Marlo

Marlo had lost count of days, and the boredom was crippling. Dormer's pessimism had ruined Worlds beyond Ultra Space for her, and she often found herself wandering the windowless, underground research facility in search of something – anything to occupy her time. Seren had not spoken to her since she punched him, much to her relief. She found herself constantly revisiting the library on the second-to-lowest level to glance over the same book titles, each time hoping to notice something that she had overlooked the last time. Still, the thought of other people, other societies, in ultra space intrigued her. It's not fair. Dormer had his own reasons for opposing a human transmigration, but who was he to say that Marlo could not roll the dice on her own?

She sat cross-legged on the floor, dressed lazily in a white tee shirt and a pair of black sweatpants that she found in the laundry room, reading a strange little book, attributed to some library she had never heard of. Sinnoh Folk Tales was a recitation of ancient legends, a cute little collection that Marlo hoped would help her escape reality for a few sweet moments. The inside cover was the color of gold, and as reflective. She parted her hair down the middle. It had grown in more than she thought, and black roots were showing against the platinum blonde dye. She opened to the first folk tale,

"Pick clean the bones of pokémon caught in the sea or stream.

Thank them for the meals they provide, and pick their bones clean

When the bones are as clean as can be, set them free in the water from which they came.

The pokémon will return, fully fleshed, and it begins anew."

Marlo smiled at that. Turning back to the cover, she reviewed the title. Sinnoh. She had never heard of it. She found the backbreaking world atlas where she had left it on the shelf and opened it to the index. There was no nation or region in the world with that name. Perhaps it referred to a particular culture, or to some old place that had been called that in the past – why else would Sinnoh be absent from the world atlas? The book was tagged on its back cover, with a printed barcode label displaying "Canalave City Library." She narrowed her brow as checked the index of towns and cities three times over, finding no match. Marlo was certain by now – this book had been written in another universe. By some great cosmic coincidence, she understood the words and the language clear as day, but the man or woman behind the text was not of this world.

Awash with wonder, Marlo folded the book of folk tales under her arm and wandered into the hallway, daydreaming like a little girl. Sinnoh. Dormer would make fun of her. Suddenly, the lights facility went dark. A strange, almost otherworldly sound hummed through the walls, and then they flickered back on. Dormer's voice boomed from the staircase at the end of the hall. "Magnificent! Magnificent! Maaaaaaagnificent!"

With one eyebrow raised and Sinnoh Folk Tales under her arm, Marlo made her way downstairs towards the lowermost chamber, where Dormer had been performing tests and experiments day and night. The door was wide open, and a queer blueish-white light was spilling out into the hallway. Peeking inside, she found the source to be the metal arch in the center of the chamber, to which all of the computer consoles were connected by wires and tubes of varying breadths. Within the borders of the arch glowed a flickering light that seemed to defy the eye as it changed and morphed in shifting, almost psychedelic patterns. It looked as though one could step through to some blinding world beyond imagination.

Dormer was dancing and laughing with a mostly empty one liter bottle of brown whiskey. "I owe you an apology, young lady," he said, slurring his words as he stumbled towards her. Marlo was nearly knocked from her feet as he drunkenly swung an arm across her shoulders, jabbing the forefinger of his free hand towards the glowing archway. "Do you know what that means?" His breath reeked of alcohol.

Marlo stammered for an answer. She had never seen him like this.

"It means we can finally leave!" he pulled his arm away and sauntered back to the consoles, swaying in his steps with drunken joy as his gray curls bounced about his head.

"Wait," she finally spoke up. "You said you owe me an apology. Why?"

"Because you made this possible!" He continued to fiddle with the console controls, the archway shining brightly still. "Remember that little conversation we had? About the other worlds? Well that got me thinking. You see, this whole time I've been trying to stop the portals – but that's no good, because if you open a portal on one side, and you block the portal on the other, you get a big explosion. The engineers who designed these things were smart. They built in a failsafe, so no matter what, the portals open. The machines see code that would stop a portal, and they ignore it. I spent days trying to get around that, but I couldn't do it. But then you! You got me thinking outside the box, with all your talk of other worlds. That was it – that was the solution! So I wrote in a redirect. That's a portal to ultra space you're looking at right there, but nothing can enter our world through it, because I overlaid another portal, so everything gets redirected somewhere else!" He laughed again, and took a swig from the bottle.

Marlo raised her brow at the sudden gush of information. She had suspected that the machines were capable of opening ultra space portals, but now she was left wondering why Dormer – who so vehemently opposed the idea of traveling to other worlds – wanted to accomplish this in the first place. Everyone knew that The Collapse had been the result of global phenomena called portal storms. But the damage had been done, and the people of the world were more concerned with sustaining themselves than anything else. The different species of ultra beasts were often as hostile to each other as they were to the native creatures of the world, and their numbers dwindled over the following years. What interest could White Lightning have in looking into this now? Dormer had mentioned something about a second Collapse. Were they afraid of another portal storm?

"So that's a portal to ultra space," she said. "What would happen if you walked through?"

"The ultra space wilds," he replied. "That's where you'd go."

"What's that?"

