“Whispers in the Dark”
Chapter 10: The Last Puzzle Piece
By: Crichton55
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A/N: Thanks for reading and for the good reviews. Keep ‘em coming!
Disclaimer: I don’t own Pokémon or any of that stuff. I do not own the song “Whispers in the Dark” or “In the Arms of an Angel” either.
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Ash found himself submerged in a familiar, piercing darkness, the only light coming from two glowing pinpricks. His brain ached from all the information that he had processed during the last several hours. Disbelief continued to infect his mind. How could he have not known? How could he have gone his whole life not knowing that his real father was the leader of the largest criminal organization in the world?
His head was weighed down with all the constant overload of new information and stimuli that had been bombarding him relentlessly. His mind was clogged with fatigue and confusing emotions, but as he stood in the darkness, he felt the mental and physical pain of the last few hours gradually begin to leave him mysteriously.
The bluish dots became larger as a blue cloudlike aura illuminated the figure of Mewtwo hovering towards him. Ash did not reach for his belt, but rather greeted the Pokémon with an expressionless stare as he folded his arms. “You didn’t need my help.”
It was more of a guess than a statement. Mewtwo gazed at him with a smile proportionate to the look a proud father would give his son. “How observant,” he said frankly. “You’re right, Ash, I could have easily destroyed them and their feeble plans with half my brain shut down.”
An instantaneous wave of rage flooded Ash’s mind, and a few more drops of liveliness filled his body. “Well, then, what was the point in putting us in that kind of danger?” he roared, throwing his arms up. “Misty was about to spend the last thirty seconds of her life boyfriendless!”
Mewtwo’s smile faltered, but did not disappear from his face. “A reality that would have been realized if I hadn’t shown up and saved her life and yours for the third time in twelve hours,” he snapped scornfully. “I still don’t know what happened when my brain was taken over,” he continued. “My Recover ability wasn’t designed to have enough energy to revive dead people, nor was it meant to be powerful enough to affect more than one person at once. My best guess is that something in the machine malfunctioned and acted somewhat like what a transformer would on power lines, which I expected would happen. I think I did see the lights dim,” he surmised, more to himself than to Ash, whose anger had subsided slightly.
“You still didn’t answer my question, Mewtwo,” he growled as his glare intensified. “Why did you drag all of us into the picture when you easily could have dealt with the problem yourself without much difficulty?” He folded his arms, eyes fixed upon the hovering psychic-type.
“Surely you haven’t forgotten what Misty guessed, have you?” inquired Mewtwo. “I thought that you would have understood my motives by now. Giovanni was correct in his assumption that I would ask for your help if he allowed me to revolt and roam free, though he underestimated my own cleverness. I’ve known for a very long time, probably since I first heard those scientists babbling in the lab where I was created, that Giovanni was your father.”
Ash growled deeply. “Why didn’t you tell me about it sooner?” he spat. Mewtwo sighed, closing his eyes momentarily as if in shame. “Because I was afraid of what would happen if I did,” he explained solemnly. “I didn’t know what it could cause. For all I know it could have caused your personality to darken considerably, something that I knew from the start would hinder your chances for a relationship with Misty, which I sensed would appear eventually. It wouldn’t have been wise to have all three of you storm Team Rocket’s base while quarreling amongst yourselves.”
“I could see the logic in Giovanni’s plan very clearly,” he continued with the same calm voice. “I knew he had designed the entire thing to acquire your Pikachu. He was aware of the power he contained and what he could do with it. Do not underestimate this man, Ash. He’s done his homework. He wanted Pikachu because of the immense power that he demonstrated earlier. With that one attack he could overthrow half the solar system if he wanted to. He could locate your mother in a heartbeat with that kind of energy.” Mewtwo noted Ash’s look of curiosity at the mention of Pikachu’s unknown and divine power.
“That attack is legendary, Ash,” he said. “Pokémon, primarily electric-types, pass down stories and fairy-tales all based around this one attack, so much that some believe it only a myth, a mere bedtime story designed only to lull young Pokémon to sleep. But this is no fable. Several hundred years ago an entire city was almost erased from existence by an even more powerful version. It’s called the ‘Thunder of God’, one of the most destructive and lethal forces ever seen by both Pokémon and humans. Now imagine if someone like Giovanni got his hands on that kind of immense devastation. The world as we know it now would cease to exist in merely the time it would take for Team Rocket to overthrow it. To answer your question further, Ash, I took you three to face almost certain death because Giovanni viewed you as his biggest threat in his search for your mother. He correctly believed that by both making his organization extremely strong and by making you a big enough enemy, it would mean that you were the only one who could stop him, so naturally he wanted you out of the way, though he misjudged exactly how formidable of an opponent he was chasing around the chessboard.”
Ash continued to stare at Mewtwo. “So you planned everything,” he said hesitantly. The Pokémon grinned again. “Very good, Ash, yes,” he commended softly, nodding his head in satisfaction. “I did plan everything.”
