MATURE: - Complete Iterations

[Persephone]

Spoiler: content warnings | author's notes

Content Warnings: Probable discussions of suicide, mental health and eating disorders beyond this. Not necessarily up front or in every chapter, but my stuff gets dark. Also there will be racism and fascism here.

Author's Notes:

Hi. You might know me as the girl who writes dark stuff with bizarre narration, such as Hard Reset, Backgrounds and Vaira. The latter of which won Best Story shortly before I abandoned it. That story largely dealt with a dark take on Chosen One stories set against a backdrop modeled after the period in German history between WW1 and the Nazis.

I really didn't have plans to touch that story again, but then actual Nazis became a thing in the U.S. So the story, unfortunately, became somewhat relevant again.

So here this is. It's... sort of a reboot and sort of a sequel to all three of the stories mentioned above, but absolutely none of them are strictly required reading. Reading them may help, however, but be aware I am not binding myself strictly to the canon of any of the above stories here. Anyway. On with the show.

Spoiler: Table of Contents

Prologue: Vaira

Arc One: Dust to Dust (Zia)
Chapter One: A Quest Completed
Chapter Two: An Enemy Dispatched
Chapter Three: A Damsel Rescued
Chapter Four: Answers Received

Interlude: Background Checks

Hospital Rooms (Seraph)
Chapter Five: beloved venom
Chapter Six: dark patches
Chapter Seven: granddaughter of the sun
Chapter Eight: the most human thing here

PROLOGUE: VAIRA

a story:

You feel an unexpected calm as you stand over the corpse of your only human friend.

This... this was not how things were supposed to go. You were supposed to be a team out to save the world for your patron gods. Instead you couldn't even save one teammate from the other. You slowly bend your knees and stoop to the ground. You don't know why. It just feels right.

Out of the corner of your eye, you see Infernape do the same.

You look down at the body. It's relatively unscathed, beyond one horribly mutilated hand. The rest of the external damage amounts to only a couple cuts, some of which would likely be quite painful to a living human, but none were enough to kill.

No. The damage was inside. Either her lungs had been torn up or she'd been forced not to breathe for an extended period of time. It was the type of wound that might even take down a Pokemon, and one that wouldn't heal.

You collapse the rest of the way. You'd run so far on rough terrain to get her back and, even if Infernape had carried her, your body had still been pushed to its limits. And it wasn't enough. Your thoughts have slowed to a crawl, and you don't know how long you spend on the ground before a rustling in the bushes stirs you.

There's a small Pokemon there, with a body coated in flowers that still glow faintly in the dark. She smells like... you can't quite pin it. Not with your human nose. But it's wonderful, and your spirits lift in spite of everything. Which makes you feel worse.

I'm sorry, she tells you in the telepathic equivalent of a whisper. I should have been here faster.

You slowly nod in agreement, unsure if you're damning her or yourself.

After an hour, or perhaps more, you finally find words to say:

"What happens now?"

what happens.

You find Jane again, in a sense. You fight. She runs. She is punished by a god, and eventually learns something in the way of restraint. The demon comes. You have made far too few friends, learned far too little about it and are far too weak to stop it. The story ends and the stage fades to darkness.

a story:

Another stage. There are changes in the roles, actors and background. But if you didn't pay close attention everything would be much the same. Arceus detects a demon coming to his world. Arceus summons his eldest children. They pick humans to fight on their behalf. They almost succeed. But an almost is the difference between tragedy and comedy. The story ends and the stage fades to darkness.

so many stages. so many stories. so many versions of the same plot, all unfolding one after the other. all stories end. all stages fade.

a story:

A man in a suit stands alone in a room. Then your gaze follows his. He is looking out of a window overlooking a city. The lights in all buildings are on, or you think they are, but the glow is far fainter than it should be. Everything not illuminated by a window or streetlamp is inky black darkness. And gradually the darkness overtakes the light.

The man turns towards you and looks you in the eye.

"It's your turn now. Try and find a better ending."

The story ends and the stage fades to darkness.

four more stories in rapid succession

a shattered girl
a ghost with a body
a sheltered adventurer
a boy in charge of the world

SUBJECT 462

...

the stories fade

a stor-

THE BASE OF MOUNT CORONET.

a story:

You feel the wind rustle your hair as you peddle through Celestic Town-

THE PARANORMAL STORAGE CENTER

a story:

The roar of the truck echoes through the garage as it pulls in. You and five squadmates advance. Alpha and Gamma begin to pull the container, the size and shape of a casket, out of the van. You lift it and hear it faintly rustle. Closer inspection reveals small airholes in the container and some sort of a regulatory system on top. Whatever, or whomever, is-

OBSERVATION ROOM 23

a story:

A teenage girl lies on a cot in the center of a looming, concrete space. She is attached to a life support system with tubes branching out and into almost everywhere on her body. The only other things in the room are a wheelchair and a recorder. The girl is murmuring in her sleep. Some of the fragments make clear sense. Some sound like statements that would be perfectly logical with the right context. Most are... less so. Random words, dates or places without meaning. But the murmuring only stops on the rare occasions that a woman comes and wakes her up to talk about the words and her dreams. Such has been the situation for years and will continue to be until-

FEBRUARY TWENTIETH, TWENTY-SEVENTEEN

The woman stands beside the girl's bed, occasionally stating words. The girl stirs, sometimes, or gives murmured answers in response, but she won't wake. The girl has no tubes in her now, but the system still stands by at the ready. You hear the woman sigh.

"9:31 A.M."
NINE THIRTY-ONE A.M.

...oh...

I opened my eyes.

 

[Ghostsoul]

You feel an unexpected calm as you stand over the corpse of your only human friend

The second person narration here is interesting, and something I rarely see on this site at least. I think it is used very well here too. Nice going.

You find Jane again, in a sense. You fight. She runs. She is punished by a god, and eventually learns something in the way of restraint. The demon comes. You have made far too friends, learned far too little about it and are far too weak to stop it. The story ends and the stage fades to darkness.

This is vague, but in a way that generates mystery and tension rather than take the audience away from the action or confuse them outright. It provides a creative and engaging set up as an effective use of minimalism.

so many stages. so many stories. so many versions of the same plot, all unfolding one after the other. all stories end. all stages fade.

This again, provides an engaging set up despite it's use of minimalist ambiguity, not only that, but it gives the story some meta insight without being too heavy handed or immature. It's subtle and accurate in it's execution.

I opened my eyes.

The narrative shift here is a good cliffhanger for the chapter, even if it could be seen as a rather ambitious move by the author. I think it sets up a good sense of intrigue and preparation for the next chapter.

I think what you have here (albiet rather short) is intriguing, it's quite a breath of fresh air to see something like this on the forum. The choice of writing style is well-handled and the dramatic angle, risky but generally tackled well.
I will be looking forward to see what you come out with next.

 

[canisaries]

I'm Canis, here to review for the Review Game. Let's dive right in.

You're very good at drawing the reader in right at the start. A powerful image of a dead friend. With the bare-bones description comes the feeling that you (or the narrator, using the second person) really are there, and it's not just some story where the narrator typically happens to conveniently recap events so that the reader has more context. And while the lack of context makes this very hard to piece together, it's pretty apparent that it's intentional.

Honestly speaking: did I "get" this? No. But I've paid enough attention in literature class that this is thought out. Same images repeat, such as the girl, respiration, the gods' chosen ones, the strange contradiction of a ghost with a body - a man being alone, but "you" also being there and the man even acknowledging you...

The "stories", which end abruptly and are overwritten by new ones, really create a sense of groundhogdayesque repetition (if this is inaccurate it's because I've never actually seen Groundhog Day and I may or may not have heard everything I know about it through memes). This is also echoed by the story name itself, Iterations, which leads me to believe this will continue in further chapters. There might be a danger of it getting too repetitive, so hoping for the story's sake that the pace does slow down or vary, at least. So, watch out for that. Art can get too artsy. The best way to fight against that is self-awareness.

This piece of fiction is also very unique, a strange hybrid between poetry and prose. I can appreciate people who do their own thing and own it. You really managed to assert your own voice in a relatively short amount of text.

As for technical stuff, I can't come up with anything to complain about the prose itself, so likely that means it's all good. Unfortunately, it also makes it really hard to come up with any constructive criticism, which I always try to give in my reviews because I know how valuable it is to writers, but eh, maybe some nice words are also good to hear once in a while.

 

[Persephone]

@Ghostsoul

Second person won't be the predominant narration style of the work, but it will continue to appear throughout it in some capacity. Not sure if that's disappointing or relieving to you.

Some things are meant to be vague and odd for people new to them, as they aren't something that the narrator grasps in the entirety either. But that's pretty much all just lifted from my last story, Vaira, as a way of establishing how this story relates to the last one. Glad that scene wasn't incomprehensible to new readers.

Uh, we'll actually be on to something almost completely different next. I believe in prologues that aren't just Chapter Zero, but instead give some larger perspective than the main protagonist or narrator would initially have. The vision, and the prologue's narrator, will both become important later. But not immediately, as it is.

@canisaries

The narrator... is and isn't there, as you guessed. I'm also not entirely sure it's possible to "get" this, since the narrator is a tad lost herself. I was really going for the feel of an old school mythological vision or prophecy. There are things, apparently random things, that give a vague idea of what must be done. But it will only really make sense when everything involved has already happened. Glad it was at least readable, if not entirely comprehensible.

Chapter One should be up this weekend. It's mostly planned and partially written, but I'm struggling to find a cut-off point for it.

 

[Persephone]

Chapter One: A Quest Completed

Another clash of steel and stone echoed through the caves of Iron Island.

“Good work. Now, brine!” I called out to my empoleon, Percival.

The bird shook his wings and the remaining dust from a rock blast showered back to earth. Percival grunted, and a shimmering mist formed around him. The rock type began tucking its head into its body when it was met by a spray of stinging salt water. Its attack was thankfully canceled as it recoiled in pain, too hurt and shocked to remember what it was about to do.

I pitied it, really. But it was in my way.

“Metal claw again!”

Percival lunged forwards and bashed the golem on its head with his left fin. The creature fell.

After waiting a second to ensure the pokemon was truly unconscious, I signaled to move forward. We did so undisturbed for roughly twenty meters before entering the Cathedral of Aura.

Or what was supposed to be the Cathedral. I’ve seen paintings of it back in the day, before the European conquest. It had colossal spires of stones and a fountain that seemed to work entirely based on currents with no technology involved. A room of miracles for an army of miracle workers.

Now the pillars had crumbled a bit. The etchings on the wall and floor were barely visible. The fountain hadn’t flown in decades. Dust to dust.

I was theoretically in charge of maintaining it. Sometimes in my youth I stopped in to try and brush the dust away or polish a stone. But there was always more dust to take its place. Over time I removed less and less until I’d moved away from the island entirely.

I got to my knees and prayed to the altar. Or what I thought was the altar, in the torchlight.

When my prayer was finished, I rose from the cold stone floor and moved as quietly as possible towards an exit tunnel. But there’s no such thing as silence underground. There are always echoes magnified: your own footsteps; other creatures, and distant water. It doesn’t matter. There’s always something going on somewhere screaming to be heard.

That makes it hard to keep track of what’s a threat and what’s not. I only realized we were under attack when I felt the first wing slap against my back.

I reached out, feeling a slight ache in my temples as I did so. Simplistic minds, most in the air. Zubat and its evolutions. Percival was doing what he could to deter them with metallic slashes and water sprays, but it wasn’t his fight.

I pulled out another pokeball. “Lilith, rock slide.”

There was a blinding, massive burst of red light in the darkness that caused the bats to begin to scatter in distress. A second later, the newly materialized onix slammed her head down into the earth, and a boulders soared up and knocked out most of the fleeing pokemon. The rest were gone shortly after. I nodded at Lilith in approval and withdrew her. She would take up too much of the narrow caverns if I left her out.

