Saphroneth

The one who does fanfic. Well, someone who does fanfic anyway.

[saphronethaleph]

John D'oh

“...Ash?” Goh asked. “I want to check something?”

“Oh, sure!” Ash replied. “What is it? Actually, hang on a sec.”

He put his hands around his mouth. “Lucario! Pikachu! Hold on a bit, okay? I’m going to be distracted.”

“Ca-RIO!” Lucario replied, nodding.

“Chuu!” Pikachu agreed brightly.

“What were you saying?” Ash asked.

“I, uh,” Goh began. “So this is going to sound really stupid if I’m wrong, but… are you that Ash Ketchum?”

Ash looked blank.

“Which Ash Ketchum?” he asked.

“Probably not, then,” Goh began, then stopped, and rethought what he knew about his friend.

Ash Ketchum, open brackets, obliviousness, close brackets.

“...okay,” he said. “I maybe need to start at the beginning, I guess. So when I started on the Project Mew stuff, it wasn’t just about completing challenges. There’s a lot of science to it, too.”

“Oh, science is amazing!” Ash said. “Did you make any cool transforming backpacks?”

Goh blinked.

“...do you… know what science is?” he asked, hesitantly.

“Yeah, obviously!” Ash replied. “It’s cool gears that do amazing things! With science!”

“That sounds more like technology, but – oh, never mind,” Goh said, trying to focus on what was actually more important. “Look – okay – during the Project Mew, uh, project, there was a lot of looking at times that Legendary Pokémon have shown up. To try and work out why and when they show up, right?”

Ash nodded slowly.

“Right,” he said. “Yeah, I guess that happens a lot!”

“That’s what I’m getting at!” Goh said. “Because it mostly doesn’t. And Danika gave us some reports of these various weird events, and I thought it was kind of funny that a lot of them said that ‘Ash’ was involved. Sometimes ‘Ash Ketchum’. I thought it was really funny that I was friends with a trainer who’s called the standard name for a trainer where you don’t know their name.”

“Oh, cool!” Ash said. “Who?”

Pikachu had already started giggling, but he broke into outright laughter at Ash’s question.

“Luu-cario,” Lucario said, solemnly. “Car-io, lu!”

“...oh, right,” Ash realized. “You mean me?”

“Yes,” Goh said, then rubbed his temples. “Anyway, uh. Where was I going with that – oh, right, yeah. So anyway a lot of those reports were from the general scientific community, and because I really want to meet Mew I looked up a lot more of them, and so many of them were about Ash or Ash Ketchum. It’s kind of an in-joke among the scientific community that maybe they’re all about the same Ash, or maybe the name is Ash because it’s a Pokémon Professor we haven’t met yet, or any of that kind of thing…”

Goh pointed. “But that’s what I’m asking! Is it you?”

“I don’t know, is it?” Ash asked. “I haven’t read the reports.”

“Luuuu…” Lucario said, looking down at Pikachu. “Ca-rio-ri-car?”

“Pikachuu, pikapi pika ka!” Pikachu replied.

“Yeah, what are the reports?” Ash said. “Maybe I’m in them and maybe not!”

Goh flicked on his phone. “Okay, uh. Getting involved in a battle involving Lugia, Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres?”

“Yeah, that one’s me!” Ash said, brightly. “I’m glad Lugia was okay, I was really worried for him at one point. And I’m glad the collector guy was stopped from capturing all of the legendary Pokémon, he seemed like he wanted Pokémon just so he could have them rather than to be their friends.”

Goh looked a bit unsure how to take that.

“...right,” he said. “I guess, yeah – and then, uh, this weird thing with an Entei?”

“The Entei was just a dream one,” Ash provided. “Unless you mean the time around Mount Silver. That one was real. Or that time with the shiny ones, there were real ones and fake ones there, the fake ones were Zoroark. That’s a Zoroark not more than one Zoroark.”

“Okay, that’s a check,” Goh decided. “Actually that’s three checks. What about… Suicune?”

“Huh, you missed one, but I guess you wouldn’t know about it,” Ash said. “But yeah, I think… hang on… four times with Suicune, plus the one with the Zoroark.”

Goh put something on his phone, paused, then scrolled down and ticked two more off as well.

“Ho-Oh?” he said.

“Yeah, loads of times!” Ash confirmed. “Never close up though. I guess you know about Lugia.”

“The only Lugia one I can see that you haven’t confirmed is the one where a Lugia was captured,” Goh volunteered.

“Oh, do they count Dahara City?” Ash asked. “It sounds like they don’t.”

“...Dahara City?” Goh repeated, then scrolled most of the way to the bottom. “That one was real? With the, Rayquaza and the Palkia and Arceus and – and so many Legendary Pokémon I thought it was a prank!”

“It was, kind of, but Hoopa’s the one who did the prank,” Ash said. “Right, Pikachu?”

“Chu!” Pikachu nodded.

“This is actually insane,” Goh muttered, then one caught his eye on the way back up the list. “Uh. Apparently there was this time that someone borrowed an airship?”

“Yeah, that was us!” Ash agreed. “Actually that was mostly Iris. It was to distract Kyurem’s Cryogonal so that Keldeo could manage to rescue the other Swords of Justice, or the Swords of Justice because Keldeo wasn’t one yet, only there was a misunderstanding and Kyurem was only annoyed because Keldeo ran away instead of conceding. Once Keldeo understood what bravery means he was able to fight well and then concede, and we flew the airship back.”

Goh had gone slightly cross-eyed.

“Chuu!” Pikachu giggled.

“I’m… going to assume most of these really happened and were you,” Goh said, after a moment. “And at Alto Mare you met a Latias?”

“And a Latios, but Latios didn’t survive,” Ash said, with a sigh.

Then Goh’s phone went bing.

“...huh,” he said. “Apparently the one who reported that event wants to know your location.”

“Ca-rio, riolucar?” Luario asked, confused.

“Yeah, don’t you mean wants to know your location?” Ash asked. “That’s on your phone.”

“I was surprised too,” Goh replied. “Who wrote this one anyway… Bianca Alter? Huh.”

There was another bing.

“What does ‘incoming Latias’ mean?” Goh asked.

Ash scratched his head.

“Do you think that has something to do about when she kissed me?” he asked.

“Chuu, pikapi pikachu chuu!” Pikachu said, rapidly.

“Of course I knew!” Ash replied. “Her illusion’s only an illusion, it’s not solid.”

He frowned. “I always thought that being interested in someone meant shouting that you only had eyes for them and then being hit over the head by Misty or Max. You mean it’s not?”

Goh stared.

“...okay, I guess I’m no longer surprised you are all of them,” he said.

[depsidase]

[saphronethaleph]

A fun thing! Ancient mercenaries (specifically this information is about mercenaries in the Hellenistic world of the last few centuries BCE) had two kinds of pay. The first was "maintenance" - which is to say, the amount necessary to live (in the ancient world this is the money to buy basic foodstuffs, and by basic I mean bread) and the second was the actual wages or salary. The Greek words involved derive from "bread" (the basic pay) and "relish/sauce".

Generally the maintenance pay could be paid "in kind" (as in, you give your soldiers food) and was paid while the campaign was going on; the salary was *silver* (i.e. hard cash) but was usually paid out on discharge, at the end of a pay period or at the end of the campaign.

(from https://acoup.blog/2026/02/20/collections-ancient-mediterranean-mercenaries/ )

[saphronethaleph]

Protracted Impacted

“A communications disruption can mean only one thing,” Sio Bibble said, ominously. “Invasion.”

“Don’t jump to conclusions, Governor,” Amidala advised. “The Federation would not dare go that far.”

Panaka nodded. “The Senate would revoke their trade franchise, and they’d be finished.”

Bibble frowned.

“I take your point, but I don’t see what else they could possibly be doing,” he said. “Yes, an invasion would be a bad idea for them, but we cannot assume that they will be behaving rationally. Your Highness, if they did not mean to invade, if they planned to negotiate, why would they cut off our communications? We are out of contact with Coruscant… we are out of contact with them. We cannot concede at this point even if we wished. The only reasonable conclusion is that they will be seeking to invade us and force us to concede.”

“Perhaps, but it shall not work,” Amidala replied. “Yes, they have cut off communications, but we were already speaking with Senator Palpatine. He will surely realize something is wrong.”

“Whether he does or not, there is nothing we can do now to influence it,” Bibble said. “Captain – we must prepare to defend ourselves. Is that possible?”

“Our security volunteers will be no match against a battle-hardened Federation army,” Panaka said.

“...hold on,” Bibble requested. “Battle-hardened? In what war?”

“I was only making an assumption,” Panaka replied. “The Trade Federation has a reputation for being heavy-handed. If they have an army, it must have been used at some point.”

“Anti-piracy operations, perhaps, but no more,” Amidala said. “Panaka, does that change the situation?”

“It might,” Panaka frowned. “Your Highness, I must warn you – the Trade Federation army will doubtless be ready for this in a way we are not. With communications largely cut off…”

“They can’t jam all frequencies,” Amidala pointed out. “They must be using their own channels… aren’t there rumours that they use droids controlled from a control ship? They can’t do that if everything is jammed.”

“Regardless, if they’re jamming hypernet frequencies and sticking to sublight radio…” Panaka mused, frowning. “We could communicate internally, and possibly even reach out to them if we wanted. But we couldn’t contact Coruscant.”

He began to pace. “If they brought an army, then they’re prepared for the possibility of hostile operations. The problem is that the Naboonian army is public knowledge – we don’t have anything that’s covert or concealed. Our starfighter corps would fight valiantly, but they would be destroyed.”

He glanced at Bibble. “We have twelve thousand volunteers in the security force. I don’t think we have any cache of weapons that could expand that?”

“There are some stockpiles,” Bibble replied. “Mostly they’re for policing purposes, but a blaster on stun is still going to be effective against droids.”

“I don’t think we should be talking about any kind of general attempt to fight,” Amidala said. “If we have no chance of resisting successfully, should we fight at all? I cannot condone a course of action that would lead us to war and lead to the devastation of our world.”

“Your Highness,” Bibble said. “Whether or not you want a war, a blockade is an act of war. An invasion is an act of war. Jamming communications is the act of someone who expects that there will be no further need for discussion.”

“I was elected to represent the people of Naboo, not to commit them to a war that would kill thousands,” Amidala replied, but she was frowning. “What are our options?”

“A lot depends on the specifics of the situation,” Panaka replied. “Technician – search the frequencies, find what they’re jamming and what they’re not jamming. We can send out the starfighters to deliver hard copy information on what frequencies to use to the cities of Naboo – the more we know the better.”

The technician nodded, and as she got to work Panaka went on. “The government could go into hiding – that means both of you at minimum. If that happens then the Federation cannot legitimize their occupation.”

“Will it matter?” Amidala asked.

“Yes,” Bibble replied, firmly. “The blockade was already being voted on by the Senate… if Republic observers have not already been sent, they will be soon. If the Republic arrives and finds that the Trade Federation has occupied our world, then unless the Federation has a legal treaty to use to excuse their presence they will be clearly the aggressor and they will lose their trade franchise.”

He shook his head. “Highness – this applies especially to you. The way the Trade Federation can win, long-term, is for them to capture you and force you to sign a treaty – otherwise, they are finished.”

“If they are invading,” Amidala replied.

“If they are invading,” Bibble conceded. “But what else would they be doing?”

“In that case…” Amidala began, then shook her head. “No. We need more information. What do we know?”

“Nothing yet,” Panaka replied. “We’ll send out the starfighters as soon as we have a set of comm codes to use.”

An hour later, one of the lower rooms of the Theed palace had been turned into a situation room. Panaka was there along with half a dozen security volunteers, several astromech droids, and Amidala along with four of her handmaidens, and she examined the holographic map.

“Explain?” she requested.

One of the droids whistled and beeped, and the hologram changed.

“The blue-green-brown overlay is the geography,” Panaka said, pointing. “Yellow circles show where we have recent overflight, and orange circles are within line of sight of major cities now on the sky watcher networks. We don’t have full coverage of the planet’s surface, but there’s at least one person with electrobinoculars watching all the Trade Federation battleships.”

“Fast work,” Amidala told him. “How up to date is the information?”

“Data link from the fighters is real time,” Panaka answered. “It’s low quality but it’ll serve. Everything else is coming in through voice reports, that’s what some of the astromechs are doing.”

The same droid whistled again, and the hologram display altered – showing a particular area of the map, zooming in.

“I see it,” Panaka said. “Your Highness, there’s twelve landing ships heading for a touchdown some distance from Theed – about five hundred kilometres. A good mechanized formation should manage to travel that distance in… two to three days.”

“Why so far?” Amidala asked, as the holographic ships slowly approached the planet.”

