Act Ⅰ-Ⅱ
Venia Silente
For your ills, I prescribe a cat.
Hello everyone, I'm here with a new story about a game that deserves more love. That's right: some more new content for the average Gates to Infinity enjoyer!
This is yet another "Special Episode" of sorts that I have been working on for a good while and has had quite an... accidented development story. But at least the first part is ready now! Originally intended to be a oneshot, this will be posted in two-shot format instead much like Forever Catch was. It follows Gamañel, my (everyone now: our) DLC Attendant Foongus from Making the World Go 'Round after he has had a hard day at work due to a crossover with JoshtheWriter's "Pokémon:Legends Sinjoh".
This story is reference-heavy and mostly follows the events and timeline of the game "from the outside" , but those references are marked and links to related material are made available. Due to the lack of BBCode support in the engine, the reference markers might not look good right now, but I'll be in the work of raising a support ticket for that and will update the thread according to the results (forenotice: be on the lookout of support for my Furigana request for the upcoming chapter 2). Still, this should be no impedement upon the ability to read the story.
But enough words, time to read: have at ye!
Gamañel stopped for a moment to slurp on a berry and try to swallow the bitter experiences from back at work, right in front of his store, to boot. He turned to take a look at the remains of the embroideries and trinkets he would have usually sold to his clientèle.
The Foongus narrowed his eyes.
The trinkets; not his trinkets. He still did not understand well what had happened, but what had happened definitively was not part of his 9‑to‑5... at least, he seriously hoped it wasn't. Considering that he was still the one who had to clean everything up after weird gates suddenly spawned among his gates and then everything caught otherworldly fire.[sup][ref][/sup]
"...Just what kind of worlds were those, anyway?” he asked to no one in particular.
Gamañel's trinkets were of the most peculiar kind. Much like Espeon and Umbreon's magic card back at town, Gamañel's ones could open paths to separate, sometimes unexplored worlds.
Yet the similarities ended there, for Gamañel knew more about the fabric of the multiverse and what even meant for worlds to be connected than the cute little cat and dog could ever achieve with their cute little tabletop game.
Gamañel suddenly had an idea. He hopped up to his cart and quickly examined the surroundings: there was mostly sparse vegetation around him and nothing that looked like a cave or any other protected space. Just a creek and wooden bridge ahead, and the trail heading further to the south.
Gamañel had not had the time to inspect the trinkets back at the town; certainly, not while the entire pile of them was spontaneously spawning and burning into ashes. Not willing to wait until he got home to find out more, Gamañel hopped down and pushed his cart to beneath the nearest tree, just short of the bridge.
He took a very brief rest and hopped back up the cart, to check on the destroyed goods.
On top of the pile was a small envelope, formerly sealed with a now broken "N" seal. Merely looking at it brought the Foongus some feelings of disgust. «Just what I needed on top of this foreclosure notice, too,» he reminded himself grinding his figurative teeth.
Nothing he could do about that for now, he knew that. So the best thing Gamañel could do would be to mind the weird events of today.
He picked one of the tapestries at random. Many of the tapestries were completely burned to ashes, but some pieces had survived here and there if only in the form of small unburned strands and pages of wool and hide. The various AZTEC-style patterns[sup][ref][/sup] were something that Gamañel was intimately familiar with, but between the strangeness of the patterns that had popped up recently and the damage done to the various impressions from the fire, he was not sure he could pick anything useful out of them right now.
Still, he gave it a look. The marker square at the centre and the two principal layers going outwards were damaged, so he tried and interpreted it by ear. He could read very generic details about the nature of a world, but not much else, at least nothing of relevance at the moment.
Gamañel let out a dissatisfied harumph and put it back where it belonged, on the pile of Things That Should Not Be.
Trying another charred decoration, Gamañel was weirded out by the "information-fat", square patterns on the edges. Information on how to enter that world was scarce, but in comparison information on how to describe the world was aplenty and complicated. Here Gamañel raised an eyebrow at how meta it all went, as the information strands included instructions such as to "cut selection" to separate landmass of a world into a "layer", fill layer with a "color bucket", apply a "transparency mask" to layer, select layer for "trigonometric deformation", select "CMYK profile" and then, at the very end, a "print" selection pointing to a rectangular map object.
Gamañel rubbed his temple at the thought.
«What kind of backards Kecleon would want to print on a Mercator projection?»
Truly, in such a print the arctic zones would widen to egregious levels. Gamañel could only imagine how much extra bizarrely the Great Glacier area would look in such a map. Not at all like decentmap projections such as Winkel-Tripel, Gamañel thought with a snicker, or like the ornamental asymmetry of the AZTEC codes that adorned his wares... when they did not spontaneously combust out of control.
