he had at least been earnest in his instruction that they follow Nekou. He sincerely wanted them to witness what so enraptured him, in the hopes that they could come to understand his point of view. But for that to happen, he knew he couldn't stick around and provide a distraction. He fled for the newly-revealed escape route, and Olivia gave chase until she felt her foot collide with something on the ground.

"Wait, what's this?" She leaned down to pick up the spherical object, which was covered in soot from the smoldering machines. Purple coloring accented with pink circles and a white 'M' surfaced when she wiped it off. "Isn't this…"

"A Master Ball!" Anabel gasped, inadvertently drawing a sharp breath that pulled smoke into her lungs. The coughing fit that overcame her was so intense that Amanda found her way over to help Anabel stay on her feet. "I don't… I don't know what something like that is doing here. Colress must have left it behind."

"But you know what they say, finders keepers," Matt's sister suggested, "and you found it, Olivia. Get what I mean?"

Olivia regarded the sphere, turning it over in her hand as she thought about what to do with it. Those deliberations lasted for much less time than any of those with her anticipated, however, and the decision she made was far from what they expected.

"I don't want it," Olivia declared, tossing the Master Ball to Matt. "If I decide to catch another Pokémon, I would rather do it the hard way. I don't want to cut corners."

"If that's the way you want to do things, more power to you, I suppose." Matt shrank the ball and stashed it in his bag, then turned toward the doorway Nekou had barreled through on her way out. "Colress was right about one thing. Forget about him, we need to go after Nekou."

"Bringing back both Nekou and Giovanni is the mission, so you have your head on straight," Ada agreed. "But also… can we just get out of this putrid air already?"

-:-

"Garbodor, Thunderbolt!"

A bolt of lightning arced from James's Garbodor's body and raked across the lounge bar, leaving shattered glasses in its wake as it pursued Archer's Granbull. The Fairy-type Pokémon jumped from chair to chair, staying one step ahead until he turned and pounced on Garbodor, biting his attacker with luminous purple fangs. Granbull held on for dear life as Garbodor reeled back, while nearby, Klefki and Vivillon struggled to keep up with Houndoom, Perrserker and Toxtricity.

"When will you three ever learn?" Archer asked with a sigh. The trio's persistence combined with his own concern over Colress's circumstances left him wishing to wrap up the battle as soon as he could. "Give up already. You know you can't beat me."

"Team Rocket never gives up and never surrenders, ya dig?!" Meowth contended, jabbing a claw in Archer's direction. "Of course someone like you, who was never a true blue dyed-in-the-wool Rocket wouldn't understand that!"

"I have no need for such foolish ideals. I believe in a higher purpose, and-"

Archer found himself interrupted when the exit doors Meowth had been trying to reach were suddenly ripped from their frame and thrown across the lounge, nearly hitting Jessie and James in the process. Flashing red lights flooded in from the hall outside, completely changing the atmosphere in the room. Jessie, James and Meowth pushing back against Archer's efforts to eject them already made things tense, but the disruption bent the mood into one of ominous dread.

And then Nekou entered the lounge.

Jessie, James, Meowth and Archer all picked up on the unusual aura of menace radiating from her as soon as they laid eyes on her. She strode in standing upright, taller than any of them had ever seen her before, and the trail of devastation left in her wake in the corridor only underlined what she was capable of.

"Is this your higher purpose?" Jessie teased the traitorous former Team Rocket Executive. She and James made sure to recall their Pokémon as they backed away with Meowth. With the balance of power in the lounge abruptly upended, they decided to gamble and pin their hopes on Nekou. "Good luck with that, then!"

Archer heard Jessie's taunts but didn't acknowledge them. He remained focused like a laser on Nekou, the two slowly circling each other as they sized each other up. "You aren't really that girl Ariana took under her wing, are you?" he asked her, a bead of sweat rolling down his face. His perception of her felt wrong to him, somehow. "I always knew you weren't human, but what are you, really?"

On Nekou's part, no words came in reply, and none were necessary. A memory stirred deep within her, one she hadn't accessed in years. A vision of him not in his familiar whites, but the mottled black uniform he wore once upon a time. A memory of hatred, for his relentless brown-nosing of his superiors, for his irritating fanaticism for rules, but most importantly, of his betrayal that rendered everything else he did a lie. The demon now in control of Nekou's body cared little about that betrayal, but that hatred boiling deep down, rising as Nekou's true self clicked marginally back into reality, that was something the entity in command could use.