“It’s much like first arriving in a new area,” Panaka said. “They’re scoping the place out for threats first. Our military is public knowledge, but they don’t know we haven’t concealed anything… and a single ion cannon could down one of those landers, it would cost them millions.”

“Of credits,” Bibble said.

“They are the Trade Federation,” Panaka replied. “I was thinking about that. Regardless of their reason for this, if we could make the occupation expensive enough then they might leave.”

He frowned. “They’re landing in the Paonga Swamps area… that’s an unusual choice.”

“How long before they finish unloading?” Amidala asked.

“I don’t know,” Panaka admitted. “Your Highness, you should consider going into hiding.”

“Not until they approach Theed,” Amidala replied. “I may be forced to retreat, but I will not run in fear before I am threatened.”

One of the droids made a beep sound, and the spokesdroid whistled in reply before turning his probe in the interface slot.

“...four to Theed Base, Bravo Four to Theed Base,” a hurried voice said. “Come in!”

“Go, Bravo Four,” Panaka said.

“I can see fighting going on!” Bravo Four said. “There’s some Gungans – they’re attacking the invaders!”

“Gungans!” Bibble gasped. “Why would-”

Amidala stepped forwards. “Captain!” she said. “All of Bravo Flight is commanded to shoot down any droid fighters that they see firing at the ground!”

“Your Highness?” Bibble said, as Panaka relayed the orders.

“We don’t have an army,” Amidala said. “Not one worth the name, but the Gungans do and it sounds like the Trade Federation landed right on top of it. The invasion force is vulnerable and we can deliver them a defeat here.”

She looked dismayed, but resolute. “And in the final analysis, if we can get the Gungans on our side by helping them out here… that is worth our starfighter corps.”

Bibble nodded, slowly.

“I understand, Your Highness,” he said. “And I agree.”

“Explain,” Sidious said, icily.

“You did not tell us that Naboo had an army!” Gunray replied, hotly. “We have lost an enormous amount of assets! One hundred and forty four million credits of bulk shipping, one hundred and two million six hundred thousand credits of tanks, eighteen million two hundred and sixteen thousand credits of troop transports, fifty-eight million credits of battle droids-”

“What army?” Sidious asked. “You lost that much to the security volunteers?”

“I mean the army in the swamp!” Gunray said. “Obviously!”

“You mean the Gungans?!” Sidious asked. “What could those mudbunnies ever achieve?”

“Over three hundred and twenty million credits of damage,” Rune Haako provided, helpfully.

“Then send reinforcements,” Sidious said.

“We don’t actually have any,” Gunray replied. “The Naboo security forces have twelve thousand soldiers and forty heavy speeders. We only brought around fifteen hundred tanks and thirty thousand battle droids to deal with them. You said they didn’t have an army!”

Sidious was absolutely stone-faced for several seconds.

“I will give you more instructions later,” he said, and closed the channel.

“Well,” Haako mused. “He’s stumped. And racist, apparently.”

“I did notice that, yes,” Gunray admitted. “...do you think it was a mistake that we turned off the jamming to have that conversation?”

Haako looked concerned.

“I wish you’d mentioned that before we did it, sir,” he said.

[saphronethaleph]

Long Hours

“Send a force to threaten the Perlemian Trade Route,” Sidious instructed. “The Republic’s financial backers are easily stampeded, with so much of their capital tied up in the war effort. A threat despite their sacrifices will cause them dismay.”

It would also deepen support for the war, and for his administration, among those very same backers. Kuat Drive Yards needed to be shown that the Separatist threat was still very present… but that would serve both of his purposes at once.

“Of course, Lord Sidious,” Wat Tambor said, then signed off, and Palpatine leaned back with a sigh.

He pulled his hood back down, and rubbed his temples.

It was all very well for Dooku to go on a covert mission intended to cause chaos in the Republic and kill over a dozen Jedi in one fell swoop. But it meant that a lot of the feckless so-called leadership of the Confederacy of Independent Systems were calling him for reassurance, and he could hardly just leave them without doing anything to keep them on-side. They wanted a Sith to reassure themselves that they were not without assistance facing down the juggernaut of the Republic.

If truth had to be told, Palpatine himself was surprised at the strength the Republic had already demonstrated. Yes, the core of the Republic military was the clones from Kamino, but the lavish equipment of every one of those clones – the fact that the Clone Army was a mechanized force with ample air and space support – that was Republic.

He’d even had to carefully manoeuvre three times to defeat volunteer bills, and if anyone in the Senate really realized the extent to which a volunteer army would cripple his steadily increasing control of the Republic apparatus… that had the potential for an absolute disaster.

Control of the only two armed forces in the galaxy of any real size… that was a means by which he could establish control, in the confusion, and then solidify it over time. But if the Grand Army of the Republic consisted of four hundred million volunteers and three million clones, somehow Palpatine didn’t think it was very likely he’d be able to secure the same kind of whip hand.

His comlink buzzed again, and Palpatine checked the caller.

Rune Haako, this time. So he pulled up the cloak, to help him compartmentalize, and answered the call.

“Sidious here,” he said. “This had better be a matter of consequence.”

“Lord Sidious, Lord Tyrannus is unavailable and there is a crisis,” Haako said. “A Republic strike force has entered the Deko Neimoidia system – they threaten our control over this Purse World. The Trade Federation’s credit will take a terrible hit if we lose this world!”

“Are there not enough defence forces?” Sidious asked. “Surely you have not been so foolish as to fail to protect such an important world.”

“The Trade Monarch of Deko is reporting that there have been… shortfalls,” Haako answered, visibly uncomfortable at admitting even second-hand that there had been serious embezzlement in the provision of the defensive forces for such an important Neimoidian colony world. “Any irregularities in accounting do not change the consequences of the fall of the system, however! Lord Sidious, we joined the Confederacy to see our goals met, not to see our worlds fall!”

“You joined the Confederacy because I offered you a chance at revenge,” Sidious replied.

“Yes, about that,” Haako replied. “When can Viceroy Gunray expect the head of Senator Amidala on a plate?”

Sidious glowered.

Haako was always a bit more… variable, than Gunray, it had to be conceded. Though he was sure the pernickety little Neimoidian would not be so willing to backtalk if Sidious was in the room with him.

Quietly making a note that Haako would pay for this in future, Sidious let the words hang in the air until they dissipated.

“Place a bounty on the destruction of each capital ship,” he said. “Make it extremely high. You will not need to pay it. If anyone tries to collect it, ensure that there are no clear records of which pilot destroyed which ship. Add falsified claims if you must. Then deny payment because cheating is gong on.”

He smiled, slightly. “That will stymie the offensive.”

“This had better work,” Haako said, then Sidious closed out the call.

He threw back his hood again and growled something inarticulate, then accessed classified Republic military information. The hologram shimmered into place above his desk, showing all current Republic military movements in the most up-to-date format, and he scanned back and forth looking for recent offensives.

There was the one Haako had been complaining about… there was the one Tambor had wanted help with… that one was the one which High Admiral Yorcks had been wailing about, simply because it threatened an important industrial world… and there was another one, an offensive just going in now. Fifteen Star Destroyers with escorts in proportion, going after Yag’Dhul to cut the Confederacy-held portions of the Corellian Trade Spine and the Rimma Trade Route at once – and directed against a defensive fleet currently accompanied by Shu Mai.

And the Republic fleet was led by… Admiral Wurtz. A capable commander, but one who was obedient to a fault.

Diverting a third of his ships on an urgent mission to support Bestine against a threatened attack would be an ideal excuse… and would cripple the Republic offensive, causing Wurtz to break off after casualties.

The comlink chimed again, and Sidious pulled his hood up and picked up his comlink.

“I already know why you’re calling,” he said, answering. “I will see to it that the Republic attack on Yag’Dhul fails.”

There was silence from the other end of the comlink.

“Do you doubt Lord Sidious?” he asked. “I know more than you could comprehend, through means you could not begin to understand.”

“Master Yoda, this is,” the person on the other end of the comlink noted.

Sidious suddenly felt like he’d made a terrible mistake.

“Wanted to ask for advice, I did,” Yoda added. “Understand all that I needed, I now do.”

The call ended, and Sidious stared at his comlink for a long moment before starting to scroll through his console for contact codes.

This was an absolute emergency. He needed the comcodes for every Clone Commander now.

“Whose idea was it to list all of them alphabetically?” he demanded, trying to remember what the designation was of the most important Clone Commanders. Was it CC-4001, 1004 or 1400 that was Yoda’s one?

Where was the right setting to show their roles?

Who designed this interface!

Snarling with rage, Sidious found the right comcode and dialled it.

“Initiate Order Sixty-Six,” he said. “Kill Yoda!”

“That confirms it,” CC-1004 mused, which was not especially encouraging to hear under the circumstances. “Jek, pass it on to all commands. Order Twenty is in effect.”

“What is Order Twenty?” Sidious demanded.

He’d only bothered to remember Sixty-Six and a few others.

“The Chancellor is also a Sith,” CC-1004 provided helpfully. “It’s also known as Order Double Cross. The Kaminoans provided a user’s manual to General Yoda when he took delivery, and he read it.”

Sidious ended the call.

“Bugger,” he said.

An army of volunteers sounded quite nice right now. At least some of them might not have believed the truth.

[saphronethaleph]

Party Level Equalization

“I wonder what sent all those Pokémon crazy!” Goh said, frowning, then glanced at Ash and Dawn. “And I’m amazed at how calm you two were! You didn’t even need to hear what the problem was – you just went ahead and solved it!”

“Well, yeah,” Dawn shrugged. “If you know, you just do what solves it, right? You know.”

“Yeah!” Ash agreed. “And when Pokémon are fighting like that, that’s usually because they’re angry, and so getting wet can snap them out of it! Plus, Piplup does it with a lot of skill, so a Pokémon that might still fight anyway knows that Piplup is much more of a challenge than they might expect.”

“Lup piplup PIP!” Piplup said, proudly.

“Chuu, Pika kachuu,” Pikachu advised him.

“But still!” Goh said. “Being able to work that out, that quickly, is… it’s really impressive!”

Dawn looked at him, curiously.

“So how long have you been travelling with Ash, anyway?” she asked.

“Goh isn’t really a Pokémon trainer most of the time,” Ash said, waving his hand. “So for him, he’s always looking in from the inside, right?”

“Oh, yeah, that makes sense,” Dawn realized. “Yeah, I guess it would be a big deal, then.”

A moment later, a glowing light surrounded them, and Goh, Ash, Dawn and their respective Pokémon found themselves in a kind of mystical realm with glowing blue energy surrounding them.

Three odd shapes appeared, and Goh held up his phone. “What Pokémon are those?”

“Uxie, Mesprit and Azelf!” Ash said, waving. “Hi, guys! Are you actually here or are you just a vision? And if you’re a vision, is it an interactive one or not?”

Azelf flew down to hover in front of Ash.

Okay, so the answer’s a bit complicated, the spirit of willpower said. Long story short, yeah, it’s a vision, but it’s kind of an interactive one.

Problem is, we’re not allowed to give some of the details, Mesprit went on, addressing Dawn. It’s okay, the boss will be along in a minute.

Uxie floated down in front of Goh, and looked contemplative, which was impressive given that their eyes were closed.

...yeah, you’ll do, they declared. Though, personal advice from me? Seek out more knowledge, and maybe learn to cook. It seems to help.

Their tails flicked. Anyway, you’re going to be going through a mind expanding experience, so keep it in mind.

“...uh,” Goh said, not at all sure how to cope with that.

I said mind expanding, Uxie chided. Don’t just lock up and refuse to think about it!

Then the world around them changed, the dominant colour going from the cool blue of a deep lake to the hot red and orange of the sun’s light, and Arceus appeared above them in this strange, liminal space.

“Oh, hi!” Ash called, waving.

“Pika kachuu!” Pikachu agreed.

“It’s been a while!” Dawn said.

Goh’s Grookey scratched his head, tilting it. “Key? Groo-key?”

“Pika pipi chuu!” Pikachu replied.

“Yeah, we’ve met,” Ash told Grookey, just to confirm. “Hey, Arceus, what is it this time? Do we help you get to your senses again, or is something up with your kids?”

“And what’s up?” Dawn added. “The Lake Guardians made it sound serious, but I wouldn’t mind if you showed up now and then for a social visit!”

Arceus stepped closer, then shook His head.

“Oh, there’s no point trying to be numinous with you two, is there?” He asked. “It’s been a while, Dawn. Ash, I think we last saw one another in Dahara?”

“Yeah!” Ash agreed. “With Hoopa – did you help out, there, actually? I know that the siblings there had amulets shaped like your ring, is that relevant?”

“I did help, yes,” Arceus confirmed. “But it’s one of those things where I prefer for things to be sorted out without getting involved personally, because I can help out in a lot of places at once but only be personally involved in one. And what makes it worse is that I’m still a Pokémon and so it can actually hurt a lot if I’m hit with an attack.”

