Reverse Mode III

I'd been having the same dream for a while now. I guess it had been about a week, had it? I'd been sleeping alone, back at my HQ. Spark kept offering to come over, and we still hung out like we usually did during the day, but at night...something was wrong. I couldn't bear to look him in the eyes. Something was just fundamentally off about the way he'd been acting around me, and I couldn't place what. I'd done something wrong, obviously. Had we had a fight or something? I'd have no idea about what; we'd always been open with each other. Well, at least I'd been open with him. Frankly, I'm practically incapable of not being; I'm either masking everything behind the whole "professional douchebag" thing (gods, I hated those business cards; really should replace them) or I'm spilling my guts and making a fool of myself. It still stood that something felt...wrong when I turned to look at Spark while we were cuddling; I'd push him out of bed and send him home before I let myself sleep. It felt...irresponsible, to be near him while I was unconscious. Like I'd lose control, or like there was something keeping me from trusting him that hadn't been there before.

I didn't remember much of anything from the past week. Spark had explained something to me, I'd gone on a monologue about the meaning of evil and Ronnie just being the worst without any particular edge or artistry behind it, and I had a tattoo of the new Falling In Reverse logo on my left arm that hadn't been there before. I didn't even like that emblem that much. It didn't really look like, well much of anything, save vaguely a pentagram, and it felt like something from a generic band. It wasn't like the lips, or even the charmingly stupid default Copperplate Gothic font. It didn't feel like Falling In Reverse. It throbbed as I rolled out of bed yet again, after yet another annoying dream sequence like the ones I'd been having: I'd wake up like everything was normal, except no one could see me or interact with me. I'd try to talk to people but get no response, but I got out of bed, walked around, headed to the bathroom, sat down to take a piss -- and I'd be right back in bed, glued to the spot, unable to move. I'd keep being able to get out and keep going further every time, but I always ended up right back in bed. I never actually moved. I couldn't actually wake up.

So I woke up, again, still trembling and frustrated, and terrified, and concerned over the time loop hell I'd been stuck in, for, what, the twentieth time? I contemplated if it was even worth getting out of bed, if I could even bother trying or the covers would just hold me down again, but this time, I had no problem stripping them off. Hell, I needed to; I was feverishly hot, drenched in sweat, heat sticking to every inch of my body. I rolled my way out of bed and went to the closet, sighing as I gathered my work clothes. It seemed I was finally able to get out of bed; every inch of my body wanted me to; surely it was real this time although I couldn't be sure. I groped around for my phone on the nightstand after it started blaring noises at me. Apparently I'd gotten up just before my alarm. Fumbling with my password entry, I turned off the alarm and unlocked it to check my schedule -- Tuesday. One of my days in the lab. I needed to make sure the latest Shadow formula shipment was up to protocol and quantity, and attend some meetings. Had a performance review or something. Well, depending on how long it took, I could always text Jet to get her to ready the shipment. I stuffed my phone, Pokeballs, and everything else I was likely to need for work into the side-bags strapped to my work pants and trudged out of my room, the rest of the building dark, no one in sight. This didn't bother me in the slightest.

The outside was just as dark, sheets of rain falling nearly horizontally against wind, rendering everything practically greyscale except a sickening purple tint. This wasn't a day fit for man, beast, nor Pokemon, but I was assigned to do my work so that's what I'd do. I realized halfway down the driveway that I'd forgotten my car keys, so turned back to the door, only to find that I'd locked myself out and neither my key card nor my emergency physical key worked, on account of the key card and physical key both being varying values of melted, a sickening scent of burnt plastic filling my nostrils. I hadn't smelled my key card melting when I'd picked it up; it had been completely normal when I took it out of my phone's case, but evidently it was just going to be like that today. I shrugged and went back to my car, only to find that the door opened as I approached and it started with no key entry whatsoever. The opening notes of Fashionably Late (the title track) started up on the radio; apparently I'd left a CD inside on my last trip and it had started from the track I was up to. Why would I have put in a CD and only gotten that far? It didn't matter, though, I needed to drive down to the downtown complex for whatever it was I was supposed to do, since after all, I'd probably end up running into some sort of traffic delays because of the rain. The sheets of sickeningly dark, violet-tinged rain kept falling through a monochromatic sky, although no puddles were on the ground; my car didn't scrape against any water as I pulled out of the driveway.

