Chapter Two - Vega's Room

"Ooh, what's wrong with it, Cyro?" asked Zeta, looking down at the hiker, whose eyes were rolling backwards into his head; seemingly in a faint. "I haven't killed it, have I?" she asked, worriedly, biting her lip. "Oh, if looks could kill," said a voice from the trees. "Ehm, Cyro," Zeta started, looking at Cyro-Mew, who was at the moment floating in a place opposite the noise, "That wasn't you, was it?" He denied having spoken by shaking his head slowly. "Zeta . . . behind . . . ," he began, pointing as if Zeta did not know what he had meant by "behind."

She looked back slowly and saw nothing.

"What the Hell, Cyro? Don't scare me like that!" She said, laughingly assuming it was a joke, until she saw the mortified look on Cyro-Mew's face, "You're serious, aren't you? What did you see? Tell me." "I saw black fur and red stripes," he said slowly, to let the full effect set in. His statement was followed by a tense silence.

"Are you absolutely sure?" asked Zeta, breaking it.

"Well, if he's not, I'm sure he is now," came the unknown voice again. Zeta turned to see the speaker and caught a glance of dissipating mist; black mist.

"Are you who I think you are?" inquired Zeta cautiously. "That depends on who you think I am. Why don't you tell me who it is that you seem to think I am?" came the surreal reply. "You and your damned riddles, Vega!"

The announcer had been Cyro-Mew, his paws balled into little kitty fists. His teeth were tight together and he had spoken through them. His brows were contorted in such a way that expressed extreme hatred. "Show yourself, you--"

"No need to name-call, Cyro," said the air as it slowly collected itself into a recognizable form. Vega appeared, eyes closed in an aristocratic manner, with his arms crossed over his chest as he seemed to sit on the air, defying gravity, one leg crossed over the other. He opened his eyes for the sheer effect. He had found himself unable to hate the humans' genetic experiments because of the eyes that they had bestowed upon him. "So, how goes the Mewthree life?" he asked conversationally, paying no mind to any of Cyro-Mew's animosity.

"What are you here for, you clod of human-made dirt?!" demanded Cyro-Mew. "That's a strange metaphor, Cyro, as well as incorrect; I'd have to be a 'bloody clod of exceptionally dark human-made dirt,' seeing as my fur is black and I am covered with red stripes," argued Vega, before continuing, "and what's wrong with an old friend coming by for a chat, eh, Cyro?"

If Cyro-Mew's blood could boil, it would have. He held off the urge to begin a long string of curse words, if only because he was too polite to use such strong, abusive language in front of a female such as Zeta. Cyro-Mew found Vega's mocking tone that was used when he was addressing him extremely nerve-grinding, not to mention the fact that "Cyro" was a name reserved only for use by the closest of his friends, namely Epsilon and Zeta. Anyone else would get their eyes clawed out, but even the fuming Cyro-Mew knew better than to attempt such a move on the superpower known as Mewfour, who would easily cast him to the ground and then laugh as he proceeded to drive Cyro-Mew to insanity.

"Vega," began Zeta quietly, "did you do something to that hiker, there?" "Yes, no, may be so, Zeta," he said, ignominiously, "What's it to you? He's just a human." He paused, looking down at the hiker belittlingly, as if he were no more than an insect. "And anyway, I think that you'll find one of these Pokémon at least moderately useful, and you might as well take the Pokéballs, anyway; that human won't be waking any time in the near future, and if he does, he won't be needing anything but medication and perhaps a bullet, if you know what I mean."

"You did take him to your Room, you monster," Zeta returned, staring angrily and distrustfully at Vega. "Yes, that's me. 'A' Class Monster, at your service, Madam," he said, charmingly, bowing in midair. "What do you want?!" she demanded, disgustedly. Vega burst into malicious laughter much like a villain who knows that he's won. "You," he answered curtly, before waving a sweet farewell and dissolving. "Parting is such sweet sorrow," said Vega's fast-fading voice as it was carried off by the little bit of wind in the woods.