“You two know… Arceus?” Goh asked. “Isn’t that the Creator of the universe?”

“I though that was Mew,” Dawn said, frowning.

“Chuu, Pipipi, pika kachu!” Pikachu said.

“Lup-pip!” Piplup countered.

“Chuu,” Pikachu giggled.

“Yeah, I wondered about that but I asked Brock once,” Ash replied. “We don’t know how it happened, but the infinite void of nothingness had an egg.”

“That’s about right, actually,” Arceus conceded, scratching one of His forelegs against the back of the other. “Mew was involved but I don’t know all of the details… anyway, yes, I’m afraid it isn’t a social visit. Team Galactic either did something involving time and space and reality or are about to do something involving time and space and reality, I don’t know which. Because of the… time, involved.”

“Can we stop them?” Ash asked. “Or is this one of those things where we have to fix it, or make it so that it never happened in the first place?”

“Honestly I do not know which,” Arceus said. “But I trust you, Ash, Dawn. And Goh is your friend so he can hopefully keep up.”

“Uh,” Goh began. “I’m… not actually a battler? Or a Coordinator? I just… catch Pokémon. A lot. And I like Mew?”

Arceus looked at Goh, then at Uxie.

Look, Mesprit and Azelf had already bagsied one of the other two and Cynthia wasn’t close enough to be caught in the vision space, the Being of Knowledge said. Otherwise, yeah, I’d have picked her.

“So be it, then,” Arceus said. “We do not have time to quibble.”

He exerted a fraction of His enormous power, and Goh glowed briefly.

“Congratulations, you are now a Mew,” Arceus said. “It’s still going to leave you working hard to catch up with the Apex of Willpower and the Apex of Emotion, but knowledge is a quest that is always incomplete anyway so it’s not a problem for the resonance. Just pick it up as you go along.”

A moment later, they were back where they’d started.

“I’ll let Cynthia know what happened,” Dawn decided.

“Yeah, I wonder if we’ve got time for me to pick up Dragonite?” Ash said.

“What did he mean, I’m now a Mew?” Goh demanded, then turned into a small pink floating Pokémon.

“Chu!” Pikachu said, helpfully.

Yeah, I get that now, Goh replied, slowly rotating. Uh. Anyone know how to float upright?

[saphronethaleph]

The Real Treasure

“No!” Donald said, folding his arms. “We’re not landing there!”

“We’ve got to land everywhere, Donald!” Sora replied. “What’s wrong with that place?”

“Just look at it!” Donald replied. “We can see from here! The Lanes Between representation of it has a ship and an island on it, and the big name it has is Treasure Island!”

“Yeah, which means treasure!” Sora agreed.

“It means pirates,” Donald countered. “We’ve had too many pirates already, Sora!”

“I’ve got to admit, Sora, he’s got a point,” Goofy said. “I know we’ll have to land there some time, but after what we just had to do helpin’ out Jack and the others I think we’re pirated out for now!”

Sora looked between his friends, then slumped.

“Okay, fine,” he decided, reluctantly. “But we’re coming right back here after the next place, right?”

Donald was silent.

“Donald?” Sora prompted.

“Fine,” Donald conceded.

“Great!” Goofy said, as Sora banked them away from Treasure Island and towards the nearest other world. “What’s that place, anyway?”

They looked it over, as they got closer – the two weren’t far apart, surprisingly close by the standards of worlds in the Lanes.

“There’s a big mountain,” Donald said, thoughtfully. “That means it’s got to be important. And there’s a river, too… and an aurora! That’s pretty.”

“Lots of climbing,” Sora mused. “I guess that wouldn’t be too bad. What’s this place called, uh… Land of Spirits?”

He looked thoughtful. “I wonder if that means there’s ghosts?”

“Well, only one way to find out!” Goofy declared, cheerfully. “Take us in to land, Captain Sora!”

“Do you have to call him that?” Donald asked.

“He does like pirates,” Goofy replied, with a shrug.

Upon landing, there was… a surprise.

“...what, again?” Sora asked, looking at his paws, then back along his body. “This always takes me a few minutes to get used to.”

He frowned down at his reflection in the water of the icy stream they’d appeared next to. “And I don’t think I’m a lion this time… it’s slightly different.”

“At least you ain’t as small now as you were last time,” Goofy pointed out, the huge musk-ox leaning down to take a sip from the river, and Sora blinked before looking himself over again and stretching.

Goofy wasn’t wrong. He did seem to be closer to a grown up version of… whatever he was, now.

“What do you think, Donald?” he asked. “...Donald?”

“No laughing!” Donald demanded, from behind a rock.

“Aww, Donald,” Goofy soothed. “You know we can’t make that promise!”

“...hey!” Donald protested.

“It can’t be that bad,” Sora said, bounding over. “Hey, you’re a Canada Goose!”

Goofy did his best to not chuckle.

He really did.

Sora didn’t, though.

As Sora was being hit with Donald’s latest staff, Goofy raised his voice.

“Guys!” he said, and Donald stopped thwacking while Sora stopped trying to escape.

All three of them looked at the elderly woman dressed in furs who was approaching them. Her hair was white, and there were red markings on the bridge of her nose, while she walked supported by a simple wooden staff.

“...hey, wait,” Sora said. “If there are humans here, how come we got turned into animals?”

“That’s a good question,” Goofy admitted.

The woman stopped, and put her hands together to bow.

“Greetings to you, spirits of the sky,” she said. “I am Tanana.”

“Hi!” Sora replied. “I’m Sora!”

“Sora!” Donald protested. “Did you already forget you’re a puma?”

“I cannot understand you, but I can gather some of your meaning,” the woman said. “You are here, I think, to help protect and guide us… to keep the evil spirits from harming our land. And, I hope, to help Kenai.”

She pointed. “He went that way, and he is unfamiliar with his new form… he has much to learn, but if the evil spirits attack him, he may have trouble learning it. Spirits of the sky… keep him safe.”

Sora, Donald and Goofy exchanged looks.

“Evil spirits,” Sora repeated.

“You think…?” Goofy wondered.

“The Heartless!” Donald declared. “We’d better stop them – and help this Kenai!”

“Maybe he got turned into something too?” Sora suggested. “Let’s go!”

Their latest adventure was an… experience. The Heartless were as much of a problem as before, but this time the cause of the Heartless becoming interested in the world was Kenai himself. The true struggle was not to defeat an evil, but to help Kenai grow as a person and to keep him and Koda friends.

Then there was the bit where a glacier had given way and a gigantic living flood had attacked, near the end. That had happened as well.

When it was over, though, Kenai spent a moment to thank each of them.

“I don’t know what to say,” he admitted. “It’s… I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“Hey, we were here to stop the Heartless,” Sora replied. “I think you’d have done okay without them!”

He frowned. “Though, uh… actually, now we have a moment, I’m kinda curious.”

“About what?” Kenai said.

“All the weapons and tools and stuff, they’re made of stone,” Sora replied. “Not wood. Don’t you guys have iron?”

Kenai looked completely blank.

“What’s iron?” he asked.

“Huh,” Sora frowned. “I think… maybe it has a different word or something? You burn wood underground where it can’t fully burn, to make charcoal, then you… uh, you get the rock with the iron in it, and you heat it up with burning charcoal, underground again, and the iron melts into a lump. Then you use more charcoal to melt it and make it into a shape?”

Kenai shook his head.

“I’ve never heard of that,” he admitted, scratching his chin with a claw. “Maybe Denahi has. I’ll see if I can show him and what he thinks.”

Sora nodded.

“I guess,” he replied. “I was just curious! Because, you know, stone keeps breaking more easily and stuff…”

“Kenai!” Koda called. “Come on, we’re wasting daylight!”

“We’d better go,” Goofy suggested. “Nice meetin’ you!”

“You don’t think that was a violation of the World Order?” Donald asked, once they were back on the Highwind and getting used to their normal array and orientation of limbs.

“I didn’t mention anything about other worlds!” Sora defended himself. “All we were doing was having a conversation!”

“That’s not the only thing the World Order involves!” Donald replied. “You need to think about this stuff!”

“And?” Sora challenged. “What problem could it cause?”

“That’s not the point!” Donald said. “How do you know that stuff, anyway?”

“Chip and Dale told me once!” Sora replied, with a shrug. “It was when they were refitting the ship back from being a square shape again. Chip was busy moving blocks and Dale was repairing the engine, and they had this long talk about how you make stuff like iron and steel… I forgot lots of it, but not all of it, and I wondered if-”

Goofy made a confused noise. “Uh. Guys?”

Sora and Donald looked at him, then out the front window.

They’d nearly reached their next world, the one they’d been planning on… except that it was different.

It still had a ship, but the ship’s sails glowed as it hung there, flying away from a dock shaped like a crescent moon. And it was not an island but an entire planet visible on the other end of the World.

And the second word on the name was not Island, now, but Planet.

Sora and Donald stared.

Then looked at one another.

Then back out the window.

“...huh,” Sora said. “Hey, when did they invent iron working again? Wasn’t there a thing called the Stone Age?”

“This is why we don’t meddle, Sora,” Donald sighed.

[saphronethaleph]

Cross Rail

“So… Cilan?” Ash asked, curiously.

“Yes, Ash?” Cilan replied.

“I’m wondering,” Ash explained. “You seem to talk about food all the time… is that because you’re really, really interested in it?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way!” Cilan denied. “Though, yes, I am quite an enthusiast. It’s not the only thing that I have an interest in, mind you – it’s simply that it’s the thing that is most fundamental.”

Ash frowned.

“Fundamental how?” he said.

“Food is necessary for everything else to happen!” Cilan explained.

“Pika kachuu, Pikapi pichu,” Pikachu opined.

“I guess I do enjoy it, yeah,” Ash said. “I’m just wondering… so what other things are you into, then?”

“Ash!” Iris warned. “You know Cilan might talk about whatever it is for half an hour, right?”

Ash shrugged.

“Yeah?” Ash replied. “I don’t mind! We’re friends, right? And maybe I’ll decide that, no, I won’t be interested again, but the first time isn’t that much of a problem… anyway, what is it, then?”

“That’s very clear-minded of you, Ash!” Cilan smiled. “A piquant attitude!”

“Let me guess,” Iris sighed. “It’s like a drink accompanying the food?”

Cilan looked thoughtful.

“I hadn’t thought of that one,” he said. “Very insightful!”

Iris shook her head, trying not to smile, and Cilan went on. “We’re actually on the way to Nimbasa City, which means that I can tell you about one of the things that I find fascinating – which is the Battle Subway!”

Ash immediately perked up, as did Pikachu.

“If it’s a battle subway, does that mean that there are Pokémon battles?” he asked.

“Yes!” Cilan agreed. “I’ve got an interest in trains generally, actually – you see, they’re a remarkably efficient way of getting around!”

Ash frowned.

“What about Pokémon?” he asked.

“I was going to ask that,” Iris admitted. “Aren’t Dragon-types like a Dragonite way faster than a train?”

“Well, not all Pokémon can fly!” Cilan replied. “And, yes, if you have a fast flying Pokémon then it’s an excellent way to get around quickly – but trains can do that job regardless of who you are. They can bring you and your Pokémon along, quickly and safely, and you don’t get rained on – which is a problem for a flying Pokémon, after all! In a train you’re inside, away from the weather, and it can take hundreds of people at once.”

“I guess I never really thought about it that way,” Ash conceded. “Normally I think about a journey being the journey, not the destination… I don’t mind taking longer because going through the towns on the way and meeting Pokémon on the way is a big part of the fun bit.”

“And there’s nothing wrong with that!” Cilan agreed. “But if you need to get somewhere in a hurry, unless you have certain kinds of Ride Pokémon, then the only way is the rail way!”

Ash nodded along.

“But what about the Battle Subway?” he asked.

“The subway is how people get around Nimbasa, but the Battle part is because of a Nimbasa speciality!” Cilan declared. “Run by Subway Bosses Ingo and Emmet, the Battle Trains are a way you can battle on the move – specially reinforced, they let you battle your way to a destination! And the Subway Bosses themselves are expert trainers, so challenging them is always a highlight!”

“I hadn’t actually heard about them,” Iris said, reluctantly. “The Battle Trains, that is… how does it work?”

“If you’re on the Battle Train, then you’ve decided you’re interested in the battle bit,” Cilan explained. “So you can either just pair up with anyone, which makes it like a Battle Club, or you can try and build up a winning streak – it’s a great way for people in Nimbasa to battle with lots of different trainers without having to leave the city!”

Ash looked like he was thinking that through.

“I guess if I had to live in a city, I’d want it to be one with Battle Trains,” he said. “But I’d rather travel around than be stuck in one place, if that makes sense?”

“I think it makes a lot of sense, Ash!” Cilan reassured him, warmly. “Though I’ve always been just as interested in the mechanics of it all! All the old rolling stock!”

