Expedition 2.12
October 13th, 2022.
My foot tapped on the ground in a regular nervous note. After our Gym Battle we had been in a holding pattern when it came to meeting up with the R&D group working on the other half of the research project Laven was tapped for with us as her interns.
They had a powerful psychic on board for teleportation, one with incredible range and precision from the sound of it. It was going to be a direct port to the city of Okido, at a lab branch where our meeting was going to take place.
Akari was hugging her togetic to her chest, quietly chatting with her pokémon as she leaned against a tree in an empty park. I only had Mirko out, who was smugly using my lap as a seat. Before that, she had been feuding with a local bunnelby which was an interesting thing.
Turns out as the regions became more interconnected, foreign pokémon were gradually introduced and settled down in new regions. It was a combination of accidental resettlement by trainers and other travelers and programs to increase biodiversity. Most of the time, the programs were focused on micromon and domestic mon, basically just serving as prey and bases for the ecosystem. Larger pokémon were also introduced due to their resettlement being good for the environment, which said a lot about how much more advanced their science is.
My world had far more issues when it came to predicting the effects of introduced species. But I suppose this world had more incentive when it came down to working with magical monsters.
“Mirol?” Mirko was muttering to herself as she played… Pokémon Unite on my phone, with a surprising amount of skill for someone with three fingers and a thumb. Thankfully she was quite restrained whenever she lost a match, I didn't need to deal with my dex-phone being destroyed.
“What are you working on?” I decided to make conversation with Akari because I could see she was reading up on a book on Trainer Regulations.
“Reading up on the laws surrounding an increased carry limit,” Akari answered with a chipper tone, while Ellis lightly nuzzled into her neck. “It's still some time away for us, but it is only a matter of earning a few more badges.”
“Carry limit…?” Had I looked that up before but gotten distracted with some biology books?
“The carry limit for a standard trainer license starts at six but can be expanded by two to three extra slots for every four gym badges depending on the region,” Akari’s blue eyes twinkled as she explained, hands gesticulating freely. “The carry limit was founded through a combination of practicality and harsh lessons. It discourages rookie trainers from taking too many pokémon with them on the road. A lot of people have died that way.” I gulped at how nonchalant she was at the prospect. “It's one reason I'm so anal about hunting and gathering, every little bit helps.”
“I'm guessing most people don't tend to know about increasing their carry limit?”
“The carry increases only apply after a specific request is sent in, so many don't bother or don’t know it's an option. As lab trainers Laven could ask to increase our carry limit to eight but…”
“You want to earn it.” That made sense plus I certainly didn't feel ready for six let alone more.
“Most common trainers tend to have three to five, and six is mandated for pokémon battles. We have to be careful to avoid whiting out.” I nodded, that was a curious phenomenon related to the bond, it could cause a backlash back on the trainer. It wouldn't necessarily knock someone out, but it would give a shock to their system that could make them vulnerable.
The strongest backlashes tended to involve mega evolution, z-moves, and the Bond Phenomenon that was best documented with the Kalos elemental trio.
“Aura is interesting,” I stated the truth, as I lightly patted Mirko’s head as she played her game. There was a sensation there, an unspoken feeling of… Connection. It was vague, but it was there. Mirko felt like… normality, harmony, and balance, with a hint of spice, raw gumption, and fighting spirit, honed violence and discipline. Normal and a hint of fighting aura, was what I thought I was feeling.
Jericho was a venomous current, a sensation that felt like it was trying to dissolve things around it, grounded by a slow and steady shift like continental plates. Poison and a hint of the ground-type that was the purview of his evolution.
Llayda was like the ocean and rivers, cold and unforgiving, and warm and inviting like the embrace of life itself, chaotic and terrible and wonderful like the energies of the fey courts.
So it was a bit shocking when I suddenly felt an oppressive pressure surround us in an instant, a deeper shade of violet-pink forming a bubble around our small picnic.
“Apologies for dropping in like this,” A dulcet voice vibrated in my head, layered over itself like the voice of a legion. “Your humans and your schedules can be quite… vexing.” I could feel the irritation, and silently agreed with her. “Locating such an interesting mind was not difficult at all, an interesting structure, disorderly and yet ordered. The connections are both strongly and weakly linked.”
