Poppin' Arms ~ Study

[Negrek]

Nate nodded. Good to know she had something planned; he'd been getting worried, after the amount of time that had passed. "Yeah, sounds about right. You thinking of bringing Shield along? I know he's under arrest and all, but he was the one who busted Rayquaza and them out, right? Seems like he might know a thing or two about the place."

 

[Namohysip]

Maple furrowed her brow, thoughtful. "I'm considering it," she said. "His powers are rapidly fading. I do not know how he gained them in the first place, and he hasn't told us, either. We tried to look into his memories, but we found powerful Psychic barriers... Which is worrying. It could be Karat's doing, but it's not easy to make him cooperate to undo them."

 

[Negrek]

Oh, fuck's sake. More fucking memory problems. Two fucking things about this world, the goddamned food names and the fact that not a single damn person remembered even one piece of useful information at any point in their fucking lives. "Yeah, I got a feeling who might be responsible there, you know, the guy like Karat except more fucking evil," Nate said darkly. Though there wasn't any reason Karat couldn't also be evil, of course. Fucking mewthings. Okay, so it was food names, memory loss, and fucking mewthings. "Figures. But anyway, figured he might be handy to have around if you thought he wouldn't make too much trouble. Not the most important thing, though."

Nate traced his fingers over the grain of the table, the rippled varnish and rough spot where someone had carved their initials into the wood. "Nother thing I wanted to ask you. Since day one, you ain't been able to do shit to most of the weirdos who've been popping up around here, right? The big magikarp, Darkwhite, Lugia, all them. But during that fight against Dialga and Palkia and all, you started being able to affect them. A little at first, and then basically the same amount as normal. And you can still do that, right? You coulda blasted Shield all to hell if you were feeling up to it."

 

[Namohysip]

Maple shook her head. "Shield had the same distortions. It wasn't that I was becoming stronger. It's that the distortions had become weaker. When you defeated one of those three, I felt some of my power returning. And when you defeated two of them, the distortion left behind from the third one was low enough that I overcame it. Your team has that same distortion, but it isn't strong. And Joule... I don't think he had a distortion at all. My powers went through to him perfectly, and I had been fighting far from your team at the time."

She rolled the ball a little, and the ball seemed to enjoy it, affectionately bumping against her arm.

"We confiscated a device from Shield that he must have stolen from Giovanni. Chip is studying it now. But it seems to create that very distortion that disrupts normal Pokemon powers."

 

[Negrek]

Nate stopped tracing. "It's a machine?" No, that wasn't right. Dialga and all them hadn't had anything on them. And obviously there wasn't anything making whatever "distortion" was supposed to be around him, or anybody else on the team. Or the shades, but--"Hang on. You couldn't see the shades in Treasure Town, or tell the infected pokémon apart from normal ones, right? And still can't? But can you... you could see all the ones coming off, uh, Joule, right? And you could tell he wasn't... you know, normal."

 

[Namohysip]

Maple paused at this, holding her Ultra Stone in place. "...You're right," she said. "We did see those. They had come directly from Joule and they had been visible. Yet when we searched the Reverse World again, we saw no sign of them. We assumed they had been destroyed, but if they're somehow lost there..." She wondered if investigating that area would be wise or not, but they had a lot of things to check already.

"There's a chance that they synthesized the aura somehow," Maple added. "I wouldn't put it past them. Or if they found some other way to create that distortion. Shield did not have it inherent to his system; it wasn't like the corruption we saw in Lugia, or Darkwh--" Maple stopped. "Darkwhite... I wonder if we could convince her to cooperate for a few studies... See the difference between a purified Shade and her, perhaps the only non-hostile, inherently distortive creature we have on hand..."

 

[Negrek]

"Yeah, might be a good idea to go look for them again," Nate said. "Would pretty much fucking suck if the next time somebody popped over to the Reverse World they found everybody all shadowy and pissed. But, like, add it to the fucking good idea pile. What I meant was if you could see those shades, but not the others, then they probably ain't the same, right? They ain't coming from the same place." Or there was some property of the Reverse World that made them visible there alone, or for some reason they only turned invisible after a certain amount of time or distance apart from what created them... too many fucking possibilities. But "not the same" seemed like a reasonable place to start.

Nate had to smirk at the thought of trying to get Darkwhite to cooperate with any experiments. "Yeah, good luck getting that one to sit still for anything. Maybe she'll promise to show up if you promise to dissect her or something. Although, gotta admit I was wondering what would happen if that celebi tried giving Darkwhite a little nudge. Seeing as she's supposed to be all with the purifying things and shit. Maybe you'd just end up with White?"

Rocky had grown bored and was wandering around the room, picking up random books people had left out, in search of something interesting. Nate sighed and rubbed his head. It sure was sounding like they needed to experiment with some shit at some point. And also like he had even less of a fucking clue what was going on than he'd thought coming in here.

