Most of Mewtwo's backstory has been stripped away to suit this fic's needs. His clone friends don't die, for instance. His character will be majority OC. Now with that out of the way, let's dive in.

Life left a lot to be desired when it first started out for me.

'Course, this sort of morbid grievance applies to almost every living being which has come into existence, but I believe I am more than in the right to say I had been dealt with one of Life's shittier hands. Shady asshole.

Shit, I feel vain just mulling over it. Still, it would make a good exercise of introspection. To reflect on my past, be informed of the future - all that crude jazz. Would have thrown the notion of flirting with such an elderly notion out of the window. 'Better never than late' was a phrase I aspired to make my figurative soulmate.

Still, with all the time I have left - which would probably stretch forevermore for all I knew - I may as well start. Already saw all that is to be seen in the world, from Kalos to Sinnoh and back again. I can almost taste the mould jutting and prodding from my eyebags.

You never know when it will end. Maybe it will be when Arceus delivered on that rapture promise he made Ash and me when we were hanging at his place. Maybe when the weather trio decides to wreak havoc again even after I forced them to talk instead of act. Normally, the opposite would be seen as the more responsible choice, but I could make no heads or tails around these sorry bastards. The pettiest incle of a conflict would escalate to an all-out apocalypse if I left those two well enough alone.

Oh, here I go again with these tangents. Every Ketchum family gathering, the young ones would call out these growing habits and grate on my nerves to no end - parroting over and over again about how old I was getting. See who would have the last laugh once I stand by their deathbeds.

Figuratively, of course. Goddamn, am I old.

Seeing as I am not getting any younger, I may as well give it a go. My first and probably only story about how I took those cards I flung it at the dealer's scroungy little face. Here's the tale of how a legendary clone destined for evil saved the world. Twice over.

Every legend has to start from somewhere. I won't lie: my origin story ticked all the boxes. Estranged parents, debilitating child life, a story of how I rose from the pressure - I had it all. It was a sob story on both accounts.

Team Rocket never cared for the little man, so long as it all worked in getting them closer to the only thing their organisation strived for: world domination. Atrocities and crimes against humanity and Poke-kind alike were always seen as excusable in their eyes - all that mattered was the end goal. The bottom line was this: so long as they were the only ones instigate the fight, no one else will. Giovanni had been so focused on the small picture, he forgot the big. So intent on searching for peace he never thought the ways he sought it would turn and backfire on him. A classic case of good intentions gone bad. In that case, he was hardly any different.

Among those backfires was the nature of existence. For all intents and purposes, I shouldn't even exist. But Gio had the bright idea of cloning Mew's genes in hopes of creating a new 'perfect' breed of Pokemon that would serve him, and only him. Have I mentioned how much he craved for world domination yet?

Can't say I felt sorry for the guy.

In fact, he was so disillusioned from his dreams, the dense shit never thought that perhaps a legendary may prove too much for nimble scientists to handle as they prodded and pricked at it with tubes, syringes and whatnot. Me being born, made and grown in a tube made of glass all by myself was, by all accounts, a bad move. Whatever. His loss in the end.

Poetic that I would be the one to throw a wrench in his plans. Guess just who the clone was. But there was so much more that happened leading up to my escape. So much more motive.

My childhood was, for a lack of a better adjective, cold. The first years of my life was a spreadsheet of numbers and deadlines that seemed to never end. I saw walls, ceilings and little natural light. They didn't have the balls to give us a glimpse of the world outside Rocket Laboratories - that would give us clones too much motivation to breach containment. I was grown inside a glasshouse alongside countless others. Maybe if they treated us nicer we would be more inclined to respect them more. Honestly, rookies, these people.

The hardest days for me were always Tuesdays. Every week and every hour which slinked by, dread took over me as the deadline crawled from three, to two, to one.

The scientists had taken to calling it the endurance and tolerance part of my training regime. Didn't seem that way to me - it was more akin to...

Well, I wouldn't say torture. The worst they did was lash at me with a whip for a solid minute, but that was for only ever for a minute. Torture meant so much more than it did to me at the time; thank Arceus I was spared of that nonsense other Pokemon under abusive trainers had to endure.

Yeesh; I was a sissy, now looking back at it!

But that was all I ever knew. The pain, the power, the isolation. Do that to a kid from the moment he can comprehend the state of his surroundings, stir him in a pot, step to a safe distance back-aways and observe what happens.

Nothing good.

Guess which one of those three factors did a number on me the most.