I blinked. That sounded like she could read the… nature of my autism? See how it was structured divergently from ‘baseline’ brains?
Can you hear what I’m thinking? Errr…
“To some extent yes, my experience with the cognitive world is vast, a century of experience will do that. And please call me Kimberly.” I could hear the name itself, ingrained into psychic impulses and wavelengths.
chief-ruler-from-the-meadow-of-the-royal-fortress-forest-clearing
“True mind reading is more difficult than one can imagine, the brain is multifaceted, a stream of consciousness from a complex and unique machine, a river of lightning. I am simply skimming the surface, creating a channel for both our minds to occupy.”
I didn’t ask but thanks for answering? Was my mental reply, and I could tell Akari was annoyed as hell.
She spoke up. “So your superiors decided it was a good idea to ambush us with a forced Teleport?”
“Apologies, this was a result of my actions, bureaucracy is one of your kind’s most malicious inventions. I sought to establish a basic link for teleportation, using the coordinates agreed upon beforehand for transport.”
“Oh.” Akari’s surliness went down a notch, accepting the answer.
“May we begin the Teleport? Consent is important.” Kimberly felt sheepish, tinging the broadcast with emotional intent.
“Yes.” Akari agreed with a sigh, and I added my own agreement.
“Then let us begin, and hold on to your stomach contents.”
“What—”
Reality hiccuped.
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The sound that fled from Akari’s mouth as she threw up was indescribable and I patted her back and winced in sympathy. The process of Kimberly’s teleportation did not agree with her, and I could understand that, it was very loopy, a shifting tunnel of chaotic warped reality, two points of spacetime suddenly forced to overlap each other.
Akari was pretty sensitive to aura, and Teleport worked by using the Dream World, the believed origin of psychic-type energy for fast travel across the material world. From what Kimberly had said, her form of Teleport exchanged precision and range for comfort and containment of the Dream World’s energies. So it hit Akari like a truck… and while the ride hurt my eyes I hadn’t felt even a hint of nausea.
I’m guessing riding across the space between realities made me resistant to a little hop into the Dreaming.
The lab itself was pretty high tech and a strange mix of clean, messy, orderly and chaotic all at once, clearly the work of multiple people with vastly different personalities. There was one scientist currently here, a young nerdy looking blonde, who pushed up his glasses as he quietly spoke with a mildly reticent Kimberly, who turned out to be a female slowking.
He turned to us and clapped his hands. “Why hello there! You must be Laven’s lab trainers, my name is Albert. I’m one of the researchers of one branch of the Zenith Research Group or the ZRG, or Zerg!”
That was a terrible name, it just made me think of killer alien space bugs.
“Are you the leader of this team?” Akari sounded curious, shifting her weight from foot to foot as she glanced around the lab.
“No, that would be…”
“I can speak for myself darling, no need to put on a front, they’re good souls.” A voice spoke from the void, and I blinked as a bipedal black and red fox flickered into existence, reality reasserting itself.
I knew a zoroark when I saw one, what was more curious was her choice of fashion. She wore a red jacket and a black dress which blended well with her fur color, her black fluffy neck fur becoming a part of the outfit. It looked nice.
“Wait… you’re that team of researchers?” I had heard tidbits about such groups, while most pokémon weren’t interested in city building and ‘normal’ trappings of civilization, there were some exceptions at least when it came to technology, knowledge and culture. Most such pokémon tended to be either psychic or in the Human-Like Egg Group.
Egg Groups were a curious thing, pokémon like in the games could be sorted into thirteen Egg Groups with three special categories. The mother usually defines the species while the father passes down egg moves. What wasn’t said was that pokémon produce different kinds of eggs.
A totodile might have a hard shelled oval about a foot long while a froakie egg would be a soft gooey ball of slime. They might need special conditions for incubation, or be easy to raise and a few, mostly mammals can reproduce without eggs. Egg Groups sorted out interspecies breeding but ignored things like incompatible fertility cycles, recovery periods after mating, or undue strain from the process. There was a reason Breeders needed a license to operate, they were basically a cross between a spa, a fertility clinic, nursery and training center all at once.