Gamañel decided to discard such meta, very distracting lines of thought for later and focus instead on the pieces of theorems and equations that made the tendrils of the code. As far as he could decipher, they apparently described the energy conversion process of a strange device, perhaps a weapon system. Gamañel raised an eyebrow; the scale had to be wrong, these numbers... from what he knew, only creatures like the mirage dragons could ever try and develop a machine of this kind, at the least capable of (if he was reading the magnitudes alright) casting a planet off its orbit in a single stroke.
Gamañel lifted two or three charred tapestries, put this tapestry under the others. Best Lake Afar or Dragons Gate never find out about this kind of world, the Foongus decided.
«Hmmm yes, best they not.»
After mulling it over for a bit more time, Gamañel put the tapestry out again, and then put the entire stack of charred remains on top of it so that it'd remain at the bottom.
The Foongus nodded to himself, extra sure and content in his good work.
Trying another charred decoration, Gamañel noticed that the data markers on how to open the gate to the world had been destroyed, and whatever instructions remained were duplicated, or rewritten, even scattered and corrupted, as if a looking glass had been shattered in small pieces and then the pointy ends sanded over so they could never attach into a full form again.
What made Gamañel shuffle uneasily as he checked the tapestry however was the instruction set that would have been encoded in it. The instructions spoke not only of a world, but of any world, and from what he could read even constructing the gate could only bring randomness. Danger resided everywhere in creation, starting from a particular world — and the only, remote chance of salvation for everyone and everything was that a woman of fate would unshackle the champion of the Primigenial One.
«...Champion?»
Gamañel squinted at some of the codewords, loose strands etched in the outer layers of their finite field polynomial. Some error correction data had survived the burning — to whisper its own threats of oblivion: for, as Gamañel knew, the Primeval Kin tended to pick their "champions" to champion their causes and their own desires to remake the universe, and not because of such things as the worthiness and honour of their subjects. ThePrimigenial One surely would be no exception... and Gamañel was not sure this chosen champion would fully understand that.
Certainly the pick of "champion" had to be relevant. Thus the narrative turned its focus on a region that was only mostly seen in older Pokémon Legends: Sinjoh, a land of myth and power that stretched some distance north from Johto, and saw the champion following the instructions of the Primigenial One...
...Already be captured as soon as their new quest started.
Gamañel held the remains of tapestry at more of a distance. «Yeah, a great start there, pal. Might as well place my bets on the Tepig.»
Gamañel groaned, feeling a bit tired. He looked up to see the sky had darkened. Almighty Sinnoh look at the time! Had he really been checking tapestries for this long...?
That particular latest remnants-of-a‑tapestry Gamañel was careful to separate from the others; he wrapped it in a towel and stored it under the carriage's seat. The Foongus mumbled all the while, unsure if it was a good or a bad thing that it had not been fully destroyed, and recalled that this very Mystery Dungeon world was soon enough to see the designation of a champion of the Primeval Kin.
Gamañel pondered for a moment. «I might have to consider offering that Prinplup a warning... for a price.»[sup][offer][/sup]
Gamañel felt cold at various levels; he shivered and took a moment to check that it was the growing breeze and not just the ill omens from the parchment that were the cause. He picked up a small Foongus-sized wool vest and put it on, to stave off the wind.
The Foongus did not really notice it at first, when the ash from the remains of his stock started lifting up from the rising winds.
In the corner of his eye, Gamañel saw something move... eerily, tumultuously, as if it wanted to leave this world as much as his clients did. He turned and looked around more, but saw nothing out of the ordinary.
The Foongus covered his cart with a mantle and returned to the front, grumbling all the while. He could only hope that the forces that had once created such realities, were still able to keep them sustained and thriving.
Gamañel had just finished tidying up the cart and covering and tying the various tapestries' remains so the wind wouldn't send them flying, when he noticed the wind, while still cold, had suddenly dulled down. Perhaps it was his tiredness seeping into his vision, but he thought it was pretty dark, almost at night already.
The Foongus hopped up the heap of assorted clutter and took a look around. The sky around him was quickly darkening and... closing in? Like the world was getting smaller and smaller by the minute, it was the best way Gamañel could describe it.
He could see a veil of light, flowing down from the sky from some sort of crack far above him, and eating at the ground around him as it inched closer and closer from all directions.
He really did not like the "from all directions" part.
Gamañel hopped down the cart and checked the trail he had come from; about fifty metres ahead he could see the white border between the ground and the light-veil, slithering closer as it phased through trees and rocks. And if he focused hard enough, he could distinguish some trails of smoke and hear guttural voices coming from whatever lay past the edge.
