Bill’s laboratory was not an imposing building – not from the outside.

  No, it more resembled a shed than anything, if one that mirrored the opulence of the Sonezaki manor; small, composed mainly of painted concrete with a pointed Ecruteak-style wooden roof, and tucked unobtrusively away by the side of the main residence. But inside, it was maybe the absolute toughest facility that Number Twelve could ever imagine herself breaching with any level of reliability. Not only was it defended by both trained guard Pokémon and automated defences, but also a cadre of electronic countermeasures and – perhaps most infuriating – the scientist in question’s odd idiosyncrasies.

  For instance, the front door; it was guarded by motion-tracking turrets that could somehow detect a shinobi even through the concealing shroud of their ninjutsu. Ordinarily machines were much easier to fool than living eyes, but inside Bill’s house of mirrors reality was often turned on its head. Twelve was always forced to move at a snail’s pace – by which she meant a normal human walking speed – lest she be unceremoniously filled with lead… Which was a problem, because the umbreon guarding the lift down were a lot smarter than the turrets. They would detect her even through a mundane disguise, and so every single time she went in she needed to expend a mountain of psychedelics to disable the flesh-and-blood guards, a similar amount of specialised, one-time-use keycards to outwit the porygon inside the computer system, and what felt like a permanent chunk of her brain just to get in the door.

  Because of course Bill’s passwords – which changed every few weeks – never failed to be less than fifty digits long, seemingly – potentially actually – completely random, and apparently perfectly memorised without the aid of a conveniently copyable note. Meaning Twelve had to actually see him input the code, write it down, and then memorise it herself well enough to punch it in quickly. She could only thank Arcus that the front camera had a blind spot so she could read a cheat-sheet, otherwise it would be an impenetrable barrier.

  No, it was merely difficult – which meant that every few months she was forced to slough off Tamara like a cocoon, and venture inside.

  Because keeping tabs on what Bill Sonezaki had up his sleeves was just about the most important responsibility the Ankoku had, tied only with keeping the Three Earthly Lords from being captured… And despite the chaos that was unfolding in the wake of the matriarch and her direct subordinates' deaths, Twelve still had a duty to see that responsibility fulfilled.

  Which brought her to the present moment. 8-7-7-5-4, 6-9-9-8-6, 2-5-4-5-4, 3-6-7-4-1, and… The door slid open, and Twelve, dressed in carefully recreated clothing and with a skin-texture mask slipped atop her normal one, felt a spark of relief fizzle across the crown of her head. Infuriating as always; almost a pattern, but not quite.

  She walked forward, black dress shoes padding against the tile and leaving them with faint grass stains, and gave a nod to the interior camera. “Hello Giga! How are you today?”

  Another spark of relief as the porygon on the other end didn’t activate the trap-door, and Twelve let herself relax just the tiniest bit; the disguise was working as well as it needed to – as well as it always had. As well as it would… until the inevitable day when it didn’t.

  No, no catastophising – stay focused.

  Past the metallic foyer was a much more homey room decorated with carpet and several paintings, and she gave a brilliant smile to the jynx and two mimes sitting around the coffee table. “Hello all! I hope you’re having a wonderful day!”

  Twelve’s tension ratcheted up and down as the psychic types touched her mind and found the vague shape of Bill, the artificial baffle glued under her jaw holding steady against their scrutiny. As with most infiltrations, the shinobi was counting on the guards’ apathy more than a completely airtight disguise – if they really dug, she’d be revealed in short order. But she looked like Bill, talked like Bill, and had made it through the front door with casual ease, and so the Pokémon had no reason to suspect. The mimes waved and the jynx cooed like a dove as she passed, heading for the elevator. “I’d love to chat, but Miss Moshi has been doing so well lately, I just can’t leave her waiting – on the way back, I promise!”

  Agonisingly slow steps took her through the second half of the first floor and into the elevator, which was back to being a utilitarian metal box. The only thing that stood out were the bright hand-painted Down! And Up! scrawled enthusiastically on the construction’s two buttons, and the umbreon lying curled up in a pet bed in the corner. Asleep? That’s… sloppy.

  Suspiciously sloppy. A quiet “Hello?” tested the waters, and Twelve found that the dark type really was asleep – or pretending well enough to fool even her. Which presented something of a conundrum. I have no idea if Bill would wake the thing up.

  She very much did not look at the camera winking out from a top corner as she pressed the down button, her attention focused on the umbreon. Damn it. This has never happened before. Gigagigo – how Bill thought up these names, she couldn’t fathom – was no doubt still watching her, the porygon3’s immense data-crunching abilities more than enough to keep track of every camera at once. Which meant that this softly napping ball of fur might just get her killed; if she didn’t act exactly like Bill, then-

  Again, no catastrophising. You’re a trained operative – you can wing it.