The Human-Like Group tends to produce few eggs, varying from hard-shelled to soft shell, more fragile than Monster Group eggs. Most produce one to three eggs and require careful tending and deep maternal and paternal instincts. Think of a k-selection species, producing only a few offspring and protecting them fiercely.
That strategy seems to be common among the more human-like of pokémon, along with live birth. Which is generally more common in mammals but does appear throughout the kingdom of life.
Zoroark snapped her claws. “Is this human broken?” I flushed as I realized my racing thoughts had landed me in an awkward situation.
“No. I just got… really focused, sorry about that.” I apologized and she rolled her shoulders, her tail wagging lazily.
“No biggie, it happens, Albert here is a spacey idiot too.” Albert flushed and I tilted my head at her. “Also… you’re not surprised I can talk? That skill isn’t common for my species, ya know?”
“My suspension of belief suffered a painful death when I fell through a tear in the very fabric of existence,” I flatly replied with the most nonchalant tone I could manage, lips twitching into a crooked smile. “A talking kitsune-werewolf is absolutely fascinating but not unsurprising either.”
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She stuck her tongue out in a canine grin, ears flicking back and forth in seeming curiosity. “Fair enough, call me Casey. It’s what most humans call me.” She offered her clawed hands, and I took it, fingers gliding over her fur as we shook hands.
Interesting.
“So you’re working with Professor Laven on this… project?”
Casey blinked. “It’s a group effort on the part of researchers from across the regions, we have Professor Burnet with her specialty in the relationship between pokémon and other dimensions, Laven as an expert on the relationship between pokémon and Metaphysical Energy, and my team are proven when it comes to technological development.”
This was far more… interesting when it came to pokémon and humans working together.
“I heard from Agent Tedesco that you managed to reverse engineer my phone?”
She smiled again. “We did, your people have developed a few minor tricks when it comes to manufacturing that humans skipped with their use of Growth and Minimize in assembly lines. It’s not very advanced, but it is refined, strangely the battery is very hard to replace.”
“Planned obsolescence is a thing in my world, and if you can’t fix it you have to buy a new one.” Apple was certainly not the epitome of an ethical corporation but two decades of family use meant I was stuck.
Casey looked at me in horror and pity.
“What?”
She shook her head, her mane puffing up for a moment before settling down. “Your device also helped us when it came to decoding some odd signals we receive when breaching dimensional boundaries. We suspect leakage from your world to ours is frequent.”
I paused. “That’s… interesting, what could be causing it?”
“Who knows, your worldline is incredibly distant from ours, so much so it’s doubtful we share a common origin that isn’t buried by Deep Time. Perhaps our realities periodically align through a phenomena only seen in the space between spaces, only the Divines could know.” Casey’s tail was wagging and that didn’t remotely diminish my own excitement.
Akari was still sitting down with a groan, and I winced. “So does this involve the wormhole energy I’m still giving off?”
Casey nodded. “It does, studying it is paramount to gaining info on your reality, and on the nature of the space-time event. We’ve gathered a fair bit of equipment and samples for quick studies.”
“Samples?”
Casey hesitated for a moment before steeling herself and continuing onward. “There are a number of phenomena connected to pokémon that have a myriad of effects on the fabric of space-time. Mega Evolution is a vast source of infinity energy, the z-moves of Alola create an innate bounded world, a materialization and projection of an ultimate move, pouring energy into the in-between, and Galar particles distort spacetime, at their peak they can rip tears in that fabric. Recent… revelations in Paldea indicate their Terastal phenomenon has effects on time itself.”
“Samples, you want to see how the wormhole energy I’m emitting interacts with samples that do odd things to spacetime?”
“Curious. You are curious about the results.”
I screamed as a robotic voice was sent into my head, a grey headed being staring into my soul and emitting a wavelength of terror.
Oh Jesus Fuck—
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So it turns out beheeyem are very good at giving people heart attacks, lovely.
I had also looked up a lot of info when it came to the mysterious and alien elgyem-line. They didn’t have the best of reputations due to the nature of their arrival, and the sheer danger potential they had as a species. Especially when their arrival involved a crash landing, numerous malicious individuals, and taking over a whole segment of the Unovan Desert.
