Chapter 7

Some weeks later, the child starts awake from dreams not its own. It sits in the dark for a few moments, confused, wondering what brought it round. Then it sees Absol sitting quietly by the far wall, watching, and its disorientation fades as adrenaline floods its veins. It swings itself out of bed and into the right body, then wrestles out of its pajamas and gives itself a look over, checking that it's got everything right, recalling who it is.

You are Weavile, claws out and glinting in the cutting moonlight. The darkness suffusing your body will drive off some of the cold of your journey, a journey to Absol-only-knows-where. She watches you, patient through the time it takes you to gather your wits, then gets to her feet. There is no need for words or explanation. There is only one reason she would be calling on you now. Disaster is coming.

Not your disaster, thankfully. There is one soul left to perish, the one that holds your last pokémon; it is their disaster that Absol feels, and you must be there when it arrives so you can take back your last friend. You dart over to Absol, the last dregs of sleep dissolving before your excitement. You'd never expected this would come so soon, though each death has come quicker than the last. You clutch at Absol's flank as she walks forward into shadow and through the solid wall, guiding you onto the dark ways you will walk to reach the destination Absol feels through her obscure connection to Fate.

When she finally pulls you out of the darkness, you are struck by the urge to turn around and hurl yourself right back in. The stench of the place overwhelms you, the cold burn of disinfectant unable to hide the undertones of sweat and vomit and urine and blood from your sensitive nose. The whirr and beep of machinery fills your ears, and farther away, footsteps, conversations; closer, slow, heavy breathing, the rustling of sheets from the small motions of sleep. You feel the dark fur bristling along your arms as you fight the instinct to flee. Absol is as unaffected as ever, padding past the bed and towards the door.

A hospital. A hospital. What are you supposed to do here? There's no way you can stay out of sight: there are people everywhere, moving about on inscrutable agendas. You didn't bring any human clothes, and even if you had some to wear, they probably wouldn't want you wandering around anyway. Now that the initial shock has worn off, you're able to concentrate, dull your senses until the awful smell is barely noticeable. But that doesn't do much to ease your panic.

You keep low as you scamper across to where Absol waits at the door. A beam of light shines in beneath it, and as you watch, a shadow flashes across as someone walks by outside. In here, things are quiet. Out there, the hospital is sleepless. Out there, you will be seen.

Absol makes as if to leave, reaching a paw up for the handle, but you hiss to her, "Wait! Don't go out there!" She pauses and gives you a blank look.

"People are going to see us, Absol, and they'll throw us out. They don't just let pokémon wander around in here. And what if they figure out I'm not one? I can't go out there. You can't, either." You keep your voice low, ears straining for any sign that the human in the room has been roused by your faint conversation.

Absol stays where she is, up on her haunches with one paw stretching towards the handle overhead. Her look suggests that this is not the time to be worried about such trivialities, but you press on.

"Look, why don't we go outside and try to come up with a plan there? It'll probably be easier to get ahold of the trainer's things after they die, when they're sent somewhere else."

Absol slowly lowers her paw back to the linoleum and impales you on her hardest stare. "If we do not find the trainer now, how will we later? I do not know their name or anything about them; I can feel only where they are, and that their end is coming. I will know them when I see them. I know nothing else. If I wait until they are dead, I will know nothing of them at all. It must be now."

"The humans aren't going to let you see the trainer anyway. If we stop and think, maybe we'll be able to come up with a better way to do this."

Absol snorts lightly. "You worry too much. Watch me, and learn. But if you are truly scared of being seen—then do not be seen."

"How? There's nowhere to hide out there, and there are people everywhere."

All you get in response is a disdainful look, and then Absol's paw lashes out again, faster than the protest being born on your lips, and pulls down the handle. She jerks backwards, popping the door open a crack, then jams her claws into the space between door and jamb before it can shut. She levers it wider and shoulders her way through. You feel the tiniest pang of guilt; you would have had a much easier time getting the door open. But you didn't want it open, and you certainly don't want Absol sashaying out into the hallway the way she is now.

The door is swinging shut again, and you dart out to prop it open with a claw before it can close all the way. You press your eye to the crack and watch.