The route to get to the downtown complex curved and flattened around me, myself being pushed up against the oppressive darkness, sheets of the black, a thick slime, those streaks across the sky all flattening once and crushing me completely. When I came back to life and my vision started to interpret the black, I wasn't anywhere near the downtown complex, but staring at a series of unlabeled doors in a hallway that stretched in all directions. At least the doors were numbered, so I followed signs whose text kept shifting to get to room 0249, where I'd been told the performance review was waiting for me. I creaked open the door, to be faced with a blinding light. It faded as the occupant behind the desk turned their laptop back from facing me towards themself. Based on sound effects, apparently they were watching the Watch The World Burn music video. They closed the laptop, which didn't stop the audio as they regarded me, although both the song and their voice sounded like they were being filtered through water. Regardless, I understood them both perfectly, and they pretty much completely harmonized. Was this Ronnie giving me the performance review? The hair was right, but he wasn't the right height, and also had a tail coiling around the base of his office chair, ending in two sharp spikes. The rest of his body shifted in patterns of purple, black, red, magenta, looking more like a cloud approaching vaguely humanoid form than a man. Once I sat down in front of the office chair, the figure mostly stabilized into looking something like Archer, save the long hair and slime dripping down each of his arms, staring calmly at me clad in a shining black latex business suit.

"Hello, Arlo. So glad you could make it. We've got much to discuss about your performance lately."

"...do I know you? This isn't my building, and you're not my usual supervisor."

"I don't know. Do you?"

"I...I don't understand what you're talking about, I'm sorry."

"We're here regarding your behavior over the past week. Suffice to say, I'm worried about you."

"Look, I...I'm really sorry, but I don't remember anything. I wasn't in my right mind. Something...else, some other guy was in control of me. I came to after a week, had a tattoo I didn't remember getting, apps on my phone I'd never install, and Spark was wearing a locked collar and didn't want to look me in the eye. There's nothing but flashes besides that. Whatever I did, I promise I can make it up to you if it hurt you or my job performance."

"Oh, no, it didn't hurt me. On the contrary, really. I'm stronger than you could ever imagine."

The reflections coming off the latex changed to the same horrible purple that the streaks falling through the sky had been, and despite having been nothing but static for the entire time we'd been talking, the laptop sprung back to life with Watch The World Burn's breakdown, as the figure coalesced and agonizingly transformed, bones cracking and skin ripping apart while they cackled to themself madly, into...me. Or, rather, some sort of horrible fusion of me and Ronnie, which couldn't decide what era's tattoos it wanted, except also with laser eyes. The figure charged me, my reaching for my belt for Pokeballs, only to find there wasn't anything there. In fact, I wasn't wearing pants at all, but I'd apparently gotten bottom surgery seeing as I had a fully functional, much larger than my T dick, and evidently excited penis.

"When are you going to take back your life?"

"Huh? I -- what do you mean? I've been living on my own since I was 17! I've got a successful research position doing stuff that literally no one else has ever done in the same way and revolutionized Team GO Rocket's operations! I've seized my life! What is there to take back?"
"You went to Orre because you threw a dart at a map, because you couldn't put any brains into deciding where to go when your mom kicked you out. You met Candela because you passed out in the desert and your Pokemon dragged you to what happened to be the only remaining Pokemon Center in the region where she happened to work. You joined the Team Valor tournament because she dragged you with her, and then you joined Team GO Rocket because they decided from the Valor tournament that you were unstable enough to recruit. And then you sat there clinging to me, like some disgusting dog humping my leg, attaching yourself to me -- without my consent, mind you -- because you didn't have the balls to be your own man. You might have been on hormones for a year, you might have gotten top surgery, you might be totally okay with running around shirtless even though you really weren't supposed to do that for at least 6 months to give the scars time to heal, but you're still the scared little girl from Kanto who decided she might as well run out into the desert in a black hoodie so she could die."

The figure's voice kept fluctuating in pitch as they got louder and angrier throughout the rant; by the end of their speech they'd layered Ronnie metal screaming at me with my mom, and with my voice before I got on T.

"You haven't taken any agency in your entire damned life. Be a man for once. And this is no exception. Here, for your 'performance review', here's a science question about your methodology: if your Pokemon don't go into Reverse Mode, why do you? How are you less stable than a Charizard that bites anything that moves? How is a metal-plated bug better at managing his emotions and overall, a better man and more mature human being than you? That's if you're even human at this point -- seeing as humans don't have fangs or tails, or manifest visible auras."

"Wait, what do you mean -- oh." The tail that had previously been on my performance reviewer, or maybe some other entity that had transformed into the Ronnie-demon I was staring at, was now attached to me and twitching wildly as the rest of my body trembled against my will. "I mean, I suspect it's probably not anything having to do with emotional stability at all -- Pokemon are way more resilient overall, and better at processing and metabolizing animum than humans. If, hypothetically, someone got exposed to an excessive amount of animum residue, which maybe I have over the past 7 years of developing the Shadow formula, a Pokemon would be able to integrate that into their body to power up their moves and stuff, but a human can't, so it results in --"
"Physical and psychological breakdown as animum causes toxic effects on body systems and if you believe in that theoretical conceptual crap, disrupts someone's core conceptual essence and therefore irritates their sense of self?"
"Yeah, exactly! And hypothetically, you get states like Reverse Mode, brought on by a combination of lack of animum oversight and emotional abuse from Cipher in their Pokemon, where the animum essentially forces a shutdown of the interface between the brain and the soul, resulting in erratic behavior, confusion, or possibly if you believe in the conceptual model of animum, a manifest concept of some sort taking control of someone's behavior. What folklore could call 'demonic possession'. Essentially like how some Ghost-types can disrupt soul and brain functionality to pilot someone's body against their will, but coming from internally."

