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Frontier Town Traveller's Haus - Lobby

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"Termiwhatnow?" Nova blinked a few times, then concluded that was the wagon's intended destination. "Well, thanks for confirming my suspicion that there's a nebulous group cooking up something sinister in the background." There was a slight smile on his beak. Hidden beneath his dusky mask.

"People who work in the shadows have to keep cards close to their vest, even in the most dire situation," Nova continued. The gears had turned in his head, linking Jade's claims to her earlier statement and that... pregnant as hell pause. "He can hold secrets that weren't sitting in that vault." He tilted his head slightly. "I would think," he resumed tapping a claw, "whoever 'trained' you to size up and avoid situations would offer similar lessons about secret-keeping."

Sure, it was just Nova's gut talking. But he'd been relatively on the mark with Silver. Nova could press his luck.
 
Jade gave him a look of confusion. It seemed like he was trying to get at something without just coming right out and saying it. "That's pretty much what I meant, though--that like, even if he was involved in stuff, the people who're running things would've held their cards close, so that they could handle losing some fallguys along the way."

That last bit was pretty specifically aimed at her, though. That much was obvious.

"I've been in that position before, on the other side, and it was the same deal," Jade said in a low voice. "I wasn't told the bits of info that actually mattered, so there wouldn't be any way for that info to get out." Not even by force.
 
Nova looked down the hallway. "Huh. Guess your world must be lower tech, then. Otherwise, whoever that is shouldn't have bothered going with people. Machines could do the same job with less risk."
 
Jade gave him a look. "Uh. Machines couldn't really do the sort of stuff we were doing. The whole point was posing as a normal member of the organization. Unless you're saying you've got machines that could totally pass for a regular person. But at that point they might as well be a person anyway, right?"

Nova's world was definitely about to be filed in the "what the actual heck" corner along with Mhynt's, wasn't it.
 
“What do you think people considered me back home?” Nova said. “Not organic. Not by a long shot. At least my partner had theluxury of being cloned from another pokémon.”
 
Jade paused. "I didn't think you were a machine, I just figured you were like... a genetic experiment." She immediately realized that had to sound really, really weird. "Er, I know that's a weird thing to just assume about someone," she added quickly. "I just happen to know a lot of them back home. Some of them clones, others hybrids, mixed from multiple species. I thought, maybe you were like them."
 
Nova shook his head again. "Fully mechanical. Built by my creator as an enforcing weapon, but given free reign to control other, mass-produced units who could only follow programmed orders.

"I mean, sure, there's plenty of gene therapy and whatnot back home," he casually added. "All glory to the emperor and his beloved Mewgenics program."
 
He was... a robot. A robot who'd been put into the body of a hybrid Pokemon. And Gladion had turned into one too, so the design couldn't just be something that was only made up in Nova's world. It was like learning that somewhere out there, someone had skipped the genetic engineering and gone and made a mechanical version of Nine or Mewtwo instead.

"So then... coming here must've been way weirder for you than for the rest of us, then. I mean, there's stuff I've had to get used to, being a Pokemon now," Jade said, looking down at her paws and flexing them experimentally. "But there's still a lot that's the same." Eating and sleeping, for one. And the senses weren't all that different, even if they were generally better than a human's.

"...And you said your partner was a clone?" At least that was something relatively more normal. Well, not to the average person back home, but at least to her.
 
Nova's dull eyes flickered. "Yeah. Mewtwo." He blinked slowly. "Judging by your tone, you know a thing or two about it. Must have one in your world. Did a bunch of idiots called Team Rocket make yours?"
 
Wh—

(Nova couldn't read minds, could he?)

"I mentioned clones, I hadn't said anything about Mewtwo," Jade said, trying to keep her fur from bristling. She exhaled slowly and said, "But, yeah, I know him. I helped him once, but we're..." God, how to describe it. Enemies? On opposite sides? Wanting the same thing but going about it in completely different ways? "...We're fighting different battles now." Smooth.