"It's sort of a layman's term that means 'fucking anywhere.' Random portals open in random worlds. Some of them have living things, and even people like us, others don't even have solid ground beneath them. Portals here, portals there – it's a deadly maze. You don't want to find yourself in the ultra space wilds, because you'll likely never find your way home. We've lost too many people that way." To Marlo, never finding her way home did not sound like such a bad thing. She stared into the mesmeric, shifting light of the arch, asking herself what kept her in this world. Dormer flicked a switch, and with a hum, the light went out. She sighed in defeat. "Go get your stuff together," he said as he moved between the consoles and powered everything down. He pulled a removable flash drive from one of the computer ports, and slipped it into his white lab coat pocket. "And tell Seren, too. We're getting the hell out of here."

Disappointed as she was, Marlo was at least relieved to be told that they would finally be leaving the research facility. She went back to the library first and stuffed Worlds beyond Ultra Space and Sinnoh Folk Tales into her backpack, before combing through all the rooms she had frequented to check for anything she might have left behind. She changed her clothes, putting on a black and white plaid flannel shirt over a black tee, and deep blue jeans. Checking the break room, she found Seren munching on a microwaved burrito. Without looking him in the face, she told him they were leaving, and then made her way up the stairs to the elevator on the uppermost level. Seren caught up a few minutes later looking expressionless as ever, Dormer swerving behind him. The drunken scientist stepped forward to enter the access code into the keypad mounted on the wall. The doors opened, and he led them inside. There was a clunk, and a hum, and then they were going up.

Marlo squinted in the sunlight as the three of them stepped outside the shed to the sandy hills. The barrier islands had been blanketed in a cloudy gray haze when they arrived, but now the sky was bereft of clouds, and the blazing sun of high noon was glinting on the gentle waves of the blue sea. Marlo unbuttoned her flannel in the heat as Seren started back towards the mainland. "No, not that way," Dormer corrected him. "We're going back in luxury." Marlo twisted her mouth at that – curious to learn what exactly qualified as luxury in this man's pickled mind.

Dormer led them over another sandy hill, towards a garage-like structure at the water's edge, pointed out towards the ocean, roof covered with solar energy collection panels. A series of large metallic cylinders was arranged in a line around one of its walls – most likely batteries. The building was large as a house, and Marlo wondered if Seren had seen it from the back of his dragon when he flew across the sound. Dormer reached the heavy metal door first, and fumbled with his keys for an embarrassingly long time, drunkenly missing the key slot over and over again as he tried to find the right one.

"You guys are going to fucking love this," he said, still slurring. Finally, he got the door open. He peeked inside, shouted "Holy shit!" and slammed it shut, shock written across his face. Looking to Marlo and Seren, he went on, sheepishly. "So, pokémon trainers, do you remember when we left Benford how I said you were here to protect me?" A strange shriek rang from inside. Dormer stumbled backwards from the door, falling on his butt as a xurkitree burst through, screeching and loosing lightning from its wiry limbs.

Seren immediately hurled a poké ball into the air, calling out his salamence. The winged creature took to the sky with a roar as the alien creature screeched and threw lightning at its new foe. The dragon dove, and swerved, and rose, narrowly avoiding electrified bolts. Marlo followed suit, calling out Morto, her gengar. "Shadow ball!" she commanded, pointing to the ultra beast while it sprinted into the hills, kicking up plumes of sand with its wiry limbs as it continued to pursue Seren's salamence. Grinning in that cute, sinister way of his, Morto launched a hunk of ghostly energy towards the xurkitree. The attack missed, exploding on the ground next to its target and blowing up a cloud of dust and sand.

"Jupiter, dragon pulse!" ordered Seren as his dragon swooped around in the air towards the ultra beast, and then bombarded the ground with a carpet of draconic energy, drawing a blazing blue line across the land. The xurkitree shrieked and flailed as it was engulfed in the strange blue flames. Dormer pulled himself from the ground, and stumbled inside.

"Sludge bomb!" she commanded as her gengar garnered toxic material between its hands, and then hurled forth a putrid, blobby projectile. The ultra beast was still reeling from the sudden blaze of Jupiter's draconic breath that it seemed to hardly notice the attack before a harsh blast of rancid sludge erupted underneath it. Screeching, the alien lost its footing, planting its lanky, wiry body in the sand.

Dormer was yelling from inside, "Come on! Get in! Let's go!" Marlo followed his voice into the aquatic garage to find him standing at the console of a boat. It was a pretty, white thing, probably at least forty feet long, with a bright red canopy roof, and a big electric motor mounted on the back, surrounded by a raised concrete platform. Double doors began to slide open at the other end as the sea poured in to equalize the water levels. She jumped as the motor started with a loud, abrupt hum, and then hopped from the platform onto the aft section of the deck as Morto caught up behind her, phasing intangibly through the wall as he so often did in favor of doorways. Marlo returned her gengar to his capsule as Seren rushed in, just barely making the jump as Dormer began to accelerate out, splashing the walls and platform with a salty spray. With that, they were off.

Marlo looked back towards the sandy hills, platinum hair whipping all around her head, to find the xurkitree defeated, roasting in a bath of blue flames while Jupiter continued to strafe the ground with its cruel breath. As the boat left the coastline, the dragon looped around, heading towards its trainer. Seren held out a poké ball, and reencapsulated his salamence as it approached.

"That fucking thing was feeding on my batteries," said Dormer, shouting to overcome the rushing air as the boat pushed through the waves.

"You're sure you're okay to drive this thing?" asked Seren, his moppy brown hair pushed back out of his face by the wind.

"You shut the fuck up."