The Foongus frowned. «And to think this is not the weirdest thing I've seen today.»
Gamañel looked up at the sky, it had been completely darkened and replaced with something like a rocky cavern or as much of it as he could make out from past the light's edge. He could hear some creatures beyond the edge, but it was all muffled by an indistinct light and those guttural calls.
Thunder boomed somewhere nearby, the Foongus turned and looked around seeing nothing but dust lifting around.
Then a bolt of purple energy hit the ground closer by the bridge, and another one, and another one. As the bolts neared Gamañel's position he could see they scattered dust and pebbles, that tried to form into Pokémon — or into something — but they couldn't, for as soon as the light and sound from the bolts dissipated, the little dust they had lifted was also undone.
This lasted for about half a minute until a gust of wind carrying malevolent energy reached to where Gamañel was and he shielded himself for a moment as he could. He dug himself into his little refuge, and once the wind had subsided, he emerged from his spot.
He could now watch as the wind around floated down to the ground and remade itself into a spectre. One that was not instantly unmade like the others, but instead persisted and solidified its existence.
It took a few seconds before the spectre evolved, so to speak, into a silverish, hollow form, largely similar to the more recognizable form of a Hydreigon yet sporting some minute differences, broader wings, more ragged fur, a shining mark branding its lower neck that was only visible for a moment before the apparition's own fur of sorts materialized and grew to cover it.
«Great.» Gamañel tilted his head. «What's the problem this time?»
Gamañel dropped down from the tree to go meet the now fully realized spectre halfway as it approached the cart and came to rest a short distance from it. The lights that formed the eyes of this apparition turned to him, and the head of the Hydreigon-creature beckoned Gamañel to move forward.
For his part the Foongus groaned.
"I'll humour you and ask what brings you around town, sort of," Gamañel announced, looking up at the main head of the apparition.
The Hydreigon-being's arm heads seemed to examine the surroundings, and then they craned down on the Foongus. Finally, the apparition lifted herself up in the air and spoke with a whistling voice as she shaked her head-arms. "So it is you. Looking always so confident!"
Gamañel blinked. He had never got really used to how energetic the dragoness could be, even in telepresence form.
The Hydreigon apparition for her part inched closer just a bit. "Given that confidence I have to wonder if you are involved in this problem."
Had he had arms longer than a Foongus has, Gamañel would have made gesture to cross them in exasperation at the accusation. "Whenever you involve yourself around, my customers die, Erish. I'd say I'm not the problem around here."
For an answer the Hydreigon-being bared her fangs, eerily blue and unlit, down at the Foongus, who hopped just a step back. She then reared her heads up and took notice of the cart with the pile of burnt objects.
"You dare. That problem is something I am working on, mister, I can assure you."
"Like that's helped much," Gamañel spat back without thinking. He had enough sense of self-preservation to not make eye contact when one of the Hydreigon's heads glared down at him hissing all the while.
The Hydreigon-imitation meandered about for a few seconds then made way to the front of Gamañel's cart, where she took notice of the burnt materials lying on top of it.
She seemed to notice the ash spread around, and craned down to lick some of the remains with her main head. As soon as she did, the apparition reared up with a rather startled expression, her wings and tail ruffled, her body's light turned slightly more yellow ever so briefly. "What happened here?" she asked in acrimonious tone. "What unnatural things were you trying to do?"
Gamañel hopped ahead to catch up and sat besides the cart. "Take notice, Erish, I'm the victim here! If I didn't know better I'd be filing for damages."
The Hydreigon-like construct grumbled and observed patiently as the Foongus hopped up the cart and pulled the rug cover to reveal some of the remains of the tapestries that had burned back in town.
"There was an... incident earlier and I was forced to close the shop for the day."
The dragoness opened her luminous eyes wide. "You? Close shop?"
The Hydreigon-being's three heads seemed to converse to themselves for a moment, and the form of the Hydreigon even seemed to fade out into a gust of wind and then back in into a more solid existence in the blink of an eye when it was finished "talking" to herself. In the end, the dragoness seemed to relax.
"Walk me through this 'incident'. Make it brief," the central head commanded.
"Well, it started with Espeon's and Umbreon's gates not working correctly, and it ended with my crafts spawning with weird gate patterns that made them combust as soon as they realized."
"But those gates did still work?"
Gamañel shook his head and pointed to the pile of burnt stuff. "I did not exactly get a chance to test."
