A/N:
This entire journey has been supported by readers just like you, and you yourself. Whether monetarily on pa-atreon or with good reviews, or even just by the act of reading the story itself. I guess it's a good time to let you know that I just officially uploaded the very last chapter (barring any epilogues) on my pa-atreon page. Thank you so much for sticking with me so long. Oak might have ended, but I haven't. We just finished a poll on the same pa-atreon page that means the next story I'll be working on is a self insert into the body of Clark Kent in the MCU (Update; The first five chapters of that, along with the first four chapters of an SI into an OC firebender during the 100 year war are both live on pa-atreon right now). Feel free to follow or favourite my profile so you can get notified once that comes out. Thank you. Thank you all so much.
I stopped feeling as Mewtwo dove headfirst into me and began to pull. My aura, or the thing I had recognized as my aura for so long, was being dragged out of me second by second, and I was helpless against it.
How could I stop him? Mewtwo had just defeated my entire team. He was a powerful psychic, and I was just human. "Are you, though?" some part of me asked. Instead of questioning where the thought came from, I began to wonder if I actually was human. My aura was strange. I had observed Cynthia for the few days we had spent together, and even though she was supposed to be an aura expert, she clearly couldn't do the things I could.
My Pokémon grew quickly, explosively, in fact. In one fight alone, my team had gone from an elite level to having members who could rip apart champion-level Pokémon with their bare hands. Was it because of aura? It couldn't be. My power seemed to recoil at being described as such, as Mewtwo did his best to pull it out of me.
Oh yes, Mewtwo. Now, I focused on what was going on with the legendary Pokémon and noticed that the transfer was taking a while. Almost like my power was fighting him without any conscious input from me. Did it not realize how futile resistance was? Could it not tell that we would lose no matter what we tried at this point? It didn't matter. None of it mattered.
My mind turned from thoughts of legendary Pokémon to my past life, my first life. I had a good life. I was born into a middle-class family and raised with one clear ambition: to become the best damn lawyer the world had ever seen. I could see the parallels now that I paid attention to them. In my first life, I was born to some of the best corporate lawyers in the world. In this life, I was born to a Pokémon champion. My first parents were inattentive creatures. I never blamed them. Few could have a career like the one they did without sacrifices. Similarly, Oak was Oak.
I had even been adopted in my past life, and here it turned out I was in a similar situation. Everywhere I looked, I noted the similarities until I spotted the final one. In my first life, I never succeeded in becoming the best lawyer in the world. I died young, still a college student. In this life, I seemed doomed to suffer the same fate. "Will you let that happen?" the same voice from the first time asked, and this time I dedicated a second to questioning it before I gave up and turned to wondering about the question.
Let it? I wasn't allowing anything to happen. Mewtwo was my superior in every way that mattered. "So?" it asked, and that was it. I thought and thought, but couldn't come up with an answer. So what? So what if Mewtwo was stronger, better, and smarter than me? When did I ever let things like the odds stand in my way? When did I ever give up without fighting? That thought drove all the lethargy from my mind almost instantly, and my eyes snapped open, staring at Mewtwo's glowing blue orbs. If I could see them, I would have noticed my own eyes beginning to glow a similar color.
I shoved myself into my power and shut off the tap. Whatever progress Mewtwo thought he was gaining was killed almost instantly as I simply decided that I wasn't going to give him any more ground. He pulled and pulled, but I didn't budge. I could not budge. I saw the connection he had created between us and began to perform my own pulling. Whatever power he had taken from me was mine, and I wanted it back.
Of course, it was easier said than done. In the beginning, I made progress before Mewtwo noticed me and began to stall me. It was now a battle of wills, and no Pokémon could ever beat a human in that. There's a reason we were at the top of the food chain. Not our intelligence, even the dumbest psychic could put the smartest humans to shame. Not our physical strength, as a Rattata was stronger than 90% of the human race. Not even our ability to adapt. No one could beat Pokémon at that. No, what made us so dangerous in the animal world was our stubbornness. We beat our heads against obstacle after obstacle on our rise to the top, and eventually, there were no more obstacles, and we stood unchallenged.
With that inbuilt trait on my side, Mewtwo was always doomed and fated to lose. I pulled and pulled and never stopped. Mewtwo tried to attack me psychically, and I ignored what felt like knives running through my brain as I continued to pull. The power I got from Mewtwo energized and healed me, allowing me to pull even more.
Eventually, I was full to the brim, but I didn't stop. Nay, I could not stop. Mewtwo would end here. I felt the taste of blood in my mouth. My nose was bleeding. Probably my ears too, considering I couldn't hear anything. The power was too much. I couldn't stop, but I couldn't continue either. A dilemma if there ever was one, and then it was solved as I felt something nudge me toward the paths that connected me to my Pokémon. I nodded. It was a good idea. I couldn't hold the power within myself. My body couldn't take it, but my team? They could. I kept pulling, but this time I dedicated part of my focus to opening every pathway connecting me to every member of my team. I sent all the power I had straight at them and kept pulling from Mewtwo.
