Destiny Village ~ Pasta Plaza

[Flyg0n]

"They don't have fossil's where you're from?" Koa asked, cocking his head. That was surprising. Were Tyrunt just found in the wild then?

"Fossils are like... Rocks? Where's I'm from, certain pokemon only lived a really really long time ago. But we can find rocks of their bones. People have found a way to revive them and they're working on trying to bring them back."

 

[Persephone]

Coco frowned. “So the baby crawls out of the rock? Eggs sound easier. I hatched from an egg.”

 

[Flyg0n]

Koa snickered. "No not out of the rock. Think of it like... evolving from the rock, I guess? Honestly I barely understand it..."

 

[Persephone]

Coco didn’t really understand evolution, either. Just that Mama was even bigger one day. So fossils just get bigger and grow another head. Did the other tyrunt have two heads? Or did the fossil not have a head.

Coco remembered she was surrounded by food.

“Can you get me food to bite? Then I want to know all about ‘fossils’ and ‘evolution.’ First question: can I bite fossils?”

 

[Flyg0n]

Koa glanced around. Now that Coco mentioned it he was pretty hungry. "Sure, I guess I'll tell you what I can." As he spoke, he wandered over to a stall selling a selection of whatever qualified as 'meat' on Cibus. Coco seemed like she might like that.

"So I guess you could bite a fossil..."

<><><><><>​

 

[MadderJacker]

It was real. A faded memory from a past life, little more than a dream, now stood on the other end of the street. The Grace looked so different in the daylight. Elegant still, the architecture was sleek with walls of ivy to give it that splash of color, but without the romantic lighting of the evening and the atmosphere of the dinner crowd. Like everything else, it was an altered copy. Different. Nothing had happened here.

Nothing had happened at the original either.

Mergo, a Gardevoir, sat on a street bench a little bit down the road as he stared dimly at the restaurant. For the past few days he hadn't known what he would have done when he'd found it again, and he still didn't know now. A loose fist occasionally tensed as violet star formed in his palm, which he treated like a stress ball, letting it break apart and spill between his fingers like a Shuckle before he eased up and let it reform.

'Burn it' had been a joke answer he'd prepared if someone found out and asked him why. If he didn't have any other ideas... Mm. Maybe later.

Someone now dead remembered something, and he had passed it on. Now Mergo was the only one who knew everything. It could have merely been a passing dream, or an unwelcomed thought put into his head by everyone's insistent teasing. It would be a lie, of course, but how difficult would it be to make that the truth?

Kill Owen. That's what he'd do. Totally. And he knew how to do it this time, too.

Mergo hummed, then let out a sigh. That wouldn't do.

 

[Namohysip]

"Oh, goodness," said a voice that perhaps Mergo had wanted more than anything, yet also wanted to avoid at all costs. "I didn't expect to find one of your team here."

Mergo had been here for a few weeks by now. Their Diyem had allowed and pushed for more time to give Team Spectrum more morale. Yet perhaps by luck the meeting never would have happened.

Mergo's luck had run out. Behind him was Reshiram, familiar and entirely foreign, with a tilted head and those same, piercing blue eyes. Even if Mergo wanted to, there would be no way to lie.

"Nostalgia?" Reshiram asked, looking like he had been on his way into the restaurant. "Must be surreal. The same place, yet not at all."

 

[MadderJacker]

The beginnings of fight-or-flight kicked in. His eyes grew just a hair wider as he sucked in a half-breath, and then, staring straight at the entrance to the restaurant, Mergo froze completely. There were no thoughts running through his head. Only screams.

Of all the times for fate to have a sense of humor, it had to be now? Here?

He needed to calm down. Mergo needed to calm down. Sheer force of will made his beating heart slow.

"It is," he answered (after a solid three second pause), which wasn't a lie. He'd had that conversation, what... four times? Maybe five? "Forgive me. You startled me." Which also wasn't a lie.

 

[Namohysip]

"Ah, my apologies," Reshiram said with a nod. "I must still be excited from the Colosseum battle of my sister. Were you planning to go inside? We could share a table; if you'd humor me, I was very curious about this other world so similar to ours." Which would be the natural expectation. Reshiram was the inventor and technological leader in Cibus, too. He would naturally be curious.

 

[MadderJacker]

The psyshock in his hand fizzled and died as Mergo struggled to keep himself from shouting an immediate 'no.' Instead he cleared his throat and folded his hands together. "I ate recently," he answered, which was debatably not a lie. He'd eaten some six hours ago, and he was used to far longer.

Someone had to have put Reshiram up to this. There was no way someone wasn't messing with him. Owen? Probably Owen. Or maybe Sage or Ben. They didn't know, but they teased him about it regardless. Snakes, the both of them. Or whoever it was.

