Title: Myamoto Project Epilogue: Healing
Author: Shadowcat
Author's Notes: Some thanks to Robert A. Stott/ArkNorth, for his thoughts upon clones
and souls in "The Lugia Chronicles"; which gave me some of the ideas for
this epilogue. Thanks to Sforzie (picky...) for Beta Reading, she was
a good editor.
It had been two years since the nightmare...yet the dream had just
begun; the pain of dreams best left forgotten...
James re-read the front-cover of the Poke-National News in disbelief.
The Jennys had "blown their cover", the eldest members of their great
family announcing themselves to the media, which devoured the story with
voracity.
It was all over the television and radio broadcast news and glaring in
the headlines of all the newspapers. Team Rocket, the remains of if
after the ordeal on Isle Noir, had covered the activities of Giovanni
well, as he had covered the activities of Team Rocket's generations that
preceded him. Now, it would soon all come out - the secret origins of
the Justicia family of police, the origin of the Happenstance family of
medical professionals, and even - the Myamoto Project.
James had wondered how his old friend "Myamototwo" had such vivid
memories of her predecessor - and he soon learned some of why. All kinds of
major genetic researchers, various scientific minds, and even scholars
and philosophers came to most strange conclusions in their debates over
the Jenny phenomenon.
"Mental Connectivity" one man termed it, a phenomenon discovered among
a few of the older Jennys, something that had only begun to happen
recently among members of the "First" and "Second" generations. It was a
"regaining" of the "memories" of the life of their original mother,
decorated policewoman Jennifer Justicia. Ms. Justicia had had donated her
tissue to an "undisclosed scientific group" for the study of genetic
engineering...50 years ago.
A "Second Generation" Jenny, who called herself Jenni Justicia Steele,
disclosed several dates concerning the experiments and their results
(refusing to disclose the "scientific group" behind it). She also
revealed that she and other members the Second Generation and the First were
experiencing impressions of "memories" that, according to logic, they
shouldn't be having. They were "memories" of themselves as their
original mother after the dates of her tissue donations, a few women even had
"memories" related to Jennifer Justicia's death.
"We have yet to come to a conclusion to explain this occurrence,"
stated one particularly expert geneticist on national television, "it may
be evidence toward the hypothesis that living cells separated from the
body retain some kind of energetic connection to the whole from which
they were taken. Perhaps even though these women are separate from their
original and from one another, they are connected."
The philosophers, of course, opted for more spiritual explanations.
"This is evidence," one said, "that the body and the soul are
inextricably connected." Some pondered that the Justicia clan was not made up
of truly individual minds, but one collective soul. The Jennys
themselves contested this vehemently, proclaiming their own individuality. One
minister asked, "Does a clone have a soul?"
All James knew as he sat on the edge of the couch, reading the paper,
was that this was going to tear Jessie to shreds. The secret of the
Myamoto Project would surely be revealed in time. Of course, he expected
to be questioned about it, along with Meowth. He hoped that Jessie
would be left alone. James assumed that she would be, having a room now
in Clemont Memorial Mental-Health Asylum.
The dark events of two years past had left James in a much-worrisome
physical condition, but he was being helped. The "Jolteon splicing"
that Giovanni had subjected him to was slowly being reversed with special
medical therapy. Mondo and the young Jenny they had worked with had
set him up with physicians who asked few questions...the physicians at
the hospital in Anaranjado.
James was able to control the electrical impulses that his flesh
generated now - much like an electric pokemon. He could use his powers like a
pokemon before, but he never had complete control over them. Now, with
the special therapies Anranjado's doctors had discovered by chance in
working with him, his electricity was no longer generated involuntarily
whenever his skin came in contact with a living organism. James could
touch again.
Sadly, he could no longer give a comforting hug to Jessie.
James recalled the night that changed his spirited friend into the
haunted creature that that she was now. The entire strange ordeal had
changed her, but especially that night.
He, Jessie, Meowth, Jennifer Justicia ("JennyNine") and a friend,
Tracey Sketchit, had broken into the hidden Team Rocket base on Isle Noir
with "Myamototwo", the only successful product of the Myamoto Project.
She was a clone of Jessie's mother, who had disappeared on a mission
many years ago, the best agent in the history of Team Rocket.
The six souls found their way to the laboratory, to search it for
samples of a substance needed to save Mya's life. She was created to be a
perfect Team Rocket soldier, but had decided to betray her destiny.
Giovanni had rigged the base with explosives - a trap. Ms. Justicia and
Mr. Sketchit were instantly killed in a violent explosion when he
detonated one of the charges. Giovanni took Jessie hostage to shoot her in
front of James, Meowth, and Myamoto, to rid Myamoto of the person she
was betraying her "destiny" for. Myamoto, using the last of her rapidly
failing strength, rushed the man and stabbed him with a large shard of
glass, sacrificing her life to save Jessie's. She died in Jessie's
arms.