“So
you planned being controlled by some space-age machine capable of mind
control?” Ash inquired, his voice becoming gradually more calm and
relaxed. Mewtwo nodded again. “I knew that you three would be too slow to
destroy the machine before the Rockets got to it first,” he explained with a
hint of pride in his voice. “So I sent
Jessie, James, and Meowth to the nearby
Ash snorted. “I’ll bet Charizard could make quick work of the job,” he boasted. Mewtwo shook his head, a light smirk creeping across his face. “You’d be surprised how rugged their toys are,” he sniggered. “You could smash a house on top of one of those things and it would continue to crunch numbers."
Ash smiled briefly, his gaze still firmly glued to Mewtwo. “Okay,” he agreed. “So they know how to make crap. What I still can’t understand is how none of us got hit by any of the random lightning bolts that looked powerful enough to kill anyone they could’ve hit,” he said with a curious tone. “Sheer dumb luck, I guess,” Mewtwo laughed, and Ash managed a medium-sized snort.
“How lucky was Giovanni?” Ash inquired through stifled chuckles. “It seemed like he wasn’t having a very good day after we showed up.”
“I can’t say that he was, either,” said Mewtwo with a rather cheerful tone. “I’d venture to guess that after Misty knifed him, he began to realize that his plans were being put in the toilet. Then again, the whole thing seemed to have an ultimate benefit for both sides.”
Ash grunted. “How the ruddy hell would a knife to the throat and a blown up base be a good thing for him?” he inquired loudly. His arms dropped down to his side, and his gaze was filled with more interest than anger. Mewtwo sniggered lightly. “I keep forgetting how slow you are, Ash,” he said affectionately. Ash growled angrily.
“You and Misty were wise to keep your conversation no more audible than a whisper,” Mewtwo praised. “But I’m afraid Giovanni possesses far better selective hearing than I had originally given him credit for. He overheard enough of your discussion to make an accurate guess as to where Delia might now live and to figure out that you are his son. He obviously wouldn’t have found out all that if you hadn’t stormed his base, just like you and Misty wouldn’t be together if I hadn’t given you both those dreams.”
Something clicked in Ash’s mind. It all fit. He remembered Misty telling him about a dream in which he was killed; he never thought much of it. “It was you,” he said slowly. “You gave Misty the premonition. But…why?” Ash’s voice was full of disbelief, his mind tumbling over the new string of information.
Mewtwo nodded. “Yes, I did, Ash,” he confessed. “I feared that Misty would not know what to do when you-“
“You knew I was going to be shot?” Ash bellowed. “I had a hunch, yes,” Mewtwo said grimly. “The fact that you were dealing with almost certain death made me fear what might happen if none of you knew what it might look like, so I gave Misty a forewarning of what I guessed to be your most perilous possible situation.”
Ash’s mind struggled to keep up. New information was entering his brain faster than he could make sense of it. “Why did you choose that particular encounter?” he asked with hesitancy, feeling a bit more of his energy return. “The near certainty of Giovanni showing up,” answered Mewtwo. “Had the highest probability rate of one, or more in Brock’s case, of you being killed, therefore it would have a greater effect on Misty. I wanted her to be prepared for that occasion should it have arisen. I don’t think, however, I could have done anything about preparing you for the truth about Giovanni.
“Don’t worry about him antagonizing you anymore, Ash,” Mewtwo reassured him as he continued. Ash had assumed an expression of anger at the mention of Giovanni’s name. “I forced him to forget all those things long enough for him to be locked up in prison, where he will remember the events, though he won’t be able to do much other than eat partially decomposed beans for the next quarter-century. I figured that if he was doomed to pacing back and forth a few feet in either direction for that long, he might as well do so while having another reason for being there.”
“So are you saying that he’s figured out where she is, and that by solving the first problem we made a bigger one for ourselves later?” he inquired. Mewtwo smiled once more.
“No,” he answered. “I believe that a long prison sentence will be more than enough to make him regret his mistakes.” Ash smiled and nodded in agreement.
Ash felt more energy rejoin him, and for the first time in hours he wanted nothing more than to see Misty, to feel her warm lips against his. As the seconds ticked by, he felt his head become clearer and lighter. “One last thing,” he said. Mewtwo raised his eyebrows. “Is this conversation really happening or am I just unconscious and in some sort of unrealized reality in my head?” he asked, feeling more energy flow through him.
Mewtwo chuckled loudly. “Of course you’re unconscious, Ash. Misty made sure of that. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not real.”
Ash nodded, smiling as Mewtwo’s glowing figure began to vanish. A final question leapt across his mind. “Wait, Mewtwo,” he half-shouted. “Will I ever see you again?”
Mewtwo’s evaporating image smiled. “I’m sure you will,” he said surely. “Take care of Misty, Brock, and Pikachu for me.”
“But where are you going to go?” Ash asked with a slight childish tone.” Mewtwo gazed at him as he disappeared entirely. “Wherever my destiny leads me.”
Ash’s eyes flew open, his heart beating fast as his eyes let in the bright artificial light that radiated through the room
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A/N: Hope you’re still enjoying this. R&R.