Note: Content warning for a slight allusion to blood.
Three Years Ago
The Hall of Origin sat at the very top of Sinnoh, the crown of Mount Coronet. It was a proud palace, with a roof that led up into the very peak of the mountain, where no normal human or pokemon could go for want of air.
Though the Hall stood tall and proud, it would never be uncovered by prying eyes. An illusion of downtrodden, crumbling ruins masked it from the eyes of intruders. And if one were to enter, they would touch the crumbling pillars of a long-desolate building rather than the pristine walls of the true Hall. For the Hall of Origin was forbidden to anyone not blessed with the power of a Legend.
Arceus wordlessly bounded up towards the Hall, carrying the new Mew with him in an invisible hold. She watched as the world silently grew smaller below them, a miniscule diorama of rivers and valleys below, the dark night clouds and stars above. When he touched down, his hooves landed upon the marble floors of the Hall with a satisfying 'plink'.
Mew was let down, finally. She unsteadily wobbled, trying to find her new center of balance on legs that were both different and weaker than before. The hall around her was giant, larger than life. The white and gold walls and pillars extended upwards and faded away into the night sky, where the moon reflected off the clouds in the distance and bathed the spacious room in the subtle gleam of night. A grand staircase split at the top and arched down to the ground in two different directions. Between them, a desk stood, and a door under the middle of the staircase led into a room unknown and hidden by shadows.
Arceus looked down at her, watching her take an unsteady step and falling flat on her face. Her new legs weren't strong enough to support her body weight.
"You will not need them," his voice boomed, reverberating in her head as if he had read her thoughts. "As Mew, you will soar. Concentrate your focus. Try it."
And so Mew did. She watched in silent awe as despite her every instinct, she began to rise off the ground effortlessly, as if carried by a steady, invisible wind. She did a few cartwheels in the air, weightless. It made her giddy.
"You may rest the night within the confines of this hall," said Arceus, watching her twirl around in the air. "Tomorrow, we shall discuss your duties as a High Legend."
Mew, who had been spinning around in the air just because she could, cast Arceus a curious glance. Was that it? Somehow she thought there would be... more. But Arceus had said all he intended to. He leapt up effortlessly, silently, and disappeared up through the roof and into the night sky above.
In his absence, she was left to explore the Hall on her own. Still teetering and tottering around in the air and holding in giggles, the desk caught her attention first. Not because it was the only piece of furniture in the room. Not because of the large amount of see-through chutes that snaked down from the skies above and ended at the desk. Not even because of the large amount of papers stacked on it, when the rest of the Hall was pristine.
It caught her attention because unlike the rest of the Hall, the floors and walls around the desk were scarred with the marks of something a deep, dark red.
02.
BLACKMAILED
When I woke up again, I was lying on an old, dirty bed that smelled faintly like skuntank spray. The walls around me were made of steel, and only one flickering lightbulb hanging from the roof provided any source of light. I was still groggy; it took me a minute to piece together what had just happened. I had just been… captured. I had been captured. So had Cherry. This was bad.
Cherry! I leapt into the air and looked around the room, but I didn't see her. In a frenzy, I tried the first thing I could think of–teleporting out of there. It didn't matter where I ended up; I just needed to get out of this room. I'd take Unova. I'd even take right in front of Arceus' face. But it just wasn't working. When I opened my eyes, I was still in the prison cell. That was enough to silence me dumbly for a good minute. This didn't just happen. It wasn't done. How could my teleport keep failing?
There was a beep. The door to the cell opened. I spun around, watching as a human strode into the room. He wore a suit, and the top of his head was covered by a large fedora. I could barely see his eyes under the brim, only his one-sided sneer, but that was definitely intentional. I could already tell this guy was a grade A villain, and the thing about grade A villains is that they're always worryingly obsessed with their wardrobe. Clearly this guy had spent the last hour behind a mirror. I bet he rehearsed everything he was going to say in front of it like a puny spewpa on a date-
"Looks like you've noticed our teleport blockers," he said theatrically. I glared daggers at him. He knocked on the door after it closed. I heard the dull thud.
