Chapter 66.1- Oak

I stopped feeling as Mewtwo dove headfirst into me and began to pull. My aura, or the thing I had recognized as my aura for so long, was being dragged out of me second by second, and I was helpless against it.

How could I stop him? Mewtwo had just defeated my entire team. He was a powerful psychic, and I was just human. "Are you, though?" some part of me asked. Instead of questioning where the thought came from, I began to wonder if I actually was human. My aura was strange. I had observed Cynthia for the few days we had spent together, and even though she was supposed to be an aura expert, she clearly couldn't do the things I could.

My Pokémon grew quickly, explosively, in fact. In one fight alone, my team had gone from an elite level to having members who could rip apart champion-level Pokémon with their bare hands. Was it because of aura? It couldn't be. My power seemed to recoil at being described as such, as Mewtwo did his best to pull it out of me.

Oh yes, Mewtwo. Now, I focused on what was going on with the legendary Pokémon and noticed that the transfer was taking a while. Almost like my power was fighting him without any conscious input from me. Did it not realize how futile resistance was? Could it not tell that we would lose no matter what we tried at this point? It didn't matter. None of it mattered.

My mind turned from thoughts of legendary Pokémon to my past life, my first life. I had a good life. I was born into a middle-class family and raised with one clear ambition: to become the best damn lawyer the world had ever seen. I could see the parallels now that I paid attention to them. In my first life, I was born to some of the best corporate lawyers in the world. In this life, I was born to a Pokémon champion. My first parents were inattentive creatures. I never blamed them. Few could have a career like the one they did without sacrifices. Similarly, Oak was Oak.

I had even been adopted in my past life, and here it turned out I was in a similar situation. Everywhere I looked, I noted the similarities until I spotted the final one. In my first life, I never succeeded in becoming the best lawyer in the world. I died young, still a college student. In this life, I seemed doomed to suffer the same fate. "Will you let that happen?" the same voice from the first time asked, and this time I dedicated a second to questioning it before I gave up and turned to wondering about the question.

Let it? I wasn't allowing anything to happen. Mewtwo was my superior in every way that mattered. "So?" it asked, and that was it. I thought and thought, but couldn't come up with an answer. So what? So what if Mewtwo was stronger, better, and smarter than me? When did I ever let things like the odds stand in my way? When did I ever give up without fighting? That thought drove all the lethargy from my mind almost instantly, and my eyes snapped open, staring at Mewtwo's glowing blue orbs. If I could see them, I would have noticed my own eyes beginning to glow a similar color.

I shoved myself into my power and shut off the tap. Whatever progress Mewtwo thought he was gaining was killed almost instantly as I simply decided that I wasn't going to give him any more ground. He pulled and pulled, but I didn't budge. I could not budge. I saw the connection he had created between us and began to perform my own pulling. Whatever power he had taken from me was mine, and I wanted it back.

Of course, it was easier said than done. In the beginning, I made progress before Mewtwo noticed me and began to stall me. It was now a battle of wills, and no Pokémon could ever beat a human in that. There's a reason we were at the top of the food chain. Not our intelligence, even the dumbest psychic could put the smartest humans to shame. Not our physical strength, as a Rattata was stronger than 90% of the human race. Not even our ability to adapt. No one could beat Pokémon at that. No, what made us so dangerous in the animal world was our stubbornness. We beat our heads against obstacle after obstacle on our rise to the top, and eventually, there were no more obstacles, and we stood unchallenged.

With that inbuilt trait on my side, Mewtwo was always doomed and fated to lose. I pulled and pulled and never stopped. Mewtwo tried to attack me psychically, and I ignored what felt like knives running through my brain as I continued to pull. The power I got from Mewtwo energized and healed me, allowing me to pull even more.

Eventually, I was full to the brim, but I didn't stop. Nay, I could not stop. Mewtwo would end here. I felt the taste of blood in my mouth. My nose was bleeding. Probably my ears too, considering I couldn't hear anything. The power was too much. I couldn't stop, but I couldn't continue either. A dilemma if there ever was one, and then it was solved as I felt something nudge me toward the paths that connected me to my Pokémon. I nodded. It was a good idea. I couldn't hold the power within myself. My body couldn't take it, but my team? They could. I kept pulling, but this time I dedicated part of my focus to opening every pathway connecting me to every member of my team. I sent all the power I had straight at them and kept pulling from Mewtwo.

In seconds, I realized my mistake. I couldn't do it. Focusing on both areas didn't work. Mewtwo was gaining ground. I couldn't offload the power without dedicating some focus to it, and any focus I took away from Mewtwo would allow the powerful psychic to regain the advantage in the fight we fought. I spoke a great deal about having better will and being more stubborn than my opponent, but none of this was easy.