Absol's presence goes unnoticed for all of around three seconds, at which point a doctor hurrying around a corner nearly trips over her. "Hey, what are you doing in here?" she says, moving to block Absol's way. Absol, ever-stately, alters course just enough to not be intercepted. The doctor is insistent on blocking her path, hustling left and right to stay in front of her, and finally Absol looks up at the woman with her most bored expression, then sits down to wait for her to go away.

The doctor seems unsure how to respond to this. She tries flapping her hands at Absol. "Shoo." The look Absol gives her is enough to make her lower her arms and glance around for help. It isn't far away; you can hear someone else approaching.

"Trouble, Joan?"

"What's this Absol doing here? Does it belong to someone? It shouldn't be wandering around like this."

"I've never seen it before." The doctor's hands twitch, as though he's about to make a shooing motion. Absol turns her gaze on him. He subsides.

You wonder how long she'll be content to sit there and let the humans do their little dance. There isn't much time—minutes, at most—before the unknown trainer dies. If it happens before you can identify them—well, it won't be impossible to track them down, whatever Absol thinks. There will be records: who died here at around the right time. But you have to admit that it would be much more complicated. Absol hates complications.

For your part, you need to get closer so you don't get left behind. As far as you can see, you have only one real option. You can't just be Kecleon (never works; people always notice the stripe) or cast an illusion (useful until you accidentally brush against someone in the hallway and lose it) or simply walk out into the hall yourself, though apparently that's what Absol expects you to do.

You're not going to. You're going to walk the shadow ways yourself, much though you hate doing it.

Outside, a third human has arrived. "...time to time," she's saying. "Usually show up for someone they're connected to—owner, or owner's relative or friend. Who knows, sometimes. Never heard of one making any trouble, and they can be dead useful—watch where they're going and get a crash cart ready, if you know what I mean. Not to mention it'd be a pain in the ass to plug up all the ways they can get in. Might as well let it get where it's going, I think." Absol looks on with her usual icy calm, waiting for them to go off and spout their nonsense elsewhere. You hiss in irritation, softly. If they're letting her go, you can't put things off any longer.

You pull your claw from the crack, then look around the shadowy room as the door swings shut. The scene is perfectly clear before your night vision, for what little good it does you. You could steal the face of this patient, steal their gown, you suppose. But surely they're not supposed to be up and walking around the hospital, either, even if they didn't wake to your ministrations and make a scene. You rub at the base of your crest and turn to stare into the shadows you only just stepped from. It's only a little jump. You'll be fine. You'll be perfectly fine.

Even so, it's not until you force yourself to remember your promise that you can get yourself moving again. There's no way you could stand before her and say that you failed in your mission because you were afraid of the dark. So you steel yourself and gather the shadows around you until the dark ways unroll before your eyes.

It's a frantic scramble to reach the hallway. You dart past a wall that is sometimes there and sometimes not as the world fluxes around you, keeping to the deepest shadows, where the familiar world lies close by. Absol isn't bothered by this place, but you have nothing close to her understanding of it. You cannot tell when the shades of possibility will come or go, and a misstep could impale you on some suddenly-jutting piece of architecture, or sink you two inches down into the floor, and for all their transience shades can leave wounds that will follow you back into the light.

Out in the hallway, more shades are passing. You dance around them warily, doing everything you can not to be touched. If you look closely, you think you can tell which ones are the doctors standing outside right now.

Once you asked Absol whether it's possible to meet yourself, walking the dark ways. After all, the reflections of other people come and go, present, past, and future. She thought that was a stupid question, you could tell, but tried to be kind in answering it. No, you can't, she'd said. Because of course, when you walk the dark ways, you are all your pasts and presents and futures come together, so they can be nowhere else. You still don't understand what she meant, but it's some comfort. You don't know if you would ever be able to face the shadows again if you encountered another of yourselves here, an empty negative ever-wandering.

As you move, you focus on Absol, using her familiar shade to anchor you. As you watch, she gets up and starts to move; the haze of the human shades that had barred her way finally part. She strolls along at her usual unhurried pace, though surely disaster is drawing nigh. Shades flicker in and out of being all around her, moving on their own obscure errands, and you are not experienced enough to recognize which are in the now, actually out in the hospital with Absol, and which are once-beens or yet-to-comes, but none try to stop her.

