The oxygen mask covering his face was flimsy and looked unreliable, as was the nanosuit binding his radiation-protected skin, but it held as he punched the airlock hatch open. Making sure that the tether connecting him from the wench on the opposite side of the airlock was tight and unmoving, he watched with intent eyes as the hatch slowly opened, the mechanisms turning and winding against each other. The two white halves of the airlock's output opened to reveal the great vacuum of space behind his visage, the unblinking stars and floating asteroids filling the devoid volume of its enormity. The planets between the dumbbell-shaped spacecraft were glowing a soft red, tinting his peripheral with an odd substance which reminded him of his grandmother's homemade raspberry jelly.

His earpiece shrieked with a sudden noise, and he spread his gloved fingers to touch the sides of his head, where he could feel the agony thundering through his mind. He staggered and bumped into the side of the airlock as it started to affect his inadvertent yet uncontrollable physical activity.

Disoriented, he leaned uneasily against the wall, heaving great breaths and fogging up his facemask. The sudden feedback faded in time, but the ringing did not dissipate as the voice of the communications expert flitted from his ears. "Sorry 'bout that," Garnett apologized.

"Sure," slurred Zanz, groaning a lot as he pushed himself from the wall. "Why didn't we get a goddamn Pokémon to leap through this stupid void to check that thing out?"

"We don't have specialized nanosuits for them, y'know."

Zanz scoffed. "Whatever," he murmured.

The whole space was still in front of him, though, and he looked into its vast emptiness, scowling at it all. In it, there was a strange light emitting from a enlarged rock protruding with queer crystals that looked the size of him. That's what I have to look at, he thought. Righting himself, he made sure he didn't have any tears or rips in the nanosuit, as that would've been a very expensive compensation he knew he was capable of paying. He didn't spend too long entertaining that thought, though, so he leapt from the airlock and drifted through the infinite, gravity-free space amid him.

He experimentally tugged on the tether. Secure, he thought. Good, I'd rather not fly into this void of space.

"What even is it?" he asked absently Garnett. "I think it's some stupid rock, but the crew clearly has other thoughts that I personally don't care for, as they're all otherworldly and revolve around the existence of another species other than Pokémon and humans altogether."

When he got no response, he scoffed, flicking his tongue to manually deactivate the earpiece and its radio. He didn't care if the expert tried contacting him again; he'd have to deal with the consequences of inaction, really.

He treaded on no ground at all with his feet and hands, touching nothing but empty, oxygen-less air, but he was assisted in his movements forward by the means of a small propulsion system at his hips, fully built into the nanosuit as a regular precaution for human ventures outside the spacecraft. It propelled him onward for as long as he wished, but its deactivation was, in his honest opinion, a pain in the ass to fully operate, so he knew that it'd have to be dealt with accordingly.

The rock was still a few hundred meters away from him, so he opted to float in relative silence, listening to the sound of his sped-up breathing as he continued forward.

Occasionally, he'd hum a tune or something that didn't bore through his mind like a college history lesson, and in time, he finally arrived at the strange rock floating absently, idly in space without interruption, resting there like the impeding Sun at the edge of his peripheral.

It rotated and orbited nothing in particular, but its rooted position never altered, never changed. Staying in that one place, its wild spinning looked strange and actively unsettling, although it truly was an anomaly that was . . . innocuous.

In a panic, as he approached fast, Zanz jammed the complex deactivation of the propulsion systems right before his abdomen made contact with one of the sharp protrusions of inordinate origin. He backed away, pulling tight on the cord that bond him to the spacecraft behind him. It took him a few moments to recover from such a sudden gesticulation, but when he did get himself and his conscience together, he looked straight at the rock and its queerness. Inquiry was obviously bubbling on the edge of his split tongue, but he needn't speak in the awe aghast he experience amid its presence.

His first compiled thought was that he didn't expect it to be so . . . big. The approximations of its size were nothing considering the physical dimensions presented in front of him, staring at him sternly. Humongous and otherworldly, with its indented craters acting as eyes and the creases and cuts caused by the brushing and collision of other drifting asteroids and space junk serving as mouths, it looked like a strange deity that pierced itself with crystals of colorations he . . . truly could not fathom attempting to describe. He was sure that it was glowing a teal or blue-green when he was so far away, yet staring at it with the only border keeping them apart being his facemask, it was indistinguishable.

What the hell even is this? he thought dreadfully, a tentative, apprehensive shred trailing through his body. It doesn't look normal. I doubt it is. . . .

He flicked on the radio, flapping his tongue uselessly until he finally tapped the miniscule button with its tip. The warped sounds of space were inconsequential in the midst of the crackling of the frequencies, stable and evident, so he unconfidently spoke into the static. "Hey, I'm at the asteroid," he announced, positioning himself upright. "I'm going to analyze it with my portable scanners, if that's all right."

