"Where is this? Who am I, anyway? Why am I here?"
Mewtwo hugged its knees, surrounded by a black psychic space—a style completely opposite to Chen Ming's.
Sensing the familiar fluctuation of psychic power, Chen Ming stopped his daily training with telekinesis and other moves, following the source of that psychic power.
Outside the psychic space, the researchers were gathered together in discussion.
"Why hasn't it woken up yet? The psychic fluctuations have been in a dormant state all this time!"
"Failure should be impossible! This is supposed to be the most perfect clone in history!"
...
It seemed someone was talking about me, but what on earth are they saying?
As if its consciousness had only just been born, Mewtwo's eyes held mostly incomprehension and doubt as it shook its purple tail in deep thought.
Thanks to those days of training, Chen Ming's power had grown quite a bit, and he quickly entered Mewtwo's personal psychic space.
To avoid drawing the attention of the researchers outside, Chen Ming deliberately shielded the intensity of his psychic fluctuations. The wave line on the detector flickered slightly, returning to calm before anyone noticed.
The moment he entered Mewtwo's psychic space, he was genuinely startled.
Chen Ming's space was all blinding white, but this one was pitch black, and the space was actually continuing to expand—simply incredible.
In his own space, if he didn't pay attention, he couldn't sense his own growth at all; only after training for a period of time would there be obvious changes, unlike Mewtwo, who had it so easy.
Fortunately, Mewtwo was still young, and the rate of enhancement wasn't huge yet, but since Mewtwo's consciousness had already been born and awakened, it wouldn't be long before it reached full maturity.
At the very center of the space, Mewtwo was hugging itself helplessly.
Looking much smaller than himself, Chen Ming had the impulse to go over and ruffle it a few times—this was a living Pokémon...
It seemed he had arrived a step early; the conscious mind of the one named Amber hadn't entered yet.
Chen Ming hadn't just been burying his head in hard work; occasionally, he would use his psychic power to check the outside world, which somewhat confirmed that this place fit the anime's worldview. As long as he could get out and confirm whether the protagonist Ash existed, that would be enough.
Chen Ming channeled his Telepathy to answer the inner voice Mewtwo was radiating into the space.
"Those are human languages, you know."
Mewtwo floated upright, asking toward the direction where Chen Ming's voice came from: "Who are you?"
Chen Ming poked his own chin with a paw and replied very earnestly: "Ah—half human, half Pokémon, I suppose. My shape is just like yours."
Answering that way should be correct; his soul was human, his body a Pokémon, and as long as he could transform into a human when he got out, by no stretch of the imagination was he a normal Pokémon.
Mewtwo looked at Chen Ming emerging from the shadow, whose body and height were already twice its own, and murmured uncertainly.
"Just like me? Then am I also half human, half Pokémon?"
"It just means that when you grow up, you'll be like me. You are—"
Chen Ming suddenly stalled and didn't say the word "Pokémon." According to his own definition, having Mewtwo learn to transform into a human would make it pretty much the same as him, so why did that feel a little weird?
"Eh—"
Mewtwo floated over, circled around Chen Ming a few times, and looked him over carefully without continuing to question.
Looking at Mewtwo up close like this, Chen Ming, who originally didn't want to get hands-on, found he couldn't hold back anymore.
On a whim, he wrapped both arms around Mewtwo and pulled it into his embrace, giving it no chance to fly away.
Resting his chin right between those rabbit-like ears, feeling the tiny fluff and the smooth texture of its skin—the tactile feel was tens of thousands of times better than any plush toy bought in his past life.
Mewtwo stayed obediently in Chen Ming's arms, only slowly raising its head after Chen Ming finished rubbing his chin against it.
With pupils devoid of a single impurity, it silently asked what he was doing, and what that unfamiliar emotion appearing through their telepathic link was.
"It's happiness, joy."
Avoiding its previous question—that was really too hard to explain, and if he explained it wrong, it would be disastrous if Mewtwo chased him down to beat him up later.
Happiness, joy? Such a warm emotion.
As for the unanswered question, Mewtwo didn't dwell on it; anyway, it didn't mind.
Soon, a curtain of light appeared in the space, and another psychic entity entered as well.
Mewtwo struggled slightly, and Chen Ming let go of it.
Mewtwo was full of curiosity right now, and it floated over to ask once more.
"Who are you?"
"A human, though I'm an existence much like you."
"Then what is a human, and what is a Pokémon?"
"Hmm—the ones who can speak, I suppose. You can speak too, so maybe you're a human as well, or perhaps you're a Pokémon."
Mewtwo floated for a while, looked back toward Chen Ming in the distance, and after staring for a few moments, fell into thought.
"You don't need to think about it so much. You and I are both the same, everyone is the same here."
Amber didn't notice the direction Mewtwo was looking, her hands clasped behind her back as she smiled at Mewtwo.
As soon as Amber finished speaking, the first partner Pokémon appeared beside the two of them.
The appearing first partner Pokémon were slightly different from usual; all of them had black markings on their bodies.
That was the direct manifestation brought by multiple genes.
On the equipment outside the space, the fluctuations suddenly grew lively, and a researcher hurried over to check.
"This is..."
"Mewtwo and Amber Two are interacting, and the other clones are reacting too."
"Telepathy?"
...
The doctor stood in front of Amber Two's instrument, staring blankly with unseeing eyes as he muttered, "Amber—"
Mewtwo snapped out of its daze, looking at the newly appeared Pokémon and observing them with keen interest.
