maskormenacelogs | I can move mountains, I can work a miracle [OPEN]

[Everything involving Tetsuo were patterns of bursts of violence followed by a small plateau of quiet. Ever since Pan publicly killed him, ever since he talked with Kaneda, the Pokemon's understanding of the human had been disturbed.

For someone who had never really cared for him or what he was, the human's gruesome death elicited something from him. Empathy? No, that's too personal. It was emotional and something that disturbed him. It would be easier to cast someone like Tetsuo as garbage. But maybe it wasn't that simple.

Maybe that's why he had to visit the human's housing after all the fighting had been done with. He hovered, finally landing at the familiar window when he finally spotted Tetsuo.

No, he had no pretense of hiding himself this time. What was there to hide after the fight?

He tapped at the window again in his deliberate alien manner.]

[There's some similarities to the visit in October; Tetsuo's on his bed, listlessly scrawling through his communicator. But unlike last time, the injury isn't physical. He's alive, he's healthier than he's been in months despite his body needing to recover from the long neglect he's put it through.

He's just sitting there, doing nothing. When he could be up, could be playing games, could be making something of the new life he's got.

At a tap at his window, he looks up. Kazu usually asked to enter that way, when he was stuck at the house --

It wasn't Kazu.

Fear spikes through his gut, leaving a shivering cold behind. Tetsuo stares initially in disbelief, then terror, then a kind of worried amazement. It's the thing. Mewtwo. And this time.. shit, he doesn't have anything he can use against him. If Mewtwo's here to kill him, there's nothing Tetsuo can do.]

[He seems well...physically at least. But there's something going on with him, he's just not sure yet.

For one thing he hasn't picked him up not even once. Like his powers weren't even there. Did dying have something to do with that?

What's more astounding is the look he sees on Tetsuo's face. Fear? This same human had no problem challenging him to a fight and getting pounded into the gravel.

What did Pan do?--Aside from tearing out his heart.

These changes felt so...different from the Tetsuo he knew.

 He projected. ]

[He doesn't even flinch when he hears Mewtwo's voice ring in his head. It doesn't resonate against anything; there's quiet where there used to be an echo.

Warily watching the window, he starts to edge away just a little, just in case. It won't matter, he knows; Mewtwo's like him. If the alien monster wants him dead, he'll die. It's already too late...]

...why...?

[His voice was always gentle sounding, too soft and young for the words he twists it for, but now there's no edge to it. No madness, or bitter arrogance, or anger rippling under the surface. He sounds younger than his age, right then.]

[It's true, the lab he destroyed he did with a ruthless efficiency. But ever since then he made sure not to destroy human life like that again.

He came close, though. Real close. Tetsuo was probably the closest. It's what disturbed him about his talk with Kaneda.

It's what disturbs him when he hears Tetsuo as he sees him now: with no bite, like...like a scared kid.

< ...I wanted to see you. To see how you were doing. >

After your death, he means.]

[Come to stare at him more, since the network apparently didn't say enough. They all saw what happened. Pan made sure of that.

Tetsuo doesn't have a reply to that. He's not really certain, now that he thinks about it, how far into the mind Mewtwo can extend. If he looked, would Tetsuo know like this?

There wasn't any other reason he could think of for Mewtwo to show up here. They didn't part on good terms. They didn't part on any terms; Tetsuo tried to kill him and Mewtwo didn't die. He hunches up further, pulling Kaneda's jacket tighter around him like it could bestow some measure of protection.]

[Seeing it on the network was one thing but seeing the aftereffects was much different.

The last time they truly spoke face to face, it was more violent. They just fought. And despite all that, he comes to see how someone as volatile as Tetsuo would react. And here he is: scared and little. It's not what he expected...it's certainly...pitiable.

His eyes scrunch up. < You're different. >]

[Mewtwo must have figured it out. Tetsuo doesn't have anything anymore. He can't really deny it, but someone else knowing isn't exactly a comfort.]

Leave me alone...

[It's not an order.]

