Legendtrapped Beta - Kinrah - Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (2024)

Chapter 1: A1P1: You Are All Cordially Invited

Chapter Text

Act 1: The Worst Idea Of All Time
Part 1: You Are All Cordially Invited
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> [Begin Sequence II: JOHTO]===~~>

A young Pokémon stands in his—

Okay, look, that’s not going to work. For one thing, this Pokémon is not young, by far. He’s also not standing in what would be called his ‘bedroom’ because as a Pokémon his living arrangements are somewhat different to how we might imagine it. It’s more of a general-purpose cave.

Perhaps we’d better start again.

> Start again.
A legendary Pokémon stands in his cave. Human calendars don’t mean much to him, so he has no particular attachment to this day, the EIGHTH OF AUGUST, 2020, especially as it’s the MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. He does not know it yet, but this upcoming week will son go down in INFAMY amongst his fellow legendaries and himself. More immediately pressing he will find himself PLAYING A GAME (reluctantly). He doesn’t know this yet either. But he will.

What is this Pokémon’s name?

> Enter name.
You enter something that is either derogatory, cutesy, or incomprehensible. How predictable. Just another reason to ditch this mockery of an interactive audience-driven story.

> One more time.
Your name is ENTEI. You are the SECOND BEAST OF JOHTO, which for the most part only means that YOU END UP DOING ALL THE WORK. Your older brother RAIKOU spends most of his time loafing around in your father’s basem*nt and your younger sister SUICUNE takes so long to complete her tasks that you’ve already moved on by the time she’s finished. This ANNOYS YOU. Your work as a group is IMPORTANT. Your father, HO-OH, says so, and you will not question his judgment. As a matter of fact, you’ve only just returned from your latest task, curbing a fire in a nearby forest. The fact that it’s about 1AM doesn’t bother you; like a lot of the legendaries, you can get by several days without sleep if you need to.

Because of having to pick up your siblings’ slack, you tend NOT TO LEAVE MUCH TIME YOUR YOURSELF. The little time you do get though you try to KEEP TO YOURSELF, since the work of the other legendary Pokémon DOESN’T INTEREST YOU IN THE SLIGHTEST. You stick to your guns. You focus on your work and nothing else. This has led to others describing you as a BIT OF A BORE, but what do they know? They aren’t you. They don’t know what sh*t you have to deal with over here. They can MIND THEIR OWN BUSINESS.

Your CAVE is better equipped than a human might believe of a legendary Pokémon of your stature. You use TECHNOLOGY. You have a TELEVISION, which doesn’t work. You have a STEREO, which is stuck tuned to some Kalosian station that you can’t understand. You have a COMPUTER, which has so far only remained intact because MEWTWO did something psychic to it. It is this latter object that you now EYE WITH CONTEMPT. There is a flashing icon on the desktop, which means that you have a new message. Multiple new messages, in fact. This rarely bodes well.

You are only able to use this technology because of, again, MEWTWO, and ARCEUS. Between the two of them they have outfitted the entire legendary and mythical Pokémon spectrum with input devices you don’t need hands for. Most of them just work by converting speech-to-text, which works more accurately than you first thought. You mostly use it to communicate with other Pokemon using a chat system called POKÉPAL, which REGIGIGAS allegedly created. Your own user handle is blazingGlory. There’s no story behind it, that’s just what it is.

As well as one-to-one messaging, POKÉPAL also connects to a number of group MEMO BOARDS. There are several primary boards, one for each region, the LEGENDARIUM which covers everybody, and a general-use board which is mostly just filled up with same-type discussions and sh*tposting. Naturally, you barely use that one at all.

From a glance, you can see that you have waiting messages from MEWTWO (likely to be something boring), HEATRAN (ugh) and several from your BROTHER (more excuses). Yeah, you’re not looking forward to this.

What will you do?

> Entei: Answer Heatran.
HEATRAN is your ‘training buddy’. You spar occasionally, to keep each others’ fires going. The guy has it in his head that he’s better than you though.

This is exactly why you hate talking to the guy.

Anyway, you’d better see exactly what is up with Mewtwo’s message, if it’s so ‘urgent’.

> Entei: Read Mewtwo’s message.

There’s more, but he starts blathering on about things you don’t understand and you can’t be bothered to read it. He does that a lot.

The key thing though is that Arceus has started the Autopilot Program, which means that, for the time being, you are genuinely out of work. All processes that rely on legendary Pokémon to function are being taken care of by themselves. Needless to say this also annoys you, because it means you haven’t got an excuse not to work. No doubt Raikou is ecstatic about this.

Time is being made for you to play games.

Ugh, the guy has a point. Again.

Pretty much all of Raikou’s messages say the same thing, that you should join the Johto region memo board as soon as possible. You dislike using the memos. It gets too busy for you to follow any threads of conversation. But it seems you have no choice this time.

> Entei: Join memo.

> Entei: Read Mewtwo’s message again.
Ugh. You really don’t want to. A game to which every legendary and mythical Pokémon has been invited - even if some of them don’t end up playing - is going to be a huge mess. Unfortunately, because Raikou is… well, Raikou, you have no hope of ducking out yourself. If you attempt to bail, he will hound you like there’s no tomorrow.

You sigh. Oh well. Better get this over with.

How… unhelpful.

To be perfectly honest, technology isn’t your strongest suit. If it was, you wouldn’t be stuck listening to whatever Kalosian nonsense your radio is babbling on about. At the very least you know how to run these files. What is ‘Sbomie’? You’ve never heard of it.

So what your brother was trying to tell you was that his ‘loop’ first involves Suicune connecting to him, and then, in order, Celebi, Lugia, your father, and you, followed by whatever tagalongs you happen to have, after which you guess Raikou will connect to whoever comes last. You note that he is nowhere near your father in the list. This is probably intentional.

This is why you don’t like dealing with other Pokémon.

> Entei: Do something to stave off the boredom.
You may as well tidy up in here. Tidying up is another thing you’ve been putting off in favor of working.

You CAPTCHALOGUE a PILE OF LEAVES that blew in during the last storm into your SYLLADEX.

SYLLADEXES (SYLLADICES?), CAPTCHALOGUE CARDS, and other terms associated with your INVENTORY SYSTEM have had about a year to be ingrained into your personal mythology. It’s another one of MEWTWO’s inventions, one which you begrudgingly admit is actually very useful, especially as otherwise your only way of carrying things would be to either put them in your mouth or awkwardly try to drape them over your back and hope they don’t fall off. You don’t know exactly HOW it works, and you don’t want to.

Your particular FETCH MODUS - that is, the method with which you retrieve items from your SYLLADEX - is an extremely basic one called PASSWORD. You assign a password to every item you put in, and then you put in the password again to take them out again. You haven’t really got the patience for anything else. Unfortunately this does sometimes lead to things getting stuck when you can’t remember the password you set for it. Two of your cards are clogged up this way, one with a PAPER LANTERN (that you can’t even remember picking up) and a… THING YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS. Suicune gave it to you one day and you’ve completely forgotten what it is, what it’s for, why she gave it to you, why you even accepted it, and (obviously) what password you set for it. It may just be that the password is the name of the item. Your memory isn’t that bad, it just doesn’t have patience for things.

You’re not going to ask about it though. You can’t be bothered.

Since you’re now going to be occupied for a while performing an extremely boring menial task, how about we try being somebody new?

> [Begin Sequence V: UNOVA]======>

This is somebody new.

> Enter name.
Your name is THUNDURUS. You are a member of the group known as the FORCES OF NATURE, alongside your bond brother TORNADUS (good for a fight but NOT MUCH ELSE) and your ‘CARETAKER’ LANDORUS (who gets some kind of sick perverted pleasure from ORDERING YOU ABOUT). As such, there’s nothing you get a kick out of more than WANTON, UNWARRANTED DESTRUCTION. Preferably by taking a lightning storm and driving it through some unlucky prat’s field. You went to GALAR once and turned an entire flock of WOOLOO into MAREEP this way.

LANDORUS said this WASN’T PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE.

LANDORUS’S FACE ISN’T PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE.

Because most of your hobbies involve TERRORIZING PEOPLE, there’s not much you tend to collect to show evidence of your INTERESTS, apart from the OCCASIONAL THUNDERCLOUD that you take home with you because you never know when you’ll need to discharge it in somebody’s face. At the moment, you currently only have ONE, safely stored within your SYLLADEX, because LANDORUS confiscated all the rest. He got a face full of THUNDER for his trouble, as well as an unsuspecting Oddish who was lurking in the area. That was pretty sweet. You have a motto - IT DOESN’T QUALIFY AS AWESOME UNLESS A SPECTATOR TAKES IT IN THE FACE. You recently got the chance to double down on this when the SWORDS OF JUSTICE invited you to ‘TEST YOUR ACCURACY’. You made it a personal mission not to leave until all three of them had been knocked out at least once.

Owing to recent… ah… DISAGREEMENTS, all three of you are currently locked into your THERIAN FORMES. You are one hundred percent blaming TORNADUS for this.

Okay so maybe it was actually your fault but who cares.

Your Poképal user handle is cumuloBurnout, and /\/ you preface all of your messages with a little lightning bolt because they’re awesome.

What will you do?

> Thundurus: What’s this about a game?
A game? The game? You’ve seen this thing from Mewtwo that he sent about half an hour ago. You doubt it could be as fun as terrorizing innocent humans, but you’ll GIVE IT A SHOT. Most of the games you play you only play just to watch and laugh when everybody else inevitably screws up. If they have to be HELPED into screwing up, that’s even better. Because you’ve spoken to him already, you know that Tornadus is already down for it, and where the two of you go, Landorus is sure to follow, but your region is having… issues.

Just look at them. The Swords of Justice are all busy doing Swords of Justice stuff. The Tao Dragon Pair are usually up for a good competition but they’re waiting for Kyurem’s go-ahead (and he hates games). Nobody can understand what Genesect says. That just leaves Victini (who is an even bigger TOOL than Landorus is), Keldeo (who is COMPLETELY SPINELESS) and Meloetta.

> Thundurus: Recruit Meloetta.
You already tried that! However she hasn’t forgotten that it hasn’t been that long since you dropped an entire thunderstorm on top of that freaky tower she lives in just for the lolz, and as such she hates your guts. She has blocked you. Actually, now that you think about it, most of the region’s legendaries have blocked you. Really this is Mewtwo’s fault - he knows full well that not every region is full of legendaries willing to be buddy-buddy with each other at a moment’s notice.

It can’t hurt to try again though.

Oh. Hmmm. It looks like you were able to open the conversation without problems. Maybe she unblocked you when you weren’t looking?

Gah. You can’t stand Meloetta’s singing. Anything musical in general just sounds like horrible screeching in your ears but Meloetta specifically sounds like somebody stepped on a Purrloin. It’s plain she’s not interested.

> Thundurus: Or you could just say sorry?
No way! Apologizing isn’t your thing. Apologizing is a SIGN OF WEAKNESS. Tornadus would find out and he would tease you for the rest of your life (and given that you’re legendary Pokémon, that’s pretty damn long). The only ‘apologies’ you’ve ever made have been insincere ones to Landorus. You never mean them, and he knows you never mean them, and you know he knows. Your bro does the same thing. It’s a balanced system.

