"Experiment? Mewtwo? What are those?"
Ash, Misty, and Brock all stared blankly. Blaine's words were clear, but the meaning behind them was impossible to grasp.
Blaine closed his eyes for a moment, as if weighing a heavy decision.
When he opened them again, his gaze had softened.
"Since you not only hatched Ralts, but even followed her memories to find me… that is a kind of fate. And because of that fate… I'll tell you everything."
He exhaled deeply.
"Perhaps only you can stop him."
Then Blaine began telling a story, a story of brilliance, ambition, and ruin.
"When I was young, I was considered a gifted Trainer. In less than two years, I won a major tournament. In ten years, I reached Elite rank."
Blaine gave a humorless smile.
"Even today, that would be considered astonishing talent."
After reaching the level of Elite Four, he challenged for the title of Champion.
"And I was beaten so thoroughly by the Champion of that era… that I lost the will to continue."
Ash blinked. "Wait, Professor Oak forced you into retirement?!"
Blaine slammed his hand on the table.
"What do you mean 'forced into retirement'?! I simply didn't feel like dealing with him anymore! I stepped down and became a Gym Leader! Meanwhile that old fool abandoned being a Trainer and buried himself in insane research!"
From Blaine's tone, it was obvious that their relationship wasn't bad. Only people on good terms could insult each other so casually.
"No wonder Professor Oak called you an old acquaintance," Ash muttered.
"You know Oak? Oh, right, you're from Pallet Town. That old man stays in that backwater and still finds a kid like you? Incredible luck." Blaine gave Ash a sideways look.
"To get this far in just three months… your talent may surpass even mine and Oak's from back then."
He wasn't wrong.
A Trainer's growth required talent.
But a Trainer's strength depended even more on the talent of their Pokémon.
How could a wild Pokémon's potential be predicted?
Luck. Pure luck.
"Your Pokémon's talent is… extraordinary," Blaine said, glancing at Gardevoir. "This one especially, this was one of my life's most difficult creations."
Ash's face stiffened.
Just then, Ash remembered something and said:
"Oh, Professor Oak asked me to pass you a message. He said he knows what you're thinking, but unless you sit down and talk to him, nothing will be resolved. If you want to talk, go find him."
Blaine froze.
"He asked you to tell me this? How did he know you'd meet me?"
Ash coughed lightly.
"He said… with my luck, I might bump into you on the street."
Blaine: 'Are you serious?'
What kind of monstrous luck does this boy have, to make Professor Oak casually predict something so absurd, and then have it actually happen?
Ash literally collided with him.
Then Gardevoir sensed his Aura.
Then Ash tracked him through a maze of paths no ordinary person could navigate.
It was absurd. Impossible. Ridiculous.
"That old man is still as naïve as ever…" Blaine muttered. He shook his head. "Never mind. Let me continue."
After stepping down as Elite, Blaine became a Gym Leader.
His life was relaxing, teaching young Trainers, dabbling in harmless research, enjoying a slow semi-retirement.
But that peace didn't last.
"I discovered research papers on genetics," he said quietly. "And from that moment… something inside me changed."
He dove in deeper and deeper.
Cinnabar Gym fell into neglect. No staff. No acting leader. For years, it was practically abandoned.
During this time, Blaine made early progress in genetic manipulation, creating Pokémon with extraordinary potential through gene fusion.
"But every Pokémon created through those early experiments…" Blaine's voice lowered "…died shortly after birth."
No matter how talented, they couldn't survive.
The research reached a dead end. Blaine wanted to give up.
But he couldn't.
A stubborn voice inside him refused to quit. He had come too far.
And then;
"An organization approached me," Blaine said quietly. "They provided the one thing my research lacked, the key ingredient."
Misty swallowed hard. "What… ingredient?"
"Mew's genes."
The room fell silent.
Mew, the mythical Pokémon. The ancestor of all Pokémon.
Its genes contained fragments of every Pokémon's genetic code.
That was why legends said Mew could transform into any Pokémon, even Legendary ones, and use their exclusive moves.
"Of course, that's exaggerated," Blaine added. "But its genes do possess terrifying inclusivity."
And with Mew's DNA, the impossible became possible.
Initially, it could only replicate ordinary Pokémon, but later on, even Pseudo-Legendary Pokémon could be copied.
What was even more shocking was that the replicated Pokémon generally possessed at least A-rank talent, though none ever reached S-rank.
But even so, the achievement was terrifying. In the Pokémon world, an A-rank talent appears only once in ten thousand. And now, he could mass-produce them.
This meant that Trainers wouldn't need to struggle in the wild searching for a Pokémon with outstanding natural talent. Once the replication technology matured, A-rank talent Pokémon could be manufactured in bulk.
In that case, many gifted Trainers would no longer fade away simply because they lacked a suitable partner.
"How could something like this ever be allowed?! If this really spread, the entire world would fall into chaos!"
Brock finally couldn't hold himself back.
Blaine's original wish sounded beautiful, but once such technology proliferated, it would be disastrous for the world as a whole.
"I don't even know why I had those thoughts back then. Looking back, I realize how absurd I was. Besides… the cost of gene replication is extremely high. Even if mass replication were possible, the required materials are scarce."
"And more importantly, I later discovered that the replicated Pokémon could only reach the Elite level. Only a tiny handful barely broke through to Professional level, and after that, they hit an absolute ceiling."
In the end, what stopped Blaine's research wasn't his conscience, it was reality.
Even though the cloned Pokémon no longer suffered sudden death thanks to stabilizing them with Mew's genetic material, their growth hit an unbreakable wall.
