Hello readers, I'm starting a new story. This story is a crossover with FourthWallBreaker's Maria's Adventures: Multiverse Patrol. If you haven't read the Maria's Adventures series, I'd recommend reading the rest of Multiverse Patrol so you can learn the characters, and the rest of FWB's stories because FWB's the best author on the site, in my personal opinion anyway.
If you're coming over from FWB, sorry I'm late, somebody wasn't paying enough attention to their email. I'll try to do better in future.
So without further delay, it's storytime.
Chapter 1: Entry
It's a little dull-looking, Composite thought as the familiar sensation of Linking faded. They were behind a wood house, almost a cabin. The house and a ring-shaped collection of other houses like it were in a clearing in the middle of a forest-like grouping of stones of various sizes.
"It's a little dull, isn't it?" a voice in Composite's head echoed their thoughts.
"Yes Oy'an, it is. If Camanion told us right, tis planet should be more varied. We must have gotten lucky." Composite responded telepathically. Oy'an – or Hunter as he was often called - floated out from behind his adopted parent's head. The Metroid, a floating green brain-like creature with three red nuclei clumped in the middle and four mandibles hanging below his jelly, orbited Composite's head, looking around in a semi-instinctive search pattern. Light reflected off of the metallic strands embedded in his nuclei and jelly, the cybernetic implants allowing him to see, hear, and speak audibly.
"I'm going to go look around a bit," Hunter said. His voice sounded like a human boy around the age of ten.
"Proceed," Composite responded. Their voice was female, late teens to early twenties, with a distinct London accent.
Hunter floated around the building corner and out of sight. Composite pulled a book, quill, and ink pot out of Hammerspace. Their tail waved slightly in the breeze as they opened toe book to a blank page and began to carefully write a complex symbol on the left side. A panel slowly appeared on the right side, becoming darker as the symbol continued.
"I'm sensing something Bu'ir" the Metroid announced, "It seems human, but it's a little off, I'm not quite sure how."
"We know," Composite acknowledged, eyes darting away from their work for a moment as two teenage human females walked around the corner of the cabin, "They're here." Their eyes returned to their work, but their visuals were examining the image from the split-second they'd seen the girls. The one Composite had sensed had brown hair, blue eyes, jeans, and a red shirt with a design of a yellow and white ball. The other was the one that really caught Composite's attention. She was also brown haired and blue eyed, but her clothes were very different. She wore a red shirt, orange jacket, jeans, and a red and white baseball cap with a blue sawblade design. That didn't catch Composite's attention. The two things that did were the group of six creatures clustered around her and the sparks of flame coming from her fingers. Both girls stopped dead in their tracks at the sight of a power-suited person behind the building.
"Khrista? That wasn't in X and Y, was it?" one of the girls asked the other. Composite's attention darted to them partway through the quote, noting that Sawblade was asking Ball.
Ball – presumably Khrista – shook her head, not taking her eyes off Composite. "I almost want to say it's Essentia, but that was post-game and the suit definitely didn't have hedgehog spikes or a fox tail."
Composite continued to write, occasionally dipping their quill into the ink pot they'd secured to a belt clip. "Put it out, we don't let fire near our Books."
Sawblade paused at that, blinking in surprise at the pronouns. The sparks did stop flying from her fingers, however.
"Mom? Are these people bothering you?" Hunter asked, drifting around the corner, causing the teens to move into defensive stances.
"Oy'an, what have we told you about calling us 'Mom'?" Composite responded, "And to answer your question, no, put your mandibles away."
"Sorry, Bu'ir," Hunter answered sheepishly. The mandibles under it, two on the outside about an inch long and an inner pair about half an inch long, didn't retract, but they did slump slightly, giving the impression of reduced alertness.
Sawblade swallowed. "Khrista, do you-"
"Metroid," Khrista responded, keeping her voice low. "I've seen Joshua play the game; that thing's weak to ice."
Sawblade gave a slight hum in response, nodding a little. "Gotcha."
"Sorry, be with you in a sec," Composite said, putting a final flourish on their writing before shutting the ink well and using a blotter next to it on her belt. The quill was placed next to the ink pot and the book went to the right side. They turned towards the pair, revealing a Mobian fox-like face with blue fur, and a purple muzzle. A transparent visor covered their entire face. They glanced between them before focusing on each of them individually, mostly on Sawblade and Khrista.
"Who are you?" They looked between the two of them again, "Actually, what are you?"
"What do you mean?" Sawblade asked, frowning. She shifted her stance a little, putting her right arm forward slightly.. Khrista fingered a red and white ball like the one on er shirt hung on her belt.
