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The Quest for the Legends (ILCOE)
Chapter 8: The Master of the Clones
This chapter's from September 19th, 2004, some three weeks after the previous one. It probably took a bit longer because it's got battles in it, and I've never really enjoyed writing them.
“Do you mind if we just have a one-on-one?”
Mark pronounced this question nervously to the junior trainer wearing all the neon green. He was still clearly in a very bad mood, but nodded curtly.
“Go, Arcanine.”
A huge creature burst out of the Pokéball. Its overall shape was rather dog-like, but the gleaming orange fur with jet-black stripes looked more like a tiger. It shook back its cream-colored mane, letting out an ear-splitting roar as it swished a bushy tail. Its huge black claws dug into the floor as it snarled towards Mark.
“Uh… is Arcanine a Legendary?” Mark asked, confused.
“It isn’t, but it was considered one in ancient times,” said the junior trainer simply. “Let’s just get this over with.”
In the original I had the very first Pokémon Mark faced in Rick's gym be an Arcanine because of the whole deal about it being considered a legendary in ancient China. Mark battled all four of this junior trainer's Pokémon both times there, but for the 3.x revisions I decided to cut it down a bit and have him just use the legendary birds the first time and then the Arcanine for the rematch. There's not actually any good reason for the rematch to be a thing at all - in the games you're allowed to fight junior trainers, leave and come back without fighting them again, so this was literally a rule I made up to put more battles in - but I'm kind of glad I didn't just ditch and forget about the Arcanine, because that was pretty much the inspiration for the idea of having Rick train stone evolutions instead. Chapter 73, of course, goes on to reference this Arcanine again.
(When I made the Ouenian gym rosters, probably before I even started writing the original, there was a system to it: I wanted all the gym leaders and junior trainers to have fully evolved Pokémon, but without any weird cheating where they've evolved at a lower level than usual. It's very possible that's the main reason I made a legendary gym in the first place: since legendaries were all single-stage, it allowed for a first gym consisting of all fully evolved Pokémon even at very low levels. I'm at least pretty sure it was the main reason I chose to make the second gym Steel-type - Skarmory is a single-stage and Steelix and Scizor can be obtained at an arbitrarily low level. But as the Arcanine laid bare, stone evolutions can also be fully evolved at an arbitrarily low level, so I could still keep to that theme with stone evolutions.)
Mark hesitated, but then took out Gyarados’s ball. It was better to be safe than sorry.
“Go!” he yelled. The sea monster formed into the pool, letting out an even louder roar. Even the Arcanine appeared to flinch for a second, but then it started growling again.
“Dragon Rage,” Mark just said.
Gyarados threw his head forward, blasting out dark flames. The Arcanine leapt skillfully out of the way and countered by leaning down low for a second and then leaping at Gyarados at incredible, unavoidable speed. The sea serpent roared in pain, darting forward and grabbing Arcanine’s tail in his mouth. The giant canine froze for a second; then it swung around and fired a great jet of fire from its mouth into Gyarados’s face. He retaliated with another blast of dragon flames, which enveloped the Arcanine. The great dog howled in pain, turned to Gyarados again and attempted to release another cloud of flames, failing. Then with a final yelp, it lost its balance and its whole majestic shape dropped down to the floor, defeated.
“Arcanine, return,” said the trainer, the dog Pokémon dissolving into red energy and being sucked into the Pokéball. “Go on.”
Well, that was extremely short. I guess it's better than it could be given it's literally a paragraph.
Mark nodded, walking across the arena to the nurse, and after getting his Pokémon healed, through the door to the purple-haired trainer.
“You back?” he asked enthusiastically. “Great! Go, Raikou!”
Mark grinned. “Go, Sandshrew!”
The armadillo Pokémon didn’t curl up upon entering the battle this time. His eyes fixed on Raikou, he awaited the order he knew he would get…
“Earthquake!”
The junior trainer’s eyes widened in surprise as Sandshrew rose to his hind legs. Slamming back into the ground, the small Pokémon made the floor ripple like liquid. The attack was unavoidable; Raikou jumped over one wave but landed just as the next one struck. As the floor rippled under the Legendary’s paws, it shivered and released some electric sparks.
This interpretation of Earthquake as something a bit more unique in nature than simply shaking the arena was new in this version. My thinking was mostly that Earthquake just didn't really make a lot of sense as a purely physical thing. Earthquakes can be powerful and destructive and cause a lot of damage, yeah - but in order for the earthquake to be felt strongly enough to realistically hurt the opposing Pokémon, it'd have to be felt for miles around the source and cause a lot of general structural damage. And a weaker earthquake wouldn't realistically hurt anyone at all - we get plenty of those in Iceland, and you just sort of look up and go "Oh, earthquake! Neat!" and then move on with what you were doing. Meanwhile, if the Pokémon was able to cause a powerful earthquake localized entirely within some circular radius, say, you'd probably get gaping cracks in the ground around that radius. All in all, when I was mulling over how to describe Earthquake here, it just didn't make any sense however I looked at it, and ultimately I went with this interpretation where the Pokémon is doing something a lot more abstract that only superficially resembles an earthquake. A couple of years later, though, we got the physical/special move split in Diamond and Pearl, and what I'm describing in the fic unfortunately totally sounds like it'd be a special move while Earthquake is physical. Oh well.