"Bullshit."

"But you just --"

"It's not that you can't remember what you did last week. It's that you don't want to. It's easier to say that it's the Shadow Pokemon aura, or that you listened to Fashionably Late too many times, or that it's your mom, instead of admitting that it's you. Here's the question, pal: what do we have in common? There's clearly something that draws you to me. What do you, Ronnie, and a Cipher Shadow Pokemon have in common?"

With sickening cracking noises, the figure's arm reached out and patted me on the head. I felt slime dripping down through my hair, followed by excruciating pain as it oozed horizontally across my forehead, branding me with molten lava.

"You're not a bad person because you like Falling In Reverse. You like Falling In Reverse because you're a bad person." The ooze continued to drip down my arms and torso, burning as it went, networks of seething purple veins arcing down my skin and blood filling my mouth and vision. Eventually, everything faded into red, leaving one last line.

"It's a shield, like any other. You're clinging to Ronnie just like you clung to Candela. You don't want to figure out who you are, so you're going to dedicate yourself to being him. Sure, you're Falling In Reverse's biggest fan, and Spark's beloved boyfriend, and Team GO Rocket's brilliant Shadow Pokemon scientist. But none of those are really you, are they?"

The red slowly faded to black, passing through a gradient through purple and deep blue along its way.

"You can treat the symptoms, but it won't cure the infection. You need to drill into the core. Also, Subject Debate is for sluts~"

The disembodied voice trailed off, not really recognizable as Ronnie, or anybody, anymore, leaving me alone with the black and the pain until even that stopped. Was I dead? Except that it wasn't that I didn't feel anything; I felt nothing. Something had been ripped out of me and the space it left was presenting its own presence; I was being ripped apart for something to emerge except that nothing was going to come out; there wasn't anything except a gnawing numbness consuming me completely; it didn't feel like anything; I didn't feel anything, none of this was or had ever been anything and there was no point in my being alive if I was stuck in a loop outside of time and space and --

Sexy Drug, of all songs, started blaring through the void. A neon flash of magenta light broke through it, searing my entire body with burning and heat and thick, sticky fluid and -- fuck, I really needed to piss, and there was something moving all around me, and what was that smell --

I woke up in a deep sweat, feeling unpleasantly warm in many capacities. Not the least of which being that I'd wet the bed. Something that I never did as a kid, at least not that I knew of. At least that confirmed that I was awake for real this time. When I'd been stuck in a hellish loop of never waking up for hours on end in my previous dreams, every time I tried to go to the bathroom for my morning constitutional, nothing came out. I groaned, gripping my head with a headache, as I slowly sat up, peeled the drenched blankets off of myself, and trudged towards the closet. And smacked my phone off the nightstand before picking it up to turn off the alarm, which in a stroke of genius, I'd set to my single least favorite FIR song, because hearing Ronnie's voice would get me into a thinking mood, but that song would make me want to get up just so I could turn it off. I'd been on sick leave for the past couple of days because I hadn't been sleeping at all well and kept having headaches and flashes in my vision -- it was the same deal as with my top surgery, where I couldn't actually take time off, but as long as the grunts did the takeovers and Jet made sure the shipments ran on time, no one really cared whether I showed up. I stared at myself in the mirror, half naked (although my hoodie was long enough that there was nothing visible you couldn't show on TV), arms and head throbbing, and my outline blurred on all sides by a seething aura of purple smoke. That same fucking initials emblem I'd gotten tattooed onto my arm glared out at me from the center of my hoodie. After all, Spark had ordered it for me with my favorite thing, and I could put the R over it for work, so I'd have my favorite thing with me always.

A wave of images filled my head, all devoid of context but all reliably awful and a little too graphic to be dreams. All the random flashes in my mind's eye I'd been having over the past week coalesced all at once: me staring at a phone screen, rapidly typing and barely able to read what I was replying to because my arms were vibrating with rage. Someone on stage in a loud, dingy strip club, tear-away clothing littering the stage as she pranced around in nipple pasties and not much else. Spark looking at me with something I couldn't place as clearly either worry or disgust, but it was definitely one of those. A microphone stand clattering to the dirty concrete floor of a bar, everyone standing and sitting flinching back in alarm. Me getting a postcard in the mail on FIR stationery, with that same fucking emblem, and squealing over it and putting it on my wall.

