The Crossing of the Paths
Second Edition
By MMM/AJ
Part I: Desert Wind
A/N: Good morning again loyal readers! This will be the first chunk where anyone familiar with the first edition will notice some divergences in how I structured the story this time around. Without spoiling any of the content you're about to read, I will just say that I felt like it was necessary to re-order some of the major plot points during this early portion of the story in a chronological sense in order to make the whole thing feel more realistic. You'll also start noticing just how much I've been beefing up the story's length with new content additions. This isn't all just grammar tweaks and paragraph rewrites after all! I'm still holding strong to my weekly schedule of uploads so far, but remember that once I reach the point where I've uploaded everything I've finished so far, things will slow back down again. And thanks as always to everyone who comments, y'all are mega appreciated!
Chapter 4: Hospitality
"You're not listening to me!"
The words sharply shocked Mewtwo awake from his fitful sleep. Even though there was a floor between him and the source of the shout it was loud enough to penetrate his mind and jolt him awake with full clarity. Mewtwo sputtered and spat out a few stray pieces of straw that had found their way into his mouth while he slept and craned his neck up to listen. He could make out two voices arguing angrily, switching between English and that strange Gerudo language, and one of those voices was recognizable as Kalana. They quieted themselves down a little bit as if they were aware of the risk of waking Mewtwo up, but it was too late; he was up now and he could still hear them.
Mewtwo cautiously sat himself upright to try to listen. Most of their words were too quiet for him to understand with the floor in the way, and half the words that were audible through it were in the Gerudo tongue, as if they were swapping back and forth between languages haphazardly. Mewtwo was unsure whether they were doing this to prevent him from eavesdropping or because it was a natural habit, but it was driving him up the wall with curiosity. In his single-minded desire to figure out what they were saying he forgot his injury and began to stand up, and for a few brief moments he didn't even realize what it meant when he experienced zero pain. He didn't realize it until he was standing up straight and pressing his ear against the ceiling. His eyes caught sight of some of the dried blood flaking off of his now pristine, intact knee and a huge flooding feeling of happiness and relief rushed over him. He began to walk around the room just to test it out, then he did a little bit of a dance just to make 100% sure. A few tears of relief began to form in his eyes and he wordlessly laughed out loud in the absence of any other way to verbalize his happiness.
The laughter immediately caused the argument on the floor above to grind to a halt. Mewtwo noticed the sudden silence and sheepishly quieted down. He sat himself on the bed as the hatch in the ceiling opened with a loud but quick creak of old wood. Kalana and Chief Hadara climbed down one after the other, faces still slightly flushed from all their arguing.
"Sorry if we woke you, is your leg finished healing?" Kalana asked.
Mewtwo nodded and smiled, then plucked up his pen and paper from the nightside stand to begin writing a reply. Before he could get more than a few words in he was interrupted by Kalana.
"Mewtwo, I was pondering your issues with speech this morning and I remembered an old trinket I used to use when I was younger. It's an Amulet of Speechcraft that I owned as a child. I figured you could use it now."
Kalana produced a small bronze amulet on a chain from one of her pockets and offered it to Mewtwo. There was a dull, cloudy old ruby inlaid in the center of the amulet that was laced with tiny cracks. It was genuinely unimpressive, especially since the metal was filthy and tarnished. Mewtwo eyed it with a confused look, unsure of what this had to do with his inability to speak.
"Go on, take it. Enchanted items still work despite the drain from the Sulaaq Towers." Kalana said, still not realizing Mewtwo wasn't following her logic.
"Kalana, look at him, he doesn't even know what you mean. Sulaaq can't understand our world's magical items or spells, so stop trying to push this."
Kalana rounded on her and snapped "For the last time mother, he is NOT a Sulaaq! You of all people should know this, you studied the scrolls and legends!"
"And you should know based on what I taught you that there were indeed a scattered few stories of the Sulaaq Chosen speaking with their strange form of magic, rare as it was! You cannot prove it either way, especially since they have a history of altering the minds of their victims!" Hadara snapped right back.
"Gods you are so stubborn! At least let me try!" Kalana retorted, then suddenly opened the chain on the amulet and reached around Mewtwo to put it on him.
Kalana accidentally brushed Mewtwo's second neck while she was putting it on him, causing pain to arc across his head and back. He instinctively shouted "Ouch!", not realizing that this was the first time his mouth had physically uttered anything other than his own name.
"Ah, sorry. I didn't realize that thing on the back of your head was so sensitive. Here, it's working though! Try talking to me!"
Mewtwo gradually relaxed after wincing away from the touch. He didn't feel any different than before, there wasn't any weird tingling of energy or sudden epiphanies. He did notice Hadara standing back and giving them a stink eye though, as if she was thoroughly disgusted by what she was seeing. He was starting to feel more than a little nervous again thanks to the steely, resolute disdain in her eyes. He stuttered a little as he tried to speak, but then somehow he actually managed to force his mouth to obey his mind and come up with words.
"What..." He paused, straining a little. "How is jewelry doing this?"
Mewtwo's words were still stilted and unnatural sounding, like a robot that was unable to properly understand intonation or inflection, but he had done it! He had spoken English without using telepathy for the first time in his life! Kalana held out her hands to gesture toward him as if this had proved a point.
"See Véma? He can speak! Now stop with your cruel skepticism, I'm sure we can figure out a way to keep the townsfolk calm until we figure out a way to help him get back home."
"Have you even asked him where his home is?" Hadara asked with a scowl.
"Yes! But it's a place only magic can reach, so he'll have to stay at least until the next tower raid."
Mewtwo worked through the difficulty of his inexperience with speech and interrupted them. "If you really want me to leave...I will leave. I can tell when I am not wanted."
Kalana shook her head and turned to him to respond. "No! You are not a Sulaaq. My mother is just being stubborn and trying to protect our people. I will make sure-"
Hadara then interrupted her with a far more stern tone. "Kalana! You are forgetting your place! Just because you are my daughter does not mean I will let you trod all over my authority. Don't talk about me as if I wasn't standing right behind you!"
"Véma you are being unreasonable! Why did you change your mind after believing me and saying he could stay last night?!" Kalana shouted angrily.
"Because I re-read the Legend of the Traveler overnight! If he really is the one mentioned in the legend then there's no way to know whether he is destined to be the one to save the world or the one to destroy it! You should remember that legend was incomplete; without the ending we have no way to know for sure what the seer saw. Do you really want to gamble the lives of everyone on Hypalia over a 50/50 chance? A coin flip?"
"Ha, the world is already a ruined, uninhabitable wasteland. The real question is whether you want to throw away what could be our only chance to restore it!" Kalana shouted back.
"Stop this!" Mewtwo interrupted loudly.
The two arguing Gerudos paused their heated bickering and turned to listen. Mewtwo was starting to feel the words coming to him more easily now, so he responded with a far more fluent tone. "I'm not going to be responsible for causing this rift between the two of you. You healed me and saved my life like I asked so I will leave in gratitude without demanding anything else. Take me to the gates and I will go peacefully."
"Good. I will make a short speech in an hour to gather the attention of the townsfolk so you can slip away unnoticed. Kalana, I command you to take him to the North gate and release him into the desert at that time." Hadara snapped, then turned and promptly opened the door to leave.
"Only if I get to send provisions with him! I will not send him to his death!" Kalana shouted after her.
Hadara paused in the door frame and gripped it so hard that her knuckles turned white. "Fine." Then she left, slamming the door behind her.
Kalana turned to Mewtwo with tears in her eyes. "Listen, you don't have to do this! I can still change her mind. Give me an hour to calm her and make her see reason."
Mewtwo shook his head. "I will not risk destroying the relationship between you and your mother, Kalana. Not after the kindness and understanding you have shown me. If you're going to give me food and water then I will be fine, I understand how to take care of myself."
Of course Mewtwo was fooling himself when he said this, he had no idea how anything worked on this strange planet 'Hypalia', for all he knew there could be whole armies of monsters like the ones that Kalana had fought out there when she rescued him. He was again rushing headlong into a likely lethal situation that he had no understanding of, and this time he knew it far more clearly in the back of his mind. Kalana seemed to understand it too, judging by the firm, knitted brow in the expression she gave him.
"Do you at least have a weapon?"
"I have..." Mewtwo began, but then remembered the fact that his powers were disabled. "No, nothing."
"This is suicide Mewtwo. The Moldugas will feast upon your corpse the moment you take one wrong turn in the Vile Desert."
"Then give me a weapon and tell me the safest path to take to reach the nearest Sulaaq tower." Mewtwo replied firmly.
Kalana seemed to realize what Mewtwo was planning at this point. "You're mad!"
