The Mask Maker

She Will Never Return

"So, to summarize, if we shoot her with a long range weapon, it probably won't kill her?" Looker asked. 

"It's just hard to say," the lab assistant answered. "We won't know unless you do it. Tranquilizers will slow her brain activity, but we've reason to believe that signals from a large part of her brain are being almost completely shut off, which is why she currently is the way she is. If you were to shoot her with this and slow what's left of her active brain, it could have negative consequences."

"With all due respect, did I just go through all of that trouble to find out something that's already known?" Ingo asked. 

"I'm sorry, but we need her. Her case is one of kind, and there are multiple complicated factors at play, including possible head injuries from all the fighting she does and whatever other trouble she's gotten herself into. Until you can get her here, there's not much more we can do." 

Looker and Ingo left the room, and the former turned to face the latter in the hallway.

"Who is she?" Looker asked. 

"I told you that I would keep her identity safe unless—"

"It is absolutely necessary now, Ingo!" Looker shook his head and covered his mouth for a moment, as if trying to reel his emotions back in. "Look, people are getting brutally attacked left and right, and Morai herself is likely on a very grim path. We have to solve this now," he continued. 

Ingo thought for a moment, bowing his head in consideration. "I'm sorry," he said, looking up. "But I can't." 

"You're purposefully withholding important information from the International Police," Looker said. "You're obstructing justice and any chance Morai has at going back to normal. Do you not want her, whoever she is, to go back to normal?"

"I still have a duty to her as asked of me in her letter. She is still who I originally knew her as, whether she remembers or believes it or not. She's still in there, and I am making what I think are the best choices for her return."

"I'm not sure about that," Looker said. "You've seen her, and the pictures from her attack of that woman were pretty lurid. The more time passes, the more monstrous she becomes. However, I also saw her when she first appeared on the streets of Castelia nearly two years ago, under the influence of no substance at all. That formula didn't make her a monster, it simply isolated the part of her that already was one." 

Ingo shook his head. "I knew her before she had psychic powers, and I watched her change. Something happened. I don't know what, but something happened, and it changed her. I think her original self is still there somewhere. As stated in her letter, I am to guard her identity until it is too late. We still have time, I think."

"You hope," Looker corrected. 

The doctor silently watched and wrote as Morai screamed in agony. He let the event play out as it had before, with Morai struggling to control the pain of the serum surging through her veins. He didn't stop her when she slid a clawed hand over her neck again, creating new wounds and aggravating what was already there. He simply wrote it down. Morai didn't seem to be able to stop herself from doing it, and had covered it up the best she could after the fact. There seemed to be a moment in the process where the pain was so great that the next logical conclusion—in Morai's brief lapse of control, at least—was to try and claw the source of it out. That, or the pain was so high above her manageable threshold that it was simply a reflexive response. 

As a martial artist, Morai was used to getting hurt on a regular basis. She had trained herself to withstand very high amounts of pain and keep fighting, and even the serum seemed to slightly inhibit her ability to feel it. But the serum itself, when administered, was like fire running through and scorching her veins. It was excruciating pain on a deeply internal level, taking hold of every cell in her body and laying waste to the parts of her brain that had been deemed useless—both by Team Rocket and Morai herself.