Shiloh was in the presence of a god.
In all her research hunting for the perfect team, with every firm she paid to search for something special for her, she had barely even extracted whispers of this creature. Mew were already so incredibly rare that most believed them extinct. She had treated old stories about its genetically-engineered successor to be just that—stories.
I had no idea what I was getting myself into by battling mew. The more she saw of Lane's world, the more Shiloh realized she had gone way, way out of her depth. Had she really believed she could catch a creature like this against her will?
So she kept herself as small and quiet as possible in the presence of this pokemon. She felt the weight of Mewtwo's psychic power like an invisible presence filling the room, an intelligence as vast as distant cliffs. It would take only a slight loss of control and she would crash upon them, her sanity destroyed.
Lane had judged her by transformation into a new form. Maybe Mewtwo would find that punishment too light.
She had almost escaped the entire conversation without a word exchanged between them, before the feline turned in her direction, and a single glowing blue eye fixed on her.
She curled in terror, ears folding back as she floated behind her visibly human guide. Mewtwo had none of the fluffy playfulness of the genetic material used to make him. His body was naked and hairless, unnaturally lean. Subtle surgical scars covered his skin, particularly around his back and neck. Or—second neck? That couldn't be natural.
"Your arrival is opportune, Victini. We will need your help."
Shiloh wasn't exactly sure what she was doing—floating was hard enough, and she still couldn't manage that without her tail flapping slightly up and down. She landed on the counter beside Lane, as she diverted her attention to communicating with him.
Telepathy felt much easier when she had a demonstration of it right in front of her. "I wasn't Victini until a few days ago. Lane created me."
"It is not the matter of your creation, but what you do with the gift of life. Korina created Lane, and she has elected to grow the populations of all mythical Pokémon. The others are not shamed by their birth, so why should you be?"
Because she didn't want to be a Pokémon, obviously. This Pokémon could probably feel that truth—but he said nothing. Maybe he wasn't reading her thoughts after all.
When he spoke again, Shiloh could somehow feel the connection bridging between them and Lane, and knew they would all hear it. "You have a Victini in desperate need of training. Where else will she get it?"
"Wait!" Shiloh forgot about telepathy then, jumping back into the air and smacking into Lane's arm a second later. "You can't use me to fight! Have you seen me? I'm like... me tall!"
She stretched out to her full height as she did it, gesturing with stubby little arms. "See!"
Lane reached over to her with one hand, running her fingers over Shiloh's ears. The gesture caught her completely off-guard. Not just because of the violation of her personal space... but the contact was so distracting. There was a spot just between her ears that always seemed to itch, only suddenly it wasn't anymore. Her anxiety faded, replaced by something far simpler.
"Is that fair to her?" Mewtwo asked. "She tells me you uplifted her recently. How long did it take you to adjust?"
Lane considered. "Weeks? Months, maybe. It was hard keeping track." Shiloh barely heard the words, until she spoke again. "Can my daughter join you here while we fight? She's not ready for this conflict."
"Hey!" Aspen squeaked from the table, bouncing angrily up and down. "Just give me the gracidea, and I'll come with! It's not fair for you to leave me here and take Shiloh! She can't even use her fire attacks!"
"She's right," Shiloh added hastily. "In fact, you should just go with her and leave me here. I can barely even fly!"
Mewtwo extended one paw from his chair—and a bright red flower appeared in the air in front of Aspen. It landed a second later, and the little Pokémon started to change.
Aspen grew taller, leaner, more confident and powerful looking. He took off, hovering in the air not far from Shiloh. "Let's go save the kittens!"
"I will join you when you are successful. You will know where."
Lane bowed. "Back in a minute." She retreated, gesturing to the two of them. She held Mewtwo's tablet in the air in front of them, a few inches from her view. "You probably want me to carry you, Shiloh. I don't think you've done any supersonic yet."
Shiloh squeaked in protest, tucking up under her shoulder. "I'm not ready for—"
The quiet penthouse vanished in a flash. Shiloh's stomach turned over, and acid rose up her throat. Freezing air whipped around her. Starry sky surrounded her, wisps of feeble cloud drifting along the horizon. The world tinted slightly pink, stilling the whipping air and freezing wind.
Lane wasn't just falling, but flying straight down, cutting against gravity. A little green and white blur kept pace with them, just beyond the bubble. Part of Shiloh heard Aspen's giggling, and longed to be out there with her. This high up there was no fear of smacking into something—maybe she could win.
"You can do all this while you're human?" Shiloh asked. She didn't even have to yell over the wind, the bubble kept that out too. "My friend has a ditto—Transform doesn't work that way! You have the same moves and stats as whatever you look like."
The girl didn't look in her direction, her eyes focused on whatever was outside the bubble. Shiloh couldn't see anything yet, just more clouds underneath. They must be moving at incredible speeds, but the velocity didn't faze her. Was that the mew's protection, or a change in herself?
"I've never been good at imitation," she said. "I create something new. This body is—something I've been working on for Team Infinity. Hybridization of human and Pokémon traits. There isn't enough of most people to uplift all the way. But I hope that might be different if they have time to develop psychic powers first."
