Destiny Village ~ Chip's Lab

[Dragonfree]

“…Oh. Fantastic.” Was there any chance he could convince Mia not to come to this fight? Probably not, was there. He’d just have to keep a careful eye on her. Goddamn it.

If “imprisoning the spirit” was what happened if you didn’t get to the victim in time, well, they’d managed to recover Xerneas and S’more. So even if Soda was all parasite by now, real Soda was still there, somewhere, and they’d just have to find him and give him a new body. The way Xerneas had been in some mystery fruit or whatever. Maybe that’d be for the best. Lose the half-ascension, become something mundane, start anew as a simple mortal. (Yeah, and maybe they’d recover Adne too, and they’d live happily ever after, right.)

“So what’s making them react to the hatched ones but not the unhatched? What’s the difference, in terms of what they’d sense?”

 

[Namohysip]

"Well... if I had to guess... power." Chip nodded. "Now that they've hatched, and now that they're more, you know, infused with all that energy they've been hiding, I think they're radiating more power in one way or another. Yep! Now that you're hatched and strong, they probably want to eat your soul, too!" He looked like he was waiting for them to laugh at a joke.

 

[Negrek]

Rocky laughed. "That's great! I'm gonna keep getting stronger, too. I bet one day I'm gonna be as strong as Marshtomp." He poked at his chest, which was more solid than it had been before. "It's funny, though. I don't feel like I got that much stronger."

Nate watched him parading around in front of the parasites' enclosure, occasionally lunging at the barrier or waving his arms around in front of them to see if they would attack. "So is there anything they might eat that wasn't, you know, a person? Like, did you try the substitute thing with them? Or, fuck, I dunno, something like a reviver seed?" Nate rubbed at his gills. "Like Rocky was perfectly alive before, so... Is all they'll go for really pokémon? Maybe even fairly strong ones?"

 

[Dragonfree]

"Huh. Would've thought that'd be a difference of degree, though, right? It's not like they had no power before they hatched, but the parasites acted like they didn't even notice they were there."

He glanced at Nate. How the fuck did the guy manage to be pretty on-point and ask intelligent questions sometimes while also inventing the most fucked-up insane bullshit? "Would it be possible to invent some kind of, I don't know, fake power source that'd draw them? Soda made something like that in the Tree of Life, right?"

 

[Namohysip]

"Maybe, maybe..." Chip hummed. "A false power source... It's all about what they detect as worthwhile. They either lunge at things they want, or ignore everything else. They don't really have eyes, so it's hard to tell what actually has their attention otherwise. Hmm, hmm, a false power source..." Chip buzzed. "All right! I think I'll try to make that next! Maybe Soda can help me, or at least store it for later."

The Parasite kept lunging at Nate whenever he got close. They didn't seem particularly intelligent, never learning that a wall separated them. Either that or it intended to break through eventually.

 

[Negrek]

Soda...? Oh. Chip must mean one of the substitutes. There was the one out and walking around, at least.

"Rocky, leave them alone," he said. The familiar waved at the parasites, giggling when they threw themselves against the barrier one last time, but then bounded back over to where Nate was standing, tail twitching, in high spirits. The marshtomp looked up at the parasites, still blindly pressing themselves up against the front of their enclosure, oozing messily. "Yeah. Some kind of artificial energy source, I guess. Seems pretty shit, keeping them here when we can't even feed them properly. And if they're the same thing as Xernatus, I don't think we're gonna get much out of them, even if we could convince them to cooperate. Might almost be better to send them back where they came from. Less dangerous and, like," he waved a hand up at their enclosures, "better than keeping them in cages where they're hungry all the time."

 

[Namohysip]

"What, you mean a mercy kill?" Chip said. "Well, I guess it's not really killing if they operate like Substitutes, but..." He drifted toward the barrier, just far enough away--from practice--that it wouldn't provoke them smashing into the wall. "...I mean, they aren't really thinking, feeling things, are they? Aside from, maybe, anger. Hmmh, what would Zekrom say about the treatment of inherently evil beings...? Ohh, I don't want to get lectured again..."

 

[Dragonfree]

Jesus. Was that what Nate meant? "Are you fucking kidding me? We're not sending them back to merge with the one that's currently rotting out Soda's brain. The less power that's in that one, the better. It's bad enough Diyem killed the one in Eien. It's a fair point we're not winning any humanitarian awards if they're starving in there, but that's not the fucking way to go." He narrowed his eyes at Chip. "Also, last time they were sentient enough to react badly to talk about destroying them."

 

[Negrek]

"Dunno if I buy 'inherently evil,'" Nate said. "But dangerous and not something we can care for properly, yeah. If it's on Zekrom, it's on Zekrom, I guess. But I don't feel great about keeping them in there until they shrivel up or whatever the fuck."

