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Veritas’ first chose in a Pokemon wouldn’t have been Psyduck, frankly. But he can’t say he dislikes the decision he’d made. The ‘mon made a good companion, and the moves it learned did have an edge when it came to what little combat he engaged in. (.. Seriously, who had come up with the ‘rule’ that eye contact on a route leads to a battle? He was only walking to work!)
And besides, it was good company. His days spent in the lab were enjoyable with it by his side, and the duck tended to follow him from behind most days of the week. It liked to carry items, he soon found, shortly after he’d taken in the little thing, and soon enough, it wanted to prove itself ‘useful’. So, he let it carry his clipboard around on good days.
It was new, truly, new. Learning of it’s headaches and their frequency. It was also new to drop everything to take care of the ‘mon, too. Sitting criss-cross on the floor of the lab with the Duck Pokemon in his lap as it whined from the increasing pain of it’s constant headaches. Now, he’d known that most every psyduck was afflicited with this pain, it was listed in every note about the Pokemon, after all.
But it was a surprise to learn how.. They’re managable most days and not on others. It’s a truly.. Human experience, he’s found. And that’s when he’d begun to keep a journal, the scholar in him wanting to find out how to cure his Pokemon’s ailments, all on the side, while he worked alongside the lab and Ruan Mei on their project. (He doesn’t understand how.. a Gym Leader agreed to this, but he doesn’t mind it. Her smarts are well-appreciated in this experiment, after all.)
Now, he didn’t know what project he was included on, he was merely doing the equations and assisting them to acquire the resources they required. All he knew was that it had to do with Mew and that.. Master Ball prototype they were working on. Still, all he had to do was send out the solved equations by Pidgey-Mail, and then he’d soon get a letter back telling him they were thankful. Alongside something new for him to work on, too.
Eventually, though, his Psyduck -- now dubbed ‘Duckie’ by his students in the lab -- had carried in a large box, a Pidgeotto trailing behind. (Usually, he never let Psyduck collect the mail, but he hadn’t noticed the package, and it likely went out itself to collect it.) So, Veritas signs for the package, and turns to open the box. First thing he notices is the broken purple shell of what he believe is the prototype they had intended to send him. The second thing he notices is the letter.
----
He sets out first thing in the morning. ‘Duckie’ is in it’s pokeball, as he makes his way to the lab he’d been given the proper address of. Mentally, he chides himself for getting this deep into this mess. He’s not about to let ‘Duckie’ fight this.. Creature they’ve made -- What Ruan Mei’s dubbed ‘Mewtwo’ -- but he’s been called to help quell this thing’s.. Mess. Yes. Mess, that’s what this is.
Still, he makes it there by noon, and it seems he’s too late. After all, that Master Ball prototype was something the creature had broken out of, something unheard of for the ball’s properties. Regardless, he pushes his way inside, hand tightly curled around the singular pokeball in his pocket. There’s something.. off about this.. Mansion-made-lab, and he’d rather not stick around here for long.
He finds himself surrounded by Ditto. They’re not what’s causing the uneasiness, no, but it’s still.. Different. Strange, even. He’d never seen them in person before, due to their rarity, as they were only classified a month into this project, and were considered rare. And although there’s a.. large amount of them, and one of them’s an unusual light blue coloration, they’re not what’s causing his hair to stand on end.
With a deep breath, he sends Psyduck out of it’s pokeball, and decides that letting it follow him around as usual might be enough to calm his nerves. After all, it’s an added sense of normalcy in this otherwise outlandish situation. Still, he pushes forward. The lab may be destroyed, but there’s records that might have been left untouched..
.. And potential survivors from the damage, too. A part of him doubts that Ruan Mei would’ve worked towards evacuating anyone who was injured after the intital damage. (This damage had to have happened in waves. A perfectly pristine mansion doesn’t get destroyed like this in an hour, after all.) Well, she would’ve worked one evacutating humans, she was connected to the mansion after all, but pokemon..? That was a whole other matter. Especially given the amount of Ditto in this place.
He makes his ways further down into the basement, eventually coming to an extremely damaged portion of the mansion. His head is pounding now, and he can barely hear Psyduck’s ‘psyd! psyd!” chants as it tries to keep up with him, and knowing the ‘mon, it’s got a headache as well. There’s some excess psychic energy in the air, here, clearly, and it’s affecting him. Still, he pushes forward.
There’s a large holding tube, large enough for even an Exeggutor, in the center of the room, cracked and leaking liquid. He walks forward, looking around the room, eventually finding what he’d come in here for. A filing cabinet, with at least one of it’s drawers undamaged in the attack. He walks over and pries it open, perusing the files, his face darkening with each one he skims.