Gods, what the hell did I do?

Still gripping my head, I pivoted on the spot back to the bed, staring at the visible wet spot where I'd been. Guess the first thing on my agenda was to wash my sheets. Right over the head of my bed hung that very postcard from my vision, on the opposite side, marked with hasty handwriting I squinted my eyes to read before flinching back, not from pain, but because I knew what it said; I knew what I'd done; I knew everything and in the name of any deity I could name, I didn't want to.

I collapsed back onto the bed with an unpleasant feeling of fluid expanding around me as my body weight squeezed it out, fumbled in my hoodie pocket for my phone, and dialed Spark's number. Images of someone of indeterminate age, size, and gender chewing me out danced in my head, several songs none of which I really liked played on loop, and...something about slutty clothes and Subject Debate. I'd had some kind of dream that left the rest of everything off, but couldn't remember what it was, but I knew one thing, staring at that fucking picture from fucking Tyranitour on my phone's home screen.

This all had to go. I was officially done with Ronnie.


"So, that's the deal. Come over. We need to go to the mall. I just looked in my closet -- I literally own exactly one shirt that isn't Falling In Reverse that I'm still willing to wear, and it's the fucking Shadow Lugia one I ripped the sleeves off. Hell, even my work clothes are implicated now since you ordered me that new hoodie -- not that I don't love it, of course! I just...you know, I'm just...I don't think that it's been good for me, maybe. I think that as fun as my deep interest can be and all, that it's been driving me into an unhealthy space. There's something wrong with me, on some level, I can feel it, and I'm not convinced that Ronnie isn't related."

Spark paused on the other end of the phone for a full 30 seconds, only a faint murmur coming through the speaker along with background noise. I usually preferred video calls, but didn't want Spark seeing my face. I looked completely dead inside, like I hadn't slept in days (maybe because I basically hadn't) and also could not yet be bothered to put on some pants. Or for that matter, change out of the hoodie with that damned emblem, get the breakfast his stomach was hounding me for, or get off my piss-stained sheets and wash them for the first time in, like, 6 months. Sans the body spray, it wasn't totally unlike what I'd been doing back on that fateful day last year when Sierra told me to go get laid -- which now that I'm thinking about it again, while I'm totally a fan of how it turned out, was a pretty gross thing for her to say as my friend and colleague, let alone as my on-the-books supervisor. Of course, at least back then, and back with Candela, I could have obsessively thrown myself into my work, blasting the same album or maybe, if I was really diversifying like last year with the MCR alternating in, up to 5, for weeks on end. I was still dead inside, but at least I was productive.

Sans the boyfriend, would previous versions of me be proud of me now? I'm pretty confident that they'd be proud of the top surgery and hormones and all, and that I'd acquired a super hot love interest, but everything else... something else flashed into my head; I'm not sure if it was from the slurry of troubling dreamstuff floating around in there from yet another tumultuous night or just a regular intrusive thought, or maybe an actual philosophical epiphany: I'd ended up in Orre because I threw a dart at a map. (Well, I generated random GPS coordinates until I found a set that weren't in water and were sufficiently far away. It's the 21st century; kids don't play with darts anymore.) My Pokemon dragged me into Candela's Pokemon center because otherwise I would have died in the desert after that Cipher rep pretending to be a cab driver abandoned me, and then I followed Candela around getting into mosh pit fights and smoking weed (well, she smoked weed while I tried and either made myself nauseous or passed out) until she dragged me to the Valor tournament. I didn't really choose to do any of that, did I? Or at least, I was fine with literally letting a random number generator decide for me, and then the girl who dragged me in off the ground. Not exactly what the little kid who decided he wanted to be the very best, like no one ever was (like the atrocious English dub of the Pokemon League propaganda cartoon's theme song, which was in itself an embarrassingly distorted version of Red) and set off to be the coolest trainer ever and do all this great stuff and decide his own fate just like Red. Or like Ronnie back in 2008, who made the daring self-determined choice of totally ignoring the terms of his probation and refusing to piss into a cup.

Damn it, Mabbitt was right.

"Arlo? Are you there?"
"Oh? Uh. Yeah. Sorry. Just got to...thinking about something."

"Just wanted to make sure since your line went silent. Anyway, I'm all in favor of getting you some new clothes! I've wanted to get you a makeover practically ever since I met you, and especially since your surgery: after all, you might be able to play around with some different cuts of shirts and styles now that, well, that whole thing is off your chest."

I couldn't see Spark's face, but I was pretty confident that if I could, he'd be winking, nudging, and eyebrow-raising at me over his pun. I tried my best to fake a chuckle, but given his lack of response, I don't think he bought it. Which was totally fair of him. I didn't either.