What use was high aptitude if they could never advance?
Yet theoretically, such a bottleneck shouldn't exist at all. Blaine suspected the cause was a subtle but fatal genetic flaw. And so, he set his sights on the Legendary Pokémon.
After tremendous effort, he managed to obtain Moltres's genetic sample. But when he tried to replicate it, the Moltres clone didn't even form, it simply exploded.
Legendary Pokémon cannot be replicated, or at least, no method capable of doing so has ever been found.
But Blaine didn't give up. If he couldn't replicate a Legendary Pokémon… then he would create one.
Using Mew's genes as a foundation.
And, unbelievably, he succeeded. He created a Pokémon born with terrifying power, its appearance resembled Mew, but its destructive potential far surpassed it.
Immediately after birth, that Pokémon obliterated an entire island. That was power on par with a Champion-level Pokémon, and it achieved it the moment it opened its eyes.
And that wasn't its limit. Not only was its starting point unimaginably high, its potential was limitless, completely unlike the flawed cloned Pokémon.
"The moment I saw its eyes, I realized I had created a monster. It was then that I finally understood the gravity of what I had done…"Blaine's voice was filled with regret. He regretted his gene experiments, and regretted even more creating such a creature.
"Born at Champion level… that's far too abnormal."
Even Ash couldn't help being stunned. A realm most Trainers could never reach in their entire lives, yet that Pokémon stood there from birth. Monster was the only fitting word.
People had occasionally called Ash a "monster" because of his accomplishments, but compared to the being Blaine created, he wasn't even close.
"What's done is done. He already exists, and he is under strict control and protection by that organization. Even if I wanted to destroy him in secret, I no longer could. And shortly afterward, he had already grown so strong that even if I wanted to destroy him, I wouldn't have been able to."
"This is the origin of Experiment No. 1, Mewtwo. A name meaning 'beyond Mew'."
Ash and the others finally understood why no one had ever heard of this name before, because Mewtwo was completely artificial.
It was an existence even rarer than many Legendary Pokémon. In terms of rarity, perhaps only those Legendary Pokémon with divine duties could compare.
After all, Mewtwo was utterly unique.
"So… what about Gardevoir? Back then, Blaine, you should've already come to your senses and given up on gene experiments. Why is Gardevoir listed as Subject No. 2?" Ash pressed further.
"You're right. I had stopped performing gene experiments at that point. However… your Gardevoir was an experimental subject created during the same period as Mewtwo. The only difference is that she wasn't created from scratch through genetic construction. Instead, Mew's genes were injected into her while she was still in her Pokémon Egg."
"When the injection was carried out, the egg immediately began collapsing. I used every method I could think of to stabilize it, but the egg never hatched, not for a very, very long time. It was like a dead egg. Eventually, I gave up on it and turned all my attention to Mewtwo."
Ash and the others exchanged shocked looks.
That egg… that was Ralts's egg. They never imagined it had endured such a catastrophic beginning, nearly falling apart before it ever had a chance to hatch, and later even being used as a receptacle for something far more dangerous.
"But after I finally came to my senses," Blaine continued, "I decided to leave that organization. Mewtwo was under extremely heavy protection, impossible for me to destroy. So I chose a different approach. While Mewtwo was inside the cultivation tank… I extracted a portion of his essence, and then… I injected that into the egg."
"What?!"
Ash, Brock, and Misty were stunned.
"Mewtwo was already at Champion level by then!" Brock burst out.
"You injected the power of a Champion-level Pokémon into an egg that wasn't even hatched yet, weren't you afraid it would explode?!"
Even though Brock wasn't a researcher, the imbalance was obvious: one side possessed overwhelming power; the other had not even taken its first breath.
Infusing the power of a full-fledged Champion into an unborn Pokémon, anyone could tell how dangerously reckless that was.
"I had no choice," Blaine said with a weary sigh. "If I didn't store the extracted essence somewhere, it would have returned to Mewtwo. And that egg… because it already contained Mew's genetic material, it shared the same origin as Mewtwo. So, theoretically, it was capable of withstanding Mewtwo's spiritual essence."
Theoretically.
"Why?!"
Ash couldn't hold himself back anymore. He slammed the table and shot to his feet, eyes blazing with fury. "Pokémon are living beings, living beings with feelings and flesh and blood! And you gambled with its life just because of some theory?!"
Gardevoir was his partner. Even if she hadn't been, hearing what she had gone through would have been enough to make anyone's blood boil.
Ralts had struggled to survive even before she was born, and then she had to endure even more suffering? If anything had gone wrong… Ash didn't even want to imagine her fate.
Blaine lowered his head, guilt etched across his face. He clearly regretted his actions, but regret could not change the past. There was no medicine that could undo what had already been done.
"You don't understand Mewtwo's terror," Blaine said quietly. "If he were allowed to grow freely… without the intervention of Pokémon with divine authority, he would've become the strongest Pokémon in existence. Without question. Even Champion Trainers like Leon wouldn't be able to stand against him once he reached full maturity."
"Why do you think he's called Mewtwo? It's because he was created to surpass Mew itself."
"For that reason alone… even if it meant sacrificing the life of another Pokémon, I had to limit Mewtwo's potential."
Ash's fists trembled with barely restrained anger. If Blaine weren't Professor Oak's friend, he probably would've punched him already.
To curb Mewtwo's power, Blaine had been willing to sacrifice another Pokémon.
And the Pokémon Blaine had chosen to sacrifice, was the very one now sitting beside him, Gardevoir.
...
STONES PLZZ 💎💎
Bonus @400
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