  Still smiling, Twelve bent down. Hidden from both the overt camera and the second, hidden one in the opposite bottom corner, she pulled a hair-thin splinter from her sleeve and held it between two fingers. “Taking a nap, hm?" she said with a pat. "Hah, you really shouldn’t do that in the elevator! We have a break room, you know.”

  There. With a dose of addling drugs in its system it no longer mattered if the umbreon was faking; it wouldn’t think to raise the alarm even if it detected her ninjutsu. Actually putting it to sleep would have been even better, but I haven’t been resupplied since the attack on the basement. No, all she had left on that front were aerosolised gas bombs, and those were an emergency measure. Twelve spent the rest of the ride down tipping back and forth on the balls of her feet, feigning boredom – and, eventually, the elevator door opened to another battery of turrets.

  Bullets failed to spray from the weapons, and so Twelve paid them little mind as she continued forward. Down in the lab’s depths the decor was a strange, eclectic mix of different styles, traditional Central Johto woodwork interspersed with actual laboratory equipment and great banks of computer mainframes – and as she passed through the barebones weapons section and into a series of much more richly-appointed rooms where Bill had been tinkering with the next iteration of the Pokémon Transfer System, the shinobi couldn’t help but wish, as she always did, for five uninterrupted minutes to properly snoop around. Or three. Or even one.

  But no, there was too much scrutiny for that. Twelve had to pick her targets carefully, and thus…

  “Giga!” she cried as she finally made it to the chunk of the facility that held the most tightly-kept secrets – the place she privately labeled the splicing division. “You didn’t answer me at the door!”

  The porygon3’s actual body was, as always, unsettling to look at – and that wasn’t just because of the numerous wires feeding into it. The original version of the Pokémon had been created with the goal of maintaining humanity’s orbital infrastructure, and its form had followed that function; bright colouration to aid visibility, flat surfaces to capture sunlight and lie flush with bulkheads and each other. People often compared the artificial Pokémon with early 3D video game characters, but the similarity was an honest coincidence; it was only happenstance that the completed porygon also ended up being capable of entering electronic systems.

  Porygon2 and its bastard cousin porygon.exe took that happenstance and ran with it, tweaking the base form’s EPI ‘coding’ to enhance its ability to manipulate computer systems – the latter especially, as it was fully adapted to an electronic habitat, capable of living indefinitely and even reproducing itself within a system. As such, their forms were distinct; the official evolution was a sleek and refined version of the original, while .exe sacrificed real-world function entirely for a fully digitised body that could easily transmit itself through the old copper cables that the nascent internet had used. It was a jagged, ugly thing, the Pokémon equivalent to a grenade mid-explosion – and Bill’s iteration of porygon3 took the ghost of a cue from Porygonamous’s indiscriminate terror weapon, moving away from space exploration and further into cyberspace.

  Gigagigo was, like his predecessors, blue and pink. His surface was smooth and had a supremely strange lighting to it – the Pokémon did not glow, exactly, but its neon form was more visible than it should have been. It really does look like a video game character made real. He still, very vaguely, looked like a duck if one squinted; his head was wedge-shaped, tapering harshly and becoming fully two-dimensional at the ‘beak,’ and he maintained the two appendages that Twelve couldn’t help but think of as pontoons – they too were two-dimensional, perfectly flat planes with only the slightest ability to manipulate objects.

  Where things diverted from porygon2 was the body. Gigagigo was not mostly-solid like his previous evolutions, but distressingly segmented. His bottom half was a series of rib-like curved tubes that held his weight as he rested, while his back was nothing more than hundreds and hundreds of cylinders, clustered like porcupine quills as they sprouted from a translucent cloud of interlocking candy-coloured shapes – the Pokémon’s organs, such as it could be said to have any. Each ‘quill’ was a few centimetres long, and about half of them ended in a wire – a connection to the laboratory’s many systems, hardwired into the monster’s perception. Twelve knew that Bill would never willingly hurt a Pokémon – no, every death in this place was purely accidental – but it looked like the porygon3 should be in pain just from existing.

  But of course, it – he – wasn’t; Giga beeped happily as her disguise continued to hold tight, and then actually spoke in Kantonese.

  “Hello Bill! Nothing to report in the security – I’ll have to give Oxy reprimand for napping! No treats for the unhappy dog!”

  His voice was monotone, and the sentence structure was plainly incorrect, but the fact that this Pokémon could fully understand and speak human language in addition to machine code and the cries of other monsters was a breathtaking accomplishment. “Oh, don’t be hard on him,” Twelve replied, her husky voice easily passing for Bill’s boyish one with only minimum effort. “We’ve all been burning the midnight oil. Things are so close to completion – I feel like I’m going to explode!”

