In a different time, in a different place, there was a child, though this child was old enough to bear resentment at being called that instead of a teenager.
This was not unusual. Children generally grew into teenagers, there being very few ways of skipping the process, and this particular child valued specificity to a degree far above her peers.
Years ago, she had been given the nickname Moon for her habit of taking long, meandering walks through the town during the night. It had stuck, and soon very few people even remembered what she had been called before.
This, too, was not unusual. Many people had nicknames, from simple shortenings of birth names to exaggerations of physical features to names that they simply liked better. Moon was fond of hers; seeing the moon, bright, shining, mystical, swimming through the night sky, was one of the best parts of her walks, especially when the moon was full.
Moon had a Pokemon partner – a Ditto that she named Pete. The two of them had been at each other’s sides for a handful of years, ever since Moon had found the Ditto shivering under a pile of snow.
This was, in fact, unusual, but only because Moon had never formally caught Pete. She’d tried, once, but the Pokeball turned out to be busted; after that, she simply never bothered to try again. She and Pete were the only ones who knew that Pete was technically a free agent anyway; all anyone else knew was that they were inseparable.
One evening, Moon was abducted.
It happened during one of her winding trips that led her down the remnants of the old road. She was sitting on the edge of the viaduct, looking out over the river, lost in the rippling reflection of the moon and the stars. A breeze, one with some bite to it, blew past her, and she drew her coat in around her; Pete was inside, snoring quietly, huddled up against her.
Moon smiled.
It was a peaceful winter day, and her life had been anything but peaceful lately.
That was when a hand, holding a faintly-chemical-scented rag, clapped itself over her mouth from behind her.
The fumes filled Moon’s nose, her mouth, and the world swum around her, descending into heaving darkness.
The last sensation she felt before she dropped into unconsciousness was the gentle rise and fall of Pete’s breathing against her chest.
The time that passed between Moon falling under and waking up again seemed to her to be at once an eternity and an instant, darkness that clung to her, surrounded her, and yet disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. When she opened her eyes, awareness didn’t set in immediately; she only knew that she was cold, and that the chair she was in was uncomfortably hard. The latter problem was easily solved by standing up, and it was then, when she drew her arm to her chest to keep Pete from falling out of habit, that she realized why the former problem was a problem at all. Her coat was missing, leaving her in only the jeans and t-shirt that she’d been wearing under it.
That was when it hit her.
Pete was gone.
The thought focused Moon’s mind more than anything else had. She was in a small room – no bigger than her bedroom at home, but with none of the comfort. The floor and walls were concrete, covered in faded, peeling paint that had once been white but now was barely even a color. A shattered window, barely big enough for her head to get through, sat in the wall behind her, letting air in that was growing colder by the minute; it was the only point of entry into the room other than two sturdy metal doors that were both, upon examination, locked. One of the doors had on it, at around eye level, a plaque that read ‘Furnace Room – Risk of Third-Degree Burns. Absolutely No Entry by Unauthorized Individuals’, but when Moon laid her hand against the metal, she could tell that the furnace wasn’t running – it was as cold as everything else. The rest of the room was barren.
Moon stared out the window. Snow began to drift down from the sky, all large lazy flakes, and she wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. “Hello?” she called. “Pete? Where are you?”
No answer came.
At least, not an answer Moon wanted.
Footprints echoed outside the door, the one that didn’t lead to the furnace, then the lock clicked and the door swung slowly inwards on hinges sorely in need of oil. The man who limped inside had a face Moon recognized in vague, dusty corners of her mind; it was sharp and angular and lean, just like the rest of him. He wore a slate-gray suit that had, at one point, been finely tailored, but time had eroded it into something threadbare and natty. Wrinkles were just beginning to set in around his forehead and the corners of his mouth, and his thin silver hair was swept back from his temples.