Jessie's soul was broken after that. She, James, and Meowth did not
know where to go or what to do after walking away from the flaming ruins
of the base. Police choppers arrived roughly two hours later,
responding to the concerns of citizens on the Anaranjado mainland who reported
seeing fires on a distant island out in the sea.
By the time that officers found the former Rockets out in the island's
woods, Jessie had cried herself into exhaustion and lay sleeping,
curled into a tight ball against the base of a large tree. Meowth huddled
next to her to keep her warm while James sat on a patch of moss a few
feet away.
To James' surprise, Brock and Mondo were with the police who found
them, along with "Jennynine's" "niece" - a Jenny who had just learned the
dark truth about her family.
Brock asked James what had happened in stunned one-word questions.
James was too shocked and sorrowfilled to answer with speech.
"Myamoto?" Brock asked, the inflection in his voice indicating "is
she dead?"
James nodded, tilting his face toward the smoldering building rising
up from the forest in the northeast.
"Officer Justica?"
James nodded again. Young Jenny sobbed into her hands.
Tears began a rivulet down Brock's right cheek. His voice cracked as
he asked his final query.
"Tracey?"
James nodded once more.
Even with the police involvement and the news coverage of the
destruction on Isle Noir, not much of the cloning lab was left and no solid
evidence of the main function of the Base. Myamoto was disclosed by
Jessie, James, Meowth, Mondo, Brock, and Jenny as merely a subversive Team
Rocket member who was, with them, trying to help the police close down a
Team Rocket pokemon smuggling operation.
None of the six ever knew why, exactly, they had not revealed the
entire truth - perhaps, it was because they felt at the time that it was
information that the world (particularly the Happenstance family of the
Nurse Joys and the young Jennys) could not bear. Perhaps, it was because
they feared another group would rise up like Team Rocket to re-create
the projects. Had events gone differently, James and Myamoto would have
testified against Team Rocket, bearing the whole truth. Now, all
involved kept their silence.
Mondo had an apartment in Pewter City and he invited Jessie, James,
and Meowth to stay with him. The young man had been much better about
saving his Team Rocket paychecks than James and his partners had been.
A month after moving in, and trying to put tragedy behind them,
Jessie's grief, instead of healing, gnawed at her soul. She had a severe
nervous breakdown. She was now in Clemont Asylum, undergoing counseling
from doctors who didn't believe half of what she told them for nearly two
long years.
She was allowed visitors few and far between. James put down the
newspaper, got up off the couch and grabbed his parka. He set out into
the pouring rain beyond the apartment door. Meowth and Mondo were
already on their way. It was an hour's drive to Clemont, even longer in the
heavy rain and James needed to make a stop, but he would be there this
day, to see his Jessie.
He pulled his Toyota through the open iron gates of a cemetery...
There they were, and of course they would be, the exact anniversary.
James parked beneath a large oak tree and stepped out to meet them,
rain spattering on his face. Misty grabbed him in a fierce hug. "You
came," she whispered, "you came."
Brock and Ash stood between two headstones. Ash was holding a
shivering Pikachu in his arms while Brock held an umbrella over both of their
heads. Pikachu's tail hung limply, and frayed. James heard the story
of how the rodent had been shot. He wondered why the Pokemon Center
hadn't just amputated it; the once proud flag now a scarred disgrace.
Standing a few feet off at another stone marker was a Jenny, and James
knew which one. James thought to walk up to her to ask how she was
taking the headlines and the news, but scratched it from his mind.
"I really wish," Brock sighed, "I had gotten to know him better." He
stared at the headstone with the intricately carved Watchers' Society
Seal on it below the name Tracey K. Sketchit.
"He was a good friend," whispered Ash, "much like you in many ways."
"And her." Brock added, nodding toward the stone on his left, the one
bearing the name Myamoto Lillis.
"I knew her best," James sighed, placing a single longstem red rose
upon the grave, "The bravest person I've ever met. If Jessie's true
mother...w-was really like her, I can understand why she never got over
losing her as a child. She used to tell me a little bit about her time
growing up, and she never completely got over the disappearance. This
whole mess - we've all changed, but Jessie, oh, it's broken her..."
James fell silent, a tear streaming down his left cheek.
"Have you heard the philosophers' debates over the Jennys?" Misty
asked, "That one guy - saying that he believes a clone cannot truly have a
soul?"
"Idiot!" James hissed. "Myamoto - the Myamoto I knew...was a woman with
a brilliant soul."
James sighed. "I have to go now." He pulled a white rose from his
parka pocket and handed it to Misty. "For your friend." He said,
glancing at Tracey's grave. Then he walked back to his car. As he drove out
of the cemetery, something caught his eye, the silhouette of a
man...standing at a particular gravesite. He glanced out the window again and
the man was gone.
"It couldn't be." James thought, no one ever came to honor HIM, even
on this dark anniversary. The man had left no known family.
James recalled the riot his burial had caused two years ago...
This cemetery, The IronGate, was a field of honor. People who had
earned some kind of special honor in their lives or by their deaths were
buried here. This was the place where many police officers that had
been killed in the line of duty were interred.
