Destiny Village ~ Central Crossroads

[Ambyssin]

"I suppose." Bahamut shrugged. "Beats leaving it there and risking it harming Dark Matter and, by extension, us."

... and now he was wondering if an immortal daemon of darkness could get indigestion.

 

[Negrek]

Nate nodded. "That's what I was thinking," he said. "Diyem says not to worry, he's fine in there, but last time Diyem said something like that, he spent like two weeks making out with a parasite that we had to go rescue him from, so, you know. Don't want to take no chances there."

He squinted up at the dragon. "You were able to kinda connect with the guy back in the Tree, right? You got any idea how to tackle the whole purification whatever whatever? I know things were pretty crazy back there, with Eien and Maple and all. This time we probably wanna go in with an actual plan."

 

[Ambyssin]

"Even if it was hectic last time, my thought was that Owen could try and appeal to the actual mewtwo, given he has some similar experiences." Bahamut tucked his head down, like he was thinking. "It clearly did something, because when Owen talked with Mewtwo, I started to sense an actual spirit inside of it. It's just shrouded by something cold and suppressive." He rested his head on his tail. "If there's going to be any shot of getting through to him, it'll be by convincing the real spirit that it doesn't need to be a weapon. That it has something to live for."

 

[Negrek]

Nate snorted. "Given the way everything works around here, yeah, that's what I was thinking. And it seemed like Owen was doing something, anyhow." Fuck, he should see if Owen would come along, too. "I was just talking to Karat, though, and he said when he got freed from Giovanni, he didn't know what free will even was. Like he had to have somebody stronger come along and order him to be free. That was his world's Red, I guess. So I dunno, maybe we should try something like that? I guess beat the guy up a bit to, like, show we're better than the guys driving him around now, then tell him to get rid of the parasite and the Dark Matter, maybe?"

 

[Ambyssin]

Bahamut shrugged his upper wings. "Are you suggesting we get this Red involved, then?"

 

[Negrek]

"We could try," Nate said with a shrug. "Diyem didn't seem to think people who weren't on the team wouldn't be too keen to join in, given the whole, you know, Dark Matter, nightmare hell thing. I don't think we can rely on him being there. So, like, what can we do if we don't got him?"

 

[Ambyssin]

"Well, a decent psychic might be able to link him with Dark Matter enough to, I don't know, project his thoughts into the guys Voidlands or something." Bahamut wasn't really sure how else to explain it without getting needlessly technical. "Though from what everyone says about the guy, I wouldn't be too quick to count him out."

 

[Negrek]

Yeah, Red probably would go for something that dangerous and arguably stupid to help a pokémon, wouldn't he? "A decent psychic, huh? Well, I guess we could ask, what, Joule or something? One of the xatu?" Nate rubbed the back of his head. "I figure chances are high we're gonna need your help with the actual getting-through-to-the-guy part. Don't wanna put too much on your plate." Nate paused, thinking. "Have you, uh, ever been to the Voidlands before. Not Diyem's Voidlands, I guess, but you know... in your world."

 

[Ambyssin]

"The Qliphoth is what is used to refer to Eternatus' realm." Bahamut's eyes turned a mix of pink and blue. And then Nate would find an image projected into his head. A neon cityscape, with buildings made exclusively of metal and crystal. No vegetation to be found anywhere, only bush-like and plant-like crystal structures. Patches of crystal clung to metal floors and building walls like they were moss or weeds. Bright signs stuck out at various angles, with phrases like "Have you thanked Eternatus today?" and "The Archbishop is watching you" under a picture of a deoxys. Other signs advertised everything from Eterna Cola to Guzzlaxatives to an Eternatus body pillow.

"Its capital is populated by a mix of aliens born within it and the souls from planets Eternatus destroyed, but the less hospital areas..." Bahamut's wing claws cricked. The image would dissolve away from Nate mind, replaced by a place with a blood-red sky and ground that seemed to be made of a mix of rock, crystal, and bones. Red fluid flowed upward, through skull-shaped rock carvings.

"... well, they don't tend to sit well with the average person." Bahamut ceased the projection. His eyes returned to their typical multicolored state. "So, I think I'll be fine."