“Kid,” the man said in a voice both sharp and gravelly, and in that one word, Moon immediately remembered him: the man she’d seen the night she found Pete, the one looking for a small pink Pokemon. Moon had lied to him then, and her heart skipped a beat as she ran down the reasons why he might have seen fit to trap her in this cold room. Had he been waiting for her all this time? Was this her punishment for lying? Her hands twitched unconsciously to the straps of her backpack, the ones she fidgeted with when she was nervous, but her backpack wasn’t there either. She swallowed.
“I brought you here to talk,” he continued, either unaware of or ignoring the journey Moon was sure her face was going on. “There are some things you’ve got in that head of yours that I want to know. Let me in on them, and you’ll go home. Easy, right?” He closed the door behind him and let a hefty rusted toolbox drop to the floor.
All she had to do was tell him what she knew? Moon took a hesitant step backwards. “Um, Snover grow berries on their bellies in the spring. Mantyke look different in other countries. Finneon can glow in the dark. Skorupi—”
The man put a hand up. “Stop. Look. Kid… No, what’s that nickname everyone calls you? Moon? Moon, I need to actually ask you the question first—”
“What’s your name?”
“Huh?”
“What’s your name?” Moon repeated. “You know mine. I should know yours.”
The man sighed and ran a sinewy hand through his hair. “You can call me… One, I guess. That’s as good as anything.” He watched her with cold eyes, doubtless waiting for her to comment on it, but Moon had never been one to think any other name was odd. “So have you—”
“If you just wanted to talk, why did you lock me in here?” In the years since she could have been called a child and not gotten irritated about it, Moon’s insistence on answering exactly the questions she was asked had morphed into a general feeling that everyone else should do the same, and she made a point of asking direct questions whenever she could. Questions were familiar ground for Moon. If she was asking questions, she didn’t need to be scared.
One let out a low rumble from deep in his throat. “Kid. Moon. Shut up. I don’t want to—”
“How am I supposed to answer the question you want me to answer if I shut up?”
“Okay. Okay.” One took a deep breath, then let it hiss out through his teeth. He knelt and rummaged through the toolbox, coming back up with a length of iron chain that he wound experimentally around one hand before loosing it and approaching her. “We’re going to play things a little differently then.”
The chain bound Moon’s hands behind her back, behind the chair. A second chain bound her feet. Sharp pain radiated out of bruises all over her body. Blood dribbled from her lips, from her nose, and it blended with her tears as they dripped off of her chin.
“I… I don’t know…” she said, forcing the words out through shallow breaths.
It was the truth.
But One didn’t believe it. He’d already shed his jacket, revealing a stained, rumpled shirt that he rolled the sleeves up on. After he’d forced her into the chair and tied her down, he’d started kicking.
“No. Try again. Where is Mew? What do you know?”
“I don’t, I don’t know anything about— about—”
One swung his leg in a wide arc, his hands in his pockets. The tip of his scuffed shoe drove into her side, and Moon let out a sob.
“Pl-please!” she coughed. “Please! Why don’t you believe me? I’m, I’m telling the truth!”
“You are not.” One took a step closer and leaned in, his face close enough to Moon’s that she could feel his breath. “I know your game, Moon. You know what the technical term is? ‘Lying by omission.’ All the intel we gathered on you said the same thing. ‘Watch out for Moon. She’s slippery. Never gives you a straight answer.’ And I know you’re not giving me a straight answer now. Go on, ask me how.” He slammed his heel into her stomach. “Ask. Me. How.”
Moon’s cry pierced the frigid air. It had only grown colder outside, and snow was falling, drifting in through the broken window, scattered every which way by the wind. “H…” she started, but no further sounds would come out of her mouth.
That was evidently good enough for One. “We saw Mew. Early mornings in town. More than once. And every time, it was flying around your home.” He grabbed her chin and yanked her face forward. “Your. Home. What do you suppose the odds of you knowing nothing about Mew are, given that it seems to have such an interest in you?”