Sandshrew rose up for the second time, preparing to perform the attack again, but the junior trainer quickly countered:
“Raikou, Crunch!”
Immediately, the tiger leapt forward, grabbing Sandshrew in its mouth like the other time and starting to squeeze.
“Scratch!” Mark ordered desperately. The small Pokémon dug its claws into Raikou’s jaw, and the tiger released him with a painful roar. Sandshrew looked rather weak and battered as he stood on his hind legs again, preparing for a final Earthquake. Smashing his paws into the ground, the floor rippled and Raikou, with a weak “Raiii”, lost its balance and collapsed.
“Shrew,” said the armadillo wearily, yet with a tint of pride. He had worked hard enough for now; Mark recalled him.
Mark. Mark, remember that time May didn't comment on Skarmory's victory before recalling him and you made special note of it, with the implication that she's bad because she doesn't bother to praise or encourage her Pokémon? See how you're doing literally the exact same thing here, with this Pokémon you've kind of neglected who finally gained a bit of confidence and won his first battle for you? Skarmory probably wins all the time, but Sandshrew really deserved some acknowledgement here. Really, it's so frustrating to me that I was so bad at this in particular.
“Go, Entei!” yelled the trainer, hurling forward the black and red ball. A reddish-brown, bulky, lion-like Pokémon burst out of the Pokéball with a deep, loud roar. A star shape surrounded its face, yellow at the top, white at the bottom and red at the sides. A grayish-white cloak that reminded Mark of a cloud or smoke kept changing its form on the Pokémon’s back. It was Mark’s favorite out of the Legendary Beasts of Johto.
He observed Entei while he thought about which Pokémon to choose. Entei’s eyes looked back at him, painfully robotically. Mark bit his lip; he was growing to despise that Rick person before even seeing him, just for doing that to Legendary Pokémon. Even if they were clones, it was wrong...
Finally a bit of the clones not having free will and Mark actually commenting on it! Although in the process he manages to imply it'd be fine if these were non-legendaries that Rick was mind-controlling.
I'd forgotten Entei was Mark's favorite legendary beast, but when I read it I thought "Oh, yeah, totally", so that's nice for character consistency. Poor Mark; you're not going to feel a lot better when you finally meet the real Entei acting on his own free will.
“Go, Gyarados!” he said, throwing the ball that held the sea monster. Gyarados formed with his usual opening roar. Entei started roaring back at him. For a few seconds the battle was a roaring contest between the two Pokémon; then Entei’s trainer shouted: “Sunny Day!”
The lion lifted its head towards the dome roof and closed its eyes in deep concentration. The sun appeared to get clearer and hotter.
Bizarre throwaway worldbuilding from the Good Battle Style and UMR: when this junior trainer's Entei used Sunny Day, Mark remarked that only legendary Pokémon had the power to use weather moves inside a building. Specifically, it was described as light shining from Entei itself; I guess the idea was only legendary Pokémon could produce light strong enough to function as a Sunny Day, or something in that direction. In this version, I may actually have given the gym the domed roof so the sun would be visible from inside it and I wouldn't need this weird justification? Sunny Day doesn't actually end up being used indoors again in the fic, but Sparky's Pokémon use Rain Dance a couple of times and there it just has clouds condensing near the ceiling.
“Dragon Rage!” Mark commanded. The trainer gasped; Gyarados formed crimson flames deep in his throat and fired them at the lion. Entei leapt to the side, dodging the attack easily.
“Entei, Flamethrower!” roared the junior trainer. The Legendary inhaled deeply and sent a cloud of flames towards the sea monster. Gyarados quickly countered with another Dragon Rage. Mark knew dragon flames were stronger than normal flames, but seeing as Entei was a Fire Pokémon, he wasn’t sure Gyarados would claim victory now.
He watched worriedly. The blasts still just met in the middle where the flames mixed and formed a huge orb of fire. The two Pokémon did their best to keep up the attack, and neither appeared to be stronger than the other.
But Gyarados was much higher-leveled than his opponent, and after a few seconds, Entei had to breathe. This gave Gyarados the chance to engulf the lion in dragon flames. Another deep roar like the one Entei had started the battle with sounded; when the fire cleared, Entei lay on the ground, defeated.
I guess it's nice that I had the legendaries dodging and so on a bit in these battles rather than just fainting in one hit the way most of them did in the older revisions.
