Chapter 39

There was a flash, and suddenly they were somewhere else. Mewtwo landed delicately, watching with mild concern as Elisa fumbled in the air again.

But he still watched, waiting until she had corrected her flight to turn away.

They stood in a cavern of vast size, with shiny black soapstone towering around them. The space was so vast that Lane floated closer to him, as close to Mewtwo as she dared. "This place is… unfriendly."

The air was icy cold, and a thin layer of moisture coated every surface.

In the far distance, Lane heard water crashing against some unseen ceiling.

Was this incredible cavern under the ocean? The walls were warped and bubbled in ways that suggested no geological process she knew.

"The space matches the character of its occupants," Mewtwo said, turning on them all. His eyes were stern, unyielding. "I will endeavor to protect you, Lane. But I do not know who has come. If we go further, they will sense our presence here. The others they may spare, but the two of us must triumph or die."

"This is where you say no," Dominic whispered quietly. "You're out of your league, Lane. I don't care how much Stockholm syndrome you feel for Korina, loyalty isn't the same as competence. You haven't had the time to be a mew yet, you're going to get yourself killed."

Mewtwo drifted closer, his eyes fixed on Dominic. "I am reminded why I find your kind so much of a nuisance. If you think your friend is too weak to help, then take her somewhen she can study in peace, then return to this moment. I'll still be here, waiting."

Dominic swallowed. "T-take… take passengers?" His feelers danced nervously on his head, the ends glowing. "I guess she didn't tell you that part?

I'm as new to this as she is. If I try to move her, I might not put her back the right way. Could end up with a pile of Lane-flavored goo."

"Hmm." Mewtwo looked thoughtful. "A pity. Her mother was a fierce warrior, almost my equal. Anything that could defeat her will prove a serious threat, even for me. Having another like her at my side would tilt the coming conflict in our favor."

"I'd need someone to train me anyway," Lane admitted. "Korina's captured… maybe you could teach me?"

Mewtwo chuckled, patting her lightly on the head. It was such a human gesture she froze, unsure of how to react. "You have no idea how furious that would make her."

She shrugged. "If we live through tonight, she'll probably hate me anyway. Can't really get worse."

Mewtwo turned abruptly, pointing just ahead. The cavern looked like it continued for some distance, but that was an illusion. The rock trailed away to a sharp precipice just ahead, a maw of darkness and stone into the bowels of the planet. Spines of obsidian poked up at random along the path downward, all inclined upward.

"I just want to say that I liked the time travel training idea better than the rush to our deaths idea," Elisa said. "Can't you try anyway, Dominic? We could have a training montage and everything! Or… you could take it in stages.

You could come back here when you're stronger, then give us time to train back in time somewhere, then come back."

"I'll take you," Dominic said. "You're a plant, I'll risk it. But I can't just…

jump around as much as I want. Even if we never saw another Pokémon, and didn't interfere with anything… the one we're fighting is the master of time, remember? If I jump even once that intersects with its own timeline, it will see me. If it decided we were a threat, anytime between forever ago and when it dies, it could swat us away like flies. You wanna risk that?"

Elisa shoved him with a paw, abashed. "You should've said that part earlier."

"I'm not as afraid of all that," he said flatly. "Honestly, I don't think Dialga cares about us. I'm more afraid of turning a not-plant into not-alive."

A strange, animalistic roar echoed from below. What had once been totally dark lit up with flickers and starts of silver-blue flames. Mewtwo raised an annoyed paw towards them, silencing them.

"It appears our presence has been noticed. Do not struggle, I will deliver us safely."

He joined them in the air, angling straight down into the gloom. Lane felt his power dragging her down, and this time she obeyed. She held still, settling into the space just behind Mewtwo as they descended. The others floated just behind her, and even Elisa wasn't fighting.

Mewtwo moved them with incredible speed, spikes blurring past on all sides too fast for Lane's eyes to focus. Each one could impale her so thoroughly she was nothing more than a little red smear on the rock. But Mewtwo didn't dodge around them, ducking and weaving as Korina had trained her to do with trees. Instead he cut straight through, shearing through rock with occasional flashes of blue fire.

They shot faster and faster, and behind them a veritable avalanche of rock gathered, crashing and bumping and tearing off more spikes as it went.

"This might be more dramatic, but I think it's more dangerous!" Lane called. "Are you sure it's a good idea?"

"Yes," Mewtwo replied, mentally just as Lane had done. "It will anger him. The strength of your kind and mine has always been that we are more than any instinct. We are flame, rain, spellburn, and spirit—yet we are none of these things.

"Our enemies hold the powers that made this world. Their minds are shadows before the bonfire. Part of me is amazed Dialga was able to restrain from destroying Korina outright."

Just as quickly as they started falling, a stone floor appeared below, torn and broken by the stomping of gigantic feet. Lane squealed, covering her face with her paws—but of course they weren't crushed against it. There was a rush of air, and she came to a gentle stop.