You realize, as you watch, that Absol's being followed by some human shade—one of the doctors from earlier, you suppose. Clearing the way for her, then? Strange, you think, but convenient. You follow after her, too, skipping and waltzing around the other shades that fill the hall, your path circuitous and fraught while the other two plunge heedless through the brush of memories and visions they can't see. The deep chill of the shadows has worked its way into your bones now, overcoming the darkness running through your body, and you are beginning to tire. This is the farthest you've ever walked the dark ways alone.

You hasten to catch up with Absol, looking all the while for a patch of shadow big enough for you to step through. There aren't any in the corridor, which is brightly lit even at this hour. You consider the rooms to either side, most of them dark, with their blinds drawn for the night, but you need to be able to see where Absol goes. For now, it seems, that means running along in her wake, navigating the shifting shadow-world as best you can.

Absol turns and walks through what must be a doorway, sits, and waits. The air around her absolutely teems with shades, and you hesitate, unwilling to plunge into the fray. Instead you cast about for another place to reemerge, somewhere close enough to hear and see what's going on but safely out of sight. You struggle to make sense of the morphing geometry of the dark world, not able to stand still for a moment, always moving to avoid annihilation by one of its shifting shades, and make a decision. You see an out and lunge for it, in your hurry coming a hairs-breadth too close to an ephemerally-closing door. A stab of chill sets your heart stuttering as the shade passes through the edge of your arm.

No sooner are you through than you toss off your mantle of darkness, cradling the injured arm gingerly and hissing at the pain. The sliver of light creeping in under the door is enough for you to see the blood glistening in your fur, but once you get ahold of yourself, you're able to see it for what it really is—just a scrape. You chide yourself both for your mistake and for your overreaction to it, then go for the doorhandle.

Your dark little hidey-hole is a supply closet just down the hall from the room Absol chose. You ease the door open the slightest crack, just enough that you can see and hear a little of what's going on in the examination room.

It's crowded with humans and pokémon alike, all milling about, with the doctor who'd been following Absol at the center of it all. You sharpen your ears and listen, straining to follow a single voice through the clamor and the white noise of closer, subtler sounds amplified by your change in perception.

The doctor is saying something, urging the group out, out of the room, they need it clear. Human voices rise in response, young, female, tense and anxious; pokémon exclaim to one another in confusion and worry. No one actually goes anywhere, not until your ears bring you the sound of something new. Below the confused clamor of people-noise, there grows the steady, insistent complaint of computers. Alarms sound and displays flash, and the protests and sounds of distress redouble.

The doctor goes from stern to shouting, leaning out into the hall to summon aid from people passing by. At last the room's occupants pile out, while medical staff rush in, and for a few seconds there is great confusion as people swirl and eddy outside the exam room. Then the door is shut, firmly, doctors and nurses within going through their dance of injections and intubations and resuscitations in a futile attempt to stave off the workings of Fate.

Your breath catches in your throat as you see Thunderstorm mixed in with the jumble of those waiting. It's been years, of course, but you'd recognize Thunder anywhere, with its one crooked magnet and the dent in its bottom side, a souvenir from a battle with an overly exuberant machop. It's evolved now, you note with affectionate pride, the original Thunderstorm being the leftmost magnet. Whatever your feelings towards the trainers who stole your friends, they at least seem to have been treated well.

The magneton is staying aloof from the crisis, seeming more resigned than anything while the gaggle of pokémon and two humans, girls in their late teens, probably, or perhaps just twenty, jabber at one another and at people passing in the hall, working themselves into a froth of apprehension. A couple of nurses have taken it upon themselves to try and calm the bunch down, keep them quiet and out of the way, remind them of the patients all around who are trying to sleep. The exam room's door stays closed, an unknown battle raging beyond.

Ordinarily you would have passed the time pretending to be in one of your favorite medical dramas. Now, though, you can't take your eyes off Thunderstorm, longing to rush over and greet it, whatever the consequences. You suppose it probably wouldn't be very happy to see you, considering the circumstances—your other companions were all rather distressed by the deaths of their itinerant trainers, regardless of how happy they were to see you again, and you doubt Thunderstorm will be any different.

The eddy of activity inside the room slows a bit, and you sense that your wait will soon be over. One of the doctors comes out to speak with the waiting humans, and your sharpened ears easily carry her words back to you. "I'm sorry...."

