Destiny Village ~ Chip's Lab

[Namohysip]

"It isn't anything bad," Chip said immediately, raising his little arms. "They were just hypothetical experiments, and maybe some practical ones! Like... for example, finding a way to harness elemental energy for more concentrated bits of energy. Imagine compacting a power plant into something the size of a small room! It'd be amazing! Oh! And of course, there was that time I offered Karat and Deoxys to potentially synthesize a surrogate child between the two of their genomes... Ah, don't tell them I said that! They're, um, they're just good friends, yes. Oh, and there was of course the time I harnessed the Tree of Life's power to project an image onto the moon. It isn't like they're using its power anymore, come on!" Chip sighed. "They just don't understand the advancements you can make with a little scientific curiosity..."

 

[Negrek]

Well, okay, that honestly wasn't as bad as Nate had been thinking. Except maybe that first one that kinda sorta might be about making a bomb or some shit. And just what in the fuck was it with these scientists with wanting to make nightmare mutant kids? Holy fucking fuck. "Well, that's a shame. Those sound like a lot of fun." Well, at least proposing that one idea to Karat sure did, just for the guy's reaction. Nate's smirk wasn't feigned. "That whole Tree of Life thing comes up a lot, don't it? You say nobody's using its energy 'anymore,' but, like, what does it even do, normally?"

"Well, it's dumb that Zekrom doesn't want you doing anything with it," Rocky said, crossing his arms. "Putting pictures on the moon would be super cool! I mean, could you watch a whole movie in the sky or something? That would be the best thing! I wish I'd been around to see that."

 

[Namohysip]

"Yeah, exactly! Just because I made a new crater there at first doesn't mean I can't just recalibrate it." Chip nodded. "It's very simple. Hm. But anyway, Tree of Life? Back when Dungeons plagued the planet, the Tree was used to keep the major things about the planet operating. If it didn't, it kind of flew into the sun. Arceus and Xerneas had to power up that tree to make sure the planet didn't fly out of orbit. But now that Dungeons are sort of, you know, fading out, we don't even use the Tree anymore. Planet's stable on its own. So now we have this giant literal power plant... unused! Pop says it's for a rainy day... How boring."

 

[Negrek]

"Yeah. That does sound like it would come in handy." Especially to a world-hopping dickface Mewtwo. Whatever the guy's plan was, wouldn't be surprising if it involved that tree somehow. Supposedly it had something to do with the end of Telum, too... or the not-end of Telum. Whatever. "Back up a bit. All that tech shit I brought you was busted, right? But when we brought Shield in, he had one of those elemental dampers on him, didn't he? And it still worked?"

 

[Namohysip]

"Oh, that? Yeah, we took a look at that, but we don't really know much more about that... If it had a power source, it ran out. One-use. Real shame. The device we confiscated wasn't really any different from the other scraps we had..." Chip sighed. "It's almost like Giovanni is expecting us to get these things so he makes sure they don't last long enough for us to analyze it."

 

[Negrek]

One-time use, huh? Was Giovanni really trying to keep his tech out of the pokémon's hands? That sounded like giving the pokémon more credit than he would want to. Bad news if he was taking them that seriously. If you couldn't count on the guy to screw up thanks to his ego, he really didn't have a whole lot of weaknesses. "Can I take a look at it?"

 

[Namohysip]

"Yeah. It's just in the other room with the rest of the Rocket material. Labeled it 162."

In the room, just as described, was one of the latest additions to the neatly arranged pile of junk. Around the size of the Mudkip's shoulder, looked vaguely like a badge without any of that kiddy flair that the Pokemon of Cibus seemed fond of. Businesslike. Cold. Functional. So probably something more of Giovanni's design. It was also inert; pressing the button in the center did not flash nor light up any screens, nor make any noise... It looked like Chip had tried to open it, too, because the back of the device had been pried open. Inside, was... empty.

 

[Negrek]

"Huh." Nate poked at the shield device, clicking the front button and poking his fingers into the empty cavity inside. "So there ain't any, like, wires or nothing?" There had to be somewhere, right? "Is this made outta one of those materials you mentioned before, like for holding radiance or shadow or whatever?"

 

[Namohysip]

"Probably something like that. Y'know, it's kinda weird, because it does look like something used to be in there, and then it just... went away." Chip hovered over Nate's shoulder. "Mmmzzzz does it look like any of that Rocket stuff you're familiar with? What's the inside of those Pocket Bowls supposed to look like?"