So what now? Admittedly you’re still downloading the game so you couldn’t play for another few hours if you wanted to, and long-term organization is definitely not your strong suit, but that was the only idea you had. You don’t particularly feel like talking to your bro right now, a conversation with Landorus is a crime you wouldn’t inflict on anyone, and you can’t think of a reason why you’d want to talk to somebody from another region. The Electric-type memo, where you’d talk to Zapdos, Raikou, Zekrom, Tapu Koko and Zeraora, and occasionally break Regieleki, is completely dead.

You have a look around your CLOUD HOUSE. Damn it’s nice living in the clouds and not in some cave somewhere. From the outside it just looks like a storm cloud, albeit one that doesn’t produce rain (unless you’re having a bath). Inside you have comfort and convenience, doubly so since you can just move it anywhere you want. See a human trying to make ‘ART’? Plonk the cloud right in the middle of his scene and refuse to go away, ruin his beautiful blue sky. You have a variety of AMENITIES, including, you’re proud to say, a GAMES CONSOLE. When you’re stuck inside this is how you spend most of your time. It’s one of the few things Landorus approves of since he says that if you and your bro are playing it you’re not causing trouble elsewhere.

He’s not that good at technology though. If he was he’d almost certainly have it taken away because you’re not paying for your online subscription. Goody-four-shoes like Keldeo might somehow sustain an income and pay their dues, but damn it, you’re legendary Pokémon. Humans should just be giving you this stuff.

Unfortunately when you turn the console on it looks like the download of Mewtwo’s game is tanking your connection speed. So much for that.

Hm. It’s a nice morning out. This means you could probably find some unsuspecting humans out walking. Guess that means it’s time to go harass them!

> Thundurus: Go harass a human.
It doesn’t take you long to find your first unsuspecting target. Look at him with his stupid picnic blanket. This sap doesn’t even know you’re here. It should be easy for you to just— ow!

Okay. Somebody else did see you, and decided to throw a capture ball at you. Moron. You thought by now every human by now would be aware that capture balls no longer function on legendary and mythical Pokémon, but apparently this idiot missed the memo. Aw look, he’s reaching for his belt. You’re going to have fun with this!

Wow, that took a lot more out of you than you thought it would. Stupid confusion. While you’ve still got a bit of a boost from that Agility you used earlier you’re going to ABSCOND back home. While you’d happily take on multiple challengers under normal circ*mstances, you’d rather not get locked into something like that if you’ve got a game to play later.

> Thundurus: Return home.
One thing you’re gonna have to do is report this to Landorus. While this means the annoyance of starting a conversation with him, if you leave it to him to find out - and he will - he’ll lecture you for hours on exercising ‘restraint’.

Landorus told you not to go anywhere. And you won’t. You’ll go SOMEWHERE instead. You’re gonna head to that hill or whatever that Keldeo lives in and crash at his place until the heat dies down. You’d better leave right now!

> Thundurus: Quickly!
You ABSCOND again. Landorus will be pissed at you when he finds the house empty. But it’s a feeling he should be used to. He knows by now that when he says ‘don’t go anywhere’ he will arrive to find you long gone.

The SEVENTH OF AUGUST is shaping up to be a day just like any other this past summer. No heatwaves, they’ve all gone west to Orre, no storms (at least not natural ones) on the horizon. Unova is Unova, and it will keep being Unova. BORING. Unova is Unova because nothing interesting ever happens. Hopefully Mewtwo’s game will change that. You don’t know what type of game it is, nobody will tell you, but it’s certain to be more interesting than the mind-numbing boredom that every day life in Unova creates.

If you knew exactly what the game entailed, you would be ecstatic.

But you don’t, so you aren’t.

> [Begin Sequence VII: ALOLA]=====-+>

> Enter name.
Your name is LUNALA. You like to consider yourself one of the BENEFACTORS OF ALOLA, which in practice doesn’t mean a lot because EVERYBODY WORKS FAIRLY AUTONOMOUSLY. You are more commonly referred to as the BEAST THAT CALLS THE MOON, which you have to admit is a very pretty title but rather long-winded, and if you’re honest you object to the word ‘BEAST’. You prefer BAT. Because, well, you are one, albeit one which evolved from a little creature which MAY OR MAY NOT have originated in ANOTHER DIMENSION.

One of your friends, TAPU KOKO, likes to call you BATMOON. This title is worse. Apparently it’s a reference to a particular human entertainment but it’s not one that draws your interest. Tapu Koko is strange and you’re just going to leave it at that.

No, your interests primarily lie in ROLE-PLAYING GAMES. There’s nothing better than a good RP SESSION over POKÉPAL. Not any particularly violent forms of roleplaying like some people might be familiar with, just old-fashioned text-based roleplaying. You like to consider yourself MODERATELY COMPETENT at it. You’re not going to be carrying the fights but you certainly don’t leave your teammates to do all the work. You’re a TEAM PLAYER. If somebody needs help, you’re damn well going to help them.

While you’re unaware of Entei’s living conditions on the other side of the ocean, your habitat is to the untrained eye rather similar, with exceptions being made for your significant size difference and flying ability. One obvious difference is the GAME TABLE. This is where you keep all your TABLETOP MINIATURES. You don’t ever use them because, again, SIZE DIFFERENCE, but sometimes you like to move them around and imagine elaborate action sequences. Unfortunately your attempt to act as DUNGEON MASTER ended in a disaster and you’d prefer not to go through that again.

You’ve just come inside from a decent night’s flying. The sun will be rising soon, which means that your companion SOLGALEO will be taking over benefactor duty, and you will be going to SLEEP. You are NOCTURNAL, after all, and the nature of your usual work encourages you to sleep every day. Fortunately you know that this will not impede any game you may be playing in the slighest. Actually, you know for a fact it will be REQUIRED.

You clocked Mewtwo’s message immediately when you got in, and began your game download. You’d been expecting this for a while. To most of the legendary and mythical Pokémon, this is just a game. To you, you know a little more than Mewtwo has indicated. You, and a small group of others. One of whom is now messaging you.

Your Poképal user handle is moietySatellite, and you have a habit of allowing your roleplaying to slip in from time to time. *shrug*

What will you do?

> Lunala: Answer Kyurem.

Kyurem always tends to be a stick-in-the-mud, no matter what the topic of discussion is. You hope he doesn’t end up regretting his decision. The tough choices are always hard to make, even if they’re made for you in the end.

> Lunala: Attend to things.
First things first, you need to ensure the dawn’s handoff occurs without problem. While Autopilot is going to be taking care of your group’s main duties, it still won’t do to allow SOLGALEO to sleep in.

You’ve heard from others that Solgaleo has a habit of sticking his nose into their business where it doesn’t belong. But in his dealings with you, he is nothing but polite and courteous. Your dawn and dusk rituals are no place for hostility, complaints, or rambling. They are but short exchanges to make sure you are each aware of any troubling developments that may be ongoing. They are a constant.

You fear that may be about to change.

Quickly you check on your download progress. Curiously, though it said when you started it would take but a few hours, the remaining time has jumped up to about 19 hours, so it’ll finish shortly after midnight tomorrow. Strange. But, then, you’re used to slow download speeds. You are technically stealing WiFi.

One other thing needs your attention. You try, again, to contact Zygarde. And, again, you fail. It’s most concerning. You’ve been unable to contact him, or anybody in Kalos for that matter, for a few days. Up until radio silence he’s been a surprising source of information, similar though not quite identical to your own source. You were coordinating. Yet though it should be daytime there, there is no response.

Well. There’s little you can do about it. He will resurface when he does. The world will turn regardless. For now, it’s time to sleep.

Lacking legs, you cannot sleep upside down like most bats, but you can hook the tips of your wings into the cavern roof and just… suspend yourself. Already you can feel sleep claiming you. You allow yourself a smile as you drift off, knowing that when you wake, you will be somewhere else entirely.

> Lunala: Sleep.

> End of Act 1, Part 1

Chapter 2: A1P2: Ready? Break!

Chapter Text

Act 1: The Worst Idea Of All Time
Part 2: Ready? Break!
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> [Begin Sequence IV: SINNOH] ====]]>

> Enter name.
Your name is UXIE. You are the first of SINNOH’s LAKE TRIO, dwelling in the vicinity of LAKE ACUITY. You are described as the POKÉMON OF KNOWLEDGE, though it is a title you tend not to use much, because EVERYBODY ASSUMES YOU KNOW EVERYTHING. While you don’t consider yourself ignorant by far you certainly aren’t omniscient.

Like your SIBLINGS AZELF and MESPRIT (BROTHERS is the wrong word considering that all three of you are AGENDER) you are an avid fan of HUMAN MUSIC. More specifically you prefer BLUES and JAZZ. It is this preference that has led you to seek out your own SAXOPHONE, which you play occasionally, but you are NOT VERY GOOD AT IT. You have yet to produce any notes that don’t sound like SOMETHING DYING IN A WELL. This is fine though! It’s important to practice. You also have several POSTERS of varying HUMAN BLUES MUSICIANS. You have no idea who these people actually are but they’re playing blues-related instruments so they must be musicians.

Your other personal hobbies include LANDSCAPE PAINTING, which you are better at because you have a lot of time to practice, and ICE SKATING, which you are worse at because Lake Acuity only freezes in the winter so you only get practice ONCE A YEAR. The ability to fly somewhat nullifies any accidents you have whilst attempting the latter, which are frequent, because PSYCHIC-VISION isn’t perfect and if you accidentally open your eyes you’re going to end up ERASING SOMEBODY’S MEMORY. That’s something at which you need no practice, because you are very good at it. Putting memories back… not so much. To be honest you need more practice at it, but it’s the sort of thing you’d rather only do with a WILLING VOLUNTEER, and bearing in mind you have no control over WHICH memories you remove… yeah.

Nobody’s quite willing to volunteer for something that could possibly WIPE THEIR IDENTITY AWAY with no guarantee they’d get it back. So you KEEP YOUR EYES CLOSED. It’s a valid solution!

You’ve just awoken from a rather pleasing NAP, during which you had some rather strange DREAMS. Having strange dreams has become a recurring trend lately, not just for yourself you notice. CRESSELIA was recently tasked with investigating such matters. Whatever she found, she’s refusing to tell anyone about it.

Your Poképal handle is notaryMemento, and You Tend To Make It Clear Others Know What You Are Saying .

What will you do?

> Uxie: Play saxophone.
In order to calm the soul, SMOOTH JAZZ will be deployed in three, two, one…

Hmmm.

That wasn’t so much SMOOTH JAZZ as it was… CORRUGATED JAZZ. While you’re sure that legendary jazz musician ‘WET BISCUIT’ MCGLEE could turn that into a decent little ditty, on its own it sounds like somebody strangling bagpipes. You’re not sure why you immediately came to this analogy because you don’t know what bagpipes sound like.

Uh… oh, it’s quite dark out. You probably should have checked what time it was before you started playing. You’ve probably woken up some of the nearby resident Pokémon with that. Sorry! You spend some time flying around and apologizing. Yes, as you thought, some of the other locals are rather ticked off with you right now. You’d better bunker down until it blows over. That said, it’s otherwise very calm and quiet out, and had you not just ruined the atmosphere with your saxophone, you might have found a bit of solace in setting up an easel and just painting the lake.

Again.

You have painted the lake dozens of times.

You settle down at your COMPUTER. You’re a very social Pokémon, so your desktop is littered with finished conversations that you never got around to closing the windows of. There are a lot of others online tonight, an unusual fact. Is there something happening? Nobody’s sent you any new messages in a while.

> Uxie: Pester Azelf.
If something’s going on, Azelf is normally the one who knows about it.