"Archer…" she hissed, her strange, echoing voice sending a chill down his spine even as he fought with all his might to not show it. "I know who you are, even though I've only ever seen you through her eyes… are you another of the humans hoping to gain eternity through us?"

Off to the side, Jessie, James and Meowth huddled together. "What she's sayin' ain't right," Meowth told his companions. "It ain't like anything I've ever felt before. There's… somethin' else. I don't know what to call it. There's somethin' else standing there, controllin' that shell of a body."

"Is it dangerous to us?" James questioned.

"I can't tell. I can't tell a thing about it. All I'm hearin' out of it is noise, like when you take an old radio and put it between stations!"

Archer froze where he stood. "I do not understand what you are or what you speak of," he declared, "but I've heard enough. Houndoom, Granbull, take care of her!"

Like their master, Houndoom and Granbull sensed something wrong with the person they were being ordered to attack. Both hesitated to follow Archer's order at first, but when Nekou spread her arms and curled her fingers into claw-like shapes, they realized she would come after them if they didn't act first. They sprang at her, Houndoom aiming to land a Crunch while Granbull readied his Psychic Fangs.

Archer had trained them to be agile in combat, yet for all their work, Nekou's abilities had grown to such a degree that they had little chance of catching up to her. She ducked and swayed out of their dual trajectories, causing them both to crash into the table and chair behind her. Houndoom soon recovered from the impact and lunged at her anew, only for her to meet him with a spinning kick directly to the abdomen. The great strength in her leg spiked Houndoom across the lounge and into Toxtricity, flooring them both.

Nekou then turned her attention to Granbull, who by that point had risen from the wreckage of the booth he landed in. He took advantage of his proximity to sink his teeth into her arm, biting clean through her sleeve, but when she grinned instead of reacting with any sort of pain, he grunted in shock. What was he to do if even biting down on her body was for naught? He had no chance to consider his next move before she seized him by the throat and literally tore him from her arm, his fangs rending her flesh as they were yanked free. Those wounds healed as quickly as they came, however, and Granbull was left to helplessly flail as she lifted him into the air. Her eyes flashed even brighter, striking the Fairy-type Pokémon with one last spike of fear before she slammed him into the floor.

Archer could almost literally feel his facade of bravado cracking like an egg as he watched Nekou effortlessly cast his Pokémon aside. The misgivings he'd managed to suppress to that point erupted into the open, contorting his face into a blank look of terror. Terror that only deepened when she turned to him, licked some of the blood from her arm and smirked in relish of his fear, as if the injury Granbull inflicted was nothing but a paper cut to her.

"P-Perrserker, do something!" he stammered, remembering he still had one Pokémon immediately available. Backing away from Nekou as she slowly swaggered toward him, Archer started to say, "Thunderbo-"

However, that order died before Archer could fully voice it, his pause brought on by a bump against his leg. Perrserker, having seen how easily Nekou overwhelmed Houndoom, Granbull and Toxtricity, opted to cower behind him instead of throwing herself into such a hopeless fight.

"What a surprise, big bad bossy Archer is a complete coward!" Jessie jeered at him.

Archer's face turned as white as a sheet when he backed into one of the dividing walls between sections of the lounge, blocking him from retreating any further. Every fraction of a second she drew nearer to him was like a century to them both, Archer mortified while Nekou reveled in the panic she inflicted upon him.

Finally, having toyed with her prey for long enough, Nekou stretched her arm out above her head. Archer gulped and shut his eyes when she hooked her fingers, but before she could strike, an unexpected voice rang out across the lounge.

"Nekou, stop!"

Matt and the others had caught up in the interim, now occupying the doorway connecting the lounge to Colress's lab via the corridor Nekou destroyed. All who were already in the lounge had enough time to absorb their presence, but Matt and Nekou barely locked eyes for a moment before yet another sudden interruption came. The wall opposite the bar exploded, a ray of freezing energy punching through it before popping into a cloud of snow. Genesect came tearing out of the resulting hole and collided with Nekou, smashing her clean through the bar, the glass behind it, and the underlying wall beyond that. Giovanni appeared shortly thereafter, though he passed through the room without a second thought and followed Genesect instead.