"It's the only way. If I can break the device that's draining my powers then I can truly handle myself for the rest of the trip home."
Kalana heaved a sorrowful sigh that must have weighed several tons. She buried her head in her hands now, truly feeling defeated by the circumstances, then stood and began to head toward the door. "I'll be back in a bit. Wait here."
Kalana heaved with all her might at the huge wooden spokes of the wheel that operated the North Gate of Ven'rakesh. The massive patchwork steel doors groaned open as the chains took their weight and swung them inward. The towering dunes of orange sand came into view outside the cool sandstone walls of the town. Mewtwo, who had been outfitted with a Scimitar, a shield, a thick brown leather cloak, and a bag of supplies, stepped forward past the gates and paused outside the threshold. He stood quietly, observing the vast empty stretches before him. There was a sudden clash of rapidly clanking chains behind him, followed by a set of rapid footsteps and a thunderous BOOM as the gates slammed themselves shut. Mewtwo turned around and saw Kalana coming up alongside him on this side of the gate. He boggled a little in shock and spoke.
"What are you doing Kalana?!"
"I'm coming with you."
"That's insane. You know what I'm walking into is basically a suicide mission!"
"Yes, and that's why I'm coming with you. I can't send you to your death in good conscience. If I'm there with you to guide you, then you will stand a very good chance of surviving and making it home. I've raided this tower hundreds of times over the course of my life and I've blown the drain device every time. I know the layout of the interior by heart, including all the weapons emplacements and security measures. You'd get shot to death at the first emplacement if you blundered in there blind, but I can get you around every single obstacle unscathed as long as you listen closely to everything I say and don't make any mistakes."
Mewtwo stood there speechless for a few seconds before he could bring himself to reply. "What will your mother think?"
"To hell with what she thinks! She can strip me of my rank and toss me in a cell for all I care. I'm not going to let her send an innocent person to their death. Just because you look like a Sulaaq doesn't mean we have a right to send you to your doom without any sort of trial or due process. It's disgusting and totally unlike her, and I won't stand by and just let it happen. Besides, I followed her command to the letter; I took you to the gate and escorted you out. She didn't explicitly forbid me from coming with you, and it's too late now anyway. I let the gate shut itself behind me, we'd need to call the other guards away from her speech to open it and she'd find out and punish me regardless. I might as well help you now and earn that punishment."
Kalana pointed back at the shut gate to emphasize her point. She was right, there were no external handles or latches of any sort. They'd have to climb the walls to get back into Ven'rakesh at this point and Mewtwo was not exactly confident in his climbing skills. He looked over at the gate, then back at Kalana, then heaved a weighty sigh of his own.
"You definitely got your stubbornness from your mother. Alright, lead the way. How long of a walk is it?" Mewtwo asked.
Kalana set off briskly and pointed out toward the horizon at the north. "Not far, only 5 hours walk. Here, you can see the tower's silhouette over the horizon already. It gets even clearer from the crest of the tallest dunes. We're fortunate to be setting out midday, we'll have more than enough time to reach the tower before sunset when the Moldugas start leaving their territories to hunt for food."
"Will you have enough time to make the second leg back home before then, assuming we succeed?" Mewtwo asked as he rushed to keep up with her.
Kalana shook her head grimly. "Maybe, if we fight quickly through the tower and don't tolerate any delays. That's not important though, I know how to handle Moldugas, you don't. Don't worry about me."
"Hey, you're risking your life to save mine, the very least I can do is worry about you after I'm gone. But just what is a Molduga anyway?" Mewtwo replied.
"A colossal, carnivorous desert fish, easily the size of an entire sand dune by itself. It swims through the sands like water and hunts for prey, eating anything that moves. It's perfectly capable of swallowing an entire person in one gulp without trouble, and it tracks your position by sensing the vibrations caused by your footsteps. You can temporarily lose it by remaining completely still, but it can and will wait you out if it knows you're somewhere nearby." Kalana explained with a grim expression.
"How exactly do your people survive if these monsters are commonplace here?!"
"Because the Vile Desert has numerous large sandstone outcroppings and mesas strewn about. Moldugas can't swim through stone, and Ven'rakesh was dug into a solid sandstone mesa specifically to avoid their attacks. It also helps that Moldugas are extremely territorial and only leave their territories to hunt for food for an hour or so at sunrise and sunset. If you travel during the middle of the day or night and avoid their territories you will be perfectly fine, at least assuming you don't get ambushed by the other desert-dwelling beasts out there."
The two of them crested the first major dune outside of the town's limits together and Mewtwo peered out across the desert at the dark silhouette of what looked like some sort of black steel skyscraper. A pit of dread began to take shape in the bottom of his stomach and began its slow, terrible gnawing work at him as he looked.
"Those beasts usually avoid direct daylight due to the heat, which is why we're probably going to make it to the tower uninterrupted. But the thralls of the Sulaaq are far more dangerous than any beast. I'm going to need you sharp and ready to kill with all the speed and skill that you can muster. I can't have you hesitating, the thralls certainly won't. Here, take this." Kalana said.
Kalana paused at the crest of the dune and handed Mewtwo a small handheld pistol of some sort. He'd never seen anything like it, it was far more advanced than any of the pistols he'd seen humans wielding at home. It was made of some sort of menacing black steel and had no cylinders or hammer, just a smooth seamless barrel and some sort of glass tip on the end. It was decorated with menacing black spines and had what looked like a battery pack on a sliding mechanism on the butt of the handle.
"What in Arceus's name is this?"
"Sulaaq weapons, stolen from the same tower we're going to raid today." Kalana replied simply, then started to make her way down the dune.
"How do they work?" Mewtwo asked.
"Simple. Aim the barrel at your target as accurately as you can and then pull the trigger. It's good for ten shots before the reservoir is exhausted."
"I understand that much, I mean what sort of technology does it operate on? This looks nothing like the black powder weapons that I'm so used to seeing humans use."
"I don't know really, the Sulaaq technology is far beyond our ability to reverse engineer or understand. Most people just assume it's a different form of magic than the magic of our world, especially since the weapon fires a stream of glowing light similar to a lot of offensive magical spells."
"Fascinating. I assume that the larger rifle strapped to your back operates similarly?" Mewtwo asked, pointing to the menacing black steel gun she wore underneath her shield and scimitar.
"Indeed, and that one gets 30 shots as opposed to the pistol's 10. But we don't have any more of the magical storage reservoirs that they rely on, so we'll have to make them count."
Mewtwo nodded in understanding and let the conversation fade away as they continued to trek through the dunes. The sunlight was beating down mercilessly and the heat was starting to get to Mewtwo already, but he was determined to prove to Kalana that he was more than just a helpless, mewling weakling. After what felt like a few hours to him he chimed in with a question.
"What's the plan of attack?"
"Once we get close we'll start by peering over the top of one of the dunes around the tower to scout out the layout of the ground around the base of the structure. Sandstorms cause the dunes to constantly and significantly shift, so approach routes change every time. There's almost always a path to sneak up to the base of the tower using the dunes as cover against their turrets. Once we get to the base of the tower we'll be inside the minimum arc for turret fire and unreachable to them, so we'll climb the spikes on the tower to reach the first balcony on the second floor and engage the thralls manning the turrets in melee combat. Stab them with the scimitar I gave you but don't throw them off the tower. We'll use their dead hands to unlock the external doors and get inside, since the locks read the hands somehow to prove identity."
"What if there's no safe cover to reach the base of the tower?" Mewtwo asked.
"Then we'll dive into the oasis next to the base of the tower and swim. Their beam weapons don't penetrate water very far so as long as we don't break the surface during approach then we'll be safe. I've done this several times."
"Will the weapons be alright if they get wet?" Mewtwo asked.
"Yes, they're thankfully waterproof."
"I see. What then, once we get inside?"
"We'll pass through a short hallway and then enter the main inner shaft chamber. It's a huge vertical hollow room that goes from the bottom to the top and it has a huge column of conduits in the center of the gap. There's water channels built on the conduits to gather the condensation and pipe it off, this also makes the whole pillar of conduits perilously slippery and impossible to climb. Every floor has a set of suspended flooring platforms in a circle around the inner walls of this chamber, and the gap in the center around the conduits is railed. We'll enter this chamber and head left toward the north side where the entrance to the main stairwell is located, then make our way all the way up to the top. There are elevators, but those get shut down by security the moment an attack is detected. Once we get to the top floor we'll have to fight past a large gun emplacement that guards the door to the room where the drain device is held. We'll have to shoot around the edge of a wall and take out the gunner, then go to the device and plant a bomb on it. Once the bomb goes off you'll be free to head home." Kalana summarized.