There is a certain… quality to the air indicative of the last time Autopilot was activated. It took Azelf pointing it out for you to notice. Hmmm.

> Uxie: Wait a couple of minutes.
While you wait you find yourself reflecting on past activations of Autopilot. There was maybe only one time when Arceus activated it simply to give everybody a break, and surprising absolutely nobody Groudon and Kyogre took that as an excuse to MAKE it a large scale event. The last you were aware of the matter He was working out a way to only activate parts of it rather than do it for everybody—

You have a message from Mewtwo.

> Uxie: Read message.
You quickly scan through the message. A game? Interesting. You immediately begin your download, which is set to take ten hours, and return to the memo.

You don’t leave the memo. Why would you need to leave the memo? It’s not like you’re going anywhere. The major benefit of Poképal is that you can do everything from your own home.

You will, however, acquire a BEVERAGE first. Fortunately you happen to have one in your SYLLADEX, which is operating using the JUKEBOX FETCH MODUS. Every item is stored on a record which can be accessed at any time, assuming you’re willing to put up with the assigned music track playing for the subsequent few minutes. But you wouldn’t use the modus if you didn’t like it, so it is with comfort that you retrieve a CAN OF LEMONADE and settle down to some jazz that’s a darn sight smoother - and quieter! - than what you were trying to play earlier.

Quickly you scan your open chat windows for anybody from Hoenn or Galar. The further region is about eight hours behind you, still mid-afternoon, so everybody there should be awake. As for Hoenn… well, you could see them needing a lot of help, especially where it comes to GROUDON and KYOGRE. Historically they have never played well together.

It seems that you never actually talked to anybody from Galar recently, and your only open chat window with a legendary from Hoenn is with Jirachi, who is one of the few currently offline. You will need to open a new chat window.

> Uxie: Start with Galar.
Yes, that makes sense. Hoenn will no doubt monopolize hours of your time, leaving no room for you to provide any assistance to Galar.

The most obvious place to start would be the Galar region memo. However, Calyrex is notoriously stingy about guests, and keeps the board passworded at all times. You will need to pester him to get the password first.

Oh. That was a rather unexpected reaction. Perhaps you should try somebody more amenable.

> Uxie: Pester Urshifu.

It could be going better, you have to admit.

Before you join the Hoenn memo, you take a quick look back at the Sinnoh memo again. It’s gone fairly quiet. Heatran is back and explaining to Azelf how he’s going to play, and it looks like his disability won’t be hampering him. That’s good to hear. There’s also a message from Mesprit about how Kanto refused help and nobody from Kalos is answering, so they’re going to fly/teleport over there and see what’s going on. It seems your region is the only one to have collected itself.

You drop a quick update in about Galar and navigate to the Hoenn memo.

> [Begin Sequence VIII: GALAR] **********>

> Enter name.
Your name is ZACIAN. You are the SWORD-BEARING HERO OF GALAR, the WIELDER OF THE SWORD OF TRUTH, the CYAN BEAST. You have lots of cool titles. It isn’t really the SWORD OF TRUTH but it sounds cool so you’ll let it slide. One thing you’d better clear up right away: you are MALE. You ALWAYS HAVE BEEN MALE, and you ALWAYS WILL BE MALE. Apparently there’s some human belief going around that YOU’RE A GIRL. You are NOT. This belief has started to make its way around the legendaries, and it’s KIND OF A SORE SUBJECT. You don’t even know how this thing started.

Obviously you’re a KEEN SWORDFIGHTER, the fact that you have to hold your blade’s hilt in your mouth notwithstanding. You’ve practiced a LOT. You’ve had some long periods of time when you haven’t actually been in posession of your SWORD, but that hasn’t dulled your skills. Where your true passion lies though is OLD FASHIONED DETECTIVE NOVELS, which you collect religiously. It goes without saying that your favourite story of all time is PROBLEM ‘FROU. Gritty hard-boiled private eyes in trench coats that are too big for them standing under a lonely street lamp in the rain. A phone rings, with some HYSTERICAL DAME pleading her case. The hunt is on.

You have attempted to replicate this on multiple occasions. Galar certainly isn’t short of rain. In fact it’s RAINING RIGHT NOW, quite heavily in fact. But the sad fact is nobody makes trench coats that fit big dogs, and you kind of can’t answer a phone without BITING THROUGH IT. You’ve got a STRONG JAW. Your sword was smithed to withstand it. Basically everything else was NOT. That’s why you’re really glad for this whole SYLLADEX thing. Only two things other than your sword have withstood your bite: ETERNATUS (because who knows what the f*ck he’s made out of) and ZAMAZENTA.

You have kind of a COMPLICATED RELATIONSHIP with Zamazenta. Well, you mean, KIND OF COMPLICATED. You mean, you care about him! You really do. He’s kind of a doofus, so after the two of you have been fighting side-by-side, you’re usually the one left to lick both of your wounds while he spaces out. Not that this bothers you. He’s pretty cute when he does that. Wait, did you say cute?! You meant to say, uh, you meant to say…

Uh…

Okay look you’re kind of head over tail in love with him but it’s complicated alright and you’re hopeless at this romance stuff and it’s not like it’s official you mean…

You’re kind of off-track here.

For the last several minutes you’ve been engaged in conversation with MEWTWO, re the subject of the problem with CALYREX. The problem with CALYREX is that he’s an asshole. He used to rule over Galar, and he’s got it in his head that means he rules over all of you as well. He is completely unpleasable and the only reason you’re able to sometimes use the Galar memo without being muted is because he’s sometimes not there. You’ve just got an answer though, and you’re about to report it to everybody who’s present in the backup memo (which, for reasons only known to the one who made it, is named the ETERNATUS TEA ZONE). Your Poképal handle is sleuthWolf, and -|===> you add little swords before your text because… well, it’s kind of self explanatory, isn’t it?

What will you do?

> Zacian: Report.

> Zacian: Facepaw x2 combo.
Argh!

You’re pretty sure that Eternatus set up the memo to automatically mod Calyrex whenever he made it in the first place. He’s such an idiot. But then what could you expect from a monstrous skeleton dragon from space who inexplicably decided to be as upper class as possible?

“Arceus, what fools these dragons be!” - Hoenn League Champion, Steven Stone.

Yes. You’re absolutely sure he said that.

You’re feeling pretty pent up right now, so you’re going to do what you usually do when you get stressed: swing your sword about. You equip it from your BATTLEDEX SPECIBUS. Everybody has a BATTLEDEX SPECIBUS, even if it mostly goes unused due to preference for natural abilities. Your KNIGHT’S SWORD however doesn’t count as ‘natural’ so you have to keep it in there under the BLADEKIND ABSTRATUS. On the plus side, this means that as long as you have the captchalogue cards for it you can carry as many swords as you feel you need. You don’t really feel the need to carry more than your own, though. Yours is enough for whenever things get too hot to handle. Which is most of the time.

Normally you’d go outside and attack a tree or something to take out your frustrations. However, as mentioned previously, it is RAINING, and the FOG is pretty thick to boot. Humans constantly complain about wet dog smells. They don’t consider that it smells worse to you. So you’re going to stay inside. You will, however, make sure first that you’re not going to hit anything while you’re swinging. Sword safety is everybody’s business.

Stupid! Eternatus! Stupid! Calyrex! Making! This! Harder! For! EveryWHOOPS

In a momentary lapse of concentration you lose your grip on your sword and it goes flying out the window.

> Zacian: Look out window.
Yeah… you can barely see a metre outside. Your sword is nowhere to be seen. You’re not getting that back for a while. At the very least you can feel it’s still close; it hasn’t flown far enough to remove your CROWNED FORME. This would be more comforting if you didn’t know the maximum range for that is about forty metres.

You probably shouldn’t mention this to anybody. Especially Zamazenta. If he knew you were swordless he’d tease you for ages.

Oh. Speaking of. There’s a familiar scent in the area. He must’ve started heading over as soon as he got banned from the memo—

ZAMAZENTA has arrived. He’s not in his own Crowned Forme so he probably left his shield at home. Probably for the best; he gets stuck in a lot of doors otherwise.

This would be more concerning if he wasn’t doing stuff like this ALL THE TIME. You’d swear he has the OBLIVIOUS ability or something.

Once you’re done with this you should probably head to the Kanto memo right away. Urshifu is likely to be waiting for you. Tethera… you’re not sure what she’s going to do. She’s a wildcard at the best of times. Yan and Tyan have washed their talons of you completely and that’s fine, that’s their decision. Eternatus can be left to do what Eternatus does, Zarude will quietly find a team of her own, and Calyrex can stew. That just leaves two and a bit of Galar’s members unaccounted for.

Really you’re not sure about REGIELEKI and REGIDRAGO either. You guess you can let REGIGIGAS deal with them? That’s what he normally does. The BIT refers to MELMETAL, who kind of doesn’t belong to any one region, considering that the MELTAN they evolved from suddenly popped up across the globe simultaneously. They kind of got lumped in with Galar afterwards for some reason.

You should actually contact them first, make sure they’ve got a plan in mind.

> Zacian: Contact Melmetal.

Well, at least somebody seems to have a plan. It occurs to you after the fact that they didn’t actually say they were going to be on Team Alola, but it’s not worth it pestering them again. You’ll just have to find out later.

A quick glance over at Zamazenta reveals he’s nose deep into one of your graphic novels, staying out of trouble. Good good. It’s not that you don’t trust him - of course you trust him! - but as he’s already proven once today he is a complete doofus and it’s always worth keeping an eye on him to make sure he hasn’t gotten himself into trouble. And even uncrowned he’s not bad on the eyes either.

Wait f*ck what were you just thinking? You shake your head to snap out of it then head for the Kanto memo. Urshifu will be waiting for you.

> [Resume Sequence V: UNOVA] ======>

> Enter name.
Your name is KELDEO. You are, in no particular order, a SWORD OF JUSTICE-IN-TRAINING, an ASPIRING AMATEUR ARTIST, and an ORPHAN. You put a lot of focus into the first two so you don’t have to think about the third. Really if you’re honest with yourself even the art takes a back seat so you can concentrate on your TRAINING, which lately has mostly revolved around running errands for the other Swords, COBALION, VIRIZION and TERRAKION. You totally get why it’s necessary, though.

Being a SWORD OF JUSTICE is HARD. You’ve got to give it a lot! Cobalion says you have to give it EVERYTHING. You have to be willing to drop EVERYTHING at a moment’s notice to provide weaker Pokémon aid. THE SWORDS OF JUSTICE HELP THOSE WHO CANNOT HELP THEMSELVES. WOW. Your mentors are SO COOL. Evidently humans think so too because they’ve made POSTERS featuring them, which you eagerly obtained and nailed to your wall. You hope one day to reach the point where they’re making posters of you too.

Unlike many other legendaries, you like to MAINTAIN A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP with the humans. You don’t get too attached because that’s how problems start and you’ve seen how that works, but you took pointers from the ALOLAN ISLAND GUARDIANS. While you haven’t done so much to the point where people are worshipping you - you haven’t been around for nearly that long and you wouldn’t even want that! - you make sure that you give humans in need as much help as you would Pokémon in need. You’re surprised that most legendaries don’t do this because people just… GIVE YOU STUFF. Like power, and an Internet connection!

But when you’re not doing that, you really like TRAVELLING AROUND, mainly to RIVERS and BEACHES, and just APPRECIATING THE SIGHTS. That’s why you’re so interested in ART - you see all these BEAUTIFUL SIGHTS and you can’t help but want to SHARE THEM.

