Subject: Re: [PW!] Mount Moon Mission Date: Wed, 01 Jan 2003 06:47:59 GMT From: Adrian Tymes <wingcat@pacbell.net> Organization: Prodigy Internet http://www.prodigy.com Newsgroups: alt.games.nintendo.pokemon Rob wrote: > "I never thought I'd see the day I'd be taking orders from a human." Dee > grins despite the pain he feels in his chest and decides to follow > Marcia's advice. He successfully Transforms into a Golem and slams one > of his fists into the ground, creating an Earthquake that knocks out the > Arbok who was about to Glare at him. Handing the small sack he withdrew > from his dresser to Marcia, Dee uses his both of his clawed hands to Dig > a large hole in the ground where he smashed it with his fist, "I'll take > us to a place near here where I'm sure they won't find us." > > "You better." Marcia recalls her Crobat and kneels on the ground to help > Dee dig, figuring she was due for a manicure upon returning to Violet > City anyway. As she scoops dirt and rocks out of the ground, she says, > "Dig faster, Dee - I'm sure backup will be here soon." "This is taking too long. Stand back." Dee brings his hands up, waits for Marcia to step clear, and mutters, "Never thought I'd be using this place forever anyway..." He slams his entire body into an earthquake that shatters a specific point in the floor, sending out cracks along the side into adjacent rooms and resonating with the mountain itself. "That'll keep the backup busy." Marcia jumps into the resulting hole after Dee, almost tumbling in the small space. Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, through a bathroom door whose fractured sign only reads "BA", but which is apparently a false start when Dee backs out of there... The bathroom shears away from the rock face, dropping into a cavernous room. Marcia immediately pinches her nose at the foul vapors that rush out of the crack like a stiff breeze. "Sorry, should've warned you. I'm just glad these two forms can't smell." Dee shifts into a vileplume, scooping Marcia up. The inside of Dee smells almost sweet in comparison, and Marcia cautiously takes in a few breaths. Through his mouth, she sees him extend a vine whip towards one of the stalactites and start swinging through the room. It is only when they are in the middle of the room that Marcia realizes what she smelled: the stench of death. Sure enough, when she takes a quick peek outside, the bottom of the cave is lined with decaying bodies. She does not object when Dee gently nudges her back inside. Eventually, they sail into an airlock, which Dee closes behind them, shifting back to normal form once enough fresh air has cycled inside. "There. Sorry we had to cross that, but the aura of death will mask our passage from the psychics. We are now safe, for a short while anyway." "Is that...your cemetary?" "Kind of. There aren't too many places soft enough to actually bury bodies inside the mountain, and of course services outside would have attracted too much attention. This place...you could call it a kind of sanctuary. When the Pokemon Resistance split in two, both sides would allow each other to throw their dead in here, and would often do so for the corpses of the other side on ground they held. It was one of the few neutral places in the whole mountain." He pauses, holding back a tear. "Before the war, you could still see the bottom. Now...it's half full." "No way. It was barely a third full." "Has it been that long? Have the bodies decayed that much?" Marcia is about to answer when she notices Dee is not facing her. "You have to understand...friends, acquaintances, I knew almost every single one of them. I...I thought if I ever had to see this place again, I'd be too strong to let it affect me, but..." The quavering in Dee's voice is all Marcia needs to hear. Gently, she holds him, turning him around so he can cry into her shoulder. Minutes later, when Dee's sobbing subsides, Marcia eyes the far door. "How long until we can leave?" Dee does not budge from Marcia's embrace. "Twenty minutes from our escape. I haven't kept track, but I'd say it's been at least five minutes, so fifteen minutes more." "Great. Well, I suppose there are worse places to be than an airlock." "Oh!" Dee reluctantly disengages. "We only have to stay in this area, and especially inside the mountain. But we don't have to stay in the airlock. In fact, while we're here, there's something I'd like you to see." "If it's a shrine to me, I'll pass." "No, no. Unless you want to believe it's a shrine, but I'd rather you didn't." Dee smiles a bit, nudging the far door open. "The only diety worshipped here was Science." He heads out, turns right, and heads down some half-buried stairs. Marcia follows, squeezing around the rocks blocking the path, grateful that she has taken their adventure as an opportunity to go on a bit of a diet. When she reaches the bottom, she immediately recognizes some of the broken equipment, even though it is