"Alright, makes sense. Is there anything else that I should know?"
"Yes, the whole facility will be permeated with the mind-controlling audio incantation that I mentioned earlier. You and I will both need to wear dense fabric earplugs sealed with wax to avoid becoming enthralled. We'll have to communicate with hand signals until we detonate the bomb. Once the drain device is destroyed the power to the whole facility will shut down, taking the incantation with it."
"Then you're going to need to teach me those hand signals before we get there." Mewtwo replied.
"Of course, it's a good thing we have a few hours. Now pay attention, this should help distract you from the heat too."
Chapter 5: Kiharé
Hot desert wind whipped through their cloaks as Mewtwo and Kalana slowly crept up to the top of a dune and peered over the crest. The sun was getting low on the horizon now but it still had plenty of heat left to broil the barren sands with before reaching the horizon. The menacing form of the Sulaaq Tower stretched up above them for hundreds of feet, feeding at the pit of dread that was still churning in Mewtwo's gut. Whoever had built this thing clearly wanted to intimidate and terrify the people of Hypalia; the architecture was utterly demonic in nature. Burnished jet black metal composed the majority of the structure, which was decorated with menacing vertical spikes that faced upwards and downwards. Some red electric lights were built into the surface of the tower, glowing softly and periodically blinking. The top of the tower had six massive spines pointing directly upwards, as well as two huge horizontal arms jutting out near the top. The surface of the whole thing looked heavily armored and high tech beneath the sinister design. Two things immediately caught his attention though; the outward-facing turrets on the second floor balcony were all abandoned, and there was a huge waste pipe at the base of the tower that was dumping out what appeared to be clear water into a nearby oasis. Some desert palm trees, shrubs, and even what looked like watermelons were all growing on the sandy soil around the oasis.
Mewtwo wanted to ask Kalana about the water but they were close enough to be within range of the incantation and thus had to have their earplugs in. Kalana was squinting suspiciously at the empty balconies and clutching her pistol. She swiveled her head around as if checking for a surprise attack from another angle, then reached down and grabbed a handful of sand and tossed it into the air above them. Nothing happened at all; no gunfire blasted and none of the turrets moved. Kalana watched for a few more seconds, then gradually stood up atop the dune. Despite her showing herself clearly out in the open, nothing happened. The sheer brazenness of this move caused Mewtwo's heart start to pound in his chest. The sound of it was deafening thanks to the earplugs reflecting it back into his ears.
Kalana gave Mewtwo the gesture to follow her and began to make a run for the base of the tower, right through the open. Mewtwo swallowed his fear and sprinted after her, catching up quickly thanks to the strength of his legs and his broad gait. Kalana landed with her back against the tower, avoiding the spikes carefully, and stared up at the balcony above them for several seconds. She gestured for him to wait and he obliged happily, pressing his back against the cold steel surface of the tower while catching his breath. He wasn't exactly in the best physical shape after using telekinesis to do everything for his entire life, so the minutes were more than necessary for him to recuperate. Nothing happened though, and once Kalana was satisfied she gave him the "Wait here" signal and then equipped a set of tough looking metal gauntlets to protect her hands before climbing up the tower using the sharp spikes on the surface as handholds. With surprising speed and dexterity she hauled herself up and vanished onto the balcony. Mewtwo held his breath and waited in silent anticipation, unable to see what was happening.
Eventually Kalana reappeared unharmed and climbed down the tower to land on the sand next to him. She grabbed his shoulder and pulled him down onto the sand as if taking cover and then Mewtwo felt and heard the muffled thud of a nearby explosion. Thankfully no hot metal shards rained down on him, but he did feel the heat and the pressure wave buffet him from above. He drew his pistol and rolled over onto his back to aim up at the balcony and fire at any attackers, but Kalana shook her head and grabbed his hands, pulling his weapon down. Unable to be heard due to the earplugs, she drew words in the sand with her finger.
"No gunners at the turret means no hands to unlock the door. I used my bomb to blow open the door. We'll steal another from the armory on the way up."
Relief washed over Mewtwo as he read it. He gave Kalana a nod and she returned it before giving him the "Follow me" gesture again. She began to climb up the tower ahead of him; once she was clear Mewtwo equipped the set of metal gauntlets she had given him. They were the wrong shape for his hands so he couldn't wear them, but he could at least hold onto the leather palms and use them as pads to climb the spikes without the sharp metal cutting his hands. This left his feet unprotected though unfortunately, so he had to try his best to support most of his weight with his arms so his feet wouldn't get cut too badly.
This proved far more difficult than Mewtwo had expected. His legs and tail were the most muscular parts of him while his arms were easily the least. By the time he had climbed to the second spike the gauntlets that he was holding ended up sliding across the metal and forcing him to rest his weight on one of the jagged spikes with his left foot. Fortunately for him the inner surface of the spike wasn't as sharp as the point so the metal didn't cut too deeply, but the pain was enough to make him cry out and scramble more to get his weight back off his foot. He struggled like this multiple times, taking several minutes longer than expected, but once he got near the top Kalana took hold of him and hauled him over the ledge. He sat down on the metal balcony floor and showed her the bleeding gashes on his feet, which drew a guilty gasp and a regretful look. Kalana dug some red potion out of her bag and offered it to Mewtwo, who greedily drank it down and waited for it to seal up his wounds. Thankfully the potion seemed to work far more quickly on superficial flesh wounds than it did on broken bones, so the gashes were completely gone in less than a minute.
Once Mewtwo was good to go he gestured to Kalana to lead the way. She nodded and took him through the smoldering remains of the sliding steel door, which led into an eerily dark metal passage lit only by blood red lights recessed in the ceiling. There were a few closed side-doors that they passed as they walked, each one having red holographic keypads next to them for entry. Kalana moved quickly in the dim light, confident in her knowledge of the passages. They went directly in, not making any deviations or turns, and not a single soul showed up to oppose them. The inner door that opened to the tower's central shaft opened for them automatically and Kalana drew her gun and swept it around the room, searching for targets. Mewtwo grabbed his pistol and joined her, but the place seemed completely abandoned.
The huge cylindrical chamber stretched up above them for hundreds upon hundreds of feet. Mewtwo could see the railed-off platforms above them, having dozens of floors that they could visit. There were turrets placed in multiple spots, but every single one was abandoned. The room had bright bloody red lighting cast down the central shaft from the top, and this light made the flowing water on the dozens of pipes and conduits in the center of the shaft look like blood. The lighting and architecture gave the whole place an utterly oppressive and horrifying atmosphere which Mewtwo figured appropriate for an empire of murderous slave-drivers. As he waited for Kalana to finish scanning the room for threats Mewtwo began to realize the deeply unsettling implications of the tower's technology. Whoever the Sulaaq really were, they were advanced beyond anything Mewtwo had ever seen. Even if the Gerudos were smart enough to use their weapons, it was clear the Sulaaq could easily have exterminated them all with this kind of technology if they had really wanted. So why hadn't they? The thought of leaving this realm and abandoning Kalana and her people to the whims of this brutal technological power was starting to stir Mewtwo's conscience, but before he could ponder it in more detail Kalana turned and gave Mewtwo a very concerned look, then gestured to him to follow before taking off toward the Northern side of the room as planned.
Mewtwo ran after her and took this chance to look around and absorb his surroundings, intending to learn the layout in case something went wrong. The circular platform that composed this floor was roughly donut shaped and there was black steel railing around the hole in the center. There were four turrets mounted on this railing and facing inward and downward, as if in preparation to fire on intruders on the ground floor. The turrets were similar to the weapons that Kalana had stolen, but were much larger and mounted to swiveling turret bases attached to the rails. They were also hooked up to huge, thick cables that were anchored to the floor. There were four sets of large sliding steel doors in the outer walls of the room, one at each of the four cardinal directions. Scattered about between them were a few smaller doors and some grated ventilation ducts. All were shut and had similar holographic control panels next to them. The walls were mostly the same burnished black steel, but Mewtwo could see some piping and conduits between plating, as well as what looked like small maintenance hatches with locked lids. The red lighting made it impossible for him to make out any other details more intricate than this. As they passed the railed off vertical shaft he cast a glance upward and noticed that the vertical columns of conduits in the center were glowing brightly with red light and occasionally crackled with arcs of electric red plasma. There was a strange chill on the air here that seemed to radiate from that central column, implying that it was intensely cold. Water was running down the surfaces of the pipes and conduits in rivulets; down here it was fairly thick and fast but as he looked up he could see that it wasn't quite as copious along the upper sections. Some conduits were cold enough that the condensation froze into thick frost, and it seemed like these spots were forming and melting randomly all over the conduit tower due to temperature fluctuation. Down below, at the base of the column, was a pool of water shaped like a ring where all this condensation was collecting. He couldn't get a closer look though, since they passed out of view on their way to the north wall.