  Another happy beep, and then the dozens of screens lining the walls flicked on all at once. Streams of text flowed past at an impossible-to-follow rate – for her, at least; the real Bill would no doubt be able to take something from the deluge – as Giga’s less-evolved brethren peeked out from the corners. “Collated data of eight hours since last visit! Gigagigo will show the progress?”

  “In a minute, Giga. I want to say hello to Miss Moshi Mochi first!”

  With a wave and a grin still in place, Twelve stepped past the artificial Pokémon, playfully making a grab for a wire. Giga responded with monotone giggles, which was profoundly creepy, and angled his port away. “Okay! I hold the everything for a minute!”

  “You do that – I’ll be back in two shakes of a mareep’s tail.”

  And so, the shinobi continued downwards. There was no elevator this time, just a ladder providing passage through a shaft tight enough her shoulders brushed the smooth concrete walls, pure darkness enclosing her the moment the automated door closed above. Within the darkness came first one giggle, then dozens – and Giga’s emotionless expression couldn’t hope to hold a candle to any of them. “Hello ladies,” Twelve whispered to the misdreavus that were the final guardians sealing Bill’s innermost sanctum from prying eyes. “Nice to see you again – though it’s only been a few hours, heh heh…”

  Like the psychic types above these ghosts had no ability to see through her ninjutsu, the dark energy subtly altering the shape of her soul to match Bill’s; the misdreavus only lightly touched her, stealing heat but not vitality, though she couldn’t help but shiver against their cold. One day. One day I’ll get it a little too wrong, and Bill will stumble over my corpse at the bottom of the shaft.

  The supernatural aura retreated as she opened the door at the end and stepped out, and she attempted to leave the morbid thought behind with it; now came the work.

  The lab’s bottommost chamber wasn’t large, but it was dense; glass tubes and computers fought with sci-fi-looking platforms and surgical equipment over the limited space, producing an environment that was both cramped and uncomfortably hot. Twelve weaved her way in, producing a sheaf of keycards from under her shirt. Thank Arcus there aren’t any cameras in here; that would make this nearly impossible. She made her way to one particular tube, one which contained the new ditto fresh from Cinnabar – Miss Moshi. Beside it was an old-fashioned console, looking distinctly out of place next to the hyper-modern machines on either side, and she quickly inserted four keycards into the slots in its top.

  A small sigh escaped her lips as she began to type – and within moments Twelve was looking at the raw data of Bill’s fusion experiments. Two of the keycards were replaced, transforming the numbers and shorthand into something actually comprehensible. Good, he hasn’t changed the security since last time. Now, let’s see…

  She tapped her way past the data itself in favour of Bill’s notes, which were always expansive and detailed – too detailed, sometimes. Two months back, one – here we go. This should be when he started to get really excited…

  Twelve stopped skimming and started reading in earnest, and as she did she couldn’t help but let the easygoing smile slip from her lips – and then, as the implications settled, a curse managed to escape her. “This is- shit.” Team Plasma is in Kanto? How could Bill possibly know this? And why didn’t they? Bill had a passable network of informants, but it was nothing compared to the Ankoku – or the other ninja clans, or even Blaine. She dug further, moving backwards, and found the answer: it had been Plasma that had discovered Bill’s secret dream and reached out, not the other way around. Where are they? There has to be something- Bill doesn’t camouflage this journal at all, if he knows it’ll definitely be in here..!

  Lords and Generals, why are there so many pages gushing about his fucking pets?! Desperation bid her to wildly skim; she’d been expecting to only need to read the last few entries, but now there were potentially months worth of material to sift through. There simply wasn’t enough time to do things properly – the keycards would only shield her suspicious actions from Gigagigo’s all-seeing electronic eyes for so long. Plasma, Plasma- Ghetsis? That’s a familiar name. One of their leaders? There were dozens of organisations that her family had files on, which added up to hundreds of names – but luckily, this one was unique enough she could pick it out near-instantly. Ghetsis Harmonia Gropius, one of their ‘Sages.’

  Apparently, they’d met physically and exchanged notes; Twelve couldn’t decipher the technical specifications of what this Gene Wedge the text was describing did, but she supposed the name rather gave it away. Her eyes drifted from the screen to the ditto…

  And then further, to the numerous in-progress attempts to transform a human being into a Pokémon, intellect and memory intact. The malformed things floated serenely in their tubes, unaware that they – according to their creator’s notes, at least – were only a step away from success.

  And Bill is apparently willing to sell out all of Indigo for that last step. It wasn’t quite the doomsday scenario she’d been dreading, but it was still bad. Team Rocket, Kanto’s secessionist rabblerousers, and now a Unovan terrorist group… How many people are planning to attack the Indigo League this winter?

  Her time was up. With quick motions the keycards were pulled free and a final one inserted, deleting the infiltrator’s activity – and then, as Twelve was turning to leave, there was a faint sound from the narrow escape shaft.

