Destiny Village ~ Library

[SparklingEspeon]

"The libraries back home don't have... 'librarians'," Tricky said, half confused. "You kind of just went in and picked whatever you wanted."

Or at least the school library didn't.

"A-anyway," she said, folding her arms and trying to make it look like she hadn't come up with that excuse on the spot. "I wanna come along."

 

[Ambyssin]

"Fascinating."

It was not fascinating.

"You're welcome to follow, though I don't think it should take that long." Bahamut flicked a prism hand and the door opened up. He marched up to the reception table and to the Bean that was manning it. After a quick inquiry, he was given a variety of options. Sadly, the one that could actually be checked out was a book in the children's section: Nice to Meet You, Pikachu! It was a sickeningly colorful book with a happy, waving pikachu surrounded by a multitude of other species from a tiny joltik to a big golurk.

Bahamut wanted to throw up, but he flipped the book open. Everything was alphabetized, so he quickly found Kyurem. "This is... supposed to be a dragon?" He turned the book upside-down. "It looks more like a warped ice pop with eyes."

 

[SparklingEspeon]

Tricky tried to twist her head upside down to look at the picture. The best she could manage was sideways-slanting-downish, but that was good enough. It looked more like a bunch of icicles stabbed into a rock to her than an ice-pop, but that wasn't really important. A better question was probably what Kyurem was doing in a children's book.

"So why are you looking for these guys, anyway?" Tricky asked.

 

[Ambyssin]

"Arceus suggested I find them." Bahamut began flipping toward the end of the book. "I believe they... have a similar glass-half-empty style of thinking as me."

He reached Yveltal's page and frowned. Bahamut turned the book to Tricky. "Is it just me or is this a slab of bacon with wings?"

 

[SparklingEspeon]

"Looks like a fletchinder painted itself with tar," Tricky said, looking at the drawing. Why did all these legendaries have to be so weird...

"So you're just looking for them so you can brood?" she asked. "Isn't that unhealthy?"

 

[Ambyssin]

Bahamut closed the book. "It doesn't matter. I've been cursed with immortality. And with the team not interested in my opinions and others able to do what I can do, I'm better off trying to find someone who thinks like me. Figure out how they can stand being in such a sickeningly cheerful world."

 

[SparklingEspeon]

"Well, m-maybe they don't," Tricky said, trying to find something to refute Bahamut's pessimistic ideology with. "If Arceus said you had to find them yourself, that must mean they aren't hanging around here, right? What if you go after them and they're corrupted like the other legendaries we fought?"

 

[Ambyssin]

"Nobody mentioned they were missing." Bahamut shrugged. "If they're corrupted, then I strongly doubt they're within the city. Maple had mentioned something about her team living somewhere a bunch of so-called gods take up residence."

"We were there earlier, dummy."

Bahamut pretended he didn't hear that. "Besides, I don't care if they do me in. There's nothing waiting for me back home and the rest of the team can probably salvage things here just fine."

 

[SparklingEspeon]

It was like having your words pelted back at you one by one. He'd really thought this all through, hadn't he? And now he was just going to abandon them all so he could go be edgy with a pair of legendary pokemon who may or may not be on their side right now. Maybe at the cost of his life, since Tricky could tell he didn't know anything about where or who they were.

"So... you're just going to abandon everything here to go chase some legendaries you don't even know anything about," Tricky concluded. "Don't you think you'd be worring anymon if you just left all of the sudden?"

 

[Ambyssin]

"Not really." Did the kit not hear what he'd said before? "Possibly Owen. But that's because he puts too much personal investment into everyone. One can only wonder how long he has in his home world until he cracks like an opened chestnut."

Bahamut shut the book. "As juvenile as this is. It does the job. Only thing I have to do is ask the librarian where to find them. Apparently he has eyes everywhere."

 

[SparklingEspeon]

It looked like he was dead-set on it, then. There wasn't much she could do to convince him otherwise. Although she was pretty sure they weren't hanging around in the city like he seemed to think they were. And if he didn't seem to care whether he came back from that trip or not...

"Well, you're worrying me," she said. "If you talk to the librarian and they're in some weird place and you go after them and wind up hurt or lost or something, I will... haunt your ghost for the rest of your dead. And I'll say 'I told you so' too, just so you know how stupid you were."

 

[Ambyssin]

Bahamut turned away from her. "Have fun with that. If you try to latch onto my spirit, you'll be killed by Eternatus. Then you won't even have a ghost to do any haunting with. You'll just be another Phantom, mindlessly attacking anything that so much as looks at you."

He walked off toward the reception desk, book in hand.

 

[SparklingEspeon]

Tricky watched him go, her ears swiveling in slight confusion. "But didn't we just... beat an eternatus?" she mumbled.

