aiko's otter den

for a squall and an outside starry sky - Cerulean Cave supposedly has a monster in it, a powerful pokemon said to level buildings. That is not what Khun finds there, or is it? LGP/LGE AU

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4. From Start to FInish

Bam, no longer supported by Khun, stares up at the dubbed “Pokemon Mansion”. He remembers it under a very different name. Mirai rubs against his leg. Still dizzy from the psychic hit, he doesn’t risk talking.

They’d packed up and left, avoiding the potential reporters swarming. Bam looks tired against his back and had actually fallen asleep on the way there.

Great, actually, because Khun had needed to decompress and think about what the heck he had just heard.

“He’s my brother.”

Is Bam a humanoid pokemon? Were they raised together?

He’d known of Mewtwo purely as a concept in the various plots of the Team Rocket plan and the diary entries throughout the mansion. There’d been a vague sketch. That was all. He didn’t think it was still alive, considering how solid the tank was that must have held him.

And here is Bam, who had lived in the Cerulean Cave and no Mewtwo in sight.

Of course, a part of the reason Khun had gone along with Hatz’s bet to begin with was the possibility of the monster inside being Mewtwo. He refuses to believe that was a mistake.

Bam takes sluggish steps into the building. Hatz and Isu are already inside and greet him with concern.

“Did you drag him to every store in Viridian?” Hatz asks.

Bam shakes his head. He almost looks green. “I… Mewtwo is…”

“What’s Mewtwo?” Isu asks incredulously.

“Why don’t we sit down outside?” Khun suggests. “And then you tell us.”

Bam shakes his head again, even more insistent. “If, If I leave, I won’t go back in, and I have to… Mi-mi won’t come out here…”

He moves towards the basement stairs. “This place… was known as Arlene’s Heart, named for her research that led to the completion and upgrade of pokemon center machines. Someone wanted to make a powerful, very human pokemon. So they commissioned my parents to do it. I think. But my dad refused. He was mourning their child. He couldn’t bear to do things again. But my mother wanted to create life. So she went along with it. D-papa left.” His voice grows stronger and weaker as he moves. Bam clutches the railing. Khun resists the urge to rush him along. “He couldn’t do it. He’d lost me once. He couldn’t keep losing me.”

Hatz freezes, nearly falling down the stairs. Isu catches him nervously with an arm.

“So my mother made five clones.” Bam’s mouth turns up into a humorless smile. “They all kept dying, except one. Mewtwo. Once that succeeded, she could make more.”

There’s no sunshine in that face, there’s only a pallor of grim, grim light. Bam’s legs tremble when he reaches the bottom stair.

Bam looks at the three of them, begging for something without words. Then he says. “Mewtwo had to watch. But I had to remember. He forgot every time. I couldn’t. I couldn’t let it go. I couldn’t just forget what it… mm.” He clears his throat. “But eventually, at time number twenty-five, I stuck.”

It’s the way he keeps smiling that makes Khun nauseous. “Mother was thrilled.”

---

He’s not okay. Bam knows he’s not okay, and he knows it’s obvious to everyone with eyes. Some of it is guilt. He had promised Rachel that he wouldn’t talk about this after all. A lot of it is fear.

He can see the mansion is crumbled and rubble now, only still standing because Mewtwo had just wanted to go —

And left him behind —

— and never ever have to be in the tank again. Bam understands. He forgives Mewtwo, but he can’t deal with it alone. Not the Pokemon’s temper, not their rage. Not their hurt either, not with his own.

“My mother was used by all of her friends. After all, once she made one successful clone, couldn’t she make more of them, make an army even? The others were made in between perfecting me. Distractions, incomplete, she would say. Children for someone who couldn’t have them. Who never found a woman he loved aside from her. She liked to make him squirm a lot.”