The Hydreigon-fascimile nodded, and prompted for Gamañel to continue his debriefing. Gamañel harrumphed at the curt gesture but still, he proceeded to explain how the incident went in more depth; he did leave some of the more private, customer-oriented details for himself, considering he was probably subject to such regulations as the GDPR. Just to emphasize the point and make sure the Hydreigon would get a clear picture of the events, he used some of the remains as visual aids, explaining how with the damage to the carpets, the full patterns could not be accessed to open the gates.
"So on that end, you don't have to worry," Gamañel stated, hopping proudly to nail down the point. "I've done my part to keep the business of life running, so to speak, and these gates should no longer be a problem."
The Hydreigon-imitation remained silent and, in her minute gestures of rumbling and fretting, Gamañel thought for a moment that he read something worrying. In the face of a thing that as much as he could tell represented a dragon creature hiding elsewhere, the best way he could read it would be her figuratively biting her lip.
Gamañel's posture straightened.
"...I thought this would make matters clear," he inquired.
Wind started blowing, faintly, as had been doing before the dome had formed. The Hydreigon-esque being looked uneasy just for a moment.
"It does... however," the Hydreigon stated matter‑of‑factly, adding a shake of her head, "this turns out to not be our original concern."
"I'm not sure I follow. With 'our', you mean...?" The Foongus recalled details he knew about the dragoness's origins and raised an eyebrow. "You and...?"
The Hydreigon made a motion to look around, at the dome of light hiding them from the beyond. She narrowed her eyes at the finite sky, as if fearing it would fall, and she turned to Gamañel with a hint of disappointment.
"I'm here on borrowed time, so I shall wrap up this current matter and fall back."
"Aha." Gamañel hopped atop the pile of things on his cart and gave the Hydreigon a wave, then made a motion to move ahead of his cart. "Speaking of, I should be going home too. Business some other time?"
The Hydreigon-construct let out a warning roar and floated up. Her six wings fanned out, making her look even larger and more other-worldly than she already was in this form. "You are not in the clear yet, Gamañel. We would see these threats properly disposed of," she stated, pointing a head at the cart.
There was that plural again. The Foongus gulped, but otherwise remained in composure.
"Now now." Gamañel wiggled about, worked up at the prospect of a lengthened meeting. "That all‑you‑pointed‑to happens to be my livelihood and I'm responsible for it. Besides I could still try to work with them."
"You won't," the monster roared.
Thunder boomed once again, as if reminidng of the purpose of the Hydreigon-being's visit. She floated about the cart to reach the back, with Gamañel eyeing her all the while.
Gamañel found himself conflicted, he wondered what exactly could the dragon do via this remote apparition, yet at the same did not want to stay around to find out.
He saw how the Hydreigon-imitation craned up and breathed in — at least, he assumed she was breathing in. In as much as he could tell, it was the sign for dragon breath or somesuch.
Waving his little arms, Gamañel tried the first feeble excuse that came to his mind.
"Agh! Come on, this is all shrinkage. You really don't have to worry about lost stock!"
The Hydreigon-imitation didn't seem to be swayed though, and as she exhaled, Gamañel yelled and hopped down for dear life from his cart to the ground, landing hat-first and bouncing on the ground.
The Foongus rolled unceremoniously on the ground while the Hydreigon-imitation grumbled at the intact cart, her own form not being able to breathe out dragon fire.
Gamañel stood himself up and narrowed his eyes, watching how the Hydreigon-apparition made a second attempt at breathing out flame, to just about as much a nothing of an effect as the first attempt.
The Hydreigon-imitation harrumphed. One of the two arm heads looked back at the main one with a hint of disapproval.
"This usually works," she hissed.
Gamañel put on an indignant display of tidying himself up and loosening some dirt off his cap, while the Hydreigon-imitation traded dissatisfied glances with the two heads in her arms and gave sheepish grumbles for a moment. Half-grateful that at least his cart was still in one piece, the Foongus stared up the Hydreigon.
"I hope this counts as a labour accident for insurance," Gamañel said mostly to himself.
Other than the growing winds and the thunderbolts hitting every once in a while near the edge of the strange dome in the sky, there was no other sound that accompanied the two Pokémon.
So for a long while, they engaged in a stiff, patently cross-accusatory staredown, though they both knew with the winds blowing, that could not last for very long.
To be continued...
Proofreading credits go to community members such as @Fobbie and others I'm not recalling right now and that I'll have to edit later on for completeness. Thanks also to @Joshthewriter as well for the allowance and conformance checks on refering to their Legends: Sinjoh material.
This is yet another "Special Episode" of sorts that I have been working on for a good while and has had quite an... accidented development story. But at least the first part is ready now! Originally intended to be a oneshot, this will be posted in two-shot format instead much like Forever Catch was. It follows Gamañel, my (everyone now: our) DLC Attendant Foongus from Making the World Go 'Round after he has had a hard day at work due to a crossover with JoshtheWriter's "Pokémon:Legends Sinjoh".