Perhaps the bats spread a message; Percival and I went undisturbed for several minutes and the cave was quieter than usual.

When we finally reached the target, there was good news and bad. The good news was that we found a collection of metal scraps that an onix could forge into a new skin under pressure. It’s what Lillith needed to evolve and what we were in the caves for. Steelix came up to the surface here to shed old coats when they molted and leave the remainder for younger onix hoping to evolve. We had found one of those coats, but there was a mature steelix sitting right on top of it.

It opened an eye and lazily followed my torch in the darkness. It kept a watch on us, but didn’t seem concerned. Perhaps it was overestimating its capabilities. Newly molted steelix were usually fairly vulnerable. I’m guessing it didn’t expect a mere human and an empoleon to know that.

I sent out my lucario, Guinevere, and called for a low kick. I ordered Percival to keep flooding the area with brine attacks.

The steelix began to rattle its body and rise to the closest thing it could reach to its full height. But even in one of the largest caverns in Iron Isle, the steelix’s movements were still restricted. That wasn’t helped by an agile and surprisingly strong fighting type slamming into its base and constantly knocking it down whenever it tried to get up. After a few minutes of that, the steelix finally changed tactics and began thrashing wildly.

I looked up nervously as the roof vibrated more than comfortable. A handful of stalactites fell from the room of the cavern like daggers and I began to realize that if the cave fell down on top of us, the steelix would be perfectly well off and everyone else would be dead within a matter of seconds, if we were lucky, or days if we weren’t.

A part of me wants to say that I rationally assessed that in a matter of seconds and sent out Lilith to hold up the roof. But I’m afraid the truth is closer to the following:

“Lilith, do something!” I shouted as I released her from her ball. I jumped as a stalactite fell less than ten feet away from me and noticed Percival doing the same. I somehow found the sense to withdraw him. He wasn’t useful here and might get himself hurt. Guinevere had shifted tactics to throwing out as many aura spheres as possible to hopefully bypass the steelix’s shell and scare it off.

That… didn’t work in the end. What happened instead is that the steelix saw Lilith and abruptly went still. It let out a slow, apologetic groan and began to slither backwards deeper into the caverns, but not before shooting one last icy glare at Guinevere and I.

Lilith shot one of her own at me as she slithered closer to the abandoned coat. Why couldn’t you have done that earlier?

I sighed. “If I thought it would have-“

She would have given it to me quite willingly. What do you think this site is for?

I didn’t have an answer. When she had heard me silence for long enough she huffed one last time and the noise echoed throughout the cavern. She picked up the coat in her jaw and began spinning the segments at the end of the tail before turning them into the earth. The drilling noise was deafening and Guinevere and I had to cover our ears while Lilith slowly retreated into the earth, dragging her new skin with her. Presumably she would surface again in a week or so and find me. Hopefully by then the argument would be forgotten amidst her excitement over evolving.

When Lilith was gone, Guinevere turned to me and smirked. So, we… scratch that, I, fought a steelix in her home territory for something she would’ve given willingly?

I shut my eyes and exhaled to avoid saying something I’d regret. “Yes, that happened. My fault. Happy?”

She chuckled telepathically and started walking back the way we came. I followed.

The cave was quieter this time around. Beyond one pesky geodude we got out without any fights. I imagine that the local wildlife had heard a steelix and onix locked in battle and decided that whatever had happened, getting involved was a bad idea.

Some time later, although in the monotonous dark and stone I couldn’t tell if it had been ten minutes or ninety, we reached the blinding light of the surface and made our way through the cracked metal grate. It was supposed to cover up the cave, to keep anyone from going in or out without a gym leader’s permission, but in time the government had realized that almost no one wanted to go down their anyway. Not with the mines mostly depleted. The gate had cracked and no one could be bothered to repair it.

The same was true of most of the island these days. I got a stark reminder of that when I stepped outside of the subterranean darkness and onto the highest hill on the island. The entire city, or what was left of it, spanned out between the hill and the coast. It might’ve been elegant once. But now the roads were covered with the same dull dust that occasionally blew out from the caves. There were four cars on the island, total, and their owners had jobs or didn’t mind some dust on their vehicle.

Some of the homes, the ones that had been abandoned one by one when their owners accepted that the mines were never coming back, were covered in the same dust inside and out. I sometimes wondered how long the island had left before everyone on it decided that there was nothing here for them anymore. Or until they all died of old age or alcoholism.

The worst part? I was responsible for this. At least, it was my job as an aura guardian to protect the city. But I had next to no training, had never met another aura guardian in my life, little money and the social brand of an immigrant. Can I be blamed for running away from it all?

My name is Zia Carver, Priestess of Cresselia and the Rightful King of Iron Isle. Look upon my works and despair.

 

[lucarioknight56]

For the Prologue:

Setting:

Not much known about this yet, but I have the feeling it’ll make itself known in time. Will be interested to see where the story goes in this regard.

Characters:

An unknown Pokemon and her trainer, with you being the Pokemon, I think. The use of second-person is unique here, and I’ve always wanted to try and use it in a story of my own. Given that it’s only a prologue right now, can’t say much on this either.

Tone:

A dark and serious tone, as if some major even had just happened. Rather fitting, considering what was implied to have just happened. Certainly works well.

Style:

Again, I like the use of second-person. Not so much the use of capitalization. I feel like a bolding, italicization or a larger text size would’ve worked better, as the caps are little too in-your-face. It’s more of a personal preference more than anything, since I prefer having a more organized look in a story.

Grammar:

No major issues outside of capitalizing where you go into the shorter sentences, like here:

a shattered girl
a ghost with a body
a boy in charge of the world
a survivor who grew up too soon

All these lines could use some caps. Although, if this is part of the style of your writing, no issue.

Overall:

I like the way the story is going, but I can’t make a proper judgement with just the prologue. Work on the format a little with the capitalization, and it’d make the story all the better. Once again, kudos on the second-person; it’s not often that the third-wheel of perspectives is used in prose. Cool start, by the way.

 

[Persephone]

@lucarioknight56

Thanks for the review.

The caps style is intentional, since the narrator of the prologue really wasn't lucid enough during the events described to bother with grammar or even coherent thoughts or explanation.

The tone and nature of the story shift quite a bit in the first proper chapter (which is arguably a second prologue given length and nature of content). You can read that to see more of where things are going.

 

[diamondpearl876]

Is this a first chapter I see? Why, yes, it is. I won't comment on the prologue since I already gave you all my thoughts through PM and you made changes accordingly, so!

There's still a massive amount of mystery in this first chapter, which isn't surprising. I'd actually almost be disappointed if we got all the prologue's answers straight up. The descriptions of the cave and the battles (or mini-battles) I guess were nicely done as well as the description of Iron Island. You did a good job finding a balance between the description and exposition, which is, I think, extremely hard to do in a first chapter, so kudos there. The worldbuilding about onix/steelix evolution was an especially nice touch.

There are some instances of passive tense that weaken the prose, but that's really down to nitpicks. In particular, phrases like "begin to" are unnecessary and bog down the story's flow, but they do add to the story's formal writing style, so, you know. Shrugs. Take from that what you will.

I don't have much to say about characters. For a first person fic, I'm going to assume the formal, analytical writing style is due to how formal analytical the speaker is. It's hard to tell at this point, but I wouldn't be surprised, given characters of yours I've read about in the past.

 

[Persephone]

@diamondpearl876

Thank you for the review. The writing style is largely due to the narrator's personality here, as they're the sort of individual who names Pokemon Percival, Lilith, Guinivere, etc.

 

[Ghostsoul]

I think he vocalized an agreement, but it was inaudible over the increasingly frustrated battle cries of the golem blocking our path.

All the verbose words in the sentence, especially as it's in the first paragraph of the story, slow down the pace and seem a bit forced.

I pitied it, really. But it was in my way.

This line has some weight to it, it's a subtle clue to the character's personality and intentions.

I’ve seen the cathedral fully illuminated once, years ago when I was first beginning my training. The room is composed of a massive, very nearly perfect semisphere. Its contents are dominated by two massive rock formations, vaguely resembling fists, that lean towards each other. Towards the top of the cavern the two almost touch, but a gap of roughly my wingspan separates them. When dealing with formations larger than any house on the island, that is indeed quite close.

This first part of the description is rather well crafted. The description of the cathedral is rather vivid and highlights it's mysticism, however the placement of the large chunk of exposition slows the story down.

What you must understand is that this world has layers.

I was honestly expecting some semi-philosophical world-building, but kind of got a mundane description into the fact this world has a lot of tunnels, I'm not sure if the 'layers' thing is really the right term to be using here, perhaps, in that case.

When my prayer was finished

This: You included a lot of exposition here about something that the characters spend very little time on (although they might come back here later, you can also save exposition for later). Although the description was good, it also felt clunky and unesseary, the reader might even feel a little betrayed.

On its mundane layer, Iron Island is primarily notable for once serving as the largest onix molting site in the Japanese isles and, perhaps, the largest outside of Siberia. For millennia, steelix had come to the surface to molt their old metal coats and fashion new ones for themselves from ores they had slowly collected deeper in the crust.

Again, there is a lot of exposition here and I'm not sure we need all of it now. It doesn't feel important, and even if this is a kind of mystery/thriller story, there are better ways to give hints the audience you don't need to give it to them all at once.

After everything was exhausted, the government placed a ban on harvesting for a few decades. Locals had flouted the law and kept harvesting

Same as they above. Does the reader really need to know about the politics of this world now? Won't it have more effect in another part of the story, or feel more relevant then?

I began to realize that if the cave fell down on top of us, the steelix would be no worse for wear and everyone else would be dead within a matter of seconds, if we were lucky, or days if we weren’t.

You can't move from a slow, kind of info-dumping scene to a life threatening one and hope that the pace handles itself. The pace is currently too slow that this has no effect on the reader.

She chuckled telepathically and started walking back the way we came. I followed.

I think this was a nice enough last line for the chapter, none the less.

This chapter would be very short if it weren't for the large amount of exposition, scene setting and info-dumping (dare I say) here. I understand that trying to establish the world you are trying to create is pivotal in the first few chapters, but the large amount of exposition here seemed a bit much even if the information might be important later on it's important not to push too much onto the readers at once. This chapter also has an issue with pacing, that being it seems to want to move from being slow paced to being fast paced within a few lines, which is hard to do especially when moving from exposition to action.
I'm sorry if I'm being a bit mean, but the style is just not really working for me here (how I see it at least) sorry.

 

[Persephone]

@Ghostsoul

Harsh, but fair. My favorite type of review.

When you wrote this I was busy being incredibly sick, prepping for a hurricane and sort of writing a second chapter in my spare time. But nothing was really clicking with the narrator's voice. You gave me some ideas, and I thank you for that. In a few minutes, the chapter will have been replaced with a new, heavily edited version. When the real chapter two gets launched, it will be a followup to the new chapter and not the old version. I hope its better.

 

[Persephone]

Chapter Two: An Enemy Dispatched

A strong, cold wind blew sea spray into my face and made me glad I hadn’t bothered to style my hair before training.

I looked across the beach at Guinevere, my lucario, and found her looking out to sea to watch the sunrise. I followed her gaze. It was an unobstructed sunrise, with only a couple puffy clouds on the horizon's periphery to mar the view. That was an advantage of islands: the horizon was much larger. Floaroma meadow was nice, but there were still trees at the edge. You couldn't catch the moment the orb rose above the soil. But the cold wind made me shiver under my jacket and I wanted to get on with training. I could watch all the sunrises I wanted in the summer without catching hypothermia.

I sent Guinevere a slight telepathic push, which is about the limit of my psychic powers. She noticed the push and turned around. Ready? she messaged back.