Bam steps towards the room with the tanks. Four are empty, only full of dust. The fifth is still. He can hear it now, the bubbling of nutrient fluid, the ringing of bells for every question he answered wrong. His wrists ache with the pain of his skin tearing because the real world simply did not want him.

“She succeeds. I get to be friends with Mewtwo. Family.” He hums. “I don’t go outside much.”

“Mi-mi visits sometimes.” He turns around one corridor, half expecting Sophia-nim, who is definitely dead, or Hansung-nim, who assuredly is not here. “She tells me about the humans making this possible, a man in the nearby gym, a man on a set of islands, a man entrenched in the ground, a woman who controls water… all these people who hurt my parents. And well, uhm, Mi-mi has a soft spot for my father. And Mewtwo had a lot of anger. One day he snapped.”

Bam finally makes himself turn to see the tanks. They’re still intact. Even now, Mewtwo’s power hadn’t been able to destroy these things.

Bam turns around and throws up.

He remains leaned over, eyes squeezed shut over the tidal wave of feeling and memory, some not his own. Long fingers and a strong palm squeeze his shoulder. Khun peeks over at him with a reassuring, cautious smile.

“I met Rachel before that. They said she was an intern for the funders of the project, for the people who wanted Mewtwo. I thought we were friends. Mother had her hide me in the cave… when Mewtwo snapped and hurt everyone. Other than my mother, Mewtwo tolerated her. I… I thought we were friends. I thought we were okay. I… was wrong wasn’t I?”

“…”

“Yes,” Hatz says. “About her. Potentially. But not about you. Not about what happened to you.”

Khun gives Hatz a glare, and Bam straightens up. “No,” he says thoughtfully. “Not about that at all.”

They stand in silence as Bam wipes his mouth, eyes on one particular tank.

There’s something sick and twisted, Khun thinks, about Gustang using this lab as a puzzling maze to get people into his gym. Or maybe it’s on purpose, maybe it’s so as many people know as possible. As many people can complain as they want and it’ll mean nothing. Nothing will matter.

“The reason I came down here is that Mewtwo will come down here, and that means Rachel will.”

“We can’t fight in here,” Khun feels compelled to say.

“You won’t need to.” Bam steps towards the largest tank. It’s a large tank made of thick glass. There are dents, as if something had been beating it over and over from the inside. His trembling hand caresses the glass. “Mewtwo won’t do anything.”

“Don’t be too sure, Bam.”

Bam doesn’t move immediately. A cold, grim expression crosses his face. “Rachel,” he says wearily. “Why did you lie?”

“I didn’t lie,” the girl says as she approaches.

A tall feline floats behind her, light and dark purple energy swirling over its fur.

“I didn’t lie,” Rachel repeats steadily. “You’re here with them, instead of in the cave, waiting for them.”

“A half-truth at best,” Bam says. He looks so tired. “Considering you left me there too, without food or water or anything.”

“You’ve survived before.” Her voice takes on a desperate, ringing tone.

Bam looks up at Mewtwo, behemoth that he is. “Hi,” he says steadily. “Are you okay? I’m sorry I scared you. I’m fine, see?”

Mewtwo looks down at him. Not that it’s hard, they have always been taller. The earth beneath their feet is warm. “Why did you go?”

Mirai growls by Bam’s foot and he scoops her up. “Because I was cold and hungry and tired and only Mi-mi was there,” he answers, blocking Khun and the others with his small body.

“Why did you come here?”

“Because I knew you’d come here,” he replies. “You always come here when you think humans are gone and check on her.”

Bam leans back and slides a hand over the opaque glass. The dusty liquid inside clears to see a woman. She’s sleeping, brows knotted together, wounds scarred over through the mottled gray.

“You want me to heal Mother,” Bam says. “I won’t do it. I won’t go back to the cave either. I won’t.”

---

Khun has spent the past few minutes carefully edging towards the wall. Not that Bam’s story wasn’t important or anything. In fact, it’s convinced him he’s going to be firing and restructuring a lot of things when he finally gets his legal contract. But because he just needs to get closer with the ball Isu had lent him.

