Part 7.5: The Crossblade

Chapter 56: Exploring Terra Gamma (2)

Remember some of those characters that disappeared during the fate arc?

I don't think did either lol

Some characters have a lot more screen-time in the Rapture route than they do in this one.

I don't own Pokémon.


Rayse

The world beneath us was still red, but not Red. It had a glow of Flux, but only a glow, and that was a giant leap from the Tangle. No more big scorpions or lightning jellyfish. It sure strengthened my resolve to uncover the secrets about Flux. Somewhere. Maybe first, I needed to uncover the truth about Aza. That was where this whole thing should have started. There was this guy who planted Gamma into Earth and grew us like fruits or flowers, so our pollen could share its beauty with the rest of the world. That was what it was supposed to be, but Brudder Aza – no, not my brother – didn't ever show up. Not until we went into the Paradox, where... something happened. Something us Champions weren't a part of. Something... stridery.

Ahead of us, there was a mega-sized wall of transparent, like, energy stuff. It looked like a big mixing of Gammas, like when saltwater and freshwater mixed together and did all this wobbly crazy stuff that was pretty to look at. Except not like that at all, because it was so orderly and tall, perfectly set over a field of grass, dividing an arrangement of a hundred or something small buildings. Oh! The school! This was those kids' school! Meter-detter High or... whatever!

But, like the Tangle before it, something changed about this place, or rather what was beyond the wobbly force field. Chunks of grassy, dirty land had been torn from the earth, hanging in the sky like gravity forgot to come to work today, and since the day just kept going and going, so to did the little islands float, parted, but still just about forming a big staircase up to the sky, where the clouds hid them all away. The effects to the land beneath it were really severe. There were huge pits separating pretty grassland from holes that never seemed to end. They went into blackness, a sort of line pronounced to the pattern of islands floating above them. It was spectacular, though; much less of an eyesore (literally?) than the Tangle, even if some of the island chunks had dry sewage lines sticking out of them, or roots were hanging beneath the islands. Some isles were tilted, others flat, some almost turned sideways, making the stairway one of the more shoddy cosmic carpentry jobs I'd ever seen. Not like us Champions could do any better...

All that scenery was coming closer. It smelled so vast, so, uh, carbonated? It was a fizzy smell, like soda oil. Weird...

I wasn't in the mood to make light of it, though. I... was in trouble. Mari's silence told me so. Looking over to Jira and Patty, the latter of whom was peeking out into the distance at the marvel, they were really only quiet because they didn't know how to parse the whole world around them. Pat's world was a whole new, horrible place, and somehow she was coping. To Jira, an alien, it was the same. Their faces shined awe upon it, and to them it returned timeless sunlight. Gee, I should've really given my paw to the pen with this whole poetry thing! Patty would've approved.

"Rayse..." Mari breathed out, flying slow enough for the rushing air to keep quiet, let her speak. My ears perked up. "Secany said you were the unpredictable type, but I never thought you would do something like this."

"Um... Sh- ...She said that about me?" I queried shyly.

"Mm, I don't know what happened to you, hey. I don't know why you're an eevee like Kat used to be, but..." Mari paused, her sighs telling me she really didn't have a lot to say.

"It's because of the Flux." I said to her. That was all I knew.

"And was it because of the Flux that you killed Kat?" she hit. I swallowed. My throat hurt.

"No, noo..." I whined. "It's not like that. Kat's – uh, I think that Kat was a strider. I don't know... how she got here, but she's gonna come back. I hope. Why else would she-"

"A strider? You mean, like Luna?" Mari asked. She knew!

"Y-you know Luna?!" I gasped.

"Yes, well, Secany did mention her before. Striders. That Laza fellow was really Luna, a strider. Luna tricked you guys, didn't she?" Mari reminded me. It didn't feel great.

"Erm, kind of. It wasn't Luna's fault. She didn't mean to! She was being... like, she was... I don't know... She's so nice, though." I explained.

"Hm. I thought Secany was pulling my tail when she brought striders up. I mean, I s'pose you two could still be messing with me, but... why would you want to?"