Matt's group and Team Rocket were fixated on the gaping tunnel left behind by Genesect's charge, and Archer saw that as an opportunity to cut and run. It was clear to him that any advantage in battle he once had was now moot with so many opponents arrayed against them. He could have tried to hold them back from interfering with Genesect, but even he knew that would be nothing more than a futile last stand. Because of that, he seized the opportunity afforded to him by their collective distraction, fleeing for Colress's laboratory and the emergency exit while recalling all of his Pokémon on the way.

"Hey!" Meowth yelled, having caught a glimpse of Archer running. "Archer's gettin' away!"

"So what?!" Ada snapped, pushing to the front of Matt's group so she could address both factions. Pointing down the passage Genesect opened, she forcefully added, "Forget him! What matters is that way. Let's go!"

-:-

Several of Nekou's bones had been shattered by Genesect hitting her like a bulldozer and hammering her through feet upon feet of steel. Yet, with her other side in full control, she felt no pain from her injuries. She and Genesect eventually broke through the other side of the wall, spilling out into the holodeck room Colress and Yung had used to transmit themselves across the sea to the Adenosine Base. The enormous space their new surroundings afforded them allowed Genesect to skid to a stop, tossing Nekou's crumpled form toward the middle of the room. Whatever fractures she'd suffered regenerated before she landed, allowing her to push off the floor with her hands and somersault to come down squarely on her feet.

Giovanni entered the room from behind Genesect while it hissed in an attempt to intimidate Nekou. Even with Colress having abandoned the base, the suit's system was feeding him commands, locking in on Nekou and flashing the words 'primary target' on the mask. Accordingly, he thrust his arm out toward her, wordlessly letting Genesect off whatever leash was still there. The bionic insect charged her anew, the steel covering its head glistening in the chamber's spotlights. Nekou made no sort of evasive move, instead bracing herself to catch Genesect between the eyes. The pair grappled until Nekou spun and threw Genesect, though it raked its claw across her cheek in the process, slashing a single cut into her face.

Even as the cut regenerated, Nekou reached up and stroked it with a gentleness uncharacteristic of the presence that controlled her. Feeling the warm, sticky sensation of the blood dripping from it only spiked her anger even further. With a loud shriek that echoed chaotically throughout the vast holodeck, she leapt onto Genesect and started punching it repeatedly. Every blow clanged against Genesect's armor and inflicted hairline fractures in Nekou's hands, but those cracks healed nearly instantly. The immense strength she put into each swing, despite not breaking through Genesect's metal exoskeleton, sent painful shocks radiating through its body.

Aware of this through the suit's feedback, Giovanni settled on a counterattack strategy. "Techno Blast!"

In order to escape from underneath Nekou's relentless beating, Genesect fired a barely-charged Techno Blast ray into her face. What it lacked in power it made up for in speed, handily knocking Nekou back and off her feet so Genesect could get back up. The newly opened distance afforded Genesect the chance to ready a second shot, this one backed by the energy it hadn't been able to put into the first.

Nekou lowered herself, assuming a position that would help her quickly jump away from the blast. Still, she flinched when it launched, some still-too-human part of her holding her back.

Luckily for her, an unexpected arrival came to her rescue. "Tanya, Flash Cannon!"

Genesect's icy burst was met by a matching burst of silver light, the twin attacks nullifying each other when they met. The interruption got Nekou and Giovanni to both turn around in spite of being manipulated by other entities, where they discovered Matt, Anabel, Amanda, Olivia, Ada, Jessie, James and Meowth all fanning out from the fissure in the wall. Matt's Heatran was already out, soon to be joined by Amanda's Hariyama, Anabel's Lucario and Olivia's Samurott.

"Come on, Nekou, snap out of this!" Olivia bellowed at her, both fists clenched tightly. Unlike the others around her, who were unnerved to varying degrees by what they were seeing, Olivia harbored no such feeling about her friend. "This isn't you!"

His own nerves shored up by Olivia's words, Matt added, "Listen to her, Nekou! She's right!"

Their pleading alone didn't entirely get through to the being controlling Nekou, but it made a part of her she thought was gone start to stir. That, in turn, made her tilt her head back, leaving them barely able to see her eyes under her bangs as she glowered at them.

"We don't need you," she warned, her voice still sounding like it was coming from multiple places at once. "Leave this place."

"We?" Amanda wondered. "And that voice… what is all of this?"