 

[Negrek]

Nate froze while Bahamut projected images into his mind. Eternatus' realm... Well, it was fucking weird, but also not like he'd expected. He thought it would be more like that weird storm he saw when he touched the mewtwo earlier, or what Eien was kicking up now around the Tree. Not a city, like with people actually living there, however strange it was. If you got far enough into Eien's storm, was something like that hiding in there?

Nate laughed nervously. "Well, I don't doubt you got it covered. I figure you been like basically everywhere, so maybe you'd know a thing or two about the Voidlands. But we aren't, uh, gonna need to actually visit Eternatus' place to get rid of the parasite, are we?"

Nate thought he'd heard, vaguely, that something like that had happened when they'd gotten the bug out of Owen. Or at least the team had gone somewhere... inside the charizard's mind?"

 

[Ambyssin]

"I cannot say for certain," Bahamut replied. "We needed to delve into Owen's mind to remove the hex that was there."

 

[Negrek]

Yeah, there it was. Fucking lovely. And who knew how scary the mewtwo's dreamscape was gonna be, especially if there was a dark matter knocking around in it, too. Jesus.

"I know Maple said most eternatus ain't like your eternatus," Nate said, "but do they all got like a world inside them or whatever?" Eien hadn't fucking eaten nobody, had she. "I mean, when you talked with Eien or whatever... has she got a city like that, too?"

 

[Ambyssin]

"No." Bahamut hadn't moved from resting against his tail throughout all this. "Eternatus in my universe is more of... a seemingly-unstoppable force of nature. It has no thoughts or will of its own. If Mewtwo's mind is corrupted, there'll probably be a lot of shadows and a stormy vortex."

 

[Negrek]

"Yeah, I got a sense of what it might be like," Nate said with a grimace. "Sounds like your eternatus is kind of like how this mewtwo was, or how we thought he was, anyhow. Nobody home and all. But you and Eien, uh, you're okay? I know it's gotta be weird, dealing with an eternatus like her, but... Seems like she likes you well enough, anyhow."

 

[Ambyssin]

Bahamut sighed. "That's because we're dimensional counterparts. Both of us travelled to other planets to help them in times of crisis only to be chased away by people who feared our powers. And we both wed spouses bearing terrible curses. But Eternatus never stopped helping planets... and she didn't lose her spouse, either."

 

[Negrek]

A "dimensional counterpart?" What, like Silver and Starr, or Red and Nate's Red? They didn't seem quite as similar as that. Or maybe similar but... opposite, almost. Or maybe Bahamut was so stuck on his own losses that he went looking for their like in everyone else.

"That's gotta be rough," he said after a moment. "If she's your counterpart, but things turned out that different for her."

 

[Ambyssin]

"Not being bound to one dimension probably helped her case," Bahamut said. "I always assumed other dimensions existed, but that traveling to them was impossible. That reality would collapse upon itself if it happened." He finally lifted his head and looked around. "Evidently, that's not the case. But if my world's Eternatus can break that threshold, than no world is safe."

He frowned. "Similarly, if these familiars can grow up to become anything remotely like Dark Matter's mate, we might have some problems." Bahamut bent over slightly. "You can't tell me you'd seriously be comfortable with Rocky having access to powers that rival Eien's, can you?"

 

[Negrek]

Yeah. More interdimensional fucking threats. Nate would like to go back to a time before wondering whether some kind of eldritch horror from another dimension might just show up and eat the planet out of fucking nowhere. "That's true. Maybe there's something in another world that'd be able to defeat it, though. Since it sounds like you've tried pretty much everything from your own dimension."

The familiars were a whole other can of worms. Nate didn't really want to think about that right now, either. "I mean, no." He sighed. "I know someone like Rocky who's a lot more powerful. Not nearly as bad as an eternatus. But it's still kind of a huge fucking problem."

 

[Ambyssin]

"Yeah. I s'pose the first step to addressing that problem is freeing Eien." Bahamut's jaw clicked. "Perhaps in interacting with Mewtwo I might be able to get a glimpse of what it did to hex her in the first place. Her mental space had these distorted chains digging into her persona. It was quite a sight."

 

[Negrek]

"I guess, yeah," Nate said. "Chains, huh? Fucking weird. Don't really strike me as a mewtwo kinda thing. More like a ghost or something." He shrugged. "If you could find that out, yeah, that'd probably be a good start."