Chapter Sixty-Six
From the command post at the rear, with two miles of trenches between himself and the blinding clash of aura, N felt ready to vomit. The charge in the air played havoc with his senses, making him see stars no matter how tightly he shut his eyes, hear ringing sounds through military grade earmuffs, and taste acid burning its way down his throat.
"Will you require medical attention?" Blacksmith asked. "I could escort you to the medic field."
Blacksmith looked like an overstuffed toy, bulging out the seams of his tailor-made uniform and stretching out his thin, pasty skin. His long, knotted hair was tucked beneath his helmet, but strands spilled out the sides.
"I'll live. Besides, the fighting would go better if you stayed here." He put on the best dour expression he could muster and asked, "Is Giovanni planning to kill me before or after it's over?"
Blacksmith grunted. "I don't have any such orders."
N smiled. "I never said you did."
The lieutenant craned his head over the trench, peered through the narrow window of the bunker's concrete walls, and whistled at the aura whipping around the battlefield.
"Not every day you see a fireworks show like that. Almost makes me glad I got busted out of prison for this shit."
N shot him a sidelong look. The man's face was unreadable as blue flashes obscured his features, but he thought he saw a smile.
"Considering that all this aura must be giving you one hell of a migraine, I can't imagine why you'd want to stay here. Heck, you can't even make an illusion, can you?"
N looked down at his fleshy, misshapen body, with tufts of black fur sticking out in odd places and wrapped in a Lucario's white robe. The fabric itched on his skin, but it felt cleaner than Ghetsis' robes. He picked at the inert eyepiece over his right eye.
N weighed his words and said, "The Lucario don't entirely trust me yet. If they think I'm planning to slip away in the confusion of the battle and leave them for you guys, they might send a few Lucario back to keep an eye on me. They'll need all the strength they can get."
Blacksmith nodded and turned back to the battlefield. N wasn't sure how intelligent the man was, but there were enough layers of meaning wrapped in there to keep him from suspecting that Ghetsis' eyepiece had a plan. The thought of anything Ghetsis had made deciding the fate of all life on the planet chilled him to the marrow, but he chuckled inwardly, remembering he also was one of Ghetsis' creations.
"Mmm." He looked up again. As Blacksmith watched, N felt the pressure around him diminish. His headache and dizziness didn't fade entirely, but it had gone down by about half. He rushed over to the window and looked with Blacksmith. With some adjustments to his eyes, he could see the corpses littering their side of the trenches.
"Word from the front lines is your friends lost," Blacksmith said. "Time to fall back."
N touched the eyepiece. Had it predicted this? If so, why didn't it warn him, or help him change it?
"You have a trump card to play," N said. He raised a drooping eyebrow. "A psychic, perhaps?"
Blacksmith shrugged. "They didn't give me much of a briefing, just a list of orders in case certain things happen. For example, if the Lucario lost, my orders are to pull all troops back and let the flanks box Bruno in. We'll hit him with everything we got."
N shook his head and said, "That would never work."
Blacksmith chuckled and said, "I never ran into a problem that couldn't be solved by hitting it hard enough." Then his mood darkened. "Try anything, and I'll put a few bullets in you."
N smiled to himself at first, but then he thought of the eyepiece. If a bullet hit that, he'd have nothing left to play against Giovanni. His isolation had sunk in. The Lucario were wiped out. All his men waited at the evacuation point to the north, and for all he knew, they could be dead. It was him and the eyepiece.
His eyes darted around the bunker. A pair of guards stood with shotguns at either exit. Two more stood at the back with sniper rifles slung over their shoulders and pistols at their hips.
Before he could think of making a break for it, Blacksmith's radio crackled, and he shoved it against his ear. A shockwave rocked the field, sending men stumbling into walls. It ruffled the robes around N and left him untouched.
N rushed up to the window, thinking to see the Rockets' psychic, and instead saw Preston, standing at Bruno's side. The Alakazam flung men out of the trenches for other Pokémon to attack. The rippling waves of psionic energy made Pokémon and humans stumble over themselves.
"We can't retreat now," Blacksmith said. "They've broken through the northern flank and are surrounding us. We'll hold them here and wait for reinforcements from the south to break us out."
"And if they can't?" N asked.
The lieutenant shrugged. His uniform stretched audibly with the movement of his shoulders. "We die emptying our guns into the buggers. Not much else we can do." He glanced back at the snipers and said, "Get firing. See if you can bring down that Alakazam."
The snipers ran forward and leaned out the bunker window. N studied the exits, hoping for an opening, but a sniper said, "I think we got our reinforcements."
"Fisher?"
"No, Admin Sun. And there's… something with him."
N knew before he saw that it would be the psychic, but his imagination could not have readied him for the thing standing before Bruno. Tall, lithe, with tubes of purple flesh intertwined at its back, that thing drove a violet wedge through the ranks of Pokémon. Conkeldurr and Machamp dropped with blood pouring from their ears and noses, while Golem and Aggron screamed as they clutched their heads. Bruno gritted his teeth as he held back the psychic barrage, and the Alakazam lent its support with trembling arms.