“I d… don’t…”
“Wrong!” One shoved Moon’s chin up sharply, snapping her head backwards. “Useless. Useless! I’m going to get this out of you, kid. No matter how long it takes. You think you can outlast me?” He bared his teeth, not waiting for an answer. “I’m going to let you sit here for a while. Looks like the weather’s taking a turn for the worse. Stay warm.”
One untied her.
Then One left.
Moon had no idea how long it had been. Her stomach and her throat gnawed at her, from equal parts hunger, thirst, and pain. Snow had only continued piling up, billowing inside, coating a full half of the room. It had even reached the door that led to the boiler room and covered the plaque on it, all except for two words. She’d curled up in one corner and tried to will warmth back into her body, but it wasn’t working.
She shivered.
More precisely, she hadn’t stopped shivering.
It felt like the chill was eating into her from every direction – from the wind, from the floor, from the walls, even from inside her. The room spun around her, pressing heavily against her mind, daring her to shut her eyes, but Moon couldn’t even stand up.
“Need…” she breathed. “Need… help. ’M gonna fall ’sleep. Can’t sleep.”
Nobody heard her.
Moon raised one arm, weighed down with lead. It barely rose past her shoulder. With every heartbeat, slower and slower each time, a dull echo of pain reverberated through her head. “Where ’m I?” she muttered. “Don’t… ’member.”
Something slid in through the window, down the slope of frozen snow. Moon blinked at it with bleary eyes.
“Pete?”
It looked like a Ditto, at least as far as Moon could tell. Small, pink. Lacking a shape.
“Pete, ’s me… You… you came to…”
The door swung open.
One.
“There you are, you little rat,” he hissed.
Moon lifted her head dizzily. “S’not a rat… s’Pete.”
Nobody took any notice of her. Pete inched forward, bearing an unusually determined expression. Then…
Pete changed.
Moon had seen Pete change before. Most Ditto could. But this time was different. It was less that Pete was temporarily borrowing a different form, and more that Pete was changing back.
A small, pink Pokemon. Not any bigger than a Ditto. A feline head with wide, piercing eyes. A long, slender tail.
Mew.
It looked at Moon, its head cocked, its face enigmatic. Then it turned its attention to One briefly before flying past him out the door.
One gave chase, holding a single Pokeball in one hand. Moon had never seen one like it before. The bottom half was the usual white, while the top half was purple with two pink circles.
The world fell quiet. Then, a triumphant shout from One, a high-pitched screech, a noise like a Pokeball opening, and a bright flash of almost pure-white light that hurt to look at, deep inside her brain.
“Help…” mumbled Moon, moments before her eyes shut and she slipped into sleep.
The person who found the missing teenager wasn’t sure what made them look in the abandoned building with the broken windows, the one half-hidden by the snow that was so common this time of year in northern Sinnoh. It was like there was a little voice in the back of their head that told them where to go. They dug through the snow, looked through one of the windows, and could just barely see, in the corner, a slip of a girl, underdressed for the weather, huddled in the corner, not moving. The rest of the building was abandoned – not a soul to be found. The only signs that anyone had been there recently were debris strewn about the hallway outside the girl’s room, and even then, the person thought, that could have easily been the wind.
They retrieved the girl and delivered her to the hospital.
The girl stayed asleep longer than anyone thought she would. Hours passed, then days, then weeks. Slowly, her strength returned to her, but her body refused to wake up. Experts examined her and said that there was something psychological about it all, but that was of scant comfort to anyone, let alone the girl.
It was years before her eyes opened.
She didn’t know where she was, and she couldn’t remember what had led up to her being there.
She remembered the cold. She remembered a man’s hand on her chin, and iron chains around her wrists. She remembered Pete, and she remembered a small, pink, feline Pokemon staring at her.
Most of all, though, she remembered the sign on one of the doors.
‘Furnace Room – Risk of Third-Degree Burns. Absolutely No Entry by Unauthorized Individuals’.
The snow had covered most of it up. There were only two words left that she could remember seeing.