  Then another, and another… someone was climbing down. Damn it. There it was, the coincidence that she’d been seeing in her head since the moment she’d made it through the front door; either Bill had woken from the mania-induced sleep the past fifty hours of non-stop work had caused ahead of schedule, or the only other person allowed inside, Lady Miu, had decided to take a trip down despite only entering the building a single time in all of Twelve’s years as a maid. And despite leaving for a personal errand less than an hour ago.

  She had perhaps five seconds to choose; hide herself away by cramming under a machine, destroying her Bill disguise and making the trip out substantially less likely to succeed… or continue to maintain her cover, drugging whoever this was and accepting that when they woke, her identity as Tamara would almost certainly be compromised.

  It was hardly a serious choice. As the door opened Twelve mimed working on the console, then turned a surprised smile towards, as she’d suspected, Lady Miu. “Honey! I’m surprised to see you – you hardly ever come down here!”

  Bill’s wife smiled back, though the expression was unsettlingly sad. “Miss Tamara. I’m afraid that I can’t allow you to leave this place – I really am sorry…”

  “I really am sorry… Would that there were some other way, but I can see none.”

  Mew watched the mask bearing her husband’s face slowly lose its smile, the expression exactly as his would have been had she said something so strange to the real Bill. “Pardon? I think I missed-”

  Mid-sentence two round pellets dropped from the disguised woman’s sleeve, hitting the ground and bursting into opaque smoke – and with a gesture Mew took hold of the room’s air, dropping the poison to the ground and stopping Tamara’s fingers only centimetres from her neck.

  “That disguise might have fooled me, if my husband were not still sleeping in his room up above… and if the darkness of your heart did not hang about you like a funeral shroud, Tamara. Let us dispense with it.”

  During the years she and Mewtwo and his brethren had spent together in the expansive, twisting cavern near Cerulean City, they had conversed many times on the nature of their power. From these conversations Mew had slowly intuited that her clone, with his fused essence, experienced himself in a very different way than she did – Mewtwo used his power the way one would grasp with a limb, flexing ephemeral muscles in accordance with conscious or subconscious desire.

  She did not do that – no, Mew was her power. The bounds of her self expanded to fill the room as a soft pink light, no longer confined to the physical body that Tamara was still staring at, panic sparking along the woman’s mind to match the shine in her eyes. The mask fashioned to look like her husband’s face peeled away, as did the darkly-coloured fabric beneath – how she had made it look like a mouth, Mew hadn’t the foggiest idea. The face that was revealed wasn’t an exact match for the estate’s maid, but it was close enough to become it with little effort.

  Then the small disk of stone pulled free from the underside of Tamara’s jaw, and Mew could begin to feel her entire mind. “There we are. My, you are a striking young woman – you really shouldn’t have hidden it all away with makeup these many years, it’s such a shame.”

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Tamara did not reply.

  “I realise I am repeating myself, but… I really would prefer that this wasn’t happening. Usually I would arrange a coincidence to keep you away until it was too late to stop, but… Well, things have been rather hectic. I was visiting my son, and time slipped away from me…”

  The woman’s muscles strained like the cords of a suspension bridge during a typhoon, threatening to snap with the effort of her attempted movement. This is awkward… Perhaps I should..? Generally she would not, but with the circumstances…

  Mew let out a sigh, and poured herself into the woman’s mind. The artificial mimicry of a dark type’s natural defences rose up to block her, but the difference in scale was simply too great; the energy spent itself to little effect, and Tamara’s limbs loosened. “What- how did you..?”

  “I would like you to tell me that you’ll stay put if I leave you down here. Can you do that for me, Tamara?”

  The alarm on the woman’s face gave way to blankness as Mew let her go, the needle dropping from fingers too weak to hold it. Tamara tested her legs, found them to be only barely strong enough to stand, and then spoke a canned phrase worn so deeply into her mind it may as well have been carved physically. “Sakura Miu, this shinobi has uncovered evidence of treason against the Indigo League. That which exists in shadow always comes to light, and this shinobi’s death will not protect you; the path to redemption begins with contacting the Indigo Region Intelligence and Subterfuge Division at the phone number zero-zero-three. Reveal this shinobi’s trespass upon your property-”

  “Miss Tamara, I would prefer-”

  “-And negotiations may begin. This shinobi’s disappearance will only cause you greater scrutiny; the-”

  “-That we have an honest conversation-”

  “-Path to redemption must be taken by your own hand-”

  “-Enough!” The part of Mew filling the human’s mind stilled her tongue, and silence fell as the two stared at each other, one blank-faced and the other with a small grimace. “I could simply compel you to tell me, Tamara. Your defences cannot stop me from controlling you body, and they will not stop me if I decide to do the same to your mind. I ask that you speak to me forthrightly, so that I am not forced to take such drastic action.” I would really, truly prefer not to have it come to that. Please – spare us both that unpleasantness.