I nodded and she assumed a fighting stance. On my end, I focused as hard as I could on myself and my own mind. I wouldn’t quite call it meditating; it’s rather hard to do that standing up and freezing, and there’s another small difference. When meditating I try to think about nothing. When focusing my aura, I have to think about everything that I am – every last detail that comprises my mind – and channel the essence of it… it was all instinctual. I'm not sure it's something that can be intellectual understood. It's a state of mind, a feeling, and not one most people have a frame of reference for.

As a result of the focus, a pale blue fire appeared on my forearms. Guinevere came flying towards me with a karate chop. I raised my arm and intercepted it in the air, keeping her from reaching me. When she touched the flames, she hissed in irritation and was sent flying back a short ways. The former was due to the telepathic static in my aura and the latter due to a sort of telekinesis I could only barely control. What little control I had also only worked when my aura was active.

It hurt. Just because I’d unconsciously redirected her attack didn’t mean my arm was spared from all damage and pain from a direct hit from a fighting type. But I shook it off. I can move my aura around to heal somewhat quickly. I’d be fine by noon.

Since Guinevere was down and confused for a second, I capitalized on the lull by dispelling the aura from my right hand in a burst of shimmering pink light. The attack hit her directly, but rather than take her out of the fight it only served to snap her back to her senses. She looked up and cast out a vacuum wave before I could react.

The hit rather literally tore the breath from my lungs and knocked me off my feet. I soared through the air for three yards or so before my leg brushed the sand and abruptly dragged my body down with it.

I took stock. Just about everything was sore, but everything could be moved and nothing seared with pain. If it was all bruises, I could handle that. I slowly worked my way to my feet, seriously contemplating letting an obscenity fly but ultimately deciding against it.

“nuff… practice,” I huffed out to Guinevere. She smirked and walked over to wrap an arm around my shoulders and another around my stomach. I let her stabilize me for a few seconds until I caught my breath and then sent her a telepathic pulse. The lucario got the message and started walking towards home, while I leaned on her shoulder and followed. After a couple steps I felt confident to stand on my own. She watched me as I teetered for a second, but when I became stable she turned away and let me move at my own pace.

Home was no longer the place I spent most of my time. I had been studying at Gracidea University for almost two years, only coming back to Iron Isle on breaks. My mothers had been publicly supportive, but I could sense the disappointment. I was supposed to save their hometown. Instead I’d given up and left them to their work, with the little hope they had gone.

It wasn’t fair to judge them for how they felt. I understood their point of view. And deep down I knew I deserved it.

I was only back on Iron Isle for winter break to finally evolve Lilith. I hadn’t heard from her in the ten days since she’d stormed off; that was not unexpected. She might finish evolving soon, but I suspected she would take her sweet time to come back to the surface and meet me. She might even just meet me in Floaroma after break was over. It was petty and painful for me. I also deserved that.

Guinevere and I finally arrived at the house roughly ten agonizing minutes after we’d left the beach. It wasn’t that far of a walk, but I was sore and she couldn’t complain about it. The sparring idea had been hers in the first place, since she ordinarily trained with Lilith and was getting restless in her absence. Percival, for his part, had already grown tired of losing to the lucario. That left me. I hadn’t wanted to, but five days of non-stop pleading and ten days of growing boredom had led to me giving in.

Something like it would probably happen a few months down the line when I’d forgotten the feeling. We would fight. I would remember. I would forget. We would fight. Repeat.

Just another little joy in my life.

My mothers’ home was a small building near the shore. They insisted on keeping it painted a bright shade of pink. Esther liked to say it brought some color to the world. More practically, it signaled that they were the nurses in town.

Guinevere opened the door and I shuffled in after her. Martha was sitting in the entry room. Esther was probably manning the Center. It wasn’t very busy, but one of them or the rare intern had to be staffing it at all times, just in case.

Mar looked up from her paper. “Oh my, did you two get in a fight?”

“Sparring match. I lost.”

She got to her feet and stood nearby me, hands in the air as if she were unsure whether to hug me, support me or leave me alone. I shook my head slowly to signal the latter and started moving towards the staircase.

My mother got out of the way. “Do you want anything to eat? We have things for eggs or pancakes if you want them.”

“Do we still have the yogurt? I don’t want to eat very much now, but by lunch most of this will have healed up and I’ll be starving.”

“Yes, we do. Cheri or pecha?”

I glanced back. “Cheri, please. But can I wait? I want to shower and change first.”

“Certainly, Zi.”

I went up the stairs to the second story, where I’d grown up. It was barely larger than a loft, but it had a bathroom attached that I’d come to appreciate, and a gorgeous view of the seas. The ocean around the island was frequently depressing and stormy, but on the good days I loved having the blinds open and just looking out. It made for a good place to meditate and forget.

I closed the blinds and made my way to the shower. I turned the heat all the way up, which still wasn’t that hot, threw off the sand-coated clothes I’d trained in, and soaked in it for as long as I wanted to stand.

Truth be told, “until I didn’t want to stand” wasn’t a very long period of time. I’m not sure Mar would’ve even noticed I was taking longer than usual. The mirror wasn’t even entirely fogged over. Still, I had just walked to the house and didn’t want to stay upright much longer. While I was collapsed on the toilet, working up the energy to stand and get dressed, I took a minute to look at the injuries. My torso and chest were discolored and sensitive to the touch. They had taken the brunt of the pain. Portions of my upper arms were sore, and my legs and hips were not in the best condition. But I could tell that some of the injuries on my extremities were already fading, the discoloration only visible under close scrutiny.

I also had minor burns on my forearms, where the skin was a soft pink. Past experience said it wouldn’t hurt unless I pressed something hard or sharp against it. But if I’d kept the aura up for longer it would start to get painful to any touch, and eventually the skin would start peeling. And those wounds didn’t heal particularly quickly.

After a few minutes of meditation and focusing my aura into regenerating my legs, I managed to stand up with reduced discomfort. My midsection would take a while to heal, but at least I could walk to the closet. Once there, I began the task of figuring out how I wanted to present that day.

I thought about something femme that showed skin, or at least a tank top. But it was cold and my skin wasn’t really in any condition to be shown off. I settled for a loose t-shirt and jeans, for minimal discomfort. When I reached the mostly defogged mirror, I frowned. The clothes were boy-mode. I wasn’t feeling like it today, but it was cold and I was sore. I settled for drawing my hair back and adding a ponytail extension. Then I applied pale blue eyeliner and lipstick and some basic mascara. I could probably pass as a taller girl in her late teens or early twenties, who happened to only be a tomboy from the neck down. It was the best I was going to get given the circumstances.

On the way out the door I remembered that I had brought a thin black sweater back with me but had yet to unpack it. I rummaged through the bag I’d brought back and put it on. A quick glance in the mirror confirmed that it had done the trick. I smiled in spite of myself. If I had to be in the world, at least I got to be cute in it.

You look nice.

The voice rang inside my head. It wasn’t like normal telepathy, such as Lucario’s. That felt like thoughts coming in from a clear source on the outside. Mental talking. Her voice was like my own mind echoing words in someone else’s voice, shutting every other thought out. It unnerved me. She knew it unnerved me. But it wasn’t like I could complain about it. Or even think about complaining about it. Or think about thinking about complaining about it. Or so on.

She went quiet for a couple seconds. I had thought about it.

Be at the meeting place in thirty minutes.

With that, I could feel pressure lift from my mind and I knew I was alone. Or at least as alone as I ever was.

I exhaled through my nose. I didn’t have any other plans or any real excuse not to go, beyond the occasional throbs of pain in my midsection. And that would be there whether I went or not. I didn’t have much of a choice, as was usual when she was involved.

I carefully walked downstairs. “Can I get a ride to Stacey’s in about ten minutes?”

“What for?”

“Priestess business.”

My mother rolled her eyes and gave an exaggerated sigh. “Well, I suppose you can’t argue with a goddess. Just let me finish putting things away.”

I helped her put away the dishes she’d eaten her own breakfast on and wipe off the counter. It was the right thing to do, and kept my mind off the meeting. After we were done, we made our way outside and Mar locked the door.

There aren’t many vehicles on Iron Isle. The town is small enough to be walkable and fuel is even more expensive than it is on mainland Sinnoh. The town owned a truck or two and there were some pickup trucks with varying amounts of rust on them scattered throughout, left as relics from the mining days. My family owned a light blue van that doubled as the town’s ambulance and a motorcycle. Esther had taken the bike to work, so that left the van. I was somewhat annoyed by that. The bike was less comfortable with two people on it, but the wind and discomfort were distractions.

I liked distractions when moving through town. The roads were packed dirt with enough gravel mixed in to make higher speed driving unpleasant. And going slowly through the town meant that my mind had a chance to reach out and brush against every other one it could find. Once it found one it would quickly scan the aura and give a general outline to me, whether I wanted it or not. To the left was a depressed single mother keeping up appearances for her kid. A block ahead was an older dog pokemon of some sorts dealing with chronic pain in one of her hind legs. To the right was a kid with more anxiety than he should have had at twice his age. A follow up scan revealed that his aura was acting up in his stomach. Hunger.

I exhaled slowly and bowed my head. Money is not one of my blessings. There wasn’t much I could do there. I decided to focus instead on the lingering pain in my abdomen. That was a simpler discomfort.

Some time later the van pulled up in front of Stacey’s.

“You have an idea when I should pick you up?”

I shook my head. “No clue. I’ll walk to the Center when I’m done. We can make further plans there.”

“Ok. Have a good meeting. Love you.”

She leaned over and kissed my cheek. I kissed hers back and then opened the door to walk towards the restaurant.

Stacey’s was the most popular restaurant open for breakfast on the island. It wasn’t particularly fancy; most of the menu was made up of pretty typical European or American breakfast items, maybe with a local ingredient or two mixed in. But they were good at what they did and there weren’t many other options in the town. It was about the time of the day where I would expect it to be busy enough that in a larger city a delicate conversation could be ignored. Here it just meant that there were more people wanting to eavesdrop on their neighbors. I understood that. It’s easy to get bored in a place like this.

There were no other customers when I entered. I glanced around in confusion, but then shrugged and walked towards a booth. A few seconds after I sat down the door opened again and Cresselia walked in.

She was in her usual human form today. Looked like a woman in her late 30s. I wouldn’t say she looked unambiguously white, but her skin wasn’t as dark as mine. She was slightly taller than I was, with pale blond hair running to the bottom of her shoulder blades. She wore a lab coat with a pale blue dress under it, with darker blue boots to complete her look. But the most noticeable thing about her was her eyes. Or, rather, her lack of them. Instead she had two shining pink lights with a strange circular aurora around them, like looking at a street light through dirty glasses.

“Good morning,” she said with a smile, settling into the chair and stretching a bit. “How are you feeling?”

Pretty terrible. “Alright.”

“That’s unfortunate. Any particular cause?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Acceptable. How are your pokemon doing?”

As she said the words, the waitress came out with food we hadn’t ordered. She sat down a fruit-filled parfait for Cresselia and a plate of eggs and potatoes for me. I looked at her and saw she had a dreary look in her eyes and a blank expression on her face. She didn’t talk, and she left as soon as she’d put the food down.

When she was gone I answered. “Percival and Guinevere are fine. Lilith is away.”

She nodded, but didn’t verbally respond as she started on her food. I took that as a sign to eat mine. I ruptured the eggs with my fork and let the yolk run down into the potatoes. Then I stirred it all to make sure that everything had roughly equal proportions of egg white, yolk and potatoes. It would have bothered me if I’d run out of one and still had some of the others left.

I was only halfway done with the plate when the goddess finished eating. She didn’t seem to care, and continued the conversation. “Has anything of importance happened since we last talked?”

“Finals. Projects. Came home for Lilith. Christmas was uneventful but nice.”

They weren’t lies. My life had become fairly routine since I left the island. In truth, in the two months since we had last spoken I hadn’t experienced much more stress than the average empathic university student.

