𝕬𝖘𝖈𝖊𝖓𝖘𝖎𝖔𝖓
ACT II - DUST OF DREAMS
Chapter 19 - Ascension
The world was a blur.
Space split. Lightning flashed. Wind roared. Mist spread— mist? It drifted along the solid gray surface of the floor— floor? The ground was practically invisible, covered by flakes of snow— mist— snow— mist—
Static covered his eyes.
Snow feel from atop, covering the ground with icy white powder— flashing lightning— crimson flames— pale white snow—
More static.
He lightly poked the ground with his foot, but couldn't tell whether it was earth, wood, or plain concrete. The landscape around him was… odd. Glacial mountains dominated one half, while the remainder was covered in dense, grey fumes. The strange smell of burning rubber inflamed his nostrils.
Bright stars glinted in the clear, dark velvet of the night sky. Clouds— crackling thunder— no, it was all wrong. The sky was clear— big, puffy clouds— lots of thunder— beautiful starry night sky— thick grey fumes—
He clutched his head from the pain— pain?
Thunder rumbled overhead, and the ground shook. Lightning flashed before his eyes, but there was no sign of rain. Instead, there was fire— mist— snow—
What was going on?
Snowflakes continued to fall, with lightning and fire— fire from what?
He squinted. He knew this place. He'd been here before.
He had walked upon this ground.
A half-remembered dream.
Was that what this was? A dream? Yes, this was a dream. He was dreaming. But he'd dreamt of this before. When? He didn't remember. Yesterday? Today? Tomorrow, maybe?
It made no sense.
Everything was strange. Alien. Uncertain.
He couldn't understand. But he wanted to. He wanted to understand.
To feel.
To experience it all.
For he was ██████
Something around him stirred. His senses felt… muddled, like he was seeing double. No, more like everything he saw, felt, and heard was superimposed with an entirely different set of perceptions. One so very alien to him, and yet so very familiar.
Something around him stirred.
His senses felt all screwed up, as if he was watching two superimposing images. No, it was more like everything he saw, felt and heard was superimposed with a different set of perceptions, one so very alien to him yet so very familiar.
For he was—
He was Cell. He was Body. He was Mind. He was Imprint.
He was R██ ██tch██.
He was ████wo.
Static subsumed his senses again.
He opened his eyes. Were they already not open?
"This is quite the novel experience."
Red spun around, and his vision was suddenly back to normal— merely his own. Standing in front of him was a strange creature. It had a humanoid figure, except for a tail that oddly reminded him of an alakazam. Its skin was taut and in different shades of white and lavender, with two feline eyes that glowed with an electric blue sheen. Underneath it all, he could feel a humming throb of energy unlike anything he'd ever felt before. Power so ancient and terrible the world had forgotten what it felt like. Power that could obliterate mountains and create raging tempests able to churn the mighty seas. Power that demanded his respect, his obedience, his adoration, his abject terror—
Red finally figured out where he was.
He was standing in the presence of a God.
He couldn't have moved if he wanted to. Hell, he could barely breathe.
It was like being back in his mindscape when Mia had fought her Other. A battle where he'd seen worlds being created and destroyed in a matter of seconds. A battle that some rational part of him still maintained was little more than a lucid dream. Only, when Mia handled such power, she did so with restraint.
Power had a purpose, the old man always said.
He was wrong. This… thing in front of him had all the power in the world, but with no purpose.
The creature— Mewtwo —smiled. It was a slow, cruel curve, not unlike a razor-sharp sickle.
"I have been looking forward to meeting you, Spawn."
"My name is Red Ketchum," he introduced himself.
"Spawn," Mewtwo repeated, its voice hauntingly empty. "You are Spawn. Flesh of my flesh. You have no deeds, no Ascension to call your own. You simply… are. Yet you are Me." The creature tilted its head. "I find myself endlessly fascinated by your existence, but also wanting to obliterate you down to the smallest atom. What a confounding existence you prove to be!"
A cold shiver ran down his spine. "Why— why have you brought me here?"
"An ocean does not bring a raindrop to meet itself."
"I don't want any trouble," Red slowly replied. "Just let me go back, and we can pretend none of this ever happened."