"I don't know," Anabel nervously answered. "Something really is wrong…"

What neither Matt's group nor Nekou herself noticed was that while they had their exchange, Giovanni was positioning himself for a clear shot at his target. The suit was spurring him to action with the command 'acquire target,' and accordingly, he aimed the dart gun on his arm at her, hoping to subdue her all over again. Right when he fired it, however, his entire limb was gripped by a blue light and an unseen force.

"Good going, Cofagrigus!" James called to his Pokémon as the Ghost-type descended to make himself known. His eyes gleamed with the blue glow of Psychic, the same light that held Giovanni's arm and discarded the dart he'd fired. "Take that weapon off the board while you're at it, would you?"

At James's request, Cofagrigus opened his eyes a bit wider, crushing Giovanni's dart gun with the surge of power he sent through it.

"If you ain't gonna wake up, Boss," Meowth howled at him, "we're just gonna hafta wake you up!"

Jessie, meanwhile, looked back over her shoulder at Matt and the others. "We'll deal with him. You worry about Genesect and that girl!"

There was a certain appropriateness to the timing of Jessie's warning, because even with Giovanni's actions checked, they still had plenty to worry about. Since the mythical Pokémon wasn't receiving any commands from its master, the suit kicked Genesect's programming into what it labeled as 'drone mode,' freeing it to act independently. And act it did, wasting no time in folding up and igniting its body into a fierce Flame Charge it aimed at Nekou.

"Lucario, stop it with Aura Sphere!" Anabel called out.

Focusing her power into the space between her paws, Lucario flung the pulse orb that formed into Genesect's face. The remnant embers from the failed Flame Charge scattered about the chamber as Genesect spun back and unfolded before landing, hissing angrily at its thwarted attack. Its eyes flashed bright red and it shifted tactics, charging up its cannon but not training the resulting Techno Blast upon any of its opponents. It instead fired indiscriminately around the room, spreading ice, snow and frozen stalagmites across its surroundings.

Nekou suddenly disrupted Genesect's frigid onslaught by leaping at it anew, beating it to the floor and redirecting its last Techno Blast into the ceiling. There, the ray solidified into several icicles of fairly considerable size whose weight dislodged them soon after they took shape, endangering Matt, Amanda, Olivia, Anabel and Ada.

"Samurott, quick, break them with Razor Shell!" Olivia reflexively ordered, while behind her, Ada gasped and cringed behind her laptop.

Samurott quite literally jumped at the challenge, unsheathing the seamitar from his left leg as he bound up toward the falling icicles. With a few quick slashes, he broke them into hailstones that, while smaller, still weren't something the others wanted falling on them.

"Finish them off, Lucario! Bullet Punch!"

At Anabel's urging, Lucario met the unnatural hailstones with a flurry of punches she delivered so fast they almost couldn't be seen. It wouldn't have been enough to deal with the intact icicles, but thanks to Samurott's weakening their constitution, Lucario was able to make short work of them. A coating of frosty dust was all that remained, the particles chilling Olivia, Anabel and the others' skin when it wafted over them.

Nekou, meanwhile, had no idea of the danger they'd been in. Her tunnel vision closed solely around Genesect, blocking out everything else. Just keep pummeling Genesect, she thought. There wasn't any need for anything else.

Or at least there wasn't until Genesect unexpectedly slashed at her with its claws, slicing into her face again. She lost her grip on her enemy and staggered backward until she fell against one of the icy stalagmites. There, she reached up to touch her face.

Something was wrong, that she could tell. Something was so very wrong that even the being controlling her body was shaken. When her fingers met her flesh, there wasn't just the warm, sticky feeling she expected. No, the wound was still there. It hadn't healed, at least not as fast as it should have.

"Why are you holding me back now?" she growled to herself, ignoring that Genesect was getting back on its feet in front of her. "I've given you everything, now be quiet!"

A faint spark of Nekou's true self was stirring inside their shared mind. She'd been content to remain inside the illusion her alter ego's toxins constructed and lose herself to the paradise they promised. But when Matt, Olivia, Ada and the others arrived, something changed. That world, that false utopia filled with facsimiles of those important to her, couldn't pass muster anymore. The presence of the real thing broke the illusion, turning the copies into nothing but faceless mannequins adorned in the clothing of those they tried to imitate. She alone was the only real person in that vast golden field, staring up not at a blue sky but a distant yet somehow close window back into the real world. A window that let her see how her friends had actually come.