"One way or another Team Rocket must've synthesized something that acts like Dark Matter. Or some part of Dark Matter, anyhow. That's what the machine... that machine with all the shaymin was supposed to look like, right? But Team Rocket's human, so their own world ain't supposed to have a Dark Matter. They had to have seen one somewhere else, at least. Wouldn't be surprised if your missing Dark Matter from that celebi's world happened because Team Rocket ganked it to do experiments on. And that's where the other shades could be coming from. So, then how did your friend get a makeover? I was thinking maybe Diyem was behind that one, since the last time anybody heard from him was right before that fight. But it sounds like he makes distortions, too, so whatever got ahold of your friend can't be him. Maybe it was the actual Dark Matter from this world, and for whatever reason that means it ain't distorting shit? Like, because it's native? But that would be three of the bastards, which is kind of too fucking many."

 

[Namohysip]

"Celebi..." Maple stopped rolling the ball. "Darkwhite was so chaotic that I hadn't even considered that. Balm and Cecpa must be nearby, right? I'll put that to the..." She cleared her throat. "Good idea pile next."

Then, she considered Nate's theory. "We have at least four known Dark Matters right now," she stated to Nate. "Or, at most, considering everything at play. There is a chance that a few are one and the same. We have your host, Diyem. We have the Dark Matter of the future world that had gone missing. We have the Dark Matter of Cibus, which was defeated. And... I suppose, to cover all of our bases, there is also the Dark Matter of Telum, the world I am from. But... that world is destroyed, and Dark Matter with it." She looked down, biting her lip. "But I thought the same of Shield, and yet..."

 

[Negrek]

"Well... I kinda didn't want to go there, but yeah, I think it's possible the Dark Matter from Telum got mixed up in this, too." He cleared his throat and fixed his eyes on Maple's shade-stone. God, how to even fucking approach this one. "But Shield being around don't necessarily mean all the rest of the place is, too. He mentioned that, uh, Tree of Life thing exploding? Bright light, big shockwave, that's it. What, ah, happened after that?"

 

[Namohysip]

Maple, too, did not wish to go there, but she had no choice if it meant unraveling whatever mysteries had followed her to Cibus. "I don't know," she said. "That's where my memories of Telum end, too. A great shockwave, this horrible feeling in my chest, like the whole world was about to end. It was like my very spirit was being ripped asunder. And then... I woke up in a void where my world once was. My whole reality... gone. Just me. And... I saw a light. I don't know how long I had been that way, floating there, but I eventually saw a light." Her grip on the Ultra Stone tightened, and it trembled in response. "That was when I met Joule... Oh, Joule..."

 

[Negrek]

Yeah, saw that one coming. So, basically anything could have happened, and if there was anybody who knew what actually went down, it was probably... that other world's Dark Matter, if that was what had actually triggered the big explosion thing. The planet blowing up was probably the simplest explanation, but when was the simplest explanation ever actually the correct one around here?

"Yeah. That sounds... pretty fucking rough," he said. Yup, having your whole world disappear and floating around alone in total darkness for who knew how fucking long, that was pretty fucking rough. Good job.

Rocky had returned to hover anxiously behind his chair. It probably wasn't a lot of fun to be in the room right about now if you were whatever kind of fucking empath. "But after that, I guess you went off on all your interdimensional adventures, huh? Got together your whole crew. You've been at that for a while, right? You ever end up fighting Dark Matters in other worlds?"

 

[Namohysip]

"Yes. Many times." The air felt a little hotter, like an incoming sunburn. "I've seen many worlds struggle against Dark Matter, some of them on the verge of defeat. Joule and I have stepped in many times with our team, and I have purged every one from the world they came from. Dark Matter can only be defeated by the powers of light, one way or another. By acceptance... or by force."

 

[Negrek]

"I'm guessing you, uh, usually went for the 'force' option," Nate said. A name like "Blade" did suggest a particular way of solving problems. "S'ppose you can't really make people accept something, so that one would be kinda hard."

Rocky looked enthused about something, tail lashing and flames dancing and a big smile on his face, though he didn't say anything. Maybe imagining interstellar adventures and cleaving baddies in half with light-blades and shit. He'd eat that stuff up.

"If you don't mind me asking, though," Nate said, "if you've picked up people from all over the place, how come they all have Telum-style names like you? Besides Joule, I guess."

 

[Namohysip]

And to that, Maple smiled a little. "They adopted those names when they worked with me," she said simply. "It... was somewhat of a tradition that started a long time ago. I don't really remember how long it had been. But they have original names, too. But... none of the stories of my team are happy ones. It takes a lot to leave behind the world you came from. And I suppose what they also left behind was their name..."