When Rachel had arrived, Hatz had seen her first, crouched behind a wall, bristled up and wide-eyed. He’d passed it onto Isu and then Khun. Bam had been so absorbed in getting the words out, in not panicking (and he’s still not panicking now, he’s so different from everyone else Khun knows) that he hadn’t noticed.

“Do you think the Champion and his friends can defeat us?” Rachel asks. Her expression is nervous. “Are you planning on fighting your way out, Bam?’

Us, she said, which could mean her and Mewtwo, but he doubts it.

“Wow, Rachel,” Khun says, before Bam can reply, which, by the slump of his shoulders, says everything. “A few months since we’ve seen each other and we can’t even call by name. How rude. Glad Bam didn’t get his manners from you.”

She bristles and collects herself. “Our last meeting wasn’t exactly on terms, Khun-ssi.”

“Wasn’t it at Silph Co?” Khun smiles as he speaks. He’d gone alone to Silph Co at first. He’d found Isu and Hatz literally beating back grunts with baseball bats. He’d found Rachel cowering in a storage area. He had thought little of it then. She’d been quiet and out of the way. “What were you doing there?”

“I was on a mission for the professor,” she replies without delay. “Ones that you and your cohorts were neglecting. I’ve been working on the pokedex and submitting fieldwork to Silph, so they can make better pokeballs for catching pokemon.”

“You mean so Rocket could catch more pokemon? Right?”

For a moment, Rachel’s eyes flicker to Bam. Khun doesn’t look. He doesn’t have to.

“I want the stars,” Rachel finally answers. “I want the freedom that I deserve with the person who was grateful to me. You left yours behind. Why can’t I?”

“You can,” Khun allows. “Just prepare for the consequences.”

Isu’s elekid slams its fist into her back. She yelps, sparking with electricity. Mewtwo turns and Bam coughs.

“Mewtwo,” he says. “Please. Let me go.”

The ground continues to warm. His shoes are sticking to the old, dusty carpet.

“No,” say the friend, brother, suffering creature.

The world glows purple.

Bam’s eyes widen and he clasps his hands over the keystone around his neck. “Mi-mi!” he shouts. His eyes gleam a brilliant violet.

Mew pops into existence before their eyes, shining pink in the face of violet.

“Protect!” Bam calls.

The world explodes into light.

---

It takes a long time for his ears to stop ringing and for everything to stop hurting like that.

“Khun-ssi!”

Khun’s whole body aches with pain. He’s fine taking today off and sleeping if it’s all right to everyone else.

“Khun-ssi,” the voice insists. They’re shaking his collar. “Please open your eyes! I’ll… I’ll ask Altair to bite your nose! Don’t think I won’t.”

“Nnnnoot that,” Khun slurs, opening his eyes. Everything really freaking hurts.

The first thing he sees is Altair, poised to pounce. The second thing he sees is Bam’s worried eyes on his. The third is Isu and Hatz. The fourth is Mew, floating above him without a care in the world.

“What happened?” he mumbles, sitting up. He vaguely remembers the Cinnabar Mansion then…

Isu slowly points to the television. They’re not outside, where are they?

He squints to look at the television. Red sweeps across the screen in a fast creep. Boats are fleeing across the sea.

“Cinnabar Island is on a volcano.” Hatz’s voice is shaky. “Mewtwo, he… made it erupt.”

“What?” Khun is up and awake now.

“Not entirely,” Isu corrects, setting the way Khun’s face has paled. “The lava’s started creeping in. He’s not strong enough yet to do it, but he kickstarted it. They were lucky the gym leader noticed in time before it really got going.”

“Shit,” Khun breathes. He risks looking at Bam, who is staring at the television like it will give him all the answers in the world.

“He’s angry,” Bam says in a tired voice. “Viole is so very angry. And I don’t blame him. I am too.”

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