Destiny Village ~ X-Eye Cauldron

[Disco]

"We're getting to the bottom of it. Slowly but surely. Perhaps we'll get more answers at the Tree of Life."

Raven downed what was left of her drink.

"It's going well. I've been exploring all of Cibus ever since I got my wings. There's still a lot I have yet to see and I'm actually thinking about exploring some of the smaller dungeons, just for fun."

 

[Namohysip]

"A Shade in a Dungeon, eh? Guess that's nothing to really worry about, aside from getting stuck forever since you can't really starve or get knocked out by weaklings." He shrugged. "Anyway, goon on ya for getting wings. You're way ahead of that other Charizard's Shade, and whatever's going on with the panicky Meganium's Shade."

 

[Disco]

"It'll be fine. They aren't as bad as they used to be, from what I've heard. And you must mean Cal... I haven't talked to her much. I'm sure she has her reasons for staying the way she is, though. I don't think I've even met the other..."

Raven glanced over at a nearby clock and grimaced. It was starting to get late, and she should have already been in the air. "Speaking of flying, I should be doing that right now. Sorry to leave like this. It was nice talking with you, Soda."

She made sure to clean up her spot before she left, and waved goodbye to the Zoroark, before leaving the restaurant and taking flight.

 

[Namohysip]

Soda watched her go, tilting his head. "Someone's busy," he mumbled, but then glanced at his badge, reading over what might have been a few notes. "...Guess she's not the only one." He eyed the badge, then his sliders, then his badge again. "Eh. Fuck it."

He continued eating.

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[Namohysip]

It was a quieter point during the day for X-Eye, which usually saw most of its customers as the sun set. During the afternoon, things were calmer. Pokemon weren't quite done with their work and weren't quite out to lunch, leaving only the few on vacation or on odd schedules to populate the tables. Among them was Puff, sitting across from Dave, with plates of food for both of them.

"Well," Puff said, "I guess that takes care of the formal pleasantries. This'll be part of that whole Dark Warrior series we're running, so you ready to start?"

 

[Dragonfree]

Dave raised an eyebrow. "'Dark warrior', huh. That's dramatic." This interview thing was pretty inane, but at least he was well used to it from back home. "Fire away."

 

[Namohysip]

"Eh, it's one of those things where it's catchy and the public came up with it first," Puff said, shrugging. "Alright, let's get started. With the basics. Tell us a little about yourself! What do you do back home, eh?" Puff was already attentive, ears twitched upright. There was an aura about him that was a little different. More professional. Maybe he really was an ace reporter...

 

[Dragonfree]

"Well, I'm human. Back home, I'm a geneticist. I worked on research into how to take the principles behind useful stuff Pokémon can do and apply them to humans as well. Like, Pokémon are good at healing; humans, not nearly so much. So I was trying to find out if we could get humans to heal like Pokémon do. That kind of deal."

Was this an interview where he should get into the Pokémorph thing? Back home, it was a given that anyone wanting to interview him knew about that and was going to spend most of it asking about it, no matter how tangential to the ostensible topic, but not here; he could get away with just not even bringing it up and Puff'd be none the wiser, presumably. On the other hand, on Cibus nobody was clutching pearls or Bibles over the concept of a person who was both human and Pokémon. Technically he was one of those right now. Even if that didn't count, humans and Pokémon were casually marrying each other and having kids and as best he could tell nobody thought there was anything wrong with it.

Well, he supposed he might as well see where this went before preempting anything. He left it at that.

 

[Namohysip]

"Oh? A human, studying how to make them more like Pokemon?" Puff seemed to lean in, but only barely. The interest seemed genuine. "In other words, is this a lot like using science to replicate what the Voice of Life, Buffet, can do? To change humans into Pokemon? Or only the parts the humans want... Like, say, a human with the powers of a Blissey, if we're going on about healing?"

 

[Dragonfree]

Dave's ears perked, but he'd better answer the question first. "Well, what we were going for was just stuff like healing technology for regular old humans. You've got berries and elixirs over here, right? We've got those kinds of things in my world, and a lot of other stuff too, but it only works on Pokémon, because it makes use of how Pokémon work, biologically. We wanted to know if Pokémon and human biology could work together, so to speak, to apply what Pokémon can do to a human body. I discovered a generic way of making Pokémon and human genes work together, which didn't exactly get us all the way there, but it was pretty groundbreaking. There's been some great work building on top of it since, but we're not all the way there."

Well, fuck it. "Due to some complications, we did wind up with some humans with limited Pokémon powers. But that's not what any of this was about. It's not remotely practical for any purpose."

 

[Namohysip]

"Humans with limited Pokemon powers, huh?" Puff repeated, nodding. "Seems like it might be helpful, but I don't think we really know what humans are really like aside from what the Omen Heroes have told us." There didn't seem to be any alarm in his voice. Interest, more like. "It sounds to me like you've dedicated your life to trying to improve society through research. Not too far off from Reshiram's work and the technologies he's helped invent, would you agree?"