The rest is drowned out by the ripple of anguish that runs through the group. The cries of various pokémon and the small gasps of the human girls fill the corridor, and the pace of your heartbeat surges, loud in your ears. It's over, then. Thunderstorm is yours to take now, and once you have it, finally, your work can truly begin.

The doctors and nurses summoned by the shrilling of the equipment are filing out, exhausted and slump-shouldered, doing their best not to notice the anguished group in the corridor. Their colleague, with the unlucky job of watching over the survivors, motions for them to come back inside, where the body is waiting. You watch the group shamble into the room, some moving quickly, seeming almost eager in their disbelief, some belabored and already resigned to the truth. Thunderstorm drifts along near the rear, and you watch its progress hungrily.

Absol is still inside the room; she's probably settled herself near the door, out of the way and no doubt soon forgotten. One way or another, you can't see her from this angle. You drum your claws against the doorjamb and consider making a brief jump over to the room, popping up in the shadow below the bed, perhaps, or under a cabinet. Probably too risky, though. The pokémon would be able to smell you, even if you stayed concealed. They're distracted at the moment, though...

Not worth the risk. You subside, annoyed but schooling yourself to patience. You've already waited so long, after all. You can handle a few more minutes. Better that than screw everything up over some stupid risk. You lean your head against the doorjamb, as though the cool wood might soothe the thoughts raging around your skull. What you need is a plan, and for that, you need to calm down. You aren't having much luck with that, though, especially not now that the typhlosion's crying is starting to intrude on your thoughts.

To the humans in the room it probably sounds like nothing more than animal wailing, and there is some of that. But you can also hear words.

"How could she leave us?" the typhlosion is bawling, paws over his face and his snout buried in the sheet next to the cooling body of his trainer. "What's going to happen to us? Who's going to take care of us?"

Thunderstorm hovers quietly behind him, at a respectful distance. Its glassy eyes are impassive, and no emotion colors the flat pop-popping of its sparking words. "It won't be so bad. I've done it before. When this happened to my first trainer, well... they send you to the PC for a bit, and if they don't have a place for you, they release you. I wanted to be trained, and it didn't take me long to find another human—Meghan."

The typhlosion makes a mewling noise and slams his fists on the bedspread. "But I've never been wild! I don't want to be wild! I don't want them to release me!"

"You're a starter. They understand that. I'm sure they'll be able to find something for you—maybe not something that involves a lot of battling, but they won't just throw you into the wild. I don't think." There is an interval of low humming, the magneton equivalent of a "hmmm," and then, "There was a starter on my old team, a charmander. I don't know what they did with him, not for sure. But he wasn't with those of us they released. So I think you'll be fine."

The typhlosion puts his paws over his face and whines, rubbing his snout in the sheets like he wants to burrow under them and hide. Thunderstorm turns slowly away, drifting closer to the front of the room. It doesn't look at its trainer's corpse, nor at the other people in the room, the buizel crying quietly in a corner, the plusle and minun hugging each other just the same as the humans across the bed are, looking confused and frightened.

You mark the faint droop in Thunder's magnets and its intermittent, confused sparking, and a twisted jealousy rises in you. There it is, grieving for the trainer who stole it from you, took it from its purpose, and still it mourns her like she deserves it. You dig your claws into doorframe and saw them back and forth to dispel a bit of your anger. It's irrational, you tell yourself. As far as Thunderstorm knows—you even heard it say as much—you're as dead as the imposter is now. But still.

The humans—trainers, presumably; at least Meghan was one—are doing their best to answer the doctor's gentle questions. You idly wonder what exactly their friend, or sister, or perhaps just some stranger, died of. Something to ask Thunderstorm later. Now that the typhlosion's subsided to more quiet grief, you can pick up their conversation easily enough.

"Yes, her parents—I called her parents when we got here. They were getting a flight... I-I think they should be in the air now. Probably just a couple more hours." The girl swallows audibly and swipes at red-rimmed eyes. "I'm sorry, I don't really know how... how to handle..." Her friend, beside her, nods.

"That's fine," the doctor says, giving them a worn smile. "We'll take care of it. It'll be up to her parents to make the final arrangements. Will you be staying to meet them here?" The two nod wordlessly, leaning against each other in exhaustion. "I'll leave you alone, then. But I think you should consider going down to the café, have some coffee, tea, maybe something to eat. You've had a long night."