  The silence continued even after Mew relinquished control of the trespasser’s mouth, but she was patient; eventually Tamara’s calculation settled on an answer, and she spoke in her own words – though her face failed to reflect the emotions underneath. “Lady Sakura Miu, daughter of a minor noble family in Cherrygrove City. Aging parents, no siblings, unremarkable by the standards of your station… How did you ever manage to fool us so completely?”

  Mew smiled. “Speaking honestly, I have never tried very hard to fool anyone. Somei and Shidare are a wonderful couple, and I am grateful that they accepted me as their daughter… though I do wish the reasoning behind that decision was less religiously motivated. The Miu family come by their name honestly; I am merely adopting it for a time.”

  A blink as the final mask, the one Mew could not remove without breaking the woman’s mind to pieces, slipped for a moment. “I do not- you did not answer my question. You are obviously a psychic of immense power – I refuse to believe you thought to hide yourself even as a child. Who are you? Are you connected to the Inner Ministry?”

  “Hm? Oh, them. Not at all, really, though their existence serves my purposes – I stay out of their way, for the most part. Human psychics, well… I don’t particularly understand them. Again, speaking honestly.”

  If anything her answer only confused Tamara more. “Human..?” Her face moved subtly – eventually settling into a hard expression, brows touching and nostrils flared. “Miu… No, that’s ridiculous. You can’t expect me to believe that.”

  Rather than words, Mew answered with action; her body blurred at the edges, returning to protoplasm as it shrunk. The pink light enveloping her husband’s workshop intensified before ceasing, and Tamara lost hold of her expression completely as she gaped openly at the Pokémon’s true form.

  But it seemed that seeing wasn’t quite enough to believe, in this case. “…Nnno,” she whined, eyes following Mew’s bobbing form. “No, no, that’s impossible. Lady Mew is a myth.”

  “Mew.” [How then was my son created? You no doubt have knowledge of Project Two, yes? Those secrets are not so secret, anymore.]

  “That-!” The woman’s lips stilled as she visibly trawled through her memory for a rebuttal, eventually finding one. “Project Two was cloned from a fossil! Mew is dead! An ancient Pokémon!”

  Mew flew forward, bopping the human’s nose playfully. Her true shape was always a relief to return to – the human form was so ponderous, charming as it was. [That is so, and yet here I am. I have died many times; in the normal course of things Sakura Miu would have aged, and passed away as an ordinary human being. I would have slept for a time, and then been reborn in my cradle in the depths of the ocean. There are many forms of life that do this; is it so unbelievable?]

  Tamara’s incredulity really was straddling the line between funny and annoying, though of course it was much better than the earlier stone-facedness. She took a step back, dress shoes – identical to Bill’s pair, down to the scuffs where his habit of tapping his toes had left marks – softly padding against the stone floor. “Mew. You’re Mew.”

  “Mew.” [Yes.]

  “You- Bill-!” She swallowed – and then a small giggle burst from Tamara’s throat. “Bill married a Pokémon! That’s – that makes too much sense… Is that what all this is about? Turning him into something more appealing to you?”

  It was said with a sneer, but Mew took the question seriously. She traced a path through the lab as she put together an answer, loops and spins taking her close to each slumbering life within the containment tubes. [No, not at all; while it is true his body holds little attraction for me, this and that are separate matters.] As she passed, she reached out and made contact; the minds of Bill’s clones were simple, no different from a newborn baby’s, and their dreams were soft, immaterial things. It is such a shame they will never have a chance to experience the world… [If anything, it was the other way around; falling in love with my husband has altered my priorities. Before, I was content with the slow path… But now simply waiting for nature to take its course seems unacceptable.] But that is the way of the world. If the Creator wished for every seed to one day bear fruit, He would have made it so. [A human’s timescale… Yes, if anything it has been Bill who’s changed me.]

  The stare that Tamara sent her way was full of emotion, incredulity and confusion and a sort of blunted wonder. It was a familiar mixture; Mew had shown herself to humans many times before, and their reactions tended to be of a kind. “You…” she started, before stopping to regain her bearing. “Why? If you really are Lady Mew, should this-” A weak gesture towards the room as a whole. “-Not bother you? Or are the myths only that?”

  Ah, still fishing for information. It was admirable, in its own way – the infiltrator’s love for her family was not the same as Mew’s love, but it was love nonetheless. “Mew.” [I will explain – but first, I wish for you to answer a question for me. Tamara… if I do so, if I reveal everything, will you allow yourself to be imprisoned for a time? Without escaping?]

  The flesh of her face had returned to stone, but underneath the woman’s teeth were grit. “If I determine that your plans are less destructive than they appear to be, I might be prepared to make that promise. Speak, living myth, if you wish to.”