Here Mewtwo could see sliding doors for what he assumed to be an elevator, judging by the console next to it having rows of numbered buttons. Just as they approached Mewtwo did a double take when he realized that these were readable numbers that he could understand, the same as humans used on Earth! It struck him again how odd it was that Kalana had even been able to communicate with him at all, those buttons were a reminder. Maybe this was proof that parallel dimensions really did have a lot of similarities with each other? Either way Kalana skipped right past the elevator and stopped at the door next to it that was supposed to lead to the stairwell. It didn't slide open automatically like the door that had opened into this big circular chamber, a fact that seemed to take Kalana by surprise.
Unable to speak to Mewtwo due to the earplugs they were wearing Kalana turned and gave him an extremely worried look. She hovered her hand over the console next to the door and shook her head, implying that they were again stymied by a lack of a thrall's hand print to unlock the door. Mewtwo nodded a little to indicate that he understood, and then he stepped over to the elevator and tried tapping the button for the top floor. Amazingly, the elevator door slid open for them automatically. Kalana gawked at this, balked, then backed up a few steps as if instinctively terrified. She raised her hands and gave a "No way" gesture, shaking her head rapidly. Mewtwo had no idea of any other path they could take, so he raised his arms and shrugged his shoulders to show her he was confused. She responded by using her hands to mime climbing a ladder, then pointed at the central conduit shaft. This caused Mewtwo to shudder, he didn't have a fear of heights but he certainly wasn't confident in his ability to climb that huge distance with his weak, atrophied arms. Especially when it was wet and slippery and freezing cold. He gave her the "No Way" gesture right back and tried to mime losing his grip on a ladder and falling.
Kalana now looked exasperated, she scanned the room again to make sure no thralls had wandered into the room and witnessed their wordless argument. Once satisfied that they were still alone, she pointed at the elevator and made the "Danger" and "Trap" gestures. Mewtwo decided to trust her judgment here since she had more experience with the security measures in the tower than he did. Out of any other ideas he decided to walk over to one of the nearby vents and pry it open with his scimitar. The screw holding the grating screeched as it gave way, then the frame popped open and revealed the pitch blackness inside the air vent. Mewtwo crouched down as if trying to climb inside, but he was stymied by the fact that the interior was actually far smaller than he had anticipated. Too many hokey human books and films had led him to think that air venting could be big enough for an intruder to crawl around inside when infiltrating some sort of hostile facility. The opening of the vent had been deceptively large, but the actual duct inside rapidly narrowed down to a width so tiny that only a little kid could fit inside. Kalana came up and grabbed his shoulder at this point to gently pull him back, then gave him the "No Way" signal again before miming a tiny little square to make her point.
Mewtwo heaved a defeated sigh, he knew there was no way he was going to be able to climb that watery conduit tower. He gave Kalana a dejected look of resignation as he stood back up. She returned that look and shook her head. Then, her face lit up with realization as if an idea had come to her. She grabbed his shoulder and took him over toward the railed gap in the center of the room. Once there she grabbed the two-stick handles of the gun turret and swiveled it around to face toward the door, then gave Mewtwo the "Back off" gesture. A huge grin spread across Mewtwo's face as he realized what she was about to do, and then he took several big steps away to let her work her magic. She flipped a switch on the body of the huge gun and then a set of four glowing red crystals popped out along the top in a line. The crystals began to glow brighter and brighter in sequence, and when Kalana pulled the trigger on the handles it fired a blindingly bright continuous beam of red light that struck the door and began to melt right through the metal! Mewtwo could feel the air heating up searing hot from the beam and some wind began to kick up from the convection disturbance it caused. Smoke billowed out of the metal wall around the door as well as showers of electrical sparks. Mewtwo could also hear a deep electrical thrumming through the ear plugs; it was so intense he could feel it vibrating his innards. Kalana swept the beam in a neat arch-shaped arc all around the door fairly quickly, sending white-hot bursts of bubbling molten metal flowing and showering to the floor. When the beam connected with some sort of power conduit in the wall by the console that controlled the door it violently exploded, sending the door careening sideways through the air with a cacophonous clanging boom!
Kalana let go of the triggers and immediately rotated the turret on its base again, sweeping the room and then checking the upper floors to see if the explosion had attracted any attention. Mewtwo took the time to watch the door they had blown for any hostiles too, gun grip feeling hot in his sweaty palm. Nobody emerged out of the dissipating clouds of smoke though; neither did anyone appear on the upper floors to draw Kalana's fire. The building tension in the air was beginning to rattle Mewtwo's nerves and make him jumpy. Where the hell was everybody? If this place was abandoned by the Sulaaq, why was the power still on? He glanced over at Kalana with an uncertain, jittery look.
Kalana jumped down from the gun emplacement then ran over to Mewtwo. She pointed at the hot molten metal on the floor around the door and gave him a warning gesture to make sure he didn't step in any of it, then she sprinted up the stairs. Still worried that this all might be one big elaborate trap by the Sulaaq, Mewtwo hesitated for a brief moment before running after her.
The stairwell was narrow and claustrophobic, only having room for one of them to pass at a time. Mewtwo caught up to Kalana quickly, but things slowed down fairly rapidly as Kalana had to pause and check her corners at every single landing to make sure they weren't taken by surprise by a foe waiting in ambush. The stairwell had tons of blind corners that a thrall could hide in, and it would only take one of them shooting either of them in the head to put an end to this entire journey. Mewtwo lost count of how many floors they climbed and his legs began to cramp and ache again as they went, slowing him down even more. They eventually stopped and passed into another hallway, then hung a quick left turn instead of going into the main central shaft. They came to a stop in front of another locked door. Kalana planted her face on her palm and then pointed at the console next to the door. Again they had no thrall's palm to unlock it, but this time there was no massive turret nearby to blast the door open. Mewtwo decided to draw his pistol and aim it at the palm reader mechanism, hoping that he could blow the lock out, but Kalana grabbed his wrists and pulled the gun away, then gave a "No Way" gesture.
Kalana followed up by giving a "Wait" gesture, then began to pace and think. Mewtwo put away his weapon and leaned against the wall next to the door, trying to wrack his brain for solutions. He was only a few thoughts in when something strange distracted him. A familiar mental fog descended on his brain, filled with flickering unclear images. He knew this feeling, he had felt it before when trying to use his psychic powers to read the future. Sometimes it happened on its own accord too, but this was extremely rare and had never produced anything accurate or useful. When it did happen on its own, it only seemed to happen when he was half asleep, either falling asleep or emerging from it. He'd never had it happen when he was wide awake and pumped full of adrenaline before! Moreover he couldn't exactly understand how it was even possible when his psychic powers were totally tapped out by the damn drain device in this tower. He wanted to try to focus on how this could be possible but the flickering vision grew and grew until it dominated his mind and clouded everything out.
He saw himself and Kalana standing at the top of the tower, attaching what looked like plastic explosives to a glowing, complex machine. He saw them retreat backwards to another room, then Kalana pressed a button on a small remote detonator. But instead of just blowing the device, his view zoomed back and he saw the entire tower go up in a massive blast almost like a small nuclear detonation! The massive mushroom cloud glowed red and emitted crackling bolts of red lightning as it rapidly expanded, dwarfing the size of the tower that had produced it. Hardly anything was left, he certainly couldn't see any remains of himself or Kalana left afterward; they must have been vaporized! The message seemed to be a very clear warning that they were about to bumble into their own certain death, but the vision wasn't finished yet. It rewound backwards, and he saw himself stopping and taking the bombs off of the tower. He saw himself gesture to Kalana to wait, then he opened up a control console on the device. The vision didn't show the console clearly enough to read, but eventually he saw himself pull Kalana aside to the same room for cover, and then the device shot off a massive beam of red light straight up through a hole in the roof! The beam was blindingly bright and massive, and the discharge seemed to cause the sensitive machinery to melt down and destroy itself! The vision began to fade away rapidly at that point, returning him to reality with an intense feeling of nausea and discomfort.
Disoriented by the shifting of his perception and the feelings of nausea, Mewtwo began to slide sideways and nearly slid off the wall. He reached up to catch himself and stop the fall successfully, but his palm landed on the palm scanner in the process by accident. Then, reacting to the touch, the console flashed green and made a chirping sound that Mewtwo could barely hear through the earplugs. Kalana turned to look and her jaw dropped with utter shock when she saw the panel light up and the doors slide right open to give them access to the armory! Kalana suddenly grabbed her rifle and slung it off of her back, aiming it at Mewtwo with a look of angry suspicion on her face. She gestured at his hand on the door and shouted something at him, forgetting the earplugs briefly in her surge of fear.
