Proton cracked his eyes open and blearily watched as Sabrina, or what appeared to be Sabrina, casually stepped in front of the enormous truck. With invisible hands and the power of a machamp, she tore the thick, metal shutter off the truck, crumpling it up like it was a paper cup and tossing it away without care or concern. He could hear a grand voice flood the air with palpable pressure as she spoke to Samuel Oak about things that he couldn't make heads or tails of.

But he didn't care. He was too busy trying to drag his throbbing, fractured arm into his waist pocket.

Grabbing a syringe, he tore off the needle cap and plunged it into his bicep. His hand dug further and grabbed a hold of a few small capsules; he quickly threw those into his open mouth and swallowed. Feeling the potent analgesics doing their job, he wasted no time grabbing for his belt.

Empty air greeted him.

Where is it? he wondered as his fingers felt around for his trusty Hydreigon's ultra ball. It should have been locked into place within his belt, but it wasn't there.

A creeping panic set in. Proton slowly sat up and craned his neck downward, trying to spot the ball, but he found nothing. He scratched the terrain beneath him with his other hand and looked around, but it seemed it didn't simply roll away. Had it— had it gotten dislodged when he fell off the truck. Or even worse, was it—

Proton glanced at the truck that had fallen onto its side, with Sabrina, Samuel Oak, and the Birth Pod.

Is it… somewhere inside?

A small panic attack was quickly followed by grim determination. While it was true events weren't shaping up to his liking, he was far from defeated. The unexpected detonation of Diglett Cave and Sabrina going rogue were unexpected developments, but he could still avert failure and make the mission a success.

No matter what it took to get there.

Sabrina stepped into the truck, followed by a sudden blood-curdling screech. Proton collapsed to his knees, his teeth gritted, as the sonic attack crashed against his eardrums and drowned him in disorientation.

His trusty crobat must have hit Sabrina head-on with a sonic attack. Psychics were terribly powerful, but it came with a range of weaknesses, including an extreme vulnerability to high-pitched sound waves. And crobats could kill a human with its screech.

While the psychic was a valuable asset, the integrity of the mission was far more important.

A sudden explosion of purple blood and gore spraying out of the truck's open end corrected that notion. Proton watched shell-shocked as the half-torn head of his crobat was tossed out of the truck carelessly. It rolled across the pavement until it was barely inches away from his legs.

"Cro–cro—" he croaked. His fingers trembled as he reached out a hand to touch his partner's head, but he hesitated. His mind tried to futilely process what he was seeing. It couldn't possibly be true, could it?

"No. No no nononoo—"

Crobat was his oldest partner. His ally ever since he'd started on the path to becoming a trainer. Before he had gotten the pair of deino he raised to become powerful hydreigon. Before he had become the infamous, ferocious dragon master he was now.

Before he was Admin Proton.

Over the years, he and Crobat had been through hell and back. They'd fought the smallest contenders to feral dragons, and each time, they stood their ground and won. No matter how dire the circumstances, he and Crobat always came through. But now…

More purple blood oozed spurted from his partner's neck. The head twitched and tilted forward a little more, rolling until it came to rest against his shoe. Proton felt like he was going to scream, but he grabbed that feeling and choked it to death. Shutting his eyes, he felt the pain rising with him and embraced it. He let the pain burn away everything else.

And with that, something within Proton broke.

When he opened his eyes next, the world had gone grayscale. None of it was important.

Except for Sabrina.

The purple-haired woman stepped off the truck, her top covered in a sticky purple mess. Their eyes met. Extreme fury met quiet condescension. Proton's hands moved down to a small button on his utility belt, revealing a slide slot that contained three ultra balls. These were his hidden cards, his aces in the hole. A gift from his father on his deathbed.

Grabbing onto them, Proton unleashed the monsters within.

And hell came to Pewter City.

There were two reasons why Red loathed driving fast.

For one thing, the only car he'd ever had access to was his mother's overpriced Henlo, a convertible she rarely took out of the garage unless it was when Aunt Ivy visited them at Pallet Town. The other was because Mia tended to join in whenever he drove, and the car's engines were susceptible to abrupt malfunction in close proximity to fairy types.

As a rule, whenever he drove around town, he had to drive carefully and sensibly.

Tonight was an exception.

The taxi's tires screeched loudly in protest as they rounded a sharp corner, knocking over a bright NO RIGHT TURN sign in the process. The car growled gamely and continued its whirring and rattling as he and Cynthia zoomed down the street.

"Faster! Faster!" Cynthia urged, her voice growing increasingly tense with every declaration.