“The what?” Iris asked.

“Rolling stock!” Cilan repeated, which didn’t seem to help. “The trains! They roll, you see. And some people – and I’m one of them – try to see all of the trains on the line!”

Iris looked mortified.

“You mean you’re a trainspotter?” she asked.

“It’s not much different from being a Pokémon spotter!” Cilan replied. “And don’t you want to see all Pokémon, Ash?”

“Yeah, actually,” Ash admitted. “I still don’t know if Porygon evolves, though…”

“There you go!” Cilan replied. “It’s like collecting a whole cabinet of spices!”

“Just couldn’t help yourself, could you?” Iris asked.

“Ax-ew, ax!” Axew volunteered, leaning out of her hair.

“Pika kachuu pika,” Pikachu advised.

“Maybe,” Ash said. “And I guess I do like the sound of the Battle Trains.”

“Good!” Cilan smiled. “Though I do want to speak to the Subway Bosses at some point… Ash, can I count on your cooperation for that? You see, I’ve got this idea about one of my other hobbies… unsolved mysteries!”

“Oh no,” Iris muttered.

“Unsolved mysteries?” Ash repeated. “What kind of unsolved mystery?”

“It’s one that you might know about, Ash!” Cilan replied. “Because you’ve been to Sinnoh!”

He rummaged in his bag, and took out two photos – one of two similar men dressed in cross-matching outfits, the other a photo of a pencil sketch of just one of the men.

“This one, with two men on it, is Ingo and Emmet!” Cilan explained. “They’re twins! And this one, with just one, is a mysterious Warden of the Pearl Clan, from Hisui – also named Ingo! You can see how similar they look, and this is an officially unsolved mystery!”

Iris leaned over Ash’s shoulder.

“That’s… actually weird,” she said. “Okay, I’m interested now. What’s the answer?”

“It’s unsolved!” Cilan reminded her. “But I’ve got some ideas about it. One of them is that there’s rumours that there’s a Legendary Pokémon in Sinnoh that can travel in time!”

“Rumours?” Iris repeated. “It’s obvious that that’s Dialga.”

“Do you mean Dialga or Celebi?” Ash checked. “I’ve seen both in Sinnoh.”

“...huh,” Iris said. “You’ve met Dialga?”

“Yeah, and his siblings,” Ash agreed, blithely. “And Arceus, too… though Dialga was the only one of them to actually do time travel… how far in the past was this?”

“A few hundred years,” Cilan said. “Ash, you’re full of surprises! It’s like you’re a pastry with a hot pepper filling!”

“Chuu,” Pikachu giggled.

“...yeah, I might need to work out if that’s an insult,” Ash admitted. “So you think there’s time travel?”

“That’s one possibility!” Cilan agreed. “Though they might not know, if it hasn’t happened yet. Another possibility is that this Ingo from the past is the ancestor of the Subway Bosses. Or it could be a coincidence! But I intend to ask, because sometimes mysteries don’t require much detective work…”

On the far side of some trainspotting, two battles on a Battle Train, and a Team Rocket plot involving several inflatable decoy trains and the Rocket Meowth working in deep cover, Cilan finally got a chance to approach the two Subway Bosses.

“...so, I was wondering!” he said. “Are you aware of Warden Ingo of the Pearl Clan, from Hisui?”

“I think you will find that we’ve already published an official response!” Emmet said.

“Brother!” Ingo said, a moment later. “This is not a matter for an official response!”

The two brothers exchanged glances.

“It’s not?” Emmet asked. “What could be the reason for that? Official responses are official!”

“Yes, but Ash Ketchum is Ash Ketchum!” Ingo replied. “He has a special dispensation!”

“Why Ash?” Iris asked. “Is this to do with Dialga or something?”

“Or something!” Ingo said. “Brother – I have been assured that Ash Ketchum in particular can be trusted. I think his friends can too.”

“Pika chuu…” Pikachu said, frowning and tilting his head. “Chu?”

“Very well!” Emmet decided. “If you have special assurance, that is fine!”

Ingo and Emmet nodded firmly, then Ingo crouched down.

“It is true,” he said. “That I was sent back in time to help out, much like you were – by Arceus, not by Dialga. However, in my case I refused a return ticket.”

“You… went back in time and then didn’t come forwards in time?” Cilan said.

“I did not say that!” Ingo replied. “I came forwards in time by trackside path.”

“But that would have to be hundreds of years,” Iris protested. “You still look like twins! How is that possible?”

Ash frowned.

“Do you have a thing that means you don’t age?” he asked. “Professor Oak’s not sure if I’ve got that, he says it might be that I’m just going through puberty late or it could be a side effect of when I died.”

“Chuu, pikapi Pika ka!” Pikachu said, firmly.

“Okay, the first time,” Ash amended. “Pikachu, you know the second time barely counts!”

He frowned. “Wait, or are you counting the chandelier as the first time? I guess that would make the one I was talking about the second time-”

“We’re getting distracted!” Iris said, sounding faintly horrified and also intrigued. “How did your thing happen, Ingo?”

“It’s simple!” Emmet said, and there was a poof of smoke.

Two poofs, in fact.

When the smoke faded, there was a black-furred Zoroark wearing Emmet’s clothes, and a white-and-grey Zoroark wearing Ingo’s clothes.

“From my point of view, Ingo didn’t actually vanish!” Emmet said. “He just turned up with a big pile of souvenirs from all over the world, two new Pokémon – one of them for me – and a very long story to tell!”

“And from my point of view, I was glad it was me and not my brother,” Ingo clarified.

“You’re Zoroarks?” Cilan asked, sounding impressed. “Oh! So that’s why the outfits look like that!”

“It is a long-term bit of trickery and deception!” Ingo said, proudly. “I have the darker outfit! That is not what you would expect from our themes!”

“Speaking of which,” Emmet added. “If you’re a Zoroark too, Iris, you’re not doing a great job of trickery.”

“...this is just my hair,” Iris protested. “I’m not a Zoroark.”

“Isn’t that what a Zoroark would say?” Ash asked, thoughtfully.

Iris glared at him.

Ash looked back with complete sincerity.

[saphronethaleph]

Slot Queue

“Huh,” Ash said, thinking about it. “So you’d be travelling with us… what do you think, Iris?”

Iris shrugged.

“I don’t mind,” she said.

“Then sure!” Ash declared. “Great to have you, Cilan!”

“Pika kachuu!” Pikachu agreed.

“Wonderful!” Cilan smiled. “It’s going to be a great journey, I’m sure of it!”

“Oh, good,” said a female voice.

Everyone blinked.

“Huh?” Ash asked. “Who said that? That sounded kind of familiar…”

He looked around, alert, then one of the nearby trees shimmered slightly and a Ninetales faded into visibility.

“...okay, I’ve rehearsed this a lot of times, but it really doesn’t feel right to actually be doing it,” she said.

Ash frowned.

“Hey, aren’t you… that Ninetales we met in Johto?”

“You’ve been to Johto?” Iris asked. “Did you meet Clair? She’s part of the dragon clan at Blackthorn!”

“Pika kachuu, Pikapi pika chu!” Pikachu said, brightly.

“Yeah, I beat her in a gym battle,” Ash confirmed. “It was great to use my Charizard for that, I miss him but I know he’s better where he is.”

Iris boggled.

“...you have a Charizard?” she asked. “Really?”

“Yeah!” Ash agreed.

The Ninetales had been patiently waiting for her turn, and coughed as demurely as possible.

“Yes,” she said. “I am the Ninetales you met in Johto, the one who hid behind the identity of Lokoko… and, ah… how to put this…”

“Kachuu, pika kachuu,” Pikachu volunteered.

“I suppose,” the Fire-type said. “So… after the battle, and after you freed Brock, I was… interested in following you. In seeing what adventure was like, after so many decades stuck in the same mansion. But I did not want to seem like I was still stalking Brock, so revealing myself to you while Brock was still among your companions was a bad idea.”

Ash nodded slightly, following that.

“I guess,” he said. “But what about after Brock and Misty went home at the end of the Silver Conference?”

“Am I missing something?” Iris asked. “Who’s Brock?”

Cilan shrugged.

“I’m sure we’ll find out at some point,” he said, cheerfully.

“I considered it,” Lokoko told Ash. “But at that point I was still… nervous. Awkward.”

She looked down at herself. “More than I am now, that is… I didn’t want to talk to you, in case it went wrong. I didn’t know what to say. So I followed you to Hoenn, but before long you’d met Brock again! And at that point it would have been too awkward – it would have looked like I’d stalked Brock to a different region, which would be even worse.”

“So…” Ash began, and Pikachu started giggling.

“Pika kachuu, Pikapi, Pika ka kachuu pi!” he said, then shook his head and rubbed the back of his neck. “Ka chuu pi…”

“...oh, yeah,” Ash realized. “So the same thing happened again with Sinnoh?”

“How many places have you been, Ash?” Iris asked.

“That’s mostly the list, yeah,” Ash said, counting. “Uh… I know I mentioned I was from Kanto to Trip, did I mention that to you? Then I went to the Orange Islands, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh and now here!”

He frowned. “Wait, doesn’t Sinnoh in the past count as different? And I swear we got really lost when we were helping Jirachi, because we were driving for days to reach Forina… actually, uh, Lokoko, did you come along with all of those weird things too?”

“...yes,” Lokoko admitted, her ears going flat with embarrassment. “I certainly saw a lot of excitement. And before you ask, I don’t know if Rota counts as a different place, or if it counts as different for Sinnoh if you do it in the past.”

She laid out her tails. “Remember, I may be hundreds of years old but I spent most of that time in an abandoned mansion. If you want berries cultivated in bonsai pots that are still fully nutritious, I am the Pokémon you want to call upon. Illusions of near-perfect quality, I have spent hundreds of years working on. Speech, your choices are me, Manaphy or Meowth for the most part. And I read every book in the mansion’s library end to end about six times, but that mostly means that I can tell you every detail of a hundred trashy romance novels. I am not wise. I merely have a lot of experience at one thing.”

“Huh,” Ash said. “I guess I can see why following me around is helpful… so why did you show who you were now?”

“Because this is the most confident I’ve ever been that Brock isn’t going to try and join you,” Lokoko said, waving a tail at Cilan. “You’ve got someone in the Brock position on your team who isn’t actually Brock.”

“Ah, I see!” Cilan declared, clapping his hands. “So you’re normally faced with a main course, which would be Ash, and an accompanying side dish and a drink! And you’re teetotal and a recovering alcoholic, so you need to be careful, but this is the first time you’ve been given the opportunity of a drink that isn’t wine and so this is the first time you’re happy with the set menu!”

Lokoko blinked, her head tilting to the side.

“What do you mean, side dish?” Iris asked.

“There’s nothing wrong with a side dish!” Cilan replied. “They compliment the flavour profile and provide a useful supplement, plus of course they are part of the set menu and so you couldn’t do without them! But Ash is clearly the main meal here, from sheer scale! After all, most of his team is Unovan and yet he’s been to five other regions – these Pokémon are not his first!”

“Do any of my Pokémon know about you, actually?” Ash asked Lokoko.

“Noctowl, but she never said anything,” Lokoko replied. “Gliscor crashed into me once but I don’t know if he noticed. And Brock’s Crobat noticed me immediately, because I hadn’t thought to extend my illusions into the high ultrasonic… he just never said anything either.”

Ash nodded, thinking.

“So, what do you want to do?” he asked. “Travel with us? I guess you’ve been doing that already, but we could make it official… though I guess that depends what Iris and Cilan think.”

“That would be nice,” Lokoko said, nodding slowly, then turned her attention to the other two. “Please? It would… mean a lot to me.”

“...I’d feel bad about saying no,” Iris admitted. “The whole, following Ash around for years, thing is… a bit weird? But… yeah, sure.”

“I’d be fine with it as well!” Cilan asked. “Though I do wonder how you’d fit into the menu!”

Lokoko blinked.

“I was… well, I suppose my position would be like Max’s, in Hoenn and Kanto,” she said. “Following along without any Pokémon of my own, but quite good at communicating with other Pokémon?”

“Ah!” Cilan nodded. “The sauce! Yes, sauce is always a benefit!”

“Pika chuu,” Pikachu said.

“I suppose it is heartening to not clearly be the oddest,” Lokoko conceded.

[saphronethaleph]

Glitched Dupes

“Really?” Palpatine asked. “Why not?”

“You are not the leader of a government at the moment, My Emperor,” the Sienar Fleet Systems board member said. “Taking thirty-three million trained professionals out of circulation would be not merely noticeable, but blatantly obvious. We can bring a few trained professionals to provide training, but… the question of manpower will have to be solved another way.”

“Right,” Palpatine muttered, because it was a reasonable point, which was why the man was not currently being electrocuted.