The expert's voice pierced the static, responding almost immediately. "Yes, that's all right. Make sure you get the entire thing, Zanz."

"Acknowledged."

From his protective wristbands, eight small spheres emerged from their melded threshold. Miniature cameras located on their fronts realistically blinked like human eyes, and Zanz whispered a declarative command. They rigidly shook in affirmation, their beady lens staring at the asteroid, and positioned themselves in a cube that enclosed the asteroid.

As their invisible lasers flashed amongst its spinning composition, he noticed that the hypnotism was broken. As to why it was so, he could only blame the operable spheres and their respective positions revealing the reality of the asteroid's spinning and gyrating. He looked down at his wrist, the display screen glowing. The lasers rose slowly but resolutely, and in time, as he remained there hanging in space, humming a toneless tune, it turned out that the scanners conveyed the asteroid's composition to be manifested by bunches of accumulated iron, flakes of nickel. Smelting ores, of course, he thought. There is nearly nothing in this stupid void of voluminous space that was profitable.

That's actually the reason why so many people came into these uncharted seas of dying, combusted stars and distant planets, he concluded. The International Program of Interstellar Study gave way to the astrosciences he and his colleagues rigorously took part in gave way to the other developments now located in the waters of black oblivion. Orbiting the Earth were satellites with solar panels connected to their immense surface area, supplying the lands down below with electricity capable of operating systems that would overload a predominant method of watt generation, that of which preceded the electric Pokémon whose wattage capped high enough to burst a standard lightbulb and forty-nine more like it. And even farther than that were the rock miners that expended their labor on the retrieval of ores from the Asteroid Belt, smelting them down, broadcasting their expensive finds to the their home world in exchange for a "sick amount of dough," as one of their wild kind would perhaps comment.

He was a simple botanist, though, planting seeds in the coop of his small living quarters, studying the unusual aspects of his field with passion he felt from a young age, fueling the oxygen tanks in his room with its inherent production. His fascination never dissipated through the years, but it weakened significantly due to the exposure to the more complex sciences of his colleagues, especially when they criticized his line of duty and study. Although he wasn't the most dignified scientist in the diverse institution of the IPIS, serving as another lowly commoner amongst the higher-class nobleman, he volunteered to go out here.

As for his reasoning, he virtually had none besides one thing: A discovery of his own that presented singular plant-life. Gardens were more his forte, of course, his repertoire consisting of green plants and their inherent coloration, but he wanted to go to space. There were more out there, he knew, for two years prior, he was studying few specimens brought back down from distant planets.

From a confidential supplier, he extracted a few experimental samples of a rare yet strange, soot-gray semblance of plant-life. Its origin diverted straight from the smoldering, barren, skin-boiling surface of Mercury, its closeness to the Sun baking it alive like a turkey in November. Upon initial examination, the procedural scanners revealed the molecular structure and atomic components of the thing were uncanny. The light grey regolith it was buried in came along with the plant, thankfully to preserve the inanimate life, and he learned that instead of extracting carbon monoxide from the air, for there was nothing to generate oxygen nor anything to exhale the much-needed compound, it used the element filaments in the "soil" to further its process of photosynthesis. Thus, its coloration was a combination of the metallic elements found beneath the burning surface of the planet, protecting its fragile, delicate leaves from withering away in the brightness of the Sun, as well as preventing the darkened chlorophyll from overheating and boiling into oblivion.

If he could replicate the same discovery of a plant on another planet by himself, then he'd be happy enough. The vegan diet he adopted so long ago would be expanded upon by the inevitable discovery of the edible vegetables and fruits. His mouth savored at the thought of it.

Travelling amongst the unblinking stars to perhaps locate something inhabitable by humans and Pokémon, wherein life could prosper without the assistance of oxygen masks and nanosuits and precautions for all sorts of radiation that might sear the skin and wear away at the meek bones of individuals was a great proposition, wasn't bad, especially if his own life would be bettered by the act of moving through their expanses at the speed of standard spacecrafts, or even faster, albeit just at a smidgen higher acceleration rate, if he were to adopt the presence of a derelict, decrepit shuttles located in the storage hold of the Satoshi.

But in the presence of an atheist electrotechnician/captain propagating that science was the future at nigh all tines, an ambitious yet pompous astrobiologist seeking out intelligent life on other planets, a young, pretty woman whose IQ was flaunted around obnoxiously whilst she dabbled experimentally on her computing tablet, and a silent man whose eternal gaze never broke from his orderly sets of chemicals and flasks, he felt . . . insignificant. With these hyper-intelligent scientists working on fields he practically knew nothing about, his life on the Satoshi was less than enjoyable, less than what he wished.

The beeping of his earpiece brought him from his reverie, his world of thought awakening to the endless sight of space, obfuscated by the asteroid that stagnated right in front of him.

Addled by his own notions of botany, he readjusted his position amongst the easily-traversed space. The eight spheres finally finished their scanning, returning to their systematic occupations, and as they settled, he watched as his wrist displays read the same things he'd seen before, running down the list with small decimal points preceding immaculate percentages.