"Re-enforced steel. The only way you leave this room is if that door opens for you."
He had a foldable chair with him. He walked over and expanded it in front of me. Then he sat down.
"Sit," he said, gesturing to the cot.
I did not sit. I wanted to tell him I'd rather do anything but sit. I wasn't brave enough to tell him that, so I just floated there like I had been.
"Where's Cherry," I said in the lowest, most threatening voice I could muster.
"Cherry…" the man rubbed his chin with a gloved hand for a minute. "So that's the name of our other catch. She wouldn't tell us that. Thank you."
I suddenly felt ten times smaller.
"Let us… go?" I said, in vain hope that would actually do something. Predictably, it didn't.
The man shook his head. "If only it were that easy. First things first…"
Before I knew it, I felt a sharp nick against the side of my head. I looked at the man's right hand, outstretched above my ear and holding a switchblade. A few tufts of my fur floated to the ground. The man caught them in a plastic container he pulled from inside his suit.
Alright, that was the last straw. This sorry ingrate thought he could kidnap me, take my friend hostage, and then cut off my fur to boot? I'd show him. I hissed, charging up energy in my paw for an attack. Power crackled through my fur, which stood on end. Most people balked. This muk-spawn didn't twitch an eyebrow. He simply brushed back the bottom of his suit in response, making sure I could see the pokeball hanging from his belt.
"You can't catch me with that," I growled. It was true. I'd already tethered myself to a pokeball, a trick I had picked up from all the lower-tier legendaries who resided on earth. But that only got a laugh from him.
"You think we haven't tried?" he said. "On both you and your friend. This is for self-defense."
Crap, this was more well-thought out than I'd anticipated. Another thing about grade A villains: Despite the over the top outfits and constant mirror rehearsals, they're usually worth their salt.
"What makes you think one pokemon is going to defend you from a High Legend?" I snarled. I was bluffing. For some idiot reason, I didn't have the firepower to knock out much more than a growlithe. But he didn't know that.
The man smirked. "You could probably kill me and break straight out of this room if you wanted. If you want to test the might of a single Legend against all of Team Rocket, be my guest."
I went silent after that, much of my bravado lost. Did he want me to believe that all of Team Rocket was outside that door?
…Was all of Team Rocket outside that door? They'd gone to extreme measures just to bring us here. It didn't make sense for them not to pile guards upon guards where I was being held.
"Or…" the man drew it out, leaving it at a pause. He knew I was trapped, and he wanted me to continue the line. To play along with his game. I didn't have another good choice, and he knew it.
"Or… what?"
"Or… we can strike a deal," said the man.
I could tell a trap when I saw one, and that was a trap clear as day. Maybe I'd walk out of the building, but he'd own my soul or something freaky like that. Not the weirdest thing creepy rich people have tried to do to me. Falls somewhere behind that weirdo who staked out Vermillion Harbor for like a year because he wanted my fur for his taxidermy collection. I was smarter than that, I could see right through it. But I wonder if a moth that flies into a light trap knows it's a trap, and flies into it anyway because it can't resist the glow. If moths could even feel anything. That was how I felt. Stuck like a moth willingly drawn into a trap.
The man was silent. It was clear he wanted me to ask him to continue.
"What… kind of deal?" I hesitantly asked. I knew it was a bad idea. Each word that slipped off my tongue felt like acid.
"I want information," the man said. "Anything and everything you can give me regarding legendary movements. I understand that as Mew, you have access to those sorts of things. Courtesy of your friend, of course."
My friend…
"What have you been doing to her?" I spat. Cherry would never give up that information on her own.
"We have our ways of extracting information when it's necessary," the man said coolly. "Now here's your deal: You walk out of this base without a target on your back, but you report to me. When I ask you to get me something, no matter what that thing is, you get it for me within a day. You have my word that as long as you do this, no harm will come to your friend."
"And when do I get her back?" I asked. Some part of me couldn't believe I was actually considering this. Another part of me, the stronger part, was scared I'd never get free if I didn't. I didn't have the power to break out of this place, and I knew it, and he knew it. I needed to set barriers somewhere, or I'd never see Cherry again.