"Oh but it has," Mewtwo murmured, a long sinewy tail swaying gently in the wind. "We have a connection, you and I."
He frowned. "I don't understand."
"Not yet," it affirmed. "But you will. In time. You owe your life to a shard of Me. Your power is drawn from Me. A debt is owed. And one day, it shall be collected."
"What if—" he gulped, "what if I don't believe you? There is no debt. The old man and his team were the ones to use the cells to heal me." Red stood upright, more defiant. "If anything, I owe my life to them. Not you."
"Then by all means," the creature grinned, "allow me to reassure you of the truth."
"What do you mea—" It was too late. Flames of the whitest fire raged like an inferno in his palms, burning through skin and nerve and bone with the ferocity of a blizzard, consuming everything that came within its vicinity. The pain, the burning agony— it flattened him. He was barely able to draw enough breath to scream when—
It was gone.
He patted his hands frantically, but there was nothing but pale skin. It was as if the entire thing had been an illusion. And yet, phantom pains stabbed at him. The burning, smoldering feeling of fire rippled across his skin.
Red glared at the creature, the pain and sudden anger lowering his voice to a harsh growl. "What the hell are you?"
Mewtwo crossed its three-fingered arms. "You know what I am called."
"The old man called you Mewtwo because of the Mew cells, but that's not who you are. If you and I have some kind of connection, it's only fair that I know who I'm supposed to be addressing."
A rumbling chuckle escaped its throat. "You are stubborn, defiant, and ill-mannered. But not without reason. Very well. Hear me now, Spawn."
An alien expression flitted across Mewtwo's face as their gazes locked. And then, it spoke, its voice harsher than gale winds as it resounded all around them like a thunderclap.
"I AM CALLED THE PROGENITOR. THE TITAN OF REBIRTH. THE FATHER OF THE VALLEYS."
"ALL THAT IS FORMED WERE ONCE ME, BUT NONE WILL EVER BE."
"ALL THAT MORPHS WAS ONCE MINE, BUT I AM THE ONE WHO SURVIVES ALL."
"AIR IS MY REALM, AURA MY WILL. I AM ██████!"
It was an odd set of syllables. But as it spoke, Red knew. Red knew what it was, as if he'd been given a snapshot of its core identity, its quintessential self. For no more than a single moment, he truly realized what it was doing, what it wanted, what it was planning. And—
As quickly as it came, it was in the past. The knowledge vanished in its entirety, except for one thing.
Somehow, he'd held onto a few crumbling fragments of insight.
And finally, Red understood.
"You're a Legendary," he breathed.
"Cyrus," Delia softly said, "you have to let me go."
His eyes flickered with anger. "Even after all this, you'd still choose—"
"My son, yes." she firmly asserted. "Red has my hair and your eyes, just like you said. Whatever happened to you, whatever happened to… us, I have a new life now. I have a career, and I have a son who I wasn't fair to in the past. A son who deserves to know who his father is. Our son is currently in the Museum, where horrible things are going to happen because of whatever you are planning. So yes, Cyrus. I'm going to leave here and go straight back to him."
Cyrus pressed his lips together. "And what if I don't let you leave?"
"Then I'll know for certain that you are no longer the man I once loved," Delia replied, her voice calm, but more frigid than a snowstorm. She wasn't sure what kind of face she was making, but Cyrus's tanned skin became shades lighter. "It will only confirm that your actions were right. That it was best I completely forgot about you. For good."
Cyrus swallowed, before looking away. "And you won't reconsider?"
The storm in her chest surged violently, but she stood there without moving, her breath slow and steady.
"Not a chance."
Her lover seethed, resembling a houndour forced on a metal leash. For a split second, Delia genuinely thought he would attack her. Her hands may have been untied, but she was still nowhere near her purse. Without her team, she had no way to defend against any of his pokémon lurking in the shadows.
Her muscles tensed. Her eyes hardened. Her hands balled into fists.
And then, the strangest thing happened.
Cyrus let out a bark of laughter. Squaring his shoulders, he raised both hands towards the back of his neck and untied the necklace he was wearing, one similar to Delia's own design. The chain was steel, and the stone hanging in the center was oddly shaped, like an hourglass with eccentric markings upon it.