‘Degree.’ ‘Absolute.’
This was not unusual. Children generally grew into teenagers, there being very few ways of skipping the process, and this particular child valued specificity to a degree far above her peers.
Years ago, she had been given the nickname Moon for her habit of taking long, meandering walks through the town during the night. It had stuck, and soon very few people even remembered what she had been called before.
This, too, was not unusual. Many people had nicknames, from simple shortenings of birth names to exaggerations of physical features to names that they simply liked better. Moon was fond of hers; seeing the moon, bright, shining, mystical, swimming through the night sky, was one of the best parts of her walks, especially when the moon was full.
Moon had a Pokemon partner – a Ditto that she named Pete. The two of them had been at each other’s sides for a handful of years, ever since Moon had found the Ditto shivering under a pile of snow.
This was, in fact, unusual, but only because Moon had never formally caught Pete. She’d tried, once, but the Pokeball turned out to be busted; after that, she simply never bothered to try again. She and Pete were the only ones who knew that Pete was technically a free agent anyway; all anyone else knew was that they were inseparable.
One evening, Moon was abducted.
It happened during one of her winding trips that led her down the remnants of the old road. She was sitting on the edge of the viaduct, looking out over the river, lost in the rippling reflection of the moon and the stars. A breeze, one with some bite to it, blew past her, and she drew her coat in around her; Pete was inside, snoring quietly, huddled up against her.
Moon smiled.
It was a peaceful winter day, and her life had been anything but peaceful lately.
That was when a hand, holding a faintly-chemical-scented rag, clapped itself over her mouth from behind her.
The fumes filled Moon’s nose, her mouth, and the world swum around her, descending into heaving darkness.
The last sensation she felt before she dropped into unconsciousness was the gentle rise and fall of Pete’s breathing against her chest.
***
The time that passed between Moon falling under and waking up again seemed to her to be at once an eternity and an instant, darkness that clung to her, surrounded her, and yet disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. When she opened her eyes, awareness didn’t set in immediately; she only knew that she was cold, and that the chair she was in was uncomfortably hard. The latter problem was easily solved by standing up, and it was then, when she drew her arm to her chest to keep Pete from falling out of habit, that she realized why the former problem was a problem at all. Her coat was missing, leaving her in only the jeans and t-shirt that she’d been wearing under it.
That was when it hit her.
Pete was gone.
The thought focused Moon’s mind more than anything else had. She was in a small room – no bigger than her bedroom at home, but with none of the comfort. The floor and walls were concrete, covered in faded, peeling paint that had once been white but now was barely even a color. A shattered window, barely big enough for her head to get through, sat in the wall behind her, letting air in that was growing colder by the minute; it was the only point of entry into the room other than two sturdy metal doors that were both, upon examination, locked. One of the doors had on it, at around eye level, a plaque that read ‘Furnace Room – Risk of Third-Degree Burns. Absolutely No Entry by Unauthorized Individuals’, but when Moon laid her hand against the metal, she could tell that the furnace wasn’t running – it was as cold as everything else. The rest of the room was barren.
Moon stared out the window. Snow began to drift down from the sky, all large lazy flakes, and she wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. “Hello?” she called. “Pete? Where are you?”
No answer came.
At least, not an answer Moon wanted.
Footprints echoed outside the door, the one that didn’t lead to the furnace, then the lock clicked and the door swung slowly inwards on hinges sorely in need of oil. The man who limped inside had a face Moon recognized in vague, dusty corners of her mind; it was sharp and angular and lean, just like the rest of him. He wore a slate-gray suit that had, at one point, been finely tailored, but time had eroded it into something threadbare and natty. Wrinkles were just beginning to set in around his forehead and the corners of his mouth, and his thin silver hair was swept back from his temples.