Mewtwo was still a little out of whack from his vision but he understood why Kalana was scared. Hell, he was starting to feel dread oozing up higher and higher in his stomach as the implications settled in. If the door opened for him, was he related to the Sulaaq somehow? He remembered Kalana and the Chief mentioning that sometimes the Sulaaq looked like him too, what if the Sulaaq had involvement with some other dimension's alternate version of himself? Either way he yanked his hands away from the wall, dropped his pistol, and put both hands up in the air to try and show Kalana that he meant no harm. He briefly gestured to his ears with one hand to remind her of the earplugs and she scowled and then lifted one hand to make a gesture at him. "Come here."
Mewtwo slowly walked up to her with his hands still in the air and she lowered the rifle, produced some ropes from her bag of supplies, and roughly tied his hands behind his back. She yanked the other weapons off his person and kicked them away, then grabbed him by the shoulder with one hand and put the rifle into his back and began to push him through the open door into the armory. Mewtwo wished he could speak to her and reassure her that he wasn't a Sulaaq and that he had no idea why their locks would open for him, but as they entered something else interrupted his train of thought. There were rows upon rows of shelving and racks for weapons, and every single one of them was absolutely barren.
Kalana again gawked in shock, then briefly turned away from Mewtwo and began to slam open cabinets to search for anything they could use. There were no rifles, no pistols, no battery packs, no bombs or grenades or anything. The place was completely looted down to every last scrap, not even a strap or holster had been left. The door swished shut behind them at that point, a fact that Kalana noticed and immediately took advantage of. She stowed her rifle, drew her pistol, and turned to fire it at two tiny little speakers in the corners of the ceiling of the room. She checked around, leaving Mewtwo tied but standing, and then when she was sure it was safe she slowly and cautiously started to pull one earplug out. After sloooowly checking for the vague sound of the voice of the incantation, she then yanked them all the way out and turned to pull Mewtwo's out too. She brusquely shoved him down onto his knees and began to interrogate him.
"Start explaining!" She said in a chilling, angry tone.
"I can't explain, I don't know why these would open for me, I swear to you!" Mewtwo replied emphatically.
"Bullshit you don't know! Listen, I trusted you Mewtwo! I bore my heart out to you, stuck my neck out in front of my mother, and threw away everything to make sure you're safe! If there is ANYTHING that you need to say to me now, I need you to say it! If you were a Sulaaq and decided to betray them that's fine, but you have to tell me! At least give me some small reason to believe you won't brainwash me with magic once that drain device turns off!" Kalana said, a measure of sadness and desperation coming through in her tone.
"I...I don't have anything. Everything I told you back in Ven'rakesh is true Kalana, I'm from another world and I have no knowledge at all about the Sulaaq. I don't know why they would have my hand print on file, and I don't have any way to prove it to you." Mewtwo paused and looked down at the floor sadly. "I won't blame you if you want to leave me here and just go home to Ven'rakesh. You don't need to be here when I blow the drain device. If you're worried that I might psychically attack you, then just turn and go now. I'll get my hands free eventually and take care of myself after you're gone."
A long, strained silence hung on the air after Mewtwo finished speaking. Kalana stared at him intensely then grunted in dismay. She waved her pistol upwards and then finally said "Here, look me in the eye when you speak. Look right into my eyes so I can tell if you're a liar."
Mewtwo raised his head and locked eyes with her. His stomach was sick with dread and uncertainty, but he knew he was telling the truth. "I promise I mean you no harm. I promise it with all the conviction I can muster, even if it doesn't mean much coming from a murderous monster like me."
Kalana's steely gaze bore into Mewtwo's soul for several seconds as silence returned to the air between them. For a brief moment Mewtwo could see the same dark, stern suspicion of the Chief in Kalana's eyes as she tried to scour him for any signs of deceit. Eventually she heaved a sigh and shook her head.
"Sa'oten. I can't believe I'm doing this. I'm such a Kiharé." Kalana muttered, then walked up and cut the bindings off of Mewtwo.
"Thank you. This means more to me than you can imagine. But what does Kiharé mean?" Mewtwo asked, rubbing his arms as he stood back up.
"It means 'Reckless Idiot' in the Gerudo tongue, though I'm sure mother would have far more colorful language if she saw me doing this now." Kalana spat, then leaned down to pick up their discarded earplugs.
"Well we'll both be Kiharés then, because I don't plan to stop."
"It's idiocy anyway, they took all the bombs. We don't have any left to blow the device with, this is all pointless. I undid your bindings because I know you're going to be stuck here even if I do leave you alone, we have to come up with another plan." Kalana replied as she handed Mewtwo back his earplugs.
"I have a hunch. If somehow my hand print will work on doors, maybe it will work on other devices in this place. Maybe I can shut the machine down with my hand print, or set it to destroy itself. We won't know unless we go up there and try it." Mewtwo replied, neglecting to mention his vision.
"Ugh, that's wishful thinking on a scale even worse than anything else we've tried so far."
"Do you have any other ideas? We could always try ripping out one of those emplaced turrets with raw strength and lugging it up the stairs to blast the device with." Mewtwo replied.
"Ugh, alright, come on and we'll try your method first. But let's not dawdle anymore, we're wasting daylight and the Sulaaq could still show up at any second."
Kalana began to put her earplugs back in, but Mewtwo interjected once more before she could finish. "Where the hell do you think they are anyway?"
"I have no Goddesses-damned idea."
Chapter 6: Chosen
Kalana peered around the corner and into the chamber before the magic-draining device and furrowed her brows. She only looked for a second, darting back around almost as if expecting a hail of laser fire to come roaring through the archway after her. Nothing happened though, and soon both she and Mewtwo were poking their heads around to look.
The room beyond was clearly a hardened military strong point designed to hold back intruders. It was circular and evenly bisected by a chest-high steel barrier adorned with wicked spikes. The surface of the barrier was polished to a reflective mirror shine, but pockmarked with scars and dents. There were multiple huge turrets placed on the wall, as well as reflective one-way plexiglass barriers atop the wall to protect the defenders from incoming fire. The whole place was just as abandoned as the rest of the tower though, a fact that only intensified the pit of dread in Mewtwo's stomach. Kalana grabbed a small rock from her pack and tossed it through the archway into the chamber to test and see if anything reacted, but again nothing happened. With a "Follow me!" hand signal she then sprinted around the corner, crossed the room with a huge burst of speed, and then vaulted over the barrier at one of the clear spots where there wasn't a shield on top. Mewtwo followed along quickly, springing over the barrier and landing with an awkward thud. There was a door in the wall here, also locked like the others, but Mewtwo quickly walked over to it and pressed his palm on the console next to the door. The red glowing holographic panel turned green and the door swooshed open effortlessly once again.
The room beyond was just like what Mewtwo had seen in his vision, but the vision had been cloudy in its periphery and hadn't shown the details of the chamber itself. The room was suspended atop the huge vertical shaft that ran up the tower and the floor was a solid transparent glass, letting them see all the way down to the bottom hundreds of feet below. The center of the room was dominated by a massive black steel machine covered in innumerable hundreds of conduits, wires, pipes, and cables of various sizes. Mewtwo could see that the massive conduit column that had dominated the center of the tower's hollow interior was connected directly to the bottom of this huge machine. Above, six massive cables were attached to the top and reached up and outward to connect with the roof of the room, almost like six spokes on a wheel. There was a huge hole in the roof too, just above the machine itself, and fading orange-red sunlight was coming in at an angle along with hot dry desert winds. Despite this source of outside air the atmosphere of the room was close, oppressive, and seemed to be electrically charged with palpable energy. Mewtwo could see the red arcs of plasma along the conduit column below them through the glass floor, seemingly explaining why the air had a distinct taste of ozone in here. Mewtwo also had a horrible sinking feeling of something watching him despite the lack of Sulaaq or visible cameras in the room with them.
