Zanz sulked in the cargo hull for days, weeks, months.

They were edging closer to Erdenwald, thanks to Xerneas and her incessant urgency to get there as fast as possible, with each passing moment the shuttle shuddered and shook in the cosmic, almost inexistent winds, the turbulence nigh unbearable. After hearing her speak of him as though he were nothing but a tool that was slightly more tolerance, maybe even less so, than her own brother, whose presence was hostile to her in every way she could fathom, he didn't want to comprehend another statement she bespoke. It was a betrayal she had committed, a treacherous transgression that served as a pivotal point to his trust. Commonly, whenever she knocked upon the metal of the doorway, poking her head between the circular window that looked into the hull, he ignored her as he munched on his unsalted vegetables, gnawing away at them angrily. She would try to apologize, telling him that she was sorry for giving him away to his lordship for the classification of eternal sidekick, but he would have nothing of it, making sure he avoided her artificially apologetic yet aggressive gaze as he worked.

After two months had passed, Xerneas stopped communicating with the man entirely, ending her attempts to reach out. His inability to forgive her and her failing insistence combined to make a dud, and from that dud, choler prevailed. They were both mad at each other, either of them for entirely separate reasons. Yet it was petulant, and nothing was to come from their incapability to speak to one another, for their approach to the planet at the outskirts of the solar system wasn't too far away now. Zanz had wished that he could have seen the rings of Saturn up close, yet he didn't want to see Xerneas and her glaring eyes, so he stayed within his quarters whilst the automated system informed him that they were just passing Saturn's orbit. He smiled sadly to himself. The wry quirking of his lips had dryly spread across his face.

He leaned easily against the cages, rubbing his fingers upon the vertebrae of the Growlithes to pass the time when he wasn't scribbling down things about the botany in his presence and quibbling with Yvetal in the volume of his mind. Erdenwald was gone from his mind, for from underfoot the notions of Xerneas which affected him into the now unwanted truth had replaced them and their urgency; instead he thought only of himself and his life whilst Yvetal fed him unbeknownst guile.

Buried in his work, he barely noticed anything menial like sleep and the passage of time, nor had he thought of washing himself or grooming. His hair had grown long and distanced from cleansing, the black strands clinging to one another, fusing together to form knots. He didn't care, though, and his hermitic, isolated demeanor had returned to its faint originality. Back on the Satoshi, he hadn't anybody except Margaret, and now her annoying presence, though friendly and passionate it had been, was replaced by the omnipresent intonation of the god of Death speaking to him, correcting his addled observations and reminding him of things that he wished he could potentially forget.

The betrayal of Xerneas was at the top of that list. Though he hadn't desired listening to the dark-skinned man whose residence dwelled in the rear of his conscience, he merely did not have a choice. Yvetal mentioned it two or three times a sleeping cycle, and his nightmares obtained sufficient fright to give him shudders once he awakened from his restless slumber. Nowadays, he stumbled amongst the cargo hull with a dreaded limp. The disrepair that muddled his thoughts as he wrote down his findings on the effects of artificial light-source aiding botanical germination made him feel uneasy.

Yet this sleeping cycle had brought upon him something of a dreary disposition. He had awakened from the cool metal of the cargo hull with a migraine pestering at the edges of his conscience, and walking around the small space of the cargo hull, he had noticed that, behind him, the doorway leading into his quarters had opened conspicuously by an entity unbeknownst to himself. He lethargically whirled his head over his shoulder.

Xerneas, unruly and unkempt, stood there. Her eyes were downcast and somber. The smile on her face was forced and artificial. The lighting of the gems inset within her horns are dim. Then she said, her voice a rugged whisper that barely passed through the eerie silence he inhabited, "I'm sorry."

Did she seriously think that a simple apology would undo the things she had done to him hitherto? Was she going insane, just like him? No, he thought. She was a goddess. She had more self-control of herself than he had.