"Is that a Pokeball?" Hunter asked telepathically.
"It looks like one… but sis shouldn't be in the Pokemon dimension." Composite replied to the curious Metroid.
"Well, visually, you both look human, but you," they nodded at Khrista, "seem to be some sort of human hybrid or symbiont, we can't quite tell which, and you," they turned to Sawblade, "don't seem to be wetware at all."
"Wetware?" Sawblade frowned. "Why would you think I'm some computer program?" Sawblade's clothes flickered like a hologram, revealing red, orange, and gray armor before resolving into normal human clothes. Composite wondered if it was a reaction to surprise, confusion, or anger.
"Sorry, we keep forgetting that most wetwares don't like being referred to as programs. Perhaps we should introduce ourselves. We are Composite and this is Oy'an, but you can call him 'Hunter,' Same name, different language."
"Bu'ir sees all sentient entities as programs of some sort," Hunter piped up cheerfully, clearly enjoying the chance to explain something to someone clearly older, "'Wetware' is just their term for biologicals. They probably think you're some sort of hardware program, or possibly a cyborg," His outer mandibles spread in what was recognizable as a smile, "They also forget that most programs can't access the internet at will from anywhere in the multiverse, so they probably assume you've already discovered on your own that my name is Mandalorian, literally translating as 'The one who does the hunting,' but Hunter is easier to remember."
"You can talk?" Khrista asked, remaining in a defensive stance. "I didn't know Metroids can talk."
"Most of us can't. Bu'ir, Parent, can be mother or father, gave me cybernetic enhancements that allow me to see, hear, smell, speak, and get energy from electricity. It's not as efficient as life energy and telepathy, but it's less scary for others." Hunter tilted slightly in curiosity, "So, who are you?"
Sawblade and Khrista exchanged looks at the question from the Metroid, raising eyebrows at each other.
One of the creatures around Sawblade, a bipedal fox with a stick in its tail, pushed past the two of them. It made a series of yipping sounds that Composite immediately started to try and translate, but to little effect.
"Delta!" Sawblade looked down at the fox in surprise and concern.
Composite thought for a moment before responding, "Sorry, didn't catch much of that. You must speak a language with no link to anything else we've heard."
"-And it just sounded like a dog to me, but if Bu'ir says it's a language, i'm willing to leave my options open." Hunter added.
Sawblade and Khrista exchanged looks at that as the fox glared up at Hunter, paws on her hips and made a series of decidedly angry yelps.
Sawblade sighed and ran a hand through her hair. "Well, you don't seem dangerous." She looked over at Khrista for a moment, then back at the Mobian figure. "I'm Maria. This is Khrista, my friend, and this is Delta, one of the Pokemon that I've befriended here." She motioned to the rest of the creatures who were standing behind her - an orange, black, and white bird, a blue monkey, a butterfly with a snowfall pattern on her wings, what looked like a miniature T-Rex carved from rock, and a little figure holding an orange flower like an umbrella. "These are Tim the Fletchinder, Pour the Panpour, Vivi the Vivillon, Grimlock the Tyrunt, and Flora the Floette."
Khrista rolled her PokeBall around in one hand, as though considering releasing the Pokemon out into the open. She shook her head a moment later and replaced the PokeBall back on her belt. "So, who are you? What are you doing on Neo-Mobius?"
"I told you it was a PokeBall," Hunter said triumphantly.
"Yes, but how? These are definitely the coordinates Camanion sent us, what are Pokemon doing here?"
"Neo-Mobius?" Composite asked, "We'll admit, we don't know as much as we should about our source world, but we're vaguely aware of Pokemon, but we're pretty sure the two worlds aren't supposed to be one…? To answer your other question, we are a hybrid of a cybernetic ally-enhanced Mobian fox and a sentient artificial intelligence."
"Mobian and AI…?" Maria's brow furrowed. She blinked a couple times at the reference to the other's source world and being aware of Pokemon, and her brow furrowed even more so.
"You still haven't given us a name." Khrista frowned.
"Sorry, the name's Composite. Either that or Ada depending on our form."
Meanwhile, Hunter had started to drift down and towards the Pokemon. Noting this, Composite stated firmly "Back!" Hunter skittered back to his place behind Composite's shoulder. " These people are still jumpy, especially around Metroids, any funny business and they might attack." Audibly they add, "Sorry, he's still young and curious."
"Form?" Khrista prompted.
"Right," Composite popped up into the air about a foot. A vortex of green energy surrounded them. When it dispelled, Composite had been replaced by Ada Hopper, a human female with blue eyes and slightly longer than shoulder length loose blonde hair, blue jeans and a black T-shirt reading
This shirt is classified as a munition and may not be exported from the United States, or shown to a foreign national.