"When I no longer have a use for you," said the man, and then he stood up. "If you don't agree, I'll have her killed on the spot. If you tell a single soul about our agreement, I'll have her killed on the spot. And if you try anything funny, I'll have her killed on the spot. Don't think you can be sneaky; I'll know. And once it's done… you'll be next."
My heart skipped a beat when he said that. They couldn't kill my best friend. They couldn't kill her, they couldn't.
They were going to. The world stopped turning.
"You have one hour to make your decision," said the man. He retracted the chair, and began to take it with him as he headed for the door and I knew I couldn't let that go I couldn't let him walk away that was my only opportunity to keep Cherry alive I had to do something I had to I had to—
"Alright!" I cried out, zipping over to the door before the man could close it behind him. "I'll do it, I'll do it! Just don't kill Cherry."
The man stopped at the door. He turned around, the barest corner of a smirk on his face.
"I figured you'd see reason."
He held out a gloved hand, and beckoned for me to follow with two of his fingers. I had the sudden and powerful urge to bite them off, but I didn't see that ending with Cherry alive. Reluctantly, I did as he asked.
I was blindfolded by a pair of guards and led down a series of hallways until I could feel the wind against my fur again. The blindfold was undone, exposing my eyes to broad daylight. I had to squint for a moment before my surroundings came into view: I was standing at the bank of a grassy cliff overlooking the ocean. We'd just come out of a small tunnel near a rock formation behind us, and in the distance behind that was the clear outline of a brightly colored, red and yellow harbor city. My eyes followed the bridge that snaked across the ocean, connecting the city to the bank on the other side of the waterway… This was Vermilion. We were right next to Vermilion.
"Got a good feel for the place?" the voice came not from the man who had interrogated me, but from one of the two rocket grunts who had escorted me out here. "Remember it. You're gonna teleport right back to this location if the Boss needs you."
I barely nodded, taking in as much as I could. This was the afternoon. That meant… I was already late for my job back in the Hall of Origin!
As if I needed yet another stressor today.
One of the rocket grunts handed me a black device that looked suspiciously like a cell phone. "Keep that with you. It's what we'll use to contact you when we need you to do something."
I took the device like it was a sugar-high joltik, looking over its smooth black surface in my paws. It was so small, but the amount of difference it made was astronomical. It meant that for all intents and purpose, I was now a part of Team Rocket.
"Can I go now?" I asked. The line was flat, devoid of emotion. I didn't have any left.
"That's everything," said one of the rockets. "You're free to go."
\|M|/
There was an overflow of paperwork on my desk by the time I finally teleported back to the Hall of Origin. I didn't see Arceus anywhere around, but that didn't mean he didn't know I'd been gone. He could pop in at any moment, ready to interrogate me and ask me where I had gone and why I was late, and I'd have to dig myself even deeper just to get out of trouble in the moment.
Not that I wasn't already deep enough as is. I zipped over to the desk, shakily placing the black device the Rockets had given me in the drawer.
The next few hours were spent sorting paperwork and wondering if there was anything I could have done better, anything I could have done to walk out of there with Cherry okay. I couldn't trust the Rockets to keep their word; for all I knew they were busy torturing her for more information. But there wasn't anything I could do about it, not on my own. Not unless I wanted to tell Arceus.
I didn't know if I could. How would he take it? Would he help me, or would he unleash his wrath and call an attack on the base with Cherry still inside? If there was ever a time for that to happen…
But he was the head of the Legendarian Council for a reason, right? Fence Gogoat had always been aloof, but his whole thing was being logical. He wouldn't order an attack so readily like that. I had to be able to trust him.
I wanted to be able to trust him.
Maybe I could tell him.
Right outside the Hall of Origin, just within the veil that hid the place from the eyes of those hikers that liked to climb up here in the winter and camp out on a freezing mountain for some reason, Zygarde slithered through the snow. I watched as it rose to its full height of ten feet, gazing serenely at the sun. Then it slowly began to split apart, many small cells leaving its being. One Zygarde Whole disintegrated into nothing, and One Hundred Zygarde Cells blew to the wind.