"I'm doing the best I can," Red grunted, slamming down on the brakes as he drifted through another sharp turn. "Besides, we could have reached the old man faster if we didn't have to visit your damn hotel first." They had found a lone taxi in the outskirts of the museum, and he had jumped at the opportunity to drive. After Cynthia informed him that her pokébelt and pokémon were at her hotel, they'd briefly stopped by and then had her braviary, a gorgeous bird of white and red feathers, fly up into the air and spot the truck.

They had been trying to follow after it since — keyword being trying, given how the aerial bombardments were causing him to nearly drive the taxi into every other wall and electric post.

"Quit complaining," Cynthia snapped. "There's fucking war zone between us and that truck. You don't have your pokémon with you, and mine were at the hotel." Out of the corner of his eye, Red watched her grab one of her ultra balls and hold it between her fingers. "If anything, you should count yourself lucky I didn't keep mine at the ranch like everyone else. Then we'd have to depend solely on your driving."

As if on cue, a bolt of lightning came streaking down from the heavens and scorched the road mere feet behind their vehicle. Red thanked his lucky stars he'd been driving as fast as he was, or else they would've been toast. He barely had time to react before swerving to the left, dodging someone sitting on a tauros attacking a group of pincers. To his right, an electabuzz rotated its arms wildly and erratically threw out bolts of electricity.

"Jerk!" he cursed, swerving the car again in another sharp turn as Cynthia's braviary changed directions to the left. Much like Skarmory, the bird was blessed with a keen eye and was taking them to the truck in the safest route possible. Another of Cynthia's pokémon — a strange, draconic ground-type called a gabite that looked like a hybrid between a sharpedo and a scyther — rushed ahead of them, doing its best to clear the way and deflect falling attacks and debris.

Ugh, I actually wish Mom was here.

He couldn't help but wonder where she was. Oak had asked her to get his team from the ranch, and Orca from the hotel. Was the explosion he'd felt back at the Museum her doing? It certainly had 'Mia' stamped all over it, but it wasn't like there was a shortage of pokémon capable of terrifying detonations.

Though none quite as capable as Mia, in his humble, not-so-biased opinion.

The thought of his pseudo-sister made his heart heavier, and almost immediately, her presence magnified within him. She was close. He could sense it. Not within his immediate vicinity, but closing in for sure. He just knew it. That begged the question—

What the hell is she up to?

Cynthia's gabite slashed its rock-hard claws against a tangrowth foolish enough to get in their way, tearing it into two and belching a small draconic pulse onto its mutilated body before somersaulting over it. The tangrowth was dead before its body hit the ground.

Brutal, Red thought, before suddenly recalling what Growlithe had done to that Team Rocket member's hand. The slashing effect reminded him of Scyther and his brand new experimental technique. It was still under extensive research, and would stay that way forever unless the League managed to get a grip on things around here. Seriously, where were the reinforcements? The Brigade and Ace Corps? It was as if—

"LEFT!" Cynthia screeched.

Red did not bother questioning the command. The car's wheels groaned as it twisted to the left, narrowly avoiding a shaft of rock that suddenly rose out of the ground like a coffin. While he'd managed to avoid being impaled by it, the escape hadn't been neat. One of the car doors was pulled off of its hinges, pushing the car further to the left. Too far left.

One moment, the taxi was screeching and sliding erratically towards a tree off to the side. The next, Red was staring at a cloud of dust and the dim image of a brick wall through a windshield that now had a webwork of cracks. His chest hurt like hell and lights darted through his vision. The air was acrid, thick with smoke, and laced with the odors of things that burned. Gasoline? Wires hung down near the car, spitting out white sparks.

Pushing the car door open, Red stumbled outside, quickly followed by Cynthia. Neither were ready to register the scene playing out in front of them. An enormous truck was on the ground, with strange blackened creatures fighting against—

Sabrina?

The sour stench of urine filled the air.

Mewtwo, through the girl's eyes, watched as three beasts sprang out from those infernal devices. Despite his human host's limited senses, he could still feel the raw, twisted power at their cores. With their massive, muscular forms and thousands of rope-like tendrils wrapping them from all sides, these creatures would have intimidated pokémon from any era. Beyond the physical, they exuded an aura that was simply wrong.

He'd felt the Spawn unleash an ancient predator from the lost world and let it run amok in an attempt to save himself and his kin. The gargantuan dragon pounced and tore its way through dozens, if not hundreds, of weaklings that could have been powerful in their own right had they not been saddled by human limitations. It was only fitting that they perished as fodder when faced with the might of those truly strong.

And now, there was this.

Not creatures of antiquity, but twisted devolutions of a natural existence. Powerful beyond reason, yet at the same time, parodies of what their true forms could have achieved. They were beings wholly specialized for the obliteration of life, with no purpose but to choose a target and attack, attack, attack with relentless fury until it was nothing but a streak of color smeared across the cold, hard ground, and then another target, then another, until there was nothing around but dust and blood.