damaged far beyond repair. "A lab? No, wait, let me guess: this is where Aerie was born." "Got it in one." Dee points to a niche in the corner. "I thought for certain none of her line survived, but now that I look at it...that one, over there. She was extremely lucky, even with the help she had, to have survived to viability." "Her *line*?" "Of course. Don't worry, I'm sure there's only one of her. When creating artificial life forms, the odds of any one embryo surviving are extremely low, so you create several. If more than one prove viable, you put all but one into suspended animation and try to bring that one to fruition. Either it dies soon, in which case you hopefully learn what to fix in the others, or it's viable long enough that the others die even in suspension." Marcia grabs Dee by his jacket. "How many did you create?" "..." "TELL ME!" "Marcia...how to put this? That's not an entirely fair question. I tried, and I would have kept trying until I succeeded had I not been interrupted. It didn't matter how many attempts failed: all the failures were just that; trial numbers without names." "Dee," Marcia growls. "Alright, fine." Dee concentrates. "Ten...no, eleven thousand...five hundred, eighty four." "Eleven thousand...?" "That's 11,583 terminated, and one Aerie." Marcia thinks for a bit. "Either you're lying or something went horribly wrong. I'm no breeder, but even I know cloning gets better than one in a hundred odds these days. And you've said you had people on your staff who knew what they were doing." "It wasn't just cloning. It was mixing the DNA from all the different organisms. Yours and mine predominate in her, but we're not the only donors. Not by far." "Wait. I remember, the ghost of one of your attempts ambushed me one night. Took some of my blood." Dee nods. "That would be the DNA that ultimately created Aerie." "But you said they were all dead! And how could you even start creating hybrids without anything from me?" "We tried to synthesize your DNA, based on Team Rocket's files about you. It was only when we had your actual genetic material that we got satisfactory results. As for the ghost, a ghost is dead, is it not? Even that ghost dissapated years ago." "Yes, but...was that the ghost of an embryo or something?" "No, no, not at all. I said they were *terminated*. Most were stillborn. The few who survived but proved inadequate were imprinted with enough knowledge to help with the project, and raised with a solemn duty to do so. There were, hmm, about ten who lived long enough to help in that manner, only three of whom produced ghosts, and none of those lasted more than a year after death." "You killed them to make Aerie?" "No, they killed themselves, when they felt their bodies could no longer be of service. Oh, don't give me that look: it was totally voluntary." "Voluntary? They were children! Babies! They never knew any other choice existed!" Dee frowns. "Not acting on the unknown is a sin? What if I told you there were ways you could gain my knowledge, then? No drawbacks, no gotchas, I'd just dump everything I knew, at least about healing and medicine, into your brain for you to do with as you wished. Would that then make your entire nursing career to date a lie? Every time you could have saved someone had you know this or that technique I happen to know? Hmm?" "That's different! There isn't some all-powerful father giving me a duty to serve his aims." "It's no different than what many people do with their lives every day. These 'babies', as you put it, actually accomplished far more than most such people do in their entire lives - and afterlives. Every one of them lived a happy and fulfilled, if short, life. What more could they ask?" "Freedom?" Dee winces. "That hurt." Her retort had been off the top of her head, but Marcia smiles when she sees Dee's reaction. "Did it? Good." "What do you want, Marcia? Do you want me to say I'd never do such an insane thing now, if I had it to do all over again? Fine! Resources aside, I don't think I could, psychologically. But please, don't ask me to regret it. It brought me Aerie, my - *our* - daughter. And I will not regret her, not even for you." Marcia raises an eyebrow. "And if I said I was going to leave you forever if you did not disown her?" "Marcia!!!" "Well?" Dee bows his head. "...no. She's *family*, damn it! I would no sooner abandon her than I would Mimic. And I would like to include you in that circle, but I can not unless you let me." "And letting her go off on her own wasn't abandoning her?" "I *thought* she didn't need me, just like Mimic. Obviously I was wrong. But no, I did not mean to abandon her." Dee squeezes his eyes shut, expecting Marcia to have stormed out of his life forever when he opens them again. But, to his surprise, Marcia is still standing there, even smiling a bit - this time with no malice - and replies, "I guess you have changed." Dee smiles. "Of course. That's what dittos do." TBC?