"But, well, I'm...concerned about your motive. I'll admit that I've never quite fully understood what you find so fascinating about him, and I think we can both agree that as a model for conduct as a man, Ronnie leaves much to be desired, but even if he's a terrible person and even if you cosplayed as him while you were possessed or whatever that was, Falling In Reverse is still part of you. No matter what he does, your passion for the music and how you personally connect with him is still valid. I'm down to help you expand your style and interests if that's what you really want, but honestly, with what we've been talking about over the past week and the whole discussion about morality and all we had right after you came out of your possession --"
"I don't really remember that. Don't know if it was an extended hangover or animum or what, but basically everything since my performance review is a blur except for the awful shit I did. That I just now remembered."

"It's not really the important part. I'll support you no matter what, and if you want me to pick you up to go to the mall, since it doesn't sound like you're in a driving state of mind, I can come down pretty much any time. It sounds like you could probably use some time out of the house even if we don't end up buying anything. But, well, you're not Ronnie. And even though none of us really understand what was going on when you had that headband, that wasn't really you either. Don't feel like you need to abandon something you love because of what somebody else did."
"It's not about Ronnie. And it's...well, that guy with the headband and the drawing on his face had to come from somewhere! It's not like I was inhabited by a ghost Pokemon. That was, on some level, me. That came from somewhere deep underneath, and it's pretty clear that it's nasty. I sexually harassed Candela, I dragged you with me so I could cheat on you at a strip club, I threatened people with physical fights and posted my fucking address on Twitter after they complained about my karaoke, I...looked trainers in the eyes after no-holds-barred obliterating them in battle with all my old Pokemon League skills and all the full potential of Shadow Pokemon, and I stole their Pokemon to transfer them to Giovanni. I almost got a promotion for that before the mic stands."

"Just because you weren't possessed by an external spirit doesn't mean that it was you. I know you'd never choose to do that on your own, so I don't think you need to beat yourself up over it as long as you apologize and make sure to do better, and I don't think that attacking and abandoning something you clearly love is going to help."
"That's the thing, though: I need to do better. I need to make sure this doesn't happen again. And, well, I don't think that's compatible with me continuing to do all this Ronnie bullshit. Whether I was 'possessed' in the academic sense or not, something occupied my body, paraded me around, damn near destroyed my relationship with you and whatever I have with Candela, could have gotten me killed, and cosplayed as and called itself Ronnie while doing it. Falling In Reverse is evil. Sure, you can say that 'the art's separate from the artist' or something like that, but it was written by an evil person; it was created to do evil and I got attached to it because I was evil. It's literally on my fucking business cards. This is the only safe option. This goes to my core. There's something...bad inside me, and that's the part of me that loves Ronnie so much, so I'm going to take away its favorite toy and shove it back down into the abyss where it belongs!"

"Arlo, you do realize that you're talking about a mediocre at best and pretty obscure metal band, right? Like, I know that it's deeply important to you, and if you really do want to try to branch out, I think that'd be good for you, but it's not like Ronnie's some kind of primordial demon, or like he injected you with Cipher formula or something. They're just songs, you know? I might not think they're the best musically, and Ronnie certainly isn't the best person, but I don't think that engaging with art that you're attached to is 'feeding your inner evil' or anything. You've been as obsessed with Ronnie as ever lately, and I'd say you've been doing pretty well. You're way less evil, any way you slice it, than you were back when you first announced yourself to us in 2019, let alone how you've said you were back when you were dating Candela. I really don't think you have to worry about it. We destroyed the headband, right?"

"It's not the headband. The problem is me. I've still been having the dreams, it's... I think it might be getting stronger, I've been waking up with shadow aura around me every damned morning. I'm not blacking out and drawing on my face and all that, but I feel like I'm going to lose control. I feel like I'm going to hurt someone if I don't stop this wherever it starts, and I can't let myself do that. I don't remember why I went to that fucking strip club, but I remember the look in your eyes. I don't ever want to see that again. I... can't let myself hurt you like that again. I've got to face the facts, rip off the bandage, and take on this where it starts, and every bit of douchebaggery I've ever done is fundamentally intertwined with Ronnie. That other guy didn't look like that for nothing. Pick me up at noon. I haven't eaten yet today and I'm fucking starving."

"Okay, I'll be right over. Hopefully going to the mall and getting some other ways to express yourself helps. Oh, and on a lighter note, I've been wondering about this ever since we got out of the crisis -- how the heck did you, or whoever that was in your body, write in cursive on his face legibly?"