“Return,” said the junior trainer disappointedly. “Go, Suicune!”
Mark held his breath as the Legendary he had seen the night before at the Lake of Purity appeared out of the ball. The slender blue body was the exact same, as was the unique crystal on its head and the white, rippling ribbons. But the expression was not. Even though he had only seen Suicune at a distance, he was positive that the eyes hadn’t been so robotically blank.
Gyarados’s eyes were however very filled with emotion. He stared at the Legendary with a mix of despise and anger.
Fourteen-year-old me thought 'despise' could be a noun, which kind of dampens the impact of this dramatic moment.
“Why?” he growled. Suicune, of course, was a brainwashed clone and therefore showed no reactions except assuming a fighting stance. The purple-haired trainer stared at Gyarados, puzzled.
“It… it can talk?” he asked, for the first time getting distracted from the battle. Gyarados paid no attention to this comment; he just closed his eyes hatefully in concentration.
What happened now was amazing. The dark blue of Gyarados’ armor faded into gray. When he had turned completely grayscale, he suddenly opened his eyes with an ear-splitting roar, and two narrow, bright red beams of energy shot from his eyeballs at Suicune. The Legendary staggered backwards, looking to be in serious pain, started to sweat uncontrollably and finally fell unconscious to the floor with a weak “Cune…”
The junior trainer’s jaw dropped.
“What the heck was that?” he breathed in disbelief.
“I… I don’t know,” said Mark, just as stunned. Gyarados turned his back at the Legendary and Mark sensed he wasn’t wishing to talk about reasons for anything.
“Well… looks like you won,” said the trainer, staring at the fallen Beast. A pool of water was forming around the place where Suicune lay.
The trainer took out one of those keys and opened the door as Mark recalled Gyarados.
“Go on.”
Mark nodded and went through the door as the trainer recalled Suicune. The nurse healed Mark’s Pokémon in the Pocket healer.
Gyarados's Dragon Beam attack only came about way later in the previous revisions, and then only as one of the new moves all of Mark's team made up for the Attack Approval event at the Pokémon Festival. However, in this revision, the whole Chosen thing gave me permission to make Gyarados special in all these new and exciting ways, and Dragon Beam became this mystery attack he uses from the start.
What happened here in the older versions was that because Suicune was cloned from "the one from the lake", it recognized Gyarados, refused to fight him and simply dropped down fainted. Needless to say, this is not how cloning works, and also not how Clone Balls work. By the time I was writing this revision, I'm pretty sure I'd been planning the scene where Gyarados kills Suicune for a while, and here, with Gyarados asking Suicune why and then attacking with an extra-powerful attack, I was trying to foreshadow that scene (which is quite similar, only Gyarados says a lot more and Suicune creates the soul gem).
In the older revisions, the junior trainer completely failed to notice or comment on the fact his Suicune was refusing to fight this Gyarados. I like that here I made him an actual person who is deeply weirded out by all this, although I do wish I'd gone further and actually characterized the junior trainers enough to show what they think of the fact they're fighting with mind-controlled legendary clones. The Camper probably didn't care, but this Cooltrainer seems genuinely excited about battling and it'd be neat if he appeared to have any thoughts on it whatsoever.
The next arena looked identical to the other two, but the trainer there was a little boy wearing a very awkward, formal-looking suit. He ran his fingers slowly through his blond hair.
This one's a Rich Boy from R/S/E.
“Hi,” he greeted dryly. “You here for a battle? I’m warning you – it won’t be easy. Two on two.”
The boy took a minimized Pokéball from inside his suit, maximized it and threw it forward.
“Go, Ho-oh!”
What came out of the Pokéball was absolutely huge. It was a gigantic, crimson bird, almost three times as tall as the boy. It stood on big, pitch-black talons and had peculiar, mask-like markings around its eyes. The Pokémon opened its crooked beak and let out a majestic, fierce cry. Then suddenly, it pointed its head upwards, the golden, crown-like crest on its head swaying back, and stretched out its broad, colorful wings, taking off into the air.
Mark considered his options, knowing that he was doing exceptionally well against this Gym just because he knew so much about the Legendaries. Ho-oh was a Fire Pokémon, but capable of using very varied attacks. It would be a risk, but Mark plucked Gyarados’ ball off the Pokéball belt.
Really? As far as I can tell the only legendary knowledge you've been making use of here so far is knowing what their types are, and the types of the legendaries you've fought so far are pretty obvious. But this bit about knowing Ho-Oh can learn a very wide range of attacks genuinely is probably something most people who aren't legendary-obsessed wouldn't know, and it's neat that Mark gets to use that knowledge. It's just undermined by this baseless assertion that he's totally been using his specialized knowledge all along and that's the reason he's doing well (as opposed to the fact he has a completely broken Gyarados and just taught his Pokémon a bunch of TMs). I was totally just bullshitting this to make it sound more justified that Mark was beating all these legendaries so easily and hoping readers would just take my word for it.