The sun was beginning to set over the many peaks around the Hall of Origin, as I zipped up to where Arceus usually lounged around at sunset to deliver my report for the day. I headed straight for the roof of the building, ascending up into the sky until the hall of the building was far below me, and the peak of Mount Coronet hung above.
Arceus liked to hang around the very peak of Mount Coronet during the sunsets, to watch them go down. And that was where he was when I zipped up towards the top of the mountain and settled on a stone perch nearby. Unlike Arceus, the altitude and the thin air made me a little lightheaded, but I had greater resistance towards it than a normal pokemon have. I'd be fine for a half-hour or so.
"Mew," he acknowledged me as I nestled into the perch alongside him.
"I have your daily report, sir," I said. I began to go through the list of major and minor things that had shown up in the paperwork today, focusing on the end on Zygarde's departure. Arceus only acknowledged me with a little grunt at the end, proof that he was listening but hadn't taken fault with anything I listed.
We sat for a minute more, observing the sunset.
"Sir," I said, breaking the silence, trying to figure out how to say the hardest sentence I'd ever say in my life. The words were on the tip of my tongue, but I just couldn't say them. So instead, I settled for an easier one. "I never asked, but… what happened to my predecessor?"
"Your predecessor?" Arceus asked.
"The one who came before m—"
"I am aware what a predecessor is."
I stopped. And waited. It was a moment before Arceus said anything.
"I killed him."
"Y-you what?" I stammered out, shocked. What had he done to deserve death?
"Don't get surprised." Arceus' tone was ice-cold. "Your predecessor was… difficult. He openly disrespected the sacred code we Legends have abided by for years, and relentlessly argued many of my decrees when I passed them. Of course, I do not slaughter my disciples over petty disagreements. A couple of times, his points even showed reason enough for me to change."
"S-so…" I began, reeling, still trying to process the fact that whoever had come before me had died. "What did you kill him for?"
Arceus sighed, like this pained him. "He sold out. He saw greater value in the worthless treasures of the humans than he saw up here with our Elite. He went down and revealed himself in front of them. He began to take information from the Room of Records, and sell it to humans down below. Before long, that information made it back into my hands, and I took notice. This matter had to be dealt with in a prompt manner. Therefore, I killed him."
I stayed silent, as I tried to process that information. What did that mean for me?
"I… I see," I said. I was the most anxious I had been in years, but I tried not to show it in front of Arceus.
"The day afterwards was the day that I recruited you," Arceus said. "I am pleased to see that I have made a respectable choice in replacement."
I nodded, grinned, tried not to look nervous, and went along with it. It was all I could do right now. Inside, my head swam. There were so many things I was trapped in now. I thought maybe it would be better to tell Arceus, but after learning this… How could I? I'd just be sealing my doom—and Cherry's in the process, when he ordered the base blown up and had me executed. I couldn't let that happen.
"So if I ever…" I trailed off, not willing to say the name of the crime I had already committed to. "You'd kill me, too?"
"If you showed yourself to be unworthy the way he did, I would not hesitate to spear you through the heart," said Arceus. "But I do not intend this as a threat. Instead, let it be a teaching moment.
"I hold you to a higher standard than I held your predecessor or any of your peers," Arceus continued. "You must be better. You are the example the lower legends look to, and the leg the higher legends stand on. You must be the best of us. You have done admirably these last three years, and if you work as you should, then you will hold this position for many centuries more. But only if you work as you should."
Finally, he stopped. We both let the silence settle for a moment, as the sun continued its last retreat over the mountain. His silence was a peaceful serenity; mine was a tense silence of anxiety. There was a dread forming in the pit in my stomach that I'd never felt before. I'd just crossed Arceus in a very bad way, and he didn't even know it yet.
The next thing Arceus said signaled that our conversation was over: "You are dismissed."
Eager to be anywhere but within earshot of Arceus right now, I eagerly nodded and zipped back down the mountain and towards the Hall of Origin.
I had a lot to think about.