Still, credit's where credit's due. The least I could give the Rocket scientists was that they had my best interests in mind - in a weird, mechanical sort of way. I was given the best supplements, the best diet, the best training regiment any aspiring Pokemon master could want and more. If it wasn't for the fact I had been hooked up on tubes in a lab half the time, I'd say I had been living the dream.

But the thing was all on a schedule, see.

Training in the morning, lab work in the afternoon, home 'schooling' at night. It worked both for and against them. For in that they had the benefit of overseeing my psychic abilities reach their maximum potential. Against in that they helped my psychic abilities reach their maximum potential. Funny how that works.

Funnily enough, that schedule was probably what led me to haul ass away from their labs in the first place.

The scientists figured that a young Pokemon like me needed social interaction with the other clones; to isolate me from society would stunt my intellectual growth as well as object to any social interaction I would have in the near future, something they desperately didn't want nor need. That said, the fella who made me should have put more effort into editing some submission DNA in my genome - because I sure as hell was free to disobey their orders whenever I wanted most of the time.

This sordid business led to a blossoming friendship I still regret ever forming to this day. Cos I sure as hell didn't deserve them.

Amber. Or rather, Amber-Two. And she... well, she was a character.

A character I could only ever hope to live up half to. To sum her up in a word: she was foregoing.

Like me, she had the wits about her to know that she wasn't manufactured as part of some genuine scientific endeavour to advance humanity and consequently Pokemon. No, clone-tech would have been squashed by ethic committees if so much as a slither of development got out.

She realised early on her being there was a means to suit an end.

But it was not until much later after some of the scientists had slipped did she find out how she came into being. From the way she reacted when I talked to her about it, she didn't like it one bit.

The girl didn't want to live in the shadow of her deceased counterpart, someone who she could only ever act as a memory of and nothing more.

Amber-Two decided she wanted out.

Those scientists slipped bad in that regard. Information that there was indeed an outside world ciphered through the cracks. Apparently, some of her caretakers were talking about where they should head for lunch later that afternoon at what they thought was behind her back. Needless to say, her prying eyes and ears never skipped a beat.

When they let us out of our pens for 'playtime' as they took to calling it - that being Amber and most of our cloned Pokemon friend group - she relayed her discovery.

Look, I never discounted the possibility of there being another world well over a thousand times larger than the labs, but I was still shocked nonetheless. Everybody had to be young, dumb and naive at some stage. I hadn't developed the ability to read minds yet (not that I used it down the line, anyway; a tad too invasive for my tastes), so I was kept in the dark most of the time.

And off to the corner somewhere, Char, Bulba and Squirts had their entire world views turned upside down. That their lives had been lies all along. You lot should have seen the look on their faces - there was comedy to last an ice age.

One thing led to another and it was not before long that we decided we would have the fullest intentions of breaking out Rocket Laboratories.

But make no mistake; by no means did we ever think it was going to be easy.

Amby's side project (a pretty name for what was really reconnaissance work) yielded that the place was locked up tighter than a brothel merchandised virgin - every nook and cranny we would turn over there was some form of security deterrent.

Fortunately, they had a legendary Psychic around.

My morning training sessions meant that my personal trainers took every possible liberty to ensure my transvection abilities is at its optimal performance every waking second of the day.

They really should have thought internal security through. Those cameras were more manipulable than gambling addicts at a casino.

The plan was simple yet ingenious. Plant fake, dummy copies of our forms in our holding pens with my psychic powers as we make our damning escape. It was risky, but as it turned out, guards within the walls were none the wiser.

Problem was, those dummies were just that: dummies. While psychically there, our copies wouldn't be able to respond to stimuli - no way in hell would anyone develop that level of ability bar Arceus and Mew themselves. Take it from me: those two are no pushovers.

Unfortunately, there was no portal in hell that did not open when the plan launched to phase two - the phase this entire ramshackle plan revolved around. Escape.

In just a joyous turn of events, one of our caretakers decided to take it upon himself to visit Amber for inspection. I will let you mull over what his real intentions were.

Once he found out, he sounded the alarm. Guards soon flooded the entire facility from front and back - covered the exits, covered the sewers, covered every conceivable door they could think of. All but one factor protected us from us being discovered almost immediately: they forgot we were children.

Luckily, they never thought to check the ventilation shafts. Unluckily, when I said they covered every exit, I meant it.

Of course, some of them were set up on the roofs. With Giovanni's predisposition to overtly irrational paranoia, this setup was almost a lock-on guarantee.