Slowly, Mergo braced himself and raised his head to meet Reshiram's gaze. The same eyes, same demeanor, that he was used to looked back at him, only they lacked any recognition. Polite, cordial, but everything else was gone. Elsewhere. Moved on.

"You... really don't remember me, do you?" he asked, though he'd already known what the answer would be.

 

[Namohysip]

Reshiram frowned, pensive. "I'm afraid you misunderstand," he said. "I'm not the same Reshiram you knew. He's elsewhere, a completely different yet similar world. Is that... difficult to understand? I can certainly see why. It took me a time to come to terms with the concept. But there is nothing to remember... as I never forgot you. We never met."

 

[MadderJacker]

"I'm aware. I misspoke," he relented.

Perhaps Reshiram was trying to be comforting. It wasn't effective. Then again, he wondered if anything would be.

"Forgive me. I didn't mean to sound like I was guilting you." Mergo averted his gaze and put his attention on a spot in the road, letting his mind wander. "There was a lot of memory shenanigans beforehand, so when you came up like this again, I thought there might be a chance." And he would have been in very real danger if there was.

So, at least that remained buried behind him. Good.

"But, at least you're much the same here," Mergo noted, putting some good will into his voice. "Or at least it seems so. The voice of reason behind the scenes, the righteous brand of truth. The kind of thing that, due to your good work, nobody is reminded of."

Mergo blinked, though his expression remained the same. What was he doing?

 

[Namohysip]

Reshiram smiled, like he could tell more from what Mergo was saying, and he nodded. "I see," he said. "You must hold me in high esteem, or, rather, what I stand for in high esteem. I did sense something from you, in a way. This... aura about you. Perhaps a kind of resonance. You must hold the Reshiram of your world in high regard. Is that it?"

 

[MadderJacker]

"I do. Her teachings helped me at a time where I needed them." Which was part of the truth.

Mergo drummed a finger on the back of his hand. He knew this path, and he would not allow it to be traversed again. These words were not the same. He had to exit the area before--

... No. No, wait, this would be perfect. Fate might have had a sense of humor, but this was a boon nonetheless.

"There was one thing that confused me, however," Mergo added. "Might I pose a question to you?"

 

[Namohysip]

"Hm? Yes, of course," Reshiram said, nodding. "Anything. At this point, we are in debt to both you and Team Spectrum, after all, for all the assistance that has been provided. Ask away."

 

[MadderJacker]

"Well... I'd like to know what functional difference there is between an expert lie and the truth."

Asking the question made Mergo feel small. It had to be some degree of blasphemy to suggest they could be the same, or childish to even ask something of the sort. But he endured.

"An experienced liar could cover up their lie with careful tricks and a well-thought-out story. I'm sure you've seen enough of these people in your time. People in power will hide many awful secrets. Some of them are never discovered and go on to be part of the foundation, sited as fact, influencing many people's real decisions for generations to come, even long after the people who hid those secrets are dead. If they're never unearthed, what makes them different from the truth?

"Two tribes have been at peace for a hundred years, almost to the point of being one. A long time ago they had hated each other, and their two leaders went to the top of the mountain to kill each other, only for them to returning after receiving a divine message saying to join as friends instead. Now their descendants help each other gather food for the winter, they trade resources that only one has to aid their neighbors, and their arts are further influenced by the other without prejudice. Only, there was no divine message. The reason for their peace was a lie, but does that make the peace any less real?"

One hand tensed around the other wrist.

"If someone wished to will a lie to be truth, and they were the only one that knew, what would stop them?"

 

[Namohysip]

When Mergo spoke, Reshiram kept his head down, eyes closed, as he deeply contemplated what he was saying. Taking in every word, maybe even running the words over his head again from different angles. It was a careful posture, one that wouldn't leave any details open, should he spend all the time in the world on it. But he didn't have that, so perhaps he was only considering as much as he could.

"This is a question that Zekrom had asked me a while ago, for a very real thing that had happened some thousand years ago." Reshiram opened his eyes. "Long ago, there were two villages that lived along the same river. One was a village that lived upstream and took pride in their power and their prosperous populations. Downstream was another village that struggled to thrive due to fewer fish to hunt and contaminated waters to wade through. Famine was settling in, and the downstream villagers were becoming desperate. They soon began to steal from nearby villages, including the one upstream.

"The upstream village investigated the cause of the matter. Their experts determined something grave, and their findings were spread not only to the upstream village, but to the downstream ones as well. There was a great beast below the upstream village, yet above the downstream village, that was tainting the waters and devouring all the fish. The upstream village was very sure that they hunted sustainably, and they certainly would not be at fault for contamination when their village itself was so clean. But the upstream village did not have the resources to hunt this beast alone, and so they called upon the assistance of the downstream village to help.