Followed by a long listing of what looked like computer code. She drifted down to the ground. Her writing implements were still at their belt. "Don't mind the shirt," she commented, "That sorted itself out around 2000 or so in our home dimension. We'll be happy to explain the history at a later date."
"...whoa." Maria blinked a couple times at the sight of the transformation, her eyebrows shooting up.
Khrista appeared surprised as well for a moment, then shook her head and snorted. "Joshua'd get a kick out of it. I bet he knows whether or not that's something to be worried about back home."
"I doubt it's anything to worry about," Maria responded. She looked Composite up and down, cocking her head to one side. "So, what are you doing here? You definitely look like you don't belong in this dimension, or like you're anything that those Team Flare goons I've been chasing could put together."
"Doubt you need to worry about something like us at home, wherever that is. As far as we know, the company that made us only exists in one dimension. And they didn't develop the technology that allows our Mobian and AI components to fuse. In fact, we're here to meet the person who did. Our sister, Camanion. The company Fcon designed us for world domination. We introduced their containment jar to a shotgun, deleted half of their security force and escaped to another dimension using Chaos Control." Ada crossed her arms over her chest, glowed with a soft white light for a moment, and reverted to the armored form. "As for Team Flare.." They glanced off into the distance for a moment. Maria thought she could see something other than the outside world reflected in Composite's pupils, "Oh, here it is… Tried to take over this region… awaken these Legendaries - what's a Legendary…? Right, should have guessed…" They refocused on the present conversation, "Right. First rate scum. Last time we read about a group like them, they ended up in the rainforest with nothing but the clothes on their backs."
Maria's eyebrows shot up as Composite listed off the events that brought her into existence, on top of the fact that they were aware of Team Flare. "You know…? I'm guessing you didn't play the games like Khrista did, then."
"You had the option to, too," Khrista pointed out. "And you still figured out what they're going to be up to faster than most people."
"Well, 'most people' can't talk to the Sigilyph that live down the route with the graveyard that we came up." Maria motioned back to the southern entrance that led into the small town. She paused. "Speaking of which, we'd better get moving and keep knocking Team Flare out of Kalos before they actually get around to doing something stupid; I don't want to stick around in places for too long if it means they get more time."
"…to…" Tim chirped. Composite assumed there was more to it, but she couldn't translate anything else.
"Thanks, Tim." Maria nodded to the Fletchinder, then looked over at Composite. "If you know about what's going on here already, then you could give us a hand taking Team Flare out if you wanted to. I bet we could find a way to get into contact with Camanion when we circle back to Lumiose or happen to find any of the other Mobians who are around, too."
"Maria, are you sure this is a good idea?" Khrista frowned. "We haven't seen anything like Composite before, it might not be-"
"If they were here to do anything that could hurt us, I would have gotten a vision by now," Maria replied, frowning at Khrista. "And besides, my Guildmaster instincts would have acted up if they were really here to cause ill will. We should be all right."
"Actually, we didn't know that information, we were reading a wiki in real time. Being able to connect to the internet in another dimension is a useful ability. But if you want us to come along," Composite floated up about an inch on a green-white cushion of energy, "We'd be happy to oblige. Besides, we just got here, so we were going to explore a bit anyway. We were just jotting down a quick Link in case we needed to get back to this dimension in a hurry. It's faster than getting coordinates."
"Link?" Maria frowned a little at that. "You mean, what you were doing in that book just now, right? How is that faster than keeping it all in your head?"
"In fact, yes. We have to swap some very long streams of numbers in and out of our execution memory. It's also easier to bring people along using a Linking Book." They grabbed their book from their belt and opened it to a page before turning it around. The left page had a complex symbol written on it, and the right side had what can only be described as a window into another dimension, "You just put your hand on the panel and away you go. The only downsides are that you have to be in the location you want to Link to when you write the symbol, and it only works between dimensions, you can't Link from one part of a dimension to another. Most Books don't follow their users, but ours does. Took us a while to set that up. A few months in fact."
Maria's eyebrows shot up at the sight of the book, and she looked between it and Composite for a moment before blurting out, "Holy scrap! You're a World Jumper!" The wide grin that crossed her face a moment later made Khrista look at her with a startled expression.
"World Jumper… Has a nice ring to it," Composite thought for a moment before adding, "We like TSR Jumper. Time/Space/Reality. Plus there's an old technical joke in there, but you'd have to either be an old-timer or be a retro nerd like Camanion to get it."
Khrista raised an eyebrow at that as Maria's eyes almost seemed to spark with an infinite amount of eagerness. "Huh."