Ironically, with us youngins', the plan was due to fail from the start.

We were in over our heads.

We were overconfident. I couldn't even teleport one of my friends, much less myself out of there. Too weak, didn't know the outside world at all.

That was to be the start of our downfall.

Off came the ventilation roof rafters, and the first thing our merry band of convicts were greeted with was a legion of gun barrels staring down at us... and Rocket goons wearing smirks which screamed arrogance. Other than the frail moonlight washing over the roof with its dull glow, not much could be seen outside our immediate periphery. All kinds of creatures from the forest which surrounded the place fell on deaf ears, not a needle dropped or a tumbleweed tossed. Just us, and their guns; think we would have been more reflective if not for the fact we would be flat as pancakes if we so moved a muscle.

And you know, to this day, I still think the course of action I took was for the best at the time. If only to rub their grins off their faces. I ended up doing the only thing I knew how.

Levitation. Psychic.

Thus, with but a cock of my fingers, the grunts quickly found that their legs no longer connected to the ground - and before they had a chance to react, they were tossed topside like a toddler would his doll.

A second of silence whisked by us before our panicked group looked each other over.

Not two moments later, our minds were made up: make a dash for it into the forest, stick close, and pray to Arceus we would survive the ordeal.

Neither of us objected.

So we did.

Some days, I would wish one of us had.

To put it lightly, we were fishes out of water. None of us had any idea what forests were, much less what to expect when traversing it. If we were being honest with ourselves, some small parts of us believed we wouldn't even have got past the first stage. We were having a fun time as any when hunters chased after our skin. That is to say, not at all.

We got so lucky.

We certainly hadn't expected to slip past the guards so easily. No doubt that Team Rocket had hope we were indoctrinated enough that we didn't even think about escaping. Wishful thinking, fellas.

Bulba had taken to conquering the forest the best among us - to be expected, seeing as he was a grass type. Char had it worst; he was out of his element, and out of his league. With the amount of dexterity he had, we had to resort to carrying him on my shoulders.

By carried, I meant levitated.

Unfortunately, just as we were three quarters our way through the forest, our rotten luck had come to bite us in our arses.

Things took a turn for the worst. Emphasis on that adjective.

It was to be the moment where I became what I am today.

It was the night that cemented my core character trait which influenced every decision I debilitated and made for years to come.

Cowardice.

Leaves of every type battered against our faces as we lumbered across the spindling forest bed. The first signs of dawn spilt over the night sky in brushstrokes of violet - not a single cloud seen or bird shrilled.

Being kids, we could only run for so long... and a run slowed turned into a jog. Our eyelids could barely stay up.

'Course, it's generally a rule of thumb during escape attempts that what comes next would not be very good. But hey, what do you expect of a naive, gullible kid?

"So tired... it hurts to walk..." Squirtle whimpered, the sensitive soul forming the first signs of tearing on his eyebags. "My feet hurt a lot. It can't feel them anymore..."

Charmander's gaze lifts up, lips tightening in its resolve. "Mewy, it's okay. Let me down. Squirts needs the rest; use psychic on him instead."

Gritting my teeth somberly, I shook my head. "No need."

"But you will-"

"I can handle it."

With that, Squirts was lifted off the ground alongside Charmander, albeit a little bit rockily at first. Even with all my endurance training, lifting any object for four hours - give or take - will be a challenge for even the most vigilant Psychics. Still, I lifted them both, even if I knew it killed me.

We knew if we stopped now we were as good as dead. Giovanni would not even consider stopping his pursuit unless we either have managed to reach someplace more populated or disappeared off the face of the earth entirely - and even then, there was no telling if he decided it was not worth the trouble of deploying region-wide search party later.

That was the only thing that kept us going. A motive that was fading faster by the second.

But not for Amber. Amber was the only one with the resolve and the tenacity to push us whelps forward, even in our lowest lows. She said it before, and she said it again:

"Don't... worry about what's behind you... it will only slow you down. It will only weigh you down. The only thing that will determine what comes before is the past. The only thing that will determine what comes after that is the future. Don't think about them, hope to never think about them. All that matters is to keep on moving."

Somehow, every sentence that oozed from her lips made her seem like she had wisdom beyond her age. Beyond my current age.

By the time we caught a glimpse of some of the barbed wire fences Amber told us about, we were already half-dead. We didn't know when or where we were going to be ambushed, we just knew we were going to be. The anticipation was killing us.

Amber, ever the most level-headed of the group, refused to go cross-eyed now. "Guys, quiet. We might trip - trigger a trap."