"Uh, well, obviously, I don't remember anything but the gory details, but apparently Team GO Rocket bought a surplus of printable temporary tattoo paper, you know, the stuff that they hand out to kids where you get it to stick to your arm with a wet towel? It was in the basement. Hadn't used it in years. Not even sure why we have funding for outreach events, seeing as we're a criminal syndicate and all. I found a stack of the stuff and a couple of extra prints of the 'unbreakable' next to the printer when I went down there yesterday, so I guess the other me did that. Based on all the permanent marker caps on my floor, the rest of his body's pretty obvious."

"You know, if Ronnie sold those officially, I bet he'd make a mint."

Spark's tone perked up a bit at the end there, like he was expecting a laugh or a launch into an infodump from me. All I could do was sigh.

I don't deserve him.


I didn't really look any less dead inside when Spark picked me up, although I had put on pants and shoved my sheets into the washer, with instructions to Cliff to move them to the dryer if I wasn't back by the time they were done. Spark looked at me with his eyes widened a little bit with worry, no matter how much he tried to suppress it, and I wordlessly stepped into the passenger's seat without making eye contact with him. He leaned in for a kiss, but I turned my head back down. Don't forget what you're here for. This isn't a date. You're not doing this just to go on a fun little shopping trip with your hot boyfriend so you can get some hot new post-top surgery clothes that didn't work well with a binder so he can show you off. You need to atone for your sins. This is your fault. If you hadn't been so obsessed with Ronnie to the point that literally every shirt you owned that wasn't for work (and hell, the base coat of the hoodie you did use for work) related directly to him (except the one that commodified Orre's worst regional trauma because it was a cool dark and edgy legendary and looked great with bastardized mistranslated Kantonian text), then you wouldn't have hurt Spark; you wouldn't have dedicated yourself to evil; you wouldn't have hurt Candela; none of this would have happened if not for him.

You don't deserve to enjoy this. I don't deserve to enjoy this. Playtime is over. This isn't fun anymore. It can't be. This is actively evil; this hurts people; I can't enjoy this. The only reason I ever could was that I was a bad person. I'm going to burn this out of me no matter what. I can't hurt him like that again. I can't be like that again. Too much of me is Ronnie, and not enough is me, and it all needs to go.

"Arlo?"
"What?"
"Are you... okay?"
"What do you fucking think? Of course not."
"Just, you've been really quiet and just sitting there making little noises and mumbling to yourself. I've asked if you wanted me to turn on some music and you didn't seem to notice."

See? This is the problem with you. You're so fucking self-absorbed in your own self-indulgent angst that you don't even notice the people who care about you. You're just as much of a narcissist as he is. Sure, you claim that you do the whole "you are not worthy to be in my presence" thing at takeovers because that's just what you think you're expected to do as a villain, but deep down, you believe it, don't you?

"Oh. Yeah. Sorry. Turn on whatever you want. Your silly little dance pop or whatever. Just not --"
"Yeah. I know. You want to distance yourself from him, and I can't blame you. Just make sure you're not also distancing yourself from yourself, okay? There's a lot of good that's come from your journey, and that's not Ronnie, that's you."

Gods, I don't deserve him. You don't deserve him. Sure, there might be parts of you that aren't Ronnie...

But they also suck, don't they? Every bit of your being is poisoned. You know, Shadow Lugia couldn't be purified by normal means -- all the standard techniques with Cipher Shadow Pokemon where using them in responsible battle and exposing them to strong and pleasing scents and keeping them with healthy Pokemon and just being nice to them could cure them? Didn't work. Only option is to put it in a purify chamber at full blast. Practically speaking, what a full blast purify chamber and what they took out XD001 with is basically something that inflicts intentional animum overload. For most other humans or Pokemon, that would kill them, but Lugia is powerful enough that instead of killing it, completely overwhelming and near destroying its animum core was enough to purge the corruption that had infiltrated literally every part of its body and the space left behind could be filled with the "healthy" animum in the chamber after it was done blasting from the healthy Pokemon, essentially regenerating a completely new soul equivalent to that of a standard Lugia.

It's generally agreed that after it was "purified", XD001 likely lost all memory of its time with Cipher and its personality was completely overridden. On a certain level, you could argue that it had been killed and a completely different Pokemon occupied its body after that point. Purification being "opening the door to the heart" and "reuniting a Pokemon with positive memories" simply doesn't apply if the corruption goes too deep. Sometimes the only way to open a door is to break it down.

But who's to say that was a bad thing?