You’re kind of at a loss for what to do at the moment, since hardly anybody from Unova wants to play this game of Mewtwo’s. You’ve been ‘shopping around’ as Victini puts it for a team to join - but you’ve just had two bad experiences in a row and you’re kind of at a low point. Your home - which is INSIDE OF A HILL - is somewhat of a comfort to you but it’s hard to deal with being insulted sometimes.

Your Poképal handle is surfeitObjection, which constantly reminds you of something Virizion once taught you - you should never blindly accept something without questioning it. Everything you learn from the Swords you make sure you know why you’re learning it.

What will you do?

> Keldeo: Update Meloetta.
You know that she’s found a team at least - you just left her in the Kanto memo, along with the surprise addition of Zacian. Unfortunately Mew was in an aggressive mood and chased you out. There was an implication that she did the same to Urshifu a little bit earlier as well.

Good old Meloetta. She knows you have low self-esteem sometimes and she knows exactly what to say to help you bounce back.

So, your next destination is the Hoenn memo. You’ve tried three regions so far; aside from Kanto, you got chased out of Alola as well, and nobody from Kalos is answering your messages. They must all be really busy with the game over there.

Alright, time to— hey!

THUNDURUS is here.

Thundurus grabs an old issue of GAMEBOY MAGAZINE and flops down into a beanbag.

That’s remarkably refreshing behavior for Thundurus. Last time he visited he just dumped a storm over the place and flew away.

> Keldeo: Join Hoenn memo.
Yes, it’s about time you got on with this. Even though your download is still several hours from completion, you don’t want to leave worrying about which team you’re joining until the last minute. Procrastination is nobody’s friend.

Before you can get an answer to your question YOUR COMPUTER SHUTS OFF. As do the lights. It appears you have just LOST POWER.

> Keldeo: Scold Thundurus.
You would, except he looks as startled as you are. He hasn’t budged from that beanbag since he arrived (though he has still somehow managed to eat all your chips). He immediately protests his innocence, and for once, you believe him. He asks how do you get your power. You say you have a cable connection out the back. He tells you to hold on a minute and goes outside. Moments later the lights come back on. He’s being very helpful today!

Suspiciously so in fact.

> Keldeo: Reconnect to Hoenn memo.
Oh, it’s going to have interrupted your download too… you hope you can resume it without any issues.

…You seem to have NO INTERNET CONNECTION.

Thundurus flies back in and tells you that the nearby CITY has lost power too, and that his MOBILE DEVICE has NO SATELLITE SIGNAL. Courtesy of the weird technology stuff that Mewtwo’s done with it his device can still directly contact Tornadus and Landorus, but he has no access to any sort of Poképal service.

You are CUT OFF.

A couple of minutes of frantic texting from Thundurus and he relays from the other Forces that it’s not just your area - the entire REGION appears to be without power, let alone Internet. This is very much not a good thing! And worrying about the game’s only the tip of the iceberg - a sudden lack of power is going to cause trouble all over the place! You really wish you had your own MOBILE DEVICE with which to contact the Swords of Justice. You know that Mewtwo also set them up with their own HEADSETS so they can easily communicate with each other, but you’re not allowed to have one until you complete your training.

It’s safe to say that since Mewtwo joined the legendary community inter-Pokémon communication has been revolutionized.

For the moment it would probably be a good idea if you didn’t let Thundurus wander off. Some connection is better than no connection. You tell him this. He considers it before agreeing with you. He says harassing people isn’t fun if they can’t bounce straight back. You’re not sure how you feel about that statement but you’ll let it slide. He pauses and asks if you have Meloetta’s number. You say no. He says crap.

Now that you think about it, Meloetta might still have power. That weird tower she lives in always seemed to be somewhat… disconnected from the rest of the region. She said something about it generating its own power and its own wireless signal. She might not even be aware that everyone else is cut off, if she doesn’t try to contact you. It might take a few hours for you to get there but you’d rather make the journey, and find out that power’s back when you get there, rather than remain and sit in what amounts to darkness for longer than it would have taken to move.

There is a problem with that plan though. Much as he seems to be being well-behaved at the moment, you’d rather not leave Thundurus in your home by himself for several hours. Judging from the fact that the beanbag is surrouned by more chip packets than you thought you had he may very well eat you out of house and home before you even reach Meloetta. You guess it goes with the whole not letting him wander off thing. Either you’re both going, or you’re not going at all.

What would the Swords of Justice do?

> Keldeo: Make a decision.
Okay. It’s time to be proactive here. The Swords don’t wait for problems to come to them, they seek out the problems and hopefully stop them before they happen. It’s far too late to stop the power going or anything - neither of you are Celebi or Dialga - but maybe you can establish some lines of communication. Sideline the game for the moment. This is a REAL event, and securing a means of communication is what you should be doing regardless of the situation immediately before.

Quickly you set up your Poképal account to autorespond to any messages that happen to come in. That way, if the network does come back while you’re on the way, anyone who tries to contact you will know where you’ve gone. There. That should do the trick. You’ll have to thank Virizion again later for showing you how to do that. You also grab a NOTEBOOK and a PENCIL (you’ve gotten fairly good at mouth-writing now without SWALLOWING ANY OF THE ERASER) and stash them in your SYLLADEX via your FRIENDSHIP FETCH MODUS.

The FRIENDSHIP modus is a bit of a pain, more so when you’re alone, even though the premise is fairly simple. The modus activates a new card whenever you make a new close friend, and then items can only be retrieved from what card while you’re in that friend’s company. Day-to-day you don’t tend to use it much. On this occasion though it’s much easier to just put the NOTEBOOK and PENCIL onto MELOETTA’S CAPTCHALOGUE CARD, since you know you’ll be seeing her. (Unless she’s not actually there any more, but you’ll cross that bridge when you get to it.) It also works if you happen to be in a long distance conversation with them, though it’s a stickler for what counts as a ‘conversation’ so messaging someone just to access their card doesn’t work.

You have a fair few cards at your disposal, some of which are already occupied. The three cards for the SWORDS OF JUSTICE, for example, contain your training gear. VICTINI’s card holds some LIECHI BERRIES you’ve been saving for them, since he absolutely loves their spiciness. There are some more cards you have for various other friends, but you won’t bother listing them all because you haven’t got time. It is however worth noting that Thundurus is not one of them.

Depending on how this trip goes though that could change! That’s the great thing about the Friendship Modus. It’s always encouraging you to make new friends.

> Keldeo: Head for Meloetta’s place.
You’re all set. There’s no sign that the Internet signal’s going to come back any time soon. It’s time to go.

As is typical for him Thundurus takes off like a rocket. You follow at a slightly more moderate pace. You know he’s going to run out of steam eventually. You’re going to be running for a few hours; there’s no point in wasting all of your energy in the first five hundred yards.

> [Begin Sequence III: HOENN] ====-@@>

> Enter name.
Your name is REGICE. You are LEGENDARY TITAN NO. 2, GOLEM OF ICE, and, unfortunately, VICTIM OF AUTOCORRECT. When you were programmed by REGIGIGAS, the typographical system he was using to code you refused to parse a DOUBLE I. You should have been REGIICE. But NO.

Your particular HARDWARE runs on a vast number of INTERCHANGEABLE PERSONALITIES. During physical operations this means little since all of them have the same operational capabilities. Switching them however drastically alters your TEMPERAMENT, BEHAVIOR, and MANNER OF SPEAKING. For the last several minutes you’ve been bouncing back and forth between ANNOYED (this is your default personality when interacting with the OTHER REGI) and RESIGNED (this is your default personality AFTER interacting with the other Regi). The impending game is of course necessitating lots of interaction with them, hence the flip-flopping. Changing between settings happens on the fly and most of the time you’re barely aware it’s happening.

Some say that you and your fellow Regi are mindless automatons. That isn’t true in the slightest. During your creation Regigigas went out of his way to ensure that all five of you could think and operate for yourselves, even if he can override you if you start becoming too UNRULY. Which, given the quality of your coding *ahem* happens A LOT OF THE TIME. Recently he has encouraged all of you to take up HOBBIES. You feel like you are the only one succeeding at your choice, which is KNITTING. You don’t really know how you’re doing it with your thick ice fingers but you’re not going to question it. Of course, by SUCCEEDING, you mean you have created ONE (1) NOVELTY EASTER SWEATER, which you are currently WEARING. You are wearing it because it has frozen to your body and you CANNOT TAKE IT OFF.

But at least it is more successful than the others. REGIROCK misinterpreted the command and attempted to take up EVERY SINGLE HOBBY IN EXISTENCE. REGISTEEL picked MATCHSTICK MODELLING, and immediately crushed any matchstick it attempted to pick up. REGIELEKI just spouted the dictionary definition of ‘HOBBY’ over and over again before overheating, while REGIDRAGO… yeah, you’re not gonna go there.

On the side you also enjoy CODING, since it is what makes up the majority of your own programming. You are slightly more qualified at CODING than you are KNITTING, though because of the nature of said programming, you cannot fix any problems that arise in yourself or your fellows. Only Regigigas can do that. And he’s… not quick on the uptake. At all.

Suffice to say you have a strained relationship with the other Regi. Referring to them is awkward as well. None of you have any gender to speak of, but Regigigas uses he/him, Regirock and Regieleki use they/them, you and Registeel use it/them, and Regidrago… yeah, you’re not gonna go there either.

As it’s been quite some time since Mewtwo’s announcement, planning for the game has already passed. Regigigas has suggested… well, ordered, really, all five of you to participate on TEAM HOENN. Truth be told you and the other two Hoenn Regi don’t interact that much with the other legendaries from your own region, because there’s just not that much crossover. Rayquaza has you help him out with tasks sometimes, and it’s all hands (or claws or whatever) on deck whenever Groudon and Kyogre start causing issues, but you otherwise tend to keep to yourselves. That’s the main reason why you’re no longer in the main Hoenn memo. That, and… other reasons. Other reasons meaning the Regimemo, where the game discussion has finished and you’ve all moved on to other topics.

Your Poképal handle is glacierNinepin, and ####self-explanatory_You preface all of your text with your active personality core.

What will you do?

> Regice: Check in on Regimemo.
Describing Regimemo is difficult. Certainly if anybody else were to gain access to it they’d generally have no idea what the hell you were all talking about. Your conversations with other Pokémon indicate that they believe it’s incredibly efficient and that you all know exactly what you’re doing at all times.

You don’t. You really, really don’t.

Regidrago hasn’t actually exploded. It’s fine. They’re both fine. That happens a lot.

It’s common belief that Regigigas stopped building Regidrago when he ran out of dragon essence. Unlike a lot of rumors that fly round about legendary Pokémon it happens to be completely true. What isn’t well-known, however - at least to anybody who hasn’t yet met Regidrago - is that Regigigas never finished coding Drago either. Honestly it’s a miracle that Drago even functions at all.

> Regice: Examine location.
This is your TEMPLE. Actually if you’re being ####_pedantic, it’s one of Hoenn’s TITAN MAINTENANCE FACILITIES. The region has three, where you, Regirock, and Registeel all spend most of your time. You each have a second one in GALAR, which is also where Regieleki and Regidrago share theirs. You used to get very ####_aggravated when people referred to your living places as TEMPLES. Temples imply worship, and the thought of people worshipping you is absurd. Once, all six of you got together to decide once and for all on a short word to use so nobody would be forced to say the same nine-syllable name over and over again.

