BONUS SCENE FROM CHAPTER 24: MEW AND THE TREE OF BEGINNING

North of the Mount Moon Range was the Tree of Beginning.

Despite appearances, it was not an actual tree. A monolith of crystal, it towered over the surrounding mountains. Its interior, which few were allowed to enter, was a labyrinth of caves. Springs and streams flowed in its deeper reaches, depositing minerals that made the green, blue, and purple crystals sprout and grow. These crystals reached upwards in spires and twined in smaller, flower-like formations. All of these were connected to each other, for all of them contained the aura, the life energy of every living creature. That energy was enough to make plants grow without sunlight, nourish the creatures that lived there, and make the crystals illuminate even the darkest of the caves.

Few pokémon or humans could wield the aura, however. As such, few had learned how to tap into the power of the crystals and even fewer had learned all of their secrets. Only one had discovered the purpose of the crystals and of the Tree itself – and that one was Citlali, known by some as the Bright Star. He was the heir of the mew, the prince of the Morning and the East, and unlike the other legendary pokémon, he knew the truth about this place. He knew why ancient pokémon, extinct in all other parts of the world, still lived here. He knew why the Regis forced out curious visitors, invoking the crystals' power to drive them out. And he knew why there was another mew here, which others had taken to calling his counterpart.

That mew, whose life was tied to that of the Tree, was called the Other Star by some. He was the prince of the Evening and the West, but also Citlali's elder, for he had been here ages before the younger mew's birth. His experience had made him powerful enough to adopt any form he wished and wander farther from the Tree than any of its other denizens. Yet despite his years, he remained eternally curious, eternally playful, and eternally innocent.

In retrospect, Citlali should have guessed the truth after their fifth meeting, rather than their fiftieth.

The Other Star wants you to come and tell him stories. I said I'd pass the message along. That was what Cresselia had said. She'd never suspected the truth – though how could she? She hadn't left Sinnoh in four or five centuries, give or take fifty years.

The mew gritted his teeth as he flew through the mist and weaved between crystal branches. He found one of the entrances into the Tree and soon found the grove where his counterpart played. The Other Star had been collecting human toys again. There was a pile of dolls and stuffed animals, game pieces and cards, tiny trains and planes and cars. Wooden blocks were scattered in the grass. Some of them were sprouting green shoots.

Citlali clenched his jaw. He ducked his head into a hollowed-out tree truck and, sure enough, there his counterpart, bouncing on green bubbles made of aura.

He saw Citlali.

With a shriek of excitement, he flew up and tackled him, knocking him back into the grove. When they stopped tumbling, he looked at Citlali with twinkling eyes. "Brother! You came! Do you have any new stories? Oh please, tell me, tell me!"

The voice grated on Citlali like sandpaper. The Other Star calling him "brother" made his irritation spike. You are not my brother, Citlali thought acidly. He disentangled himself from the other mew and made himself take a steadying breath. Calm down. This is his nature, Citlali reminded himself. He cannot help his nature.

The other mew didn't seem put off by Citlali shoving him away. He did a backflip in the air and gave him an expectant look instead. Citlali, grudgingly, sat down in the grass and said, "Sit down. I won't tell you anything if you don't behave."

The other mew did so, grabbing one of the blocks to fiddle with as he listened. Citlali told him about the war breaking out in Kanto, about Mewtwo's training, and about the work of his other wards. They were scouting out the underground Celadon Base – a risky venture, but a good way to work up to facing the increased security around the Viridian Base. It was also an essential venture, since rumor had it that the Rockets had conscripted some of Silph Company's leading researchers to work in their laboratories. If the man and the fox managed to free them, it would slow and maybe even cripple their experiments.

The other mew looked up from his block. There were now blue flowers blooming from it. "What about that girl Mewtwo was in love with? Didn't she have babies?"

"She did and he loves her still," Citlali said sourly. "She and the little half-breeds are fine. They've settled in the City of Ghosts. They should be safe there, for now."

"Why do you hate them so much?" the mew asked, hearing to the bitterness in his voice. "They're just babies."

"It's not them I hate so much as what they represent. If my brother had picked another pokémon as his mate, he could have continued the mew legacy. But he chose to spurt his seed into that – woman – instead." He grimaced. "I swear, if he could live his life as a human, he would. He practically is one, no matter how much he claims to hate them."