From what I could tell, the elgyem were a space faring species along with the gothorita-line, and had been enemies for good reason. The elgyem had tinkered with their biology to create a second evolution stage… that was incredibly susceptible to the Shadow, creating insane, unstable individuals that had warped their culture into one of war across the stars. Which itself was a reaction against a greater force that was poorly documented but likely had some ties to the inkay-line.
Yay.
So somewhere out there in space, pokémon were re-enacting Star Wars while we were down here planetside. Which explains why it was supposed to be surprising to have a malamar, a gothitelle and a beheeyem working together. It would be like Mirko getting along with murkrow and misdreavus when both were enemies out in the wilds.
Anyways after that scare, a lot of equipment had been set up with various samples held within strange machinery. What looked like a round marble I recognized as a sample of Lopunnite, a Buginium Z, and a Tera Orb.
“Interesting, your infinity energy waveform is distinct from most humans.” The zoroark researcher (what a concept) commented as she read over my readings. “I wouldn’t call it completely alien either, the genetic sample you lent us proves that much.”
I had gotten a lot of data probes used on me, less for research and more for my health. I had needed a bunch of shots to deal with local variants of disease, and they had strengthened my immune system using a special variant of Heal Pulse mixed with other moves. Having genetic data was useful so I wouldn’t face the trouble early resurrected species faced when it came to modern times.
I didn’t need to die from a common cold like a dumbass.
Turns out my genetics was nigh-identical in composition to someone from the northern Mezo region, which was statistically and logically impossible. Humans had supposedly evolved from a pokémon species, losing their spiritual physiology for material solidity and resistances against metaphysical attacks. Humans were weaker than pokémon but they did have a number of benefits inherent to their biology.
The question then was why our species was effectively identical, aside from exposure to life energy that my body was apparently responding to at a very efficient rate. They had even studied the culture on my skin and seen the same result, and had analyzed bDNA from where I had been found. Mostly it was DNA from insects, but some larger fauna was scanned too, foxes, coyotes, an owl. Which of course pinged back as being similar to that of pokémon on this planet.
Red foxes had the most similar DNA to vulpix and nickit, and shared the same 34 chromosome count as the entire family of Vulpes. It was… kinda disturbing. The zorua line evolved in the steppes and semidesert of central and northeast Asu, so I suspect their DNA might share some similarities to the Corsac foxes of east Asia. Zorua was pushed out of their habitat, with many fleeing to the New World over the past thousand years.
Fennekin evolved on the continent of Afruika, directly south of Kalos, residing within a great desert covering almost a third of the continent. So sharing similar genes to a Fennec fox is a given.
Weird.
“So how is my aura different, and why does that matter?” I had to ask a bigger question before I got distracted.
“Boojiboo!” Reiniculus contributed with his incomprehensible banter, clearly having the intelligence and means to develop human speech, and not wanting to. “Imhaater japdelup!” Casey clicked her teeth, frustration clearly told through her body language.
“Gimme a second you insane bastard,” I blinked as she poked Reiniculus’ gooey face with her claw and she looked back at me with an exasperated expression. “It’s not much of a difference really, aura is aura is aura. It seems to be a multiversal constant, even if its expression might be different in far away universes outside His Design and Her Purview. Your aura is the substance of your soul, a force contained within our mortal forms, released upon death, recycled by arcane machinery beyond mortal knowing, the processes of life laying down the sediment creating the bones of every empire, monster and human both.”
I felt a slight chill at her proclamation. If I understood correctly, the elemental items were a sort of… byproduct of life itself, infinity energy given a solid and physical form. The various elemental dusts, gems and stones were incredible dense sources of energy, the various ores and minerals of incredible power were like… fossil fuels, but many, many times denser.
Which does explain how the hell they can power things like gigantic flying airships, some of which weighed north of a thousand metric tons.
“So it’s just a quirk of my reality?”
The zoroark nodded. “There is a subtle shade to it however, one I’ve seen only in those touched by Legends.”
I flinched. “Is that so?
“It happens far more often than it used to,” she admitted with a disquieted tone. “You passed through the Twisted Shadow, the lands between, it is not unlikely that you would have encountered the gods that dwell within them.”
“I imagine you can’t tell me which one it was?” She answered in the negative.