This story is reference-heavy and mostly follows the events and timeline of the game "from the outside" , but those references are marked and links to related material are made available. Due to the lack of BBCode support in the engine, the reference markers might not look good right now, but I'll be in the work of raising a support ticket for that and will update the thread according to the results (forenotice: be on the lookout of support for my Furigana request for the upcoming chapter 2). Still, this should be no impedement upon the ability to read the story.
But enough words, time to read: have at ye!
Act Ⅰ
It had been quite an arduous day of work back at Post Town, and Gamañel for one needed a break for a few days. The Foongus marched out of town via one of the southern trails, pulling a cart that contained the charred remains of the day's business.Gamañel stopped for a moment to slurp on a berry and try to swallow the bitter experiences from back at work, right in front of his store, to boot. He turned to take a look at the remains of the embroideries and trinkets he would have usually sold to his clientèle.
The Foongus narrowed his eyes.
The trinkets; not his trinkets. He still did not understand well what had happened, but what had happened definitively was not part of his 9‑to‑5... at least, he seriously hoped it wasn't. Considering that he was still the one who had to clean everything up after weird gates suddenly spawned among his gates and then everything caught otherworldly fire.[sup][ref][/sup]
[ref] As seen in JoshtheWriter's Pokemon: Legends Sinjoh [Chapter 1]
"...Just what kind of worlds were those, anyway?” he asked to no one in particular.
Gamañel's trinkets were of the most peculiar kind. Much like Espeon and Umbreon's magic card back at town, Gamañel's ones could open paths to separate, sometimes unexplored worlds.
Yet the similarities ended there, for Gamañel knew more about the fabric of the multiverse and what even meant for worlds to be connected than the cute little cat and dog could ever achieve with their cute little tabletop game.
Gamañel suddenly had an idea. He hopped up to his cart and quickly examined the surroundings: there was mostly sparse vegetation around him and nothing that looked like a cave or any other protected space. Just a creek and wooden bridge ahead, and the trail heading further to the south.
Gamañel had not had the time to inspect the trinkets back at the town; certainly, not while the entire pile of them was spontaneously spawning and burning into ashes. Not willing to wait until he got home to find out more, Gamañel hopped down and pushed his cart to beneath the nearest tree, just short of the bridge.
He took a very brief rest and hopped back up the cart, to check on the destroyed goods.
On top of the pile was a small envelope, formerly sealed with a now broken "N" seal. Merely looking at it brought the Foongus some feelings of disgust. «Just what I needed on top of this foreclosure notice, too,» he reminded himself grinding his figurative teeth.
Nothing he could do about that for now, he knew that. So the best thing Gamañel could do would be to mind the weird events of today.
He picked one of the tapestries at random. Many of the tapestries were completely burned to ashes, but some pieces had survived here and there if only in the form of small unburned strands and pages of wool and hide. The various AZTEC-style patterns[sup][ref][/sup] were something that Gamañel was intimately familiar with, but between the strangeness of the patterns that had popped up recently and the damage done to the various impressions from the fire, he was not sure he could pick anything useful out of them right now.
[ref] AZTEC Code is a kind of bidimensional code similar to QR Code.
Still, he gave it a look. The marker square at the centre and the two principal layers going outwards were damaged, so he tried and interpreted it by ear. He could read very generic details about the nature of a world, but not much else, at least nothing of relevance at the moment.
Gamañel let out a dissatisfied harumph and put it back where it belonged, on the pile of Things That Should Not Be.
Trying another charred decoration, Gamañel was weirded out by the "information-fat", square patterns on the edges. Information on how to enter that world was scarce, but in comparison information on how to describe the world was aplenty and complicated. Here Gamañel raised an eyebrow at how meta it all went, as the information strands included instructions such as to "cut selection" to separate landmass of a world into a "layer", fill layer with a "color bucket", apply a "transparency mask" to layer, select layer for "trigonometric deformation", select "CMYK profile" and then, at the very end, a "print" selection pointing to a rectangular map object.
Gamañel rubbed his temple at the thought.
«What kind of backards Kecleon would want to print on a Mercator projection?»
Truly, in such a print the arctic zones would widen to egregious levels. Gamañel could only imagine how much extra bizarrely the Great Glacier area would look in such a map. Not at all like decentmap projections such as Winkel-Tripel, Gamañel thought with a snicker, or like the ornamental asymmetry of the AZTEC codes that adorned his wares... when they did not spontaneously combust out of control.
