Mewtwo lay gasping, holding onto the last beam of his desecrated home with all his strength. He knew this was the end. He had dishonoured his name as a pokemon as he destroyed the labratory. But it was better for him this way. There was no reason, no purpose, to the life the researchers offered him. It was better...
His mind was fading. His powerful psychic mind. It was over.
But the voice wouldn't quit. It wouldn't let him give up.
"Stop, you fool," he whispered to the young Pokémon trainer who knelt beside him, trying to coax him back to life.
"You can't give up now, Mewtwo," the boy pleaded, his eyes swimming with tears. "Not now. Not after all that's happened."
The Pokémon clutched in pain at the wound in his tail, from which his life slowly ebbed away in the red stream of blood.
That girl was sobbing again as she held a lost Starmie in her arms. "Starmie, if you only knew...."
The trainer holding him looked sympathetically at her.
Mewtwo turned his head from the sight. Shame filled his heart as he recognized that the one who had caused so much pain, so much despair, was himself. He had become a murderer in his desperation. His mind took a turn for the worse as it became his last remaining quality.
It wasn't meant to be this way.
Revenge had seemed the final reward. The payment in full for a life of misery. What Mewtwo hadn't expected was that the revenge he held so dear merely intensified his misery.
The scientists were gone, their lives cruelly terminated by the one they lived for.
The labratory was demolished as well, save one lonely board that shot from the ground like a sign of surrender. It was this beam that Mewtwo now clung to as his life drifted slowly away from him.
It hadn't been his most powerful attack. It was a psybeam.
One psybeam. Thirty-seven Pokémon dead, two seriously, if not fatally injured. Twelve humans lost, six of these the scientists that had made Mewtwo what he was. Six were Pokémon trainers, including a gym leader, who had died in trying to save his Vulpix from the blast. A Starmie and a Pikachu were killed, and two human hearts were broken. By one psybeam. One loss of control. One flash of anger.
"Ash," he whispered to the trainer who knelt beside him.
"Yes?" asked the boy softly.
"Never," wheezed the Pokémon, "never, let your anger get out of control." His eyes began to close. "You will only end up hurting someone you love."
Mewtwo was still.
Ash bowed his head in quiet agreement. "I will remember for you."
He turned sadly to the girl holding her departed Starmie. "Anger is one letter short of danger, Misty," he told her in a low voice.
She nodded. "It was enough."