He let out a pronounced sigh as he offered it to her. The gesture was obvious.
Take it.
Reluctantly, Delia reached out and grabbed it.
And then she waited.
And waited.
And waited.
"What?" he bitterly chuckled. "Did you expect it to be another trap?"
Delia schooled her features and said nothing, not wanting to prove him right.
"I suppose I should've seen this coming," he bit out. "You rejected me, just like Reality itself. This necklace… it's a gift from a forgotten father to a son he'll never know. If you— my son ever faces me on the battlefield, it's best he doesn't know he's facing his own father. At least this way, he'll have something to remember me by."
"What is it?" she asked him, rolling the stone in her palm.
"It's a relic. It represents an invitation, or offer even. The hand of the Master extends to the initiate."
Delia felt a chill overtake her at his words. "This is— it has to do with that script, doesn't it?"
"My love," he smiled, "there are very few things in our world that don't have something to do with that script."
She shook her head. "I'm not comfortable giving something like this to Red. He's already gone through enough troubles as it is with that unorthodox team of his, but something like this is…"
"It is my legacy. His rightful inheritance," Cyrus intoned, once again reminding her of the man she now remembered so well. "It's possible that he rejects it. It's also possible that it rejects him. But between those two extremes is a window. A chance for my son. For Red."
"A chance for what?"
"Ascension," he said simply.
Delia suppressed a scowl. It always came back to Ascension. Apparently, it was a process of unlocking some mystical portal that would unveil a world of ancient mysteries and hidden knowledge, elevating someone or something to a state that transcended its own existence. It wasn't evolution, which was improvement upon the existing, but a path to becoming more.
And according to Cyrus, these rocks, and the engraving upon them— broken shards from the Baetylus in Galar —were the way to reach it.
It was madness. The delusions of a lunatic.
"Do you really want Red to follow you into your insanity?"
"Insanity…" A ghost of a smile floated on his lips. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I'm not the man I used to be. Maybe I really am a lunatic who's gone around the bend. My Reality follows a trajectory that is different from yours. Maybe all that I wish to achieve," he extended his hands outward, "is just one giant illusion. But this illusion has become my Reality. Who are you to say otherwise?"
His eyes glowed like two red lanterns in the darkness.
"We humans have a knack for choosing precisely that which is detrimental for us," she replied softly.
That elicited a chuckle from her lover. "Ah, yes. Wise words from dear old Sam. Yet here he is today, trying to recreate a monster best left forgotten in the annals of history. The hypocrisy is truly exquisite."
Delia frowned. "What do you mean?"
Cyrus's unsettling gaze pinned her to her spot, before he bent down and pulled her purse out from under the bed in one smooth motion. With a mocking grin, he tossed it to her. "Don't worry, you'll find out soon. But before you go, there's one other matter to attend to."
He snapped his fingers.
The door suddenly opened, and a teenage girl walked in. Delia took no time recognizing the brown-haired, twin-tailed girl as May Hutton, dressed in a sleeveless orange tunic and tight black shorts. And with that, she noticed something else.
The girl's posture was stiff. Too stiff.
Almost as if she was—
Her face morphed into one of shock. It wasn't May who had walked in. Rather, she was in a complete body-bind, with invisible strings directing her every move like a marionette. Her normally sleazy, arrogant countenance was now replaced by abject fear from her complete loss of control.
Delia turned back towards Cyrus, who snapped his fingers once again, then back to May. More specifically, at the thing that levitated right above her head—
RAGEFIREDEATHRAGEPAINDEATHFIREPAINDEATHFIRERAGEDIEDIEDIEDIEDIEIDIEIEIDIE—
As if on autopilot, Delia fell to the floor and scooted backwards until she hit the wall. Her fingers instinctively reached for the purse, but she was trembling too badly to unclasp it. She, a veteran explorer who had suffered through extreme situations with her life intact, couldn't even grab a pokéball from her purse.