“This isn’t just a personal check-in, is it?” I asked. The goddess sometimes pretended to care about my life, but we both knew that in five hundred years she would have forgotten who I was entirely. So there wasn’t much reason for her to care about me now. There was always a reason for her visits.

“No. I have a mission for you.” I half-thought an objection, despite myself. “It will be over before the semester starts. Don’t worry. I just need you to file a request with a government office in Eterna.”

“What for?”

“There’s a warehouse nearby. The Paranormal Storage Center. They study the gods, auras, magic and the like. Usually they’re just a small nuisance, but at present they have custody of something that needs to be freed.”

She inserted the information into my mind. Subject 462. A girl about my age, emaciated and bed-ridden.

“They… keep people there?”

“Yes. The girl was previously a minor oracle who didn’t feed anything terribly important to the wrong people. She has recently been promoted to be the priestess of Dialga, a job she cannot perform in captivity and one that exposes her to far more sensitive information. I want you to inform the heads of the agency of the circumstances and escort her out.”

That sounded simple. Far too simple for a job that the goddess had called a meeting just to assign me. And she would’ve had ways to communicate with the agency as well without sending me. Something felt… off.

“They have ignored my entreaties so far. I want to show them that I’m serious and the person contacting them is the goddess she purports to be.”

“And if they still decline?” I asked.

“Then there may be a need for forceful action. I will take care of any injuries you may sustain doing my work, as is customary.”

“Can this wait for Lilith to get back? If I’m going into a fight...”

I trailed off as she reached into her lab coat and put a great ball on the table. I glanced down at my belt and saw that Lilith’s wasn’t there.

“Are there any other problems?”

“I don’t see any.”

She stood and walked over to me. She placed a hand on my shoulder and I felt my aura convulse. When the world settled a second later none of my injuries hurt anymore. “Then I will see you after your mission, if you are hurt. If you escape uninjured, we shall meet when I have more news for you.”

With that she placed a gold note on the table and walked out, leaving me to finish my meal alone.

I did so and walked out. The note she’d left was far more than enough to cover the meal. I suppose the rest was to make up for the psychic tampering and any confusion it left. Of course, I didn’t think there would be any. Cresselia was a deity-level psychic who took pride in her ability to fix everyone else’s messes and leave none of her own.

I don’t think much about whether or not I agree with her assessment. Bad form to craft negative thoughts about a normally helpful psychic.

I made my way through the town streets towards the Center, doing my best to keep my thoughts on the girl I’d seen and the mission ahead rather than the quick scans my power was making of those around me. I was glad for the chance to actually help someone. If anything, I was annoyed that my mission didn’t go further. If they had more people like me locked up just because they had a connection to the legendary side of creation, it felt wrong to just take one person out and leave the rest. But was I allowed to do it? Was Cresselia’s indifference a sign of support or apathy?

I kicked myself, literally, for not asking those questions at the time. It wasn’t like I could call her and ask. I had my directives, and it was my mission to execute them in the way that was least likely to upset her. That was my job. It was all I could do.

Unless, of course, I got hurt. Just a little. Not enough that it could keep me from getting out, but enough that she’d have to meet with me. And then, after I knew more about the place and had consulted with an oracle who had lived there…

My train of thought was interrupted when I got near the Pokemon Center. Too much fear and hurt around me. I reached out. Five auras in the Center. Four human, one pokemon. The pokemon was the Center’s resident Blissey. Two of the humans were my mothers. They were a tad scared and their thoughts were racing. The third was a local woman, distressed by a connection that led to the fourth human.

I knew him. He was an old, bitter man who had drunkenly spewed racial slurs at me during a town hall meeting. I wasn’t happy about it, but I’d picked up on enough angry thoughts throughout the years that hearing the words aloud wasn’t much of a shock. No. What got me was the way my mothers approached it. Telling me that he was impaired and didn’t mean it and I couldn’t blame him. Making sure that I bore him no ill will. Because my silent anger would have made him the victim.

That’s when I first had words for what I was feeling. I was tired. I was tired of being set up to do things that I couldn’t, and then being judged when I failed. I was tired of being expected to be an all-loving messiah. I was tired of being the punching bag of gossip and rumors and whispers in the school and not being allowed to punch back. I was tired of being forced to care about people I had no affection for at all.

I dropped out of classes the next week. I passed the Alternative Secondary Exam two months later. The next semester I was in Floaroma.

I dug deeper into the old man’s physical aura. The disruptions matched alcohol poisoning. I knew that ailment unfortunately well, given the vices of the town. It wasn’t particularly hard to fix; he would need an aura infusion that might leave me sore for a day at worst. Then I’d have to even everything out, make sure that the aura was in the right places to purge out the affliction. I could do it in ten minutes and he definitely could make it another ten at present.

But I walked on, making my way towards home. If he didn’t want my help, that was fine. I could leave him be. It’s what he wanted all along, right?

Come the evening I would pretend to care deeply, to express regret that the meeting with Cresselia had still been going on and I couldn’t have done anything. One of my mothers might cry. I’d cry with them. Pretend to care. About him, about the town, about any of them. And then the next day I’d get on a boat for Canalave and look back across the water, half-hoping the entire place would get sucked into the sea so I could be done with it for good.

 

[diamondpearl876]

Ayeee, this time I can say a lot about the characters! We get a lot more insight here into Zia's personality and her powers. Toward most things, she seems largely apathetic, and really, when she's dealing with all kinds of other people's problems indirectly, against her will, can you blame her? Even people who directly try to help others through things could become apathetic and burnt out under the right circumstances. There's some strong language and statements in here, too, which emphasize this, particularly the last sentence in the chapter. It definitely made an impact on me. There was a ton of tension between Zia and her mothers as well; I get the impression they're not accepting of the job she does or of her as a person in general, which only adds to Zia's tendency to not care and to want to get away, into the quiet. She's relatable, and we don't really see a lot of characters that outright express pure apathy and/or hatred toward others, so I appreciate that portrayal. I think it's a lot more realistic and common than people would like to believe.

I'm pretty interested in the task Cresselia sent Zia out to do, along with her powers. Given that there's been more exposition than actual plot thus far, this really helped to change that and send things into motion. It sounds like Zia's going to go off course and stray from Cresselia's instructions, which may or may not end badly. Guess we'll see.

If I had any complaint, it is that the writing style seems borderline mechanical to me at times, but I'm in two minds about that. It fits Zia's apathetic character, for one thing, but I'm afraid it could grow grating over time. The style in your other works was similar, but there was enough sarcasm and jokes mixed in to keep things flowing nicely. Unfortunately, I don't have any recommendations or even if it's a problem; I might just be the only one who thinks so. At any rate, I think writing style just comes naturally the more you write, and if you force it, it won't work.

A couple of last notes: I like how Lilith went off and away to complete her evolution. That was a small, subtle bit of worldbuilding that also served to show more about Zia - most notably, she wasn't comfortable setting out on her mission until Lilith returned. Zia sparring her pokemon herself is also an interesting touch I'm surprised we don't see more of in pokemon fanfic, and her focusing on the pain caused by her sparring rather than the pain brought on by her aura powers added yet another level of depth to her.

 

[Persephone]

Chapter Three: A Damsel Rescued

The lobby was unremarkable enough I questioned whether I was in the right place. The walls were unadorned and two windows let light stream in. There were a few chairs and a table in the room, with a small stack of magazines on a rack nearby. The only thing remotely off was the glass shield between the main lobby and the receptionist’s desk.

“Can I help you?”

The receptionist herself was a middle-aged woman with a clearly forced smile.

“Yes, my name is Zia Carver. I’m a priest of Cresselia and here to lodge a complaint on her behalf.”

Her smile didn’t crack in the slightest. A quick aura scan confirmed that she was entirely nonplussed on the inside as well, as if people claiming to speak for the divine came up to the desk every day. Which I suppose was possible, given the “Department of the Paranormal” sign outside the building.

“And what is the nature of your complaint?”

“There is a woman at the Paranormal Storage Center. You have her listed as ‘Subject 462.’ Dialga has claimed her as one of his oracles and would like to see her released.”

The woman nodded and typed something on her keyboard. After waiting for something to load, she looked through the glass at me like she was trying to note and evaluate every single detail of my appearance.

It unnerved me. I understood that this was a part of her job, and not a casually transantagonist glance, but still… it dredged up the wrong feelings. To reduce complications I was dressed for boy-mode today, with barely styled hair, no makeup, a button-up shirt and jeans. It would match my official ID if I was asked to present it. That was usually necessary to get anything done with the government.

After an awkwardly long pause she nodded, and hit a few more keys.

“Someone is coming to pick you up and take you to the PSC. Please have a seat in the meantime.”

It was a possible trap. Keep an eye on me while reinforcements arrived. I also didn’t have any better options. The best alternative was storming a heavily reinforced compound filled with magical weapons with only three pokemon and some limited aura power on my side. I might be able to do some damage if I got inside and had some element of surprise, but the direct attack route was almost certain to fail.

I also didn’t sense any hostility from her or anyone else in the building. At least, no hostility directed at me. So I sat down and picked up the most recent issue of World Affairs.

The cover story was on the Peninsular War. I flipped to the story, out of obligation. I had been born there, less than a year before the war broke out. I’d been lucky enough to have been evacuated during the period where the U.N. still seemed to care and countries were still willing to take refugees.

There wasn’t much in the article beyond pictures of carnage and men with guns. They had no solutions. Just wanted to bring “attention” to the problem, make some money on the misery of others. I set it down and spent another few minutes staring ahead in silence, running through possible plans of attack and defense in my mind.

I sensed more auras appear in front of the building. Hardened, merciless. But not hostile. They were prepared for a fight, but not planning on starting one.

A few seconds later a tall, burly man dressed in black entered into the building and looked at me. He flicked his head to the door and walked out. I followed. Their van was relatively inconspicuous. It just looked like an ordinary utility truck, the kind that was a logo away from being some repairman’s base of operations. The man held open a door in the back, and I got in.

There was a pane of dark glass between the back and front of the van, and no sound got through. But I could sense from one of the two minds in front that I was being watched. One-way glass, probably a microphone somewhere. It didn’t matter. I didn’t plan on saying or doing anything on the ride.

That got boring quickly. The trip went on for almost an hour and I didn’t want to risk letting my guard down. I got the impression we were traveling through the wilderness. There weren’t many human auras, and there were many auras of forest pokemon. I would have been nervous, but I didn’t get a sense that the men up front were being deceptive or calculating now.

Of course, it wouldn’t make sense to tell the drivers of a psychic about a nefarious game plan. So I was operating on a degree of faith in the government I didn’t like having. Especially if it was a part of the government engaged in human trafficking of people like me… I bit my lip. With every passing moment I regretted not taking the violent option more and more.

At the end of the drive I sensed far more auras. Some were human, some were pokemon and some were… bizarre. Between the two. Not like either of the two. Tinted with the divine. Radiating energies I had never sensed before. I got my wish. They’d taken me into the belly of the beast. Time to find out if that was for better or for worse.

The door opened and the two men fell behind me when I got out, driving me towards the main gate of the building. One of them pressed a key beside it and we continued inside through a long, sterile corridor with blinding white light reflecting off the walls.

Eventually they stopped at one of the many nondescript metal doors lining the passage and opened it. I stepped in to the office.

It was about as bleak as the rest of the compound, with a metal desk and grey computer monitor facing away from me, with a few steel chairs throughout the room. There were a few papers on the desk and some filing cabinets to the side, but that was it in terms of adornment. Behind the desk was an older man with greying hair. He was dressed in a button up shirt and grey pants, with a red bracelet on his right arm. His expression was severe. A reflexive scan turned up… nothing. Somehow he had shielded his mind from me. That could have been innocuous or terrifying.

“Carver,” his voice was low and flat, betraying nothing.

“Yes.”

