A New Recruit


Mewtwo had spent the last few days on Sylen adjusting to his new...
home.  He decided that this was his home because he had nowhere else to
go.  The world of pokŽmon was far away in his mind, a place of bad
memories and nothing more.  Still, this new world was very difficult to
understand.  In his few days there he had come to realize three 
definite facts.

Fact one:  Vincent's real name was Eric, or at least that's what he
told him.  Maggie was actually the female Agent's real name.  Out of a 
personal naming database of ten thousand, her real name had been 
picked.  Slim odds, but perfectly possible.

Fact two:  The Agency was a subsidiary of an organization called the
Council, which was the real power behind everything in Existence.  They
were extremely benign, but Mewtwo had a hard time trusting anyone after
all he had seen.  Still, they gave him everything he asked for, which
just made him more suspicious in the end.

Fact three:  Everything was much stranger than he had expected.  There
were species walking around here that he had never even dreamed of.
There was so much diversity here that no one even looked twice at him,
which made him feel a little insignificant, but it was also nice to not
be so conspicuous.

Actually, it was hard to be conspicuous in his current location.  He
was sitting with his back against an apple tree on the border that sat
between a field full of grass and wildflowers and a forest that was
filled with some of the oddest creatures he had ever seen.  Mew was in
a science lab some five hundred miles away, although if he wanted to 
see her, all he had to do was ask and he would be there in a few 
minutes.  Maggie was...somewhere.  She had left him at the dropoff site
when he had first arrived and he hadn't seen her since.  The only 
other person in the area was Eric, but he was otherwise occupied.  At
the moment he was swinging around a rather large sword in the middle of
the field, hacking away at an invisible enemy that only he could see.

"Hyah!  Hah!!  Hahh!!"  He had been doing that for the better part of
the morning, but now the sun was high in the sky and he was getting 
tired...or bored, Mewtwo couldn't be sure.  He slid the sword into a
sheath stuck to his back, which quickly vanished.  Mewtwo found that
anything he wasn't using at the moment was sent to a personal Limbo
till he needed it.  It seemed a little strange, but no stranger than
everything else.

"Are you quite done?" Mewtwo asked.

"No, but who cares?"  He jumped into the air and flipped a full 180
degrees, leaving him hanging upside-down in midair.  He walked over to
Mewtwo as easily as if he was walking on the ground.  "Hey, can you
do this?"

"I would imagine so, yes.

Eric flipped back to the ground, then flew up into the air above the
trees and scanned the horizon.  A few moments later he saw a small 
figure flying toward him at high speed.  He floated there, calm as 
could be, and waited till the figure stopped in an instant, only three
feet away from him.

"Hey, Maggie," he greeted.

"Hey."

"So, did you get it?"

"Yeah."

"Great.  Let's do this."

They both dropped to the ground next to Mewtwo, but he didn't even
glance at them.  "Yes?" he said, his eyes closed in concentration.

"Could you stand up?" Eric asked.

Mewtwo slowly rose to his feet.  "What is it?"

"I got a present for you."  Maggie handed him a small ring box and he
handed it to Mewtwo.  "Open it."

He did so, and found a small metal device inside, about the size of a
pea.  "What is it?"

"A miniature personal morphing device," Maggie quoted, like she had 
been programmed for it.  "It will allow one person to morph into one 
form for an unlimited period of time.  The small size makes it almost
invisible to physical sight and various scanners and detectors, but it
has a drawback, and that is that it's size makes it impossible to 
program the DNA and physical attributes for more than one form."

"Why are you giving this to me?"

"Because I want you to come with me on my next mission," Eric said
cheerfully.

"Again, why?"

"Because we're going back to the pokŽmon world."

Mewtwo was silent for a moment.  "Why?"

"I'm not sure, I just know we have to go back there.  Look, just put it
behind your....uhh....well, put it behind that thing on your head."
He gestured towards the two horns on Mewtwo's head.  They were the 
pokŽmon equivalent of ears, allowing him to pick up sound vibrations
much easier and from greater distances than humans.  Of course, loud
noises bothered him more, but that was a condition he had to live with.