It didn't matter. He wasn't going to listen to somemon like her. Must be hard, being so old and jaded you'd forgotten what positivity was. Did everymon really hate him that much? Sure, he'd been nothing but a grump for all his time here, but it didn't take a genius to see that he was hurting too.

But now she had to find another reason to be in this library. (It hadn't yet occurred to her that she could just leave.)

<><><><><><>​

 

[Negrek]

"Who the fuck even asks to meet in a library, anyway?" Nate grumbled. He appeared to be walking as far from the shelves as possible, like the books might burn him if he got too close.

"I don't know, I think it's nice. It's such a big library," Rocky said. The shade was carrying a large femur in one hand.

"Yeah, you fucking would. You'd probably want to like, check in a book or whatever the fuck," Nate said with disdain.

"Maybe if I knew how to read," Rocky said wistfully. "Or do you think they have ones with nice pictures?"

"I swear to god I'm surrounded by fucking nerds. Where the hell's this meeting room supposed to be, anyway?"

"I think maybe over here?" Rocky said, leading the way through the shelves.

 

[Namohysip]

The library continued for what felt like forever. With how large it was on the outside, it seemed even bigger on the inside, which led to a mild suspicion that it was some kind of localized Dungeon. Surely something couldn't be this impossibly large to navigate. And yet, despite this, Nate did finally find his way to the meeting room on the second floor of the library, where a Hydreigon and a canid Zygarde floated or stood within. The walls were like glass--must have been one of those trendy study rooms--and Buffet spotted Nate just as he rounded the corner. He waved with one of his heads.

"Nate," he greeted once he entered. "Didn't get too lost, did you?"

"We probably should have picked a closer room," Bean admitted, smiling.

 

[Negrek]

"Nah, it was no problem," Nate said, ignoring the look he got from Rocky, who'd had to listen to him complaining the entire way. "Thanks for showing up, anyway." It was an undignified scramble, as always, to make it up onto a table where he could be a little closer to eye-to-eye with the others. Rocky took a seat, putting the bone on the table between them.

Nate studied the green dog thing. He'd seen them around in a lot of weird places--didn't seem like they spent much time out actually "searching for distortions" if they could afford to hang out at the Colosseum or the marketplace. But whatever. It was worth a shot. "You're Bean, right? Buffet was telling me you're the guy to talk to if you need to find shit."

 

[Namohysip]

"I certainly am!" Bean said. "Most of my copies are generally searching around the continents for anything odd. I tend to have two assigned to any major area, and I've been looking through distortions where I can. It can be quite difficult, at times..."

"Bean is a bit like this world's personal overseer, alongside Arceus," Buffet said. "Where Arceus is unable to look into the distortions, Bean is sent in to physically explore. But even then, this Blacklight matter... it seems to be something where he isn't able to sense the distortions properly, either."

 

[Negrek]

Copies. Well. You just never knew what weird shit was up with pokémon.

"Ah. Yeah. I was kinda wondering how that all was going," Nate said. "Thought this might help." He gestured at the bone lying on the table. "We found this in Giovanni's place, right? Supposed to belong to that marowak who went missing, Bone. And then a little later on, we got a message from our old Dark Matter boss. Says he's locked up somewhere here on Cibus, and while he's been stuck here, he heard people talking, and one of their names was Bone. So. Maybe if we find her, we can track him down, too. Gives us a lead, anyhow."

Nate turned to Buffet. "Bone's one of the heroes you brought over here, right? Have you got that whole mystical connection thing going on that might give you a hint about where she went? Or her partner, that blaziken guy?"

 

[Namohysip]

"The only one that I have a strong connection with in that sense is Pine," Buffet admitted, frowning. "But... I do keep tabs on the other humans. While they haven't caused any trouble, it's always good to be cautious of the superpowers that aren't under Arceus' jurisdiction. Like I said before, there were times in other worlds where a human had tried to rival the Arceus of that world and, well, it was a risky venture." He laughed, though. "Still, that's very rare."

Bean gave Nate an apologetic smile. Buffet always was one to ramble. "I've been searching for them as well, and as far as I can tell, I only know that they haven't left their home continent."

 

[Negrek]

Yeah, of course. If it woulda been that simple, Buffet would already have told everybody where the marowak was. Presumably. "That's too bad. You happen to know anything about the world Bone came from?"

What Bean said, though. Now that was fucking interesting. "Their home continent, huh? Which is what one of them again? I ain't so good with Cibus geography."

"Maybe we could look at a map?" Rocky said. He used his badge to show a projection of the world map in the air above the table. Nate eyed it, frowning. Nope. No idea what was going on with that shit.