“You are here to claim Subject 462?”

“Yes.”

He shook his head. “There would be little point. It’s largely non-responsive, and almost always incapable of action on its own. It truly is best for its well-being if it is kept in the facility, barring a drastic change in its mental and physical state.”

It. Damn him.

“Dialga has requested her freedom. If you want to quarrel with the time-“

He waved his hand dismissively. “If Dialga wants it free, he can send a sign himself. Right now I have a supposed priest of Cresselia, with very little in the way of accomplishments to back up that claim and no Native blood whatsoever, telling me that another god entirely wants a questionably sentient and highly dangerous object out of our custody. Have you even met Dialga?”

“No.”

“Talked with him in a dream or anything?”

I grit my teeth. “No.”

“Then why should I entertain you for another minute?”

“Can I meet the girl? I have healing abilities. I may have been sent to revive her.”

“May have been. May, may, may, may, may. For someone claiming to speak for a god, you have very little confidence master Carver. Or is it miss? You seem to be confused about a lot of things to me. Perhaps you might benefit from an examination here. Or a mindwipe and transfer to a more mundane facility if you, in fact, have no abilities at all.”

I slammed my fist onto the table and cloaked it in a pale blue fire, not even having to focus it in anger. The men behind me had an abrupt and hostile reaction, but were stopped by the man in front of me raising his hand.

“Thank you for saving us a test or two, Carver. Now, I’ll give you one chance. If the subject doesn’t stir, you will be promptly escorted out of the facility. If it does, you will be wiped and sent on your way. Happy, Carver?”

Before I could answer he stood and moved towards the door. When he was outside, the guards motioned for me to follow. They were mildly hostile now, and I was less confident than ever in my ability to handle a fight. If the bracelet blocked my ability to read the man’s aura, maybe it would also block my ability to harm him with it. In that case, I would be a moderately talented but self-taught martial artist with a couple of steel types facing off with at least two armed guards with pokemon.

Planning has never been my strong-suit. I usually prefer to just keep bluffing my way through things until the punching starts. And then I just punch harder than anyone else.

The man pulled open a metal door with “Observation Room 23” stenciled into it in thin, dark lines.

Inside was the girl Cresselia had shown me. Mid to late teens. Dangerously thin and sprawled out on a cot. She was very pale, but her features weren’t particularly European. Possibly just a Native who’d been away from sunlight for years on end. Her hair was black and chin-length. It couldn’t have been the most practical cut. Maybe it was for her mental health. Her arms were marred by scars and bruises from what must have been scores of injections. A pillar with needles and pipes of varying sizes stood beside the cart, with vats and vials of substances arranged around it. They were all disconnected at present, possibly in anticipation of my visit. It made me wonder if the prior show had really just been a test to see if I was serious or not.

I approached her and held a hand a few inches from the exposed skin on her arm. Her physical aura was weak, with some sort of external sedation keeping her down. Her mental aura was rapidly fluctuating, and even a quick glance threatened to pull me into an ever-changing storm of colors and sounds. I disengaged.

“Well? Anything the great aura guardian can do, or has this been a waste of my very precious time.”

I sighed and turned around. “Why is she this weak? And what are the machines for?”

“I thought you were the child of nurses? Can you not figure it out on your own?”

“I don’t really trust anything here to be standard equipment.”

He either coughed or laughed. It was hard to tell. “Very well. Its paranormal manifestation keeps it unconscious but talking most of the time. The subject it talks about can be changed with verbal prompts or auditory cues, which is why we usually keep visitors away and its environment quiet and constant. The only times it shows any particular signs of life or sapience are on the rare occasions where we go out of our way to wake it up. Then it typically offers a cryptic explanation for its sleeptalking, requests to move around a bit in its wheelchair, and then reenters its standard state. It seldom expresses desires of any kind, barely responds to pain or external stimuli and appears to be a fairly simple human-shaped animal with language and dream-based manifestations.

“As for the machines, those are its life support system. While it can eat or drink when awake, we can’t get it to stir enough for it to survive on its own. So we had to take its regulatory, consumption and excrement processes out of its control, for the sake of health and cleanliness.”

“yurtimeisntthatpreshus”

There was a subtle shift in the girl’s physical and mental auras, as the external sedation faded and the storm of sights and sound shifted to the back of her mind. She slowly pushed herself upright in the cot, although I didn’t need an aura scan to tell me it hurt and strained her.

When the girl was upright, she blinked several times and looked between the man and I. “Oh. Missed the cue there by a few seconds.” She turned to me, “It already the twenty-fourth?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Yes,” the man answered, “it is the twenty-fourth of February, 2017.”

She rolled her eyes. “I know the year. I know what they’re here for. I know what you’re going to ask me. Dialga did claim me, and I want to go.”

I felt a disturbance in her aura and she crashed back down as the external sedation slowly started creeping in.

The man shook his head and responded, “And what do you expect to happen when you have left? Do you expect your visitor to take care of you? Or will you waste away on the streets?”

“Wormholes. Sydney. The plague bringer. Jubilife. The dark blade. I’ve saved your asses more times than I care to recount. All… all of it connected. Something outside. It wants in. Punching holes in reality until something breaks it open. You can’t stop it. I’ve looked. Trust me. Keep me here? Everything ends.” She smirked at the facility head. “Can’t have that, can you? World ending means you lose all your beautiful toys. I might be lying. I can and would. That’s a risk for you. But then there’s Zia here,” she motioned at me. I hadn’t given her my name. “Aura-ey person shows up and I wake on my own. Let’s say, one percent chance I’m right. If you let me out you can lose one of your, what was it, barely sentient and largely unresponsive toys for a chance at keeping them all.”

The girl released the most over the top sigh I’ve ever heard. “Also, ‘spect your guards might want to keep living. Maddy’s three months pregnant, right Jim? Suck if your kid died a couple months into life.”

One of the guards fidgeted and their aura became very confused. The facility director saw it too and glared at the girl. “I don’t think you understand your condition. If we let you go, I’m not sure which one of your long list of problems would kill you first. Your blood oxygen levels plummet if we take you off your ventilator for more than an hour. You can’t stay awake often enough to drink or eat reliably, your immune system is deficient to the point that even in one of the most sterile environments in Sinnoh you still get life-threatening infections every few months. Really, your vocal cords and mouth are the only part of your body that function properly almost all the time, and even then you can’t talk if you aren’t breathing.”

She sighed. It look like that simple act hurt her. “One: there are mobile respirators, power chairs, et cetera, et cetera, Et. Fucking. Cetera. If you actually cared about staving off the endtimes, you could take a hit from your one hundred and six million dollar budget and get me some supplies. Two: The reason I’m asleep all the damn time is that you won’t wake me up. If I had a decent human being like,” she glanced at me, “someone like them who didn’t see me as their fun little precog figurine to play with then that wouldn’t be a problem. Three… ok. Infections. Illness. You got me. But I’ll find a healer quickly enough. She can mitigate the worst of it. Now, if you have any other questions for your resident know-it-all, feel free to ask them.”

The director frowned. “I have a call to make.” With that, he walked out of the room, leaving the girl and I alone with two very confused guards.

“What’s your name?” I asked her.

“Tell you later.”

“Might not be a later.”

“Will be. My way or your way. Just depends on a call between Omega and… huh. Somebody else. Blind spot. Hate blind spots.”

One of the guards spoke up. “You saw the end of the world?”

“More or less,” she answered. “Other thing comes in. There’s a fight, but not a winnable one. You can’t fight him with anything from here. He feeds off our world. Just gobbles up whatever you throw at him. And you… well, you never help. Can’t. Don’t know why. Too many blind spots. But on the other side everything gets worse.”

I felt another, somewhat gentler presence approach. She stopped to converse with Omega, as the girl called him. Then she began to walk towards the room.

The door opened and they both stepped through. She was a black woman in her late 30s, with an air of perpetual tiredness hanging over her, with the tattered remains of an optimist lying around her psyche. I could understand that. I’m sure I looked similar under the hood.

She wheeled in a large and bulky chair, with tank treads and a large box of storage materials under the seat. The woman glanced at me and then turned to the girl. “Subject 462. Good to see you awake. Do you mind if I help you into the chair.”

“Course I don’t.” The girl smiled, and I could sense waves of relief rush through her. If the oracle was happy, maybe we were out of the woods.

The nurse picked her up and placed her gently in the chair. Then she opened up the box under the seat and pulled out a handful of needles, wires with suction cups on the end, and a ventilator. She then slowly and methodically began inserting everything where it should be.

“You’re telling me you had this the whole time and still fed me the bullshit about being defenseless?”

The nurse shook her head, although I don’t think the girl could see it. Not through her eyes, at least. “You’re still very vulnerable to infection and for this to work you’ll need to have someone capable of reinserting, removing and adjusting the life support system in the most sterile way possible. You will need to periodically replace the medication and oxygen as well. You should have an adequate supply for at least two weeks, though.”

“How do you fit that much oxygen in?” I asked.

“Very high pressures and some chemical reactions. I trust you’ll be acting as her caretaker?”

I froze up. I had classes in four days. The girl said there was a healer coming, but I had no idea when that would happen. I knew where veins were, though, and I’d been given the talk on where to insert a needle before I’d gotten The Talk. With a little training I could figure out how all of her equipment worked and… gods, she looked fragile. Like a minor slip could tear her frame apart. And it had been so long since I’d been able to actually help anyone…

“For the time being, yes.”

The woman gave me the manual for the support system and a file on the girl’s health, and walked me through what everything did and why it was necessary. The entire system took care of her homeostatic functions, monitoring and correcting everything from her insulin levels and blood composition to her heart rate and breathing. All the little things that my body did without my conscious mind being aware of it.

When I’d been walked through everything, the girl and I were escorted to a van waiting at the front of the compound. They wheeled her in and clamped her down, and I sat down in a seat beside her chair. The windows were tinted on the outside, but perfectly transparent on the inside. That was transfixing for the girl, as she stared hungrily at trees, clouds, pokemon… all things she might never have seen in person.

The rush had pushed the sleepiness to the back of her mind, giving me a better look at it. She kept her insecurities and weaknesses on the surface, which was strange. Most people kept those buried deep enough that they were hard to find even when I was explicitly looking for them. That was bad. It meant it would only take superficial damage to break her. And yet… she was so overwhelmingly happy as she looked out the window.

No, I was reading her wrong. Deeper scans and new context gave me new information. Her mind was made up of extremes. In the past she’d had more reason for the weaknesses to surface so those were closer, but there was a bedrock of strength beneath it. She had a very, very vivid emotional life. Easy to hurt, yes, but impossible to shatter for good.

“You asked for my name,” she said, dragging me out of my musings. “It’s Seraph.”

“That’s a pretty name.”

She nodded. “Very.”

Ultimately her happiness did her in, causing her to let her guard down. By the time we arrived back in Eterna she was asleep and muttering something about a mountain spring, the faint lines of a smile still etched upon her gaunt face.

 

[diamondpearl876]

Heh, now in this chapter, we get to see more of the sarcastic/witty writing style I know of. Seraph's dialogue was amusing to read, to say the least. She's got quite a bit of spunk in her despite her current state, which I suppose was mostly just suppressed by all the sedatives and whatnot. The contrast with her apparently being naive and overjoyed about returning to the outside world is an interesting one. Zia's read on Seraph may or may not spot on - she seems tough as nails, sure, but also too fragile to hold up forever. I guess we'll see, since I assume she'll be a main character from now on, or at least an important recurring one.

The dialogue of the director was also well written, I think. It was aggressive and harsh and actually made Zia react, with, given how apathetic she can be, says something. Zia was described as overthinking simple requests from the receptionist initially, such as calculating all the reasons why the receptionist would ask her to "have a seat in the meantime." Zia had a feeling that this wouldn't go too smoothly and seemed to become paranoid over it, despite her aura reading of the receptionist being clear. I'd say her hunches were right about the situation, given how hostile the director tended to me. Not sure where I'm going with this train of thought, honestly, though I enjoyed that subtle layer of depth added to Zia in this chapter.