Kalana put a hand on Mewtwo's shoulder to shake him out of his thoughts. She gestured at the huge machine with her other hand and then shrugged her shoulders in confusion. Mewtwo turned to look at her and gave her his best look of confidence, then strolled across the glass floor and approached the machine. There was one small red holographic console on it, waiting for a hand print. He placed his hand there and it flashed green, then expanded to a massive, table-sized control panel several feet tall and wide. The whole thing lit up with Japanese text which Mewtwo could easily read. He silently whispered thanks to the cosmos for the fact that he had been born in Japan and began to read the display carefully. Kalana watched in amazement as he stood quietly and ran over the text with his fingertips while reading. Most of it was technological jargon that he couldn't really understand. There was a bar graph for Capacitor Grid charge over time, a line chart showing fluctuation in "Containment Field Stability", a table of numerical data values for some sort of energy absorption spectrum, and several terms that even he couldn't understand. Sure Mewtwo had read the minds of the scientists who had created him and learned a tremendous amount about technology that way, but those scientists had been biologists and geneticists, and they certainly weren't as advanced as the Sulaaq engineers that had built this. Mewtwo fiddled around until he found a scroll bar, then used it to navigate around until he came across a large series of buttons to issue commands. Again, most of these were beyond his understanding and sounded like bullshit from a sci-fi TV show humans had written, but he immediately knew he had found what he was looking for when he laid eyes on a big, red, grayed-out button surrounded by blinking Caution symbols. It was clearly labeled "Emergency Capacitor Vent!" and it had further warning text underneath it: "WARNING: Capacitors are currently at 75% charge! Emergency Venting above the 50% threshold will cause catastrophic power overload and total system failure! Do not use except to stop explosive capacitor chain reactions!" Beneath that text was a button labeled "Override Safeties."
Mewtwo gleefully slammed his palm on the override button, which made the formerly grayed-out Vent button enable itself and start flashing red. Mewtwo quickly pressed this one next and it prompted him one more time with a window that said "Confirm Emergency Vent!" Without hesitation he confirmed it and then grabbed Kalana to yank her away to safety. They ran together through the door and back into the hardened checkpoint, then took shelter behind the spiked security barrier. A huge, roaring boom sounded not long after they made it to safety and the intensity of it easily penetrated the earplugs and rattled Mewtwo's entire body. The floor shook violently and blinding red light poured out of the door frame and bathed the whole room in its sickly bloody glow. The blast only lasted a few seconds though, and in its aftermath the lights recessed in the ceiling all shut down at once, plunging the two of them into near-total darkness. Now the only light they had to go by was a hint of indirect sunlight that emanated through the doorway from the drain device's room, where the hole in the ceiling was letting the fading dusk in. Mewtwo grinned and pulled his earplugs out rapidly, then said "There! I thought that would work!"
Kalana produced a flare and struck it, sending a column of intense white flames and sparks straight up to illuminate them and the room around them. She pulled her earplugs out and scowled. "So not only do you have a palm print that opens Sulaaq doors, but you know how to operate their machines too?"
The smile faded from Mewtwo's face and he turned to address her, holding his arms out in the air. "Look, I can feel my powers coming back, but I'm not attacking you, see? If I was a Sulaaq then wouldn't I attack you now?"
Kalana shook her head and waved her hands in the air dismissively. "Alright, alright. I believe you. At least you can go home now, right?"
Mewtwo paused and assessed the situation. His energy was surging back to full force, it was almost like he had been resting for a whole day and was now totally fresh. He could easily go home now if he wanted, assuming the vortex in the interdimensional space wasn't still there. But then something struck him as he pondered leaving now. He looked at Kalana standing there in her ragged patchwork leather cloak, body covered in battle scars and wielding weapons she only casually understood how to use. This was a woman who really had risked everything and willingly given up so much to help him, and now when they had finally accomplished what they had set out to do, Mewtwo's conscience woke up and told him that he couldn't just leave her. He couldn't leave any of these people here to die their slow, drawn-out deaths of starvation and enslavement under the heels of the Sulaaq. If he could shatter the drain device on this tower then it meant he could shatter the other ones too. With his powers he could put an end to the enslavement of the people of Hypalia. For once in his miserable life he could do something good for someone and make a real difference, rather than sulking sadly about his nature. He looked over the barrier into the drain device chamber, then back to Kalana.
"Not yet. If I'm going to leave, at the very least I need to do something for you and your people now that I have access to my powers for a time. Before I do anything though, answer me just a few questions. The thralls that the Sulaaq keep, they are mostly Gerudos now, yes?"
Kalana shot Mewtwo a worried and confused look before she replied. "Yes, us and Gorons, since we are the only long-lived peoples of Hypalia and the Sulaaq don't let their thralls bear children. What exactly are you playing at? You mean to free a bunch of them?"
"In a word, yes. Tell me another thing, how long does it take for them on average to bring reinforcements in to repair the drain device after one of your raids?"
"The device takes 3 or 4 days to rebuild, but the actual reinforcements typically arrive in an hour or less. Which is usually why dawdling like this isn't such a good idea!" Kalana replied in an uncomfortable tone.
"And what direction do these reinforcements usually come from?" Mewtwo asked as a plan began to solidify in his head.
"Mewtwo, please, I am grateful to you for your desire to help us, but you're underestimating the threat they can pose in battle!"
Those words caused Mewtwo's bruised and battered ego to start surging up to the surface. It was eager to reassert itself after being so browbeaten into involuntary humility by the events of the last 24 hours. He felt that a show of his power was in order, so he raised his hands and began to speak telepathically.
"You've never seen my abilities in action Kalana. Watch this. I'll make sure the Sulaaq don't rebuild this device in just 3 or 4 days!"
A brilliant aura of glowing blue psychic power flared around Mewtwo as he reached out with his telekinesis and began to shear the very walls of the tower apart around them. Focusing just on this upper floor, he systematically ripped the bulkheads and wall panels to pieces, creating a shrieking cacophony of ripping metal. Kalana ducked as cords and cables snapped like whips and chunks of the structure pulled free all around them. These huge fractured pieces were then subsequently released into the air outside the tower to plummet to the sands below. The now heavily damaged drain device emitted showers of shards and shrapnel as Mewtwo pointed his hands at it and rent it into pieces with his mind. Thankfully the razor sharp shards were easily directed away from him and Kalana with telekinetic force. Kalana gawked in amazement and terror as Mewtwo put on an extra special show of disassembling the drain device into tens of thousands of tiny pieces right before her eyes. He then waved his hands dismissively as if brushing all the debris aside, causing the shards to rocket off into the distance at colossal speed. Now they were standing exposed on a platform of flooring with no walls around them, bathed in gorgeous reddish-purple light from the setting sun.
"Sa'oten!" Kalana exclaimed softly.
Mewtwo smiled smugly. "Whatever they send, I will handle. To prove to you that I mean to help you, I'll do it without killing a single Thrall. I'll save them all and free every last one of them. I just need to know where they usually come from. If I remember correctly, you had mentioned tunnels underneath the towers, correct?"
"Y-Yes, there's subway tunnels connecting every single tower together in a vast underground network. Undoubtedly they will have sent a train out by now." Kalana replied, still looking shocked by Mewtwo's display.
"Good, then we will go down to the station in the basement and have a stakeout until they arrive. Once they start coming off the train I'll ambush them, disable all their sources of incantation, and free them. And if we're lucky, your sister will be among them."
The interior of the tower was absolutely pitch black due to the power outage that Mewtwo had caused. This necessitated him creating a psychic orb of light as he led Kalana down the stairs from the top all the way to the basement. The narrow steps would have been a death trap in the absolute blackness, especially if they blundered into Sulaaq reinforcements on the way down. Despite the fact that Mewtwo had all his abilities back now and could easily defend himself, the horrible oppressive atmosphere of the place remained. Mewtwo's returning ego and self-confidence just couldn't break the aura of terrible dread about this place, even if he believed himself fully capable of defeating the people who had built it.
Once they got to the bottom floor Mewtwo had to telekineticly rip the unpowered door open in order to gain access. This revealed a huge room that basically looked like an industrial loading bay built around a monorail track that was recessed into the ground and connected to two huge tunnel openings in the left and right walls. There were a few active lights in this room; all of them were located on the rail and the floor around it, but the main ceiling lights were all still dead. This seemed to imply that the rail itself was an energy conduit, which would make sense given that train cars were expected to arrive regardless of the state of the tower's own power grid. Mewtwo could see a closed freight elevator built into the wall immediately to the left of him and several huge, hastily-stacked black steel crates scattered around the room. There was plenty of filth and scuffing all over the dark steel floor, giving plenty of indication of all the heavy loading activity that had undoubtedly taken place here. Most of the crates looked empty, having their lids hanging open or loosely draped alongside them, but some still appeared closed. There weren't any actual remaining forklifts or other machines, so aside from the crates the room seemed barren. Kalana gestured to the crates and dashed over to hide behind a stack of them. Mewtwo followed her quickly, feeling grateful for the fact that the stack gave them an excellent hiding place out of view of anyone unloading from the subway.