Sabrina's lips twitched as Mewtwo felt amusement bubble within him. He would not have minded having such monsters at his beck and call. But did this human truly believe these beasts could overwhelm him?

"Kill that—"

That was all the human had time to say. A high-powered psychic blast smashed into him a moment later, sending him flying away like a ragdoll. Mewtwo watched with muted fascination as he somersaulted multiple times in mid-air, then landed crouched on all fours.

"FUCKING KILL THAT BITCH!"

"Oh my," Mewtwo muttered. "A challenge from an insect. This should prove… entertaining."

He burned power through the girl's veins— raw, psychic power that the human's limited form would otherwise never have been able to procure by herself. It flooded every inch of her body, spreading within like wildfire and bringing with it a wonderful, nostalgic sensation. No doubt his actual form would be leagues above what he could currently accomplish, but even this girl— this Sabrina —showed potential.

She was proving to be a most interesting toy. On that note, Mewtwo could not afford to hold back for the sake of holding back. Already, the girl's frail form suffered from the venomous creature's sonic attack. Allowing it to sustain further damage was counterproductive, at least until his new form was complete.

He raised his— Sabrina's —hand and constricted the space around one of the beasts. But the psychic construct dissipated just as quickly as it had formed.

Potent energies of the Void. No wonder the insect feels so confident.

He cocked his head.

Perhaps I should correct his ignorance.

A shrinking, howling noise was followed by a chunk of asphalt the size of a boulder being raised off the ground by invisible strings and thrown in his directions.

Mewtwo flung it away as nonchalantly as a man would wipe sweat off his brow.

I stand corrected. Void and Ardor. Such an intriguing combination.

"Sucker Punch! Mach Punch! Force Blast!" the human ordered.

The first grimmsnarl came at him from the side, its tendril-wrapped fist cloaked in Void. The second launched itself from his back with pure aura pulsating around its form. The third maintained its distance and threw force at him.

Three against one. A splendid assault, well conducted for something so mindless. However, for all their coordination, it did not change the fact that they were all simply too slow.

The second one's speed outpaced the others, so Mewtwo twisted the girl's body around to deal with it first. The creature's eyes widened as the distance between it and the first grimmsnarl suddenly became zero, making it crash its powerful fist against the first's head. The third's wall of force then slammed right into them, flinging them away by several feet.

Mewtwo/Sabrina stood completely unharmed, as if she had been simply observing the entire battle.

"Is this the best you can manage?"

He tilted his head towards the right, narrowly avoiding a string shot from an ariados, while the third grimmsnarl came lashing at him. Its half-ton of supernaturally powerful muscle punched through the air, its tendrils laced with Void and lashing around in an attempt to slash against the body of his frail host.

"Such a chore," Mewtwo mused, rapidly increasing and decreasing distance around them to weave out of the constant barrage of attacks. He narrowly avoided a pulsating sphere of Void energy, slapped the ariados up into the sky, and then—

Fell to his knees as the beam of Void slammed into her from behind.

Twisted fae and their powers of repulsion and attraction, Mewtwo inwardly spat.

It didn't matter. If direct psychic manipulation of energies wouldn't do, then physical force would serve as a perfect substitute. Mewtwo pushed himself up, feeling the Void do terrible things to his host's body, and extended his arms outward. Three enormous slabs of rock were pulled out of the ground and levitated with frightening precision as they were shot with perfect accuracy towards the three beasts. The human yelled something at the beasts, who then kept the slabs from hitting them using the power of Ardor.

Mewtwo smirked as two slabs shot out of the ground around each grimmsnarl and trapped them in place.

One of the grimmsnarl managed to get out of the rock sandwich and blasted a wall of raw force at him. Mewtwo casually grabbed the force, twisted it around, added momentum to it, and pushed it into the earth, sending it back as a seismic attack. Before the beast could react, the earth beneath its feet exploded, trapping it within.

Another large rock slab slammed upon its head from above.

The grimmsnarl did not rise up again.

"A commendable attempt. Would anyone like to try again?"

When no one answered, Mewtwo smirked using Sabrina's lips, and slowly levitated up into the air. He hovered for a silent second, barely inches above the ground, before entering the truck's compartment once more. There was simply no point in wasting energy on such insects. Slowly disconnecting the tubes connecting the Pod, Mewtwo faced his new form, still floating amidst the liquid within.

Soon, he promised himself. Soon he would have a new form, and with it, he would rain down annihilation upon humanity. A poetic ending, to be annihilated by the very thing they thought would uplift them.

Truly, humans create their own demons.

That was when he heard it. A soul-wrenching draconic roar shook the heavens, and a whisper from a human voice followed suit.

"Hyper Beam."

And then, Mewtwo saw white.