They floated around in a circle together for a bit, and as if thinking of something, Mewtwo wanted to introduce Chen Ming to Amber and the others.
Yet after looking all around the surrounding space for a long time, it couldn't find a trace of Chen Ming anywhere, as if he had never existed at all.
Chen Ming had chosen to slip away quietly the moment Amber appeared. He wasn't a busybody; rather than acting like a butterfly flapping its wings to change the world, he'd rather quietly stand in the background and observe the entire world.
Amber asked, "Are you looking for something?"
"Looking for a—um—Pokémon that looks a lot like me," Mewtwo said without hesitation. "Amber, have you seen him? He should look older than me."
Amber's face turned pale and she said rather uneasily, "Uh, y-you wouldn't happen to be talking about that one, would you? Has he been here?"
Mewtwo didn't say much, only casting an inquiring gaze.
"I suppose I've seen him. He's from one of the earliest batches of the cloning experiments, but the earliest batch had huge technical flaws and suffered immense pain."
"The current state of the cloned Pokémon is thanks to him, otherwise they would have to endure that same pain, too."
"I've thought about going to see him, but as soon as I get close, I can feel that destructive pain—it's a very agonizing feeling."
"When you met him, you didn't get hurt, did you?"
Amber held nothing back, pouring out everything she knew in one breath, and finally looked at Mewtwo with concern.
Is that so? Clearly it was a very warm, very attractive feeling—what on earth were pain, agony, and injury?
Mewtwo continued to ask, but Amber couldn't give a very good explanation, so she could only push it down in her heart to ponder by herself.
Afterward, they played together happily, but the breadth and depth of the space were enough to make Chen Ming shed tears—he worked himself to the bone just to barely keep pace with someone else...
Later, through Amber's memories, Mewtwo reshaped the life she had lived within the psychic space, understanding what the world outside looked like.
Creating it so easily and leisurely was definitely enough to deal critical psychic damage to Chen Ming. Good thing he had slipped away in advance, or else it really would be a case of "comparing Pokémon to Pokémon drives a Pokémon to anger."
Another period of time passed, and Chen Ming kept reckoning the time.
That's right, he hadn't gone into Mewtwo's psychic space by accident; he did it to leave behind a psychic coordinate.
His purpose was none other than to experience the feeling of a Pokémon inside a container dying.
He'd had that thought before, but Chen Ming's psychic power was too strong; if he forced himself to experience it, he was afraid the other party's soul would be scattered to the winds in an instant.
To this end, Chen Ming had also tried learning from Mewtwo how to use a psychic space to accept the psychic entities of other Pokémon. Regrettably, it was a problem of their genes; their aura was too violent, and simply passing through the psychic barrier would cause tremendous harm to the other party.
In the end, Chen Ming was left with only one option: waiting for Amber and the others to meet Mewtwo.
"Time's up. Shall I just sneakily go in and sneakily come out?"
Chen Ming raised his head and muttered to himself. He was genuinely afraid that if he saw Mewtwo's sad expression, he wouldn't be able to help comforting it, and at that point, Brother Mewtwo—who would launch counterattacks in the future again and again—might just get "talked" out of existence by him. Just thinking about it felt a bit inauspicious.
Entering Mewtwo's psychic space once more, he was shocked all over again. If he hadn't trained his psychic space in advance, he probably would have been pinned down and beaten to a pulp by now.
This time Chen Ming didn't make a grand entrance; he smoothly wrapped his psychic power tightly around himself, not letting a single shred leak out.
If Mewtwo had trained in the subtle control of psychic power, then no matter how Chen Ming disguised himself, it wouldn't work; unfortunately, the current Mewtwo was just gullible enough to be fooled.
Chen Ming floated slowly beside them, watching as they turned into points of light and vanished into the space.
Chen Ming, who had once thought he had lost all sympathy, seemed to be infected by their pure emotions as well; his chest felt tight, aching with an indescribable sensation.
First Charmander, then Squirtle, followed by Bulbasaur—they all marched toward death.
"Where did everyone go?"
Mewtwo didn't have much of a concept of death, so it could only ask Amber, who understood more than it did.
Amber said nothing, simply smiling like that.
"What's wrong, Amber? What happened?"
Mewtwo moved its three little paws, seeming to sense something.
"I somehow feel like I'm about to say goodbye."
As she spoke, Amber dissolved into scattering specks of light and faded away.
Amber...
Mewtwo floated in silence, its eye sockets trembling slightly.
First the moon in the space vanished along with everyone else, and finally the buildings below all disappeared completely one by one.
Since the space had been constructed relying on Amber's memories, once Amber left, the things within the space naturally vanished as well.
There seems to be something in my eyes...
Mewtwo reached out a small paw, wiping away the tears trickling from its eye sockets.
"Those are tears. When a living creature's body feels pain, tears will flow out. The only ones who cry out of sadness are humans." Amber chose to smile as she answered Mewtwo's past question at the very end.
Pausing for a moment, Amber spoke again: "Thank you. Your tears... but please don't cry. You're still alive, you have to live on. You know, it's bound to be very interesting."
Amber chose to leave Mewtwo with the hope of living on, still wearing that smile right before she vanished.
Mewtwo's tears could no longer be held back. It experienced the emotion called sorrow and sadness in the truest sense, yet it would rather have never known it at all.
"In the end, I still couldn't hold back, huh."
Chen Ming tilted his head up slightly. There is always a subtle difference between being a third-party observer and an actual participant.
The wrapped-up psychic power slowly dispersed. *Sigh*, in the end, it chose a different answer.