Gamañel decided to discard such meta, very distracting lines of thought for later and focus instead on the pieces of theorems and equations that made the tendrils of the code. As far as he could decipher, they apparently described the energy conversion process of a strange device, perhaps a weapon system. Gamañel raised an eyebrow; the scale had to be wrong, these numbers... from what he knew, only creatures like the mirage dragons could ever try and develop a machine of this kind, at the least capable of (if he was reading the magnitudes alright) casting a planet off its orbit in a single stroke.
Gamañel lifted two or three charred tapestries, put this tapestry under the others. Best Lake Afar or Dragons Gate never find out about this kind of world, the Foongus decided.
«Hmmm yes, best they not.»
After mulling it over for a bit more time, Gamañel put the tapestry out again, and then put the entire stack of charred remains on top of it so that it'd remain at the bottom.
The Foongus nodded to himself, extra sure and content in his good work.
Trying another charred decoration, Gamañel noticed that the data markers on how to open the gate to the world had been destroyed, and whatever instructions remained were duplicated, or rewritten, even scattered and corrupted, as if a looking glass had been shattered in small pieces and then the pointy ends sanded over so they could never attach into a full form again.
What made Gamañel shuffle uneasily as he checked the tapestry however was the instruction set that would have been encoded in it. The instructions spoke not only of a world, but of any world, and from what he could read even constructing the gate could only bring randomness. Danger resided everywhere in creation, starting from a particular world — and the only, remote chance of salvation for everyone and everything was that a woman of fate would unshackle the champion of the Primigenial One.
«...Champion?»
Gamañel squinted at some of the codewords, loose strands etched in the outer layers of their finite field polynomial. Some error correction data had survived the burning — to whisper its own threats of oblivion: for, as Gamañel knew, the Primeval Kin tended to pick their "champions" to champion their causes and their own desires to remake the universe, and not because of such things as the worthiness and honour of their subjects. ThePrimigenial One surely would be no exception... and Gamañel was not sure this chosen champion would fully understand that.
Certainly the pick of "champion" had to be relevant. Thus the narrative turned its focus on a region that was only mostly seen in older Pokémon Legends: Sinjoh, a land of myth and power that stretched some distance north from Johto, and saw the champion following the instructions of the Primigenial One...
...Already be captured as soon as their new quest started.
Gamañel held the remains of tapestry at more of a distance. «Yeah, a great start there, pal. Might as well place my bets on the Tepig.»
Gamañel groaned, feeling a bit tired. He looked up to see the sky had darkened. Almighty Sinnoh look at the time! Had he really been checking tapestries for this long...?
That particular latest remnants-of-a‑tapestry Gamañel was careful to separate from the others; he wrapped it in a towel and stored it under the carriage's seat. The Foongus mumbled all the while, unsure if it was a good or a bad thing that it had not been fully destroyed, and recalled that this very Mystery Dungeon world was soon enough to see the designation of a champion of the Primeval Kin.
Gamañel pondered for a moment. «I might have to consider offering that Prinplup a warning... for a price.»[sup][offer][/sup]
[offer] In the future of PMD, Dialga will attempt to recruit Dalvin for the Primeval Kin, as seen in [Beyond Today].
Gamañel felt cold at various levels; he shivered and took a moment to check that it was the growing breeze and not just the ill omens from the parchment that were the cause. He picked up a small Foongus-sized wool vest and put it on, to stave off the wind.
The Foongus did not really notice it at first, when the ash from the remains of his stock started lifting up from the rising winds.
In the corner of his eye, Gamañel saw something move... eerily, tumultuously, as if it wanted to leave this world as much as his clients did. He turned and looked around more, but saw nothing out of the ordinary.
The Foongus covered his cart with a mantle and returned to the front, grumbling all the while. He could only hope that the forces that had once created such realities, were still able to keep them sustained and thriving.
Gamañel had just finished tidying up the cart and covering and tying the various tapestries' remains so the wind wouldn't send them flying, when he noticed the wind, while still cold, had suddenly dulled down. Perhaps it was his tiredness seeping into his vision, but he thought it was pretty dark, almost at night already.
The Foongus hopped up the heap of assorted clutter and took a look around. The sky around him was quickly darkening and... closing in? Like the world was getting smaller and smaller by the minute, it was the best way Gamañel could describe it.
He could see a veil of light, flowing down from the sky from some sort of crack far above him, and eating at the ground around him as it inched closer and closer from all directions.
He really did not like the "from all directions" part.
Gamañel hopped down the cart and checked the trail he had come from; about fifty metres ahead he could see the white border between the ground and the light-veil, slithering closer as it phased through trees and rocks. And if he focused hard enough, he could distinguish some trails of smoke and hear guttural voices coming from whatever lay past the edge.