At least she wasn't lecturing Shiloh on how evil she was for interfering. It was hard enough to take her seriously right now after seeing her lounge around a tiny old house in a blanket. "The Pokédex entry is wrong, then. It's not the same move."
"The Pokédex was designed for trainers in a collecting sport. Legendary Pokémon are beyond such classification. Our abilities aren't restricted to moves. Our powers pierce the veil of sleep, time, and dimensions. But all of them are children of the Firstborn. Even you."
Shiloh saw something form against the night sky. A vast metal shape, larger than some little towns she'd visited during the early days of her Pokémon journey. It had no visible propellers, yet somehow remained stationary in the sky. With her new senses, she felt a great distortion to the gravity around it.
This was military-grade technology, as cutting-edge as the greatest vessels in Kanto's navy. But the huge shield painted across its top-deck belonged to no nation-state.
A dozen smaller vessels were parked atop its deck, beside the long runway that made up most of the space. Whatever curiosity Shiloh had about Lane and the deeper plots of legendaries faded to the back of her mind, replaced with simple fear. "There must be thousands of people down there!"
"Several thousand," Lane agreed. "Academics and scholars. Researchers unbound by ethical constraints, pushing their fields without concern for the trail of blood in their wake." Her words brought rage beneath, and Shiloh found herself feeling grateful that she hadn't taken either of Lane's children.
"Will you kill them?"
Lane shrugged. "My mother taught me not to waste. They owe a debt, and the dead can't repay."
The airship grew larger underneath them, its scale so vast that the metal blurred together to Shiloh. How are we supposed to find a few kittens inside— she stopped abruptly, eyes widening.
Shiloh felt a familiar mind in there. Not Briar, or anything specific. The dark-type was too strange to read. hiloh couldn't forget the pattern. "I know where my friend's Zoroark is. Mirage is on that ship."
Lane fixed her with a sudden, intense stare, her eyes glowing the same pink as the shield around them. "I can't find Miya and Goh—they must be in poké balls. Show me where you feel your friend's pokemon. We can hope they haven't been separated."
She wasn't sure exactly how she did it, or even what. Shiloh shared her view of the airship's interior, the same way she had sent words and feelings. One thought wasn't that different from another, now that she had the chance to play with them.
Lane altered their flight, angling to the side. "Stay close to me, Aspen! Plasma has had legendaries break their containment before. They might be expecting me."
Shiloh watched their flight, or tried. Their speed was so incredible that she couldn't tell what they were looking at as it blurred past. Were they going to smack into the side of the airship, and turn into a little pink stain?
"I don't know what you expect me to do in there!" Shiloh yelled, her voice rising with panic. "I keep telling you all, I'm not supposed to be a Pokémon! I don't belong in your battles!"
"You're the greatest champion in history," Lane said. "You wanted me to be your Pokémon so badly, let's see how you do. I'm not just one Pokémon, I can be hundreds. Almost any move you can think of, I know it."
Those statements were impossible of course, defying everything she'd ever learned about how Pokémon worked. Transforming into things that weren't there, using more than four moves...
Shiloh had seen enough with Lane not to argue the point. If the mew said she could do something, she meant it.
Seconds later they smashed into the Vainglory from the side. Instead of crushing to paste against its armored walls, the airship groaned and buckled, caving inward ahead of them.
Shiloh turned head-over-heels, overwhelmed by the sudden deceleration. Then she dropped out of the air, into Lane's waiting arms.
They were standing in a computer room of some kind. Cubicles were arranged on one side, most dark. A few were lit near the walls, with panicked-looking nerds scrambling away from them.
Shiloh watched them fall one by one as Lane approached. She spared none of them, leaving a mismatched array of confused electric-types squeaking and scurrying away from her. Her, and the gaping hole she'd left in the wall.
All except for one young man, with a phone receiver.
"There's—"
Lane held up one hand, focused on him. His tone changed slightly, and he continued. "There was an explosion in the cryocooler. We are assessing the damage."
The mew whispered those same words under her breath as she got closer, eyes fixed on him. "No, we don't need you to send anyone. We can handle it."
Something zipped through the air just behind them, and Aspen landed on the desk in front of her. He glanced between Lane and the piles of empty clothes. "Did you have to make such a mess?" he asked, annoyed. "They weren't hurting my sisters."
"They were helping," Lane said, just as the only other human in the room hung up the phone.
His eyes regained their focus, and he looked from Lane to the new Pokémon all around him, fingers gripping his desk in obvious terror. "You... kill me too?"
Lane shook her head. "I don't want to kill anyone. There are two mew kittens aboard this vessel. Where are they being held?"
He looked away. "I-if I tell you, you won't do to me what you did to them?"
Shiloh felt it the same time Lane did—the wave of desperation radiating from this young man, searching for anything to save himself. He wanted to tell them, but he didn't know. He wasn't important enough to know anything useful.
"It's wrong to lie, Riolu," Lane said. His shirt slipped off his chest, though his glasses stayed on, looking absurdly large. "Point me to the pokemon you sense," Lane said, speaking to Shiloh this time.
She lifted one paw, pointing straight through a wall. Lane made them a door, and they left the former IT-technicians behind.