[No bite to that bark. Tetsuo would have hurled that demand with a threat or a destructive show of force. But no, nothing.

It only draws the pokemon in like a curious animal by string.

 He knows he should tack on more to that.

< It wasn't right. Even you should not have experienced that. >]

Yeah. Everyone saw it...

[Insult to injury. Since when does a psychic NOT see shit like that coming.]

[< That's part of the reason why it wasn't right. >
Choose his words carefully, that's the important thing.
< The other reason was they used you...I didn't like seeing that. >]

You didn't like seeing it?

[Oh, poor fucking you.]

[This is an attempt at an apology ok.

< I'm trying to say how I feel. Now listen for once and shut the hell your mouth. >]

[.....he does.]

[Now that that's worked. He's surprised it actually did.

< I mean...when I first met you...there was a bit of myself I felt there. But I didn't want to believe it because you were so destructive. Or maybe I did but I lied to myself.

Nevertheless, as destructive as you are, I don't think anyone deserves to be killed in such a way. I don't want to make what I saw meaningless. Perhaps it means that I should try understanding you again. >

He doesn't say anything, just holds himself to wait for the human's reply.]

[A bit of himself?

Tetsuo hadn't really thought about it that hard. Here was something he could sense was so different that it scared him.And that was all that Mewtwo was, wasn't it? Some huge cat human horror that could shove himself deep into his brain?

Maybe on some level, he'd noticed a similarity. On that same level, he rejected it so thoroughly that the comparison makes him blink.

As for the rest...

Tetsuo tries hard to listen for any hint of duplicity, any sense of falseness. WIth the ...guy's? Thing's? Clone's? Monster's? thing's voice in his head, he should be able to tell, right? Even as useless as he'd been left, he remembered what it'd been like. Hard to say if he still had that power now.

In the end, he flops back limply to the bed, arms splaying out.]

There's nothing to understand.

[It's not self-defeating if it's true, is it? Or.. if he's scared to, or something. He doesn't know what's going on anymore.

Maybe he never did.]

[He could take his word for it, leave it at that and go. That would be easy, wouldn't it?

Then Tetsuo would be like the thousands of other humans he passes by with the same amount of apathy. But it's not easy.

So just to humor the human and say there was nothing more to discover to this human possessing something monstrous that was tearing him in an invisible way? Then there really is nothing to him.

There's nothing to Mewtwo.

And the pokemon can only hope to hold up a mirror and find it reflecting nothing or worse becoming a prism, bending light away from him. There'd be never any hope to understand himself. That's worse, and that dread hangs from his telepathic pushing when he reaches out.

]

[There they are, monster and person in a shifting spiral until it's unclear which is which. Eventually they'll have to settle as two sides of the same experiment- one subject grown, one found. Both abandoned.

Both there to question evolution and progress.

Both catastrophic failures, and both horrible successes.

Of course, neither knows for certain how far the parallel runs. It's just some deep, needling instinct that twines the two together, seeking answers in each other. It's that desperate plea for self that shines through, and that, Tetsuo can start to understand.

It scares him on a level beyond fear of death. That nightmare beyond his window sees him... and finds they're in some way equatable.]

Is there a point to anyone?

[He's falling quieter as he speaks, afraid of this new nihilistic hole gaping underneath him. None of this is real, part of him's reminding him. It can't be. He lived and died and fought in a million dreams. This was one of them.

What the hell can possibly matter then?

But he's talking seriously, and answering with his limited pool of information as long as the clone, freak, dinosaur whatever sticks around.]

Edited 2016-01-20 12:40 (UTC)

[Disgusting isn't it? That Tetsuo could be in anyway comprable to him. But he's proven it several times, in both ability and attitude.

They were both the evolutionary dead-ends, the point where life shouldn't go. Yet here they both are, psychic human and psychic legendary.

He knows nothing about Tetsuo's past, just that something happened. Maybe he was something lab-tested himself. The human wouldn't let him know that at this moment.

But he knows that feeling of existential helplessness. He's felt it several times before. Mewtwo is...what? Second in the line of something he didn't know himself. There are several times he's had to give vague answers and half truths to the question 'what are you?'