The Foongus frowned. «And to think this is not the weirdest thing I've seen today.»
Act Ⅱ
Gamañel scurried to a random fallen tree nearby and got up the trunk; there he remained for a few seconds looking around as he saw the veil inching closer, slower and slower, until it finally froze about twenty metres from him in all directions.Gamañel looked up at the sky, it had been completely darkened and replaced with something like a rocky cavern or as much of it as he could make out from past the light's edge. He could hear some creatures beyond the edge, but it was all muffled by an indistinct light and those guttural calls.
Thunder boomed somewhere nearby, the Foongus turned and looked around seeing nothing but dust lifting around.
Then a bolt of purple energy hit the ground closer by the bridge, and another one, and another one. As the bolts neared Gamañel's position he could see they scattered dust and pebbles, that tried to form into Pokémon — or into something — but they couldn't, for as soon as the light and sound from the bolts dissipated, the little dust they had lifted was also undone.
This lasted for about half a minute until a gust of wind carrying malevolent energy reached to where Gamañel was and he shielded himself for a moment as he could. He dug himself into his little refuge, and once the wind had subsided, he emerged from his spot.
He could now watch as the wind around floated down to the ground and remade itself into a spectre. One that was not instantly unmade like the others, but instead persisted and solidified its existence.
It took a few seconds before the spectre evolved, so to speak, into a silverish, hollow form, largely similar to the more recognizable form of a Hydreigon yet sporting some minute differences, broader wings, more ragged fur, a shining mark branding its lower neck that was only visible for a moment before the apparition's own fur of sorts materialized and grew to cover it.
«Great.» Gamañel tilted his head. «What's the problem this time?»
Gamañel dropped down from the tree to go meet the now fully realized spectre halfway as it approached the cart and came to rest a short distance from it. The lights that formed the eyes of this apparition turned to him, and the head of the Hydreigon-creature beckoned Gamañel to move forward.
For his part the Foongus groaned.
"I'll humour you and ask what brings you around town, sort of," Gamañel announced, looking up at the main head of the apparition.
The Hydreigon-being's arm heads seemed to examine the surroundings, and then they craned down on the Foongus. Finally, the apparition lifted herself up in the air and spoke with a whistling voice as she shaked her head-arms. "So it is you. Looking always so confident!"
Gamañel blinked. He had never got really used to how energetic the dragoness could be, even in telepresence form.
The Hydreigon apparition for her part inched closer just a bit. "Given that confidence I have to wonder if you are involved in this problem."
Had he had arms longer than a Foongus has, Gamañel would have made gesture to cross them in exasperation at the accusation. "Whenever you involve yourself around, my customers die, Erish. I'd say I'm not the problem around here."
For an answer the Hydreigon-being bared her fangs, eerily blue and unlit, down at the Foongus, who hopped just a step back. She then reared her heads up and took notice of the cart with the pile of burnt objects.
"You dare. That problem is something I am working on, mister, I can assure you."
"Like that's helped much," Gamañel spat back without thinking. He had enough sense of self-preservation to not make eye contact when one of the Hydreigon's heads glared down at him hissing all the while.
The Hydreigon-imitation meandered about for a few seconds then made way to the front of Gamañel's cart, where she took notice of the burnt materials lying on top of it.
She seemed to notice the ash spread around, and craned down to lick some of the remains with her main head. As soon as she did, the apparition reared up with a rather startled expression, her wings and tail ruffled, her body's light turned slightly more yellow ever so briefly. "What happened here?" she asked in acrimonious tone. "What unnatural things were you trying to do?"
Gamañel hopped ahead to catch up and sat besides the cart. "Take notice, Erish, I'm the victim here! If I didn't know better I'd be filing for damages."
The Hydreigon-like construct grumbled and observed patiently as the Foongus hopped up the cart and pulled the rug cover to reveal some of the remains of the tapestries that had burned back in town.
"There was an... incident earlier and I was forced to close the shop for the day."
The dragoness opened her luminous eyes wide. "You? Close shop?"
The Hydreigon-being's three heads seemed to converse to themselves for a moment, and the form of the Hydreigon even seemed to fade out into a gust of wind and then back in into a more solid existence in the blink of an eye when it was finished "talking" to herself. In the end, the dragoness seemed to relax.
"Walk me through this 'incident'. Make it brief," the central head commanded.
"Well, it started with Espeon's and Umbreon's gates not working correctly, and it ended with my crafts spawning with weird gate patterns that made them combust as soon as they realized."
"But those gates did still work?"