The eyepiece flicked to life. It told him to leap out the bunker window and run for it, towards the battle. N hesitated and looked around the room. All eyes were on that window. Blacksmith had a pair of binoculars and was watching the battle next to his snipers. The four guards at the door leaned out of the bunker and peered over the trench.
N bunched up the flesh in his legs, forming them into muscle springs. In a single bound, he hurtled out the window and rushed into the winds of psychic energy tearing across the field. A sniper fired at him, but the bullet careened wildly, like a leaf caught in a tornado.
The robe was blown off of him, and the eyepiece was sliding off his face. He wrapped the thing inside his blobby flesh and pressed on. His headache had cleared, and with his renewed strength, he made himself invisible save for his eyes. He ran over shattered ground and stray corpses, piles of ash and puddles of blood, steadily approaching the pair dueling in the middle of the battlefield.
After an agonizing run that left his muscles afire, N received more orders from the eyepiece, to hold position in a trench fifty feet from the fighting and wait for its signal. At that range, Bruno's aura crept into the air. Bile rose in the back of his throat, and spots of color distorted his vision. He hunkered down, hugging his knees to his chest.
The thought of running came to mind, running as far away from this madness as possible, making a sanctuary where Bruno or Giovanni would never find him. They might believe him dead in this chaos. After all, what did he have left?
N peered over the trench again. He saw the expression on Preston's face. Shame. Anger. Guilt. His breath caught in his throat as he realized what the eyepiece had calculated days before. Everything boiled down to this moment. Two powers, locked in an even struggle, and Bruno's attention diverted from the insubordinate psychic. Preston's eyes narrowed, and the relatively small eddies that shored up Bruno's defense turned on him. Bruno snarled and tightened his aura around him, but Mewtwo pressed closer, tightening the aura into a coating around Bruno's skin. Wisps of hair that strayed from the protecting aura went up in purple flame.
The other Pokémon rushed forward, towards Preston. The Rockets redoubled their artillery barrage, but the charge rapidly approached the Alakazam.
The eyepiece lit up. A tinny voice came out of an invisible speaker, ringing in his head. "There's poison stored in the eyepiece to prevent unauthorized users from wearing it. Go now."
N raced forward, through the crushing psychic presence. As a Mightyena hamstrung Preston, N tore the eyepiece out of his head and shoved it through Bruno's aura. The blue barrier tore at his flesh as N crossed it, but a thin strand of gelatinous bone guided it forward. Needles uncoiled from inside the eyepiece and reached for Bruno's right eye. Bruno shied away, but Mewtwo's psychic presence held him in place.
The needles plunged in. At the same instant, a white streak shot down from the sky, hurtling towards Mewtwo. It stopped a foot short, held back by the psychic's redirected power. It exploded with a roar, buffeting the psychic back a couple paces. White-hot plasma rose in a luminous column, and billowing gases mushroomed out in an incandescent cloud.
Through the haze of the first explosion, more white streaks hurtled down. Blow after blow staggered Mewtwo. Nuclear missiles fell like raindrops, pattering over the psychic umbrella and tearing it to shreds.
Mewtwo fell forward and propped itself up on one elbow. A flickering purple sheen, which hovered above its head, winked out.
One more missile fell. It crashed into Mewtwo, and the engineered Pokémon vanished in a flash of light. Only a smoking crater remained.
Sight returned slowly to N's eyes. His head swam from the repeated flashes and the rush of aura around him. He saw a red glow first, a piercing light that chilled every cell in his body. He tried to run, but he collapsed on his trembling leg.
As he blinked the sight back into his eye, more details resolved themselves. First, the metallic grey eyepiece. Then a blue smudge around it. The smudge turned into fur, and Bruno's face resolved itself around the eyepiece. A feral grin twisted its features.
"My, that was quite the gamble," he said. His words were slurred, and the pitch of his voice leapt up and down. "It's a shame he was never kept in a pokéball. That tampering you did with the PC systems would have made the interface system much easier to calibrate." The Lucario chuckled. "It was meant for a human brain, after all."
"What – what are you doing? I ordered you to-"
He threw his head back and laughed. "Oh my, you still haven't figured it out yet? I got worried when Giovanni had nearly ruined everything, but luckily, you aren't as perceptive as you think you are."
N shivered when he met the Lucario's eyes, one staring blankly at the ground, one covered by the eyepiece. "So, you're betraying me?"
"You betrayed me first." Despite the poor control of voice, his words had a disturbing croon in them. "Come on, don't you recognize me?"
N's eyes widened. He hardened the cells in his right hand into a blade and leapt forward. As he charged, a translucent blue wall appeared in front of him. He slammed into it and fell back.
"Too late. The control isn't perfect yet, but with time, I could do anything with this body." He walked forward, stumbling over awkward legs, and kicked a pebble at N's head. "You know, I'm actually glad you sold me out to Giovanni. I had settled for eternal life and power over humans. But now? I've never dreamed of such power."
Blue fire sprang up in his hands. The left eye stirred and focused on N. Ghetsis raised one hand, and the ball of fire turned into a towering inferno.
"So long, Subject Nine. Thank you for all the useful data."
Changelog
12/29/18 – minor edits