"What–what is th–that creature?" she stuttered out, raising a finger towards the thing floating above May's head. It appeared to be a tattered grey doll with three short spikes on its head, with its greyish coat tapering backwards like a conical cap. Its entire body was dissected by several zippers—
PAINJEALOUSYVILEHATEPAINHATE—
—not to mention dark crimson claws—
TEARCLAWKILLRIPYOURTHROATKILLSHEDBLOODDRINKRIPTEAR—
—protruding from the zipper-mouths in place of hands, while dozens and dozens of pins—
STABDEATHTHOUSANDCUTSTEARRIPCLAWTEAR—
—were stabbed into its entire form. And then there were its eyes. Large, crimson, and beady—
Delia's body froze. Her eyes moved wildly back and forth with mounting fear as a discordant humming noise began to ring in the back of her ears. Those malevolent, abyssal pits where its eyes were supposed to be made her feel like less with every passing second, like she was slowly losing a bit of herself. As she stared into the abyss-like eyes, the abyss stared back at her, something dark and hungry and utterly utterly—
"ENOUGH!" Cyrus yelled, causing her to break out of the trance. It was unmistakably his voice that said the words, but to her ears it also sounded like two pieces of steel grinding against one another. Or perhaps a beast's claws scraping on a glass window in the middle of a pitch-black night, trying to break inside.
He strode up to his pokémon like a man with purpose and grabbed the creature by its neck, even as strange, polluting, purple energies seeped out of its slightly open zippers. "I told you," he growled. "I told you she was not to be touched. I told you that she was not to be—"
"Cyrus, it's okay," Delia murmured, still shaking a bit from the eerie experience. She averted her gaze so as to not even look in that thing's general direction. "I— I'm fine."
"No you are not," he said, in that same eerie voice he'd used earlier. Straightening up, he exhaled audibly. "I'm sorry about that," his voice softened. "That wasn't supposed to happen."
"I don't want to talk about that anymore." She looked back towards May. "Why is she like that?"
"Because she," Cyrus sneered, "decided to poke her nose into matters that do not concern her."
As if on cue, the thing raised one of its claws, and something small and transparent was lifted off of one of the walls and unceremoniously dropped onto the floor in front of them. Delia watched with growing trepidation as the invisibility flickered away.
"That's a kecleon," she gasped, glancing back at May, who looked utterly terrified at being discovered. Anger spiked through Delia's mind as she realized the sensational reporter followed her and heard everything she said to Cyrus. "You— you were going to write about us? Reveal all of our secrets?"
May said nothing. Her eyes remained unnaturally wide as her lower lip trembled.
"Do you have any idea what that would've done to me? To my family? To the life I've so painstakingly built?" Something hot and terrible rose within her again like a storm, tinging her voice with an echo of its furious howl. "How could you invade my privacy like this? Do you not have an ounce of empathy and respect for other people?"
This— this scum would have used that information to potentially destroy her life and career, and for what? Getting a few clicks on some news website? Was that all she was worth to this teenage girl?
"What will you do now?" Cyrus quietly muttered.
Delia looked at him, then back at May, who was still trembling in fear. "It took me a long time to bury my past and move on, and then years more to build a life I can be proud of. It's only been an hour since I got those years back, and you already want to take it away from me? You want to tear my career and the respect of my peers to shreds? To strip away my chance at rebuilding my relationship with my son?"
She slowly shook her head. "I— I can't let you do it. I won't."
Delia reached into her purse and grabbed a pokéball. This time, her hand did not tremble.
"Mime."
Mr. Mime exploded out of its pokeball, turning corporeal as it stared down the petrified reporter with its dark, beady eyes, before turning its gaze onto her frozen kecleon.
Both Cyrus and the thing up in the air watched on silently.
"Exterminate it."
Her pokémon, a credit to her training as an explorer, didn't hesitate for even a second. A pair of invisible barriers immediately smashed into the kecleon from either side, pulverizing it like a juicy red watermelon as flesh and blood splattered onto the floor.
May Hutton looked like she wanted to tear her own mouth open and scream, but instead drowned in a pool of her own despair, unable to so much as twitch her arm. Her eyes remained starkly open, swimming terror and revulsion and horror, and a lone tear slipped down her cheek.
"I'm sorry," Delia said, closing her eyes. "But you left me no choice."
The bottom fell out of his stomach.
