Mist Continent ~ Paradise

[unrepentantAuthor]

Brisa smiled and flicked her tail idly. Nanab was sweet. Good thing Pine seemed fond of her in return.

"I dare say I'm well assured of our chances at this point," she drawled. "The stakes keep on risin', an' we keep on risin' t'meet the challenge."

She raised a brow at Pine. "I suppose ya would've made short work of Dark Matter if'n you'd been flesh and blood fer that one. Shame y'couldn't get involved. Must not be many challenges left in yer life with yer kinda strength. Even the Blacklight Crisis ain't somethin' y'can apply yer strength to, huh."

 

[Namohysip]

"Yeah, a little. But I guess that's what happens when you're a strong dude in an era of peace. Or, you know, an era where you can't do a whole lot. Quiet life is fine, though." Idly, he ran his claws along Nanab's back, and she curled up, rubbing her head against his thigh.

Someone called for Nanab from the other end of the field. "Oh! Darn. Okay, I think I need to answer that. I'll be back soon!"

Reluctantly, she uncurled and slithered away, waving a vine at Pine, who waved back. Pine didn't follow; it was likely something administrative, which Pine didn't do a whole lot of.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Brisa nodded her chin at Pine in an inquiring gesture.

"You guys are pretty close, huh."

 

[Namohysip]

"Uhuh." Pine watched her go, expressionless as always. Back to neutral. "Been together all my life here, pretty much. I think I've been here longer than I've been there."

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

"That's somethin' my pa said once," commented Brisa. "When I was five or six. Said he'd spent more time as a delphox than as a human."

She wiped her mouth with the back of her paw and tilted her head. "T'gether as in workin' t'gether, or t'gether as in life partners?"

 

[Namohysip]

"One then the other," Pine said simply. "I think I'm gonna die with her too."

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Brisa decided to assume this was simply Pine's unnerving, dysphemistic nature at work, rather than anything to worry about. Kudos to Nanab for not being bothered by it either.

"You love her?" she asked, not feeling the need to be any less blunt than her companion. It came as a relief. It was like talking to an Escarpa clanner who didn't have a chip on their shoulder.

 

[Namohysip]

"Uhuh." Pine was still staring off into space, but a closer look would reveal that his eyes were trained on where Nanab was heading--one of the sites in paradise, inspecting a quarry in progress, it seemed. "She gets me. She gets a lot of the weird stuff I see."

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Brisa's brows rose. Now that was interesting.

"Weird stuff, huh? Try me."

 

[Namohysip]

Pine paused, considering this. Then, he turned his head and looked at Brisa, perhaps considering something, perhaps looking at something that only he could 'see.' "Four hundred eighty," he said.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Brisa squinted at the haxorus.

"That's my vitality score since the last time the Colo staff scanned me," she said, carefully. "You can just . . . tell?"

 

[Namohysip]

Pine's eyes darted around the air just above Brisa. "Three seventy five. Seven fourteen. One fourteen. One eighty. Two forty six." Pine nodded, and one of his claws twitched in a curious way. "Guts. Charge. Thunder Fang. Facade. Electric Terrain... and a bunch of other weird names I dunno about."

A gust of wind blew. Then, he looked ahead. "Those are the stuff you have on-call if an emergency happens. The powers you can draw the fastest right now."

More wind blew and Nanab shouted something like a cheer.

"Too bad it only works on people I'm not fighting. Otherwise I could replace Owen."

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

"That's the rest of my official statline," said Brisa, not sure what else to say, or whether to be impressed or disturbed. "I'd bet money that the 'weird names' you're seein' are my Blacklight powers. Void Arcstrike, an' the like."

Brisa scratched her cheek and furrowed her brow. "Y'can't just . . . elect not to fight, huh? Doesn't work on hostiles under any circumstances? Too bad. Would be fuckin' handy t'have that ability at paw 'gainst some of these motherfuckers we fight."

Was this a consequence of Pine's incredible strength, or was his strength somehow so great he could unlock this insight? Were they unrelated? Was it a property of his soul, or his body? Could it be replicated? Brisa doubted Pine could answer many or any of those questions.

"Have you always seen that stuff?" she asked, instead.

 

[Namohysip]

"Yeah." Pine leaned back. As usual, his expression was inscrutable, but his body seemed more relaxed. By then, Nanab had returned.

"Okay! I'm back," Nanab said, sighing in a satisfied way. She grinned. "What'd I miss?"

"I told Brisa about my brain defect."

"Ohh, don't call it that," Nanab said without missing a beat. She reached for his hand and squeezed it, then draped herself over his lap.

"Alright," Pine replied, rubbing her back on reflex. He was smiling again. "I only started."

"Oh. Well, if that's the case... Yes, Brisa. Pine has a very, very rare disorder--or maybe a combination of them--but he's the only person in the whole world with this known combination. It probably has to do with how he came here from the Worldcore."