"I didn't think I'd get to cross paths with someone else who travels across dimensions!" Maria laughed. "This is so awesome! I've got so many questions."
"Bug them about them later; we've got that next town to get to, remember?" Khrista nudged Maria in the side. "Shalour City? With the Fighting-Type Gym and the Mega Evolution stuff?"
Maria's excited grin faded a little at that. "Oh yeah. Right." The grin came back, but she was less excited now, more determined. "You wanted to have a look around, Composite? We've only just started traveling around Kalos, so you'll see a lot of the region if you travel around with us." The determination softened into a hopeful sort of expression. "O-only if you feel like coming along, that is."
Composite and Hunter glanced at each other. "Can we, Bu'ir?"
"We don't see why not. They probably know more about the environment then we do."
The two turned back to the girls. Composite shrugged and Hunter's mandibles bobbed in a similar expression, "Sure, why not? Camanion probably doesn't even know we're in-dimension yet. The communication equipment we use apparently doesn't work in-dimension either, even though it's based on the same D'ni technology as the Books." It was pronounced 'Dunny,' "She mustn't have done an especially great job reverse engineering it. A problem we'll correct at a later date. And even if she does know, she won't miss us. We didn't really set a time or anything, temporal flow differences and all. And if anyone wants to fight along the way, we'll give them more than they bargained for."
"If you want to do that, you're probably going to need a Pokemon and stay in that more human form of yours, unless you can hide your armor," Khrista responded. She glanced over at Maria for a moment before looking back at Composite. "Maria and I both have some pretty good connections with Pokemon around the world; we could probably get you a Pokemon that you could train and work with while you're here, at least."
"I would ask if anyone from the PokeExplore Guild - a Guild of Pokemon that I lead - would want to work with you, but my PokeDex is region-locked, so I can't bring over any Pokemon that aren't native to Kalos or over a certain level," Maria added. "If you want to take one on, I'm sure that there a number of Pokemon who would be more than interested in having a Trainer."
"Huh. So most fights happen by proxy in this dimension…" Composite glanced into space for a bit more reading for a second, "Non-lethal by proxy. Not the kind we're used to. We'll have to think about it.," Composite transformed back into Ada with a swirl of energy, "You can call me Ada in this form. And for the record, we can't hide our armor without transforming. Honestly we're not sure what that would look like apart from a swirl of red data cubes, and deactivating our fusion isn't really an option. We've only done it once, and that wasn't voluntary. An accident with a backfiring EMP. Same surge knocked out the fire sensors in the area, so we had to do some fast talking to get out of a medical exam by the local paramedics when the halon went off."
Maria's mouth became more of a straight line when she heard Composite's comment on how they weren't used to what sorts of fights happened in their present dimension. She winced when the other added the mention of an EMP. "Ouch. I'd rather not imagine what that must've felt like."
Khrista's nose scrunched up a little. "Me neither, and I've gotten myself shocked more than enough times by Pikachu to know Thundershocks are definitely more painful than most people let on." She motioned towards the stone arch that was a short distance away from where they were standing. "If you want to think about it, Ada, we're going to have to walk through a trail of wild Pokemon in order to get to the next town over, anyway. There's a cave coming up, too - Reflection Cave. Should be some interesting Pokemon hiding in there."
Tim groaned. "I … the …"
"I know how you feel, Tim, but something tells me this cave is our only way to get to Shalour." Maria glanced at Khrista, who nodded. "All right, then. You good to go, Ada?"
"Caves… We can work with that. We've had to sleep in a few of those during our time with the D'ni," Ada's pupils flickered through green, orange, blue, and light gray for a second, though her irises stayed their normal piercing blue, "And seeing in the dark isn't a problem."
"I'm ready, not that you asked," Hunter added petulantly.
"Plus, it can't be much worse than Sector 1 on BSL. At least in these caves we shouldn't be constantly fending off Hornoad-Xs intent on infecting us, not that they could."
Maria and Khrista exchanged confused looks at that, as did Maria's team behind them.
"...yeah, there's nothing dangerous like that around here," Maria said. "The worst we're going to run into are Trainers and wild Pokemon, and we can take care of them."
"Non-lethally," Khrista added pointedly.
"We can handle that. Probably. Have to do a little reconfiguration, but it shouldn't be too hard. And all he has to do is refrain from chewing on people and not ram so hard." Ada experimentally holds out two fingers stiffly and makes a few jabs at around head level before trying a pinching motion, "Yeah, we can do this."
Glossary of Mando'a terms
Bu'ir: Parent, Mother, Father
Oy'an: Hunter (name)