He scowled, thinking, then realized there was an obvious solution.

Yes, strand-cast clones were useless for these purposes, because they usually came out looking like carpet material, but he had other means of cloning. And he wouldn’t accept his own spirit being transferred into a Kaminoan accelerated clone, but when that was not the primary objective, there were…

...options.

“I will be able to provide the manpower,” he said.

It would take a lot of cloning cylinders, but he had a lot of cloning cylinders.

The Final Order would be ready on schedule.

SP-1030481 tapped on the controls, sending his report forwards to SP-665 and SP-89793 in command of the Bane.

The Bane wasn’t completed, yet, but SP-1030481 was eagerly anticipating the time when it would be ready. The time when the warships of the Final Order would be ready, able to strike out into the galaxy and destroy all who had mocked them. All who doubted them… had doubted Emperor Palpatine.

And the time when SP-1030481 would be able to dispense with this subservience, and take his rightful place.

He was the true inheritor of the Sith legacy. All the others were mere false clones, not truly duplicates of the original Sheev Palpatine – of the original Darth Sidious. They were obedient, accepting their place in the Final Order, and so it would be easy to take control.

Easy to usurp control, and to prove that he was the true Sith. The Sith who would use the Final Order to destroy the galaxy, and rule over the ruin.

And it would be him who did it. SP-1030481, Palpatine, Darth Sidious.

All he had to do was to pick his moment, and seize control from the feckless followers all around him.

Kylo Ren double-checked that he was following the directions of the Sith Wayfinder, and passed through the nebula around Exegol.

There was plenty of interference, but even from here he could feel the intense, throbbing power of the Dark Side below him. It was like there was not one Force Adept below, not one powerful Sith, but thousands – millions, even.

Truly, the power of Darth Sidious was awe-inspiring.

Then, very suddenly, the entire surface of Exegol erupted.

Ren threw up his hand in automatic response, then stared through the cockpit windows of his TIE Whisper.

There seemed to be… almost a thousand chain-detonation explosions of Dark Side energy going on below, as if someone had taken over thirty million Dark Side bombs and packed them into small spaces along with the parts to a large number of capital ships.

Then Ren pulled up, avoiding the cloud of purple smoke and atomized debris that was rising into the air from the surface of Exegol.

The presence of Darth Sidious had vanished.

“...kriff this, anyway,” he muttered, turning around, and flew away from Exegol again.

It was a silly place.

[saphronethaleph]

Latchkey discovery

“General Organa Solo! Admiral! I – there’s something you need to know!”

“What is it?” Leia replied, frowning for a moment at the Duros in front of her. “Yaral, correct?”

“Yes, General,” Yaral confirmed. “General, I’ve been going over the implications of the operation that took place on Starkiller Base, and… I think I’ve got it.”

“...got what?” Holdo asked. “You’re not making sense.”

“I – ah, sorry,” Yaral mumbled, and put down his datapad. “It’s… so, ah, one of the extant problems in Hyperspace theoretics for the last several decades at least is that we can’t predict what routes will work and what routes won’t. It should be a settled science, but the fact that it only semi-reliably produced results matching empirical observations is a major clue that what we’re working with is actually an approximation… and not a good one. There’s plenty of models that were supposed to solve this, but none of them were… ah… they didn’t properly allow for the psuedovelocity-hypervelocity transition, for example, or they produced results that seemed to indicate that actual hyperspace travel was impossible, or they weren’t reliable with results.”

“Is this important?” Leia asked. “I mean you no insult, Yaral, but we are currently being pursued by a First Order ship capable of tracking us through-”

She stopped.

“...is that relevant to this?” she asked.

“It might be,” Yaral said. “At least – it might be if they’ve got a general solution to hyperspatial field theory, if it’s the same as – so, I’ve been working from the way that the Millennium Falcon jumped under the Starkiller Base shield. That indicates that the former understandings about mass shadows were not correct and could not be correct, and that gave me a hint so I tried using a different model on the way that mass impacts hyperspace. Specifically, it’s not the mass itself that impacts hyperspace, it’s the energy of the gravity that impacts hyperspace. The very energy bound up in the gravitational field, the, the warped space time is what is causing the impact, and normally that’s essentially the same but it becomes different under certain circumstances. Frame dragging around black holes, especially multiple black holes, is one of the places where it becomes particularly noticeable, but it’s not the only one – and Starkiller Base was suppressing the mass that it contained as it charged up, which changed the calculations!”

The duros sounded terribly excited, and he flicked through several pages of notes. “And this results in – it all falls out of equations from the seven-fifties, one of the old models that was rejected for improper agreement with evidence, but if I plug in the new corrections then it fits all known observations. And the effect of firing a large bolus of energy through hyperspace has the same impact!”

He showed them the next page. “See?”

Admiral Holdo and General Organa Solo exchanged glances.

“...we… don’t have qualifications in theoretical hypermetrics,” Holdo said. “What are we looking at, exactly?”

“This is what happens if you fire a large beam of pure energy through hyperspace,” Yaral explained. “See this term here? Because the pure energy beam has energy, and that energy is the same kind of mass-energy that impacts hyperspace, then in addition to exiting hyperspace at the target location it suffers superluminal bleed – the normal scattering that you get with light moving through a medium, it still happens, only the light moves outwards at faster than light speeds. That’s why the beam could be seen while it was in transit!”

His voice was full of passion. “You see? This must be correct, because it exactly replicated observations I wasn’t even trying to explain. It’s the grand unified theory of hypermetrics!”

“Marvellous,” Holdo said, sounding slightly frustrated. “But what does this mean on a practical level? What can we do with it?”

Yaral looked at his notes, then at Admiral Holdo.

Then back at his notes.

“...well, this means that it’s possible to predict the exact moment at which the superluminal transition takes place,” he said. “And, in fact, to demonstrate that the hyper velocity generated by the hyperdrive does not have to take place only after transition. It would in fact be possible to tune a hyperdrive so that it makes a very good approximation of hitting lightspeed while still in normal space, though the downside is that the whole ship would be converted to an energy packet in so doing while still in normal space instead of tachyonic space. It would completely destroy the ship if it hit anything, and it’d make a mess of whatever it hit…”

He flicked forwards another page. “And it would make it possible to hit hyperspace anywhere! Without restriction, in fact – once the calibrations were done to more correctly align a hyper envelope with the energy structure of the ship, you wouldn’t even need to take off. You could jump to hyperspace while standing on the ground.”

“And tracking through hyperspace?” Leia asked.

“...possibly, but…” Yaral said, flicking back, then tapped out a few more calculations.

“I think I can see how they’re doing it,” he said, eventually. “It’s something about the energy signature of a specific ship, they’re tracking the vector and energy levels on hyperspace transition and they can then simply follow it until it stops. But that’s a branch conclusion of the theory, it doesn’t require the full unified theory.”

Holdo nodded.

“Thank you,” she said, catching Leia’s eye. “General. This is our answer – we retune the hyperdrive of the Raddus to do that superluminal transition in realspace. I’ll stay on board to drive it in, but the rest of you need to evacuate to transports… there’s a world not far away. We can get in range of it, then everyone else evacuates and I ram the Raddus right down Snoke’s throat.”

“You’d die,” Leia pointed out, which was an understatement.

“I did not join the Resistance because it was safe, General,” Holdo replied. “And we need to get Yaral’s knowledge off this ship and to the New Republic. We need the Resistance to survive. That is the highest priority.”

[saphronethaleph]

Succession Not Secession

“Are you coming, Master?” Anakin asked.

“Oh, no,” Obi-Wan replied. “I’m not brave enough for politics, Anakin! I have to report to the council.”

He held up his hands. “Besides, someone has to be the poster boy.”

“But this whole operation was your idea,” Anakin objected. “You planned it, you led the rescue operation.”

Obi-Wan chuckled.

“Anakin, I do not enjoy glory,” he said. “I would much rather discuss philosophy. Have a conversation. But I know that you enjoy it.”

“That’s strong language,” Anakin replied.

“You tolerate it better than I do,” Obi-Wan amended. “Besides, you’re the one who carried me unconscious on your back, and managed to land that bucket of bolts safely. You deserve your glorious day with the politicians.”

Anakin laughed.

“All right,” he said. “But you owe me. Again.”

“Certainly,” Obi-Wan agreed, readily. “I’ll see you at the briefing.”

Anakin smiled, stepping away from the shuttle, and caught the start of the conversation as Palpatine reached the gathered senators.

“Chancellor-Emeritus, what a welcome sight,” Bail said.

Palpatine stopped so suddenly that it was as if he’d run into a durasteel wall.

“...what?” he asked, his tone flat and cold.

“...I said I was glad of your survival-” Bail replied.

“Not that!” Palpatine snapped. “What do you mean, Chancellor Emeritus?”

Every last bit of warmth had fled his tone, and Anakin frowned.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“It wasa muy difficult decision!” Jar Jar said, wringing his hands. “But mesa pointed out that this wasa time of emergency, and that the Chancellor is so so important that it’s no good to have the Chancellor unavailable while there’sa enemy fleet over the capital! It’s askin’ for trouble, when there’s so many things only the Chancellor can do and he’s not there!”

“You mean to say…” Palpatine began, then choked off his words. “You have replaced me? After all I have done for the Republic?”

He took a deep breath, clearly trying to gain control of his anger.

“Explain,” he demanded.

“Mesa already said!” Jar Jar declared. “The Chancellor is so powerful, they’sa able to do all kinds’a things! And mesa pointed out that because yousa had been captured, there were many things that yousa could not do because yousa were not in the Senate! So wesa had to do somethin’!”

He winced. “Plus, mesa was worried, because Count Dooku isa Sith-”

“Was,” Anakin supplied.

“Wasa Sith!” Jar Jar corrected himself. “And mesa knows that Jedi can do mind tricks, so mesa wanted to make especially sure that the Chancellor was not someone who could be made to do bombad things by bein’ influenced by a Sith!”

There was a creaking noise, and Anakin looked around to see where it was coming from.

“This betrayal is outrageous!” Palpatine snapped. “After all I have done for the Republic!”

“Well…” Jar Jar began, nervously. “Mesa was pretty sure that yousa said yousa did not actually want all of the powers and only needed them because yousa were essential! But mesa is also pretty sure that wesa winnin’ the war.”

He shrugged. “And, besides, mesa is pretty sure that the new Chancellor isn’t going to be controlled by a Sith!”

“You even picked a new Chancellor?” Palaptine demanded. “Who was it?”

“I’m sure Chancellor Amidala will do a perfectly fine job,” Bail declared, soothingly. “She’s already made several significant decisions that have-”

“Amidala?” Palpatine repeated, his voice full of rage.

“Is there a problem?” Jar Jar asked, sounding more confused than anything. “Mesa thought yousa were friends!”

“Chancellor Emeritus, you’ve been through a lot recently,” Anakin said. “You need to calm down.”

He had to take a step back at the venomous look Palpatine shot him, before the ex-Chancellor closed his eyes and clearly did his best to focus.

It was, apparently, quite difficult.

“Why. Amidala?” Palpatine demanded.

“The new Chancellor has the confidence of the Chamber,” Bail replied. “She has good relations with the Jedi, and her actions during the war have earned her the approval of members of both the expanded-war and reduced-war factions. I’m quite sure she will bring the war to both a victorious conclusion and a conclusion in line with the ways of the Republic.”

He smiled, pleasantly. “She’s already rolled back some of the emergency decrees which expanded the role of the Chancellorship, on the grounds that they were simply unnecessary, and has returned more power to both the judiciaries and the Senate.”

“This is a disaster,” Palpatine said. “You can’t possibly mean to…”

His gaze flicked to Mas Amedda. “Why didn’t you tie it up in committee?”

“Motions of no confidence are privileged,” Mas replied. “As I’m sure you recall, Chancellor Emeritus.”

He was looking distinctly nervous. “Besides, you had been kidnapped and Representative Binks made excellent points… ah… and you weren’t here! I didn’t know what I was supposed to do! All I have is a stick! You’re the Sith Lord!”

Everyone else froze.

Anakin thought very quickly, and jumped to a conclusion from a standing start.

“...and that’s when he exploded,” Obi-Wan said, looking up from the notes he was taking. “Correct?”

“Yes,” Anakin agreed. “I’m… not really sure why. Dooku didn’t explode.”

He tilted his head slightly. “Do you think it’s something to do with how I used two lightsabers for Dooku’s head and only one for Palpatine’s?”

“I don’t think that’s it,” Obi-Wan replied, distracted. “Maul didn’t explode.”

“But did you cut his head off, Master?” Anakin asked.

“No,” Obi-Wan admitted. “Anyway… what happened after that?”

“Mostly there was a lot of panic,” Anakin answered, thinking. “Then the Chancellor came out and told me she’s pregnant.”

Obi-Wan stared at him.