But there was one element unbeknownst to Finn, the AI assisting the ship in its operations, and he gazed curiously at the abundance of the unknown element, clocking at near sixty-four percent of the enormity of the queer thing.

He knew almost next to nothing of chemistry, but if there wasn't anything that Finn could derive from the present sample, whether it be an element, compound or some sort of concoction craftd by the menial demonstrations of nature at its acute finest, and other than that it emanated a smidgen of atomic radiation blazing at the edges of his nanosuit which threatened to pierce its fabric resolutely, then the fact that it was beyond their innate control was a warning sign they could back the operation up.

I know better than that, he thought, tapping a few buttons on the touch-sensitive wrist display. Then, flicking his radio on again: "I completed scanning. Sending its documentation to you now."

Margaret's voice entered his ear, abrasively clanging against the sides of his head. Gods, that stupid voice is annoying, he thought. "Hey, Zanzie," she said, a Southern lilt edging her intonation.

Annoyed, he said, "Could you get someone else on the line, please?"

"No can do," she responded.

"Why not?" he asked.

"Well, if you must be so obtrusive, Mary, I'm unsure about how this large rock here has received this immense amount of radiation, and this element, too."

"I am, too," she said complacently.

"Our plans were to examine it and find out what it is. It seems otherworldly, though. And right now, I can't even perceive the stupid color of the damn thing."

A moment of silence passed. Zanz enjoyed the stillness of space now, encompassing the isolation he portrayed easily in the wake of the intelligent scientists roaming the Satoshi with their work hanging from the frays of their fingers.

"It looks green or blue to me," she proclaimed reasonably.

"Yeah, that's what I thought, too. Until I came quite closer, it looked teal, but then it just . . . turned into a mystery. I can't even begin to describe it."

"That's not very clinical of you, Zanzie," she mentioned sardonically, criticizing his articulation.

Her satirical commentary flitted through his mind as he floated closer to the asteroid. The resonant ridges and creases upon the rock looked out to him now, yet he ignored the gazes of the craters as it wound around, spinning on a dimensionless as though it were being tossed through a washing machine working at high maintenance. If he were so mesmerized earlier, he wouldn't've noticed anything about it, and would've reported that noteworthy details of the asteroid were quite devoid.

But as he looked at it sideways, tilting his gaze to his left, it looked, ever so slightly, that the scintillating, iridescent rock appeared to be in the strange shape of a malformed Y. Two large spires made of the unnamable coloration (which still frustrated Zanz beyond belief, its incomprehensible disposition smacking against the side of his head) spread outward from the central, iron-condensed body spanning the length of his height downward, dipping into a flap that was tipped with three crystals, glowing inconceivably.

"Yvetal," whispered Zanz. He inched closer to the asteroid, careful not to place the nanosuit against the unknown element bestrewn amid the uneven, unstable rock. His fingers stretched so daringly close to the spires, but he did not touch them, lest he succumb to the infectious disease of malevolent curiosity.

"What?" asked Margaret, stripping him of his daring touch.

"Who," he corrected. "In the Book of Arceus, there is a god of Death, and his name is Yvetal."

"So? What does that have to do with this?"

"I know you're a godless woman, Mary, but hear me out," he insisted. She grunted in response, so he continued, "Arceus helped in the creation of multiple gods that controlled some aspects of the Universe, and in a legend of old, there was speak of two gods: Xerneas and Yvetal, respectively controlling the aspects of Life and Death. The legend followed a virtually sinless man who was afflicted with a fatal disease destined to kill him, and Xerneas, in his ill, spake unto him words of encouragement and passion as he dragged closer to the control and endowment of Yvetal. The blue-hued spirit that walked at his side through his ventures before death disappeared one day without trace of dissipation. Yvetal appeared in the sky as a red-hued demon, spreading his body in the form of a strewn Y. Then he collapsed as Yvetal spoke to him, whispering in his ear the language of Death."

"And?" She sounded impatient.

"Presumably, if we're following this legend, the Y means something." To elaborate, he added, "It looks like a Y, but has the veil of blue to guard it from its true demeanor."

"Touch it," she said suddenly.

Sharping inhaling a breath of oxygen that pipes down his lung and nearly choked him, his incredulous reply, impactful in the extremities of the situation, was a loudly shrieked "What?" which rang against the protective facemask.

"I assume you're telling me that this thing has a spiritual disposition about it. Touch it," Margaret repeated, chuckling. "Science dictates that nothing'll happen, right?"

Zanz sneered. If she could see him, he'd give her a grotesque grimace, but he could do no such thing at the moment, much to his displeasure. "It's not my faith," he answered defensively.

"And I don't like to brag about all my accomplishments," she retorted. Then, in an easier voice: "Just do it, Zanzie. I'd like to see what happens."