"The train itself will have its own incantation broadcasters so we'll need to put in our earplugs again immediately. Before we do though, there is something else I should tell you about." Kalana whispered. Her tone seemed hesitant and almost guilty.
"Go ahead."
"Well, the Sulaaq aren't just thralls, there are ruling castes above them that I haven't yet described. You probably heard my mother mention them earlier today, but I probably should have given you more detail before we got here. Even if thralls are the only thing we've ever seen in living memory, the old scrolls also described the Sulaaq themselves as being divided into two distinct groups: The Immortals and The Chosen. Thankfully, the Immortals are, as far as we know, not actually immortal. It's a name that our ancestors gave to them because they all seem to be perfectly identical monstrosities that shared so much in common with each other that it was impossible to even tell them apart. It was supposed that even if you killed one in battle, you couldn't tell the next one apart from it, so it was almost as if you hadn't killed them at all but they had just come back to life. They were terrifyingly savage warriors that wore massive suits of mechanical armor and fought using razor sharp claws built into their gauntlets. They were incredibly magically talented, but often didn't use their magic in favor of simply disemboweling their foes with their blades and devouring the remains."
"Chilling." Mewtwo replied, frowning as he tried to imagine one. "What do they look like, and what are they capable of?"
"Unfortunately their appearances were never actually seen in much detail due to the armor they wore. But the details we have describe them as standing on two legs, having a long tail, two arms, and standing nearly 7 feet tall. Their armor was said to be physically attached to them and impossible to remove, and it was rumored to be completely impenetrable to even the most powerful Hypalian weapons. Only magic could harm them, and if you did manage to cause damage to them this way they would simply cast a magical barrier that would block all future attempts. Legends say that our ancestors only ever managed to kill a scant few of them before their conquest was rapidly completed. They were bloodthirsty monsters who never spoke, never had names, couldn't read or write, and seemed feral in their violent blood lust. They only answered to the Chosen caste, who were the leaders of the Sulaaq."
"And what about them, what were they like?"
"They...well they were the ones we described as the shape-shifters. They were only seen once or twice by our ancestors during the Sulaaq Conquest and very few survived to tell the tale. It was never certain whether the forms that were witnessed were their true forms since they could change shape at a whim. They are the reason my mother was suspicious of you, since they weren't mute like their Immortal servants. They were even more powerful mages than the Immortals, and were said to be unparalleled in their sadism and cruelty." Kalana whispered.
Mewtwo fidgeted nervously with the earplugs in his hands as he listened to Kalana's description. Self-doubt began to curl around inside his guts as he pondered what a "Powerful mage" could even do. What if the Chosen could match his psychic power with their spells? Was it even likely that one might show up today at all? He began to ask Kalana a question but then his ears suddenly caught a hint of an unintelligible distant female voice. Kalana apparently heard it too, because she instantly began scrambling to stuff her earplugs in.
"Earplugs, NOW!" Kalana urged.
Mewtwo's blood began to turn icy as he rapidly jammed the waxy fabric into his ears and snuffed out his psychic light orb. He tucked his tail behind himself and crouched down low behind the crates as he instinctively raised a psychic cloaking field around himself and Kalana. A minute or so later the room was illuminated again, but this time by the same sickly blood red light that the Sulaaq seemed so fond of. Mewtwo couldn't hear a peep through the plugs but he could see the red light source moving into the room from one of the tunnels in the far wall. It stopped in the center of the room, casting eerie shadows of the crates against the walls. Mewtwo watched those shadows cautiously as silhouettes of humanoid people began to appear a few moments later. He knew that he could pop out of cover using his cloak anytime he liked without being seen, but the sinking feeling of dread in this place was intensifying rapidly and causing him to remain pinned in a crouched position. Something felt horrifyingly wrong now; his feline instincts were screaming in his head to get out of that place as fast as he possibly could. Only his determination to save the thralls kept him there.
The minutes passed in debilitatingly tense silence as Mewtwo and Kalana waited for the Thralls to make a move. They seemed to be milling about and unloading gear on the other side of the crate pile just out of sight. Mewtwo couldn't shake the feeling that was keeping him from acting, even though he had planned to spring out and disable the incantation the moment the train stopped. It was only when he actually spotted the Thralls walking into view that he was finally roused to action. Several older and emaciated Gerudo women with blank, pupil-less eyes marched across the room toward the freight elevator in a robotic manner, each carrying one of those black metal rifles like the one Kalana had stolen and used. They still wore their traditional Gerudo clothes, but these clothes were now dirty and ragged with wear and tear. Mewtwo noticed that only a few of them wore red like the ones from Ven'rakesh, most wore a mixture of blue, green, or yellow outfits. Most seemed to be visibly old and craggy and a huge majority had horrible scars or barely-healed wounds. A few were pulling on the handles of heavily loaded freight dollies that seemed to be hovering on glowing cushions of red energy rather than wheels. The thralls stopped at the freight elevator and tried to summon it, but since the tower's power was out they were seemingly stuck. Mewtwo also spotted an extremely bizarre two-legged creature among them that seemed to resemble a walking, animated brown stone boulder with arms, legs, and a head. This creature also had a face with blank soulless eyes and was carrying a crate with his bare hands as if unperturbed by the obvious weight of it.
Mewtwo finally sprung up out of hiding, sending a telepathic message to Kalana to wait in their hiding place. He floated out into the center of the room and saw the massive cargo cars on the train that had stopped in the center of the room. Huge sliding doors had opened on the sides of each car, showing dozens more crates of supplies that more of the stone-skinned beings were lifting out and loading onto hover-dollies. The train itself was just as sleek and high-tech as everything else, but unfortunately Mewtwo couldn't seem to spot any visible external speakers on it. Where the hell was the incantation coming from? He pondered just waiting for the Thralls to finish unloading themselves from the train and then blasting the whole thing apart with a psychic blast, but his thoughts were interrupted when he suddenly heard a sinister telepathic voice speaking directly to him.
"Don't think I don't sense you."
All of a sudden Mewtwo's psychic senses detected the presence of another psychic being on that train that hadn't been there before. Only a moment after that did he see a hauntingly familiar form step out of a door on the train and into plain view. Mewtwo's jaw dropped agape in horror as he beheld the sharp, orange-suited form of his former foe Giovanni, the leader of Team Rocket!
"YOU!" Mewtwo bellowed out telepathically.
"What's the matter Mewtwo, surprised to see me here? Drop that foolish cloak, I know right where you are."
Mewtwo dropped his cloak, not out of any desire to obey the wretched man in front of him, but to conserve psychic energy now that he knew it was useless to hide. He instinctively charged and fired a shadow ball at his old foe, which sailed through the air and homed directly in on his form. With supernatural reflexes Giovanni ducked the attack and rushed several steps forward, avoiding the blast that ensued as the shadow ball struck the subway car and violently detonated it.
The Incantation must have ended when the subway car detonated, as the thralls suddenly dropped what they were doing and began to look around in confusion. Mewtwo took this time to rip the earplugs out of his ears. He was about to bellow angrily at Giovanni, but the orange-suited gangster beat him to the punch.
"Oh bother, you're really just as stubborn as ever aren't you? Now I have to do this." Giovanni said, then raised one hand that began to glow red.
Suddenly all the Thralls went rigid again, as if direct control of their minds had resumed. Mewtwo recoiled again in horror as he tried to wrap his mind around what he was seeing. Giovanni had never displayed any sort of psychic capabilities before and the idea of what he might do with them was frankly nightmarish. Despite the restored mind control the thralls seemed to ignore Mewtwo for now, thankfully. They were back to their work again and were starting to set crates down next to the freight elevator. Mewtwo decided that he didn't want to wait for Giovanni to make a move though, it was time to do what he should have done to him right from the beginning. Mewtwo focused a massive surge of psychic power into a direct telepathic blast, aiming to cook the vile man's brain inside of his head. No more giving him a chance to attack. No more reckless banter that would allow him to deploy more machines. No more mercy. Unfortunately, even that direct pragmatism seemed to fail; the Psychic attack bounced harmlessly off of his opponent like water splattering on concrete.
"What's wrong Mewtwo, can't handle the thought that I might actually have prepared the technology to follow you to this world and handle you properly this time?" Giovanni taunted, contemptuously ignoring the lethal attack that he had just shrugged off.
Mewtwo's heart sank into despair and horror for a few brief moments before he remembered the fact that Kalana had described the Sulaaq Chosen as shape shifters who loved to take the form of what people feared most. It all made sense, Mewtwo had been reckless and didn't have a mental barrier up since he didn't expect psychic foes here, so if this being was a Chosen, and it was the same presence that had registered as a psychic when it arrived, then it would have been easy for it to read Mewtwo's mind and see his fear and hatred of Giovanni.