"I think you hate them more than he does," his counterpart murmured.

Citlali's lashed out his tail in anger. He barely avoided whipping the other mew with it. "We can't all forgive them for what they have done. Or forget it," he said with venom. We can't all be like you.

"But they make all of these fun things!" he said, holding out the block.

"And for every one thing they create, they destroy two more. I won't love them for it." He wouldn't make the same mistake as his ancestors. He wouldn't be destroyed by love.

He couldn't stop Mewtwo from following in their footsteps. He could take steps to minimize the damage, but that was all. Whom Mewtwo gave his heart, his body, and his future to was his choice in the end. Citlali could turn his brother's path only so far; he couldn't force him onto another one entirely, no matter how much the mew would have preferred to.

He comforted himself with the thought that at least his meddling ensured a happier outcome for Mewtwo. If things worked out the way he'd planned, that is….

"Do you love anything?" his counterpart asked, tilting his head.

"I love my brother," Citlali said crisply. As much of a pain in the ass as Mewtwo could be, the mew considered him family.

The other mew, however, seemed to assume he was talking about him. He brightened up, his tail twitching and his eyes shining with excitement. "You love me?"

Citlali hissed at that. "Not you. Never you."

His counterpart drooped. "Why not?"

"Because you aren't even real."

The other mew stared at him, uncomprehending.

A long time ago, Citlali's brother had died. His death had left Citlali as the last of his kind. Before long, the mew had grown lonely – so desperately lonely that even the company of other pokémon had lost its comfort. Then one of the legendary pokémon had told him of a Tree of Beginning. The Tree was a holy place – a place where all things lost to the world could still be found. There were pokémon who lived there that had vanished everywhere else. There was even a mew there who helped guard the ancient tree.

With hope filling his heart to bursting, Citlali had flown there as fast as he could. He'd met the other mew there and believed that he wasn't alone anymore. He'd been young and naïve and had wanted so badly to have a brother again.

He'd been devastated when he'd found out the truth.

He hadn't wanted to believe it. He'd even rejected his suspicions for years, until they'd taken root in his brain and grown like ivy, twisting through his thoughts. Why was it, he'd wondered, that extinct pokémon still lived here? Why was it that the Regis defended this place so ardently? Why was it that the other mew was so connected to this place – so much so that its life force and his were bound together?

And why was it that no matter what happened, the Other Star never seemed to change? He always acted like a child, even when wars were waged at the foot of the Tree, even when pokémon and humans were killed in front of him, even when their blood splashed onto his face. He was always curious, always asking questions, always exploring, and always watching everything around him.

When Citlali had summoned up the courage, he'd peered into the essence of the creatures here. What he'd found was bodies built from crystal, with aura running in their veins. Though they looked and acted like the pokémon from eons past, they were not them. They were not real. They were golems that didn't bleed nor breed nor quarrel. They couldn't think for themselves, for they no minds of their own. They were echoes of the past – echoes given form by the Tree. They existed only because the Tree remembered them and wanted nothing in this world to be forgotten.

Before humans had thought of recording their history – before they had even left their trees – the Earth had had the Tree of Beginning as its archive.

And every archive needed an archivist.

The archivist was responsible for more than just overseeing the archive. Its duty was to add to it, to journey into the world and record everything it saw. But it could only go so far before its connection to the Tree – the source of its "life" – thinned and snapped. If that happened, then the power that held it together would be lost. The construct would unravel; the illusion would fall away; and the archivist would be revealed for what it really was: a blob of crystal.

Citlali had seen it happen for himself. When he could no longer deny his suspicions, he'd taken hold of the other mew and teleported him to their homeland. His "brother" had struggled before they'd blinked out of existence, and when they'd reappeared, he'd had gone silent and deathly still. It hadn't been long before his body had collapsed, his bones crumbling and his flesh melting under in the heat of the Amazonian sun.

When Citlali had returned to the Tree, he hadn't known what he would find. Perhaps the death of the archivist would have destroyed the Tree as well. Yet there it had stood, unchanged from the day before. As he'd stared at it in stunned silence, something had hit him from behind – and when he'd shaken off his attacker and had whirled around to face it-

"Brother! Brother, tell me stories!" the other mew had cried.