"What?" asked a shocked Cyro-Mew, "What did he say?" "You heard him well enough," Zeta hissed. "W-Why didn't you ever say anything?" asked Cyro-Mew, looking at her with the same sympathetic look as before. "I thought it would be better to keep it to myself," she replied, quietly, trailing off at the end. "Keep what to yourself?" pursued Cyro-Mew. Zeta sighed at length. "All right. I'll tell you, but if you so much as hint at it to Epsilon, I'll kill you." Cyro-Mew cringed; she sounded serious. Cyro-Mew nodded in compliance nevertheless, eager for an explanation. "Well, do you remember how I said I still dreamed about him? It's not a dream, per se," she began, and Cyro-Mew began to anticipate what he would hear next. "He brings me to his Room every night, right after I fall asleep. It's like living in two worlds now, it's been going on for so long," Zeta explained. "No wonder you stay up until midnight some nights. . . ," said Cyro-Mew, unknowingly ending the conversation on that subject.

"Anyways," said Zeta, her despondent tone suddenly and abruptly metamorphosizing into her normal one, "let's get that guy back to the lodge. Maybe he'll be a lucky one." Cyro-Mew paused still lingering on the conversation of a moment past. "Er. . . . He'll have to be a really lucky one, and you know it," he said finally. "Yes, but. . . maybe. . . ," said Zeta, leaving the sentence hanging in the still air. "All right, we'll take him back, but I'm not going to clean up after it," concluded Cyro-Mew, falling back into his normal stereotype. Having solved the problem of what was to be done about the hiker, Cyro-Mew used his inherent psychokinesis to carry the hiker behind the three as they returned to their home.

The hiker was set up in the main room, occupying a mattress that Zeta had dug out of the attic. Reki had been appointed to watch over him, and had happily complied, if only because Zeta had bribed him with a promise of getting him up to his next form soon.

Reki had since fallen asleep and was presently snoring as only a Bagon could. Zeta was on the computer, clicking around aimlessly on the human's Internet. Cyro-Mew, on the other hand, was deep in thought, lying awake in his bed in darkness, but for a digital clock and the light of the moon from through his window. He had gotten a strange feeling about the hiker; he looked familiar somehow, even though Cyro-Mew had never seen that person before. The nagging feeling at his gut was eager to contradict that assumption.

He sighed, dismissing it as one would dismiss deja vu, before slowly drifting off to sleep.

Zeta, back on the first hand, did not want to go to sleep, so she stayed on her computer, researching a bit of the Mew-clones' past, mostly to find the human perspective, and partly because she was feeling mildly nostalgic after seeing Vega take a Victim right in front of her eyes.

She found an interesting shred of information: names that the human masses had used to refer to the three by, since none of the humans had known the three were clones of Mew, from an illegal experiment gone horribly awry. All, that is, except the scientists, who were currently in a collective tomb or burnt to ashes back in the Cinnabar Mansion. Epsilon, for his sheer psychic prowess, had received the name Noushi, meaning "brain death." Zeta, for her draconian talons and physical fighting style of "slice and dice and ask questions later," was dubbed Shukketsushi, which meant "bleed to death." The two had been named for their causes. Vega, however, being the worst, was named Kokushibyou. He had been named after the famous plague, the Black Death.

Looking further, she found an official count of casualties, as well as percentages of what they had died of. The trio had killed in excess of ten thousand people total in less than three weeks, after which the two inferior clones turned on the one superior clone. About thirty-nine percent of the deaths had resulted from the destruction of the buildings: fires, collapses, trappings, falls, etcetera. Epsilon killed around fifteen percent, and Zeta, another sixteen, but Vega alone had killed thirty percent; nearly the other two clones' kills combined.

On that same web site, she found a list of surviving Victims, and the percentages there were nearly depressing. Vega had taken around three thousand Victims apart from his main kill count: the previous thirty percent. Sixty-seven percent of his Victims lived out the remainder of their lives in a mental institution, with thirty-one percent committing suicide. Only two percent had recovered fully. Sixty people of three thousand had recovered fully.

As Zeta read all this, her eyelids became weighted, and the efficiency of her cognition began to slow. She found herself having to reread some simple passages occasionally, but still she resisted. She did not want to fall to sleep.

She continued foraging for articles on the Three Deaths, as the humans had called their group, and came upon a mildly interesting article that related to the "rumour" that Team Rocket had been involved in the incident. It was about Giovanni's mysterious disappearance after the first blood of the Three Deaths.