“Kid,” the man said in a voice both sharp and gravelly, and in that one word, Moon immediately remembered him: the man she’d seen the night she found Pete, the one looking for a small pink Pokemon. Moon had lied to him then, and her heart skipped a beat as she ran down the reasons why he might have seen fit to trap her in this cold room. Had he been waiting for her all this time? Was this her punishment for lying? Her hands twitched unconsciously to the straps of her backpack, the ones she fidgeted with when she was nervous, but her backpack wasn’t there either. She swallowed.
“I brought you here to talk,” he continued, either unaware of or ignoring the journey Moon was sure her face was going on. “There are some things you’ve got in that head of yours that I want to know. Let me in on them, and you’ll go home. Easy, right?” He closed the door behind him and let a hefty rusted toolbox drop to the floor.
All she had to do was tell him what she knew? Moon took a hesitant step backwards. “Um, Snover grow berries on their bellies in the spring. Mantyke look different in other countries. Finneon can glow in the dark. Skorupi—”
The man put a hand up. “Stop. Look. Kid… No, what’s that nickname everyone calls you? Moon? Moon, I need to actually ask you the question first—”
“What’s your name?”
“Huh?”
“What’s your name?” Moon repeated. “You know mine. I should know yours.”
The man sighed and ran a sinewy hand through his hair. “You can call me… One, I guess. That’s as good as anything.” He watched her with cold eyes, doubtless waiting for her to comment on it, but Moon had never been one to think any other name was odd. “So have you—”
“If you just wanted to talk, why did you lock me in here?” In the years since she could have been called a child and not gotten irritated about it, Moon’s insistence on answering exactly the questions she was asked had morphed into a general feeling that everyone else should do the same, and she made a point of asking direct questions whenever she could. Questions were familiar ground for Moon. If she was asking questions, she didn’t need to be scared.
One let out a low rumble from deep in his throat. “Kid. Moon. Shut up. I don’t want to—”
“How am I supposed to answer the question you want me to answer if I shut up?”
“Okay. Okay.” One took a deep breath, then let it hiss out through his teeth. He knelt and rummaged through the toolbox, coming back up with a length of iron chain that he wound experimentally around one hand before loosing it and approaching her. “We’re going to play things a little differently then.”
***
The chain bound Moon’s hands behind her back, behind the chair. A second chain bound her feet. Sharp pain radiated out of bruises all over her body. Blood dribbled from her lips, from her nose, and it blended with her tears as they dripped off of her chin.
“I… I don’t know…” she said, forcing the words out through shallow breaths.
It was the truth.
But One didn’t believe it. He’d already shed his jacket, revealing a stained, rumpled shirt that he rolled the sleeves up on. After he’d forced her into the chair and tied her down, he’d started kicking.
“No. Try again. Where is Mew? What do you know?”
“I don’t, I don’t know anything about— about—”
One swung his leg in a wide arc, his hands in his pockets. The tip of his scuffed shoe drove into her side, and Moon let out a sob.
“Pl-please!” she coughed. “Please! Why don’t you believe me? I’m, I’m telling the truth!”
“You are not.” One took a step closer and leaned in, his face close enough to Moon’s that she could feel his breath. “I know your game, Moon. You know what the technical term is? ‘Lying by omission.’ All the intel we gathered on you said the same thing. ‘Watch out for Moon. She’s slippery. Never gives you a straight answer.’ And I know you’re not giving me a straight answer now. Go on, ask me how.” He slammed his heel into her stomach. “Ask. Me. How.”
Moon’s cry pierced the frigid air. It had only grown colder outside, and snow was falling, drifting in through the broken window, scattered every which way by the wind. “H…” she started, but no further sounds would come out of her mouth.
That was evidently good enough for One. “We saw Mew. Early mornings in town. More than once. And every time, it was flying around your home.” He grabbed her chin and yanked her face forward. “Your. Home. What do you suppose the odds of you knowing nothing about Mew are, given that it seems to have such an interest in you?”