Keep writin', yo.

 

[Persephone]

Chapter Four: Answers Recieved

Seraph woke up with a start; her eyes were wide enough they looked like they could burst out like a cartoon character, she was breathing as if her lungs were button mashing “on” and “off” as fast as possible and I could feel her heartrate beating faster than I thought was anatomically possible.

Crap..

I tried to reverse-heal her, draining away some of what little aura she had back into my body through my fingertips. It seemed to work, a little, in that she calmed down to the level of someone who’d just chugged two energy drinks in a row.

“Holyfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck is that what drugs feel like because that really seems like what drugs feel like not that I’ve done them beyond all the ones I’m currently on right now but holy shitfuck.”

She got all of that out in one breath, which at least meant she wasn’t hyperventilating. She took a few seconds after that to get her breathing in order and adjust in her chair. “Seriously, what the fuck was that and can you never, ever do it again?”

“You’d been asleep for eighteen hours and weren’t waking up. Tried loudly talking around you, gently shaking you and even taking your respirator out for a few seconds. Got desperate and tried a small aura infusion.” I grinned sheepishly. “It seems to, uh, have worked.”

She looked at me like she wasn’t sure whether to laugh at the joke or hate me forever. In the end, she just shook her head slowly.

“My bad, I guess. Should’ve told you how to wake me up. In the future just gently touch my arm, say my name and walk me through what time and place I’m at. Maybe describe me and my condition, remind me who I am? That should work, usually, I think.”

“Will do.”

Seraph stared down at a blank space on the ground for several seconds, either thinking to herself or using her oracle powers. Perhaps both.

“Thank you for doing this, by the way,” she said at last. “My next chance wouldn’t have been for a long time.”

“Yes, well, what exactly is this? What did I agree to back at the storage center?”

“Ten days. All I need. Then you can be on your way. Or not. Up to you. Things go better if you stay but I think I can make things work without you. In the meantime you won’t even miss anything in school. First week back and nothing important happens in lectures. Email in the lit paper by Thursday and you’ve done all you need to do.”

“And what are we going to be doing in ten days?”

She smiled. It wasn’t intense as the ones I’d seen the previous days. A look at her aura showed that she was still getting her thoughts together after the aura shock and the rush of being free had faded a little bit.

“Depends. Long and short of it is that we need to get a relic from Eterna Forest, find an ally and get to Floaroma. Then our new friend and I can be on our way and you can continue with your life.”

“And who is our new friend?”

She rolled her eyes. “Now, what kind of an oracle would I be if I just spilled everything from the get-go? What I can tell you is that we’re looking for a rogue, a mage and a warrior. I provide the exposition, if you stay you take care of the tactics and supplies and not killing each other stuff. If not, I do tactics and the thief does supplies. As a thief does. Basic RPG stuff. Mage comes first, then thief, then fighter.”

“They taught you RPG strategy?”

“Nope. But they did try to prime me to look at big, epic supernatural things. Couple years of that means that I’ve spent a lot of hours watching tabletop.”

There were a lot of questions there. How her powers worked. How long she’d been in the storage center. What games she’d be up for playing. How she planned on getting to Floaroma and….

“The Storage Center. How many other people like you were there?”

“A lot. And you are absolutely, positively not going to go out of your way to fuck with them. Not yet.”

“Doesn’t end well?”

“The attack? Sometimes works, sometimes doesn’t. Main prob is that doing it now throws off events down the road and makes the ally gathering part harder than it needs to be. Later on you can rip through the place as much as you want, with some strong trainers thrown in to the mix on your side. End of discussion. Any other questions?”

“Well, uh, hate to be the bearer of bad news but you’re confined to a chair and Eterna Forest isn’t exactly handicap accessible. And there are lots of bugs out there of the disease carrying and pokemon varieties. Sometimes both.”

“First off, it’s winter? As in, the season that there aren’t bugs out?” The meaning behind the question marks: Are you a moron? “Second, the chair works just fine outside. A bit of a rough ride but in the really, really bad parts Gwen can carry me—remind me to hold a thought. Third, we’ll pick up the healer I mentioned yesterday at some point. That wasn’t a lie. And fourth, I’m probably going to need proper clothing and/or a very cozy blanket, because, yeah, winter.”

“Add a tent,” I noted, “to keep heat in at night. But there’s a problem there: I’m broke. I don’t think you have money. Tents and clothing and food cost money. Do you have a plan for that?”

“Course I do. Now, backtracking, because you didn’t remind me I was holding a thought, where’s Gwen and Lil and whatever-I’m-gonna-call-your-empoleon-because-Percival-is-too-damn-long.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Hells yeah, seeing if I could get you frustrated in less than fifteen minutes of awakeness. Incidentally, won the bet. Pay up self.”

“I’m not annoyed.”

“I can try harder.”

“Don’t.” Seraph huffed and pouted, but stayed quiet for a few seconds after that. “Lilith is resting in her ball because it’s daytime and she’s still recovering from her evolution—”

“Oh? She evolved? Congrats to her. Wasn’t sure if we were before or after that.”

“After.”

“Gathered.”

“Right.”

There was another pause. Whether or not I would admit it, I could see how her smugness could get grating given too much time and too few clear explanations.

“Guinevere and Percival are resting in the fields outside the center. I can bring them up, if you want.”

“No, it’s not necessary now. Just needed to make sure they were still on hand.”

“Good. Now, before this drifts further…” I motioned to a bowl beside us. “You need to eat. I brought you cereal. Your medical file says you’re lactose intolerant, so there’s no milk in it. Don’t worry.”

“What kind of cereal? The healthy shit or the sugary shit?”

“The healthy sh—kind. Your body needs nutrients to recover.

She frowned and she subtly shifted towards puppy dog eyes. “You understand that I’ve literally never had sugary things in my life, right?”

“And your health records make me doubt you can handle them now. When we get to Floaroma or meet ‘the healer’ then someone more qualified than me can look over your files and see if I’m reading something wrong.”

Her aura shifted and her mood plummeted. Not quite to where it had been when I met her yesterday, but close.

“Fine, fine,” she muttered.

I handed the bowl and a spoon to her. “Do you need help eating?”

“I am perfectly competent, thank you very much.” She dug the spoon into the cereal and lifted it to her mouth. Slowly. Her arm shook a little and some of the cereal spilled over, but it did eventually reach her lips and she got it down. Seraph could, in fact, do it. And her speed meant we had time to talk.

“As for money and supplies,” she said while lowering the spoon again, “you haven’t challenged any gyms before, right?”

“No. Wasn’t one on Iron Isle and I never really cared about challenging the one in Canalave. What’s the point? What’s a little piece of metal do for me?”

“Very, very little,” she conceded. There was a pause as she chewed and swallowed her next bite. “But there are perks with it. Each badge you get more and better equipment. First one gets you a decent tent, a small backpack and a sleeping bag.”

“Does a ‘decent tent’ have space for your chair?”

“Barely, but yes.”

“What about the food and clothing?”

“Working on it. While I finish eating, can you go get your team? It would be best if we could take care of the gym today.”

“Aren’t there waiting lists for those?”

“Nope. Eterna Gym is a little weird. No waits for more than a few hours.

“But there’s at least a preliminary round?”

“Yup. It’s meant for eleven year-olds with a turtwig; you’ll get through it in less than a minute, get to fight the gym leader an hour later.”

“I need time to research,” I protested.

“Well,” she flicked the spoon at herself as she lowered it, “research away. Poison gym. Prelim challenger will use a dustox if you get there before two, a gastly if you get there after. I’d get there early and anticipate spores, if I were you. Gym itself is one of the puzzle ones. Obstacle course with her pokemon out and about in it, trying to keep you from the end. Clear the maze and you get your useless piece of metal. Always six hostile ‘mons in the maze, all poison-type. Find out which species you have to worry about upon entering. Maze is rainforest themed. Hot, humid, trees. Artificial river running through it and a cliff face at the end. It has a ramp, don’t worry. No climbing involved. Door is at the end of the cliff. Trails change, but today it’ll be a straight shot. Pokemon are mostly little babies or barely once-evolved critters.”

“Aren’t gyms supposed to be hard?”

She motioned at me with her finger as she chewed. She wasn’t very fast, and I thought her jaw might already be getting tired.

“Only real twist is that every run has one of the leader’s personal collection involved. She’s a traveler with a team from around the globe. Congolese drapion: water type, will be in the river if it’s up. Incan toxicroak: dark type, fond of debilitating darts. Javan roserade: same typing, really pretty, bulky and hard hitting but really slow. Abuses leech seed and toxic. Just run from it.”

Another bite.

“Sinan nidoqueen: ghost-type with wicked swords. Can be run from or hit from a distance. Just make sure you don’t get close. Then the two weird ones. Yilios is a flying dragon that heats up her surroundings, making her fire attacks more dangerous. Abyscull is a nasty mess of spikes and tentacles from up north. Doesn’t take hits well, but he’s fast as hell and built to take down wailord so he’s the biggest threat you could face. If he’s there, he’ll be at the final pond on top of the cliff waiting in ambush.”

I really wasn’t sure if her jaw could handle the whole bowl. Which was weird since she literally never stopped talking, even when asleep. I would’ve figured that those muscles might be a little more developed than the average persons’.

“Just keep watching auras and you’ll have an edge on her team. All of them but the nidoqueen prefer sneak attacks, and none of the pokemon in there will be taking orders from their trainer. Plus you can have all yours out at once. There. Research concluded. Any further questions?”

An unconscious aura scan answered an older question. It wasn’t that her jaw was incapable of eating, but that she was once again on the verge of being pulled under by the sedative force at the back of her mind.

“You’re tired.”

“Not a question.”

“You are.”

She put the spoon down into the mostly empty bowl and pushed the whole thing away from her a little bit to show she was done.

“You wanna know how my powers work? I see stuff from across space and time. Pretty accurate beyond blind spots. Cost is energy. Dig too much and I need to sleep. So if I go exposition digging…” She sighed loudly, and a shudder went through her body. “That happens.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You wanted to do things the boring, normal way. I told you no. My choice, my…” Another yawn, a little weaker than the last. “…consequences.”

She tilted her head and looked up at me.

“Can you get your pokemon around and think strategy? Wake me up at eleven. I want to see some stuff outside of a pokemon center’s room.”

“Will do.”

I’m not sure she was awake for the last part of my response. I took the bowl off her lap and threw the rest of the cereal into the bathroom trash can. I’d need to avoid asking her questions over food in the future. In fact, it would probably be best if I kept Q&A’s to the evening when she’d be bound to nod off anyway.

When everything was cleaned up in the room, I went downstairs to retrieve Guinevere and Percival. Then, well, I can’t say that I’d slept very much the night before between worries about Seraph’s health and anxiety over what everything meant. I figured I could use a quick nap myself and crashed on the couch beside her, falling asleep to Seraph’s ramblings unconscious about a dewgong show.

 

[Persephone]

Omega: The requested files are attached. -Delta

Spoiler: ”Subject 462 – Intake Reports”

Interview with [REDACTED], nurse at [REDACTED] Hospital, [REDACTED], Sinnoh

Conducted by Theta-4 on Nov 1, 2008.

Theta-4: Evening, [REDACTED].

Nurse: So… am I supposed to start talking or…

Theta-4: Can you start by describing any unusual events in the last week.

Nurse: You mean the random girl that just appeared?

Theta-4: Or anything else that seemed out of the ordinary.

Nurse: Ok, so, um, on Monday morning [note: Oct 27, 2008] I went into room [REDACTED] to prepare it for a patient we were getting transferred that afternoon.

Theta-4: And what did you see in the room?