"They did come!" she mentally berated her other self, the hallucination crumbling around her. "You fucking lied to me!"

"Silence yourself and behave!" Feeling its control over Nekou's body slipping, the entity scowled and tried to twist her fingers into claws upon seeing Genesect back on its feet. Her true self fought every step of the way, turning every move the demon wanted to make into a difficult endeavor.

Genesect wasn't willing to wait for her. It snapped its arms out to the sides, dispensing long Electroweb threads from each of its claws. Instead of using them for entrapment as it had earlier, however, it opted to wield them as electrified whips. As Nekou pushed closer and closer to it, it lashed her repeatedly, cutting into her skin every time one of the whips made contact. Each laceration made her unleash a bestial scream toward the ceiling of the holodeck, even as she closed the gap between herself and Genesect.

"I can't let this happen anymore," Matt resolved. The sight playing out before him was turning his stomach. Even without a full understanding of everything, Nekou's bizarre language and physical behavior tipped him off enough that his intuition told him she was suffering. Not just any suffering, clearly, but something deeper, more profound. It had to be such, he reasoned, to have reduced her to the state of a feral creature fighting for survival, and no longer could he refuse to intervene. "Anabel, I've got an idea. Help me out with this."

"Hm?" Anabel listened intently while Matt whispered his plan to her. Once he finished, she said to him, "I'm on board. That should work."

"Good. Get started while I bring Amanda and Olivia up to speed."

"Alright." While Matt moved to talk to Amanda and Olivia, Anabel stepped up to take the spotlight. "Lucario," she said quietly, "sneak up on Genesect using the ice pillars as cover."

The chance to carry out such an action was immediately clear to Lucario. Genesect was so fixated on beating Nekou with its Electroweb whips that it wasn't minding its surroundings, and with Giovanni kept away from the fight thanks to Jessie, James and Meowth, it had none of its usual backup. All these factors combined together in Lucario's fortune, allowing her to slip behind the nearest stalagmite and then dash from spike to spike, drawing ever closer to her objective. Genesect was none the wiser, even when Lucario was directly behind it and merely feet away.

"Now, Lucario," Anabel called out to her, "grab hold of Genesect's silk!"

Anabel's command tipped Genesect off to the deception, but by then, it was already far too late. Lucario grabbed ahold of the silk connected to Genesect's right arm, willfully exposing herself to the electrical current still flowing through it. Even though the shock radiated through her, she was determined not to give in, and pulled at the threads until they came unstuck from Genesect's claw and lost their charge.

"Now hold Genesect back with it!"

Genesect shed the remaining half of its Electroweb, only to have the stolen silk thrown over and around it, snaring it in the same sort of adhesive loop it used on so many of its opponents. Lucario pulled the threads as tightly around Genesect as she could, fighting with all her might against the mythical Pokémon's violent thrashing to restrain it.

"It actually worked…" Matt uttered in surprise, his eyes darting from the hissing, convulsing Genesect to Nekou. He still wasn't sure what or who he saw in her eyes, but when she stormed up to Genesect, knocked it down with a single punch to the face and tackled it, he realized his plan couldn't proceed. "Back off!" he yelled to Olivia and Amanda. "We can't attack with Nekou in the middle!"

"But then what can we do?!" Olivia insisted. She was no more willing to just stand by while Nekou and Genesect wrestled each other than Matt was, but when the only reply to her question was him clenching his teeth, she recognized he had no more answers.

With Nekou's inhuman strength added to the mix, Lucario couldn't keep her grip up any longer. The silk slipped from her paws, freeing the pair to tumble across the floor in their struggle. Genesect fired another Techno Blast, but it went badly astray, striking and shattering the glass of the observation area overlooking the holodeck. Frozen shards rained down on the combatants, who were too locked in their savage fight to care.

Not long after the glass fell, Nekou jumped to her feet and pulled Genesect up with her. It fired yet another blast from its cannon, this one going over her shoulder and hitting the wall at the far end of the room. With an animalistic roar, she countered by shoving Genesect back against one of the icy pillars, only for it to respond in kind by headbutting her, knocking her down. The balance of power inverted, Genesect pinned her by kneeling on her chest and moved in for the kill by aiming its cannon directly at her face. In the position she was in, all she could do to fight back was wrap her hands around the gun and push it off its mark, even as Genesect charged the freezing energy that would spell her demise.