I stared wordlessly at the T-shirt wall at Subject Debate, and realized to my horror that I didn't recognize half of the albums on it. The other half, I did recognize: they were seminal genre canon picks that most kids shopping there weren't meaningfully sentient for the release of. Honestly, watching all the high schoolers mill about, what was I even doing there? I'd been in a state of arrested development since, well, since my mom kicked me out, and for what? I lived in what amounted to a dorm room, had only just stopped wearing horrible body spray to not set off Jet's sensory issues, and a giant fucking metal-plated bug had better executive functioning than I did, so had tasked himself with reminding me to eat and making automatic phone calls I didn't want to. Gods, I was doing such a good job at being an adult, and here I was, not only in a store built for high schoolers staring at one T-shirt wall full of generic band shirts for albums most of which I didn't recognize and another of designs they stole from Tumblr, but not even being especially cool in there. What the fuck was I doing. What kind of professional wears pants that come with built-in suspenders, buckles, bells, whistles, and all that bullshit. What kind of respectable scientist wears band shirts for shitty bands in the lab. And what kind of 25-year-old shops for clothes made for someone 10 years younger than him.

My eyes darted to the side of the band T-shirt wall, at the very top left corner, where something that looked suspiciously like Ronnie at the end of Zombified sneered down at me. Another chain of images flashing into my head -- mic stands, businesses who never wanted me back, Spark looking at me with concern and shame and anger because I tried to fucking cheat on him -- and then that fucking riff that was definitely stolen from Linkin Park kicked up in my head. From the corner of my eye, I'm pretty sure I saw the eyes on that fucking shirt move and I think it started laughing at me.

Spark hadn't been paying attention; he'd been looking at the blind packed pins and little creatures and such (there weren't Subject Debates in Kanto when I was in the target audience, but I'd heard that they didn't use to have all that cutesy crap), but he looked towards me with concern as I stormed my way out, hood back up and trying not to break down. He quickly ran behind me to follow me out.

"Are you okay? Did it get loud in there? Do you want to leave?"

"...no, you're right. I need some real clothes. To look like a real person. I'm supposed to be an adult so I need to fucking dress like one. I've been having my fucking emo phase and feeling sorry for myself for, what, 15 years? It's over. I need to suck it up and realize that the root of my problems is me. Hell, maybe my mom was right. After all, look how fucking great I'm doing. Let's just get some plain black button-ups or something and leave."

"Don't say --"

Spark called out after me, but I was already on my way back down the mall corridor at a clip, glaring daggers at anyone who looked at me walking past with concern, hair and hood over my face because Spark wasn't going to see me cry.

You don't get to cry. Crying is for nice people. You, meanwhile, have no actual feelings and are just taking advantage of your sweet, perfect boyfriend's goodwill. You're supposed to be a man. You're supposed to be an adult. You're supposed to be redeeming yourself. So stop fucking whining and do something.

I ended up in one of the mall flagship department stores. There were 3, but they were all essentially identical, so it didn't really matter which I was actually at. Storming my way past spaghetti strainers, hard-shelled suitcases, and lacy bras, I found my way to the generic men's section and found a stack of button ups. They were my size. They seemed like a tolerable texture. And most importantly, they were solid colors. No evil iconography, no arrested development, no emotional armor. I picked up 2 black and 2 dark red and went straight for the cashier without going past a dressing room, and I'm pretty sure I got misgendered at least once on my way out. Honestly, I couldn't say I was paying attention.

Really, when you think about it, isn't the whole concept of "being emo" a contradiction and a commodification? What part of independent emotional expression comes from literally wearing someone else's logo and serving as a blatant billboard for them? Fuck "emotional armor". Fuck band shirts. Fuck the entire concept of liking bands. You've just been hiding behind a fake subculture built to sell shitty music to give yourself an excuse to be a terrible person. You don't even have a special interest. You would just rather be the world's specialest boy and main character of reality than admit that the root of your problems is you. You'd be happy if you weren't so fucking self-absorbed and projecting that onto shitty music and your job that literally contributes nothing to the world except evil.

Spark didn't end up reconnecting with me until I was in the checkout line. He looked down at my shirts, and some plain black cargo pants I'd picked up on my way to the checkout, and raised an eyebrow.

"Are you sure? These all seem like they'd look great on you, of course, but I'm not shopping for a school uniform, you know. You can get something more fun if you want."

I still couldn't bear to look at him, wordlessly taking the credit card he offered me.

"No, it's okay. I need some clothes that are actually something an adult professional would wear. Couldn't exactly go to a field conference in my Team Rocket uniform or Tyranitour shirt, after all. Besides, I didn't really see anything at Subject Debate I wanted. If I'm going to get more edgy shirts, I'd rather get them from somewhere that supports the bands, or an independent retailer."

"I've been at several conferences, and I've seen folks in T-shirts. As long as it's got a Pokemon on it, they don't care. But if that's what you want, then I'm okay with it. I'll look around for interesting concerts in case you want to get new shirts, how about that?"

Spark's outward tone of voice was cheerful and supportive. His eyes were terrified.

Is he concerned about you, because you've deceived him into thinking you have feelings? Or is he scared that you're going to go Reverse Mode and attack him and trying not to set you off?