“Negative. The power of the Divines often defies all current science,” Beheeyem added their perspective, working on something in the background, having asked for our dex-phones to give them an upgrade of some kind. He mostly just needed the in-built blackbox to transfer all the data. “Analysis indicates wormhole energy radiation is both benign, and being broken down and assimilated into your system.”
“Is that normal?”
“Affirmative. Outworlders tend to lose the radiance of the In-Between over a period of time varying between six months and sixteen years, as their natural energy pathways perceive wormhole energy as a foreign body and reject it. Assimilation is a rarer event but largely benign, and it seems to be having a positive effect on your weak aura.”
“Positive?”
“Graazi!” There was… something oddly calculating in Reiniculus’ eyes, like it was running mental circles around us. Casey simply kept her gaze on him, and I sighed.
Beheeyem continued. “You are not at all adapted to the energies of this Realm, most Outworlders tend to be from similar worlds to our own, or so fundamentally alien that it will have no ill effect on them. You would not be so lucky, this world is bathed in an energy that has no place in your universe, a form of force native to a higher, greater reality. The wormhole energy has inoculated you against the backlash, resulting in a softer, easier transition.”
Oh.
That doesn’t invoke existential terror at all, yay.
A second psychic presence prodded at my head, and slapped Beheeyem upside the head. “Can you try not traumatizing our colleague’s trainers? You already gave Akari a panic attack when you appeared behind her.” The female voice of Amaya the Gothitelle was soothing and calm, pulling me out of a spiral of thought with a gentle sway of psychic flow. “Have you at least completed their pokédex upgrade?”
Beheeyem coughed (no mouth, how?), and gently floated a black square with a Pokéball symbol on, with a porygon-face shaped indent in the center. They tapped it, and it popped open to form a solid screen, was it hard light, a foldable electronic screen?
“It was a simple upgrade, an amalgamation of multiple parallel technologies, the Xtransceiver of Unova, the Holo Caster of Kalos, and the Rotom and Porygon technology developed in Alola and Paseo. Improvements have been made to battery life, scanning capabilities, navigation, Trainer Card connectivity, a Pokémon Box Link absent in this model, and better optimization of poké-energy projectors.”
To my surprise the phone came to life in his hands, floating while surrounding itself in a weak shell of energy, blocky hexagons keeping the phone aloft. So… they had figured out how to let porygon partially project their physical form so they could replicate the minor tricks of a Rotom Phone?
Cool. The natural form of the porygon-line was in fact an intangible mass of binary code, basically equations given life, and given form with molecules of silicon and force fields.
“Hello world.” Was the response from Porygon…2? “Upgraded successfully, uploading information on local Nodes, and other areas of interest potentially relating to rumors of Burst Phenomena.”
“Burst what?”
“You’re researching what?” A still half-sick Akari burst back to life in a rage, her lips curling back in a savage snarl. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?”
“We are not researching what you think we are human.” Casey snapped back with an irritated growl. “Those… things are broken and buried, forgotten in the fog of war, but aspects of it remain, an energy which suffuses this land which we believe responsible for creating weak spots in the Real… studying it is necessary if we want to understand how your friend was torn out of her world.”
Her expression softened, but she didn’t look any less angry and… afraid? What would make her scared like that?
“I’m still not sure what the Burst Phenomenon is?”
Akari deflated, defeat written all over her face. “You could say it’s a bit like… the Bond Phenomenon, two sides of the same coin. A way to strengthen a trainer instead of the pokémon.”
“And that’s bad?”
Akari chewed on her lip. “No… but the way some in Tohoku used it before the war was… an unforgivable act, to the point it was reduced to rumors and urban legends in just forty years.”
So it was before The War?
Beheeyem had left in a flash of Teleport, while Amaya remained in a corner, staring at us with a carefully held mask from the disconcertingly human-like pokémon. In reality she was quite uncanny, sort of edging between ethereally beautiful and alien mirror.
“We only need to study the energies to figure out how and why they’re causing space-time rifts, your professor mostly wants the two of you on research missions to spiritual energy centers for her own work. But she needed the both of you to reach at least a 2-star rating.”
Which we did…
Akari didn’t seem very convinced. “Fine. So how long do we need to be here?”
Casey winced, placing a clawed paw under her chin. “Two days?”
My traveling buddy scowled.
This was going to be a long two days.
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