"I don't know if I could—" the first girl starts, but her friend puts a hand on her arm and she pauses, taking a great, shuddering breath. "Okay. Okay, yeah... maybe that would help."

The doctor nods and says, "It's up to you. But remember, if you leave the room, please recall your pokémon. They can't be out in the rest of the hospital, and we'd appreciate if you didn't leave them unsupervised."

"Oh, right. Sure." The first trainer rummages pokéballs out of a pocket and recalls several of the room's occupants, Thunderstorm among them, in flashes of red light. You hiss a curse to yourself and start drumming your claws again, then stop immediately when a nurse passing in the hallway pauses, her gaze roaming as if she's trying to find the source of a mysterious noise. You force yourself to stand quietly while you fume about the situation Fate's thrown you into. How are you going to get that pokéball out of the girl's pocket, especially here, where you can hardly move for fear of being seen?

The second trainer, the taller one, hasn't moved. The remaining pokémon peek at her around the edge of the bed, obviously nervous. As the doctor turns to leave, she speaks up. "If pokémon aren't allowed out in the hospital, what about that absol that came in with you? Does it work here?"

The doctor grimaces and turns towards what is presumably Absol, and you can picture the woman receiving a cutting stare in return for her pointed look. "No, it doesn't. They show up around here sometimes, and we haven't had much luck keeping them out. I suggest you just ignore this one, unless it starts to cause trouble; then you should call someone to try and remove it."

"It's that omen thing, isn't it?" the girl presses. "They're supposed to show up when their trainer's in danger, aren't they?" The vehemence in her voice unnerves the doctor, who takes a step back, raising her hands in a placating gesture. Across the room, the remaining pokémon take notice, and all eyes turn towards Absol.

"I'm sure I couldn't—" the doctor begins, but the trainer isn't listening.

"If they show up when someone's in danger, why didn't this one come earlier, when—when—?" the trainer goes on. She's starting to tear up again, but her face is set in an angry grimace, her voice rising. Her pokémon tense, and so do you.

The other girl glances at her friend, then hisses at Absol, "Go away. You got to see what you wanted, didn't you? So now go. You aren't welcome here." You can imagine Absol's bored stare.

"I—I'm not just going to ignore it! It was there when Meghan died. It was just watching? Some warning! Some help!" With sudden decisiveness, she points at Absol and barks, "Minun! Get rid of that thing!"

"Ma'am!" the doctor yelps. "This is a hospital! Recall your pokémon!"

The minun himself looks bewildered, still shell-shocked with grief, tiny and nervous in the strange new world of the hospital. At his trainer's goading, he toddles up next to her feet and starts to spark from cheeks and paws alike, but he is still reluctant to attack.

"I'll call security, Ma'am," the doctor says warningly. "I'll call—" And then she leans out into the hall and yells for assistance, for the trainer is paying her no attention at all.

"Go on, Minun. Spark!" she yells, shrugging off the restraining hand of her friend. Minun pulls himself together and makes a dash for Absol while you agonize in indecision. A battle, a scene, sure to draw attention to you and your mission—the last thing you need. But on the other hand, who's going to notice you in the midst of the chaos? Who's going to be able to say with certainty, afterwards, exactly what happened?

It may not be the best chance, but it is a chance. You decide to take it.

Meanwhile, the minun is racing for Absol, who remains out of sight until the electric type is perilously close. Then she lunges from her spot and into your field of view, lashing out swift and precise with a paw. The minun is swatted aside and into the wall, striking it with a pathetic little smack and falling in a crumpled heap.

Absol flinches ever so slightly from the shock of contact with the sparking pokémon, but is hardly hurt. You gather your strength, then hurl yourself across the corridor in an impossible burst of speed, coming to rest at the foot of the bed in the examination in half a heartbeat.

While Minun gets unsteadily to his feet and calls up his lightning again, the humans stare at you in brief shock. "Another one?" one trainer asks.

And, her anger temporarily forgotten, the second replies, "A—weavile?"

"That's the biggest weavile I've ever seen..."