This experiment was.. entirely inhumane, he deems it. It’s a broken mess of experiments and -- The ditto are.. failed Mew clones? Mewtwo.. Mew Two. Veritas kicks himself for not realizing sooner, and he kicks himself when his hair raises on end and he turns to find himself face to face with the exact creature he’d willingly helped create. No. Not creature, Pokemon. A Pokemon he helped create into this cruel lab.
He grabs his singular Pokeball to call Psyduck back into it. He’d rather not fight, and he doesn’t doubt that outrunning this.. creature would lead to better prospects. (One that means Psyduck won’t be injured.) So.. He darts to the side, trying to call for Psyduck, only for the creature to just.. Blast the ball out of his hand. It hurts, and he’ll likely have a burn there come tomorrow, but right now, he has.. priorities. He whistles for Psyduck to follow him, as he tries to run out of the room. He’d rather not battle the Pokemon that destroyed this building, and was a likely cause for the evacuation, too. So he runs.
Now, he’s well aware he might not be able to outrun the Mewtwo, but.. He’s going off of his knowledge of the base instincts of most Pokemon. Which is to protect and stay in their place of birth, no matter how.. Unhomely it may b..- Veritas stops in his tracks and turns back towards the room he’d just run from.
He’s no worse than the people who’d abandoned Mewtwo before, isn’t he? If he’s basing it off of the.. idea that Mewtwo is much like an infant with little survival instincts and was.. basically raised in captivity, he’s going about this all wrong. He turns around, and sets a hand onto Psyduck’s head, asking it to follow him at a distance. (He knows full well that the Pokemon won’t listen, but it was worth a try.)
And he walks back into the room, and towards Mewtwo willingly.
“Mewtwo. That’s your name, correct?”
The Pokemon makes a sound that can only be described as a Trill, before words fill his mind.
“Name. Yes.”
He crinkles his nose slightly. He shouldn’t have expected perfect grammar from a Pokemon, but it still irked him. “May I come towards you?”
“No.”
A simple enough answer, so he stays put. “Is something wrong?”
“Kept in Glass Cage.”
“You’re out now, aren’t you?”
“Out. Yes.”
He swallows, knowing full well he might make a mistake that will make at least one person dislike him. But, he’s never quite cared for Ruan Mei’s opinion, anyhow. “Would you like to come with me? Outside of here?” And besides, this’ll give him an opportunity to teach his students on man-made Pokemon, too. (And the cons of doing so.)
“Outside?”
“Outside of the.. Lab. Mansion, whatever you want to call this place.”
Mewtwo comes closer. “Outside. Yes. Outside good.”
“Then follow me and.. ‘Duckie’.” He can easily change his route home. It’s not hard to get to Viridian City by any means, and he does need to stop by Pewter again, regardless. (He owes the muesum a visit. They’d presented one of his discoveries recently, on Wormholes, and he wanted to see how they’d done so.)
He turns away and starts to leave. He doesn’t expect Mewtwo to follow him, but he did offer. He hears the tell-tale waddles from Psyduck, and his own migraine begins to alleviate itself. Once they’re out of the fog of psychic energy, he pulls Psyduck into his arms and carries it, trying his best to calm it’s own headache. It’s a futile effort, and he’s well aware, but he still tries, running a hand along it’s feathers.
He gently ruffles them, before continuing to walk. He’d rather put Psyduck into it’s pokeball, but it’s likely broken from that blast his hand had taken earlier, and there’s also the fact that he has a Pokemon as powerful as Mewtwo following him, too. (A part of him dreads his students’ reactions to his ‘newest pokemon’. Because as much as he doesn’t want to lay claim to Mewtwo.. His students will do that for him, first. They did the same with Psyduck, after all.)
----
By the time he makes it back to the lab, it’s dark out and he’d completely skipped his stop by Pewter City. He pushes his way through the door and holds it open for Mewtwo. He’ll figure out a sleeping situation later, because he truly doesn’t want to head home quite yet. So he lays Psyduck on two of the cushions that once held Pokeballs, and moves to add to the Pokedex what information he’s garnered on Mewtwo.
By morning come, the lab’s Espeon makes it way towards him, flicking him with it’s tail. Ah, perhaps he had spent the night burning the midnight oil, but it wasn’t like it was intentional, after all. Still, the creature had learned that if it woke ‘after’ someone, it wasn’t good. He’d had far too many cases of others coming into the lab early, on little sleep, and then collapsing, after all.
So he pats it on the head, and stands up, turning to look across the lab. Faintly, he finds himself smiling at the sight of Psyduck, still asleep where he’d put the ‘Mon last night, and Mewtwo, floating as close to the ceiling as possible, and he can only assume it’s asleep, too. Instead of bothering the both of them to head home with him, he just quietly slips out of the lab and locks the door behind himself. It’s not as if there’s anything important that needs worked on today, and he still needs to find a way to explain Mewtwo’s presence, anyways. So he merely heads home to get the rest he’d skipped out on the night before.