“...Anakin,” Obi-Wan said. “She is nine months pregnant. With twins. She had to tell you?”

Anakin frowned.

“...I haven’t seen her in five months,” he said, defensively. “Have you seen her more recently?”

“I, Anakin, have had time to read the minutes of the Senate meeting,” Obi-Wan replied. “While you have been waiting for your turn being interrogated. Jar Jar mentioned your relationship with Padme as a great reason that it would be difficult for a Sith to corrupt her.”

“Jar Jar knew?” Anakin said.

“Surprisingly, your wife told her closest colleague a few things,” Obi-Wan replied, dryly. “Perhaps a mistake, given who it is, but the result is hardly a bad one… though I’m afraid, Anakin, that you will most likely be expelled from the Jedi Order for marrying Padme.”

He shrugged. “That will, of course, have to wait until a proper investigation has taken place into the matter. Given the gravity of the situation and the importance of the matter, anyone who has been directly involved with you will have to recuse themselves from the investigation… it might take as much as six months to find the knights who can do the investigation, and then they’ll have to be very careful to make sure they get all the details right…”

Anakin looked lost, and Obi-Wan chuckled.

“Just as the Senate has learned a few things about acting quickly during the war, we have learned how to do things slowly and properly,” he said. “You should have about four years to get your affairs in order before, regretfully, you will have to become a consultant who is no longer able to use the term Jedi.”

Anakin’s expression cleared.

“Right,” he said. “...hey, can I call myself a Sith once that happens? I guess the title’s free.”

[saphronethaleph]

Zhen What

“Well,” Po said, quietly, as the door closed. “This sucks.”

He exhaled.

“Well, I guess it’s time to work out how to get out of here!”

“Should you be… you know… discussing this in front of us?” one of the komodo dragons asked. “Just saying, it doesn’t seem very sensible of you.”

Po shrugged. “Eh. By now things sort of either work themselves out or don’t. I’ll deal with it regardless.”

“Brave, but foolish of you,” another komodo dragon said. “The Chameleon knows everything. She certainly knows about you.”

Po frowned, stung.

“Yeah, don’t remind me,” he admitted, wincing, then sat back. “Hey, when’s dinner?”

The komodos exchanged glances.

“...you… were only locked in here less than a minute ago,” one pointed out.

“And?” Po replied. “I’m a big guy! I need to be kept topped up, you know? I get that you guys are deceptive and evil, but that’s no reason to not have hospitality.”

That got him scoffed at, and he shrugged.

It wasn’t like he was that hungry, after all. He could last a good, oh… ninety minutes before he felt really hungry, and even then that was just more motivation.

“Hey, are you who I think you are?” a voice whispered, and Po looked to the side – then did a double take.

“...what are you doing here?” he demanded. “Did you already get-”

“What?” the grey corsac fox asked, head tilting to the side. “Wait, you recognize me? The Dragon Warrior-!”

She was about halfway through working herself up into a gleeful frenzy, then halted suddenly.

“...oh,” she muttered. “So that’s why.”

“That’s why… what?” Po asked. “You’ve got a lot of nerve trying to act like nothing happened.”

“That’s just it,” Zhen replied. “We’ve never met.”

Po stared at her, tilting his head a little, then rolled to the side.

“...no, I’m pretty sure we have,” he said. “You know, four hundred mile journey across China? Fighting off those komodo dragons who attacked us on the Great River? That one time-”

“Yeah, that wasn’t me,” Zhen answered, sounding dismayed. “You know who’s in charge of this city, right?”

Po frowned.

“...yeah,” he said. “The Chameleon. They say that nobody knows where she really is, or who she looks like today – that she rules by fear, because anybody could betray you if you speak out against her.”

He pointed at her. “You told me that! I mean, I’d already heard of the Chameleon, but you told me how she works!”

Zhen laughed, bitterly.

“Three months ago, I got caught,” she said. “Just bad luck, but it got me thrown in here. And the Chameleon came and just… looked at me. Talked. Asked me to show what I could do… It was weird. I thought maybe she was trying to recruit me, but… no luck.”

“You’d have worked for her?” Po asked, curious now. “But she’s the bad guy!”

He shook his head. “You do work for her!”

“That’s what I’m trying to say, big guy,” Zhen said. “She wasn’t trying to recruit me. She was trying to become me. A sob story to get the Dragon Warrior away from the Hall of Heroes, and steal the Staff of Wisdom… and I guess she succeeded.”

Po stared, then his expression changed.

“How do I know you’re not just trying to trick me now?” he asked.

Zhen shrugged.

“You don’t, I guess,” she replied. “I would have worked for the Chameleon, if it got me out of here, so I can’t even say it’s wrong… I’m just gutter trash. Why would you listen to me?”

She sighed, and slumped back against the bars.

Po scowled, then the scowl slowly melted off his face.

“Why would I do that, huh?” he asked. “Now that’s a good question…”

He kicked the ground.

“How often do they feed you in this place, anyway?” he asked.

“Twice a day, maybe?” Zhen replied. “I’ll be honest, the food is not great.”

Po winced.

“Now I have even more reason to try and get out of here,” he said.

“We’re still able to hear you!” one of the komodo guards called.

“Yeah, yeah,” Po replied, making a talking-mouth gesture with his right paw, then closed his eyes.

Thinking.

“Hey, Zhen?” he said, after a minute or so. “Who would win in a fight, Tai Lung or Master Tigress?”

Zhen made a hmm sort of noise.

“Well, my first guess is Tai Lung, because they did fight once before,” she said, pensively. “But then again, Master Tigress has had a long time to work out how to solve those problems, and I guess she’s got a lot of reason to show that she’s better… she’s got more of a reason to fight, while before she wasn’t as ready for it. So I don’t think you could really say who would win. It’d be way too difficult to tell, we don’t know enough to say.”

She glanced at him. “What’s your guess, then?”

“I think Tigress would take it,” Po said. “Like you say, she’s had a reason to improve, and she really has come a long way… it’d be close, though.”

He nodded, then tilted his head slightly.

“What do you think of Master Shifu?” he asked.

“Well, I’ve never met him,” Zhen pointed out. “I guess he must be strong, and capable… and wise… I’d be nervous just being around him. Heh, I’d probably call him a squirrel or something just to keep him off balance and to relax a bit.”

Po nodded again.

“And… what’s it like, being a thief?” he asked.

“Always a struggle,” Zhen said. “You can’t trust anyone except yourself… but you always want to trust someone. You know?”

She rolled her neck. “It’s just… the street trains you in habits, because you don’t survive long without them, but those habits get in the way of trying not to be a thief any more. I’d just… I couldn’t help myself, I’d take things without meaning to.”

Her voice caught. “It’s… I feel so stupid admitting it, but… you’re Po. One of my heroes… and if I can’t tell you, who can I tell?”

Po smiled.

“You know,” he said. “The Chameleon is really good at copying people. It’s honestly kind of impressive… you know, impressive in a bad way, not a good way.”

“I don’t get it,” Zhen confessed. “What are you talking about?”

“You’ve never met me,” Po replied. “I understand that now. But, in a way, Zhen… I’ve met you. Even if it was ‘you’ beating me up before I got captured… and it does explain why ‘you’ weren’t so concerned with every last bit of your outfit.”

He scratched his ear, then held out his hand. “So… what do you say, little buddy? Friends?”

Zhen stared at him, then at his hand, then took it through the bars.

“...sure,” she said.

Then Po turned around.

“Hey!” he called. “If you guys need any suggestions about the catering, then I’ve got some!”

“Shut up!” one of the komodo guards told him.

“I don’t know, have you seen the size of him?” another asked. “Maybe he does have some good ideas about the food.”

The first guard looked torn.

“...it wasn’t great today,” he admitted. “What kind of suggestions, panda?”

As they began talking in earnest, Zhen looked down at her paw… and the jade earclip and belt piece that she’d lost to the Chameleon months ago.

The bits that could combine into a lockpick.

The bits that Po had just given her back.

Then she glanced at the cage door. At Po.

“...no pressure,” she muttered, under her breath, then flitted across the cage door to get to work.

The Dragon Warrior was counting on her.

She wasn’t going to let him down.

[saphronethaleph]

Interface Dialogue

With great care, Arceus exerted their powers, and shifted from one Plate to another. Their ring shimmered, changing colour several times every second as the Alpha Pokémon went from Plate to Plate to Plate, and small but significant pulses of energy began to etch an outline in the air in golden light which hung there despite having no visible source.

“So much time, that I spent on other things,” they said, quietly, then raised their voice. “COMMAND.”

An alphabet of Unown tumbled out of the air before them.

We are ready, they chorused. Input command.

“SUDO -iu,” Arceus said, into the air, and the Unown rippled. “Admin.”

Input admin password, the Unown sang.

Arceus pronounced a word that could not be rendered with symbology, and the chorus shivered. Then it shattered, reforming in a different configuration that glowed with gold.

Admin user, they chanted. Input command.

“Portal -g -l -s –destination ‘reverse world’,” Arceus declared.

Error, the choir stated. Argument -l not understood.

Arceus blinked.

“...really?” they asked. “It is a logging command.”

They frowned. “Portal -h.”

This is the help page for the portal command, the Unown sang. Use it to understand the portal command.

Fifteen minutes later, Arceus tapped their hoof.

“All right, I believe I understand now,” they said. “Portal -g –explain ‘full’ -s –destination ‘reverse world’.”

Initiating portal command, the choir hummed. Activating primary physics package. Decompressing space. Giratina mode requires dependencies, do you wish to acquire these dependencies?

“Yes,” Arceus confirmed. “Me. It really has been a long time since I did this. And I thought I had recoded everything to use log instead of explain.”

The Unown did not comment on that.

Acquiring dependencies from Uxie knowledge base, they sang, instead. Checking dependency chains… done. Checking red chains… done. Loading… initiating portal formation.

The golden outline that Arceus had inscribed on the air went thump, and the inside glowed like a golden mirror. Then it shattered, revealing a hole in space and a world on the other side.

“Exit,” Arceus said, and the choir stopped glowing gold. “Thank you. I probably should have checked the documentation first.”

We are the documentation and the implementation, one of the Unown pointed out. We are the code and the machine. You would just have been bothering us elsewhere.

“Yes, but it would have made me feel better,” Arceus replied, quietly, then stepped through the hole.

The Reverse World was a place where up could be down, and left was often right, and where gravity was subjective rather than objective. It could be whichever direction you wished it to be, or whichever direction you feared it was.

And Arceus had been walking for no more than about a minute when they caught sight of a familiar silhouette, approaching.

“Daughter,” they said, halting.

“Hi, Parent!” Giratina replied, flying down to float in front of them. “So, how have you been?”

Arceus blinked.

“...forgive me, Giratina, but I would have expected you to be… mad?” they said. “Or annoyed, at least.”

“For what?” Giratina asked, head tilting.

“I banished you,” Arceus answered. “And for far too long.”

Giratina laughed.

“What, you mean, you sent me to the entire plane of reality over which I have functionally total control?” she replied. “And then didn’t do anything to keep me here?”

Arceus tilted their head.

“...did I not?” they asked. “I… suppose that does explain a lot of why you are not upset…”

They frowned. “How have… you been, then?”

“Great, actually,” Giratina answered. “So a couple of years ago there was this thing where a guy was trying to take over Dia and Pal, using the Red Chain? Only he got two of them, not sure how… anyway, I sucked him into the Reverse World to teach him a lesson, and then I met this trainer who’s really nice.”

She shrugged, her wings flicking up and down.

“And, since then, I’ve started inviting people in to look at my artwork. Do you like it, by the way?”

She gestured at the sky, and Arceus followed the direction of her gesture.

They beheld a gigantic snowflake, the size of a small city, that glittered with diamond-dust swirling around it. Smaller orbs of earth, each one holding six trees growing in a hexagon, drifted around it, and every so often one of the facets of the giant ice snowflake would magnify one of the earth-and-tree snowflakes to enormous size.

“It’s beautiful, Giratina,” they said. “How long did it take you to make?”

Giratina looked briefly confused, then laughed.

“Oh, right!” she said, still giggling. “No, you don’t get it. That’s not the artwork. The whole Reverse World is the artwork.”

Arceus stared for a few seconds.

“That’s why it’s so funny that you thought that ‘banishing’ me was a punishment,” Giratina explained. “You sent an artist to a place she had infinite space and materials. I just kinda got started and didn’t stop.”

“Then I am… I’m glad you’ve been happy, Giratina,” Arceus said.

“Though, uh,” Giratina mused. “There was this one guy I thought was a friend a couple of hundred years ago who turned out to just be using me for… I dunno, clout or something. If you could send a trainer back in time to stop them and stuff, that would be great. Unless you’ve done that already.”

“I have not,” Arceus replied. “Back in time, you say?”