It wasn't alive, so therefore it couldn't die. It didn't think for itself, so therefore it wouldn't remember dying.

The Tree, upon sensing its probe's demise, had simply made another copy and embedded it with the same programming. The copy would do what it had been designed to do: gather information about the world around it. If it had to pretend to be a real person to get people to care for it and give it what it wanted, it would do so.

Citlali hated it for that.

He hated it for giving him hope. If the Tree of Beginning hadn't been so important, the mew would have shattered and melted every crystal in it to ease his pain. But the Tree and its work was important – maybe even essential. So instead of destroying it, Citlali had humored it instead. He'd come to this place and told his stories, because it was his duty as a legendary and the other mew's counterpart. He also did it because he knew that one day even an immortal like him might die. If he did, then he wanted some record of himself – the last of the mew – to remain behind. He did not want his race to be forgotten. To be forgotten was than death.

Mewtwo had said so himself, once.

Mewtwo. If the other mew had been the death of his hope, then Mewtwo had revived it.

He wouldn't have thought so years ago, but it was true. The mew had watched the humans when they'd searched his forest and his shrine. He'd known they were looking for the remains of one of his kind. They'd wanted to resurrect a child – or at least the scientist leading them had.

Citlali, sympathizing with him and sensing that their success was important, had allowed them to have what they'd sought. He'd let the take his brother's eyelash and hadn't given it a second thought. He'd been certain that he'd made the right choice – that his gift would be used to change the world for the better. If the fake mew looked after the past, then it was his duty to look after the future. He'd thought he'd done his work well that day.

It was only later, when he'd discovered what the humans had done with his gift, that Citlali had thought he'd been wrong about that.

He'd allowed the humans to make a monster. He'd allowed them to make a corrupted mew, a copy little better than the mew of the Tree. He'd been furious, and when the opportunity had come for him to confront the abomination, he'd done so gladly. He would have gladly killed Mewtwo, except….

Except his mind had been changed on that island. It had changed when he'd seen Mewtwo's and the other copies' strength. While he still thought the originals were worthier than their counterparts were, the copies had earned their right to exist. And Mewtwo….

Mewtwo was a part of the mew's legacy. He breathed, bled, and fought for what he believed in. His heart was full of passion and he dreamed the mountain dreams. He never forgot Citlali or what they'd shared. He'd even clawed his way into becoming the mew's equal. Compared to the other mew, the clone was so alive – so blessedly alive – and the mew was proud to call him his brother.

But he would not give the fake the same honor.

"What do you mean? I'm just as real as you, silly!"

Citlali, snapping back into the present, glared at his counterpart. "No, you're not. You weren't born. You have no family. You don't even have the decency to stay dead when something kills you. You're just an extension of this Tree. You're nothing more than that."

The other mew floated back and looked at him reproachfully. Someone else, Citlali thought, would have looked at that sweet and heartbroken face and reconsidered. Someone else would have believed that this creature, despite its origins, was a self-aware being. Someone else would have been convinced it had a heart.

Citlali was not that someone. He knew better. He and the Tree had played this game too many times before. He wouldn't be taken in by its ploy now.

"You're so mean!" the other mew cried. "Take it back!"

"No."

"TAKE IT BACK!" it screeched, flinging itself at him.

Citlali teleported before the fake could reach him. As the other mew spun around, he smiled a rueful smile. He knew just what to say. "You're a fake," he murmured, "but even a fake has its uses. Would you like to hear a story?"

And that was all it took to reset its programming. The angry tears disappeared and its childish smile was back. "A story?" the Other Star said, a tear still shining on its cheek. "Tell me!"

So the Bright Star told him a story. He told him Yasu's past, letting it record the tale for time eternal. When that was done, Citlali searched the Tree for someone to play with the other mew. A pikachu took on the task, and with his counterpart distracted, Citlali made his escape. He ascended through the branches of the Tree and flew through the mists surrounding it. Before long, a clear blue sky expanded out before him.

There was a future ahead of him to look towards. He couldn't dwell on the past forever.

Citlali flew on and didn't look back.