We tiredly nodded.

After a silent exchange of words, we agreed on a battle formation: Bulba covered the front, Amber covered our flank and the rest scoped the ground in search of any traps we may set off.

Ahead of us were endless logs of trees hampering our sight, but even so, the gates looming above the canopy gave us a clear direction of where to go.

I managed to spot a few lucky padded leg-holds which would have made our feet mincemeat for sure - skirted around them so that we wouldn't give them any indication about where we headed.

"Nice spotting."

"Thanks, Amber."

She probably only complimented me to boost morale for all of us, knowing her - and she meant it that way, too. Amber... always looking out for everyone but herself. Whatever her clone was like, kindness seemed to be one of their core character traits.

"Guys, we are almost there. Just a bit more, and-"

Try as we might, Team Rocket knew a bunch of kids were no match to a pound of Houndooms.

Which was precisely what they deployed them at the last minute. Amber couldn't sense it, but we could. Call it innate instincts, if you will, but the very idea of Houndooms ripping us to shreds terrified us to no end.

That's how we heard their howls for our blood so quickly. Who knew psychological warfare works surprising well with kids?

Fear soon slunk under our skins quicker than a pistol whip. For the lack of a better word, we were paralysed - rooted on the spot, shakily conjuring thoughts of how we would be torn apart limb by limb. Only Amber could bring us back to reality, and she was having none of it. "Over the fence; RUN!"

It didn't take turning into an Alakazam to know that this was the best course of action.

The edges of forest soil parting at the pressure of fidgety feet, we took off in earnest, and into the labyrinth of ferns and bushes we went.

It would soon become clear we were never going to get where we wanted.

I should have known they factored us escaping into one of their shit-lists. Team Rocket is nothing if not maniacal with their attention to detail when it came to protecting their top assets.

So, they laid a trap at every conceivable turn.

It was only a matter of time one of us stepped on them. Even if Bulbasaurtwo was one with the forest, it didn't ward him off his ability trigger traps.

A slight force of exertion was all it took for the trap to set off. Immediately, a clamp chomped on one of his feet, a yelp escaping his throat. "ARGH!"

All of us swung our faces towards his general direction with varying degrees of horror.

"Guys, my leg! I, I can't move!"

"Mew," Charmander pled, waving his arms about for emphasis. "I think this is a good time to let me down. Like, right now."

I held no objections.

The dragon-type was off my grasp, awkwardly waddling his way towards our friend. He got down, inspecting the mechanisms of the trap carefully before nodding his head. "Yeah, this seems doable. Problem is, it will take me a good while before I make any real progress. Think you can cover my tail while I..."

"Say no more."

In the ten minutes Charmander took to loosen the trap for Bulba, Amber and I fought off the rest of the Rocket goons; Squirtle lied waiting at the sidelines for obvious reasons. Wave after wave of Koffings and Arboks were launched at us, all to no avail. I wouldn't say our defence work was perfect, but it did its job. Thanks to the overzealous training placed upon me at the lab, I made quick work with the enemy Pokemon - used Psychic during most confrontations, Psycho Cut and Confusion in others. It was all fluid like the xylem of a plant's root system - Amber was a great strategist which directed me on when and where to use my already waning strength, while I had the smarts of learning how to deploy them efficiently. I still had to carry this whole group over the electric fence, after all.

Unfortunately, in the same ten minutes that it took us to high tail it out of there, Rocket goons were devising a better and smarter strategy of their own as well - one that will ensure that I was clamped down for good.

It was time for a little more human intervention.

So, they surrounded the area which we occupied in a neat little circle which would ensure we wouldn't get out without a fight. We were so preoccupied with the possibility of another Pokemon attack that we failed to account that the Rocket grunts themselves were threats, too. Silly me.

"Alright, got it!" Char cried - much to our relief. "Now get yourself out of there and let's go, Bulba!"

With a sweat-drop, the grass type let out a bellyful breath. "Don't need to tell me twice."

I was so intent on listening in on their brief but jolly exchange that I failed to notice a red dot breathing down on the back of my neck. By the time I turned around, a signature piercing shrill already took off in a burst, set on making sure its contents ate me whole.

That - got my attention. I only caught a glimpse of the weapon, but even from afar, I could still see its metallic features. Dark-infused power bled off the machinery as if it was a wellspring for the darkness itself. Any good Psychic could sense it. It was a mechanism which helped them to survive. Unfortunately, it was a trait which only served to make me and the others lock up.