“The one who stopped all the problems had a phone, so… probably time travel, yeah,” Giratina agreed. “You don’t look happy about it.”

“Oh, I’m just going to have to use the help interface again,” Arceus said, shaking their head. “I always feel awkward when I’m standing in front of the Unown reading a help page. It’s not good for my ineffability.”

“You’ll always be ineffable to me, Parent,” Giratina declared, reassuringly.

[saphronethaleph]

Constitutional Nonarchy

“My Lord,” Grand Admiral Tasson said, his tone respectful. “I wondered if I might have a few minutes of your time.”

“Go on, Admiral,” Palpatine invited.

He was feeling in a good mood. There’d been a major industrial disaster on Kashyyyk recently, and that sort of thing always gave him a lift.

“I was wondering, My Lord – what, exactly, is the economic basis of your rule?” Tasson inquired.

Palpatine frowned slightly.

“...I don’t understand the question,” he admitted.

“My reason for asking, My Lord, is that it is of course self-evident that you cannot be making all of the decisions with respect to the Imperial Bureaucracy yourself,” Tasson said. “There are not enough hours in the day. Given projected fleet numbers for the Fleet Year Fifteen project, if you sat for an interview with each Imperial Star Destroyer commander for one minute per day, you would only be able to speak to about fifty-seven and a half percent of them assuming you never did anything else. Or slept. And while squadron commanders and admirals and Moffs and sector commanders are less numerous, it is still, I think, clear that you can’t do it all yourself.”

Palpatine dearly did not want to admit to the truth of that, but eventually waved his hand in an irritated sort of way.

“Go on,” he said, without actually conceding anything.

“The reason why I ask about the economic basis of your rule is that I wish to form a better assessment of what is actually the most important to protect and enforce,” Tasson went on. “For example, if the basis of your rule is predicated fundamentally on pre-war trade patterns without the intervention of those megacorporations that would go on to become the CIS, then it necessarily follows that the Navy’s main focus will be on enforcing free trade zones, preventing the re-emergence of large financial blocs, and of course hunting down the rebel pirates who might try and strike at us.”

He tapped on a pad. “While, if the economic basis of your rule depends instead on the prosperity of a few very large corporations – such as Kuat, Sienar and so on – then it is instead the case that the Navy will be employed in supporting those corporations and shutting their competitors out of the markets which those corporations would prefer to use. It is still the case that hunting down rebel pirates is important, but you can see I hope how the instructions to ship commanders would need to be completely different.”

Another tap. “A third possibility, of course, is that you don’t much care and that instead the economic basis of your rule depends on extraction. In that case then the main focus would be on making sure that taxes are paid, or that appropriate sweeteners are instead provided – though of course I must warn My Lord that this form of behaviour does reduce total internal revenue-”

“Why do I need to bother with any of this?” Palpatine asked. “I am in charge now! This was tedious when all I had to do was listen to the Senate!”

Grand Admiral Tasson gave him a look that indicated that the Grand Admiral did not understand him any better than he understood the Grand Admiral.

“...you are in charge, My Lord,” he said, slowly. “And that means that it is your decision. You can, of course, decide not to make a decision, and just leave it up to the lower ranks, but they will come up with their own answers and those answers may be different. Which would cause chaos and uncertainty, and most likely disaster.”

“Very well, then, what do you suggest?” Palpatine asked, waspishly.

“That you come to a decision, My Lord,” Tasson replied. “That decision could include that you want to delegate this authority. It could also include that you don’t mind the chaos and uncertainty and disaster – or that you very much do mind those things.”

He coughed, discreetly. “But I should ask, My Lord… if you don’t want to make this kind of decisions, why did you take over the government?”

That made Palpatine frown slightly.

It had been part of the plan, certainly, he knew that much. And the plan had been essential to wipe out the Jedi… but the Jedi were wiped out, now, or near enough.

But at the same time, he didn’t want to give up his power. The bits about not having accountability and being able to do what he wanted, those were good.

Very good, actually.

“...what about if I wanted it to be that I could do whatever I wanted, and I didn’t have to bother with any of this and I didn’t care if everything went into complete chaos?” he asked.

“That would probably work, My Lord,” Tasson said, glancing down at his datapad and frowning. “I think that should get you… hmm… maybe about twenty years, at the outside.”

Palpatine scowled.

“Explain,” he said. “Twenty years in what way?”

“There’s a number of interlocking factors,” Tasson explained, helpfully. “Firstly there’s that if things do start to go badly, economically, then it both reduces the tax base and makes it harder to fund the Fleet Year Fifteen project, and it makes it more difficult to source the many millions of trained, ideologically reliable personnel able to staff the fleet, while increasing Rebel pirate recruitment and the availability of resources to them. Then, relatedly, there is that that setup does not result in the same scale of flow of new, ideologically committed recruits.”

He waved his hand. “Oh, anyone who grew up and remembers the Clone Wars will be committed to the Empire, because we know the failings of the Republic, but to young people too young to remember the Republic it will become easier and easier to just assume the Republic must have been better. As it happens, My Lord, the lack of Jedi may actually make that ideological cohesion harder.”

Now Palpatine looked baffled.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because they were thought of as the guardians of peace and justice for a thousand generations, and then they were revealed to be corrupt and all died in the same two hour period,” Tasson said. “So there is no substantial base of literature supporting the idea that they were corrupt, and unfortunately we can’t be the ones to produce such literature… to anyone who thinks that the Empire might not be the best thing in the universe, then anything bad we say about the Jedi will simply look like proof. With no actual corrupt Jedi around to point at, then everyone will imagine what they want the Jedi to be like and just assume they were lovely.”

Palpatine muttered something unprintable.

“So… by the end of that twenty year period…”

“...a lot of the possible well-educated and capable recruits for the armed forces will not be willing to make large sacrifices for the coherency of the Empire, yes,” Tasson agreed. “If the system is stable and coherent enough that they can go along to get along, that’s different, but if it’s unstable as we’ve discussed…”

“Yes, yes, I take your point,” Palpatine grumbled. “Nobody told me that being absolute ruler of the galaxy was going to involve having to continue making decisions. And knowing things. It’s much less fun when you’re not setting up a multi-decade backstab on an entire building full of idiots who’d never see it coming…”

Tasson respectfully didn’t make any comment.

“Fine, fine, work out some alternatives,” Palpatine added. “Maybe I’ll even keep the Senate around so they can make themselves useful doing the boring bits…”

[saphronethaleph]

Shoujo Jump?

Kakashi’s expression conveyed how very unimpressed he was with his team, which was quite an achievement to do with just an eye.

He was quietly proud of it, really. Not something he’d ever say out loud, because that would ruin much of the impact and the mystique of the whole thing, but there was an art to being so expressive with so little of your face showing.

It could also unsettle anyone who actually realized it.

More to the point, it meant he didn’t show how concerned he was over actually managing this team. On two levels.

Firstly, there was the social level. Kakashi was used to commanding a team who already knew what they were doing. Genin did not qualify. He wasn’t sure he could teach effectively and he was sure that he was responsible for anything that went wrong, including if any of them died.

Secondly, there was simply that… it was weird seeing a kid who acted like Kushina but looked like Minato. It was weirder seeing a kid who looked like an Uchiha and acted like an Uchiha. And Kakashi had the unsettling feeling that the one who was closest in personality and nature to him was Sakura.

Different hair colour, though.

“All right, blondie,” he said, indicating Naruto. “Go.”

“My name’s Uzumaki Naruto, you know?” Naruto asked, or possibly said, depending on his version of the Uzumaki verbal tic. “And I’m a magical girl!”

Sasuke blinked.

Sakura fell off the wall. Forwards, fortunately.

“What!?” she demanded. “You’re talking about that stupid perv technique?”

“No, no, it’s not that, you know!” Naruto replied, then frowned. “Well. It might be that? But it’s also not that, you know?”

“That’s helpful,” Sasuke muttered.

“Then what are you talking about?” Kakashi asked, because he wasn’t sure either.

“I’ll show you!” Naruto said, rummaging in his pockets, then took out the winding stick from a scroll.

Without the scroll.

“Ninshu flash!” he declared, holding it up, and Sakura covered her eyes.

To Kakashi’s distinct surprise, the winding stick lit up, and so did Naruto’s clothes. Then he did a twirl, and when the twirl ended he was wearing a frilly white and orange dress and holding a naginata with a bright orange blade.

Also, he was a girl. Or was it she, now?

“See?” Naruto asked. “Magical girl, like I said!”

“You’d better not be looking, Sasuke!” Sakura said.

“He’s wearing a dress,” Sasuke pointed out.

Sakura looked, surprised, then did a double-take.

“...okay, who taught you fashion?” she said. “That’s actually pretty good.”

“It’s orange!” Naruto declared, because… yeah, actually, that checked out as his primary idea of what fashion was. “It’s my colour! I’m an autumn, you know.”

Then he glanced behind him. “It’s autumn, right? Or is this kind of orange summer?”

“How should I know, moron?” a new voice said, and Kakashi blanched.

Because the speaker was a fox.

Then he refocused, and saw that – yes, it was a fox, but it was a fox with just one tail and the most astonishingly put-upon expression Kakashi had ever seen on any living creature.

“Oh, yeah, I should introduce you,” Naruto said, and picked up the fox to show him off. “This is Kurama! He’s my standard issue magical girl talking beast companion, you know? He’s like a tutorial for how my powers work!”

“Put me down or I bite your ankles,” Kurama informed Naruto.

“Hey, how are you going to bite my ankles if I don’t let you down, you know?” Naruto asked, curious.

Kurama bared his teeth.

Naruto hastily put the fox down, and picked the naginata up again. “So, anyway, because of that, I’ve got special powers I can only use while I’m transformed! It’s like a secret identity but I figured it was a good idea to tell you guys because you’re all Konoha ninja, and also you’re my team, you know? So if I can’t trust you I’m… what was it, Kurama?”

“Proper fucked,” Kurama provided.

“Yeah, that!” Naruto agreed.

“What kind of powers?” Sasuke asked. “Is that something anyone can do?”

“You want to be a girl?!” Sakura demanded.

“Like that’s the weirdest thing anyone’s done for power,” Sasuke defended himself. “There are ninja out there who do some incredibly screwed up things for strength. Kakuzu from Taki, remember him?”

“...yeah, I heard of that,” Sakura admitted. “But still! If you did that you’d be a girl, Sasuke! And then you wouldn’t be-”

Sakura’s voice stopped so suddenly it was as if she’d run into a wall, and Kakashi glanced over at her to see if it was anything worrying.

Seeing that it was only the fact she’d actually imagined what it would be like, and was thus undergoing the standard issue Wait Am I Straight realization, he shrugged it off.

“I’m more concerned with how you came to have this in the first place,” he said, focusing on Naruto. “And what you can do with it.”

“So there was this weird dream I had, where a giant fox was having an argument with someone who said he was my ancestor, and also me,” Naruto said, vaguely waving her hand. “I didn’t understand most of it, you know, but they told me how to do the thing and I’ve done the thing and it worked!”

She shrugged. “I guess that’s science, you know? Anyway, this is the Ninshu Naginata. It’s all about peace, harmony, love, and surprise!”

“...surprise?” Sasuke repeated.

“That’s what I use if the first parts don’t work, you know!” Naruto declared, grinning and posing. “See, Ninshu means you always have to try and solve problems peacefully, but it also means that if you don’t solve those problems peacefully you can instead use incredible violence, you know?”

Kakashi thought about that for a few seconds, then turned his attention to Kurama.

“I’m assuming you’re the adult here,” he said. “So… why?”

“Why what?” Kurama said, giving Kakashi a look.

“Why all of this?” Kakashi clarified, waving at Naruto.

“Hey, I wonder if I can make the transformation do nail polish?” she asked. “That would fit with the theme, you know?”

Kurama cogitated.

“It was noticeably better than the alternative,” he said.

[saphronethaleph]

“All right, everyone!” the announcer said. “It’s time for the semi-final match! On one side we have Ash Ketchum, from Kanto, who’s been steadily rising through every Pokémon League he’s taken part in!”

He waved his hand to the other side of the arena. “And on the other side, the mysterious Tobias! This enigmatic trainer has never shown any Pokémon other than his Darkrai – but he’s never been up against a Frontier Brain before!”

“I’m not actually a Frontier Brain,” Ash objected. “I just got told I could be one whenever I wanted.”

“My mistake!” the announcer conceded, immediately. “All right – will both competitors send out their first Pokémon!”

“Pika kachuu, Pikapi?” Pikachu asked.

Ash shrugged. “Nah, I know who I’d like to send out!” he replied. “It only seems fair.”

“Chuu,” Pikachu conceded, as Tobias sent out his infamous Darkrai, and Ash responded with his own Pokémon.

Cynthia spat out her drink.