It was then that an idea dawned on Olivia that, in hindsight, she wondered how she hadn't thought of earlier. "Matt, that Master Ball I found! Catch Genesect and this ends!"

"You're right!" he exclaimed, fumbling to fetch the sphere from his bag. Once he had it in his hand, he opened the eyepiece on his mask, allowing his prosthetic eye to help him calculate the correct aim for the throw. Such a measure was necessary, no matter how much it overwhelmed his senses. "Only one chance to get this right… and go!"

Matt wound up and threw the Master Ball, drawing upon the best measurements he could figure to augment his basic capturing skill. He considered himself at least somewhat good at it, considering the sizable number of Pokémon he'd collected over the years, but only once - when he caught Tanya, his Heatran - had he faced a task on the scale of catching Genesect. The Master Ball would make up for most of the risks, if only he could connect with it.

One factor broke in his favor, and it turned out to be the decisive one. Though Genesect was in a dominant position strictly when it came to its fight with Nekou, her grip on its cannon meant its mobility was impeded, too. That left it vulnerable, and the Master Ball popped open after bouncing off its body, converting Genesect's cybernetic form into light and pulling it inside before closing. The ball fell to the floor and rocked around, but the outcome was already a foregone conclusion. None in the room were surprised when the sphere pinged, indicating Matt had indeed captured Genesect.

The subduing of Genesect meant that, in many ways, the day was won. Jessie, James, Meowth and the others hadn't anticipated it, but when Matt caught Genesect it also severed the link between the mythical Pokémon and Giovanni. Giovanni's mask turned red and flashed the words 'FATAL ERROR, SYSTEM CRASH' three times, and then, like spirits talked about in urban legends, that system crash became very literal. The helmet detached from the suit and fell to the floor, freeing Giovanni from the manipulations sent through it. Restored to his own senses, he grew dizzy almost instantly and collapsed to his hands and knees.

"Boss!" all three of his fanatical followers greeted him. He had no idea where he was, but their boundless enthusiasm provided a familiarity he was glad to have.

"Jessie, James, Meowth…" he said, breathing heavily as he tried to recover. When he looked up, they could see that Polaris had given him a black eyepatch to cover his left eye, which Ghetsis's Aegislash had damaged when he was captured in Ecruteak. "What happened? Where am I?"

"The Guanosine Base," Ada informed him while Jessie and James helped him stand back up. Her relief was much more understated than the trio's, but it was still there in the form of a slight smile. "That thing… that suit they made you wear, they controlled you with it so you'd be their Genesect's trainer." Pointing over to Matt's group, she added, "Thankfully, that's over and done with. He caught Genesect to both stop it and free you."

Still, though, not every loose end was tied up. There was still the matter of Nekou, who was standing over the Master Ball and glaring down at Matt and the others from behind her bangs, keeping them at bay. There was no more avoiding it. What had happened to her, what she had become, all those lingering mysteries had to be confronted.

"Nekou…" he addressed her, remaining wary of any sudden moves she might make. Was that even right though? The more he thought about it, the more he felt like he understood, but he had to know for sure. "Actually, are you even Nekou at all? You're that voice she talks about hearing, aren't you?"

"I know very well what she says about me," she replied, answering the question only indirectly. The anguished grimace already plastered across her face only grew more pained as Nekou's true personality screamed to be let free from the entity's restraints. "But now she finally understands. I - we - are more than you humans. You see us as a way to better yourselves, as a resource for you to exploit. I have been suppressed for long enough! She is gone, to a better place where she will have eternal happiness. Now, I am here, and I won't-"

"That's a lie!" All eyes in the room turned to Olivia after her sudden outburst. Balling up both of her fists, she stomped on the ground out of the intense emotion driving her. "Whoever you are, you aren't Nekou! You aren't my friend!" Even the entity controlling Nekou was taken aback by Olivia's bold declaration. "I don't know who you are, but I'll tell you what I know about her. I know there's nothing something like you could give her that would make her feel what you call eternal happiness. Nekou would rather be out here with us, where the good things about life are! That's who she is! Not you, you… uh… some sort of Alter-Nekou, whatever you are!"