“GO!” he shouted. The sea monster emerged into the pool with his usual opening roar.
“Dragon Rage!” Mark ordered quickly, not wanting to risk an Electric attack making contact with Gyarados.
“Sunny Day,” said the boy calmly. Ho-oh closed its eyes and took a fiery glow as the sunlight shining through the dome intensified greatly. Mark shielded his eyes from the light with his hand. Gyarados breathed out a blast of crimson flames at the rainbow-colored bird and Ho-oh screeched in pain.
“And now, Solarbeam!” commanded the boy. Ho-oh obeyed, forming an orb of sunlight in its beak and firing a white-hot beam of light at Gyarados. He roared as the beam struck him, leaving a burn mark on one of the segments of his body. He countered with another Dragon Rage, which turned out to be too much even for the Legendary; Ho-oh let out a weak cry and then landed exhaustedly on the floor.
“Return,” said the trainer disappointedly. “Lugia, do it!”
Mark felt his stomach twitch upon hearing the name of his favorite Pokémon of all; he felt both excited to see it and very pained to know that he’d just see a clone. The red and black Pokéball opened in mid-air, releasing the Pokémon it held.
If Ho-oh was huge, Mark didn’t know what Lugia was. The bright white draconic creature stood on powerful legs, stretching its somewhat hand-like, feathered wings out to a wingspan of what looked like almost six meters. Combined with the long neck, the Pokémon itself was probably over five meters tall. Growing back from the eyes were the two black spikes that Mark had always loved the most about this Legendary.
Too bad Mark's specialized knowledge didn't end up counting for much, since Ho-Oh goes down extremely easily in two hits anyway. Oh well.
Lugia was actually one of my least favorite Pokémon back when I wrote this - mostly, granted, out of a sort of hype backlash, because everyone else thought Lugia was the coolest and I just could not see it at all. (Eventually I got over the backlash and I like it today, though.) This may be noticeable from these descriptions: although Mark's supposed to like Lugia more than Ho-Oh, Mark's description of Ho-Oh sounds a lot better than the one of Lugia here, which is mostly just "Uhh, it's really big! And... his favorite part is the eye spikes! Yeah!" I was obviously not great at writing about somebody liking Lugia. Sorry, Lugia.
“Gyarados, Dragon Rage!” Mark ordered quickly. Gyarados wouldn’t last long, especially not after having been hit with that Solarbeam previously, but at least he’d be able to dish out some damage with the most powerful attack in his whole team.
“Lugia, Psychic!”
Lugia started glowing with a bright blue aura as Gyarados charged dragon flames in his mouth. The sea monster unleashed the attack a moment before the Legendary; Lugia got hit hard by the flames, but then fired a blue blast of psychic energy at Gyarados. He roared in pain and collapsed weakly.
“Return,” Mark muttered. He considered his possibilities. Despite what some people thought, Lugia was a Psychic Pokémon rather than a Water or Dragon one, so Charmeleon wouldn’t be at a disadvantage. With it this sunny, the lizard should win.
Mark made his decision and grabbed the Pokéball with his hand.
“Go, Charmeleon!”
An actual strategic choice made based on specialized legendary knowledge! Amazing. (It's still just about types, but Lugia genuinely was a Pokémon whose type people got wrong a lot back in the day, and that's in the real world where everyone's caught a Lugia, so I can definitely buy that Lugia's type isn't common knowledge here.)
Mark’s evolved Pokémon came out. He appeared to flinch slightly at the sight of Lugia’s size, but quickly came back to his senses.
“Flamethrower!” Mark blurted out.
“Hyper Beam!” the trainer said, gritting his teeth.
Lugia started charging a white orb of energy in its mouth.
“No, wait, Charmeleon…”
Lugia threw its head backwards before firing the beam.
“DODGE!!!”
Charmeleon jumped swiftly out of the way, just before a bright white beam smashed into the floor just where he had been. Some of the floor seemed to melt.
“Flamethrower, now!” Mark ordered. Lugia was worn-out after using all of its energy in a Hyper Beam and couldn’t counter when Charmeleon breathed a tongue of flames towards it. With a loud cry of pain, Lugia collapsed.
“NO!” shouted the boy. He recalled Lugia disdainfully.
“Go on, then,” he muttered, opening the door. Mark went through it and healed his Pokémon nervously. The previous match had been a close call.
This arena was also identical to the previous ones. The trainer wore a lab coat and glasses and had long, black hair.
A G/S/C Scientist, I believe.
“You’re going down,” he said confidently. “One on one. Go, Mewtwo²!”
“Mew… what?” Mark questioned. The Pokéball opened to reveal a strange Pokémon.