"I don't believe you, Sulaaq! You're mimicking the demons from my past, I was warned about how you operate!" Mewtwo shouted.
Feeling a renewed surge of confidence Mewtwo raised his psychic shield and hurled a Shadow Ball at the grinning ghoulish facsimile of his old foe. The illusionary Giovanni raised one hand and a psychic barrier of his own appeared, deflecting the orb away harmlessly.
"Oh, is that so? Well I also know how you operate, including all your abilities, so this shouldn't be difficult for me."
Suddenly the form of Giovanni seemed to shimmer and morph before Mewtwo's eyes. The transition almost resembled a TV changing channels too slowly, revealing video distortions and static for a brief moment before the new form showed through. This time his foe took the appearance of an infamous Dark type Pokémon called Zoroark. This particular type of Pokémon was well known for its incredibly potent powers of illusion. Immediately everything seemed to make sense to Mewtwo; most of it seemed to click right into place. Sulaaq were known for shape shifting, so were Zoroarks using illusions. Mewtwo's psychic attacks and cloak had failed to work on his opponent, and Zoroarks were immune to all psionics. Zoroarks could even learn some psychic type powers, though Mewtwo forgot exactly which ones were in their movepool. Moreover, those powers would be entirely indistinguishable from magic, leading to the Gerudos calling them incredibly powerful mages. There were still a few gaps in the theory, but Mewtwo didn't have time to ponder it since the Zoroark was starting to move toward him, brandishing its claws.
Mewtwo acted on instinct now, no longer feeling disconcerted by the trickery. He pulled his hands back to charge an attack, choosing the same old reliable standby that he always employed against Dark types: Aura Sphere. The blue orb of glowing energy coalesced in his hands but the Zoroark seemed completely unphased. Mewtwo didn't care, he lobbed the orb and watched as it homed in directly on its target. But at the last possible second, the Zoroark teleported out of the way and switched places with a young-looking Gerudo thrall. The Aura Sphere didn't have time to course correct and continue homing on its original target; it instead struck the young thrall on her left shoulder and cleanly severed her whole arm, sending her tumbling to the floor in a heap.
"NO!" Mewtwo shouted in horror and shock.
"What's the matter? You actually care about these vermin? That's useful information indeed!" The Zoroark cackled.
Mewtwo didn't have time to react as his opponent raised its arms and began to fire off bolts of crackling red energy that struck more and more of the thralls, blasting horrible burnt holes in their bodies and causing them to collapse. Shock, terror, and complete disgust filled Mewtwo's mind, and for the first time since he had come to the world of Hypalia the red tint of rage began to fill his vision. No longer thinking clearly or remembering his type disadvantage he took off and charged at the Zoroark using telekinetic force to propel himself through the air. He formed a blade of jagged psychic energy in his hands mid-flight with the intent to carve his foe in half.
"Stop it!" He bellowed in rage.
The blade struck the Zoroark in the belly and completely bounced off, dissipating without any sort of effect whatsoever. A jolt of icy fear then surged up Mewtwo's spine as he realized his error. He tried to course-correct by lining up a kick, hoping that some basic fighting-type blows might be more effective. But the Zoroark now had the drop on him; it raised one of its clawed hands and plunged those razor-sharp claws directly through Mewtwo's psychic barrier as if it was made from tissue paper. The blow passed all the way through and landed in Mewtwo's shoulder, carving a deep bleeding wound several inches into his flesh and striking the bone. Mewtwo gasped as his failed kick's momentum caused him to crumple onto the Zoroark's striking arm. The pain broke his focus and caused him to dangle atop that claw while his foe held him aloft with a peal of sinister, derisive laughter.
"I'll give you one single warning, leave this tower and never come back! If you ever interfere with our operations again, I'll carve your head off of your shoulders with my claws!" Zoroark snarled.
"Why...don't you...do that now?" Mewtwo sputtered, reaching up his hands to grab at its arm.
Before the Zoroark could reply though, Mewtwo heard a loud squelch and saw a Scimitar blade plunge directly through its gut! It gasped and dropped him on the ground in a pile, then snarled furiously and vanished through a teleport. Without the clawed arm holding him up Mewtwo then tumbled to the floor in a crumpled heap, howling in pain. Blood arced out of the open wound now that nothing was wedged in it to keep the flow stemmed. Thankfully Mewtwo was able to quickly use his Recover ability to stanch the bleeding and regenerate his flesh. The hole was still receding when he felt strong hands lift him up into a sitting position. There was Kalana kneeling there next to him with a deadly serious expression on her face and a still-bloody Scimitar in her other hand.
"Are you alright?!" Kalana asked urgently.
"I'll be fine, I'm healing myself with my powers. Did you see the Sulaaq reappear anywhere in the room after it vanished?"
Kalana shook her head, then scanned the room rapidly while Mewtwo climbed to his feet. "Nothing."
Mewtwo heaved a shuddering breath as his shoulder finished healing. As he stumbled to his feet he cast his psychic senses around the area, trying to detect any hint of a presence. Initial looks came up empty, and since Mewtwo didn't think that Zoroarks could learn Recover or any other Pokemon powers that could heal them, he swapped his attention to searching the room for any survivors. The entire group of thralls were collapsed on the floor now, including the huge rocky-skinned ones. He began to run around the room, frantically putting his fingers to their necks to check for pulses. Dead. Dead. Dead dead dead. He hadn't moved fast enough, everyone was dead. The Zoroark had killed its entire entourage of slaves, purely to spite Mewtwo. Mewtwo choked back some tears as he continued, refusing to stop until he had checked every single body.
"Mewtwo...it's too late. We should go." Kalana said in a calm but resigned tone.
"No! Not yet! I have to try to save at least one of them! Do you see any still breathing? I won't stop until we know for sure!" Mewtwo shouted back angrily.
"No, it's too dark to see." Kalana replied, then begrudgingly joined him.
Mewtwo continued on through the room with Kalana by his side, checking as many as they could as quickly as they could. He fumbled when they reached the huge stony beings though; their skin was so thick and rocky that he couldn't feel any sort of pulse or warmth through it. He crouched next to one and tried to use Heal Pulse on it, flooding its body with psychic healing energy. The dead flesh didn't respond though; there was no miraculous reanimation to be had when all the life had already gone. Mewtwo began to cry now as he knelt next to the massive stony corpse, choking a little on his sobs as he tried again and again. Kalana knelt next to him and laid a hand on his shoulder comfortingly.
"Mewtwo...I'm sorry. There's nothing we can do. The best thing now would be to give them all proper burials."
"I couldn't even save one of them." Mewtwo sputtered in disgust, finally stopping his failed healing attempts. He fell down onto his hands and knees now and just cried loudly, consumed entirely in shame and grief.
For several horrible moments he was stuck like that, until suddenly he heard one of the thralls moaning in pain. He instantly forgot his shame and jumped to his feet, running over to see that it was one of the last ones he hadn't checked. It was the younger one that his Aura Sphere had struck in the shoulder. Apparently the wound had been non-fatal; the energy of the attack had cauterized it and prevented her from bleeding out. Apparently the Zoroark had taken her for dead and hadn't bothered to fire his much more fatal beams at her. Mewtwo immediately grabbed the girl's severed arm and pressed it back into place, then used Heal Pulse while whispering an aimless prayer to no deity in particular. Relief flooded him when he saw that it wasn't too late, the flesh began to regenerate itself! The arm hadn't gone too long somehow, it knitted itself back to her body under his careful psychic direction. It took a huge amount of power to heal a wound this horrible, especially when it came time to regenerate the bone. It took several minutes, during which Kalana came over to watch. Mewtwo heard her gasping in shock and then starting to cry a little, but he was too busy focusing on healing the injury to stop and look at her.
Once the wound had sealed itself completely, the healing energy flowed out over the rest of the girl's body and washed away all the shock hormones that had knocked her mostly unconscious. She moaned some more, but then opened her eyes and sat up. She looked at Mewtwo and terror flooded her gaze for a moment, but then Kalana gently pushed him aside and scooped her up into her arms and began to hug her tightly while sobbing.
"Kalana?!" The girl asked in shock.
"I thought I lost you, Vála." Kalana managed to say between sobs.
Mewtwo stepped back and let them have their moment. Relief drowned out the guilt and shame he had felt for a brief moment; he knew it was Ruru. He would have to deal with the bodies of the other Thralls soon, but at least he had done what he had set out to do.