In seconds, I realized my mistake. I couldn't do it. Focusing on both areas didn't work. Mewtwo was gaining ground. I couldn't offload the power without dedicating some focus to it, and any focus I took away from Mewtwo would allow the powerful psychic to regain the advantage in the fight we fought. I spoke a great deal about having better will and being more stubborn than my opponent, but none of this was easy.
Thankfully, I was joined by those who had been with me since the very beginning. I didn't know how they knew just what I needed, but they did. Ino started first, and the rest of the team followed suit. They dragged the power right after me as I dragged it out of Mewtwo. It was a godsend.
But even they were beginning to max out their capacity. Ino triggered the Pokéballs at my waist to release Igneel and Gai. I could tell from their sudden appearance in my senses. They too began to pull and take in more and more energy. We were just hitting what I suspected to be the halfway point in Mewtwo's power, so we still had much more to go, and the more power we took from him, the more ferociously Mewtwo fought to keep what he had. He had tried to break the connection between us more than once, to just cut his losses and run, but I didn't let him. This was probably our one chance to take him down, and we would not waste it.
I could feel the power beginning to change my Pokémon as they took more and more of it into themselves. Ino had monitored the allocation to Igneel and Gai until they were revitalized enough to handle things for themselves. The energy found nowhere else to go within them, so it began to shift, change, and actually evolve their bodies. If I had attention to spare, I might have been worried. But I had nothing that wasn't spent on the psychic I was locked in a death stare with.
"Will you kill me, brother?" Mewtwo asked in my head, and I recoiled at the appellation he had bestowed upon me. This wasn't the first time he was doing this, but somehow now, it wasn't mocking. It was almost sorrowful, and the more power I took from him, the more I got to see of his memories.
I could see from the day he was 'born.' The day he obtained sentience, really. He had been subjected to test after test by Giovanni and his accomplices before he was written off as a failure and doomed to be terminated. Instead, he had been taken by Blaine, the one he called father. And Blaine was very much a father to the psychic. Where the others had seen failure, Blaine said he saw promise, so he was the one who raised Mewtwo from childhood. Every joyful memory Mewtwo had was of Blaine congratulating him for passing some test or fulfilling some expectation. Blaine didn't even just treat Mewtwo as a test subject; he taught him politics, world history, things no weapon had any business knowing. At this point, I was beginning to become certain that the same way Mewtwo saw Blaine as a father, Blaine might have seen the Pokémon as a son of sorts.
Of course, that idyllic lifestyle was uprooted when Blaine was lax with his shields one fateful afternoon, and Mewtwo realized the truth of his mortality. The knowledge that the father he trusted had kept so much away from him had made him snap. He killed Blaine with tears running down his eyes, the same sort of tears that ran down mine right now. And from there, he had done what he thought necessary to survive. When he ran out of Mewtwos to consume, he seemed ready to accept his fate but wanted to achieve Blaine's dream first: world peace. Somehow, in his twisted mind, Mewtwo decided this was the quickest way to achieve actual peace. Destroy the regions he felt had the least potential to truly unite and then force the remaining ones to fight among themselves in a tournament for survival.
Of course, the tournament was never meant to hold. He very much expected a joint mission like this. He wanted to spend his last days being the glue that forced the champions of the regions to work together. He had thought that by triumphing over him, the champions would build the bond necessary for a greater, more peaceful world. And then Oak had to throw a wrench in things by inviting me along.
Giovanni was dead. Giovanni had been dead for a long time. Mewtwo wore his body like a second skin and used him to achieve the unity he sought. And when I showed up at the base that day, he had gone through Giovanni's memories to find out why I felt so familiar. That's when he got hope of living. He saw me, and all his plans ended. He was going to take what I had and complete himself to secure his life and find some other more elegant way to achieve Blaine's dream.
I just stared at him dispassionately. "You brought this upon yourself... brother. But do not worry. Your dream. Blaine's dream. I will achieve it. Trust me," I said finally, with little hesitation. I could empathize with him.
The 25% of power he had remaining was suddenly mine. He stopped resisting at my words, and the strength of my pull shoved the power right into me. With no opportunity to take the power into themselves, my Pokémon were forced to watch as the overflow of power within me did the same thing it had done to me.
Any other human would have died from what happened to me. But I wasn't just human. I was more than that, and the power began to change my body into something more resembling that.
It felt like magma was flowing through my body, but my brain was quick to shut down the pain before I went into shock. Luckily, by some weird quirk of nature, most of the changes remained internal. My muscles were denser, as were my bones, and every inch of me was worlds more powerful. My brain was reshaped and enhanced. All of me was broken down and built again.