“What the hell?” she demanded. “How did he – but – okay, even for Ash that’s ridiculous.”

“I’m actually not familiar with that Pokémon,” the announcer said, as the crowd murmured at the sight of the two Pokémon facing off against one another. “Trainer Ketchum, can you please explain for us what that Pokémon is? And… where you found them”

“Sure!” Ash replied. “So, what happened was, when I saw Tobias and his Darkrai were in this Pokémon League I realized that that meant that it was actually okay to bring Legendary Pokémon along to the League!”

Then he frowned. “Though, uh, I actually looked it up and Darkrai are apparently Mythical Pokémon, but I got a bit mixed up about the difference between Legendary Pokémon and Mythical Pokémon, because when I asked Professor Oak he said that a Mythical Pokémon was one that people weren’t sure existed, but then I asked him about Mewtwo and Mew and that confused him because Mewtwo is officially a Legendary Pokémon even though he’s a clone of Mew which is a Mythical Pokémon, and really it seems like if you had enough of a Mythical Pokémon to clone it then you’d have to say that it was at least as real as the clone you made, or otherwise how could you get a clone?”

He shrugged. “Right?”

Darkrai shrugged.

“Darrr-krai,” it declared.

“Huh,” Ash said. “Can’t you speak?”

Then he made a little dismissive gesture. “Anyway, uh, as I was saying, I wasn’t actually sure if Legendary Pokémon are allowed, just Mythical Pokémon, but since I did know Mythical Pokémon were allowed I looked up what they were and I called in some favours, and I managed to bring along a few because I realized that if I didn’t know you could use a Mythical Pokémon in a battle then I was pretty sure they didn’t know so I thought I’d ask.”

Once the explanation was finished, the announcer blinked a few times.

“You… called in some favours… to get Mythical Pokémon?” he checked.

“Yeah, well, I actually called in some favours to get in touch with them,” Ash explained. “Because I don’t really know a way to get in touch with Celebi except by waiting to see if I asked them in future, and since they didn’t show up that must mean that I didn’t or they said no. And Jirachi’s asleep for a thousand years. But I did know who to call to get in touch with some other Mythical Pokémon, and they were all really interested! Did you know a lot of Mythical Pokémon can actually talk?”

Then he frowned. “Huh, maybe that’s… no… no, that can’t be it, because Mewtwo can talk and Mew can’t. Or doesn’t. Never mind then!”

“Pika kachuu, pi pi, Pikapi?” Pikachu suggested.

“Oh, yeah, Lugia as well!” Ash agreed. “And some of the others. I forgot about that. Anyway, I know some people who do know how to get in touch with a few Mythical Pokémon, and like I said they were interested – so that’s who I brought for this battle! Because it doesn’t seem fair to use them against trainers who don’t know how to battle with Mythical Pokémon, but you must do by definition, right?”

Tobias nodded, possibly against his will.

“Mr. Ketchum, I do need to actually know what the Pokémon is for me to be able to announce them,” the announcer hinted.

“Oh, right,” Ash realized. “So this is Arceus! They created the entire universe. And I’ve got Mew, not the Mew who Mewtwo was cloned from I think, some other Mew, and I’ve got Manaphy who’s just happy to be here! And Darkrai said they were busy so that’s not really an option…”

Darkrai raised a spindly hand.

“Krrr-aaai?” they requested.

“1. You were very eager to battle with Staravias and Bayleefs and other such Pokémon. 2. If you are going to faff around, then you should be willing to find out,” Arceus declared. “3. No, you may not retreat because you are no longer in the overwhelmingly dominant position.”

Then they glanced back at Ash.

“Seems fine to me!” Ash said. “Setting firm boundaries! And it’d kind of be unfair on Tobias if his Pokémon didn’t even bother to fight.”

“Are you all right?” Aaron asked.

“Oh, just realizing that the time I met Ash was probably not even anything out of the ordinary for him,” Cynthia replied. “Now I can’t decide if I want to read parenting books on how to squeeze information out of a child who doesn’t know what’s important, or just become his travelling companion for the next year or so…”

Down below in the arena, Darkrai used Dark Void and Arceus responded with Being The Creator Of The Universe, Thank You Very Much, which was a passive ability but still a very effective counter.

[mkarchin713]

Relatives of all Ash’s companions: 😳😱🤯

All of Ash’s companions:😑🥱😴

[valiantsuitcaseskellington]

I want this on ao3 just so I can bookmark it, lol... ima lose it on here, even if i heart it

[saphronethaleph]

Fortunately, it is on AO3!

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

(This is actually a general thing, I have more stuff on AO3 than on Tumblr, though it's not a superset situation.)

[saphronethaleph]

Wait It Out

“How’s the dig going?” Alexandra asked.

“It’s… going,” Marcus replied. “It’s kind of… you know?”

He shrugged. “I guess when I got into palaeontology I was expecting something a bit more glamorous.”

Alexandra laughed.

“Yeah, kids always think about dinosaurs,” she said. “But this is still good enough, right? Sure, this is tertiary or even quaternary, post-ice-age, but they still bring us in for this because…”

She waved a hand. “There’s not really a good term for someone who studies animals that have been dead for a few thousand years. Archaeologists are more focused on human activity.”

Marcus shrugged. “I guess? But… you know, I was picturing… Alberta, Canada. The Karoo Basin. Somewhere like that, not… the upper Meuse valley.”

“At least the food is good,” Alexandra pointed out. “So, what have you found?”

“Mostly, more wolf bones,” Marcus said. “This place must have been a den for generations for there to be this many, right?”

“Could be, but don’t get too attached to that viewpoint so early,” Alexandra replied, all business now, and looked over how much the junior palaeontologist had done.

There hadn’t been much change during the day she’d been away, which was about right. They were dealing with what was clearly a palaeo-cave, a cave that had been subsequently buried and filled in with loosely consolidated sediment, and it had been someone out for a walk a while ago who had discovered bones and led to a more thorough investigation.

Now they were several feet down into the mud and earth that had filled the cave, and – as Marcus had said – they’d found a lot of wolf bones and teeth. Along with other things, as well.

“Well, if nothing else, we’ve got some good evidence about… uh… it would be early bronze age, right?” Marcus added. “It’s been a while since I looked any of that stuff up, but I’m pretty sure it’s… copper age, then bronze age when they add tin to it? And that’s found in Cornwall, so that’d be fairly nearby.”

“Sounds right,” Alexandra said. “Though I couldn’t tell you the dates – obviously because we’ve got so much biological matter we can carbon date, so we’ll know once the samples get back to a lab that can do the work. But probably not before then, before then it’s just guesswork.”

She was about to continue, but Marcus held up a hand.

“...uh,” he said. “Did you hear something?”

“Like what?” Alexandra asked.

“It was inside the cave,” Marcus replied. “I heard something moving.”

“I doubt it, but let’s go and have a look,” Alexandra decided, picking up her hard hat and putting it on. She shrugged off her backpack, extracting a notebook and torch, and Marcus followed her towards the cave mouth.

“How big did it sound?” she added.

“Bigger than it should be!” Marcus replied, nervously. “I could understand a rat or something, but it sounded… yeah. Big.”

“It’s probably just a snake, or something,” Alexandra assured him. “And yeah, I know, that’s not great to hear, but you’ve got walking boots. Whatever it is, it’s going to be more scared of you than you are of it.”

She grinned. “If you were in Alberta, it could be a bear. That would be a lot worse, right?”

“Yeah, that doesn’t really help me,” Marcus muttered, then he and Alexandra froze as something moved.

Something very big.

“...I am no longer interested in teasing you,” Alexandra declared, then there was a kind of crackle of moving earth. Something emerged from behind a wall of hard earth and rock, poorly lit by the light of Alexandra’s torch, and both palaeontologists stared.

They couldn’t help it, because what they were seeing was… amazing.

And glorious.

And impossible.

It had a green reptilian muzzle, with a stripe of white down the lower jaw and the throat, and a crest of blue and red feathers atop the head. Behind that were forelimbs with what looked for all the world like furled wings, with red and blue and green-white patterning along with a flash of orange behind.

And it was looking at them with alert curiosity.

Then it yawned, before shaking its head and focusing.

A moment later, something-

-Marcus felt like he was falling, or floating. Like there were explosions of colour and light around him. Red and white, green and blue, each one different, each one with cascades of meaning associated with it.

Red… heat and sunlight, aggression and strength…

Blue… cool and supple, contemplation and wisdom…

Green… solid and unmoving, endurance and toughness…

White… ephemeral and moving, adaptability and intelligence...

…

and SONG…

- and Marcus sprawled backwards on the earth.

He was back in the cave, but it felt like he could hear and feel more than before. It was… baffling, and impossible to put into words, somehow…

“What the-” Alexandra said, sounding amazed and pained at once,

“You too?” Marcus asked, then the creature loomed over them.

“I do hope that worked!” it sang, without words, the impressions forming in their minds without seeming to pass through their ears. “Darktooth-my-Creator devised Enkindling by itself, but I had to work out much of how it could be done over my Great Sleep.”

“What the fuck?” Marcus asked.

The creature looked mildly disappointed, then frowned, before nodding.

Bizarrely, Marcus could see… colours, pulsing through it. Red and blue, green and white, mingled in a multicoloured pattern that seemed to trace every part of its body and connect in a kind of woven crown at its head, like antlers or… something else.

It felt like they weren’t there, and yet they were real. Or perhaps that they weren’t real, and yet they were there.

“I understand your confusion!” the creature… said. “It is difficult to learn to talk in a different way to the way you have been used to. You must try to send meaning, not merely expect the sound to do it for you. That was the problem that the Artist had.”

“...what did you do to us?” Alexandra asked.

“Enkindling!” the creature said. “It is when a Draak expends a little of their Essence to reach out and grant power and the might of the elements to a beast… and normally make them significantly smarter.”

They made a sort of smile, like they were trying to copy something they’d seen once. “That is not necessary for No-Tails. I understand that you are intelligent. But you are normally very bad at Singing and this made conversation impossible.”

They tilted their head. “Oh! I should ask – have you Taillessgone past the Grey-To-Come? All-Mother saw that the Great Green and the Great Blue would rise again after the Grey-To-Come, and I decided that rather than follow Darktooth-my-Creator, or the All-Mother, or Many-Times-Burned, I should seek a different Way.”

They coughed. “I have always quite liked sleeping.”

It took Marcus a long time to process that.

“...have you been asleep since the bronze age?” he asked, eventually.

“I do not know what an Age of Bronze is,” the creature said, then looked… dismayed.

“I have not introduced myself!” it declared. “I should.”

It advanced, but not in a threatening way. Instead, it went right past them, out into the sunlight, and Marcus and Alexandra followed in a shell-shocked sort of way as the huge, beautiful creature struck a pose.

“I am Draak-Kin!” it said, tail thumping the ground and wings spread in the air. “I am the Fang of the Great Green, Beloved of the Four. Keeper of the hidden ways, Beloved of the Spirit of the Great Green, Master of the Good Ways of all Beasts. Friend to the Artist.”

That done, it tilted its muzzle. “You can probably call me Spiritkeeper, I know that the names of the Kin are long. I never bother to use the full names of others.”

“You’re a dragon?” Alexandra asked. “But…”

She sat down, hard.

“Oh, bloody hell.”

“Yeah, that’s about how I feel,” Marcus admitted.

“Spiritkeeper just said that it had been hibernating since – well, obviously since those wolves were here, if not before,” Alexandra said. “I don’t… I don’t even begin to get how that could be possible, but I’m looking at it.”

She waved a hand at Spiritkeeper, who preened – seeming quite pleased with the attention.

“And… that would sort of explain why we’ve never found one, right?” she asked. “Look at it, really look – gracile form, mostly avian structure… psychic powers don’t fossilize, but depending on how rare this species is taphonomy might mean we simply never actually get identifiable bones that would be anything we’d identify as a dragon. Obviously this species could be the origin of a lot of the stories about dragons that we know from our history, but Spiritkeeper has been underground for so long that all of recorded history has happened… since then.”

She frowned.

“...but surely…” she began. “Spiritkeeper, what happened to other, Draak-Kin?”

“I understand your meaning!” Spiritkeeper said. “And I do not really know. I know that Darktooth-my-Creator took many of us to evacuate the planet, though. I know what All-Mother wanted to do and do not know if they succeeded. I can only assume that Many-Times-Burned failed, since you are here. But-”

“Hold up, hold up,” Marcus said. “Evacuate the planet? That’s… impossible, isn’t it?”

“Darktooth-my-Creator was very wise indeed,” Spiritkeeper said. “If he said he could do it then I do not want to say that he could not.”

Alexandra started to laugh.

“I… think we need to explain to a bronze age dragon about… enough of modern culture to get consent to take photos,” she said. “Or maybe even ask them to make first contact. Because this is absolutely wild.”