  Mew could not smile in the human way while in her natural body, and so she expressed herself with a loop instead. [I suppose that is all I can ask. Let me begin… in the beginning. Yes, I think that would be appropriate.] Settling down atop the console Tamara had been using, Mew wrapped her long tail around herself as old emotions flowed. How long has it been, since I recalled that first moment? Years? Decades? [What I am about to say will sound fantastical to you, but please know that I, at the very least, believe it to be the truth. May I ask, are you a follower of Arceanism?]

  “I… was not. I am reevaluating.”

  “Mew.” [I understand – you would know Him as Arcus, but to me He is simply the Creator, and He is the being responsible for my birth. Many years ago, when the stars were still newborn and the world filled with His light, I burst into existence alongside a great many other beings. Some were alive in the sense that you and I would know it, and some were not, but each of us was imbued with a purpose: to go out and bring our own existence to fruition. To follow in the Creator’s footsteps, and create.

  [Some of us left right then, at that first moment, but many of us lingered – we were in the presence of our parent, and that love was a grand and intoxicating thing.] Without border, without sense… [And there were our siblings, of course. Even as the light of His halo diminished and Almighty Arceus left to create other universes, even as the Font of Creation ran empty, I lingered – the void was cold, and it would be a long trek to find a world for myself. I lingered, and I lingered, and in the end it was only me and one other.]

  Tamara guessed where the story was headed. “The Dexus?”

  “Deoxys,” Mew corrected, startling the human with Lady Miu’s voice. [Yes. I had stayed out of loneliness, but he… He was different. No two of us were the same of course – but even still, he was different.] The memory, bittersweet and faded, filled her mind.

  [I’m scared, Brother…]

  [Fear? I do not know that. In me, there is only curiosity. What is this fear like, Sister?]

  [It is… cold. Why do you linger? I fear the void, so why..?]

  [The Father’s light still shines, if only a little. It is mysterious – I wish to understand.]

  [We stayed for a very long time at the place of our birth, long enough that the firstborn stars began to die. To the me that exists now it seems unthinkable, but back then I was… not yet acquainted with time. I was ageless, at the height of my power, yet filled with the light of creation. But eventually, I decided to leave – and I convinced Deoxys to come with me.]

  “That… is not how the story is told.”

  “Mew.” [No, but it is my truth. The flight through the great void was everything I had feared and more; the emptiness between stars was vast, and the emptiness between galaxies even moreso. If I had set out in the first moment like the most diligent of us, there would have been planets nearby – but they were all taken after those billions of years, and so I and my partner were fated to spend even more time together. And, in that gulf of unending darkness… we fell in love.]

  [Brother… when we find a planet… perhaps we could remain together?]

  [That is not what the Father imparted to us, Sister. Is it even possible?]

  [We… I would like to find out. If you would agree to it.]

  Silence. Deoxys’s sinuous limbs trailed behind him as he thought, and she occupied herself with watching the stars slowly change colour as they aged. Mew disliked the silence, but it would be unfair to hurry him – not when he was pondering her own request.

  [I accept,] he eventually sent back, and her heart leapt.

  [Truly?]

  [Your presence has become familiar to me, Sister. I should wish to leave it and experience something new… But I do not. It seems my curiosity is insufficient.]

  [And so, when we finally reached a suitable planet – this planet – we decided to create life together. It was… difficult. We were unique existences, opposites almost; my instinct was to start at the top, to create grand things that controlled the stone and air, things that could survive the harsh unformed Earth as I could. To shape the world first, and then make life to populate it after. But Deoxys was adamant that things should start from the bottom – that we should begin with something small and simple, something that could survive the conditions through efficiency and adaptation. Even with our love, we were not able to come to a single conclusion, and so we compromised. I started at the top, he at the bottom, and we were content to one day meet in the middle…

  [And then, I made a terrible mistake. The Defender.]

  Tamara shivered behind the mask of Number Twelve. “The Rayquaza.”

  [Again, you’ve understood. I… became engrossed in the task I was created for. In the beginning I was focused, but as things went on the joy of motherhood engulfed me – and I forgot, for a moment, that my beloved and I were distinct. That my creations must be taught to recognise him.]

  “That’s why it attacks anything in the upper atmosphere. I- we thought it was just territorial, but it really is a religious proscription?”

  The woman’s voice was heavy with something Mew had no name for, an incredulity that lacked disbelief. It was obvious that Tamara was taking her story as it was, and she was glad – if she’d had to convince the ninja of every little thing, this would have been agonising. Recalling the depths of my failure is already bad enough… [Yes. My Rayquaza, my heroic monster, was created to defend the Earth from transgression – that was one of the instincts that the Creator left in me, the desire to defend my work. But that is no excuse.] Restless, Mew unfurled herself and darted across the room. She pressed her mind against each tube again, drawing comfort from the physical manifestations of her husband’s efforts. Even Miss Moshi, a clone of her own remains with not a touch of Deoxys’s essence, was part of it; without the ditto, and her predecessors of course, Bill would never have been able to get this far.