I could only respond with a weak half-smile before realizing that the cashier was signaling me to pay, but I knew from Spark's equally half-hearted response that we both knew it was fake. We spent the drive back in silence. Spark offered to take me back to Instinct HQ so we could watch a movie together or something, but I told him that I was tired or had a headache or something like that. It really didn't matter what. I was lying -- I did, honestly, want to go. I wanted to do something cute and fun and normal, but that's not how this works. That's not who I am. There's a fundamental corruption at my core, and I need to fix it before I can have any fun. Otherwise, I'm just going to explode and end up hurting someone and ruin things for myself and everyone else.

Upon returning to my room, the first thing that struck me (besides how I had forgotten to wash my sheets and they were starting to smell) was how pretty much every available wall surface contained something Falling In Reverse-related. The poster from Tyranitour. Album covers I'd printed out. Tour posters for tours I hadn't been to, but liked the art of. That fucking postcard Ronnie sent me after I posted my address online -- you know, he could have come over and fucking murdered you and would have been totally justified in doing so -- it all had to go. There wasn't anything with his face on it, thank God, except that fucking Fashionably Late album cover blow-up from the tournament, because I didn't like eye contact, but it really sold the idea of a cramped, depressing cave of evil where all of my worst thoughts and impulses bounced off the walls and circulated back into me in concentrated form, like a Dyson sphere of hatred. Or maybe a reverse purification chamber. Logically speaking, if surrounding yourself with healthy Pokemon, good smells, and positive memories could remedy corruption, surrounding yourself with evil, Shadow Pokemon, and not cleaning your space did the inverse.

I darted towards the first available wall and started systematically ripping off the posters. Most of them were just printouts I'd put up after I moved in and got access to the HQ printer and I'd never bothered laminating them, so they tore into pieces and stained my hands with ink. After about 10 minutes, I had a pretty solid pile of evil-tinged shreds at the center of my room, and was crying for some ungodly reason, staring at my hands like I'd just committed a very theatrical murder.

This is progress. This is good. That's the evil leaving your body. Keep at it.

My final target, hanging right over my bed so it was the first thing I saw every morning, was the Tyranitour poster. Below it sat my original Ronnie plushie, and the Spark plushie they'd gotten me as a response to learning I slept with the image of another man every night. Looking at them, the memories actually...weren't of evil, or Ronnie, or any of that. Spark and I did have a great time in Mote City. The plushie was a symbol from Cliff that I was in a safe place, and he was willing to be supportive of my interests.

I thought you needed someone to talk to, so I made you a little friend! It's supposed to be that guy, from that band you like? I based it on your poster, of that album with the black and white and the pink cursive.

It was still Ronnie. It was still evil. It still had to die. But somehow, I couldn't bring myself to do the obvious correct solution. I gently took down and rolled the Tyranitour poster back up into a cardboard tube I found under my bed, and stashed the Ronnie plushie in my closet on top of the box labeled "Orre Stuff". The Spark plushie joined him, because I didn't want to make eye contact with it.

Despite it still being somewhat damp and the smell being obvious, I collapsed back down on my bed and clutching at nothing in particular, kept crying until I lost consciousness. I still had no idea what I was crying over.


[dream sequence about Candela? Reconciliation with Candela; scene is already written.]


[Music recommendations from everybody else -- Blanche only listens to podcasts, Spark has some Nightcore and such, Cliff has show tunes, Sierra likes Taylor Swift or something, and Elaphe has some Neopian stuff that kind of scares Arlo because it contains phonemes human mouths can't produce.]


[reveal from Blanche of the animum stuff, and why Arlo goes into Reverse Mode when his Pokemon don't? and the suggestion for what to do to deal with Reverse!Arlo next time he shows up, or maybe they set up a VR dream sequence generator so the guys can talk?]


[final dream sequence, Reverse!Arlo calls Arlo out for focusing on the surface level stuff over what's actually wrong with him, and Arlo realizes he's right -- namely, that he's still treating himself / part of himself as evil. Reverse!Arlo isn't some kind of evil shadow invader thing; he's part of Arlo's being and ultimately, one that's been trying to look out for and protect him, which he hasn't been listening to. Being as abrasive as he was and as attached to Ronnie and stuff as he was had been a defense mechanism. Ronnie / FIR was his only friend and he got so attached to being edgy and evil and all that because he was convinced he wasn't worthy of love, but, well, he is. He has real friends now, so he doesn't need the imaginary one. He still appreciates all Reverse!Arlo did for him, though, and is sorry for mistreating him. Cooldown hug which manages to "defeat" / re-integrate the shadow aura fragment, and a happy ending, although not a complete one. Arlo concludes he could probably also use a non-Team Rocket affiliated therapist.]

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Pub: 29 Nov 2025 00:35 UTC

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