A collective funeral for Myamoto Lillis, Jennifer Justicia, and
Tracey Sketchit was held here...to honor them for their sacrifice in trying
to bring down the "smuggling operation" of Team Rocket. A riot was
nearly caused by Tracey's Scyther when it was let out of its pokeball to
say goodbye. Not accepting that it's master was gone, it moaned and ran
around trying to cut everybody down with it's blades...the beast was
tranquilized by the nearest Pokemon Control, only then it returned to the
pokeball in the hand of its former master's aunt.
Further disruption was caused...when a group of people came with the
casket of Giovanni. The people present for the triple funeral demanded
to know why HE was being buried in this honorary place, and on that
day-it was a horrible insult to the three whom it was known that HE had
killed. Groundskeepers explained that the plot had been paid
for...rather richly...and that the burial could not be denied.
James burned with anger...but there was nothing that could be done
about it, so the once Head of Team Rocket lay amongst the honored, amongst
the very same people he had slain.
As James mused about the past, and about the man he thought he had
seen standing in the rain at Giovanni Sakaki's tomb, he soon found himself
at the gates of Clemont Memorial Mental Institution. He told the
gatekeeper his name and purpose-and was let inside the grounds to park.
He walked into the main lobby, to find Mondo and Meowth sitting in
plastic chairs there. "They won't let us in!" Mondo said to James as soon
as he saw the blue-haired man step through the door.
"Won't let you in!? I demand to know why!" James said, first to
Mondo, then to the nurse at the front desk.
"Which patient are you here to see?" she asked. The nurse here was
olive skinned with indigo hair-not a Joy, like at the Pokemon Centers.
"Jessica Lillis, ID number 776235." James replied.
"No," the nurse said, "not letting anybody in to see her today..."
"Why!!?" James nearly screamed, slamming his fist down on the desk.
Small curls of blue lightning arched off his knuckles. The nurse
stared at him, clearly frightened.
"Sir, if you don't calm down, I'm going to have to call security. I
already explained it to your friends over there, and given them the
appropriate paperwork to go over. If her condition improves, you give us
those papers as soon as you fill them out...and we can call you. Her
doctors said that she can't have visitors today."
James resigned himself to sit down next to Mondo and Meowth. This was
the first time, he had hoped, that he could at least hold Jessie's hand
since his "splicing". The last time he had visited her, 2 months ago
(according to Clemont's limited visitation policies) he didn't have
quite enough control over his electric impulses to touch someone in
complete safety. He would not have killed her, but she definitely would have
been given some painful burns.
Meowth crawled over Mondo's blue-jeaned thigh and looked James
directly in the eyes. "Dey won't let us in...'cause...she's gone batty
again."
"I'll explain this," Mondo began. "She was in the group area, like
they've been letting her go to for the past few months...since she's been
doing so well. Anyway, last Wednesday, the TV was on in there. She saw
the news...about the Jennys. That's what the doctors and the nurse
over there says. They say she started screaming hysterically and grabbing
things and throwing them at everybody."
James sighed, a tear welling up in the corner of his eye. Mondo
continued.
"A couple of the security boys grabbed her...sedated her, and her
doctors are not letting her out of her room...only for 'necessary
evaluations' or something...and they are not letting her into visitation, even
for us."
"Why didn't anyone call us?" James asked.
"Their wretched bureaucracy," Mondo explained, "We didn't have the
right paperwork on file for that, apparently."
"How is she..." James whispered, then turned to the nurse at the front
desk again, "HOW IS SHE!?" he screamed, his hair standing up out to the
sides from the static charges his body was generating.
"Sir, if you don't calm down..."
A pair of moving objects coming down the north hall caught James
attention. A man in white uniform was pushing a wheelchair...with a
familiar red-haired figure.
"Jessie!" James breathed. He ran down the hall, everyone in the lobby
staring. The nurse paged security.
James ran with an aura of blue electric light surrounding him, the man
pushing the wheelchair abandoned the patient and ran to save his own
skin. James skidded to a halt in front of Jessie and fell to his knees
in front of her. She stared off into nothingness, as if she didn't
notice him there.
"Jessie?" James cried, the tears down his face free flowing now.
"Jessie, dear?"
He gently clasped her hands in his. She stirred, surprised to feel
his skin upon hers. She mumbled, then slowly rose from the wheelchair,
and James rose with her.
"James? You...can touch me?"
"Yes...now..."
Two security men came up behind him, but the doctor who had been
wheeling Jessie was watching from the other end of the hall, he held up his
hand in a halting gesture.
"No, this is the first time she's spoken in a week. Let them be."
Jessie hugged James around the waist, and they stood there, James
letting Jessie cry into his shoulder while he cried into her long red hair.
Things would never be as they were before the Myamoto Project. Still,
James knew that this was the beginning of healing - for Jessie, for him,
for all those who had survived through that terrible adventure.
THE END
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