Mewtwo took the device and set it behind his right ear/horn.  He waited
for a few moments, but when nothing happened, he got a little 
impatient.  "It isn't working," he snapped.

"Of course not, it isn't activated," Maggie replied.

"Then how do you activate it?"

"Tap it."

"Excuse me?"

"Just tap it with your...uh...paw, I guess."

He did so, extending a claw and lightly tapped it against the metal.
As soon as he did, he felt his guts being wrenched from the inside, 
twisting around and reshaping themselves.  The sound of bones crunching
was predominate in his ears, the sound of his entire skeleton shrinking
down into a human form.  The horns on his head sunk down into his skull
and were reproduced out on the sides of his head.  His paws separated
themselves into hands; his claws turned to somewhat dull fingernails.
His eyes were forced to close, then he felt a change in his mind; it 
had become less sharp, unable to hold as much information.  He still
retained most of his basic knowledge, but much of his more advanced
mental powers had been tucked away somewhere in the back of his head.
Finally he opened his eyes, and he immediately noticed a difference.
He couldn't see as far, and colors were much less pronounced, not as
sharp.  His hearing came from the sides of his head instead of from all
around, and his teeth...they were dull, just a bunch of molars, not 
sharp at all.  How these humans chewed meat, he couldn't imagine.

"Well?"  Eric.  He was standing beside him, trying to keep him on his
feet.  The transformation had drained him somewhat; perhaps it was just
because it was the first time.  "You okay?"

"I am...fine."  His voice sounded different, a little more...human,
whatever that meant.

"You wanna know what you look like?" Maggie asked.

"Of course."  Might as well figure it out now rather than have small
children screaming in horror at the sight of his face.

Eric made a gesture, then a reflective surface appeared in midair, 
right in front of him, like a one-way mirror without a frame.  Mewtwo
glanced at it, and noticed something very...familiar.

"Recognize it?" Eric said with a wide grin.

He was Sean.  Or more accurately, he looked like Sean.  He had the same
blond hair and brown eyes, but his face was different.  His nose was
smaller, for one, and he wasn't quite as tall or well-built.  In a 
word, he was younger, about Eric and Maggie's age.  He could see 
advantages to the younger form.  Adults trusted a child more than they
did another adult.

"Maggie programmed it," Eric said, still grinning.  "And yes, I asked 
her to program it so you would look like Sean.  I suppose it's some 
kind of tragic irony, or something."

"Well, it is tragic," Mewtwo retorted.  He was actually wearing 
clothes, the standard all-black garb of an Agent.  For some reason, the
thought crossed his mind that he actually looked good in it.

"Ready to go?" Maggie asked.  She had already taken out her own portal
remote from her coat and was already raring to go.

"Yeah, sure," Eric walked up beside her, then glanced at Mewtwo.
"Ready?"

"What?  Yes, I'm ready."  He took one last look in the mirror before it
vanished in a puff of smoke, then waited as Maggie opened a portal.
"What *is* our mission?"

"I'll tell you when we get there," Eric said slyly.  Before Mewtwo 
could say anything else, he ran behind him and pushed him into the
portal, then quickly followed.

***

In the middle of an unknown field, a large blue-white portal exploded
into existence, and three humans popped out.  Two came out feet first
and the other tumbled to the ground and rolled a few times.

"You all right?" Maggie asked just before she pulled Eric to his feet.

"Yeah, sure," he replied.

"What is our mission?" Mewtwo asked, feeling very itchy in his clothes.

"Our mission," Eric started, "Is to test a new invention, specifically
a time remote."

"You have not yet developed time travel?"

"No, we figured out how to go through time a good long while ago, but
we've been trying to make a time machine that fits in one of these
remotes."  He pulled a remote out of his coat, one that looked similar
to the portal remote.  Most likely they were designed that way.  "See,
we don't exactly go through time much, since there's way too much 
chance of fucking up the timeline, but we still do make the occasional
trip, and our current equipment isn't as easy to carry as the remotes."

"So we're making the first experimental trip with a temporal remote,"
Maggie finished.

"I understand, but why did you ask me to come with you?"