"Breaker looked at me and said it was different," Pine said. "That's the nice way of saying I don't see things the same. Hallucinations."

"Mhm. Pine's aura can actually attune to those around him incredibly quickly. As long as you two are allies, he can sense a lot of subtle things about you... But that's combined with the fact that sometimes, Pine can see things that aren't actually there, but they're his brain's way of showing him the energy he's sensing from his allies. He can tell how hungry you are, the moves you have on-call, your basic strengths, sometimes even how you're feeling emotionally! And... it manifests in a way that is similar to how he used to interact with this world, is that right?"

"Mhm. I was a human who could travel between this world and my home world."

"And it was through a strange technology," Nanab said. "What Pine 'sees' resembles how that technology showed our vital signs. When Pine was brought into this world from the Worldcore... I think it might have made his mind see things in that way."

"It's easier to focus on different things if I treat it that way," Pine added, twitching his claws again. "Otherwise... too much info." He twitched his claw one last time, then visibly relaxed. "I turned it off."

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Brisa thought carefully about what they told her. She remembered a sliver of information about one of the posse who'd faded back into their own world. Golett Ashwood. A former human. They'd said...

That this universe had been a game where they came from.

"Makes enough sense to me," she said, dismissing the existential crisis out of hand. She'd talked enough about multiversal bullshit and whatnot to Diyem, God Squad and Luz enough times already. This was seasoning.

Was a human. Was.

"You remember what your human life was like?" she asked, after a moment. "Can't help but be curious about yer double life while it lasted, and how it came to a close."

 

[Namohysip]

And there, for perhaps the briefest of moments, there was a hint of discomfort and hesitance. Pine opened his mouth, but no sound came, and he closed it, and Nanab seemed to have gone quiet, too.

"My life as a human was alright," he said. "Nothing too crazy. Probably boring stuff to you. Humans don't get elemental powers or anything... I visited here a lot. It was like I never really went back home at all. But I'd get dreams about my time as a human, so that's how I knew I still lived my life there."

Silence.

"And one day I stopped getting them."

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Brisa winced, only slightly.

"Reckon I just had the same hunch you did," she said, quietly.

There was a moment of quiet. The sun over Paradise warmed her fur. The smell of the food they'd been consuming remained in the air. In the distance, someone laughed. All the while, Pine's other body, presumably, lay beneath the earth on a foreign planet.

"I'm sorry it weren't by yer own choice," she said, simply.

 

[Namohysip]

Pine was holding Nanab a little tighter, and she gently curled around him.

"Kinda sucks," he said. "I dunno how it even happened. Dunno even if it happened."

"Pine..."

"Mm..." Pine looked off. "Sorry. Just something I wonder, sometimes."

Nanab sighed softly. "Pine... wonders if the reason he got his human life in a dream is because maybe he's not really 'Pine,' but..."

"Someone the Worldcore created," Pine said, "to grant Nanab's wish that I could be here."

"But that isn't true, Pine," Nanab said gently. "Buffet said it himself... you could travel. The world didn't even try to send Pita away when his job was done. You changed it. You convinced Cibus to let humans stay..."

"Mm. Mm. Yeah." Pine sounded dismissive, but the way Nanab reacted, he wasn't. He was really listening. "I guess sometimes I think it'd be better if I was still alive, and I wasn't the real Pine. Then nobody got left behind. I think I'm gonna keep thinking that anyway. Maybe it's true. Maybe I'm fake, but I'm also real, too."

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Brisa didn't jump in straight away. It wouldn't do to be hasty. Instead, she quietly took three small bottles of cheri cider from her basket and offered two to her companions, tail flicking.

"If you have yer memories, and ya behave the same way, do the same things, say the same things as y'would either way, I don't see how it oughta make much difference," she said, carefully. "But whether you're the same soul, or mind, or what have you, or not, you're still evidently a person livin' as Pine and I reckon ya oughta go on in that fashion."

Brisa put a digit to her mouth and hummed in thought. "Say, I reckon I recall hearin' about no fewer'n two other humans whose bodies in their home worlds went afore their souls did, ended up bound to their pokémon forms. I'm sure you'll've spoken to Bone long before now. Soda is the other, if I'm not wrong."

What if that had happened to Jesse?

"Ain't sure 'bout my pa."

 

[Namohysip]

"Mm... Dunno how it'll go," Pine said. "Bone's different, since she had to choose without totally knowing. Kinda the opposite of me, where I knew stuff but couldn't choose."

"Soda..." Nanab frowned. "Sometimes, I wonder if Soda used to be like Pine, and... it just didn't work out for him. How awful..."

Pine seemed calmer, which showed only in his muscles seemed less tense beneath his scales. "He's still gotta be stopped," he said flatly.