Time for a brand-new fanfic!  I'm just killing time till the millennium
and waiting for the riots.  On the subject of the next episode of
[it's a plug, for god's sake!] PokŽmon:  The Next Pikachu!, I'll be
posting it relatively soon.  Hopefully all those lemons have kept
everyone busy.


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Ghost Town



In a small building on a remote planet somewhere in the universe,
Mewtwo watched Eric as he stood inside a small chamber.  One end of
the small room was a glass wall, which allowed people outside to look
in.  The other end had a number of guns attached to the walls.

Suddenly one of the guns fired a single shot straight forward.  It
moved through the air faster than Mewtwo could see, but Eric's hand
snapped up and caught it just before it went into his chest and through
his heart.  Another gun fired, and again he caught the bullet.  Now
they fired at a machine gun rate, and the Agent's body became a blur as
he moved faster and faster, catching each bullet just as it was about
to hit him.  Finally the guns stopped, along with Eric.  "There," he
said, "That's how you catch bullets."  He walked toward the door, then
suddenly screamed in pain and threw the bullets away.  "Damn it, those
things are hot!!"

"Gee, you'd think bullets fired not two seconds ago from a gun would
be cold," Maggie grumbled.

"Hmph," Mewtwo muttered, "Indeed."

Eric walked out of the room, rubbing his hands on his coat.  "Whatever.
Look, we still have some time to kill before my package gets here."  He
looked at Mewtwo.  "Why don't you take a shot?"

"Excuse me?"

"Go ahead.  I'll change the settings so it's not so tough."

"Hmph.  You don't have to change a thing."  With that, he stepped
inside the room and stood his ground against the guns.  "Start it."

"Okay, fine.  What do I care, I'm just an Agent."  He pressed a small
red button on his side of the wall, then there was a short buzzing
sound, and the guns were activated.

A single bullet fired, and came within two feet of Mewtwo, but it
suddenly stopped in midair.  A moment later, the same flurry of bullets
that attacked Eric was fired at him, but they all stopped before they
reached their target.

"Cheater," Maggie said with a smile.

"I thought the point of this exercise was to not get shot," Mewtwo
replied slyly.

"Either way."

He stepped out of the room, then all of a sudden a portal opened near
him, and a man in a business suit stepped out.

"Sir," the man said to Eric, "Here's the information you requested."
He tossed a yellow folder to him, then spun around on his heel and
went right back into the portal.

Eric opened the folder and pulled out a single piece of white paper,
then a very annoyed look formed on his face.  "I knew it.  I just
fucking knew it."

"Knew what?" Mewtwo inquired.

"Michael's been following me.  This is the proof."

"Who is Michael?"

"A demi-god.  Very nasty killer-type."

"And why has he been following you?"

"Oh, nothing big.  I just killed his brother."

Right, nothing big...  "Excuse me?"

"His older brother was a full god.  He took over a low-tech, highly
superstitious planet with propoganda and his own godly powers.  He
started making everyone built monuments to him and 'his glory', and all
that dictator shit."

"And you killed him?"

"Not alone, no.  Killing a god is hard as hell.  They can regenerate
better than you ever will, and on top of that, they're immortal.  The
only way to kill a god is to destroy their avatars."

"Destroy the body, and the 'soul' is destroyed as well?"  He had kept
going over and over the possibility of a person having a soul.  In
religion it was the thing that lived on after you died.  It was the one
thing that lasted forever, or so they figured.

"Nah, you can't destroy a soul, but you can force it to go to its next
life, which is what we'll be doing."

"Hey, walk and talk," Maggie told them.  They left the room, making way
for the next people scheduled to use it.  "The Agency launched a pretty
big operation getting Michael's brother out of that world.  We had to
do it without upsetting the social order, and without blowing up the
whole damn planet."

"Believe it or not, that's kind of hard."

"And now he's after you?" Mewtwo asked.

"Yep.  We eventually had to kill his brother by throwing his avatar
into a star.  Very nasty business we're in sometimes."

"So where are we going?"