Still frustrated, Zanz turned away from her. If I am not doing something, he thought, I'm going to whirl on her and get mad. So, to prevent this from occurring, he took up the clipboard from the highest shelf, clicking his pen and getting ready to acknowledge the status of a random yet interesting botanical organism. Kneeling beside the Venusian plant housed in its glassteel abode, he said simply, keeping his voice level, "Go. I needn't your negativity amid this pleasant space, y'know."

Xerneas sighed. "It's been six months, two weeks, and three days," she announced.

"Is that so?" he asked indifferently.

"Yes, Christopher. And there's no reason why you shouldn't get out of this pitfall. It's not that serious any longer. Arceus has revoked the choice, and -"

"He didn't do any such thing," said Zanz aggressively. The volatile nature of his voice had made Xerneas wince, and she stepped back a smidgen. "You speak lies."

A pause. Zanz waited, calmly taking notes of its heated environment, adjusting the knobs, watching the dials as they flickered indefinitely. He must keep his repose, at least until it wasn't possible any longer.

Then an additional response that sounded uncharacteristically loathing. "You are starting to sound like Yvetal," she snapped.

"Yvetal knows me better than you do, y'know," he admitted. Although he felt anxious, he still rose from his position and deftly pivoted on her. She looked weary and feeble, but the choler that commonly flowed through her at the mention of her brother overtook her. "He's given me enlightenment and solace in the dark of time," he added. "You used me for your own selfish malcontent, Xerneas, and -"

She growled interjectedly, "I came here to make peace, not violence."

Zanz bristled. "Violence is the last affair of madmen," he snapped. "And if I were to allow myself to consider you apart of mankind, then you would be amongst their consensus."

"Your sanity is questionable, too, Christopher," she said to him. She watched as he contorted his face into a mildly unbearable expression, and she continued before he could utter a word. "So now that we're on the same page, I want you to listen to me. There is no way that we are going to heal the fissure that's spread between us unless we speak to each other." She stepped perilously forward. Her blue hands had reached forward to wrap around his wrist, but he retracted, taking a small step backward. The pain and anger in his eyes set them aflame.

"Please," she pleaded. Her wide, large eyes were unblinking as she stared up at him. Appearing as though she were as innocuous as newborn Ponyta, she continued her staring, lengthening the intensity so much that he had flickered in his tenacity.

Acquiescing wasn't his best spot, but eventually, he staggered and made his unpleasant descent. His anti-social behavior from early life had affected him to this day, making him untrustworthy and unwilling to trust in turn, but it sedated in his isolation, and now, it worked intensely against him and his welcome intentions.

"Make it brief, then," he said.

She smiled. It was pleasant; a calm in the ceaseless storm of unrest that surrounded him for the last half-year. He forgot, perhaps because of how Yvetal spoke so freely and so malignantly about her, that she was beautiful.

Then she gestured for him to follow her out of the hull. She said, "C'mon, Zanz, lemme show you where we are."

He followed her soon. He couldn't resist the unseeable visage that might've laid beyond the protective glassteel, so he strutted, sauntering from the hull and blocking his eyes with his forearm as the light invaded his eyes. He shielded himself from the bright illumination as Xerneas's blue hue gathered close. Then, when he found himself accustomed to the light, he withdrew his arm from his vision, and the petite goddess stood eloquently in front of him, her hands folded behind her back, her eyes transfixed upon his own dim irises.

And behind her sat the amazing spectacle of Uranus. Its aglow surface of darkened hues of blue was cropped with crevices and elevations that were divvied with shadows. The silhouettes brought upon by them were cold and cool just as its innate surface must have been, but it still attained a iridescence that piled on his conscience with a clumsy precision. He watched it as the small asteroids and flakes of rock and dust spun around its enormity in a circular movement, and their spinning disposition superseded him in painting the mild picture of awesome amid the velvet sheet of space with its endlessly compiling stars and planets undiscovered.