When it finished, I noted that I looked much the same. Wait, how did I know that? I had looked through Ino's eyes with unnatural ease, entering her mind without even noticing.
I watched Mewtwo fall to the ground, completely spent. He was done for. I could already see him fading, his body falling apart and decaying right before my eyes.
Ignoring the humans around me, I turned my attention to my team. I shouldn't have been surprised by the fact that the energy they had absorbed had created some form of mega evolution within them. After all, they always had the genetic information, but not the catalyst. The power we stole from Super Mewtwo was that catalyst. And unlike the temporary mega evolution brought about by the mega stone/key stone relationship, this one was permanent. A permanently mega-evolved team of elite-level Pokémon? Let's just say that none of the champions surrounding me gave me any cause for worry at this point.
In fact, I was happy to see them all gathered like this; it made things more efficient. Sharing my thoughts with my team, they all leaned forward, standing straighter, intimidating the humans around us.
"Mewtwo is gone. His power has been taken by me and my team, and made our own," I spoke as I rose up into the air. Unaided flight was practically easy compared to some of the things I knew I'd be capable of with the power that now coursed through my veins.
"So, what happens next?" Lance asked, staring at me warily. His senses must have given him some inclination of what was happening next.
"Mewtwo had a dream. A stolen one, but a dream nonetheless. He desired peace between all of us. Long-lasting, true peace. He sought to bring it about through conflict, but I have a simpler, more efficient method in mind. Submission. That is what I ask of all of you. Champions you are. Champions you will remain, but you will recognize one champion above all. Me," I said, not quite realizing how much I sounded like a supervillain until I had let out the last word. I searched my head and unsurprisingly found that some of Mewtwo's character traits had made their way to me with the power I had stolen. Nothing worrying, for now, but still worth keeping an eye on.
"Submit to you?" Lance asked, clearly holding back laughter. Even Cynthia looked like she found the idea ludicrous. The Hoenn Champions were silent. They didn't have much of a team left after all the chaos the fight had brought. Truthfully, the only ones with teams ready to fight were Lance, Oak, and Cynthia herself. Even Lance had a dead Pokémon and an injured one to consider, so none of them were at full strength. If I wanted their submission in the most efficient way, this was the right time to get it, but there would always be an asterisk. One of them would get ideas of trying again, of challenging me in a few months or a few years. No, I had to crush them totally and completely.
"Yes, yes, you will submit to me. But not now. No, not when you are so weak and broken. Instead, I'll give you the months you need to gather yourselves and challenge me at this arena once I finish building it," I said.
"And what will make us do that?" Wallace asked, drawing eyes to him. The question was valid. Why would they take the risk of facing me when they could just ignore me?
"My idea of peace between the regions is a federation. An international federation with an International Champion who would reign over all the regions. Not subjugation, but submission. I don't seek to conquer you all. However, if you do not make things easy for me, you will find that I will do what is necessary to achieve my goal."
"Which is?" Wallace pressed. He wanted a threat. That's what he desired.
"Absolutely nothing. If you do not come to tender your challenges, I will assume that you are choosing not to accept peace, and all I can promise you is one war. One war to end them all. That is my promise. Accept peace, bend the knee, or prepare for war. With a fading body, Mewtwo laid waste to three whole regions. Imagine what I can do with a team of six healthy Pokémon at my side with the same kind of power. Will you risk it?"
I saw it in their eyes. They would. They didn't believe I had the power. Sure, my Pokémon had physically changed, but these people were used to being at the top of the food chain. Mewtwo was an anomaly in their eyes. For what reason would they believe I had the same kind of power at my fingertips?
I needed a demonstration, something to show that I had the power. And Igneel, as always, reacted to my thoughts. Blue fire flared on his body like a cloak, and he flew into the skies, concentrating his power before firing a blue beam into the ocean around us. It took me a second to realize the blue beam was just concentrated fire-type energy. The air around us changed as vapor flew into the skies.
The ocean was boiling. The ocean itself. Igneel landed on the ground in front of me to stunned silence. "I will be expecting you," I told them as I teleported away with my team. The distance to Sabrina was nothing. I bent the space between us with only a flex of my mind. With only a quarter of Mewtwo's power, I felt like God himself. It was truly a godsend that he'd been cursed with a body that was falling apart and couldn't bring anywhere near his full power to bear against us.
I appeared in the reception and only had to wait a few seconds for Sabrina to barrel into my chest. "I'm sorry," I whispered to her as I held her, and she said nothing as her lips consumed mine.
A/N: Wouldn't it be fancy to just end things here? This is the final chapter by the way. This is ittt. There's an epilogue, of course. It's available on pa-atreon right now or you can read it when it comes out in a week. The two new stories I've been talking about will get released next week (at the same time as the epilogue) so stay tuned.
How was the ride?