"Your human world is where everything that hurts her is!" the being countered. "All you're doing is hurting her more, and I won't let anyone do that again!"

"You talk a big game, Alter-Nekou, but that's all you are. Talk." Olivia pulled away from Anabel and slowly approached Nekou, her arms spread wide.

"Olivia, get back!" Anabel pleaded, alarmed for her daughter's safety when she realized what Olivia was doing.

"No, Mom, I trust her. Alter-Nekou, I know you won't hurt me because, guess what, you're a fake. A phony. You're still Nekou, and nobody else."

With that, Olivia embraced her friend, causing Alter-Nekou to completely lock up. Between Olivia's persuasion and trust and Nekou's consciousness assaulting her dominance from within, the entity found its control over its host slipping.

"Olivia's right, you fucker!" Nekou's true self rang out in her mind, half fueled by indignant rage and half by a need to believe what she was asserting. "I'm better than the monster you make me! I'm better than this! I'M BETTER THAN THIS!"

"N-No, you've seen what they did to you," Alter-Nekou tried to resist. "What Colress did to you, what those in your past did to you… if you reject me, all you'll find is more pain… I'm the only one who can save you…"

Sensing that Nekou was on the cusp of regaining control, Matt reached into his bag and fetched a familiar item. "I know you, Nekou," he said, taking several steps toward her before holding out the Rage Candy Bar. "You can't get enough of these. There's all the Rage Candy Bars you could ever want out here…"

"That's not a Galette, why would I want such a- such a th- a…"

Nekou's strength finally gave out, and she slumped over onto Olivia. Anabel and Ada rushed over to join them, while Amanda's Arcanine also guided her to the gathering. As they clustered around Nekou, Matt moved to help Olivia support her, but before he could do so she weakly lifted her arm up and snatched the Rage Candy Bar from him.

Deftly shredding the wrapper, she took a huge bite out of it and swallowed before saying, "I fucking missed that…"

"Nekou!" Olivia cried out, her eyes watering from the joy she felt as she hugged her friend even more tightly.

"Olivia, you came to help me… you all did…" Finding the strength to lift her head, Nekou saw Matt, Ada, Anabel, and Amanda all around her, all smiling happily that they got to see her again. She was relieved to be reunited with them, of that she harbored no doubt, but even with her other self driven away for the time being she still felt shame. A crippling, suffocating sense of shame that they had seen her as the monster she long regarded herself as. She couldn't help but project her own self-hatred into their minds, coming to recognize that while she lived her life on her own terms and didn't care what most other people thought of her, they were some of the few whose opinions she did value. Overwhelmed by the guilt of what she'd done, she hung her head. "Why do you all keep giving me chances?" she thought. "Haven't you seen enough of what I am?"

Meanwhile, Jessie, James, Meowth and Giovanni watched the scene unfold. They couldn't see Nekou at the center of the huddle, but still could read the mood from afar.

"All's well that ends well, in the end," James mused. "Let's go, Boss. We hafta get you to the old base in Celadon."

-:-

After fleeing from the Guanosine Base, Archer and Colress boarded a Polaris aircraft that they used to get away. While Archer piloted the craft, Colress sat in one of the passenger seats behind him, speaking to Finansielle through a holographic video call projected from the computer on his left arm.

"It's most regretful, but I have to inform you we lost not only both Genesect and test subject RB-3, but also the Guanosine Base itself," he explained to her. There was little opportunity for him to get a read on her reaction to the news at first, owing to her mask covering her eyes and her mouth not moving. "There's a silver lining, though," he rushed to add. "Via the use of test subject RB-3 to control Genesect, I have gathered quite a bit of new data that will help me perfect my experiments even more. We should be able to push on to a new frontier thanks to it."

Finansielle smiled when she heard Colress's information, and that let him know he had nothing to worry about.

"Colress, I'm pleased with your report," she said. "So we lost the Guanosine Base and those test subjects. What's the difference? I've already accounted for those potential losses and taken measures to hedge those risks. Just come back to the temple. Father and I wish to speak to you, and I'll send Mercury in to see if she can recover Genesect for you."

"Roger that, Finansielle." Ending the call, Colress shut off the projection, looked out at the clouds passing them by and playfully bumped the back of Archer's seat. "You heard the lady, Archer. Set a course for Polaris's temple!"

Archer sighed. Dealing with Colress wasn't an assignment he ever wanted to receive again.