 

[Negrek]

"Yeah. I got to imagine. That makes sense, though. New worlds, new name. Feels like I got more names than I can shake a stick at, these days." And when you joined up with a team of superheroes, you needed a real superhero identity, didn't you?

Rocky was back to bouncing around the room, swinging at empty air and making faint pwoosh and kashwoom noises. Some dastardly Dark Matters were definitely getting the shit beaten out of them over there.

"So all those other worlds, all those other Dark Matters, and you ain't encountered this weird distortion shit that cancels your powers before? You could just blast away at them no problem?"

 

[Namohysip]

Maple nodded. "They were trivial," she said. "You meet one, you've met them all, really. Their origins are all the same in the end, and beating them is not an issue... usually." Maple hummed, rolling the stone again. "I've been doing these missions for a long time. Saving worlds of all kinds. I'm rarely met with a force I cannot deal with, and when I am, Joule and I were more than enough to cover each other.

"There aren't many things that can cancel out the power of a Pokemon. I've encountered element-proof human inventions, but those only work to a point. There is also, of course, Eternatus, whose powers can absorb surrounding energy and nullify Pokemon techniques... but that, too, has its limitations. Given your initial arrival here with what happened to Sushi and Sashimi... Eternatus must somehow be involved in this. Yet I don't know how. We haven't detected the smallest hint of one aside from that initial outbreak. Afterward, it was all Shades."

 

[Negrek]

(( ty for name-dropping Eternatus there. I had no idea how I was going to get there, since Nate's never heard of one. -_-; ))

"Right... So then the distortion shit don't mean Dark Matter at all. Else you would've seen it before now. So everything I was thinking... Fuck, I have to start over. Goddammit. Nothing here makes a lick of goddamn sense." Nate balled his hands into fists against the tabletop. Fucking fantastic. Thankfully Rocky was distracted, or the familiar would probably be giggling at him for having fucked it all up. Asshole.

Nate certainly knew of tech that'd block pokémon attacks, but if it was something coming out of him, apparently, it couldn't be fucking tech. Unless Diyem had installed a little circuit board or two somewhere he hadn't noticed. On the other hand, he'd never heard of a fucking Eternatus, or... not in his own world, at least. Something about that was familiar, though. "Eternatus... is that the thing Bahamut's always going on about, that like fucking eats planets or whatever?"

 

[Namohysip]

"Well, actually," Maple said, "Eternatus has been known to distort reality if it gathers enough power. However, Dark Matter is also responsible for Dungeons in this world. Many others, too. Dungeons can form in a number of ways depending on the world... but distortions of reality by Dark Matter is one. I've never heard of Eternatus using their power in that way until now, though..." She paused. "Hrm, well, if I had to guess from what Bahamut has said, though..."

"I'm not sure about a planet eater. He might have known of a nonstandard entity, or a similar one to what I know."

Maple looked at the shelves. "There have been no sightings of one in this world, so there are no illustrations. But I can try to replicate its appearance. Soda isn't here, so my light projections aren't the best, but..."

Maple grabbed her tail and made a few gestures. Golden paint floated in midair before coalescing and discoloring into a sky serpent that seemed to be borderline skeletal, if not entirely. "This is Eternatus in a suppressed form. If you need someone for scale..." Maple placed a replica of a Wailord next to it. Eternatus appeared to be larger by at least a third, perhaps more, end to end.

"Certainly not the size of a planet eater, but still very large."

 

[Negrek]

Nate leaned in close to the floating image of "Eternatus." Glowy, dragony, spiky sort of thing. Sure. And the projection was pretty slick. Must be handy, having a magic paintbrush growing out your ass. "Yeah, I'd call that pretty goddamn big," he said, eyeing the comparison wailord. Maybe not eat-the-planet-in-one-bite big, but big enough to do some damage. "You've seen these guys before, then?"

"Wow!" Rocky chirped, and Nate nearly jumped out of his skin. When the hell did he get back over here? "It's so cool! It's like a mecha-dragon! I hope we get to meet one. It's a space dragon, right? I bet it flies around in space!"

 

[Namohysip]

"Yes, a space dragon. Poisonous as well. They often travel through the cosmos feeding on energy from stars and dead planets. Places where they wouldn't be bothered. You could consider them cosmic scavengers... Though, if what Bahamut said is anything to go by, and what's happening here, there may be a subspecies or variations that are more hostile. If they are completely overflowing with energy... they become something very different. Their full form..."

The projection changed, and Wailord became impossibly tiny to compensate. It looked more like a coiled serpent hanging from a ceiling, ending with a giant, five-headed hand that loomed over all. "If you are seeing an Eternatus like this, it is preparing to harvest energy... or it is battling seriously."