He knows the true depths of unkowning, lost in that cycle of searching.

Really sad, that this violent human in his most vulnerable could say things he's thought to himself many times. It's unnerving.



The pokemon had enough of this. Standing outside. He's opening the window to step in. He doesn't step any closer, just floating in a sitting lotus positing.

< It felt cold out there. > But he digresses. < There has to be a point. There has to be one. >]

[This time, there's no backlash to the nightmare moving closer. Tetsuo, in fact, doesn't even move. Mewtwo can kill him if he wants, him being outside or inside won't do anything to change that. He, at least, knows what this one's capable of.

A long time ago, now, he'd demanded what Mewtwo was, alone and in agony in some back American alley. As if getting that answer would mean something.

He hadn't thought about it before, but 'clone' implied science was involved somewhere. You had to do that in a lab. Maybe, after all, it did matter. Maybe it did mean something.

This time, he's so close to softly asking the reverse question, as if Mewtwo'll have a better answer than he did for himself. As if Mewtwo had all the answers to all the questions he was increasingly scared to ask himself.

It was impossible to shake that fear of there being no answer at all.]

What if that is the point? In the end, it's all meaningless. You can fight all you like, but-

[But you die anyway, he doesn't say. He lets the unfinished sentence hang in the air, not daring to finish it, not daring to move past it.]

[Mewtwo is grateful he gets something of an understanding from Tetsuo. He expected some struggle or protesting as he came inside, but nothing yet.

Yeah, this affair with Pan really changed him. And the fact it was something of a positive is all the more unnerving.

That's a poignant question Tetsuo asks. What is the point? He never thought about death. It didn't come to him mostly because birth had been just as a confusing and violent process itself. Being taken out of this world must be the same.

But the question is to do with all that time between? He's still trying to find the answer, so far his only answer is pushing the limits, testing himself. Maybe keep humanity in check, like someone looking over an unstable weapon. It changed so much.

How could he simplify it?

< Fighting is a must anyway. It must be done to reach your peak. I thought it meant strength. Maybe it does, but it also means fighting to hold onto your goals.

If you let go of your goals, no one else can do them for you. They don't know what we want like we do. >

No one could truly know like he knows himself.]

Goals? I don't have any goals. [With that soft admission, he twists away from Mewtwo, musing bitterly to the wall.] I thought I did earlier, but now...

Look... I didn't tell you this earlier, but back where I'm from, I die. I've been thinking about it ever since Kaneda told me - right now, I'm probably older than I'm ever gonna get to be. I thought if I could get stronger than everyone, I could prove that didn't have to happen. Maybe I - I could change something.

...But I couldn't. So there's no use fighting anymore...

[That's heavy. Mewtwo only keeps looking at him, frozen by an awkward inability to know where to drag this conversation next.

< ...do you want my honesty? 'Getting stronger' is what I have been doing.
Do you want more? What Pan did to you...it felt too familiar. Not in the physical sense, but the way it was done… >

The public display. The pain. Pain that's made to be an example, a show of. ]

[He turns back around, staring into those alien eyes. If he's being honest, he has no idea what he was expecting. Agreeing with him, maybe; they are? were? enemies, and he hasn't forgotten that. Mewtwo could easily have no reason at all to keep acknowledging him like this after a confession like that.

But... they're alike. That's why he had to say that, and maybe that's why Mewtwo just keeps talking. They're alike... and that's why he has to know-]

Familiar?

[It's true, he owes the human nothing after giving a confession like so. But he felt he needed to hammer out a few issues he had, many issues actually. And they have common ground, the feeling gets stronger the more it feels like.

He nods. It was painful to admit, he didn't want to admit the whole truth. Not that Tetsuo or anyone wasn't ready, he wasn't ready yet.

< Yes...the feeling. Helplessness. At another's mercy. Used by your own trust, used for their own gain. >]

I can move mountains, I can work a miracle [OPEN]

Jan 6, Evening

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