That isn't how inertia works. How did he do that? She blinked, zipping up to follow just beside him. Her friends floated along behind, mostly out of sight.

The roar came again, causing sections of nearby rock to tear out of the walls or ceiling, crumbling to powder before their eyes. Mewtwo froze, a haze of blue flames appearing around them. He stopped, waiting for the power to pass.

"The shaymin told me that legendaries hate us," she said. "This whole story about where life came from, and how mew used to keep everyone else doing what they were supposed to. Is it true?"

"Essentially. The specifics are lost to history. Potentially forever, if Starfall is destroyed. That ship was a bastion against the other forces, a refuge

their powers could not penetrate. That is why Korina retreated within its walls—it was a place I could not follow."

"Did you ever try?" Lane countered. "She would've been happy to see you."

He patted her again with one paw. "That may be, kitten. But I do not think the vessel's intelligence would be. I am a mutation, just as the other

'legendaries' we fear. It cannot know that I have mastered my power. Only that I am a danger to the crew. Though the crew was long dead before any of us were born. Before Korina too, before her parents, and before their parents. So long ago they were legends themselves, without a people or a home."

The flames finally faded from before them, enough that Mewtwo began to move again. More deliberately, this time, rather than blurring out of sight.

The cavern was so vast that they both looked like children in the home of a god, even Mewtwo.

"You wonder if I'm strong enough," he said, without looking back. "I don't know. But the first thing I really learned from humans was that of courage. It does not matter if a path is wise, so long as it is right. I should've known you were one of them by the simple act of coming to me."

She looked away, ears flattening in embarrassment. "Not one anymore, technically. Korina adopted me."

"And she's done an excellent job. I wait in eager anticipation to see her face when I repeat some of what you told me."

They said little else as they flew forward together through a lair of a god.

Well, Mewtwo didn't. Lane turned her attention back to Dominic, relieved that he hadn't given up on them yet. There were few better predictors of failure than the time traveler leaving you behind.

"Does Dialga have something to do with… your stuff?" she asked. "Only thing I could tell you about that name is that it's the god of time. How do we fight a god?"

"That is an excellent question," Dominic said, annoyed. "I don't know.

Steal its armor and encase it in cement?" He flew up to Lane, resting a hand on her face, forcing her to meet his eyes. "Look, the others have this…

organization. They're older than time, literally. They have so many rules our human selves would've died of old age just trying to read them all. It's because time is dangerous, and we don't want to break it. But because of the rules, the

world keeps worlding, and every now and then we can nudge things. Make things better, push the world towards a happier outcome."

Lane nodded solemnly. She didn't much like the sound of all that. What kind of world was ruled by a corporate committee somewhere, who decided for everyone what their world would become? "So Dialga is your… boss? CEO?"

Dominic shook her. "Think before you say things, Lane. How would I be helping you fight him if he was in charge? Dialga has as much power as lots of us… maybe all of us. It travels through time unpredictably, making changes for apparently no reason. Most of the time it doesn't even care if we go behind it and clean up the mess. Most of Eternity don't even think it has any goals, really.

It just wants to use its power. Has to, maybe."

Lane considered that, expression darkening. "We're fighting a time traveler by flying straight into its lair. We go in, there's this real epic Pokémon battle, and probably we get torn into our atoms in the process."

"Basically, yeah," Domininc said. "The smart option was running away, I already gave you that. You could… carry on Korina's legacy by surviving. Have lots of kittens, teach them about her. Don't let the monsters know you exist until you're ready to face them."

"We are nearly there," Mewtwo said, from just ahead. Indeed, a bonfire burned in the distance, lighting the tunnel with flickering shadows. Lane could see creatures gathered there, filling a vast cavern even though there was just a handful. She could identify none of them, though the power radiating from them was nothing short of divine. All these had come to watch Korina die, last of the race that had once contained them.

"We can't win," Lane whispered, stopping in the cavern. "There's so much power in there, Mewtwo… stop."

He did, turning to face her. She could see the recognition in his face. "It is not wise," he agreed. "I knew it would not be. I assumed you did as well. We did not come to win, we came because it was right."

There was something poetic about a noble death. But Lane wasn't some mythic hero—she ran a fan club for cute Pokémon nobody else believed in.

What good would it do Korina if she got to watch Lane die first? They'd still kill her too.

"Dominic." She faced him, expression as hard as Mewtwo's. "I need you to take me back. I don't care about the danger. If we go in that room, we're dead anyway."

He glared right back, meeting her eyes. "I told you before. We'll probably draw Dialga's attention. If we don't, I could kill you. You're not made to travel through time—taking other creatures is too hard."

A grin spread slowly across her face. She wasn't the right species for traveling through time, but she had an excellent model to copy.