She hesitated for a moment and then asked, "What's he like, the one that you know?"
 
Nova tensed, as if he said something wrong. "Sorry. I... know about other worlds. Parallel worlds. Similarities and..." His voice trailed off. He looked down guiltily. "Too many dreams. Forced visions. Where the word 'clone' always syncs up with mewtwo and Rockets. So, I hear it, I make assumptions.

"When I met the one I know? He was... someone on death's door." Nova stared at a door at the end of the hallway. "We found him deep underwater. Stabbed through with a large crystal. A chunk of some foe Team Rocket's boss thought Mewtwo could beat. The last mistake that idiot and his 'enterprise' ever made before being consigned to a footnote in Earth history books."

He vaguely recalled stilted conversations. And his spur-of-the-moment decision to flood that crystal — and, by extension, Mewtwo — with Eterna energy as a life-saving gambit. "I helped get him healthy. But the hardest part was undoing the 'programming' he went through. He truly believed he was nothing but a living weapon. It took a long time to break through that. And, even then, the best we could do is suppressing it.

"I haven't seen him in a long time." The sadness in his tone suggested it wasn't by choice. "Best I can say is... now he's the last hope my world has against the emperor."
 
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Jade nodded vaguely. "The one I knew was... I know he doesn't want to be a weapon. I think he just feels like he has to fight against the people who made him one." But that just meant even more fighting and more destruction.

Jade finally remembered that she'd been eating toast. She took a bite of it, and--yep, dry.

"The last hope for a world..." she said distantly. "Sounds heroic." Then, unsure of whether or not it was a good idea: "It... sounds like you miss him"
 
"I do." Nova hung his head. He took a shaky breath. "But I'll never see him again. Not like this. And we both know that. I trust that, once I'm back home, he'll do what's needed when he finds me. He'll stop me... from hurting anyone else."
 
'Not like this,' he'd said. All this talk of weapons, and being afraid of hurting people, and it was sounding a lot like the things Razors had said, back when...

"Before you were brought here..." Jade began, not really sure how to word it. Not sure if there was a good way. "...Were you not in control of yourself? That's... another thing in common with the hybrids that I knew." Was that what he had to look forward to when all this was done?
 
“I’m bound by the Red Chain,” Nova said. There was a faraway look in his eyes. “I’ve been a prisoner in my own scales for eons. Wandering the realm. Preaching like a deranged lunatic. And laying the foundations for… someone who was once human — a self-proclaimed pokémon wielder — to take hold over fate itself… and bring every universe and every soul together. Into one single world.”
 
Right, that was... a little bit beyond the scope of anything that could happen back home. But the general idea was the same. A weapon without free will, who could only be freed in death. In theory, at least.

"...And it's a sure thing that Mewtwo couldn't free you any other way?" Jade asked hesitantly. "Not even if he destroyed the thing controlling you?"
 
“There’s another soul trapped inside with me.”

Nova’s body flickered. The Protect that formed was a stark red instead of the typical blue. And the shield itself vaguely resembled a canine.

“He needs that soul freed to stand a chance.” Nova’s gaze dropped to the floor. “There’s no way to free them without destroying me.”
 
Jade let out a breath. "Right. That's pretty different than the mind control I'm used to dealing with." But in a world with those kind of crazy powers, who was to say that there couldn't be some equally crazy-sounding solution?

"I guess, if you've been away from Mewtwo for so long..."—--eons, he'd said—"isn't it possible that he could figure out some other way? Things could have changed, since the last time you were yourself."
 
"It'd be nice if it was possible," Nova said. "But you're asking for a miracle. Sometimes there isn't a perfect solution to these things."
 
Jade let out a sigh. Alright, so this was probably a bit like if she'd tried to convince Nine that crashing the plane wasn't the best way to free him and Razors back then. He'd figured that out on his own time, he'd just needed to get pulled away from that situation first.

"Well..." Jade went on, "at least being here on Forlas means you'll be able to live for yourself for a while before going back to... that."
 
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