บท 55: Cam
A/N: Here we are. The end of the Main Story, but the beginning of a lengthy epilogue in the form of twenty-two bonus chapters~
Hope everyone enjoys this look into Cam's mind and past!
-x-X-x-
In the beginning, he was Red. That was undeniable, just as undeniable as the fact that he was not born in the conventional sense but created in a laboratory. Professor Samuel Oak had manufactured him through an admittedly impressive feat of genetic engineering. Him… and Yellow. At the start of it all, it was the two of them.
His earlier years are filled with training and tests. Oak was obsessed with making sure his creation was perfect. But he was also so convinced of his own superiority and vanity, that the concept of failure didn't really catch upon his mind. He would be victorious. More specifically, Cam, or rather, Red would be victorious. Even in his darkest moments, Oak didn't have any doubts. He was so certain that everything would turn out to be worth it, in the end.
… He remembers all of it. From the very first moment of consciousness, all the way to now. For a long time, he'd forgotten. Forgotten what it was like in the quiet of Pallet Town. Forgotten his earliest years with Yellow by his side. They'd only really known the Professor and their Mother. There had been… some early interactions with Daisy Oak, but they had been few and far in between. They were simply of different age groups, and despite the amount of time that the Professor put into Red and Yellow, Daisy never really fell into the role of surrogate sister.
Perhaps she even resented them, for how much they took her grandfather away from her. Perhaps that was why she'd ran away from home, to make her fortune elsewhere. Cam didn't blame her for that. He didn't blame her for getting involved with Gary. After all, he wouldn't be who he was today if not for her actions. If not for Gary's… intercession.
The man was fully on the up and up, when he'd come to Professor Oak for help. He was a young man with a full team of powerful, well-trained Pokemon. He was part of a new wave of Kanto trainers, but none were like him. None had the drive and strength that Gary had. He stood head and shoulders above the rest.
But he also cared deeply for Daisy Oak. Not even knowing that Daisy was pregnant, Gary had come to Pallet Town all by his lonesome to seek out her grandfather. He'd asked for the Professor's help, wanting to be a man worthy of Samuel Oak's daughter. Sure, he had collected all eight Gym Badges, but he knew that Victory Road and the Elite Four would be even tougher. That if he was going to stand a chance of beating Champion Lance, he needed to go to the man that everyone else had forgotten.
He'd died for his beliefs. For his hopes and dreams. He'd died, thinking that he could trust the Professor, not understanding the monster that Samuel Oak had become. He'd seen only a man… and been shot in the back for it.
How did Cam know all of this? After all, it's not like he was there. But in a way, he was. The Professor had reached too far, in enhancing their genetics when creating his clones. He had added in some Mew DNA. Not enough to make them inhuman looking… just enough to give them that extra edge. They weren't supposed to be Psychic, like some human beings naturally were. They were merely supposed to be Empathic.
It was all designed to make them more capable Pokemon Trainers. After all, understanding your opponent was a key step in ensuring their defeat. Knowing instinctively what the enemy might do next would allow Oak's secret weapons to react with inhuman speed and could very well mean the difference between victory and defeat.
But of course, Oak had overreached. He had tried to play god… and nature itself had taken its due. When the Professor shot Gary in the back of the head, Cam might not have been in the basement… but he felt it all the same. A moment of anguish, of heartbreak and betrayal. Gary hadn't immediately died from the gunshot wound. He'd been paralyzed, and well on his way to death's door… but the poor man had lived long enough to watch as Oak destroyed his Pokemon in the machine that was supposed to strengthen them.
That psychic imprint of despair had reached Cam in his bed across Pallet Town. And from that moment on, he had not been simply Red… not anymore. But then, neither had he been Cam quite yet.
After that night, he'd felt an irresistible urge to make his way down to the basement beneath Oak's Laboratory. He was allowed down there often, of course. Tests and trials galore awaited him whenever the Professor demanded his presence. But he was never left unattended. And so, Cam had waited. He had waited until a day when the Professor was out of town, and he had snuck down, satisfying that little niggling voice in the back of his head that said there was something he needed to see.
He was only eight years old. By human standards, he was a child. But Oak had not made him or Yellow to be only human. Watching the Professor's video diaries, witnessing his crimes and understanding his own purpose and what it was all building to… Cam had turned away. The Professor had intended for him to be without that pesky thing humans called a conscience. But Gary's Psychic Imprint made that impossible.
At the time, as Red, he could barely be called human. He was more machine than anything. But even still… he was disgusted by the Professor's actions. And ultimately, he decided he wanted nothing more to do with them. It was the first decision he'd ever made for himself. The first real choice in his entire life. To leave.
His one regret, even after all this time, was not taking Yellow with him. Blame it on his youth if you will, but there truly was no excuse. She was his childhood companion, even when the Professor had sought to make them less codependent. She was his ever-present shadow… he should never have left her behind, should never have left her to become his replacement, the new… Red.
But he had. It was done, and there was no changing the past. He'd run away… and survived. With knowledge taken from Oak's files, and a couple of purloined tools the Professor had never even noticed were gone, Cam had been able to remove his tracker. It was a messy affair to be sure, but then… the messier the better.
As had been made evident by their final confrontation in the Hall of Fame, the Professor thought he died. He thought there was no way Cam had survived in the forest, all by himself. Another moment where the man was blinded by his own arrogance, his certainty in his own intelligence. He'd made Cam too capable, too strong, and too perfect to die that easily.
Despite having no capture devices to utilize, Cam was still built for Pokemon Taming and Training. He befriended several Wild Pokemon throughout the forests surrounding Pallet Town, before eventually moving on. He made his way across the Kanto Region, staying away from human civilization, sticking to the wild and untamed parts at all costs.