Thankfully, I was joined by those who had been with me since the very beginning. I didn't know how they knew just what I needed, but they did. Ino started first, and the rest of the team followed suit. They dragged the power right after me as I dragged it out of Mewtwo. It was a godsend.

But even they were beginning to max out their capacity. Ino triggered the Pokéballs at my waist to release Igneel and Gai. I could tell from their sudden appearance in my senses. They too began to pull and take in more and more energy. We were just hitting what I suspected to be the halfway point in Mewtwo's power, so we still had much more to go, and the more power we took from him, the more ferociously Mewtwo fought to keep what he had. He had tried to break the connection between us more than once, to just cut his losses and run, but I didn't let him. This was probably our one chance to take him down, and we would not waste it.

I could feel the power beginning to change my Pokémon as they took more and more of it into themselves. Ino had monitored the allocation to Igneel and Gai until they were revitalized enough to handle things for themselves. The energy found nowhere else to go within them, so it began to shift, change, and actually evolve their bodies. If I had attention to spare, I might have been worried. But I had nothing that wasn't spent on the psychic I was locked in a death stare with.

"Will you kill me, brother?" Mewtwo asked in my head, and I recoiled at the appellation he had bestowed upon me. This wasn't the first time he was doing this, but somehow now, it wasn't mocking. It was almost sorrowful, and the more power I took from him, the more I got to see of his memories.

I could see from the day he was 'born.' The day he obtained sentience, really. He had been subjected to test after test by Giovanni and his accomplices before he was written off as a failure and doomed to be terminated. Instead, he had been taken by Blaine, the one he called father. And Blaine was very much a father to the psychic. Where the others had seen failure, Blaine said he saw promise, so he was the one who raised Mewtwo from childhood. Every joyful memory Mewtwo had was of Blaine congratulating him for passing some test or fulfilling some expectation. Blaine didn't even just treat Mewtwo as a test subject; he taught him politics, world history, things no weapon had any business knowing. At this point, I was beginning to become certain that the same way Mewtwo saw Blaine as a father, Blaine might have seen the Pokémon as a son of sorts.

Of course, that idyllic lifestyle was uprooted when Blaine was lax with his shields one fateful afternoon, and Mewtwo realized the truth of his mortality. The knowledge that the father he trusted had kept so much away from him had made him snap. He killed Blaine with tears running down his eyes, the same sort of tears that ran down mine right now. And from there, he had done what he thought necessary to survive. When he ran out of Mewtwos to consume, he seemed ready to accept his fate but wanted to achieve Blaine's dream first: world peace. Somehow, in his twisted mind, Mewtwo decided this was the quickest way to achieve actual peace. Destroy the regions he felt had the least potential to truly unite and then force the remaining ones to fight among themselves in a tournament for survival.

Of course, the tournament was never meant to hold. He very much expected a joint mission like this. He wanted to spend his last days being the glue that forced the champions of the regions to work together. He had thought that by triumphing over him, the champions would build the bond necessary for a greater, more peaceful world. And then Oak had to throw a wrench in things by inviting me along.

Giovanni was dead. Giovanni had been dead for a long time. Mewtwo wore his body like a second skin and used him to achieve the unity he sought. And when I showed up at the base that day, he had gone through Giovanni's memories to find out why I felt so familiar. That's when he got hope of living. He saw me, and all his plans ended. He was going to take what I had and complete himself to secure his life and find some other more elegant way to achieve Blaine's dream.

I just stared at him dispassionately. "You brought this upon yourself... brother. But do not worry. Your dream. Blaine's dream. I will achieve it. Trust me," I said finally, with little hesitation. I could empathize with him.

The 25% of power he had remaining was suddenly mine. He stopped resisting at my words, and the strength of my pull shoved the power right into me. With no opportunity to take the power into themselves, my Pokémon were forced to watch as the overflow of power within me did the same thing it had done to me.

Any other human would have died from what happened to me. But I wasn't just human. I was more than that, and the power began to change my body into something more resembling that.

It felt like magma was flowing through my body, but my brain was quick to shut down the pain before I went into shock. Luckily, by some weird quirk of nature, most of the changes remained internal. My muscles were denser, as were my bones, and every inch of me was worlds more powerful. My brain was reshaped and enhanced. All of me was broken down and built again.

When it finished, I noted that I looked much the same. Wait, how did I know that? I had looked through Ino's eyes with unnatural ease, entering her mind without even noticing.

A/N: The final chapter is a go!