Nurse: There was a girl, probably about eight, hooked up to a ventilator and IV drip on the bed. She was saying something, but didn’t wake up when I moved around her. She was running a high fever: 104, if I remember correctly. I thought there had been a mistake, that I was in the wrong room. But I wasn’t. So I asked around and tried to figure out if there’d been a clerical mistake, but, no, we didn’t have anyone in that room. We couldn’t find any records on her. We’re running DNA tests, not sure how those will work out, but for now we have no idea who she is or how she got here.

Theta-4: What did you do about her health after she arrived?

Nurse: We treated the fever as best as we could. Brought in [REDACTED] and she gave her something that brought it down. She contacted you, I think. When she was stabilized from that we ran more tests.

Theta-4: And what did they show.

Nurse: Leukemia. Late stage leukemia that’s spread to her brain.

Theta-4: You mentioned that she’s been talking in her sleep. Is the cancer a possible cause of that?

Nurse: Maybe. But… everything’s so weird. Is this… has this happened before?

Theta-4: I can’t tell you that. What are the girl’s prospects?

Nurse: Not good. You’ve seen the scans, right? I’d give her two months at most. Probably less than one.

Theta-4: Was there anything else unusual in the room?

Nurse: Not that I recall, no.

Spoiler: ”Incident 601: Zia Nair”

Mission report from Epsilon-2

We started hearing reports of a mysterious boy in Floaroma City on January 4, 2002. I was sent to investigate.

The sequence of events that occurred, as far as I can tell, is as follows:

January 2, 10:00 A.M: Boy arrives at [REDACTED] and asks to come in. He was confused by the denial of entry and insisted that his name was Zia Nair and he was currently living at the facility. No individual on staff nor resident at the facility was familiar with him. Paper and electronic records contained no mention of him. Yet he demonstrated familiarity with multiple residents and staff members and was able to provide knowledge that [REDACTED] claims she had told no one.

January 2, 6:00 P.M.: [REDACTED], a local priest, was contacted about the matter.

January 3, 12:00 P.M.: After an interview with the boy and extensive prayer, [REDACTIVE] notified the Department of Children’s Welfare.

January 4, 8:00 A.M.: Zia is interviewed by the DCW. Disturbed by multiple odd claims from the child and the nature of the situation, they notified us.

January 4, 7:00 P.M.: I arrived in Floaroma.

January 4, 8:00 P.M.: I conducted my first interview with Zia. A partial transcript is given below:

Epsilon-2: Can you tell me your name?

Zia: Zia Nair.

Epsilon-2: Where are you from?

Zia: I live here, in [REDACTED].

Epsilon-2: How long have you lived here?

Zia: Since, uh… what’s the… month, the month after June.

Epsilon-2: July.

Zia: Yes.

Epsilon-2: Where did you live before that?

Zia: Fujirah.

Epsilon-2: Why did you come here?

[There is a long silence. Zia is visibly distraught.]

Zia: …fire…

Epsilon-2: Where, exactly, were you living in Fujirah?

Zia: [REDACTED]

Epsilon-2: I see.

[At this point I felt the need to move the conversation along before Zia became too emotionally unstable to continue.]

Epsilon-2: How old are you?

Zia: Four and a half.

Epsilon-2: You look confused. Do you have anything you want to say to me?

Zia: …why is you scared of me?

Epsilon-2: I’m not scared of you.

Zia: Yes.

Epsilon-2: Why do you think that?

Zia: Feel it.

Epsilon-2: Can you explain that? I don’t understand.

Zia: Your is orange. You scared. I… lot of scared people. I know scared.

Epsilon-2: Orange?

Zia: Yes.

Epsilon-2: Can you feel… other things in people?

Zia: Yes.

Epsilon-2: I see.

[End edited transcript. See I601-A3 for full log.]

At this point I moved Zia into an apartment in [REDACTED] for further questioning and research. He seemed upset and confused at being separated from “friends.” Subsequent interviews suggested that he initially believed everyone was simply pulling a prank on him. Upon advice from [REDACTED], this line of thought was encouraged to minimize trauma.

Research revealed that [REDACTED] did exist in Fujirah before being quickly torched in an act of violence that, to this date, no group has taken credit for. There were no survivors. Contemporary coverage of the incident confirmed that a child named Zia Nair was living in the shelter at that time.

The event occurred on [REDACTED], 1999, when Zia was [REDACTED] months old. It is extremely unlikely he was outside the building at the time of the attack and no records exist of him being processed by any orphanage in the UAE or refugee processing organization elsewhere.

The child’s apparent age roughly matches that of a human child of sixty months, making it possible he is the Zia Nair supposedly killed in 1999. I have been unable to find reports of that child manifesting abnormal abilities, but records from the region have mostly been lost and in-person interviews may be fruitless given the widespread migration and mortality in the area.

I recommend the child be transferred to a non-storage facility for power and psychological testing. Release to the general public with continued monitoring appears possible at this time. As such, exposure to sensitive information or potentially traumatic experiments should be limited while the child is in our custody.

Spoiler: ”Subject 130 Overview”

Compiled by Chi-1.

Sensitive material. Sharing information contained below with agents below Sigma without express approval from Omega is a cause for immediate termination, reprogramming or indefinite detention.

Subject 130 is a mid-scale manifestation in Aspyre Asylum, Canalave City. The subject cannot be moved without significant risk of loss of life for Department of the Paranormal agents or alteration of the subject. The latter is unacceptable given potential geopolitical ramifications (See Update). Experimentation is prohibited after Incident 949.

The subject first manifested on Sept 2, 1995. Electronic devices in the asylum began to malfunction and audio recordings from the weeks following frequently contain what appears to be the sound of a female human crying in the background. The DP was notified on Sept 8, 1995 as evidence of a haunting began to mount.

The subject’s behavior began to change on Oct 15, 1995. Knives in the kitchen began to disappear and reappear in patient’s rooms, sometimes suspended in midair. The sobbing became audible in portions of Floor 3 Section A. Electronics ceased functioning throughout the building. New devices entering the building would cease functioning if they did not contain a speaker. Those with a speaker became irresponsive and the speaker began to play audio of a girl screaming at the speaker’s maximum possible volume.

The screams were often incoherent or wordless, but there are reports of some phrases. These include: “Leave me alone,” “Stop” and various expletives in English, Japanese and Italian.

While no fatalities had been observed, the management and the DP agreed to close the building and relocate patients. At this point the site came under the sole ownership and management of the DP and research began in earnest.

Signs of the haunting temporarily stopped following the evacuation of the asylum. As increasingly extensive research expeditions were launched in the building they reappeared with a more violent tinge than they had at the start. Service weapons spontaneously fired, pokeballs became impossible to open and screams loud enough to inflict temporary hearing loss were observed. Despite this, no personnel were killed or severely injured and the exploration continued.

The poltergeist was first observed in Room 311 on November 29, in the form of a blond teenage girl of European ancestry with her right arm amputated. She was wearing only relatively modest black underwear of an unknown brand. This appearance has been consistent across sightings.

Subject 130 was despondent and huddled on the floor of the room when agents entered. She quickly regained composure and began flinging objects around telepathically and demanding that the trespassers leave “her room.” Beta-4 briefly engaged her in combat with a captive gengar before being called off by Epsilon-2. Subject 130 severely wounded the gengar in response and the exploratory team exited the building.

Future attempts at exploring the building, particularly the third floor, were met with varying degrees of injury and failure. Ghost pokemon were first observed on December 14 and proliferated in population over the coming weeks. At present, Subject 130 is believed to have the third largest phantom enclave in Sinnoh.

Subject 130 appeared particularly agitated when therapists were brought in to help ascertain her story and motives, as well as help her cope with her death. These interviews culminated in Incident 949, in which a department therapist and Alpha-18 disappeared. Rescue operations found no trace of them or their bodies and Subject 130 made no attempt to contact or impede the investigation. When agents entered Room 311 they found Subject 130 unresponsive and lying on her back on the room’s bed. Delta-7 reportedly heard the words “I’m sorry” whispered nearby his ear.

Following the incident testing in the building has stopped and the department’s role has become one of containment, keeping ghosts inside the building and humans out.

Update:

It was previously unclear who Subject 130 was in life. There were no records of anyone ever dying in Room 311 and there was no patient staying in it at the time of Subject 130’s manifestation. Following Incident 1412, Subject 462 may have shed light on the matter.

Subject 462 appeared to reference Subject 130, at one point repeating verbatim portions of this report. These references were also frequently linked to stories about the Seafoam Islands and the magikarp line.

The utterance of the word “Gela,” apparently while recounting a conversation, has led to Gela Esprit, daughter of Suzanne Esprit of Kanto’s DII, becoming the primary person of interest.

Details remain inconsistent. Gela never went to Sinnoh in her life and perished two years earlier than the manifestation in an accident involving a newly evolved gyarados. The body was retrieved and our top sources in the Kantonian government verify that the death was real and affected her mother beyond the response critical injury or feigned death would.

Yet the theory seems otherwise plausible. Subject 130’s appearance roughly matches that of Gela Esprit and she lost her lower arm in the attack that killed her. The subject’s emphasis on electronics also aligns with the apparent means by which she channeled her magic in life.

The Kantonian government has become aware of this information and made requests to have Subject 130 either transferred to them or jointly managed. These requests were denied. The DII subsequently requested visitation and experimentation rights in the asylum. As of this update those requests have yet to be formally granted or denied and are being made at the political level.

Spoiler: ”Subject 199 Research Document 1”

Sigma-1

This document is an investigation into potentially verifiable claims made by Subject 199 about her history.

Background: Subject 199 came to the department’s attention during Operation [REDACTED] following a raid on [REDACTED] sellers in [REDACTED], Hoenn. One of the paper trails ended with a woman going by the name of [REDACTED] in [REDACTED], Sinnoh. She was taken into the department’s custody and under compelling influence claimed to be the sorceress Medea from Achaean folklore (see: Argonautica, Metamorphoses, The Medea).

The woman physically appeared to be in her early twenties. She has since demonstrated an ability to change her apparent age and most other physical features, making appearance alone a poor means of analyzing or tracking her. Despite this, she has consistently exhibited features and DNA typical of a woman of Southeastern European or Near Eastern descent. She had six pokemon on her at the time. In no particular order: Scorpio goldeises goldeises (Japanese venomoth), Alterniflora imperius tenebris (Indonesian roselia), Draga yilios (yilios – previously unconfirmed by science), Rex venrex magicae (Imperial nidoqueen), Amphitre bellator amazonia (South American toxicroak) and Scorpio plureius benthus (aquatic skorupi).

All pokemon known to science appeared to be several decades old, even if this exceeded their natural life expectancy. Later experimentation with Subject 481 revealed Yilios to be at least 1500 years old. Due to the limitations of Subject 481 it is impossible to determine a more specific age.

Subject 199 claimed under compelling influence that the yilios was close to 3000 years old; the nidoqueen was roughly 800 years old and a gift from Genghis Khan; the toxicroak, skorupi and and roselia had been obtained on scientific expeditions to tropical European colonies between 1770 and 1951; and the venomoth had been obtained in the 1970s after winning the first bug catching contest in Goldenrod National Park.

I was tasked with investigated the veracity of these claims. Results are mixed. While the pokemon’s ages and the ages of items found with Subject 199 appear to match her claims, the historical proof of her existence is much more questionable. Investigation into the colonial explorations she alleges to have participated in have found no reference to her, and sometimes no reference to any European woman at all. At least one of the expeditions, [REDACTED], appears not to have gone near the range of the species she claims to have caught on it.

There are no reports of a woman matching her general personality, powers and description being close to Genghis Khan, despite claims of friendship and the sharing of several details later confirmed by Subjects 462 and 811.

