The Mask Maker

Morai's Last Fall

"Weren't you given the authority of the law for this occasion?" Ingo asked. 

"As in, don't you have handcuffs?" Emmet added. 

"O-oh, right!" Emma coughed. She pulled out a pair of handcuffs, but when she went to step forward, she stumbled to the ground. 

"Here, I'll do it. Your injuries are pretty severe, it looks like," Ingo said. "We don't have much time before—"

Morai jumped up, and the movement made her stumble, but not from any outward injury. She quickly grabbed a Pokéball, and soon Malamar appeared by her side. 

"You were about to...kill her," Ingo said with a surprised look on his face. His hat and coat were sleek with rain. "Morai, I knew you had fallen far, but—"

"Shut up!" Morai yelled. "All of you! Can't you get it in your silly heads that she's gone? How many times do I have to explain it?" 

Ingo stepped forward and grabbed Morai by the arms with such intensity that she had to admit it hurt even her. Emmet's Eelektross stepped into battle her Malamar when it tried to help her. 

"Can't you see, Morai? You're dying, and you're becoming worse and worse by the minute! You can't understand because of that serum, but if you continue down this path, you'll end up in a place far worse than the people you've maimed. Can't you see, with those psychic eyes of yours, that there are better paths that lead to much better places than this?"

Morai stared at him with wild eyes. Her face was streaked with blood, and her hair was disheveled from the rain and the fighting she had done. Her nails dug into the sleeves of his coat as she gripped his arms, but the fabric was too thick to tear. 

"She's...almost inhuman," Emmet whispered, adjusting his hat.

Ingo, like Emma, had looked Morai in the eye to give his words more sincerity, but she hadn't yet taken advantage of his risky choice. She had almost forgotten what it was like to look at someone who's eyes weren't wide with sheer terror or glazed over in a stupor. Her gaze softened. 

"...If I die, I would rather it be like this," she said calmly. "This is all I can see, you see, but I like it all the same. Whoever I was before evidently had people like you to share in the pleasures of life with, but she was being ripped in half by two sides fighting over her soul, and she writhed alone in secret agony. I was born when she was set free of the chains of such duality, ironically through an act of good that saved your Battle Subway. If I must go, then let me walk strongly down that fading dark path alone, with my face free to feel the rain upon my skin, and no mask to hide who I truly am."

Ingo said nothing. He simply stared into her eyes, which had faded from red to their usual stormy color. His grip relaxed a little, and as the brim of his hat shielded his face from the rain, an unmistakable tear ran down his otherwise stoic face. 

"But until then," she added, "Until death comes to take me down below, I'll fight as hard as I can, as is my nature."

Ingo let go, and Morai pulled the photo album he had given her out of her coat. She flipped to the picture of her old self, Ingo, and Emmet, and handed it to him. The stationmaster looked it at for a moment, then violently shook his head. 

"No," he said. "I choose to honor the wishes of my friend. You are not her."

Ingo called out his Haxorus, and his brother prepared for battle by his side while Emma leaned against the wall and called her Crobat out. Morai stood alone against the three of them, but she didn't seem bothered. She smiled, lowered her mask to her face, and ordered Malamar to join her.