You decided on the word TEMPLE.

Yeah, nobody said you were particularly smart.

Because this is YOUR maintenance facility, the temperature is sub-zero. Everything is frozen solid. Of course you can still interact with everything. A maintenance facility that doesn’t work IS A RATHER PISS-POOR EXCUSE FOR A MAINTENANCE FACILITY IF YOU ASK YOU. Regigigas has instructed you to await the arrival of Rock and Steel, the latter of which you will soon be, rather cathartically, punching in the face. They should arrive soon. Rock has this rather annoying habit of moving very slowly and then immediately somehow teleporting away the second you’re not looking at them. They call it the ability to TRAVERSE GREAT DISTANCES BY MOVING VERY SLOWLY. You call it freaky and would rather they not do it around you.

There is evidence of your INTERESTS around the place too. You have a couple more COMPUTERS which you use for your coding projects, so if you accidentally brick one you’ve got backups. There is a vast array of KNITTING MATERIAL, wool and the like, which is all frozen to the floor. There’s also a very conspicuous HEAT SPOT on the far side of the room, caused by your SUPERHEATED NEEDLES. RESHIRAM, who also knits, gave them to you for you to try so your projects wouldn’t instantly freeze. Unfortunately this also means you cannot physically hold them and dropped them the second they came out of your sylladex.

You should probably pick those up at some poiAAAAAAGH

You don’t know how they do that.

REGIROCK has arrived, dragging an inert REGISTEEL behind them. Notably they did not open any doors to get in here.

Now you’ve got to be very careful with this. You’re only looking to perform maintenance, nothing more. You charge up an ICE PUNCH. Careful, careful…

> Regice: Damage assessment.
Nothing vital has been damaged, fortunately. Despite the holes, this sort of thing is exactly what the maintenance facilities were built to contain. Fighting amongst yourselves doesn’t happen often, and mostly happens by mistake. Possibly the most damage has been done to Regirock, who is not only now stuck in a hole in the floor but who is now sporting a pair of very straight burn marks on the bottom of one of their feet where they stood on the SUPERHEATED NEEDLES.

At the very least it looks like Registeel is coming fully online now.

> Regice: Report to Regigigas.

A good thing too. You don’t want Rock and Steel in your facility for any longer than they have to be.

There’s a loud pinging noise from your computer announcing the arrival of a new message, and by the time you look back Rock has completely vanished. Damn it.

Well, little point crying about it now. Rock is gone, and that’s the main thing.

> Regice: Answer message.

> End of Act 1, Part 2

Chapter 3: A1P3: Everything is Fine

Chapter Text

Act 1: The Worst Idea Of All Time
Part 3: Everything is Fine
======================================>

> [Begin Sequence I: KANTO] ==¬¬¬¬>

> Enter name.
Your name is ARTICUNO.

You’re kind of at a crossroads in your life right now. On ONE WING, you would be quite content to spend the rest of your life BICKERING WITH YOUR SIBLINGS. It’s worked for you so far. That, and then BEATING UP LUGIA when he provides an intervention, INEVITABLY LOSING, and spending the rest of the evening… well, BICKERING WITH YOUR SIBLINGS, just in a more friendly manner. It’s a STATUS QUO.

But ON THE OTHER WING, recent events have been building to a sort of background crescendo, and LUGIA has recently informed you - very recently, he did it about ten minutes ago - that the CONSTANT SHIMMERING that you can hear in the background when everything else is quiet, that fails to step out of rhythm with your heartbeat, is the WORLDSONG.

The WORLDSONG is an enormous f*cking deal. If the world - no, the universe - has a pulse, that’s the Worldsong. A Pokémon attuned to the Worldsong becomes extraordinarily powerful - it’s how Lugia is able to deal with the BEAST OF THE SEA, the powerful ocean current that threads its way through the islands where you reside. He’s heard it for most of his life. And now, apparently, so do you, which according to him qualifies you to take a place as HIS APPRENTICE OF SORTS in dealing with climate issues.

You’re not sure how you feel about that.

Your relationship with other Legendaries is… well, mostly NON-EXISTENT. You’re not the sort of bird who gets out much. Especially since your brother had AN ACCIDENT and you have to spend a lot of time interpreting for him. When you do get time to yourself though, you could say you enjoy ICE SCULPTING. It’s cheating a little bit, being an ICE TYPE and all, and you get plenty of flak from your siblings for doing ART. It’s fun, though. The fine work is especially challenging considering the only things you have to work with in the way of tools is your beak, your talons, and airflow created by your wings.

You are currently located on ICE ISLAND in the middle of the ORANGE ISLANDS, where it is UNSEASONABLY WARM (and this is nothing to do with your brother, you have checked). You have another nest on the mainland but you’re always DRAWN BACK HERE. You kind of wish you were set up elsewhere though. The island’s natural cold climate is only just suppressing the heat, and the snow cap is much smaller than it should be. It’s one of many things Lugia is going to expect you to learn to deal with.

Your Poképal handle is offensiveGlaceon, which at first glance doesn’t make a lot of sense but starts to when you understand that A) you wanted the acronym OG REALLY BADLY, and B) the only real ice-related word beginning with G is GLACIER, which was already stolen by REGICE.

GLACEON is BASICALLY THE SAME.

You’ve been in kind of a daze ever since Lugia dropped that bombshell. For the last few minutes you’ve been sort of typing to yourself in a ‘conversation’ with the aforementioned Regice, a dialogue impaired by the fact that you’ve been forbidden from actually mentioning what he said until he makes it official, whatever that means.

What will you do?

> Articuno: Do some sculpting, calm down.
You know, that’s not a bad idea. It’s certainly better than stressing out, and typing whatever words come into your head at Regice isn’t helping. You apologize to it again and close the conversation.

If you’re going to do any sculpting at all, you’re going to need ice, and that means you need water. Unfortunately the only Water-type move you actually know is RAIN DANCE, and the last time any of you used a weather move here among the islands things broke pretty badly so you’re not going to do it again. This means you’re going to have to fly down to the ocean, freeze a block, and then stuff it into your Sylladex and cart it back up.

At some point you know you’re going to have to learn WATER PULSE. That would be very useful. However to learn it you’re going to need to get somebody else to teach it to you, and the only Pokémon you know who’d be willing to do that is - you guessed it - LUGIA. SIGH. Zapdos and Moltres are going to give you so much sh*t.

The flight down to the waterline gives you the opportunity to observe your little cluster of islands. FIRE ISLAND, ICE ISLAND, LIGHTNING ISLAND. Unimaginative, but easy to remember at least. Then there’s SHAMOUTI, where Lugia holes up when he’s dealing with you, which is all the time. You know he’s got another nest SOMEWHERE, but he won’t tell any of you. He knows you’ll just trash it in retaliation. There’s no sign of either him or your siblings though. Good. It’s REALLY HOT. You don’t want to spend any longer down here than you have to.

Drawing an ice block out of the ocean is actually fairly easy, considering that it’s saltwater. You’ve even practiced shaping it here and fashioning handles for your talons to hook onto so you can move it about easier. Then it’s just a matter of captchaloguing it. Your Sylladex is running on the obviously-named SCULPTURE FETCH MODUS, which is just as it sounds - you’re tasked with making a miniature sculpture of whatever you have in your Sylladex before you can get it out. It’s not as bad as it sounds. You don’t have to be too accurate. You never run into problems with getting too-detailed items stuck. A solid block is a cakeflight.

Yikes. Even in your Sylladex it’s starting to melt. You’d better get back up the mountain fast!

As you approach your nest you can hear an incredibly loud, repetitive noise. Great, it’s the Poképal pinging noise. You know exactly who it’s going to be. MEW is the only one who repeatedly pings people to get them to answer her. She knows the pinging noise is incredibly annoying. That’s what she’s going for.

> Articuno: Deal with Mew.
And… MUTE!

That’s much better.

Yeah, you know there’s about to be a game going on. You’ve got the download running. Mew of course has installed herself as Team Kanto leader. She expects this means you and your siblings will be bowing to her every whim and request. You will NOT. Neither you, Zapdos or Moltres give a flying f*ck about her. As soon as the download finishes - it’s got a couple of hours to go - you’re planning amongst yourselves to try and cut her out of the loop entirely. She can run her own team with Zacian and Zamazenta and whoever else decides to wander in.

You note as you leave your computer again that it’s just ticked over midnight. It’s now the EIGHTH OF AUGUST. Yay, you guess.

Now, what will you sculpt?

> Articuno: Make a Lucario.
Eh? Um, okay, you guess. You have got an oblong block, a biped’s not going to be too hard.

As predicted the block pops out of your Sylladex without any fuss, and you get to work with your beak. You’ve heard it said that at at its base level SCULPTING is just TAKING A BLOCK and revealing SOMETHING HIDDEN INSIDE. You don’t know who said that because it’s total taurossh*t. You tried doing that once and it turned out that all that was in the block you’d picked was ICE.

Hm hm hmm…

While you’re doing this you can see Poképal flashing angrily at you. That’s some fit Mew’s throwing. Normally she tires herself out for a few minutes but you guess the prospect of this game has got her all fired up. Oop, careful, you’re starting to get to the delicate parts. You need to be very careful that the whole thing doesn’t fall over and shatter. You’ve lost many projects this way.

But as you work you find your mind drifting back to that conversation with Lugia, and along with it the shimmering in your ears seems to get a little louder. You’re not ready for anything like that. You don’t want that level of responsibility. You— sh*t!

You fumble and accidentally peck off the proto-Lucario’s left pair of aura tassels.

f*ck this. You can’t concentrate right now. There’s only one more thing you can think of to clear your head.

> Articuno: Go to war.
Yes, this is obviously the best course of action right now.

You leave your island and take up a holding pattern. Moments later you hear a sort of strangled screech - Arceus damn it he’s not supposed to do that - and Moltres emerges, making a beeline for you, looking somewhat sick. Yeah, that attempt at a vocalization hasn’t agreed with him. He’s handicapped himself.

But you don’t care.

Suffice to say Lugia is NOT HAPPY with any of you right now.

> Articuno: Damage assessment.
You’re not particularly concerned with how your siblings are coming out of this, but you’re definitely paralyzed, you’ve probably got a bit of charge left on you and should be careful when you ground yourself, those Air Slashes you took definitely left a mark, and you took the full force of that Aeroblast to the face. Safe to say you should probably Roost when you get back to your island, and dig out the Cheri berries you have stored for just such an occasion.

You don’t miss the look of disapproval Lugia sends your way as he makes sure the three of you disperse. But you don’t care. That was fun. f*ck him.

A lot of the time you’d all take his admission into the battle as an excuse to gang up on him, but then a lot of the time you don’t normally all three of you get hit by his opening salvo. Really all this means is the lecture he’s going to give you is going to start earlier than normal.

Once you’re home (eventually) and cured of paralysis, you get straight back to what you were doing: ignoring Mew. Instead you hop into your trio’s private memo.

Ugh. Now you’re right back where you started. You might as well get back to the proto-Lucario. You can see from the box flashing that Mew is still pinging you every few seconds, but you’re still not going to answer her. You’d block her, but that’d just invite her to teleport in and start shouting at you in-person and you really don’t want that. You don’t even know why she doesn’t do it right now.

At least if you’re sculpting you don’t have time to concentrate on anything— huh? What’s this? It looks like there’s something embedded in the ice, near the bottom. It must have been floating in the water and you missed it. Eh, it’s probably just some trash the humans threw in the sea.