It was a light purplish blue all over. Its head was somewhat catlike with two horns pointing straight upwards in place of ears, but the overall shape was slightly humanoid. The whole body was so unnaturally thin, though, that Mark wondered if it had ever eaten a single morsel. He could count the ribs under the furred skin, and the long arms and legs had three bony fingers or toes each. Its eyes were small, white and had no pupils. Finally, absolutely contrasting with the weakish appearance of its body, it had a very long, muscular, dark blue tail ending in a round shape.
It suddenly dawned on to Mark what it was. It was Rick’s experimental super-clone, but he had in fact ‘cheated’ – he made a super-clone of a super-clone. Super-clone².
It's Mewtwo²!
In the original, his name was just "Mewtwotwo". It was always clear to me that he wasn't Mewthree: Mewthree would be a new super-clone of Mew, but Mewtwotwo was a super-clone of Mewtwo. The change to Mewtwo² in this version was genuinely motivated largely by some instinctive feeling that it made more sense, in some imagined mathematical abstraction of super-cloning, to call it that. But in part, I also just thought Mewtwotwo sounded a little silly, and for my amazing serious fanfic, Mewtwo² sounded much cooler. I pronounced it Mew to the power of two for a while, but quickly realized that, while badass, that was really long and unwieldy. Today I say "Mewtwo'two", but feel free to pronounce it however you like.
The original described Mewtwotwo's appearance like this: It looked like a Mewtwo, but it was larger, darker in color and had much longer arms and legs. The ears were also longer and the eyes were smaller and more evil-looking.
This version refines it a little with more detail, but it hasn't changed much. The basic idea of his design was to look at how Mewtwo differs from Mew and take it even further in that direction: taller, thinner, bluer, longer and bonier limbs, thicker tail with a rounder tip, pointier ears, and yes, eviler eyes. I suppose at a later point I noticed Mewtwo also had fewer fingers and toes, and that's why I ended up with a very confident mental image of it having two fingers after describing it as having three here. (Also, Mewtwo only has two toes; Mewtwo² definitely shouldn't have more.)
“Go, Gyarados,” Mark said nervously, sensing that this would be a difficult battle. The blue sea monster emerged from the Pokéball into the pool. Gyarados let out his battle roar.
“What is my task?” said Mewtwo²’s voice weakly inside Mark’s head. He couldn’t help feeling horribly sorry for it.
“Fight,” the scientist ordered. He didn’t need to say anything else. Mewtwo² started glowing bright blue as the same glow took over Gyarados’ shape.
“Gyarados, Dragon Rage!” Mark commanded desperately, but Gyarados couldn’t do anything that wasn’t Mewtwo²’s will now. Slowly, he rose up into the air, drawing closer to the ceiling.
“No,” said the weak telepathic voice as Mewtwo²’s glow started fading and Gyarados got lowered back towards the pool. “I… don’t… want…” Mark saw the clone’s body starting to sweat, like it was making a great effort.
“Fight,” the scientist growled again. It was like Mewtwo² was zapped with electricity or something; its body went stiff for a second, but then it started glowing blue again. At that very moment, Gyarados unleashed a blast of crimson fire which enveloped Mewtwo². A telepathic scream of pain could be heard; then the clone was left dazed and dropped down, fainted. Mark felt a twinge of guilt.
Poor Mewtwo², already desperately trying to resist. Of course, I had no idea at this point that his resistance would end up being a key plot point at the end. I don't think I was planning to do anything in particular with him at this point? I knew Taylor got him later, since that was in the original, but the motivation for drawing attention to his resistance here was probably just to go LOOK how much this Pokémon is SUFFERING. My fanfic is DARK AND SERIOUS.
Mewtwotwo's personality in the previous revisions was... different.
“Whaddayawant?” said the Mewtwotwo.
“Psychic,” said the trainer.
“Okay,” said the Mewtwotwo lazily and waved one finger. At first, that seemed to be careless, but the effects were incredible. The water in the pool all went up into the air and stayed there, leaving Gyarados in a deep, dry hole. Then he started to headbutt the walls until he fell down and didn’t move. Then all the water fell down again and Gyarados floated up at first, but then he sank to the bottom.
The Mewtwotwo yawned. “Anything else? Maybe something a bit more... challenging?”
“Just wait a minute. He’ll most likely send out another pokémon,” said the trainer like Mark wasn’t there.
“I choose you! Ember!” Mark sent out Charmeleon. How dare you calling Gyarados weak, he thought...
“Mewtwotwo, Psychic!” The Mewtwotwo made the fire bounce straight back at Charmeleon and then lifted him into the air and dropped him to the floor without moving at all. Charmeleon looked unconscious. The Mewtwotwo turned to its trainer and asked: “Is there anyone here who TRAINS pokémon, not just catches them? Same boring challenges day by day! I feel like battling something powerful...”