Red was roughly forty feet away from the truck when it exploded. He hadn't even had time yet to look for the old man and see whether he was within the detonation blast radius, but what little time he had kept him from being killed.

Clearly, his experiences in the Viridian forest and with Mia had paid off. With nothing but raw instinct, Red immediately dropped to the ground and covered his head with his arms.

The explosion was unbelievably loud. There was simply no way to convey the sheer violence of it. One moment, Sabrina— Mewtwo, Red reasoned —was kicking the crap out of the three monsters that could only be grimmsnarls based on the old man's descriptions. The next, an immense, draconian roar shook the heavens as a three-headed dragon swooped down from the skies, followed by Proton's declaration.

"Hyper Beam."

Suddenly, there was a strange light in the three maws of the draconic beast, red and pulsing with primordial energy. The dragon tilted back its three heads, paused for a moment, and then let go with a deafening roar.

Red could feel it press against the vaults of his mind — an emotion so violent and intense that it would tear his sanity to pieces if he let even a portion of it into his head.

The light erupted from the maws, combining and lashing out furiously in the form of a single shaft that sniped down at the truck like a laser beam.

It was torn to pieces. Raw energy lashed around like a gyarados, tearing open asphalt from the road beneath and surging in all directions in a huge wave of power. There was this single, terrible feeling in the air, a sudden hammer blow of disorienting pressure that left him half-blind, deaf, and almost drunkenly impaired.

Red ignored the jolts of agony from his chest and the familiar, high-pitched tone ringing in his ears, and pushed himself up. He could hear Cynthia screaming in the background, but couldn't quite process her words. He pushed through the smoke, sometimes on fours, and when he could help it, on two legs. Somewhere along the line, his brain rebooted and things snapped back into focus. Red, gagging on dust, dragged himself towards the thick tree where he'd seen the old man lying down. There was a blinding sense of panic growing within him, but he was too disoriented to even register what he was panicking about.

His feet hit something soft.

Red fell to his knees and found himself touching skin.

Human skin.

Bloody human skin.

That was when it hit him. He was sitting in front of the old man's body. Professor Oak's bloodied body. Blood was trickling down the man's face, and there were significant burns on his hands. Red didn't care. He ripped his own tux open, tore off his tie, and wrapped it around the old man's head wound. With another hand, he pressed two fingers against Oak's neck and found a thin but steady pulse. Elation filled him from head to toe. As long as the old man didn't lose too much blood, he was going to be alright.

He heard footsteps coming from behind him.

It was Cynthia. "Red! Is he—"

"He's fine for now," he replied, "but we need to get him out of here."

He looked towards the epicenter of the detonation, and found the accursed man— Proton — down on his knees, but wide awake. The massive hydreigon had swooped down and was glaring everywhere, scanning for potential threats. Red was pretty sure that if not for the smoke, the dragon would have attacked them immediately. There was the sound of rocks falling off, which could mean only one thing.

The grimmsnarls were free.

But what happened to Mewtwo? To Sabrina?

His questions were answered by a gale of furious wind that blew away a cloud of dust. At the center of it, enveloped by a sphere of raw psychic power, was Sabrina. Red watched with awe as the orb flickered for a moment, before dispersing, after which Sabrina slowly drooped over the Pod. Her eyes were half-lit, making Red wonder if she— or Mewtwo for that matter —was even awake.

Proton let out a victorious laugh. "I knew it! Leave the Pod," he snarled with unspeakable fury. "Kill the girl!"

One of the grimmsnarls let out a grating howl. It leaped in Sabrina's direction—

Red watched dumbly as a liquid-like white light engulfed the grimmsnarl from head to toe. It wasn't fire; it was burning death in white. The shaft grabbed the dark, hairy beast and sent it flying twenty feet before crashing into the ground like a useless hunk of blackened meat.

The grimmsnarl did not move again.

"ENOUGH!"

Near-transparent shields sprang into existence, separating Sabrina's weakened form and the Pod from Proton and his pokémon. Red felt another of those barriers fall into place around him, sealing him, Cynthia, and the old man away from everything else.

Delia Ketchum stepped forward. Beside her, Orca, Oak's majestic arcanine, let out a maddening growl as it emitted sparks of blue flames from its maw. Skarmory flew in the air above them, and Mia was right beside his mother, levitating off the ground. There was also Scyther, his sharp scythes glowing white with splotches of red dotting the blades. His mother's Mr. Mime had a crazy look in his eyes and a golem— Travers' Golem, Red recognized —stood on two limbs, as if waiting for Delia's command to usher in a world of devastation onto whatever target she desired.

Last but not least, his purple growlithe sauntered out of a small puff of dust and smoke behind his newly acquired dratini. And sitting on its back, with Shellder clamped onto one of her hands and a poképuff in the other, was Mawile.

AN: Peek!