> Articuno: Examine item.
It takes you a moment to extract it. ‘It’ appears to be a PAIR OF SUNGLASSES. Not just ANY pair of sunglasses, though, because you recognize them very well. They belong to your NOT-COUSIN YAN. What on Earth are these doing here? You don’t think Yan’s visited the Orange Islands since that one time a couple of years ago when Lugia thought it would be a good idea for all six of you to have a ‘family’ reunion. Needless to say it didn’t go well and Lugia is never inviting them down again. But anyway you know that she’s had her sunglasses in the interim, and she made a big deal about them being the only pair in existence.

You’d better let her know you’ve got them.

You can probably get back to your sculpture now, finally. It’ll be at least an hour before she picks up that you implied she has a big head. You can’t help but wonder though - how did these glasses get here? They’re identical to Yan’s down to the exact detail. You know the local Squirtle can be a bit overzealous, but these things are definitely built for a bird, not a turtle.

Oh well. It’s a mystery that you don’t even really want to know the answer to and probably won’t be solved for a really long time anyway.

> [Resume Sequence VII: ALOLA] =====-+>

What the— settle down! Yes, we know there are a lot of characters to meet in Alola! We can only pick one for the moment!

That’s better.

> Enter name.
Your name is SILVALLY. You… guess you don’t really have any titles, unless you count TYPE:FULL, which makes you feel uncomfortable. You are also the YOUNGEST LEGENDARY POKÉMON IN THE WORLD, owing to having been CREATED only a few years ago. You’re still really new at this! It’s very hard! Unsurprisingly you get along well with the other MANMADE POKÉMON, those being MEWTWO and MAGEARNA. GENESECT would also count, except he doesn’t speak an easily understandable language. You’re learning how to TRANSLATE for him but you’re far from being FLUENT.

You were, to put it bluntly, CREATED TO FIGHT. More specifically you were engineered to COMBAT THE ULTRA BEASTS, who seem to (at least for the moment) have retreated to lick their wounds. You haven’t seen any for a few weeks. This is a GOOD THING. For a Pokémon created to, in essence, RIVAL ARCEUS, you DISLIKE FIGHTING INTENSELY. You’ll do it when you HAVE TO - you’re as close as it comes to being the WORLD’S #1 AUTHORITY ON THE ULTRA BEASTS - but on more general terms you COULDN’T HURT A FLY.

As the youngest you are absolutely fascinated by the HISTORY of the Pokémon world, and as such you spend a lot of your time READING ABOUT IT. On a couple of occasions you’ve gotten the opportunity to join LOCAL ARCHAEOLOGIST MARSHADOW as he goes SPELUNKING. That said, he spends most of those occasions complaining about how HE WAS THERE FOR THAT AND THE HUMANS GOT IT WRONG. You think it’s fascinating though. The difference in historical interpretation is in itself history. You’re sure if everybody immediately understood everything about the past then they wouldn’t find anything interesting at all.

On a side note, you have at TAPU LELE’S REQUEST taken up SOME FORM OF DANCE. You don’t know what a quadrupedal dance is called, and neither does she. However she helps you a lot when you fall over and she thinks learning to dance will help you stop falling over. Though you’re a few years old your limbs still sometimes do things you don’t want them to.

Your Poképal handle is makeshiftNovelty, which to be honest is what you feel like sometimes.

As is usual you’ve just woken up in a COLD SWEAT after having another NIGHTMARE. They’ve been getting a little less frequent, which is good, but it’s always the same - you’re back trapped under that HELMET. This is in part your own fault - until Arceus found out you were doing it and took it away, whenever you got scared of your own power you’d put it back on and hide in a dark corner somewhere. He tasked Cresselia and Darkrai to put a stop to the nightmares, but for some reason - you really don’t want to know why - your DREAMSCAPE doesn’t exist to them. It’s just you this happens to. Mewtwo has dreams, Genesect has dreams, even Magearna has dreams (though admittedly they are pre-programmed). They can see all of their dreamscapes. But not yours.

There’s a little grounding for reality, though. You can hear MELMETAL and TAPU FINI quietly talking outside your DEN.

What will you do?

> Silvally: Get a drink.
That sounds like an excellent idea.

One side of your den is filled with books. They’re not stolen, at least you don’t think they are. You mostly get by with donations from the Tapu, who seem to have made it their mission to supply you with the damaged books the island libraries would otherwise throw away. The other half is your living space. Grass bed, little river for running water, food supply. And… this.

This container carries your RKS MEMORIES. Not your actual memories. They’re more like little discs that allow you to take on whatever type is programmed onto them. You don’t like using them. If that was all they did, that would be fine, but it transpires that they are ACTUAL MEMORIES. Just not yours. With one of them plugged into your head you are literally remembering an event in somebody else’s life, somebody who was that type. Sometimes… it can be a little overwhelming. You’re not going to go into any more detail than that.

You were getting a drink. Right. It’s nice and cool. While you’re at it you splash a little onto your face, not that it helps. Even without the helmet your eyes are covered by some sort of superglass lenses.

The drink does make you feel a little better.

There’s one more thing you need to take care of before you join Fini and Melmetal outside. It’s very important. Arceus told you to do it.

On this wall there’s a mirror. There’s a Pokémon in it. It’s a MANMADE CHIMERA.

> Silvally: You are not fake.
It’s pieces of other Pokémon that have NO RIGHT TO FIT TOGETHER.

> Silvally: You are not fake!
It’s an EXPERIMENT made to SUPPLANT THE ALMIGHTY.

> Silvally: YOU ARE NOT FAKE!
It’s YOU.

You are a living, breathing Pokémon. Your creation was your birth. Your emotions are real. You have your power under control. Nobody is ever taking any of that away from you.

Your name is SILVALLY.

And you are NOT FAKE.

Breathe.

Inhale.

Exhale.

In. Out.

The Pokémon in the mirror smiles.

Now you’re ready to face the day.

Judging from the light level outside the islands are around about half an hour away from sunrise. That’s pretty good. Usually you wake up at ridiculous hours in the morning. You take a quick moment to wash then step outside.

> Silvally: Switch on computer.
You like using your computer. It’s a very valuable resource! You’re always careful to check sources though, and even more so when you stumble upon articles related to yourself. Unlike many of the other legendaries a lot of information about you isn’t public domain. That said, you do edit cautiously when you find misinformation about your BROTHERS. Technically speaking they’re your IDENTICAL CLONES. There are four Silvally in existence and you were all created the same way. You don’t have much contact with the others, though. They’ve all got human trainers and they’re very happy with them and you’re very happy for them.

You are however, to your knowledge at least, the only one of them who identifies as female.

As soon as the computer finishes booting up, the message from Mewtwo pops up immediately, and you quickly begin the download. It’ll take a few hours. Wow, the files must be big.

Huh? Someone must have just noticed you logging in and is messaging you.

> Silvally: Answer.

It’s incredibly easy to get distracted by the computer. You make sure there’s nothing else amiss that requires immediate attention and then head back outside.

> Silvally: Go back inside.
Wow, it it is all about the talking today. Maybe it’s that sort of game? You’re not particularly good at text adventures though. You’re more of a solo puzzler kind of gamer, when you do gaming that is. You probably would like visual novels too but those tend to have branching paths and you just reach the first choice and get paralyzed with indecision and never touch the game again. There has to be a happy ending too, you can’t stand—

Huh?

Why is there a VULPIX in the middle of your den?

It doesn’t appear to be doing anything, it’s just… sitting there. Staring at… uh… oh, is that an empty captchalogue card? You guess you probably left it there yesterday. Not that special. Um.

> Silvally: Say hello.
You attempt to greet the Vulpix.

The ice fox jumps several feet in the air in surprise when you speak then darts forward, snatches the card, and absconds through a window.

Okay?

It’s not like you particularly needed that card… you have seven in your Sylladex already. But you don’t quite know what the Vulpix could even do with it. As far as you’re aware only the legendaries and mythicals have Sylladices in the first place. Weird. But not particularly vital, so you’re not going to worry about it too much. It’s not like they’re going to accidentally captchalogue themselves.

You hop back in front of your computer and open up the Alola region memo.

You can’t help but smile to yourself. You’ve got great friends. Sure, they can be silly, Necrozma is a handful to deal with, and Zeraora has a hair-trigger temper and frightens you sometimes, but you’d never change them. You’re sure that whatever this game is, you’re going to do great in it.

Then you hear a commotion from Tapu Fini and Melmetal outside, and proving that he wasn’t paying attention at all, TAPU KOKO swoops in with a klaxon horn to wake you up.

Nope. Never change them at all.

> [Resume Sequence II: JOHTO] ===~~>

> Enter name.
Your name is SUICUNE. You are the THIRD BEAST OF JOHTO, the NORTH WIND, and sometimes it feels like THE ONLY SANE MEMBER OF YOUR TRIO. Between RAIKOU, who’s too lazy to emerge from your father’s basem*nt, and ENTEI, who makes himself so busy that he never has time to talk to either of you, you’re kind of STUCK.

Things used to be different. You have fond memories of Raikou being the fun older brother who always got you into trouble, and Entei being the aloof older brother who waded in and got you out of it. But sadly those days are LONG GONE. You are forever doomed to be the youngest sibling who not only DOES HER JOB but DOES IT CONSISTENTLY (as opposed to Entei who just blazes through his tasks as fast as possible so he can move on to the next one). Your pleas for sanity have fallen on deaf ears.

When you’re not CLEANING UP AFTER YOUR BROTHERS though you enjoy a pasttime of your own creation that you’ve named SURFACE TENSION ART. Mostly this consists of RUNNING AROUND IN CIRCLES ON A LAKE fast enough that you create intricate patterns with the ripples your paws create. Though from water level you don’t get to appreciate the finished product that much, you recruit a local wild Pokémon to carry up a CAMERA and TAKE PICTURES. Some of those pictures are pinned with NeverMeltIcicles to your CAVE WALL. Staring at them is ODDLY RELAXING. Of course, the finished product usually only lasts a few seconds before another local wild Pokémon who’s not so amenable to your presence decides to go for a swim.

The other downside is that it sometimes makes you so DIZZY that you lose the ability to walk on water and FALL IN and end up smelling like WET QUOTE UNQUOTE DOG for hours. You suffer for your art.

Closer to home you maintain an unofficial role as JOHTO LORE HISTORIAN. While the title seems to be something that’s more up CELEBI’s alley, she hops in and out of time too frequently to stop and SMELL THE METAPHORICAL ROSELIAS. You’ve taken it upon yourself to KEEP A DETAILED ACCOUNT OF THE REGION’S HISTORY. It’s not perfect, there are gaps, and nothing back before you and your brothers were born, but you strive to keep it updated nonetheless. Admittedly this has more to do with your FATHER, HO-OH, who you suspect to be approaching the final days of his cycle, and as such is going A BIT SENILE. Your records help him keep track of things he should be remembering.

It’s not a nice job but somebody needs to do it.

At the moment you’re REVIEWING THOSE VERY RECORDS while impatiently waiting for your game download to finish. Entei turned up a little while ago and started his own download, but then left the memo again, probably to avoid talking to you. He does that a lot. You’re… SIGH… used to it by now.

Your Poképal handle is crystallineSlush, which is an accurate description of the CONSISTENCY OF YOUR MANE.

What will you do?