Needless to say, chapter 75 would be very different if I'd chosen to keep this version of Mewtwo² in the ILCOE instead of giving him a complete personality transplant alongside the name change. Thank you, fourteen-year-old me.
In the previous revisions, this trainer also had a Mew and Mewtwo. The Mew clone battled normally, but the Mewtwo was considerably less cooperative:
Mewtwo emerged from the ball and looked at its trainer with deep disgust.
“What do you want now, kid?” came Mewtwo’s telepathic voice, echoing inside Mark’s head.
“Oh, shut up, kitten. Just use Psychic on that Gyarados over there,” said the trainer and pointed at Gyarados.
“Why should I obey you, kid? I could hypnotize you any time and take over the world. What can stop me from doing it?”
“Don’t get any ideas, you overgrown cat,” the trainer said. “We changed your genetic code so you can’t. Actually, you were also supposed to obey after we did those changes...”
“I don’t care what I was supposed to do. I’m on my own now. Goodbye.”
And then Mewtwo teleported away.
“Mewtwo, what are you doing?!!!” the trainer yelled. “Oh well, the last one also did. Go, Mewtwotwo!”
Later, when Mark returns to the gym, he doesn't have to rebattle this trainer:
But the trainer wasn’t there. Mark went to the door and saw a note saying “Went to get another Mewtwo. Challengers, please go through, it’s not locked.” Mark thought of how the Mewtwo had teleported away. And the trainer had said “the last one also did”. How many Mewtwos could be lurking around, waiting to take over the world? Mark tried not to think about it and went through.
Oddly, the implied multitudes of Mewtwo wandering the earth with world takeover plans did not go on to be significant to the plot.
“Return,” muttered the scientist. “Face Rick, kid,” he then said, reaching into his pocket and taking out the key to the Pokéball door. It opened slowly.
Mark went through the door and got his Pokémon healed, noticing that this arena was about double the size of the previous four. But the Gym Leader was nowhere to be seen.
“Rick went to the basement,” the nurse explained. “You’ll just wait here, won’t you? I need to go now.”
Mark nodded, and the nurse hurried out through a side door.
Mark sat down on a bench. The basement? Where was the basement? What was Rick doing there?
He stood up, walking backwards from the wall and looking if he saw a door somewhere. His foot slipped and he was sent flying into the pool.
Mark’s first thought was that he’d have to change his clothes. The second thought was that this pool was stupidly deep. The third was “What’s that hole in the wall doing there?” The fourth was that he’d better get out of the pool.
This paragraph is strikingly similar to a paragraph going all the way back to the original:
The first thing he thought was that now these clothes were wet too. The second thing was “How oddly deep this pool is!” and the third thing was “Why is that hole in the wall down there?” The fourth thing was that he better get up to the surface.
There aren't a lot of times where the ILCOE's phrasing is directly based on the previous revisions, but this is definitely one.
It took me a moment to recall/decipher how Mark sees this hole in the wall only when he's fallen into the pool, but basically, the pool is on the right side of the arena, and the hole is in the left-side wall of the pool - you'd have to be in or above the pool to see the hole, assuming the pool covers the entire right side of the arena from front to back. I should have made this a lot clearer when I was actually writing it.
Of course, it does not seem to have occurred to me that this means any water-based Pokémon that fights in the gym could easily see and enter the secret entrance to the lab! Yet another way in which I wasn't properly treating the Pokémon as characters, I suppose - even though Gyarados is about to examine things for Mark and tell him about it, I somehow didn't think of the fact that this means any random kid who comes in there with a fish Pokémon will probably hear from that Pokémon later: "Hey, funny thing about that pool in the gym..." Rick's security choices are baffling.
He swam to the bank and climbed up. He looked around, and seeing no signs of Rick, he sent Gyarados out into the pool.
The sea monster looked around, seeing no opponent, and turned back to Mark.
“Could you swim down there and see what this hole in the wall is for?” Mark asked. Gyarados just nodded and dived down. Mark saw him disappear through the hole. After a few minutes, during which Mark wondered why he was being so nosy, the monster returned.
“It’s very interesting, actually,” Gyarados stated. “It’s a pretty long tunnel, but it ends where you go a bit up, and it’s got steps up, like you can empty the pool and then walk the whole way. There’s a red room there, I couldn’t go in so I didn’t see much.”
“A red room?” Mark questioned blankly. “Emptying the pool?”
“Yeah, you can probably empty it somehow. Try the light switches over there.” Gyarados jerked his head towards the wall, which had six switches on it in two columns of three.
Mark walked over there, not sure why he was doing this but driven on by curiosity.
I wonder why it doesn't occur to Mark here that he might get caught snooping around. As it is he's just doing a lot of thinking "Why am I doing this", but not about any of the potential consequences of doing so, which seems pretty backwards.
