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Come on, this is... Look, we already knew familiars are partly based on our energy or spirit or memories or whatever the fuck. What exactly does this change? There's still nothing biological involved. You can't just say we're 'parents' in some new sense now just because the stone's some kind of...

Dave nodded slowly. "Right. I'll swing by tomorrow with something from the Cauldron." He paused. "Guess you should avoid the extra-hot sauce. Do Substitutes eat?" On the one hand, the idea that Squiggly'd basically been some kind of unholy sperm cell was disconcerting, but on the other hand...

Dave's gut clenched. The thought of Substitutes being left to just run around independently, forks of his psyche, until the inevitable moment their fragile bodies were destroyed and nothing remained, was somehow worse than them all simultaneously disappearing. "Do you want to stay in the...

Dave opened his mouth and then stopped. There were obvious answers. The way that the notion of discrimination hadn't even computed for Puff, holy shit. Souls and afterlives? Only if Soda was to be believed souls actually existed back home, too, and were just conveniently undetectable and...

Dave watched Soda apprehensively. He didn't like the idea of the real Soda still out there obliviously believing in his apocalypse plan one bit, and couldn't be entirely convinced that him destabilizing as a result of learning the truth was worse than him going on in his delusion. On the other...

Dave's gut stung with the absolute worst feeling about this. "Or it's fucking Soda's Arceus."

Dave raised an eyebrow. "If you say so."

Dave narrowed his eyes at Giovanni. "You didn't answer the question. Did you corrupt him with Blacklight and so on, or was he always like that?"

"Why? I mean, they deserve rights like anyone else, no matter how much trouble it is. What kind of question is that?"

Dave looked back over at Soda, who seemed to have completely zoned out of the conversation. He took a step toward him, speaking quieter. "Hey. Soda. You know anything about what your other self meant by that? Knowing what makes Blacklight Mewtwo tick?"

1. Tell us about your world. The QftLverse is roughly an interpretation of the Pokémon anime universe, with a lot of bits of worldbuilding accumulated over sixteen years of writing my trainerfic The Quest for the Legends and its offshoots. The anime is broadly canon to it, except for any bits...

Dave watched as Flesh pulled Soda into some kind of embrace, gaze lingering on him for a moment, but then turned back to Diyem and to the screen showing Giovanni. "Well, what are the odds it's just that Mewtwo, as an autonomous being? When you say it followed your orders alone, was it literally...

The description of a stained-glass mind held together with spider silk made Dave’s skin crawl. He glanced over at Brisa, the simultaneously sickened and frightened expression etched on her face even as she couldn’t look away. Fucking psychics. Soda was having some kind of goddamn breakdown and...

Dave looked at Owen, at Soda, at Breaker. Well, she sure could mess with a bunch of heads. Or any sufficiently powerful Psychic, like Karat. Or... omnipresent dark emotional void Overseer therapist Bean. "Soda, we just want to figure out what the hell is going on and what happened to your...

Dave looked sharply at Owen. "Wait, what? How'd you figure it was him?" Was he implying the real Soda'd manipulated his and his own substitutes' memories? Had he always been talking to substitutes? God, what the fuck.

Under any other circumstances, his denial would be comical. As it was, there was a growing pit in Dave's stomach. He exhaled slowly. "Hey. Soda. Nobody thinks you just fucking forgot, all right? Something's fishy here. Other people have been having their memories erased in all this; maybe...

Dave tilted his head. Could Puff just... not wrap his mind around bigotry at all? What a fucking concept. "They are functionally human. But in my world people tend to look for excuses to de- to take certain groups and decide they're dangerous, or lesser, or don't belong, for whatever bullshit...

Dave narrowed his eyes at Soda. "You said you're a Substitute. Were you there? Or are you going off what the real one told you happened? Is that why you said you didn't remember how your argument with her went the morning after she attacked you? Was it you who told me that?"

Dave nodded slowly, heart hammering as Soda lashed out at Joule. "Did she or did she not want to ascend?"

Dave gritted his teeth, his gaze staying on Soda. "Okay, well, maybe you're more willing to listen to me. You told me about how you fought with your partner over Arceus not ascending her too. What exactly were you fighting about?"