And Dave, of course, was still completely fixated on Soda. Nate wished he had teeth to grit against his irritation. It was all he could do not to snap back with something about how the universe didn't revolve around fucking Soda, for fuck's sake, but he managed. Give him a fucking medal already.

"You really think whether or not these two are back with the main body is gonna make any sort of difference?" he said. "After all the power concentrated up there, like the fucking unown and the Blacklight blasts and Soda was already like half a fucking arceus, it seems to me like these two little guys would be just a drop in the bucket."

If the parasites did have any opinions on the matter, though, that might change things. Nate watched them closely.

 

[Dragonfree]

"Soda's powerful. The parasite's just the thing feeding on him. Yeah, it could make a difference to have two whole extra parasites joining with it to overpower his spirit or whatever the fuck. If nothing else, by the time we beat the thing out of him it'd be real fucking nice for it to not be able to fight us off long enough to infect one of us instead."

 

[Namohysip]

"Sapient, sentient, it's all a line, y'know?" Chip said, but the conversation had moved on. "Mmhh... All right. I guess we'll keep them here for now. Maybe we can find something pleasant, something that lets them calm down. Who knows? There's bound to be something that could purify them or whatever..."

 

[Negrek]

The parasites still weren't giving him anything to work with. Nate was feeling the battle again, longing for a fucking nap. He was way too tired for this shit. "Can we get Eien in here, maybe? Supposedly being around her makes Diyem able to feel things other than, like, rage and hate and shit. Maybe she can calm them down, too."

If she was cool hanging out with the siblings of the thing that had been mind-controlling her for, like, fucking months. And it wasn't like Eien's "aura" had done anything to calm down the parasite stuck in her. Ugh.

 

[Namohysip]

"I could try..." Chip pulled out his badge, clicking through. "She doesn't really have a badge yet, but she must be with Diyem. He's Rot here, right? I wonder if Eien will go for a native name, too. Maybe something like... Mold. That would fit with Diyem's, don't you think? What does that sound like to you guys?"

 

[Dragonfree]

Nate just kind of ignored him altogether, but at least he'd backed off the idea of killing the parasites. Wouldn't complain to not have to have more of an interaction with him. Jesus.

"Eien? I mean, I guess." If they were basically pieces of another Eternatus, it might make sense? Let her be their surrogate Eternatus mom? What the fuck. "Mold sounds like... fucking mold. You sure those don't sound weird to you? Rot's not even a goddamn food. Do you hear Diyem's name when I just use rot in a sentence?" God, Diyem's nonesnse translation thing was going to be the death of him.

 

[Negrek]

Nate perked up when Chip seemled interested in calling Eien in. He'd been expecting that to be put on the vague future experiments list. "Yeah, I'm sure she's hanging out with Diyem. Who knows, maybe both of them will show up." He wouldn't blame them for being kinda clingy, after everything that had happened.

"Sometimes you eat rot by accident, though," Rocky said sagely. "Maybe it counts. I don't know about mold, though. Eien's nice. She should get a nice name!"

"Cheese is basically mold, ain't it?" Nate said.

"We can't call her cheese! She's a dragon!"

 

[Namohysip]

Chip just shrugged, apparently now sending messages to Diyem. "...Oh! It looks like she'll be on her way soon. Considering they can fly, it probably won't be much time at all. Er... I'm not sure how easily she'll fit, though. We never really expected someone bigger than a Wailord to ever set foot in Destiny Village... It was built with Legends in mind, but there's a limit..."

 

[Negrek]

Oh. Right. Nate glanced at the mightyena. Goddammit. It seemed like it was going to be hard to get the parasites in range of Eien's friendly aura or whatever the fuck, except for the obvious... goddammit.

"Maybe you could, uh, put one in one of your bubble things and take it outside for her. Just, like, temporarily," he said to Dave. He even forced himself to actually look at the fucker, how about that.

 

[Dragonfree]

Dave narrowed his eyes at him. Oh, now he wanted his help. He almost wanted to tell him sorry, no, I'm very busy molesting kids, but he'd probably take it as a confession.

It wasn't a terrible idea anyway. "...Chip, is there any way to get one out of there into a Protect without the other getting loose?"

 

[Namohysip]

"Yes, the cells are separately sealed. I could grab one, er, if you'll help. Do you want the fat, dark one or the skinny, red one?" Chip drifted toward the cell doors, waiting for Dave to get ready.

 

[Dragonfree]

"...Let's start with the small one." That one'd seemed less aggressive, right? Probably easier to confine and more receptive. Dave looked at it through the glass and tried to concentrate, grasping for Radiance in the depths of his brain.

It was a lot harder when not actually in a fight. He grasped for a reason this mattered. Maybe if Eien could soothe them, or whatever, it'd be one step towards figuring out how to get them out of Soda. Something like that.

And there it was. He nodded to Chip, preparing to trap the parasite.