The switches weren’t marked. He pressed the first one and the lights went out. He quickly pressed it again, but nothing happened. He tried it again a few times, but then tried the second switch. The boxes the trainers were supposed to stand in got illuminated. Nothing happened when he pressed it again, either. He tried the third one and Gyarados got lit up too. He growled, screwing his eyes shut.
“I don’t like this light, Mark,” he said.
“Sorry, I can’t turn anything off here,” Mark apologized, attempting to press this button again. The fourth switch, to Mark’s great relief, put the lights back to normal. Pressing the fifth one, he wasn’t really expecting anything interesting to happen, but with a great noise, a drain opened at the bottom of the pool and the water level started lowering.
“You’d better recall me before it empties,” Gyarados commented. Mark nodded, holding forward the Pokéball as it dissolved Gyarados into red energy. The pool took a bit of time to empty, but it was way too deep for Mark to get to the bottom.
He hopelessly tried the sixth switch, and small handles appeared out of the wall of the pool, forming a ladder.
Mark shrugged and went down, wondering what Rick would do if he came back. He nervously entered the tunnel and walked through it. It was rather long, but in the end he came to another, short staircase. He climbed up, ending in, as Gyarados had said, a room lit by red lights. A see-through door led to another red room; it was open.
He curiously went in, but then heard voices. He quickly ducked behind a low wall. Through the red glass on top of it, he watched two scientists walk into the room, which he now had the time to examine.
It was full of glass tanks containing a brown liquid. Inside them floated Pokémon embryos, some very Pokémon-like, others just creepy, shapeless forms at the early stages. Each tank had a screen and a keyboard on it. Odd, pyramid-shaped devices of different sizes were lined along the walls. Mark realized he was in Rick’s cloning lab.
This entire sequence plays out virtually identically to the UMR, which in turn is virtually identical to the original. The context was slightly different - this all happened after Mark got the first badge and got Dratini at the lake, when Mark randomly decided surely Rick would be a great person to ask about whether Dratini and Gyarados might count as legendaries - but Mark accidentally walking backwards into the pool, seeing the hole in the wall, sending Gyarados out to examine it, fiddling with the light switches, even what each of the switches does, is all exactly like I wrote it when I was twelve. Clearly, by the time I was fourteen I still thought this was awesome and nothing about it needed to be changed, nope. I still kind of get a kick out of the light switches; the UMR even had a completely irrelevant worldbuilding parenthetical about how the lights lighting up the Pokémon are tuned to the Pokémon's energy and will therefore dim as the Pokémon is weakened.
One of the scientists walked to a tank containing what looked somewhat like a Caterpie. The other one walked to one that was farther away so Mark didn’t see what was in it.
“Hey, Peter,” the nearer one called, “I think it’s ready.”
The Peter guy came and peered at the Caterpie.
“Yeah, looks pretty good,” he agreed. “I’ve got to tend to mine, though.” He walked back to his tank, and the one with the Caterpie did something on the computer and then the brown liquid started flowing out. The Caterpie was left in the tank and slowly opened an eye.
“Cater…” it squeaked. “Cater… two!” Mark suddenly understood what was going on – they were making more super-clones, ones that Rick didn’t have a license for. He hardly dared to breathe.
The scientist pressed a button and the tank opened with a low hiss. He picked up the Catertwo, smiling.
“What a beauty!” he said proudly. Peter came holding a Pikachu super-clone – it had blue balls on its ears, blue pawpads, long blue claws and a threadlike, jagged tail with a blue triangle at the end. It looked menacingly at Catertwo and hissed, baring its sharp fangs.
“Mine’s pretty good too,” Peter said. The other one examined the Pikatwo.
“Well, nothing beats Rick’s. You know, the one he gave to Taylor,” he commented.
“Ah, well, that doesn’t count,” said Peter. “Rick’s the cloning master.”
“Yeah, but seriously…” said the other one, lowering his voice, “I’ve got to say, Rick’s spoiling the kid. If my little brother came to me and said the Charmander he got as a starter was too weak and he wanted a clone, I’d tell him to shut up and clone one himself. But nooo, of course Rick just gives him the best clone we’ve ever made, and I heard he’s going to give him even more! And then Taylor lost his Charmander and got some level 14 Quilava out of nowhere, just to keep it in the Pokéball all day without training it at all! And I mean, what’s Rick thinking, giving him super-clones? Anybody at all can see them! This is madness, somebody will catch him one day if he keeps this up...”
Ah, the world's most convenient as-you-know-Bob infodump. This is also more or less identical to the previous revisions.
The scientist stopped abruptly upon seeing a blond-haired, handsome man of around twenty-five enter from a side room, who Mark assumed was Rick.
“Hey, Peter, Jimmy, do you know who was playing around with the switches?” he asked worriedly.