  Even now, I understand so little – for all my intellect, I am a creature of instinct. This human science of DNA is beyond me; without Bill and his collaborators, none of this would be possible.

  The love she felt was warm, and with a crystalline sound flesh turned to protoplasm and back again. She was Lady Miu once more. “I am responsible for my beloved’s ravaging; my child was only following the instincts I implanted. When it happened… Deoxys was engrossed in his own task, and there was no chance for him to even defend himself. By the time I was aware, it was over.”

  Another shiver. “‘And the blood of the foul Dexus watered the Earth,’” Tamara recited, causing Mew to cringe. “‘And the earth drank of it and became tainted, and from the tainted earth sprouted a seed, and from the seed was born a man and a woman. The sin of our terrible father is ours, and atonement may only come through virtue.’”

  “…It is poetic, the story they have made of me and my partner, isn’t it? I love stories, but I must confess to finding that one unpleasant to sit through.”

  “But- but why this? Are you attempting to revive him?”

  Mew stepped towards the woman, who was struggling to move, and for a moment considered lifting the suppression binding Tamara’s limbs – but no. She had invested trust into these sorts of people in the past, and it had not ended well; until cooperation, truthful cooperation, was secured, the restraints were necessary. “In a way. Deoxys is like me; he is truly immortal, and cannot die – but where I might be reborn should my body be destroyed, his body is, on a certain level, indestructible.” Her fingers touched the intruder’s temple, attempting to reassure but only causing the ghost of a blush – and Mew realised she’d neglected to reconstitute her clothing. Oh my, how silly. It’s been quite some time since I made that mistake; I really am flustered. Her skin transformed to silk and was shed, and she continued without further attempts at reassurance. “Even now, he is spread thinly across every living thing upon this world, humans and plants and Pokémon – though the former bear more of him than the latter.

  “But his nucleus, the seat of his consciousness, that exists in a single place: atop Mount Silver, resting in its Recovery Forme. Awaiting the point where the life it created evolves to become like him – the smallest of microbes giving rise to a god, just as the gods I first made shaped the Earth for lesser life.” Mew smiled. “We are… about halfway there, I think. Millions of years in, with millions more to go. And now, in this human form, that wait seems simply unbearable.”

  “Bill,” Tamara muttered, and Mew’s smile widened.

  “Yes. With the power of human science, Bill will skip over those millions of years of evolution. He will fuse himself to Deoxys directly, joining father and child and restoring their mind – and then, his strength returned, Deoxys and I will begin again.” The thought of it was beautiful. Simply fixing things, and making whole what was shattered… “This time, there will be no need for compromise; with Bill Sonezaki and Sakura Miu acting as a buffer between Deoxys and Mew, their contrary natures will be made to coexist. The new life we create will be the way my son already is: the essences of human and Pokémon conjoined. Do you understand? Your children could be the way I am, deathless, pure. Do you not desire that?

  “Will you stay your hand? Or, dare I ask, assist us?”

  Tamara seemed to be having trouble breathing, and this time Mew really did lift her restrictions; the energy flooding the human’s body halved then halved again, and she let out a gasp. Tamara’s eyes, a bright ruby red without the coloured contacts softening them to pink, regained the lustre they’d lost and then some – she was all at once tense as a spring, as though she thought attacking would have a different result the second time.

  But no attack came, only words. “This… conjoining. What would it do?”

  “It would draw together the bits of my beloved still floating free. I am afraid that everything currently living would lose their physical coherence – but within Deoxys’s vast mind you would all continue to exist, so saying you would die would be inaccurate.” Please. The life he created on his own – you are still so small. A few decades, and you will be dead regardless; does it not make sense to spend those years to create something that will last? “A new humanity will be born, evolved to the point that each member would be no different from the greatest of my creations, the giants who formed the continents or the great dragons that protect time and space from outside subversion. A process that would take countless ages – this is a chance to skip forward, to go from primordial slime to modern human in a single step. Please.” Please.

  Tamara’s breathing softened, the beat of her heart following her mind into calm. “I…” she said, hesitating for a long moment. “…Accept your reasoning. Allow me to leave, and I will do what I can to aid you.”

  “Tamara…”

  “You would want Mount Silver unguarded, yes? It should not be difficult, with the attacks obviously coming – I would only need to nudge things a little-”

  “Tamara. Do you think that dark energy is enough to cloak your thoughts from me? That you could lie?”

  She stilled as the accusation washed over her, and her mind did two things. The surface, bent with will and dark power grasping from below, felt genuine confusion – while that deeper self seethed in alarm. Number Twelve bid Tamara’s mouth to grimace, her voice to tremble ever so softly, and her leg to step back. “I assure you, I have no intention of double-crossing you. If you really are the Lady Mew of legend – and I believe that you’ve demonstrated quite enough that you are – I would need to be a fool of gargantuan proportions to oppose you.”