 

[Negrek]

"What, you think maybe there was shit in here, but it self-destructed or something?" Or maybe got eaten up by the shadow or whatever was supposed to be powering it. "It looks more or less like what I'm used to, I guess, aside from missing a battery and, you know, all the bits that actually make it work. When you open up a pokéball it's mostly a bunch of mirrors. Can't really see the circuits and shit. Ain't never taken one apart to see what's underneath."

Rocky was wandering around the room, staring at the confiscated equipment. He was paying particular attention to the pokéball cannons. Nate tried to keep half an eye on him, so he didn't decide to start touching anything.

 

[Namohysip]

"I don't really know the first thing about these, so human expertise has been a big help..." Chip sighed. "But I guess if you don't know, I can always ask someone else what they think. Maybe that Torracat..."

There didn't seem to be much more to look at from the technology compared to before. A shame, but Giovanni must have been thorough...

 

[Negrek]

"Mmm. Yeah." There had to be some way to get ahold of some of Giovanni's shit in working condition. "But whatever he's got, doesn't seem like it runs on normal electricity. Could you detect that shit? Like, tell someone had a bit of shadow or a bit of radiance on them? Or if they had a gizmo that, like, made... electric waves." Fucking science.

 

[Namohysip]

"We're still trying to work on detecting things like that," Chip said. "It's... hit or miss, and it only works on strong, active concentrations. Like a Shade, or a distortion nearby. We gave a few to the Beans during his scouting, actually. With any luck, the narrowed search in the Air Continent will turn something up."

 

[Negrek]

Figured. "Yeah, well, that'll definitely be handy. I'm thinking Giovanni might've planted a bug on somebody on the team. Or maybe they agreed to act as a mole for him, whatever, but I wouldn't be surprised if it happened to somebody who didn't realize what was going on. He figured out what was up with Sword way too fast after we showed up in town. Too fast for somebody to have actually called him without us noticing. So he's got some kind of psychic link with somebody on the team, or a listening device, or they turned their badge on for him..." Nate trailed off. Yeah, there was that, wasn't there? "Say, you can look and see if there were any signals sent from badges from the, uhh, magic water place, around the time all the shit went down with Karat escaping and all, can't you?"

 

[Namohysip]

"Hmm, we searched there, but we didn't really get any abnormal signals other than the ones we were told about. No leads there, I'm afraid..." Chip dipped his head down. "We really tried to track everyone down to every detail and couldn't find anything..."

 

[Negrek]

"If there wasn't anything sketchy going on there, then that's good info just by itself. Means it probably wasn't badge communication that let Giovanni in on what we were planning." Well, at least for now the porygon seemed able to handle badge questions without exploding. Nate tilted his head. "When you've got a badge, you can see, what, not everybody's location, but everybody in your group, right? Like Maple can see where all the God Squad are, and all of us, at the very least. So if somebody got ahold of her badge, they'd be able to see where all of us were? Then if they made a copy... Should we be worrying about them being able to see where we are right now? Rocky, put it back."

The infernape familiar had been about to sneak some piece of broken equipment into his bag. "Aww..."

 

[Namohysip]

Chip glanced at Rocky, then back to Nate. "That's entirely possible. But we'd get a server request for something like that, and... well, we can check, but we didn't notice anything abnormal. Then again, if they replicated the signal, there's no telling..." Chip sighed. "I'm going to have to implement even more logging..."

 

[Negrek]

"Don't worry about him. We were just about to leave all the cool Rocket tech behind, weren't we?"

"You're no fun," Rocky grumbled, but he didn't protest beyond shooting a wistful look over his shoulder while Nate led the way back into the main lab space.

While they walked, Nate said, "So who all's got badges, anyhow? All of us, obviously, and the God Squad. The guildmaster. Arceus. What about"--oh, God, that fucking stupid name--"Team Drumstick?" Nate's eyes narrowed. "Or Deoxys?"

 

[Namohysip]

"We lost their signals a while ago..." Chip sighed. "All high-ranking Pokemon have one. It's not their main badge, so they don't use it all that often, but they do have it. Especially during this Blacklight nonsense, y'know?"

 

[Negrek]

"Lost their signals, huh?" Nate said. "You happen to know where their last messages were sent from, before they went AWOL?"