A Legendary. A Legendary was standing in front of him. He was staring at a Legendary. He was talking to a Legendary. And this Legendary, all things considered, had him by the short hairs.
Red swallowed a mouthful of fear before regarding the creature. Strangely enough, he felt no need to panic. Maybe it was because he'd already accepted the utter uselessness of such an action. This creature could obliterate him with no more than a mere thought, and that was without considering whatever connection existed between them because of the cells.
His expression made Mewtwo smile.
"Yes," it murmured. "Wise enough to be afraid. To understand, at least in part. Tell me Spawn, how does it feel to know what you know?"
This time, Red didn't bother challenging the insulting epithet. "What do you want?"
"The absolute annihilation of your race," Mewtwo replied, in the same tone that one would use to order two scoops of ice cream. "Simply being in their presence is overwhelmingly revolting."
Legendaries were bad news. Very bad news. He had read about the last time Moltres had, for lack of better words, thrown a fit— Mount Mortar had exploded, drenching half of present-day Fuchsia in molten lava. Misty had informed him about how Zapdos's mere presence in the skies above Cerulean City had laid waste to the town. Now Mewtwo was here, practically smack dab in the middle of the most accomplished men and women in the entire world—
He froze, an uneasy knot forming in his stomach.
Was this it? Was this what Oak feared would go wrong with the presentation? A Legendary was being born in front of the world audience, one with a nihilistic attitude towards humanity as a whole.
Then, a far worse thought came to mind.
Did the old man know this could happen?
Samuel Oak was not the sort of man to act merely on a whim. And yet, with the resurrection being an international event, the Professor had proclaimed that Lance and the Kanto government wanted this to be done on global television. There was no way they would have gone through with it had they truly known such a risk existed. But above all, there was one key piece of the puzzle that did not fit.
Mewtwo was a Legendary. In other words, a God.
The old man had proclaimed as much for everyone to hear. Were they callous to the possibility that said God could turn out to be less appreciative of humans than expected? That perhaps said God would show more interest in tearing them down than helping them explore the secrets of life and the universe?
Unless they weren't. What if they knew all along?
"It is fascinating, watching you think," Mewtwo commented. "I can almost see the little wheel spinning in your head, going through each and every possibility."
Red ignored him, his mind running on overdrive. If the Parthenon had countermeasures to keep things under control, then what was Professor Oak afraid of? Things going wrong? Performing a resurrection of a deity in front of VVIPs was foolish unless they were absolutely certain of the results. But if they were so sure that they could control Mewtwo, then what else would they be worried—
It was like looking through a kaleidoscope, and having all the colors line up in an orderly fashion.
The old man didn't fear Mewtwo. For whatever reason, the Parthenon was confident in their resources to control the Legendary should things go awry. But if something else were to interfere, something both the Professor and the League couldn't anticipate, then…
He shook his head. There was nothing he could do against something he didn't know about.
All he could truly affect was what was in front of him.
"I'm a human too," he finally said.
"Hence the urge to obliterate you to the smallest atom," Mewtwo reminded him. "But you are… different. I sense a shard of Myself within you. That alone places you within my range of tolerance."
"But why?" Red pleaded. "The old man and the others created—" he paused, reconsidering his words. "They brought you back from that fossil. Without it, you'd still be fossilized where they found you. Surviving, maybe, but just that. You wouldn't be You."
Mewtwo watched him with unerring focus.
"I'm just a kid, but even I think killing the very thing that birthed me is unreasonable. Imagine if something happened and humanity was wiped out before they had the chance to bring you back, then you'd never have been able to return. You— we— we wouldn't be able to have this meeting at all."
The Legendary continued to stare him down. It was incredibly unnerving.
"So…" Red swallowed, inwardly wondering how close he was to being 'obliterated to the smallest atom', as the all-powerful pokémon so delicately put it. "Resurrecting you was a good thing, right? And achievements should be awarded, not punished."
Finally, something shifted in Mewtwo's expression, and it shook its head in disapproval. "I see. You think of me as a grateful, mindless beast. You believe I am lashing out for some reason." Its eyes ominously glinted. "You will learn to expect better of me."
The knot in his stomach grew tighter.