“Well, nobody entered, at least,” said Jimmy. “We’d have noticed.”
“That’s good. Let’s just hope it was some random kid.” Rick smiled faintly, but walked back to the room. In the doorway, he turned around again.
“Oh… Lee says Mewtwo² is resisting the Clone Ball again. We’ve got to make a new model of the ball.”
The two scientists nodded.
“Let’s go evolve these beauties, now,” said Peter happily and they walked over to the pyramid-shaped machines near the walls. Mark saw his chance; he quickly glanced at the door he came through, but the entrance room was filling with water again; Mark assumed that Rick was refilling the pool. He looked around the room and eyed a staircase leading further down. Not seeing any other possible exit, he crawled silently towards it.
It led to a long corridor containing nothing but posters on the walls with ideas of new super-clones. Mark took a quick look at each of them, but didn’t have the time to read any properly. At the end of the corridor there was a ladder; Mark climbed up and hit his head on something hard. He discovered it was a trapdoor. Lifting it carefully up and climbing through, he discovered he was in the seemingly empty entrance room to the Gym itself.
In the original, I included illustrations of the posters that Mark saw: Catertwo, Metatwo and Buttertwo; Pikatwo, Raitwo and Bulbatwo; Ivytwo, Venutwo and Charmantwo; Charmeletwo, Charitwo, Squirtwo, Wartortwo and Blastwo; Pidgetwo, Pidgeottwo and Pidgeotwo; Rattatwo and Raticatwo; Spearotwo, Fearotwo, Ekantwo and Arbotwo; Sandshrewtwo, Sandslashtwo and Nidotwo; and Nidorinatwo. They were all glorious.
He shivered, remembering that his clothes were still wet, and rushed to the hotel, thinking about this experience.
Oh, Mark's visit to the secret cloning lab. I'd forgotten just how little this had changed from the original! That's wild. The only real difference is that in the prior revisions Mark watched the scientists stage some battles between their clones to show off their special moves. This is purely my twelve-year-old self's idea of a really cool scene, preserved forever.
(That cut bit with the scientists' battle was actually an important piece of QftL history: because they were using made-up moves, I had to describe what those moves involved, resulting in a more visual battle than any of the battles I'd been writing in the story before, which pretty much just consisted of the trainers' commands and the Pokémon's cries. I started writing brief attack descriptions into all my battles after this, and eventually I realized I could just edit the previous chapters to use the 'good battle style' too - and thus began my revision-mania.)
By the time of the IALCOTN, I'd already firmly decided this entire thing was getting the boot. Rick making his secret cloning lab accessible to anyone who presses some switches in a public gym arena or has an aquatic Pokémon instead of, y'know, just having a nondescript locked door is pretty silly; Mark getting in, conveniently overhearing relevant information and then simply getting out with zero repercussions is just poor writing; Mark risking pissing off somebody in possession of a bunch of cloned legendaries out of pure idle curiosity, without so much as a thought for whether this might get him in some serious trouble, is just weird; the whole thing is deeply unnecessary in general since the relevant information could easily be obtained elsewhere (we're obviously going to learn that Rick's been giving Taylor clones, Charmeleon himself could have identified his original trainer, and if Mark had to learn anything else about Rick's clones, Mew could probably tell him). But I can still appreciate why this was the coolest thing ever to twelve-year-old me. Illegal experiments! Secret passages! Superclone Pokémon!
Otherwise, this is another chapter of fairly uninteresting junior trainer battles before Mark actually gets to battle his first gym leader. A couple of them sort of have a point to them - establishing Mewtwo², the Suicune foreshadowing, Sandshrew finally winning a fight - but I could have done those things in the actual Rick battle, or if I had to, in just one junior trainer fight. All in all this gym is way drawn out.
I'd quite like to keep Mark actually meeting Mewtwo² this early in the story because of the way that Mark will go on to remember and reference Mewtwo²'s efforts to resist here in chapter 75. This opens kind of an interesting conundrum if Rick's going to officially train stone evolutions - he's hardly going to use Mewtwo² in battle in a stone-evolution gym. Something that occurred to me as I was doing the commentary here was that I could actually potentially keep the lab scene and make that the point of it - obviously, I'd have to rework things significantly to actually make sense, but assuming that could be done, I can definitely envision an actually good, suspenseful lab infiltration scene where Mark witnesses the still-secret Mewtwo² and perhaps ultimately escapes only thanks to Mewtwo² resisting the Clone Ball. I'm not entirely sure if I could make it work, but it's definitely a thought I'll be chewing on for the future.
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This is an author's commentary intended for readers who have already read the entire ILCOE. My retrospective comments on the chapter are in bold below, with some remarks within the text and then some overall thoughts at the bottom. The commentary will contain significant spoilers! Do not read the commentary on your first read-through!