"I really don't know.  Hold on."  He pulled out his phone and pressed
one of the auto-dial buttons.  "Sir?  Yeah, it's me.  You do?  Where?
Oh, good.  Yeah, I'll take it."  Beep.  "That was our boss."

"You have a boss?"  It made sense, of course, but even so, it surprised
him that people like this would have a director.

"Yeah, his name's Yarzigall.  We've got a new mission."

"What is it?" Maggie asked idly.

"We're to go to this small town on Kaszmal IV and investigate some
disappearances.  Nothing big, but it's a useful mission."

That intrigued Mewtwo.  "Useful?  Why?"

"I hid some items there a while back.  Items that are, more or less,
able to kill a god."  He pulled his remote from his pocket, set a few
controls, and opened a portal.  "This is one of those worlds that
doesn't even know about alien life, so you'll have to morph.  You still
have that thing we gave you?"

"Yes."  He tapped the small device located behind his ear, and within
seconds, he was in the body of a human, complete with Agency apparel.
"I still don't like it."

"Eh, most people don't.  You'll...well, actually, no one's really
gotten used to it.  Never mind."  He walked through the portal, and the
others followed.

***

Michael watched them leave, knowing full well where they were going.
Hmph.  They were planning to kill him.  Just like his brother.
Bastards.  He pulled his cell phone from his coat and placed a call.
"Steph.  Get over here.  Now."

She appeared a moment later.  "Yes?"

"How do I counteract their plans?"

"Beat 'em to the punch, so to speak.  Just get there before them and
use the elements' power to kill them instead of you.  Simple as that."

"Good.  You can leave now."

"Gee, thanks," she said with the utmost sarcasm.  She vanished, and
Michael opened a portal and left.

***

"Son of a bitch!!"

They appeared in a secluded part of the woods, one that bordered on a
small town.  Eric was the first to leave the portal, and the momentum
of his exit sent him crashing into a tree.  Maggie and Mewtwo managed
to stop themselves before they repeated his fate.  "Damn it, that
hurts!" he complained loudly.

"Then you should've moved out of the way," Mewtwo suggested.

"Yeah, yeah.  Look, until we get through that town over there," he
gestured toward the large number of small houses that dotted the
landscape, "Try not to talk to anyone.  Technically, we're not supposed
to be here."

"What do you mean?"

"He means we're here unofficially," Maggie explained.  "This world is
under the Council's protection, which means no one can interfere, not
even our enemies.  Still, the Agency has been wanting to find out about
this place for a while."

Eric got a weird look on his face.  "What?  Why didn't you tell me
about it?  I could've saved a phone call."

"Forget it, we're here to investigate, right?"

Actually, Mewtwo was there because he was bored.  There was almost
nothing to do on Sylen, except meditate and communicate with Mew.
Lately, though, the life of an Agent provided him with excitement to
spare, not to mention threatening his life more than a few times.  Then
again, like Eric had said, that was the fun of it.

"Let's get moving," Maggie said, breaking him from his thoughts.
"Looks like it'll be dark soon.  The only problem with world-hopping is
that no watch in Existence will keep correct time for each world."

It was true; on Sylen, it was midday.  Now it looked as if sunset would
be upon them any minute.  They trudged out of the small forest, down a
small hill, and into the town through a small alley formed by two
neighboring houses.

The people themselves were normal, at least.  They were human, as
Mewtwo could see.  "I am curious," he started, "Why have there been
humans on different worlds, in different universes?"

"Basic DNA," Maggie explained.  "Humans have a rather basic DNA
configuration, compared to other species like you.  So when the great
primeval soup dish mixes together, humans get created slightly more
often than other species.  It's kinda like an intergalactic craps
game, and our species is a hard eight."

He didn't understand the craps metaphor, but he understood the odds of
particles mixing together to form proteins.  A small boy brushed
against him, then ran away to a house on the opposite side of the
street.  They walked down the road, one that was thankfully devoid of
cars.  Actually, there weren't any streetlights, or traffic lights, or
lights of any kind.  There was a candle in the windows of each house,
and no other source of light that they could see.  The only thing that
kept the night away was the sun, and that was waning fast.