That meant they had a shot at crippling me all the while. Only now, they decided to take it.

Firing, the rocket projectile punched through the air, screaming in its fiery wake. In my panic, I swerved out of the way, dropping both Char and Squirts onto the patchy forest floor in the process. My efforts would be in vain.

It would also be like them to produce all the latest weapons tech. And what do you know; the long list included a homing friggin' missile.

With the force of an Incineroar slam, the explosion consumed my core form whole, swatting and drilling my form into the base of a tree. Safe to say, it hurt more than five endurance training sessions combined. Moaning lowly, I peeled myself from the trunk and fell feet first onto the ground, shaking and whimpering all the while. The buzzing in my ears muted my friends' cries of terror.

Winded, I shook my head regardless - clearing my thoughts to deploy my Psychic abilities. Soon enough, my right hand hoists into position.

Just as I was about to activate them, however, the sharpest stab of pain erupted at the base of my skull, only leaving me to ball over like the weakling I was. Some mix of Scary Face and some other crippling ability.

I seemed to possess the former naturally with the way I look alone. Didn't help here though. As far as my powers were concerned, I was stripped bare. I couldn't bring them to the surface - not even tapping into my reserves helped. All that came out were pink sputters of mist and stale air. Whatever they used on me, it was potent and did its job well.

I was a sitting duck.

Fortunately, I kept my ability to levitate for whatever inconceivable reason.

"I can't... guys, I can't use my Psychic. That rocket launcher had some sort of Dark energy stored in it, and it... I can't... I can't seem to use Psychic anymore - on either of you. Squirtle..."

"It's fine," he called back from the ground, still weak from his exertions. "Not like y-you had a choice, either way."

Just as the Water-type finished, however, my ears picked up movement from the bushes. It was consistent - a beat, a rhythm... reverberating the forest floor for all convict-kind to shudder and stand in awe. Damn it. We were being boxed in.

"They're coming..."

Just then, the most unbelievable, the most inconceivable words escaped Amber's mouth. Words that drowned out Team Rocket's marching entirely.

"Go."

I blinked once, slowly readjusting my gaze onto her. "What?"

"You heard me. Run. Run as far away from us as you can."

"I am sorry, but that is ridiculous..."

"Yes, you can... and yes, you will. Us four had a talk when you left for your routine training. We vowed that... if it all went downhill, if things turned sour, it would have to come to this."

"You don't understa-how, how can you can expect to fight an army? With three handicapped Pokemon? You would stand not stand a chance! Just let me think-"

"Can't you see we were only being kept around so that you can get stronger? Think about it! Their research on all the clone Pokemon in this branch solely serves to benefit you. Your training regiment was because they cherry-picked from a list of training regiments they used on us! Don't you understand? Giovanni only wants you. Team Rocket as a whole is centred around you. Run away, and his plans to conquer Kanto will be set back by half a decade at the very least. Cut the Arbok at its throat."

"What about-"

"Mew, this is not just about us any more. This is about the fate of the entire planet. Once they finish their experimenting - and believe me... they will; they will find a way to wrap you around their fingers. We can't allow that to happen. People will get hurt if you stay. People will die. Now go! Run! Follow the roads, find this so-called 'city'! We will stall!"

"But..."

She gives me one last look of reaffirmation, breathing calmly with a look of determination glinting from her pearly eyes. "Mewtwo? Trust us. We will be fine. Learn to worry about yourself for once."

I wanted to say so badly that I did. That I did excessively. That I did too much for my own good. That I did at the expense of them. It has always been about my escape. It's always been about my bravery and camaraderie, the only bit of glue which stuck the mosaic together. No, I was vain - my head was shoved far, far up my arse I couldn't recognise myself anymore. Giovanni's character was rubbing off on me too much, more so than Amber. But I unconsciously decided it was better this way.

I chose to be self-centred.

And you know what I hate myself for the most?

That, while my mouth was open, my throat still found a way to be parched for words.

But once Amber had set on mind on something, it would take the world's strongest crowbar to convince her otherwise. I could nod uselessly, and slowly. I looked them all over one last time, the same determination gleaming on all their eyes.

"Just... just don't forget us. We love you. Goodbye."

And with that, I ran away.

I ran and ran and ran. From the ferns to the bushes to the roads.

All the while, droplets of tears slowly stained the forest bed blue.

PREVIEW

"Hey there. The name's Ash. Are you hungry? Because you look like crap."

I couldn't have agreed more.