Zeta looked despairingly at the computer's clock, seeing that she had only managed to stay up until one A.M. She sighed, defeated, before opting for the lesser of two evils. The greater of which would be falling asleep in the chair while the computer was on, going to Vega's Room anyway, and waking up with a backache the next morning. The lesser evil she considered to be falling asleep in her bed, going to Vega's Room, and waking up with no backache and the computer off.

Consequential to her decision, she shut down the computer and turned it off, before going to the light switch and turning the lights off. She stood in the newly-arrived darkness, letting her eyes adjust; a practice pointless to some, but habitual for her, because she would awake again in pitch blackness soon. She got into bed finally, closing her eyes despondently, and finally let sleep overcome her weathered defenses.

A moment later, she awoke reluctantly in a black world, lying on nothing, seeing nothing but her own self somehow even without any sort of light. The unique effect of living in this strange place was the fact that she no longer felt tired except for the drowsiness she acquired from her staying up past the normal time.

"Such a bad girl, Zeta," came a voice from the vast abyss of nothingness, "making me wait an extra three hours for you to show up. Bad, bad kitty dragon."

"Forgive me, I have sinned," she said with extreme sarcasm, as she endeavoured to get up. "No, no," said the darkness, behind her now, "stay down." The nothingness pushed her back onto the invisible surface, at the same time taking shape into the familiar evil form of Mewfour. "Stay down," he repeated kneeling next to her. He disappeared briefly, reappearing in front of her, yet far enough away for her to see him as he floated in the blackness, in the same pose as he had appeared in in the forest earlier.

"So, did you hear of that poor boy in the Cinnabar Mansion? Pity, really," commented Vega, watching his captive interestedly. "Another of your Victims, isn't he?" said Zeta through her teeth. "Oh, you know it," said he, "I can see you know it in your red, slit-pupiled eyes. Beautiful eyes." He closed his own eyes for a moment with an indulgent smile on his face.

"Stop fantasizing, you pervert," said Zeta, glaring at him. "Now, why," began Vega, dissolving again, "should I," he continued, appearing in front of Zeta, "do that?" he finshed, snapping his eyes open in front of her face. "Agh! My eyes!" cried Zeta, blinded by Vega's sinisterly glowing eyes. "Whoops," said Vega, unconvincingly.

"Aghhh . . . ," groaned Zeta under her breath, "Owww . . . ." She rubbed her eyes vigourously, trying to recover them from the shock of the light. "Damn you, Vega!"

When she opened her eyes again, the blackness was gone, replaced with a luxurious room, albeit with no exit and very dimly lit. She glanced around at the surrounding area. The walls were blue like the sky, but covered with a thin veil much like a spider's web, making them look like ice. The floor was also blue, but the normal, more intense blue. "Just your colours, right, Zeta?" said a voice behind her, just before she felt a paw alight on her shoulder. "Don't touch me," she hissed, and the paw was removed, though reluctantly.

"You do realize, of course, that I comply with your commands only out of consideration," Vega sneered, leaning over her to look into her face. She glanced up at him before digging her face into a pillow. "Why do you always shy from me? I took that hiker and that boy to protect you. Why do you hate me for that?" he asked plaintively.

"Explain," came the muffled reply from the pillow.

"The boy had found the Journal. You didn't really expect for me to let him go after he'd read the entirety of the Journal, did you?" he said. "And the hiker, wouldn't you know it, was out to get you. Did you not see the Masterball in his clenched hand?" he asked in a certain poetic tone, "The hiker was our old friend, Giovanni." Zeta twitched at the name. "Oh, so, you remember him?"

"Of course I remember him," said the pillow.

"So, do you see how all of my Victims are taken to protect you?" inquired Vega quietly.

"What about the other three thousand?" asked the pillow, "Where's the explanation for them?"

"The same explanation as I suppose you would have for the, oh, sixteen hundred that you completely offed. At least those three thousand of mine lived . . . for a little while, at any rate," retorted Vega, smiling.

"At least I didn't 'off' another three thousand; you killed twice as many as I had," replied the pillow.