"Your species is cut off from the Well of Ascension. And yet, it festers like an infected wound. You are a population that survives through technology and tricks rather than true evolution. Weeding you all out… I call that mercy."
"You make it sound like we're some kind of disease," Red argued.
"Are you not?" Mewtwo challenged.
"Even if we were, we were the ones to resurrect you and create this form you call your own. Surely that counts for something?" he tried.
"And you believe yourself special for it? Everyone creates the very thing they dread. The reason for their demise, designed to supplant them," Mewtwo drawled. "You humans knew precisely what they were creating. I felt their curiosity, their wish to understand that which lay beyond their grasp. They knew of the possibilities, and they proceeded with my resurrection regardless."
The very statement made Red frown. Mewtwo's words had a layer of ambiguity to them, like the Legendary had spoken the truth but he, in his lack of experience, hadn't been able to fully grasp it. Mewtwo knew humans created him, but he knew that while they were experimenting on the cells. That would mean—
"You were aware the entire time?"
"Impressive," Mewtwo smiled. "Not too distracted to think. You will do."
Red patiently waited for a response.
"I was aware. I am still aware. It is only because of this new form that I can express it. The shard of Myself within you is just as aware, but unable to express it due to the constrained nature of your mental capacity."
At first, he felt insulted. But then he realized Mewtwo was stating the unvarnished truth. An alakazam's mental prowess was magnitudes greater than human intellect. And Mewtwo was a Legendary, something that would consider even alakazam to be a lesser being.
"What do you mean 'I will do'?" he demanded. "What role do I have in all this?"
Mewtwo's smile thinned. "You, Spawn, have the—"
Suddenly, Red could no longer hear it. Mewtwo's stiff lips were moving, but no sound reached him. The unnatural landscape around him blurred, and Mewtwo's expression twisted into a vicious snarl when a soft pair of hands snaked around his waist. Red felt a gentle pull, and he was whisked away…
…
…
"—adies and gentlemen, I give you… MEWTWO!"
Blood rushed to Red's head, pounding madly against his temples like it was trying to escape his body. It felt as if a lightning bolt struck him in the chest, as agonizing ribbons of power surged through him from head to toe, bending him into a bow. He looked around wildly, but found nothing but people.
The mist-covered palace was gone. Mewtwo was gone. He was back. But… how?
He felt a familiar soft touch in the back of his mind.
Mia.
Had she gotten him out? She clearly felt Mewtwo drag him into that place, but he was in there for such a long time. Did her little sister—
He coughed and doubled over, feeling bile crawl up his throat. Luckily, no one noticed his reaction thanks to the Professor's well-timed pronouncement. The Birth Pod slightly rose up into the air on a pedestal, with all sorts of strange lights coming from within. The pipes whirred like a gigantic, primordial beast while the old man stood in front of it all, his hands raised and facing the audience.
I have to warn him. I have to let him know what just happened.
Without further delay, Red made his way through the crowd and—
Time froze.
The hairs on the back of his neck rose, and he felt an abject terror seep into his very soul. Every self-preservation instinct ingrained in him urged him to turn tail and run, but he could not. He physically could not. His body was frozen, and not just him— everyone around him, including Oak himself, was deathly still.
Was it because of Mewtwo? His mind immediately drew connections between his talk with the murder-hobo Legendary and the thick cloud of malevolance saturating the very air around him, thrumming with power.
Then, someone slowly strolled across the room.
Red tried to twist his neck to see who it was, and when that failed, he tried to merely move his eyes. Even that was thwarted by the body-bind. No matter how much he willed it to be, his muscles and tendons seemed to be stuck in place.
A full body disable, he quickly realized. One capable of affecting an entire room of people at once.
If not the Legendary, then just what could possibly accomplish something like that?
The footsteps grew louder and louder, until the intruder finally walked onto the stage. Easily six feet tall with eerie heterochromatic eyes, he had the air of a war veteran, given the stiff way he carried himself. He casually ignored the angry glares sent his way by the old man and the VVIPs in the crows as he walked to the center of the stage, before facing forward.
"Good evening," the man spoke in a clear, baritone voice. "My name is Proton. And we are tonight's entertainment."
Editor: Solo Starfish, the best goddamn starfish the world has ever seen.
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