> Suicune: Status report.
There’s… not an awful lot to report on, if you’re honest. It’s about 1:20AM, your download has about quarter of an hour to go, and the situation in the Johto memo is no different than it has been since Entei arrived. Lugia is still busy, your Father is still chasing your brother, and Tethera is still lurking, though she hasn’t said anything for a while. And who knows what Celebi’s doing. You don’t want to know is what. She’s a pest and if she’s keeping herself occupied then she’s keeping herself out of trouble.

You go over to your cave entrance and look out over the nearby forest. It’s very quiet tonight, exceptionally so. If you didn’t know better, you’d say the world was drawing a breath, holding it in anticipation. Okay, fair, it’s not every day of the week that Arceus activates Autopilot so you can all play a game that you know next to nothing about, but still. Everything is finely balanced. The world’s been like that for a long time, and it will continue to be so for a long time to come.

A still pond, waiting for a single pebble to skip across it.

The human rumor mill says that you and your brothers all live in the same place, in the tower. While that used to be true, you and Entei moved out into places of your own years ago. At top speed you’re probably about twenty minutes away from each other. Raikou claimed he was doing the same, but just moved all his stuff into the basem*nt instead, and Ho-oh either just doesn’t care enough to do anything about it or keeps forgetting that he’s there. You did have a plan once to get him to move out, but it required Entei’s cooperation and he wouldn’t even give you the time of day.

You’ve heard about how the bird trios of Kanto and Galar fight with each other. That would be an IMPROVEMENT.

There’s the Poképal message alert. Too much to hope it’s Entei?

> Suicune: Answer.
It’s not Entei.

It’s the same the world over. Siblings. A universal pain. You can think of only three Pokémon with relations who actually get along with each other - Reshiram and Zekrom, who are basically more like two halves of the same whole anyway, and Giratina, who only gets along well with his brother and sister by dint of being unable to comprehend why he wouldn’t. Everyone else, NOPE.

While you’re thinking about it, you idly reopen the log of an old memo. At one point Palkia decided to open an ‘Aggrieved Sister Council’ for each of you to air your grievances. It was a good idea in CONCEPT but the execution just showed that not even the various sisters got on well with each other either. It only lasted the one session.

It all went downhill from there.

Considering that the conversation took place about two weeks before Palkia and Kyogre broke up, maybe it was a good thing that the latter wasn’t part of it.

> Suicune: Check download.
Five minutes, less. Only a few minutes to kill. Not enough time to go out and do something, too much time to just sit and stare at the progress bar. Doing that would practically guarantee it to hang at one minute remaining for the next few hours.

You scan through the Poképal user list, seeing if there’s anything interesting. It’s been related to you that Unova’s got some sort of power problem, so everybody is offline there with the exception of Meloetta and Victini. By now everybody in Alola’s woken up. Both Raikou and Ho-oh are still offline, still running/flying according to Latios. In Raikou’s absence you suppose you’ll just have to play the game as it comes. It’s going to be you and Entei up first regardless. Last time you checked everyone else from the region still had at least an hour to go.

You don’t particularly like the prospect of jumping into something like this completely blind, but it can’t be helped—

Entei is messaging you.

> Suicune: Answer Entei.

> Legendtrapped: Predictably perform a character switch psyche-out.
You’re the boss!

> [Begin Sequence VI: KALOS] ===>

> Enter name.
Your name is XERNEAS. You are the LIFE OF KALOS, the BEARER OF IMMORTALITY, and on some occasions you are known as THAT TREE THAT WASN’T THERE YESTERDAY.

Also for the THIRD TIME TODAY you have a FLETCHLING STUCK IN YOUR ANTLERS, but we’ll get to that.

Though you are PURE FAIRY-TYPE, your true passion lies in HORTICULTURE. Were you at home (which you are currently NOT) we would see that it’s quite cluttered with BONSAI TREES, amongst which you have scattered several small MODELS OF POKÉMON. Essentially you are growing YOUR OWN FOREST, just on a VERY SMALL SCALE. You tried doing this with a full-size forest once. It worked well for about fifty years but then YVELTAL came to see how it was going on, SNEEZED, and killed the entire thing. And that was how everyone found out that the giant death bird IS ALLERGIC TO POLLEN.

Despite your region’s reputation, you actually get along with Yveltal quite well. She’s appropriately apologetic about anything of yours she accidentally kills, and you’re appropriately apologetic about anything of hers that you accidentally revive. You don’t really have problems with the other legendaries of Kalos either, aside from HOOPA being a GENERAL NUISANCE and every time that VOLCANION sneaks into your house and uses your forest as the terrain for his TRAIN SETS. ZYGARDE is ZYGARDE, he defies all explanation, and DIANCIE…

To be honest, you don’t get Rock-types at all. Or Steel-types, for that matter. Look, you deal in ORGANIC LIFE, not whatever weird biomineral they’re all made out of. Trying to understand them just gives you a headache and sometimes you just try to pretend they don’t exist. Somewhat understandably some others use this as an excuse to label you as A BIT OF A BIGOT. It’s not like you don’t WANT to understand them. You’d like nothing more! But for some reason people got upset when you tried to disassemble Magearna to see how she worked.

Kalos is a bit cut-off at the moment, because your POKEPAL NETWORK is currently DOWN FOR MAINTENANCE. It was acting up for a while and then got worse, so GIRATINA flew up from Sinnoh to fix it, and that meant TAKING THE WHOLE THING OFFLINE so he could diagnose the problem. You’re perfectly fine with this. It gives you an excuse to stay away from the computer for an extended period of time. It’s unhealthy to be glued to it for so long. You do have a HEADSET in your Sylladex which you could equip at any time and use to call up somebody else, it works on a different system, but you’re just out on a WALK. You don’t need to talk to anyone to enjoy yourself.

Though this does lead to the other problem, vis-a-vis POKÉMON STUCK IN YOUR ANTLERS. You wouldn’t think it’s terribly difficult for the little things to extricate themselves, but this FLETCHLING has been there for about ten minutes and shows no signs of being able to leave. BIRDS, BUGS, if it’s small, you’ve probably had one stuck there. You’ve just had to learn to deal with it.

Your Poképal handle is barkNecessarily, and you xpeak with a bit of a xtrong Kaloxian axxent.

It’s a wonderful late afternoon on this, the FIFTH OF AUGUST, 2020. The forest is alive with evening life, there’s a pleasant breeze blowing through the trees, and EVERYTHING IS FINE. You certainly don’t have any knowledge of any sort of game that may or may not be being finalized around about now.

What will you do?

> Xerneas: Make like a tree and leaf.
That was terrible. It’s not nice having your disability made fun of.

Yes, occasionally when you USE UP ALL YOUR LIFE ENERGY, you TURN INTO A TREE TO RECOVER. You have no control over this, although thankfully with Arceus’ intervention sleeping for a millenia is a thing of the past. At most it takes you about NINE HOURS to fully recover, which is just about enough time to confuse any humans who COULD’VE SWORN THAT THIS TREE WASN’T HERE BEFORE, but not so much that SOMEBODY DECIDES TO CHOP YOU DOWN. Though that did happen. Once. You’re not entirely sure what you actually did, but when you woke up you immediately SMACKED INTO A TREE YOU COULD’VE SWORN WASN’T THERE BEFORE and gave yourself a concussion.

You’ve been reliably informed though that the human involved went on to found one of Kalos’ most famous TREE NURSERIES so you’ll count it as a win.

> Xerneas: Talk to Fletchling.
He’s not much of a talker. You asked him how his family was, he said they’re fine. You asked him how life was treating him, he said he was fine. You asked him if he could get off, and he said he was stuck. You can’t reach up and help him out so you’re just leaving him there for the moment. When you eventually get tired of it you’ll find a tree to rub against and dislodge him. This is usually how it goes. That, or find Zygarde to help. He’s busy with Giratina though.

…oh hey, he managed to unstick himself and fly away. That’s great! Maybe it’ll be easier for others to—

Huh.

The air here feels a little thick. You’re right on the edge of the region, nowhere particularly special. There’s something… unnatural here. You must investigate.

It seems the closer you get to the region’s border, the thicker the air becomes, and the more difficult it becomes to go any further. You notice that the wild Pokémon are definitely avoiding this belt. You’re not sure what this is, but it can’t be good news. You back away, head along the border a bit, and try again. Same effect. Are you… are you trapped in the region? Not that you’d want to leave, but…

You carefully pick up a BROKEN BRANCH from the floor, making sure NOT to captchalogue it, and throw it towards the border.

It gets stuck in the air halfway.

This definitely isn’t good news. You should report this.

You decaptchalogue your HEADSET from your Sylladex using your GARDENS FETCH MODUS. It’s a pretty simple modus - items you collect are planted, and you have to wait for them to grow before using them again. You’re just about to start the call when you notice something else that doesn’t belong. In the tree above you there’s a splash of purple amongst the green. Given that all of the native wild Pokémon seem to have abandoned the area, this is unusual. You should be able to dislodge it if you… just…

You give the tree a SOLID KICK.

You have encountered A WILD SNORING MESPRIT.

> End of Act 1, Part 3

Chapter 4: A1P4: I Misclicked

Chapter Text

Act 1: The Worst Idea Of All Time
Part 4: I Misclicked
======================================>

> [Resume Sequence II: JOHTO] ===~~>

> Suicune: Be Entei.
What? That doesn’t make any sense. You’re already Entei.

> Entei: Finish downloading already.

> Entei: Start client program.
You start the sbomie_client.exe file with little difficulty.

What the f*ck is this?

The screen that pops up is a little… basic, just white text on black. Sbomie_Beta_0.0.1. Then a stupid ASCII logo. ‘Awaiting Server Connection’. Everything else is just technical gobbledegook. You really doubt that anybody understands what it means.

It changes slightly. Now it says ‘Server player connected. Press [ENTER] to continue.’

> Entei: Press [ENTER].
You press ENTER.

Here we would no doubt be treated to an interesting flash loading screen set to the first 71 seconds of the Homestuck Fan Musicians track Jungle #3, if the author was willing to actually put his animation degree to good use and spend a lot of time and effort for relatively little payoff. But he’s not, so we just have to take his word for it that it’s really cool and unique.

You have no idea what any of that meant. You just sit there staring at the loading screen in a sort of stupor for a minute or so.

Then… nothing happens.

> Suicune: What’s going on?
You’re not quite sure. The loading screen finished, the Sbomie logo appeared, and now you appear to be looking at a very realistic representation of the interior of Entei’s cave. See, there he is, standing in front of the computer. A menu has popped up with various options, but the only one that seems to work at the moment is labelled ‘DEPLOY PREFAB’.

> Suicune: Deploy prefab.
You select the tool and the camera zooms out, now showing the area outside your brother’s cave. An area around the cave mouth is highlighted in an odd pattern.

You click, and… whoa! There’s a house there now! It’s very, um, blocky, and it doesn’t appear to be furnished, but it’s definitely a house.

You can only blink in surprise as the Entei on your screen turns around and walks over to the cave mouth. He stares at the building for a moment, then returns to the computer.

> Suicune: Examine options.
You have a list of dropdown options. The ‘deploy prefab’ tool seems to have completely vanished. Instead you’ve got the tools SELECT, REVISE, DEPLOY, PHERNALIA REGISTRY, GRIST CACHE, EXPLORE ATHENEUM, and ALCHEMY EXCURSUS.

Some of those don’t sound like real words.

You might as well go through them in order. Pressing SELECT changes your mouse cursor into a big round blue 3D shape that’s sort of like the Sbomie logo. Judging from the way your brother is eyeing it as you move it around it also has presence in the real world. This is actually a little amusing! It’s funny to watch Entei reacting to you moving the cursor around like he’s the character in a video game you’re playing.