"But you did kill," countered Vega, "and you liked it." The pillow, for once, had no come-back. "You loved the wails and the screams that those pathetic humans made when you cut into their soft flesh with those blades that you call claws, even when they are so much more potent than any ordinary 'claw,'" boasted Vega. "You licked the blood off of them after every kill. You savoured the thrill of the hunt; of the kill. I remember it well," recalled Vega, a reminiscing look on his face, "I would watch you kill with all your viciousness; watch the light dance off your sleek black killing claws. A dazzling sight to behold, you in your murderous mood." He licked his lips at his conclusion.

"Shut up," sobbed the pillow, "Go away!"

"I apologize if I've upset my little blood rose," he said sincerely, caressing her shoulder. "I told you not to touch me!" "You can't escape me, blood rose. I'll do this for the rest of eternity; you, of all people, should realize that," he replied. "And stop calling me that!" "What would you prefer I call you then?" asked Vega, curiously. "Nothing! Just leave me alone!" "I must refer to you by something," pursued Vega. "Fine! I don't care! Just so long as you go away!" "It saddens me, my pet, that you do not share my desire for us to be together, but, since I aim to please, I shall leave you here for a little while," he conceded with a little sigh, "but if you have a change of heart by some great miracle, all you have to do is call for me; I'll come."

Vega slid off the bed and started towards a wall, tail drooping in a defeated way. He stopped and looked back at Zeta over his shoulder. "Sorry," he said, before trudging off through a wall to the nothingness surrounding the little room, leaving Zeta lying on the bed alone.

She looked up from the pillow finally and laid her head on her arms after crossing them. She sighed. "He does this at least once a month, but . . . he never apologized like that before . . . ," she said to herself. She stayed silent for a time before she became shocked at her own thoughts. "Why am I being compassionate about that cold-blooded killer?" she demanded of herself, "I've been in his Room far too long."

Vega looked up from his mentally-manifested viewer screen, and sighed despairingly. "She won't believe me . . . . I hate this!" he cried, dropping his head into his palms. "Why can't I have her?" he sobbed.

"Ever since the beginning . . . I've been inclined to try for her affections, but I have never succeeded in gaining any of them," said Vega to himself, old memories resurfacing in his mind. "I wish I could just get her consent to be within twenty feet of her . . . . She doesn't even want me in the same mile."

He looked longingly back at the screen. His paw reached out of its own accord, running along the length of his vision's image on the screen; once, then again, until he was stroking the dimly lit screen; the only light in his otherwise dark, empty world. Unfulfilled desires and dreams run through his head all the while.

"I start too many thought with 'I wish . . . ,'" he said, his paw sliding slowly from the screen, "And 'I wish' does not solve near as many problems as 'I will . . . .'"

Zeta was sitting boredly on the bed she had been left on, waiting impatiently for morning to come so she could leave Vega's Room. Her ear twitched as Vega attempted to contact her telepathically. "I don't suppose I could come back now, could I?" he asked gloomily. "If you leave it up to me, then you already know the answer," replied Zeta distastefully. "I thought you would say something like that . . . ," trailed off Vega with a dreary sigh, "I don't know why I even bothered asking . . . . I suppose you'd like me to leave you alone for the rest of the night, correct?" "The rest of eternity, more likely," muttered Zeta, glaring at a wall. "Eternity is a rather long while, Zeta," was the slightly uplifted reply, "but I think I can manage the rest of the night." "What? You're actually going to leave me alone for more than twenty minutes?!" asked Zeta urgently, "Are you sick or something?!" "Not physically," was the response heard by Zeta, but "lovesick" was the term that Vega had for his condition. "Hm," began Zeta, "Well, then, go ahead and uphold that. Leave me alone." "All right . . . ," sighed Vega, before adding a statement he could not have tacked "I will" to: "I wish you would be a bit more tolerant of me, but I will uphold what I said I would."

And Zeta was left alone.

After an hour or two, she really began to worry. She did not like to admit even to herself that she could worry about someone like Vega, but she began to nonetheless. After another hour, her tail began to twitch uncomfortably.

"Is he really going to keep a request like that? He's never left me alone for so long," she said to herself before her traitorous mouth said: "I hope he's all right . . . ."

Which he, in fact, was not, but her utterance of concern helped his mood a great deal. At the moment, he was watching Zeta over the screen yet again, solitary tears dribbling down his cheek every few minutes. "I wish I could . . ," he began in the higher-pitched tone of one who has the grip of depression upon their throat, before changing his tone abruptly, "no . . . I will find a way to make her mine . . . ."