 

[Dragonfree]

It didn't sound like Puff entirely got it - hadn't he just said the Pokémorphs weren't useful for anything practical, which was a good thing - but whatever, at least he wasn't coming in with random pedophilia accusations, like some people. "I'm not exactly intimately familiar with what Reshiram does, but that's a reasonably fair description, sure. What was that you were saying about using science to replicate Voices of Life? Is that what Reshiram is doing?"

 

[Namohysip]

Puff tilted his head. "Er, no. I was just wondering if that's something you could do with that... genetic technology, since I think Buffet can do the same thing, since he has a hold of all walks of life on Cibus. We already have him to work with that kind of thing, so Reshiram doesn't see a need for trying to do those same things by science. Might be beyond us, still, anyway, if I had to guess. Buffet's power operates beyond natural sciences. Reshiram is responsible more for... well, this." He gestured to the very badge he was using for recordings. "Or the screens in Destiny Colosseum, or the advancements in Protect insulation for buildings that make Destiny Village so sturdy.

"For you to be looking into something that only the Voice of Life could once do--placing the powers of one creature into another--it sounds very ambitious."

 

[Dragonfree]

He'd really thought that sounded suspiciously specific, but apparently not. "Well, where I come from, the notion of just taking a human and turning them into a Pokémon is silly science fiction. Not realistic on any level. A lot of things that are possible here are pretty absurd by my reckoning; honestly I'm still getting over the fact I ever functioned in the body of a Poochyena. What's possible is using our understanding of the biological machinery that already exists to achieve desired results. The part-Pokémon kids - the press called them 'Pokémorphs' because of some ridiculous book series - have some Pokémon features because we used the cellular machinery that already exists to grow their bodies in the womb, and got it to build Pokémon parts instead, or additionally. There's no special god-magic involved, just regular old biology."

Technically he wasn't sure if Pokémon in Cibus even fucking had wombs. Puff was just going to have to stop him if none of this made any sense to him.

"Technology is a bit different, since it can be designed from the ground up while biology's working with existing evolved systems, but fundamentally both are using scientific methods to advance understanding and maybe discover ways to make life better for everyone."

 

[Namohysip]

Puff was writing a lot of notes down while listening. "Incredible," he said. "With your limited resources in your world--no access to gods or the systems they follow--you're still trying to achieve similar feats with science alone. That's commendable all by itself. ...You've got a lot of ambition." Puff looked at Dave, halting his notes briefly. "Someone doesn't have that kind of ambition just for no reason. What are you fighting for, in a way?"

 

[Dragonfree]

Dave quirked an eyebrow at the insinuation that doing science without a god helping along was particularly noteworthy. God, what a concept.

"I mean, as far as getting into it, I was just interested. I read a load of books on biology and evolution and genetics as a teenager, went to college, graduated with honors, got a Ph.D., figured I'd try to get into something groundbreaking from there. You know?" Did he know? Was university education a common thing in Cibus? Whatever.

He paused for a moment. "But since the Pokémorph thing happened I've been spending more time just trying to give them a decent life than on the actual science, so I guess that's what I'm fighting for today. For people to treat some kids like actual human beings. Go figure."

 

[Namohysip]

His ear twitched again. That seemed to be a 'tell' that he'd heard something interesting. "...How do you mean, not treated like actual human beings?" he asked. "We don't treat Thyme or the others as human... but the way you said that, I think the meaning of the phrase is different. Could you explain?"

 

[Dragonfree]

Dave blinked. "Uh, well, in my world Pokémon don't talk. Civil society's composed of humans. So we talk about human rights, et cetera, and it's just rights that apply to everyone. Treating them like human beings just means treating them as people. Obviously if sapient Pokémon like on Cibus made their way over there it'd be an awkward phrase to use."

 

[Namohysip]

"But these part-Pokemon humans that you've made, are they not human?" Puff asked, brow furrowed with something between concern and confusion. "If your society treats people under human rights, wouldn't they get human rights because that's how they behave?"

Puff was a reporter. They typically asked leading or probing questions. But for some reason, the Cinderace looked genuinely confused about what Dave was talking about.

 

[Dragonfree]

Dave tilted his head. Could Puff just... not wrap his mind around bigotry at all? What a fucking concept.

"They are functionally human. But in my world people tend to look for excuses to de- to take certain groups and decide they're dangerous, or lesser, or don't belong, for whatever bullshit reasons they can come up with. So every time we were going to send them to school or whatever, we'd have to jump through hoops because the principal'd have concerns about whether they'd murder the other students or whatever if they were let in. And in the end they enacted a law to forbid them from being around other people, just functional house arrest."