"Well, we thought you might want to come back here one more time, and
I kinda thought you might enjoy seeing this place fifty years in the
future.  That's when we're going, by the way."

"Ah."

Eric motioned for the two to come closer.  "Okay, this thing works on 
the temporal bubble theory, so don't go too far when we get to the 
future.  If this thing works, they'll make one for a crowd, but until 
we give it our OK, we'll have to live with it."

He tapped a few keys, then pressed a button in the middle of the 
remote.  A white sphere exploded from the front of the remote and 
expanded around the trio.  Mewtwo felt like there were ants crawling 
all over him under his skin.  The energy of the sphere almost blinded
him, but he could see the other two slowly dissolve just before the
light completely filled his eyesight and he vanished without a trace.

***

Inside a particularly large asteroid in a belt around a dying white
dwarf star was a rather small building.  It had been built directly
into the rock so it would blend in perfectly and be totally invisible
to any passing ships.  There were five people in the building, only 
four of them human.

"Press the button."

In the middle of the main room was a giant circle of metal, over ten
feet in diameter.  To the side of it was a small platform.  One of the
four humans pressed a small red button, then the platform began to 
glow, and another human slowly materialized, appearing on his hands and
knees.  His clothes had tiny wisps of smoke rising from them, and his
face had multiple burn marks.

"Welcome back, Aaron."

At first he didn't move.  The images of the battle still fresh in his 
mind, he tried to sense the man who had almost killed him.

"Get up."

Aaron complied, but only out of fear that he would be attacked again.  
Fear.  He hadn't felt anything even remotely like it in years.  It was
a...disturbing sensation.

"Good.  Glad to be here?"

He finally found his voice.  "Glad to be...where?"

"Here."

Aaron noticed that his eyes were closed, so he opened them, and he 
figured out where he was and what had happened.  "Oh.  Thank God."

"Yeah.  Looks like you got pretty beaten up."

His boss.  Galim.  The leader of the Agency.  The other three...Nametz,
John, Kal.  There was one more.  He was red.  "Who...is that?"

The red figure took a small bow.  "I am Khali."  His voice sounded like
the recordings they had taken of Jerry in demon form.

"We've formed a little alliance while you were gone, Aaron," Galim 
informed him.  "Did you know there's another Agency out there?  And 
they have the gall to think they can defeat us.  Us!!  We've blown up
more than half this entire galaxy, and they just destroyed our 
homeworld like shit!"

"But...Khali?  Why?"

"Because Jerry was able to take control of Mewtwo and damn near won, if
it hadn't been for Sean and Mew.  But we know now that those two are
out of the picture, and so is the Athame."

"How?"

"We scanned that planet you went to and found that Mewtwo and two 
others are using something called a time remote to go to the future. 
This thing-" he gestured toward the giant ring, "Is a temporal portal.
We found it last week and hacked into the computer.  Turns out this 
thing can be linked with any other time-travel device and send one 
additional person on a trip through time along with those three pricks,
so, we're sending Khali."

"But sir, I'm the top Agent here!  I just need to be healed, then I can
bring you their heads!

"Shut up!"  Galim kicked Aaron in the head, giving him a more serious
concussion.  "You've failed!  Khali is more powerful than you.  He'll
teach those freaks that we're the real power here."

"It will be my extreme pleasure," the demon said with a toothy grin.

The air in the middle of the time portal turned to energy, and one of
the other Agents signaled Galim.  "It's time."

The rest of the Agents sprang into action, entering commands into the 
various computers, preparing the portal for travel.  Khali stepped up 
to a small platform in front of the portal, then when Galim gave the 
signal to go in, he twisted around and fired a beam of energy from his 
mouth at one of the computer consoles, then jumped through the portal,
vanishing in an instant.  The console exploded, killing the Agent 
standing behind it in an instant.

"Damn double-crosser!"

Even before the last syllable left his lips the room exploded, along 
with the asteroid.  No one saw it, no one detected it, and no one 
cared.  Khali knew that he couldn't come back to those false Agents.
What awaited him on the pokŽmon world was a being he had come to 
respect, and ultimately fear.  He would have to kill him as soon as
possible, then he could finally achieve his destiny.