Everyone suddenly stopped.  All the people in town, the childred in the
streets, the men walking home from work, the women tending the garden,
they all stopped dead in their tracks.  It was like someone had frozen
them in place.  Finally the sun dipped below the horizon, and every
last person in town disappeared.

"What...was that?" Maggie asked, very startled.

They were alone.  Once the sun was completely down and twilight had set
in, the people of the town had been phased out of existence in an
instant.  The town was in complete darkness, except for the candles
still sitting in the windows and the fires burning in the homes.

"I think," Eric started, "Ah, hell, I don't know.  I guess Yarzigall
wasn't kidding when he was talking about 'disappearances'."

"Indeed," Mewtwo mumbled.  "What do we do?"

"I guess...we look around.  Check out some of these homes.  Maybe they
were expecting this."

"I'm not sure breaking into people's homes is allowed by the Agency,"
Maggie informed him.

"Who cares, we're not even supposed to be here."

She shrugged.  "I guess.  Fine, let's split up.  Pick a house and
search it.  But don't mess up the furniture, okay?  We've got enough
troubles."

"Sure, *mom*."

They all walked toward a different house and went inside.  None of them
were really sure what to look for, except anything out of the ordinary.
Then again, that could be anything.  It usually was.

***

Fifteen hundred feet above the town, a portal opened, breaking the
vast darkness.  A cloud, darker than the sky, slipped through the
portal and melted into the form of a young woman.  Spectre looked down
and saw a figure stalking around in the bushes, trying not to be seen.
"Right on time, Michael dearest," she whispered.

She also saw Mewtwo and the others walking around in a ghost town.  She
didn't know what they were up to, but if Michael was still following
them, it must be something important.

What the Agents were doing wasn't important.  She wanted Michael's
power.  A demi-god was at least a step towards godhood.  And that fool
still thought that he was even a match for her.  Imagine!  Him, a
challenge for her?  Gods must suffer from chronic delusions, she
thought.

She still had two problems:  Michael, and Mewtwo.  One had to die so
she could kill the other.  Now the only problem was how...

Michael:  His power was impressive, but not a match for her after she
absorbed a few lives.  He still had abilities that she couldn't fathom;
he seemed to know something about one of the Agents that bothered her.
What if they were hiding something from him?

Mewtwo:  His power was what she always wanted.  She knew about the
secret to his psychic abilities, and it was that secret that made her
want that power so badly.  Still, he had one weakness, one that she
wouldn't hesitate to exploit...

***

In a laboratory on Sylen, Mew sat on a very soft bed that had been made
up for her.  She didn't sleep, and for good reason.  She expected
company.

After a few minutes, her expectations were answered.  A very familiar
young woman in black entered by walking straight through the door.  The
woman didn't smile, didn't frown, didn't do anything but walk straight
toward Mew, picking up a small metal device from a tray near the door.

The woman stopped when she was just inches from Mew.  They stared at
each other for what seemed like hours.  Finally, the woman slowly moved
the device towards Mew.  The tiny pokŽmon immediately raised an energy
field and prepared to blast the intruder to atoms, but with a quick,
unseen movement, the device was attached to Mew's neck, and the energy
field dissipated immediately.  Mew felt her nervous system seize up and
stop altogether, preventing her from moving.

"Sorry about this," the woman suddenly said, "But you've got to go."
She pressed a tiny button on the device, and Mew quickly vanished in a
flash of light.  "Don't worry, your son will be joining you soon."
With that, the woman waved her arm and opened a portal behind her, then
quickly stepped through it.  It closed soon after, leaving no trace
that she was there.

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I wonder if the owners of pokŽmon would let me publish these fanfics
in a book if I asked them.  They'd probably want a percentage of the
profits.  And there's so little reserved for the writer...maybe not.
Then again, I do need a new laptop, and advances are very generous.
Hmmm.......


The Master of Eternal Darkness,

Shadow