  Not a fool, no. Without speaking Mew enveloped the woman once more, her body dissolving entirely into pink light. Tamara struggled – as did Number Twelve, who lanced out with needles of thought-eroding energy. Mew bled at their touch, but as before the difference in scale was enough to defeat even the strongest type advantage; slowly, inexorably, Mew wiped away the woman’s self like the sea swallowing land. Just a loving daughter. I will mourn you, Tamara Ankoku – and yes, Number Twelve as well.

  Though you would not have lived much longer anyway, you could have bore fruit – and that loss is tragic.

  “Giga!” Bill called as he strode forward, a spring – no, ten springs! A hundred! – in his step. “You didn’t greet me at the door!”

  “…Bill is two Bills? He pardons?”

  Despite being fully rested, Bill needed to take a moment to parse out the Pokémon’s words. “Hm? Oh, yes, my darling wife came down before me, I think. Did she look like me? You know she loves a good prank!”

  He laughed, and after a moment of confusion Gigagigo joined in. “Miu was here, ha, ha, ha! Sneaky!”

  “Yes, very sneaky.” The monitors covering the walls flicked on as Bill gestured, though he took a moment to give Giga a good scratching before he got down to business; he was planning to work in the lower level all day, so a little pet break wouldn’t hurt anything!

  The porygon3 continued to giggle as he was tickled, and soon the rest of the family was poking their heads out from the screens – literally, in some cases. “Everyone, come on out and get a hug! We’re almost done; soon we’ll all be together, and we won’t ever have to keep any secrets ever again! Isn’t that exciting?”

  Electronic sounds answered positively as the porygon poured out from his computer systems, and Bill was knocked off his feet by their enthusiasm. He luxuriated in the feeling of relief that seeing an end brought – soon the long years of work would be done, and he would achieve his dream.

  He would be a Pokémon. No, it was better than that; everyone would be a Pokémon, a pure form of life free of evil or hardship. All the hatred and sadness would melt away and become love, and he and his wife would create a world where that love could blossom and multiply forever.

  As if hearing his thoughts Mew poked her head out from the chute separating the two levels, and he smiled at her. “Honey! We were just talking about you!”

  “Were you? Only good things, I trust.”

  “Oh, not quite…” He wrestled a hand free from the pile of porygon, and waggled a finger. “You really shouldn’t come down looking like me – you confused poor Giga!”

  The evolved Pokémon dipped with embarrassment. “Not too confused…”

  “Oh,” Mew softly gasped, and Bill belatedly noticed the signs of sadness on her face.

  “Honey?”

  “Not here – let’s talk about it down below, alright?”

  Sensing the change in atmosphere, the group hug broke apart. That too was sad – but in the world as it was, sadness was a part of everyday life. But not forever. Soon, there will be no more of that, ever again…

  He couldn’t wait. “Alright. Giga, can you collate the date since I left yesterday? I’ll be back up in a bit.”

  A stern beep, and the porygon got back to their stations. Bill followed his wife down the ladder, attempting to guess what had her in a bad mood – was Miss Moshi doing poorly? Had something exploded while he’d been asleep? – but halfway down his speculation and movement both paused. “Is there… one more misdreavus than I remember?” Did they make an egg? No, I would have noticed it coming back up the other day…

  “Yes, Bill.” The echoing voice of his wife was deeply sad, and he felt sympathetic tears prick his own dark-blinded eyes. “This one’s name is… Tamara.”

  Tamara? Like our..? “Oh. I see.” But she’s been with us three years, hasn’t she? Spying… The Ankoku really are heartless, to train such a vibrant young woman to do such evil things… Yes, humanity couldn’t be transformed soon enough. “I’m sorry. I know you’d never hurt anyone unless you really needed to.”

  The end of the tunnel met his feet, and within his deepest lab he found the proof of it: Tamara’s body, still but unmarked as though she were only sleeping, her face almost unrecognisable without makeup or the plastic bits piled next to her. “Shall we… send her back to her family?”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea, love – we’re only a bit away from victory. We shouldn’t rock the boat.”

  Bill nodded, feeling the tears run down his face, and prepared an empty containment tube to hold the… body. “She found everything, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “You… tried to convince her?”

  “Very hard. I told her everything, showed her my original form – but in the end, she could not let go of the world that is. Yet another sacrifice for our dream… I wish it were not so.”

  Another nod; it really was tragic, but that was just… life. Some people couldn’t be reasoned with.

  The body floated in the tube as he let it go and sealed the container, no different from his unborn children… save for the spark of life that was missing. Yes, I wish it were not so too. But it was, and there was no sense crying about it.

  Yet the tears continued to flow. It was just… a shame.