“I d… don’t…”
“Wrong!” One shoved Moon’s chin up sharply, snapping her head backwards. “Useless. Useless! I’m going to get this out of you, kid. No matter how long it takes. You think you can outlast me?” He bared his teeth, not waiting for an answer. “I’m going to let you sit here for a while. Looks like the weather’s taking a turn for the worse. Stay warm.”
One untied her.
Then One left.
***
Moon had no idea how long it had been. Her stomach and her throat gnawed at her, from equal parts hunger, thirst, and pain. Snow had only continued piling up, billowing inside, coating a full half of the room. It had even reached the door that led to the boiler room and covered the plaque on it, all except for two words. She’d curled up in one corner and tried to will warmth back into her body, but it wasn’t working.
She shivered.
More precisely, she hadn’t stopped shivering.
It felt like the chill was eating into her from every direction – from the wind, from the floor, from the walls, even from inside her. The room spun around her, pressing heavily against her mind, daring her to shut her eyes, but Moon couldn’t even stand up.
“Need…” she breathed. “Need… help. ’M gonna fall ’sleep. Can’t sleep.”
Nobody heard her.
Moon raised one arm, weighed down with lead. It barely rose past her shoulder. With every heartbeat, slower and slower each time, a dull echo of pain reverberated through her head. “Where ’m I?” she muttered. “Don’t… ’member.”
Something slid in through the window, down the slope of frozen snow. Moon blinked at it with bleary eyes.
“Pete?”
It looked like a Ditto, at least as far as Moon could tell. Small, pink. Lacking a shape.
“Pete, ’s me… You… you came to…”
The door swung open.
One.
“There you are, you little rat,” he hissed.
Moon lifted her head dizzily. “S’not a rat… s’Pete.”
Nobody took any notice of her. Pete inched forward, bearing an unusually determined expression. Then…
Pete changed.
Moon had seen Pete change before. Most Ditto could. But this time was different. It was less that Pete was temporarily borrowing a different form, and more that Pete was changing back.
A small, pink Pokemon. Not any bigger than a Ditto. A feline head with wide, piercing eyes. A long, slender tail.
Mew.
It looked at Moon, its head cocked, its face enigmatic. Then it turned its attention to One briefly before flying past him out the door.
One gave chase, holding a single Pokeball in one hand. Moon had never seen one like it before. The bottom half was the usual white, while the top half was purple with two pink circles.
The world fell quiet. Then, a triumphant shout from One, a high-pitched screech, a noise like a Pokeball opening, and a bright flash of almost pure-white light that hurt to look at, deep inside her brain.
“Help…” mumbled Moon, moments before her eyes shut and she slipped into sleep.
***
The person who found the missing teenager wasn’t sure what made them look in the abandoned building with the broken windows, the one half-hidden by the snow that was so common this time of year in northern Sinnoh. It was like there was a little voice in the back of their head that told them where to go. They dug through the snow, looked through one of the windows, and could just barely see, in the corner, a slip of a girl, underdressed for the weather, huddled in the corner, not moving. The rest of the building was abandoned – not a soul to be found. The only signs that anyone had been there recently were debris strewn about the hallway outside the girl’s room, and even then, the person thought, that could have easily been the wind.
They retrieved the girl and delivered her to the hospital.
The girl stayed asleep longer than anyone thought she would. Hours passed, then days, then weeks. Slowly, her strength returned to her, but her body refused to wake up. Experts examined her and said that there was something psychological about it all, but that was of scant comfort to anyone, let alone the girl.
It was years before her eyes opened.
She didn’t know where she was, and she couldn’t remember what had led up to her being there.
She remembered the cold. She remembered a man’s hand on her chin, and iron chains around her wrists. She remembered Pete, and she remembered a small, pink, feline Pokemon staring at her.
Most of all, though, she remembered the sign on one of the doors.
‘Furnace Room – Risk of Third-Degree Burns. Absolutely No Entry by Unauthorized Individuals’.
The snow had covered most of it up. There were only two words left that she could remember seeing.
‘Degree.’ ‘Absolute.’