It appears this tool can be used to move objects around. You easily pick up a small rock that Entei left in the middle of his floor and move it out of the way. You know he would have ended up tripping over it at some point otherwise. Is there a limit to what you can move? With ease you select Entei’s computer, then the pile of brush he sleeps on which somehow is one solid unit, then some of the junk he’s shoved to one side. All of that seems very movable.

Then you try to select Entei, and he flashes red for a moment before attempting to attack the cursor with Fire Blast, which doesn’t affect the cursor at all but does blow a hole in his wall.

Next, REVISE. The cursor for this tool is almost the same, except the various squares of the Sbomie logo are arranged into some sort of wave rather than being flat. It’s very aesthetically pleasing. But what could it revise? It takes you a few clicks around before you accidentally click and drag over part of the house you put down earlier and the building… expands? So it revises house layouts? Is this the Sims or something?

DEPLOY make the cursor go vertical but doesn’t seem to do anything by itself.

The PHERNALIA REGISTRY has a further drop-down menu with four objects, listed as the CRUXTRUDER, TOTEM LATHE, ALCHEMITER, and a PRE-PUNCHED CARD. More made up words. You’ll come back to this in a minute.

GRIST CACHE is… um… hold on… crap. Currency management. Ugh. It looks like deploying the prefab structure didn’t drain any of this ‘BUILD GRIST’ but revising one of the walls did. You… guess it makes sense? It would be easy to drain your currency supply before establishing a way to gather more. Especially for somebody like, say, Raikou.

You don’t really know how it’s going to work for him bearing in mind he and your father live at opposite ends of the same building, but you’re sure Mewtwo’s thought about that.

Finally, the EXPLORE ATHENEUM and ALCHEMY EXCURSUS options both drop down blank lists. You guess these will do something later?

> Entei: Explore house.
This is all very confusing and vaguely disconcerting.

This building is… what’s that word Heatran used to use… very POSTMODERN. You think that’s it. All straight lines and no curves anywhere. You can’t possibly imagine why it’s necessary, though. You’re not moving out of your cave.

What’s in here?

…this appears to be a BATHROOM. It appears to be fully equipped with a BATHTUB, a TOILET, a SINK, and a TOWEL RACK, which is very odd considering there’s no other furniture anywhere.

You turn on the bathtub tap.

You have plumbing now, apparently.

Suddenly the whole house shakes slightly. What’s your sister up to now? You leave the room and— huh. Was this here a minute ago? The room outside the bathroom is now occupied by a large ‘device’. You don’t know what the heck this thing does.

While you’re staring at it the ground shakes twice more. Perhaps you’d better return to your computer and ask Suicune what she’s doing.

> Entei: Retrieve portable communication device.
It’s actually more of a HEADSET. You threw it away in a corner some time ago. Here it is.

You cycle it through your Sylladex using your standard shortform password of the letter A and onto your head.

> Entei: Explore devices in a cautious manner.
Caution is for time-wasters. You don’t waste time, dammit. You get on with things.

> Entei: So get on with it!
Alright, alright already!

> Suicune: It can’t hurt to check, right?

> Entei: Examine Cruxtruder.
This is the thing your sister put on the ground floor. It looks like a big tube surrounded by useless gadgets that are only there to look cool and don’t actually do anything. There are also four blank screens. There’s a little wheel on one side of the tube, which moves a little when you push it with a paw, but then it gets stuck on something. It seems there’s something inside the tube, and the wheel is probably how it’s supposed to be removed, but there’s a lid which is jammed on tight.

You’ve got an idea to deal with that but no doubt your sister will have some strong words to say if you break it so you’re just going to leave it alone for now.

Your next stop is the TOTEM LATHE, that gadget that Suicune dropped in the room next to the useless bathroom. Okay, yeah, you could see that, you guess. You’ve seen enough pictures of Zekrom’s woodworking tools, you know what a lathe looks like. You’re pretty sure it’s supposed to have blades of some description though.

In the front of the device is a slot. The size is familiar to you somehow, but you can’t place it at the moment.

There’s a bit of a CLUNK from the direction of the bathroom.

You watch impassively out a window as the floating blue cursor drags the uprooted toilet through thin air and knocks down a tree.

> Entei: Ascend.
Why did she put this thing on the roof? Whatever it is, it’s certainly proving popular with some of the local Hoothoot, who all flee when you approach.

The last big gadget is a big platform, with an odd folded arm sticking out of one corner. As Suicune said, there is also an item on top of it. A PRE-PUNCHED CARD, you think she said? It’s definitely a captchalogue card, and it’s definitely full of holes. You’re not sure about PUNCHED though. It looks like it’s been CLIPPED.

You captchalogue it, and… huh. You can’t get the item out of it either. This card is a complete item which is now nested on its own captchalogue card. You take it back out again. It’s difficult to make out through the holes, but it looks like… some kind of building? Rendered entirely in brown.

> Entei: Take card to lathe.
That’s what it was! That slot in the lathe is exactly the same size as a captchalogue card! Emboldened by your sudden epiphany, you return downstairs and insert the PRE-PUNCHED CARD into the slot on the TOTEM LATHE. The lathe deploys an array of CHISELS. So that’s where those went. But it’s not like you’ve got a bit of wood that’ll fit in it. That’s what you make totems out of, right?

It seems you’ve now exhausted all possible interactions. You don’t know what the thing on the roof is supposed to do, you haven’t got anything to put in this lathe device, and the thing downstairs is stuck and/or broken.

With what?

Okay, you were considering using your teeth. You’re a little concerned though that when you get it unstuck it’s going to fly off and hit you in the face.

You return downstairs to the Cruxthinger and look at the lid. Yeah, that’s in there tight. This is going to take some work.

Thi— no, that won’t fit. What about— no, definitely not. You could try— that idea’s insane and you’re ashamed for even thinking about it.

Frustrated, you swipe at the lid with a move you made up yourself, FLAME SCRATCH.

It just comes right off, something brown and cylindrical shoots out of the tube and punches a hole in the ceiling, and a glowy ball of… stuff suddenly appears.

It hurts your eyes to look at. Augh.

> Entei: Look down.
You look down and… huh. The blank screens are showing numbers now.

[00:08:08]
[00:08:07]
[00:08:06]
[00:08:05]

It appears to be a countdown.

This isn’t unnerving at all.

> [Resume Sequence III: HOENN] ====-@@>

> Enter name.
Your name is DEOXYS. You are, plain and simply, AN ALIEN. You have been MAROONED ON THIS PLANET for AN INCREDIBLY LONG TIME, ever since the ASTEROID that was your PRIMARY MODE OF TRANSPORT had to engage an unexpected EMERGENCY LANDING. Arceus was very upset about it. In your defense, in your entirely ambiguous culture nobody minds being pancaked into the ground by a rock travelling at thousands of miles an hour, and you didn’t really have much of a choice as to landing zones.

It’s hard to tell sometimes what He was more upset about, being LANDED ON, the PROPERTY DAMAGE you did to his planet with the impact crater, or the subsequent EXTINCTION of some early Pokémon species. At the very least you have made up for the last one by SUBTLY ASSISTING THE HUMANS in RESURRECTING THEM. Or, you know, you come up with the ideas, and then Rayquaza anonymously drops them into human scientific journals, because you can’t spell for sh*t.

HUMANS absolutely fascinate you. They have so many ways to take the simplest of things and make them INCREDIBLY COMPLICATED! Take communication for example. The way you do it is incredibly easy - you just instantly transmit what you mean and whoever you’re conversing with gets it instantly. Humans though - and quite a lot of Pokémon, to be honest - feel they need to make complicated movements with their mouths, tongues, throats and lungs to produce an effect technically known as SPEAKING. You really don’t know why humans are basically the only living things on the planet which aren’t classified as Pokémon. Everything else is, so why not?

You’re also particularly intrigued by how humans view SPACE. Again they overcomplicate it, and rather than just going up there to find out what it’s like they just FANTASIZE ABOUT IT a lot and make a surprising amount of TV SHOWS about it. Like STAR TREK. STAR TREK is very complicated indeed. You don’t get why none of the characters in that show travel around in asteroids like sensible people. You have found much interest in the one called RED DWARF. There’s something very amusing about a group of people trapped on a ship with each other slowly driving each other mad. You don’t quite understand how a Litten plus three million years of evolution ended up with something resembling a human more than an INCINEROAR, but you suppose they wouldn’t have been able to ‘talk’ to them then.

Recently you’re not supposed to have been watching it, because apparently people don’t like it when you call them SMEGHEADS.

Right now you’re about to do something peculiar. A few days ago you received a communication from ZYGARDE, with a message that you were not to open until exactly two minutes ago. He told you that you were to follow the instructions exactly. So… okay? You can follow instructions.

Your Poképal handle is nebulaDiscursor, and u dnt rly get y speling is mportnt.

What will you do?

> Deoxys: Execute instructions.
Let’s see here…

You’re not entirely sure what all that was meant to accomplish, but it worked!

There is a fourth step, which is kind of strange. It has two parts. Step 4(1), wait ten minutes, which you can do, you guess. Step 4(2) says Don’t Panic, which… you guess you can also do? Is something panic-worthy about to happen?

> Deoxys: Examine room.
You’re really very proud of your living space. You sort of carved it out of various meteor offshoots that Rayquaza keeps dropping for you. Okay he doesn’t drop them specifically for you, this is just where he chucks them to be rid of them, but you’re convinced that someday you’ll find some spaceship parts and be able to assemble a way off this planet.

You assembled your TV out of an old robot. You’re sure the humans didn’t mind, they had plenty of them, and they did all go a bit mad. You had to get Giratina to set you up with this fantastic human invention called NETFLIX so you could get your shows, though. Again they made something that should have been simple very complicated. You have some POSTERS, though you’ve mainly just picked them for their designs rather than what they say. You’ve been informed that the one with the happy Zigzagoon on it is an advert for some Pokémon food, for example.

Eating is another thing you don’t get and think is too complicated. What is even the point of a digestive system when you can just separate out the nutritious elements immediately during consumption? Why doesn’t everybody do that? This is such a backwards planet, honestly. As far as you’re concerned there’s only one thing this planet has done right, and that’s RED DWARF.

And COTTON CANDY.

Okay, two things.

> [Resume Sequence II: JOHTO] ===~~>

> Entei: Go upstairs again.
Have you mentioned how much you’re starting to dislike stairs? You usually traverse great heights by jumping, which is something you do very well. Having to use stairs just feels humiliating somehow.

The ball thing is following you. So much for your sister keeping an eye on it.

When you get to the floor with the lathe on it, something out the window catches your attention. There’s something in the night sky. Is that… huh, a shooting star. You won’t do such a childish thing as making a wish, because no matter where you are in the world wishing on a star triggers Jirachi immensely and he’ll interpret it in the most literal way possible and you’ll end up drowning in noodles again. Instead you’ll just watch for a minute. It’s fairly bright, which means Rayquaza will be destroying it any moment now.

Any moment now.

Any… moment… now.

You blink.

It doesn’t look like any other shooting star you’ve seen. You could swear that it’s heading straight for you.

No, that’s impossible. The chances of something like that hitting you directly are so small that— oh, sh*t.

[06:34]
[06:33]
[06:32]
[06:31]

…This is a troubling development.

> End of Act 1, Part 4