"They traveled into a strange cavern that radiated an ominous aura the moment they entered. Deep inside was a gargantuan beast, indescribable to any kind of Pokemon, that gravely injured several of the upstream Pokemon, and injured some of the downstream fighters as well. But they were heroic, and fended the beast away with attacks from a distance after seeing that physical contact made the fighters lose fur and perhaps even limbs, had they not been careful.

"The beast fell. And over the course of a few moons, the river was clean and bountiful, even for those downstream, and all was peaceful."

Reshiram looked at Mergo, finally opening his eyes. "What do you believe truly happened?"

 

[MadderJacker]

Mergo hadn't looked at Reshiram throughout the tale, nor had he when he'd phrased his questions, but nonetheless his approach was much the same. His eyes shifted about, as if all the information was on a board in front of him, connecting threads from one pin to another. The pose he held could've lasted hours, far into the early hours of the morning until sleep would creep up on him. A number of times, he'd done just that.

"Barring one possibility, I suspect that someone made this to save face for people who didn't want to admit their tribe's flaws," Mergo concluded. "Unless this was one of your prismatic Muks so long ago that they were not yet a known phenomenon, 'indescribable beast' is far too convenient."

Even though this world had its share of strange omens before that defied explanation, those had a pattern. And no human was summoned for this one, were they? He'd only heard of the ones surrounding the four omens of relative recent years. This had to be an old one, though, since the people of these tribes apparently fished for their food.

"... However, I would personally find the truth of that story little more than a novelty," Mergo added. "Truth or lie, reality is (I assume) that they keep the river clean and leave enough for them all to survive. And that's all that matters now."

He started to glance up to Reshiram, but his gaze only met with the rings on his neck before returning to the street, awaiting judgment.

 

[Namohysip]

"The truth," Reshiram said, "was that the upstream village was being reckless with their resources, and contaminated the river with their trash, while taking too much from the river. Unsustainable. Other nearby villages caught wind of this after realizing where it all stopped, and confronted the upstream village. While powerful, they could not overpower all of them with might... But they were also filled with pride.

"They conjured up the idea of a beast that was to blame, while looking into ways to better their treatment of the river. They 'slayed' the beast and gave the credit to the downstream village. The whole story was to stall for time until they could fix the river themselves. The beast was an illusion conjured by powerful Psychics; all of the injuries were staged."

Reshiram sighed. "This was a truth that took decades to uncover, and by that point those who orchestrated it had passed on. When it was discovered, it became merely a footnote in the history books, brushed aside as days gone by. The truth of how it all happened didn't matter to those upstream... despite calls for further reparations for what had been done. Justice had not been done because the upstream village kept their pride, and only learned through caution, not shame or true righteousness. And, therefore, they would be at greater risk to commit the same sins again."

Those blue eyes looked down on Mergo again, considering things. "Zekrom and I had talks about this incident. Arguments, too. But in this world, even gods can grow. I was younger then... I wanted the truth to come out immediately. It was a grave lie and an injustice hidden by those in power. Neglect and famine had been caused and not paid for. Zekrom held a different opinion--that revealing this truth would lead to more resentment, perhaps even greater conflicts, compared to the peace and partnership that had been fostered by taking down a common foe. An imagined foe. I called it dangerous. Zekrom called it a compromise." Reshiram looked away. "Even now, I am unsure what the proper approach would be, and how my convictions would tie into it. It worked out, that time. But not always."

 

[MadderJacker]

"As long as people have the power and wit to control the narrative as they wish, evil will go unpunished," Mergo added, then gave a deep sigh. "Hearing the things that psychics can accomplish in other worlds makes me deeply ashamed."

Casual memory scanning and sealing, powerful illusions, mind-manipulation... Mergo shook his head. It didn't matter right now.

A different kind of shame had crept up his spine. Even if Reshiram likely didn't hold the same adamancy as in his younger days, it still irked him. And yet Mergo had been willing to let it slide. Sure, he thought the people and their pride was a shame. Somebody should have scared the daylights out of them to give them the humbling they desperately needed. Ensure it would never happen again. But if it meant risking stability, was truth all that important?

It was uncovered far too late. Whatever grievances there were are no longer there. The lie had faded, but its essence was now the truth.

Did Mergo believe in truth? Or did he just use it?

He drew in a deep breath. The question formulated in his mind, and he felt like he was putting his head on an execution block as he stared into a window at The Grace. The silhouette of two Pokemon were conversing, and one tilted their head back in laughter.

"What about if there are no victims?" Mergo asked. "What if it's a lie to yourself? If you pretend something never happened to you, and you bury it so deep that you move on and make a new life, would that be a new truth?"