Most tellingly, she did not win the inaugural Goldenrod bug catching competition despite claiming so repeatedly while compelled to give honest answers. The winner was a male of North European heritage who did not capture a venomoth during the competition. He has since been identified, tracked down and interviewed.

It appears as if Subject 199 has the memories, items and pokemon that would come from the story she’s told us, and multiple subjects have confirmed that she at least believed herself to be telling the truth. However, we have yet to find actual evidence of her in the historic record beyond the paper trails dating back roughly four months that were recovered in Operation [REDACTED].

Spoiler: ”Interview with Valentina Cabello”

Interview conducted by Sigma-1 on [REDACTED].

Cabello: Alola. My agent said you worked for the government, is that right?

Sigma-1: Yes. Can you state your name and occupation for the record? We have a series of questions we would like to ask you.

Cabello: Don’t like the sound of that. Can I call my lawyer?

Sigma-1: Of course. But I assure you that the questions come from scientific curiosity rather than a pursuit of justice.

Cabello: Roto, call Mr. Black.

[Cabello picks up her PokeNav and converses with her lawyer, arranging for him to come to the interview site. Wiretaps revealed nothing of interest in the call and it has been omitted here.]

Sigma-1: I like your necklace.

Cabello: Thanks. Just got back from a conference in Singapore. Got it from an aquarium gift shop down there.

Sigma-1: Gallery of the Pacific?

Cabello: Yes.

Sigma-1: I frequently travel on business. It’s one of the better aquariums I’ve been to.

Cabello: Wouldn’t know. Went for a friend. Music was pretty, though. They bought me the necklace as thanks for the time. It was a nice gesture.

Sigma-1: Fond of Lapras?

Cabello: I love their voice. Always thought about getting one. Bulky, intelligent, powerful, beautiful. Not particularly rare these days and a good one can move between islands. And you’d be surprised how ill-prepared many top trainers are for ice-types.

Sigma-1: But you never got one?

Cabello: No. I’m not fond of the whole capture thing. Very new invention in the scheme of things. Morally questionable on the lowest of pokemon, but on something with human-comparable intelligence it’s…

Sigma-1: Highly unethical?

Cabello: Yes. I’m not saying you can’t have pokemon. Especially in my line of work. But I prefer to do things the old-fashioned way. Either bond or bargain with one. And, well, I've just never found myself in a situation where that happened. Besides, my starter would get jealous.

Sigma-1: You’re from Valle Espejismos, correct?

Cabello: Yes.

Sigma-1: In Baja California?

Cabello: Yes.

Sigma-1: You’re sure?

Cabello: Why wouldn’t I be?

Sigma-1: Because we can’t find any record of that town existing outside of your own references to it.

[There is a long silence]

Cabello: You are joking, right?

Sigma-1: No.

Cabello: So is this an immigration thing? Fraud?

Sigma-1: No.

Cabello: Am I free to leave?

Sigma-1: I think it would be best for both of us if you stayed.

Cabello: And I have things to do. Let’s reschedule for another time, shall we?

Sigma-1: I assure you our interest here is simply in ascertaining the truth in—

Cabello: In what? My time is valuable and I’m not going to dignify this.

Sigma-1: So you genuinely believe the town exists?

Cabello: Roto, pull up the geowiki article on Valle Espejismos.

PokeNav: An article by that name cannot be found.

Cabello: Index it.

PokeNav: Thirty-two results. First hit: “Sitting down with Valentina Cabello.”

Cabello: Index search “Valle Espejismos” minus “Valentina” minus “Cabello.”

PokeNav: No results. Would you like to try another search?

Sigma-1: I assure you, Miss Cabello, you aren’t the first person I’ve had an interview like this with. Would you like a glass of water? And it might be best to call off your lawyer if we’re going to talk about the supernatural. It’s dangerous to get mixed up in those things.

Cabello: I’m not sure what kind of… what this is. And I would prefer to at least know what it could do to my career.

Sigma-1: Probably nothing. It’s the kind of thing we prefer to sweep under the rug if the person of interest is willing to work with us. We prefer not making enemies we don’t have to. I believe you can understand.

Cabello: Who are you?

Sigma-1: Agent Sigma of the Sinnoh branch of the Department of the Paranormal.

Cabello: Sinnoh branch?

Sigma-1: Alola’s branch deals with Ultra Wormholes wherever they show up in treaty-bound nations. These sorts of things – interesting people who appear out of thin air with false memories – they’re ours. You might not be connected. Our working theory is that you aren’t. But these are the sorts of things we like to investigate completely.

Cabello: I… I would like a glass of water.

[Sigma fills a glass with tap water while Cabello tells her lawyer that the meeting was cancelled.

Sigma-1: There you go.

Cabello: You mentioned a “working theory.”

Sigma-1: Correct.

Cabello: What is it?

Sigma-1: You’re a faller from a world where the town was real. Alternatively, you’re a faller who invented her backstory wholesale. There’s some precedent for that. Fallers often have repressed or altered memories to cope with their experiences. Especially young ones. You were thirteen when you arrived in Alola, correct?

Cabello: Yes.

Sigma-1: Ever met a wild Ultra Beast?

Cabello: No.

Sigma-1: The theory is at least plausible, then. Can I ask you more about your time in Baja California? Particularly the time right before you left.

Cabello: I would rather not. It was a very traumatic period in my life.

Sigma-1: Can you at least tell the story to yourself in a way that makes objective sense?

Cabello: I didn’t invent that experience.

Sigma-1: You’re absolutely certain?

Cabello: Look, this all gets into things that I would rather not disclose. You have your secrets. I’ll keep mine.

Sigma-1: You’re a demigoddess.

[There is a long pause.]

Cabello: How did you learn that?

Sigma-1: We run background checks on people who end up in positions of power or influence to screen against supernatural plots. That is the secret you wished to keep from being revealed, correct?

Cabello: I’m free to leave?

Sigma-1: Once again, I think it would be best if—

Cabello: Alola.

 

[diamondpearl876]

I can certainly see why you like writing Seraph. She does a lot of exposition explaining here, but her dialogue is interesting and engaging enough - mixed with the fact it's not an exceedingly long chapter - which made me hardly even notice it while reading. I found it amusing how Zia wants all this time to research before heading straight to the gym but Seraph's already a million steps ahead of her. She might be in a terrible physical spot right now and Zia might be in charge of taking care of her, but this is a pretty unique situation that requires the two of them to work together and benefit each other.

Again I really like the spin you put on 'mons, and really, all the worldbuilding stuff in the interlude shines. I kind of regret reading it in the dark before bed because there was an ominous, tension filled kind of feel throughout the entire thing - which attests to how well written it was. I kind of question its placement, but... I guess we're starting to get into Zia working alongside Seraph so we're straying a lot from what's happened so far in the story, so the interlude doesn't feel too out of place.

The bit that stuck out most to me, of course, is the boy named Zia - I get the feeling this is still the Zia we're reading about, though her pronouns are wrong due to the time period, her age, etc. If that is her... Well, then, I have a feeling we're in for a wild ride for whatever's going to happen in this story, to say the least.

 

[Persephone]

Hey, @diamondpearl876 I haven't properly responded to your reviews in a bit so I'm just going to take some time here after interlude one to reply.

Re: Zia. They use they/them pronouns. There hasn't really been a chance to make this clear in the text since Seraph would already know and anyone else they encountered either already knew or wouldn't listen. But I also don't believe in gender identity/sexual orientation as being a "spoiler" thing, so there it is. They're genderfluid. Word of goddess.

"Apathetic" is pretty much what I had in mind when I designed them. I wanted to reverse engineer Jane from Vaira a bit and think about what being a psychic would actually do to your mental state. Especially growing up in a non-that-wonderful place. I ended up settling on either becoming sociopathic out of necessity if they could alter their own brain or just having to stop caring about people the conventional way if they couldn't. Otherwise it's just too much to deal with, especially if you're in a position where you feel obligated to help everyone and that any suffering that occurs is your fault. So, yeah... they need therapy but they might end up tearing the therapist apart in the process. And yeah. Paranoid. Kind of part of their character.

Seraph was a struggle to design, especially when seen by Zia. Since her plot role in the story early on is essentially exposition and information gathering it's hard to make her seem like a real and important character who makes decisions relevant to the plot. So I kind of settled on her having a very memorable personality in its place. Especially since her outlook on the word is just about the opposite of Zia's. Sets up some fun fights/discussions.

Glad you like the worldbuilding. It's mostly the result of having thought about the Vaira/Background universe for years and pulling all of the little bits together into one story. Perks of being on the third draft of more or less the same fic.

Is the mechanical style still a problem? Zia was really depressed on Iron Isle so it was hard to write their narration as anything other than a "and this is what happened" narrative. Now they're still depressed, but a little less so.

As for the interlude...

I talked with you about how the decision to have the interlude there came about. I tried writing another character's reaction to the events that would've been in the next Zia chapter but it was ultimately really boring for me to write, so I figured it would've been worse to read. I figured instead I should write an interlude that provides information Seraph is going to be discussing in the next few chapters so she has less exposition to give and its presented in a more entertaining why. And I'd say I'm sorry about ruining your sleep but I'm really not

Thanks for reading!

 

[diamondpearl876]

Hey, @diamondpearl876 I haven't properly responded to your reviews in a bit so I'm just going to take some time here after interlude one to reply.

Re: Zia. They use they/them pronouns. There hasn't really been a chance to make this clear in the text since Seraph would already know and anyone else they encountered either already knew or wouldn't listen. But I also don't believe in gender identity/sexual orientation as being a "spoiler" thing, so there it is. They're genderfluid. Word of goddess.

Ah, okay. I saw they pronouns occasionally, but it still wasn't entirely clear to me, so thanks for clarifying!

"Apathetic" is pretty much what I had in mind when I designed them. I wanted to reverse engineer Jane from Vaira a bit and think about what being a psychic would actually do to your mental state. Especially growing up in a non-that-wonderful place. I ended up settling on either becoming sociopathic out of necessity if they could alter their own brain or just having to stop caring about people the conventional way if they couldn't. Otherwise it's just too much to deal with, especially if you're in a position where you feel obligated to help everyone and that any suffering that occurs is your fault. So, yeah... they need therapy but they might end up tearing the therapist apart in the process. And yeah. Paranoid. Kind of part of their character.

Indeed! This is definitely many, many steps up from Jane, in my opinion. A lot of her character felt a bit forced and whatnot in Vaira, and I can tell you've planned Zia a fair bit more.

Seraph was a struggle to design, especially when seen by Zia. Since her plot role in the story early on is essentially exposition and information gathering it's hard to make her seem like a real and important character who makes decisions relevant to the plot. So I kind of settled on her having a very memorable personality in its place. Especially since her outlook on the word is just about the opposite of Zia's. Sets up some fun fights/discussions.

Agreed. You mentioned Zia not really being a fan of Seraph very soon, and I can see how that'd happen, given they're opposites.

Is the mechanical style still a problem? Zia was really depressed on Iron Isle so it was hard to write their narration as anything other than a "and this is what happened" narrative. Now they're still depressed, but a little less so.

No, but I think that could be because Seraph's dialogue is there to balance that. I didn't particularly focus on Zia's narration style, however, nor did anything pop out at me.

As for the interlude...

I talked with you about how the decision to have the interlude there came about. I tried writing another character's reaction to the events that would've been in the next Zia chapter but it was ultimately really boring for me to write, so I figured it would've been worse to read. I figured instead I should write an interlude that provides information Seraph is going to be discussing in the next few chapters so she has less exposition to give and its presented in a more entertaining why. And I'd say I'm sorry about ruining your sleep but I'm really not

Yeah, I clarified already that it was the horror tone that made it feel slightly jarring, but all things considered, the interlude fics. If this material is going to be covered in the next few chapters like you say then they should definitely be an interesting set of chapters. Looking forward to it! tho pls don't steal my sleep anymore with the chapters ;-;