He saw the planet through the telescopes that Powell himself owned on some of his ventures through the Satoshi, going from each planet and observing them with an astronomer's intention, but never had he expected to be so near to the planet. Even when he was informed by Lemon himself, there was no need to think that they would actually achieve any of the goals that they had set for themselves, but now, as he hovered through space in a small shuttle containing only the quintessential objects for a single human's survival, he felt even farther from any type of intelligent creatures as he took sight of the enlarged planet. He could make no approximations to their distance from the planet itself, but the fact that it overtook the glassteel visor told him that it was closer than he truly anticipated, and it frightened him. He stumbled backward and frantically whispered a few commands into the air that would have set the visors blinds downward if he had the shuttle's hand-held remote, yet nothing substantial occurred in these fleeting moments. Looking at Uranus, he felt like he might pass out; for all the blood which ran through his vessels soon started their ascent into his brain, engendering the meager headache that surfaced at the edges of his mind.

Xerneas noticed this, and reached forward for the man before he nearly ran into the side of the shuttle and activated the airlock once more. "Honey," came her whisper, "calm yourself, please."

He took deep breaths, but nothing could assist him in his need to sit down and look away from the frightening conception of Uranus. He never thought that he'd be afraid of a planet, of all things that could potentially incite fear within one's mind, yet his visage refused to take its enormity into his mind.

Guiding him back into the cargo hull, she rested him easily against one of the numerous shelves that lined the metallic walls, and knelt next to him as he pressed his head against the shelf. She pushed aside some of the strands of hair that cropped out from his messy fringe, and tucked it behind his ear affectionately. The ting on her cheeks didn't go unnoticed by the man as he turned to her. He saw that her eyes beheld happiness in its simplest manifestation, and was unnerved by it.

"Panic attack?" she asked patiently. She wound her fingers through his hair absently as she waited for a response.

He shook his head, pushing the fingers which ruffled his hair from him entirely. He was not in the mood to be coddled. "I've never had something along those lines," he admitted harshly, the words escaping his mouth with a significant bout of force.

"There's always a first time for everything," she reminded him.

"Well, I doubt that I had a panic attack, Xerneas," he said in a coarse voice haggard with breaths constricted and restrained. "I just . . . saw Uranus, and I couldn't deal with it. I don't like the fact that we're so far away from Earth, so far away from humanity."

"There are living creatures that live on Erdenwald," she said desperately, but she let out a little whine when he looked up at her with eyes filled with anger.

"But those are not my kin. And besides, to think that I will soon have to be their prophet, as a person who has never truly experienced their customs and has no intentions of ever doing so, it irks me. The entire existence of that planet, however reassuring it may be for you, is unnerving, and I trust nothing of it unless contact comes into fruition and I can see it for my own eyes." He sighed as she momentarily beamed at him, a radiant smile grasping her lips in a gleeful purchase. "That doesn't mean I'll like it, though," he added.

This hadn't affected her smile. "You'll come to Erdenwald, though?"

"I'll think about it," he said.

"I hope you say yes, Christopher Zanz. Otherwise, I think you will have a long time to stare at that planet right there," she remarked deliberately, and he perceived it almost as a threat. Whether or not it was, he had no idea, but the fact that she looked momentarily intimidating as she uttered those words unnerved him just as much as the thought of Erdenwald and its elusive people's existence.

Softly, she pat his cheek with her hand twice. The moments lingered, her hand resting coldly on his face, her fingers tapping a rhythm that felt odd and queer. Her healing abilities didn't seem to render the tired creases in his face inexistent, and her palm settled into the indentations. "Get some rest, Christopher," she amended at last. Rising from her spot next to the man and padding out of the cargo hull to man the shuttle once more, she left Zanz sitting there, his eyes watching her as she went to leave him. And although the acceleration of the Hubb was something that he was used to by now, it roiled his stomach and made him queasy as it was activated, Xerneas's pushing her translucent hands through the machinery and blasting the metal thing into the vacuous depths of space almighty.

He watched as her head drooped and her hair started rising higher than the iridescent antlers that emerged from her cranium. The spectacle was immersing, and he soon did the same as the goddess of Life. He dropped his head and shut his eyes, letting them fall. He dozed off soon, and the last thought that crossed his mind before he entered the dreams of weird conception was one of how irregular Xerneas could be with her emotions and the way they were displayed to him. But it dissipated in the wake of his sleep, soon forgotten, but not entirely distanced from his conscience.