You ignore them, bringing your claws together in front of your face and concentrating. For all your practice, this attack never comes easy to you. You draw deep on the shadows, and darkness wells up and through you, hollowing out your chest, scouring your insides with the chill of the unreal. It overflows and pours out from the shell of your body, the fluorescent lights overhead dimming as a wave of dark energy sweeps out in all directions, a tide of nightmare power that engulfs everyone in the room, catching their minds in its inky undertow. The minun's electricity goes out with a tiny zzzt!, and he staggers and sinks to the floor while the humans collapse boneless and unconscious behind him, pulled down into noxious, unnatural sleep. Absol lets fall the energy barrier that shielded her from the attack and looks around with mild interest, then back at you, waiting for an explanation.

Before you can give one, an angry cry from behind you announces that you didn't manage to fell all the onlookers, and Absol dashes around you to head off a snarling nidorino. Meanwhile, a glance to the side finds that the noises of combat have started to attract onlookers; a couple nurses stand at the door, eyes wide, mute with surprise. You send them scampering with bared teeth and a quick lunge, then turn back to the task at hand.

You have to work quickly. You don't know how well your attack will work on human physiology, so you have no idea how long the humans scattered around you will stay out, how long you have before security shows up or someone else interferes. One of the girls is already awake, maybe from the shock of her skull cracking against the tiles. But it's a vague, insensible consciousness, and she offers no resistance as you scamper over her to reach her friend.

You plunge a claw into the trainer's pocket, digging out pokéballs. You struggle to keep hold of them as you dart over to a pair of chairs up against the wall and the three large hiking packs propped next to them. You bring a fist down on one of the bags to create a depression, then drop the pokéballs into it with your other hand. A couple nestle in place, but several slither away, rebounding from the tiled floor and scattering in all directions.

You curse to yourself and give chase, shouting for Absol to come and find you. She pins the nidorino under a paw and gives her usual curt nod of acknowledgement, flicking a misty spatter of blood from the edge of her blade in the process. You hardly notice, skidding around on the tile and snatching at bouncing pokéballs with clumsy claws. When at last you've gathered them all again, you race back to the bags and press yourself up against them, stretching out to be sure you're touching all three at once. Then you jump, thinking yourself back to the only safe place you can reach from here—the storage closet.

There in the dark you slice the bags open, not stopping to bother with the zippers, spilling their contents onto the floor. You sort through it with anxious haste—clothes, food, first aid kit; no pokédex. Fear seizes you as you stir the tangle of junk, digging in slapdash haste to find the only thing that concerns you. Maybe it's gone, turned over to an authority or placed in some official holding.

On through candy bars, a dog-eared magazine, more clothing—crumpled clothing, tangled around itself instead of carefully rolled up like the rest, and here, a pokénav, keys—the pokédex. It skitters out onto the tiles and you snatch it up, fumbling it open with your outsize claws and then groping for the pokéballs, which have by now spilled in all directions. Absol steps out of the gloom to find you grabbing them up one at a time and pressing them to the pokédex's reader, watching the screen to discover what is inside each.

At last you find the one you're looking for and drop the rest, letting them bounce and roll away into whatever crevices they please. You struggle with the hatch on the back of the pokédex, only now bothering to let your claws melt away and reform into dextrous human digits. You pull the data card from its little slot and drop the dead pokédex onto the pile of detritus, then glance up at Absol and grin. She gives a small nod, then half-turns away, inviting. You vault over the ruin of the trainers' possessions and land by her side, putting a hand on her shoulder. Absol starts forward, the dark ways unrolling before her, and guides you both home.

Back at the house, the child spends a long time simply clutching the pokéball in its hands, elated but too exhausted to face the pokémon inside. But the thrill of victory will not let it rest, and it lies awake on its bed until long after morning comes, thinking, exulting, remembering. Remembering Cinnabar.

It had watched footage of the eruption on television, marveling at the disaster it had so narrowly avoided. At the time it hadn't thought of anything but how lucky it had been to survive, to have Absol. But then, two days later, she came for it. "Come. There is something you must see." And the place she took it was like the ruins of hell.