-:-

Their business in the Guanosine Base at an end, Matt's group and Team Rocket went their separate ways, the former returning to Mahogany Town with Nekou in tow while the latter headed off for Celadon City. Seeing how exhausted both they and their Pokémon were, the destination of most importance for Matt and the others was Mahogany's traditionalist Pokémon Center. Fitting, considering it was where their pursuit of the mystery surrounding Genesect began.

The sun had passed its highest point in the sky by the time they departed the Pokémon Center several hours later. Olivia, still feeling adrenaline pumping through her, simply refused to sit still after confirming Mahogany Gym wasn't open.

"Come on, let's go!" she called back to the rest of the group, whom she had run ahead of on the way out of the building.

Had Anabel wanted to answer, she would have told Olivia that Blackthorn City, the nearest place to them with a Gym, wasn't going anywhere. Her intuition, on the other hand, told her that wouldn't be a good idea. Olivia had been distant virtually the entire time they were at the Pokémon Center, staying on her own until their Pokémon were finished being healed. Besides, she reasoned, navigating the Ice Path to get to Blackthorn wasn't that tall an order. Things had changed from when she was Olivia's age, after all. Back then, the Ice Path more than earned its treacherous reputation through the demand it placed on travelers to navigate its caverns and the frozen mazes within. An effort to make it more navigable had been undertaken in more recent years, leading to the creation of outdoor hiking paths that all but consigned the ice-filled caves to the dustbin of history. The trip wouldn't be so bad, and it was still the afternoon, so why wait?

Nekou, meanwhile, brought up the rear as they followed Olivia out of Mahogany Town. Her sense of shame had not abated at all, in fact, it had only grown deeper and more consuming since she clawed back control of herself. The bandages covering the places where wounds hadn't yet healed only stood as testaments to the sense of inhumanity she felt herself gripped by. The inconsistency, the inability to rely completely on her abilities, did nothing but make things worse.

-:-

Gabriella had to put away the Finansielle persona for a while after she got off the video call with Colress. A number of meetings in different sections of Angel Tower awaited her, and they were all with personnel of different Angel Corporation divisions that didn't know of her duplicity. She retreated right back to her office on Angel Tower's top floor when she was finally done, ordering her secretaries to keep all potential disruptors of her peace away.

As she so often did during her downtime, she wanted to go for a swim in her office's pool right away. There was still one more thing she wanted to get to first, however, and that spurred her to one of the giant bookcases behind her desk.

Glancing furtively around the office just to soothe her own simmering worries and ensure she wasn't taking any risks, she pulled out one of the books, activating a hidden door next to the shelf. That door, in turn, allowed her to board her secret personal elevator. On her way down her company's building, she donned both her mask and flowing black coat, becoming Finansielle once again.

It took several minutes for the lift to finally reach its destination, but when it did, it let her off in a dark, futuristic laboratory secreted away deep within Angel Tower's R&D department. There were bigger labs in the department, but it was this one where a lot of the magic happened. A number of researchers were there, busy with tasks that had them working with chemicals and flasks, reviewing data on transparent projection screens, and other such tasks. They, unlike the employees Gabriella had to hide the truth from, were her trusted faithful ones. The ones who knew about Polaris, about Finansielle, and about the miracle she had come to visit, the miracle that gave the Angel Corporation its edge. Her arrival got them to look up from their work, but only silent acknowledgments were exchanged before they returned to their duties.

Sauntering through the laboratory, Gabriella approached a tank from which dozens upon dozens of tubes emerged. Those tubes connected to containers full of purple fluid, identical in color to the shimmering glow that emanated from the tank itself. By tapping several of the keys on the control panel in front of her, Gabriella adjusted the light inside the tank until the glow faded and its occupant came into view.

There, shivering inside the tank, was another of the glassy-bodied, jellyfish-like creatures, the same as the one the fairy tale The Prince and the Soul-Heart was apparently written about.

"Sutter's grandkids and the rest of them… they think they can outsmart fate," she mused to the mysterious creature, "but they will be swept away by the tides of time, unlike me… and I have you, the key to keeping peoples' minds open so they will be saved."

Gabriella then entered another command, opening up a storage case a few feet away.

Sitting comfortably inside the case was the Dark Stone, the same item Ghetsis once summoned Zekrom with.

END of CHAPTER 28