After all… humans were so much more dangerous than Pokemon, in the end. Despite the power of Pokemon, despite their potential… there was nothing more destructive than a human being. No more was this telling then in how the strongest Pokemon, those who had had their potential plumbed to its utmost depths… were those that belonged to human trainers.
He did not consider himself a trainer, at that time. He was a friend to his Pokemon Companions, a companion in turn. He traveled with some, met new friends along the way… and all around helped wherever he could. It was easy to understand Pokemon. Easier still to understand humans, but his understanding was what kept him away. He liked Pokemon… he couldn't say the same for humans.
And in the end, he was only proven right, wasn't he? His friends from that time, from the decade he'd spent living free and feral in the Kanto Wilds… were all gone. Each and every one of them… was dead.
It was Lance who'd done the deed, though not personally. The Pokemon Champion likely didn't even realize why Cam had been so happy to see him fall as he had. Lance's government had taken note of the increasing strength of Wild Pokemon, all across Kanto. Cam's travels… ten years of him living side by side with ferals… had caused a disruption in the so-called 'natural' order of things.
He hadn't intended it. He hadn't gone out of his way to do so. All he'd wanted was to make his friends stronger, so they would be safer. And as much as he loathed the Professor, the training he'd received, along with the instincts in his head… they had lent well to helping him gird his friends so they could defend themselves properly.
Except, in the end, he'd made a mess. He hadn't helped any one of them become strong enough to protect themselves… only strong enough to draw the eye of the humans. Lance's government had put out an initiative, a bounty on Wild Pokemon found to be outside of their bounds, stronger than they should have been for the areas they were in. And of course, lured by the promise of free money, trainers had flocked to… take care of the problem.
Perhaps some of Cam's friends had survived somewhere. Captured, instead of merely killed off. But by the time he'd realized what was happening… they were all gone. And he was alone. He'd found himself moving closer to the humans then. Trying to decide what form his revenge would take. How he would… how he would kill them all, given half the chance.
Then had come the call. Team Rocket was recruiting. Cam had barely understood what that meant, only that they spoke out against those already in power. He'd seen an opportunity then, even after ten years away from civilization. He'd seen an opportunity to join and use Team Rocket to burn it all to the ground.
Only, just as he was joining up, something strange had happened. Something that derailed all of his plans, changing everything. That something… was Cam.
He still didn't fully understand what it was to this day. He was Cam now… that much was certain. But up to that point in the Team Rocket Orientation, he HAD been Red. And then he'd been struck by… by a fragment of a person. By scattered pieces of memory that were not his own. When Petrel had asked his name, he had been in the midst of quite the crisis. Cam had been what slipped out at the time, even as he'd come to eventually accept the name wholeheartedly.
The original Cam… was not much. Compared to his eighteen years of experience before their collision, Cam wasn't even a person. And that was saying something, coming from him. Still, it was true. The original Cam was nothing more than a few snapshots. Some memories. It was how he'd discovered the discarded Coin Case and knew to abuse the hottest slot machines in the Game Corner.
It was how he'd known half a dozen little things here and there over the course of his journey from Rocket Grunt… to Rocket Boss.
And more than that, it was the only reason he was still alive today, still a human being, rather than the braindead vegetable of a weapon that the Professor would have turned him into. That code that Oak had used at the end of it all should have worked. It would have worked, if not for the snippets of Cam. Even after everything, he would have still been Red at his core, and Oak would have had complete control.
In the end, however, he was enough of a different man, changed by his experiences and circumstances he still didn't fully understand, that Oak's code had no longer worked as it should have. Rather than hollowing Cam out and turning him into a mindless weapon, it had simply become a shroud that, after a moment of great effort, Cam had shrugged off, becoming himself once more.
For that, even if he never fully understood what had happened, Cam would always be grateful to the original Cam. Both for the hints and help along the way, and for standing alongside him in that final battle for the sanctity of his mind… his soul. And to Gary as well, for how the man had unknowingly, in his final moments, shown a young clone that he did not have to follow in his original's footsteps.
Everything else was history. Cam had still been somewhat… discombobulated the first time he'd ran into Yellow-who-had-become-Red. She'd kicked his ass, and rightfully so. But that… that had been the wake-up call he needed. It had shaken the rust loose, so to speak. Even if he was more than Oak's Creature, he was still what Oak had made him. Designed to be impossibly strong and utterly unstoppable. After that first defeat, he had not faltered again. He had not lost another Pokemon Battle, not even once.
And now? Now he was the Boss of Team Rocket, and the secret advisor to the eleven year old boy in charge of all of Kanto. As he originally was, his plan had been to burn human civilization down to the ground. Luckily, the fragment that was Cam had tempered him, helped him see the beauty in the world around him… even in the humans.
The original Red was made to live and breathe Pokemon. But Cam? Cam cultivated people. All of Kanto Region was now his playground, and all of its inhabitants, be they human or Pokemon, were his to cherish, protect, and help grow.
As he rests there with his head against Mewtwo's bust, her three-fingered hand running through his Ditto-Pink hair, Cam smiles softly and nestles into the Psychic Pokemon a bit more.
Soon, it would be time to get back to work. But for right now, in this moment? He could take a second and rest.
-x-X-x-
A/N: So there it is. If you read between the lines, the final mystery, that being why Cam is Cam and not some other name, can be figured out fairly easily, I imagine.
If you still don't necessarily understand, well, the final bonus chapter will be a unique POV that will explain it entirely.
As always, feedback is greatly appreciated! Comments and Likes sustain me!
Hope everyone has enjoyed... here's to twenty-two more chapters!
Also there's still TEN more chapters over on the P atreon for early access!
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