Cinnabar Island was wiped out, nothing left standing. Some buildings had been engulfed by lava flows, the others flattened by the force of the blast itself or crushed beneath the boulders it had hurled. The wreckage was covered meters-deep in choking ash. Absol was practically swimming through it, and the child struggled to follow, floundering through with its shirt pulled over its face in a vain effort to block out the particulates, coughing miserably all the while. But it knew better than to complain. Absol, her usually immaculate coat soiled and dark, would not have brought it here for no reason.

She reached an anonymous pile of wreckage climbed the jut of a splintered beam poking from the ash slurry, claws digging deep into the crumbling wood to hold herself steady. The child stopped below and waited, looking for some indication of why Absol had brought it there. But the slumping gray humps of ash obscured everything, and even if they'd been standing at the center of the town hall, the child would never have been able to tell.

"Listen," Absol said. "Look around you. This is Fate."

"Fate" wasn't right. When Absol spoke of it, the child got the impression that what she meant was something far larger and more complicated than such a human word, but "Fate" was the best translation it could make. It had tried grilling Absol about it many times over the years, but all that had ever happened was the two of them frustrating each other. Absol would be annoyed by the child's stupidity—how could it fail to understand something so natural and obvoius? And the child had been completely bewildered by Absol's analogies—what was it supposed to do with explanations like "It is like the way shadows bend when they flow over blood?"

So, Fate it was. Absol continued. "Two years ago, a terrible crime happened here. It was a crime both against Mew and against nature itself. It must not be allowed to happen again. Look around you. Those who were responsible have been punished." She tipped her head to the side, ever so slightly. "And those who were not responsible have also been punished. Such is the way of Fate."

The child looked again at the shattered remains of Cinnabar Island, then to the still-smoking volcano rising overhead, one side of its cone disintegrated by the explosion. Half-imagined pictures of white-furred shadows, padding quietly through history, teased at its brain. Sometimes it wasn't sure whether Absol thought Fate was something that was or something you did.

"There are many who abetted the creation of Mewtwo, and every last one of them will be punished. They will die. They will die unnaturally. They will die before the time set down for them."

Ah. A question. The child, most certainly, had so abetted. And it had to ask—did that mean that it, too...?

Absol gave it a long, steady look, and after a moment it subsided, sheepish. Oh. Of course. It had already died.

Absol continued. "You recall that I have a mission."

It did. Defend the child.

"You recall that you have a mission as well. One that you did not undertake alone."

It did. Its heartbeat quickened as it began to suspect.

"After you died, humans took your pokémon and divided them. They have come to rest in the hands of others who were here on Cinnabar, others who have been marked by Fate. Each of these will perish, and perish unnaturally, before their time. When they do, I will know. When they do, you will be reunited with your friends. You will take what they had and use it to carry out your mission, so that their possessions may be used to rectify the wrong they helped bring about. Such is the will of Fate." She fixed the child with a hard stare. "You have grown into your strength. It is time for you to begin your mission in earnest. Are you prepared?"

Yes, of course. It said as much, wheezed it, gagging on the suffocating mouthful of ash-filled air it sucked down in its excitement. Absol was solemn in the face of its hacking affirmation. She nodded. "Then come." She leaped from the beam and dropped into the wreckage, the remains of some anonymous building now blasted from its foundation. She dug industriously, hollowing out a crevice in the shifting ash and batting free a grime-covered pokéball, sending it rolling towards the child's feet. As it bent down to pick it up, she said, "This is the first. See to it that you do not forget its purpose, or your own."

Only later would the child wonder how Absol managed to find the thing, buried in a pile of soot in some no-account corner of Cinnabar Island. At the time it had been too overwhelmed by the reunion with its friend, with the treasure salvaged from the wreckage, with the fact that it suddenly had a real home, once the summer vacation house of some wealthy Cinnabar resident, now left empty and forgotten on a little island to the south.

The child held that first pokéball—Rats' pokéball—didn't understand what it meant, what it was embarking on. Now it holds this last pokéball, and the circle is complete. It has planned and waited and grown impatient and waited still more, and finally it is ready to set out on its journey. It's a journey long-deferred, dreamt of by a dead human child but never taken. It is a journey dreamt of once again by the person it has become, and today it will begin.

There are eight badges. There is a grand tournament, held once per year. It is only a little over a month away.

The child will win those badges. It will enter the tournament. And it will meet the trainer who holds the key to its future—its future, and that of its mother.

But first, someone else will have to die.