Gamañel shook his head and pointed to the pile of burnt stuff. "I did not exactly get a chance to test."
The Hydreigon-fascimile nodded, and prompted for Gamañel to continue his debriefing. Gamañel harrumphed at the curt gesture but still, he proceeded to explain how the incident went in more depth; he did leave some of the more private, customer-oriented details for himself, considering he was probably subject to such regulations as the GDPR. Just to emphasize the point and make sure the Hydreigon would get a clear picture of the events, he used some of the remains as visual aids, explaining how with the damage to the carpets, the full patterns could not be accessed to open the gates.
"So on that end, you don't have to worry," Gamañel stated, hopping proudly to nail down the point. "I've done my part to keep the business of life running, so to speak, and these gates should no longer be a problem."
The Hydreigon-imitation remained silent and, in her minute gestures of rumbling and fretting, Gamañel thought for a moment that he read something worrying. In the face of a thing that as much as he could tell represented a dragon creature hiding elsewhere, the best way he could read it would be her figuratively biting her lip.
Gamañel's posture straightened.
"...I thought this would make matters clear," he inquired.
Wind started blowing, faintly, as had been doing before the dome had formed. The Hydreigon-esque being looked uneasy just for a moment.
"It does... however," the Hydreigon stated matter‑of‑factly, adding a shake of her head, "this turns out to not be our original concern."
"I'm not sure I follow. With 'our', you mean...?" The Foongus recalled details he knew about the dragoness's origins and raised an eyebrow. "You and...?"
The Hydreigon made a motion to look around, at the dome of light hiding them from the beyond. She narrowed her eyes at the finite sky, as if fearing it would fall, and she turned to Gamañel with a hint of disappointment.
"I'm here on borrowed time, so I shall wrap up this current matter and fall back."
"Aha." Gamañel hopped atop the pile of things on his cart and gave the Hydreigon a wave, then made a motion to move ahead of his cart. "Speaking of, I should be going home too. Business some other time?"
The Hydreigon-construct let out a warning roar and floated up. Her six wings fanned out, making her look even larger and more other-worldly than she already was in this form. "You are not in the clear yet, Gamañel. We would see these threats properly disposed of," she stated, pointing a head at the cart.
There was that plural again. The Foongus gulped, but otherwise remained in composure.
"Now now." Gamañel wiggled about, worked up at the prospect of a lengthened meeting. "That all‑you‑pointed‑to happens to be my livelihood and I'm responsible for it. Besides I could still try to work with them."
"You won't," the monster roared.
Thunder boomed once again, as if reminidng of the purpose of the Hydreigon-being's visit. She floated about the cart to reach the back, with Gamañel eyeing her all the while.
Gamañel found himself conflicted, he wondered what exactly could the dragon do via this remote apparition, yet at the same did not want to stay around to find out.
He saw how the Hydreigon-imitation craned up and breathed in — at least, he assumed she was breathing in. In as much as he could tell, it was the sign for dragon breath or somesuch.
Waving his little arms, Gamañel tried the first feeble excuse that came to his mind.
"Agh! Come on, this is all shrinkage. You really don't have to worry about lost stock!"
The Hydreigon-imitation didn't seem to be swayed though, and as she exhaled, Gamañel yelled and hopped down for dear life from his cart to the ground, landing hat-first and bouncing on the ground.
The Foongus rolled unceremoniously on the ground while the Hydreigon-imitation grumbled at the intact cart, her own form not being able to breathe out dragon fire.
Gamañel stood himself up and narrowed his eyes, watching how the Hydreigon-apparition made a second attempt at breathing out flame, to just about as much a nothing of an effect as the first attempt.
The Hydreigon-imitation harrumphed. One of the two arm heads looked back at the main one with a hint of disapproval.
"This usually works," she hissed.
Gamañel put on an indignant display of tidying himself up and loosening some dirt off his cap, while the Hydreigon-imitation traded dissatisfied glances with the two heads in her arms and gave sheepish grumbles for a moment. Half-grateful that at least his cart was still in one piece, the Foongus stared up the Hydreigon.
"I hope this counts as a labour accident for insurance," Gamañel said mostly to himself.
Other than the growing winds and the thunderbolts hitting every once in a while near the edge of the strange dome in the sky, there was no other sound that accompanied the two Pokémon.
So for a long while, they engaged in a stiff, patently cross-accusatory staredown, though they both knew with the winds blowing, that could not last for very long.
To be continued...
Proofreading credits go to community members such as @Fobbie and others I'm not recalling right now and that I'll have to edit later on for completeness. Thanks also to @Joshthewriter as well for the allowance and conformance checks on refering to their Legends: Sinjoh material.