"No, Mari, we wouldn't...! Even then, I haven't seen Secany for so long now." I lamented.

"True, she's refrained from returning to the Grove. I'm the same way. Our goals are... aligned, for better or for worse. God, this changes everything... I almost can't believe it. I actually don't think I can yet." Mari doubted.

"Mmgh..." I groaned. "Why aren't we going back to the Grove? Didn't Jira tell you Alli was hurt? You did tell her, right Jira?"

"Uh-huh. This doesn't look Grovey at all." Jira said.

"Would that be 'Groovy'?" Patty inquired quietly.

"It's not groovy either..." said our mythical.

"I know. I'm sorry. Alli will have to wait a little bit longer," Mari began. "The truth of the whole matter is, I... huh... Secany and I have been helping each other, but we don't meet up often. Her end is more complicated than mine. Mine involves tracking down Symbi wielders and persuading them by any means necessary. They've been getting rowdy lately."

"Rowdy? How do you mean? You seem fine to me!" I told her.

"Good thing, too, otherwise I might've tried to feed you to Maya when I saw what you did to Kat," she said. That was morbid! "By that, I mean Symbis and their wielders are looking for a way to destroy Flux through and through. They've concluded that, to do that, they need to erase all Pokémon."

"What?!" Jira and I clamored.

Erase Pokémon?! Why?! Ho-... How?

"Symbis are capable of terrible things. After all, how Maya went Flux so quickly was... Never mind that, actually. Um. Even worse, they're looking into becoming Crossblades." she explained.

"Uhh?" I murmured.

"It... seems like the majority of them have a plan figured out to do just that. So, if I can step in and stop them, while Secany handles her end... Hopefully... just hopefully, you Pokémon can live in a world free from the Crossblade." said the skywisp.

That was a big claim. Was that really what Secany had been doing this whole entire time? She was really trying to get rid of the Crossblade without me? But that didn't... Okay, settle down Rayse, I told myself. I already accepted that Sissany was the type to go and get dirty without me. I was sure she would've said something like, uh, she didn't want me getting hurt because... I was weak, or... something like that, but still! A-and what Kat said – Kat said she and Mari had a plan... 'if only Delta Meadow did' something. It was something. Kill Kats? Like, how horrible! So bad!

Aside from all that, if I didn't have the Crossblade to keep me distracted, I might have ended up just like Maya. Instead, I ended up like Vay used to. Was that any better?

Of course it was, silly sylveon – er, eevee. Yeah. I was fine, because the 'White' blade that ripped me up made certain that the 'Red' skin couldn't grow there. Was the Crossblade really that bad of a thing? It hurt, but... was Flux worse? I could kind of understand if the Symbis wanted to get rid of it, and if they wanted to use the Crossblade as part of a grand scheme, that meant they already knew the Cross was a counter to the Flux. So then, were they right?

Erase... all Pokémon, I thought again. We were just fake Champions created by Luna, given fake names and spread fake Gamma. But, we got our real names back once we visited the Paradox! We caught hold of the truth and stapled it to our identities, because, HERP-A-DERP, those were our identities! And, somewhere along the lines, Vay did the same thing, and he did it WITHOUT the Crossblade, uh, I think!

No way. The Symbis were wrong. Crossblade aside, erasing all Pokémon, fake or NOT, was pretty much just as bad as the Flux! I mean, that was kind of what the Flux threatened to do!

...what it always threatened to do...

And since Flux is here, there's no way the Pokémon are fake. This is a burden from home.

It's all too real.

And NO DROOLING!

I smacked my lips and made sure they were dry. The icy breeze from being carried through the air ensured that for me. It was such a far departure from the burning organic heat of the Tangle. It was nice to be cold again.

"I came to the Tangle," Mari started. "Because I was following Arcadia's wielder through it. It was not easy tracking her down, hey."

"Oh, Cadi! Cadi was there?!" I asked.

"No, not 'Cadi', but Cadi's wielder. I was heading this way when the scent of her Symbi faded out in favor of another. I'd lost her, but... naturally, I wanted to know who that other Symbi was. That was when I ran into Jirachi."

"Me?" Jira squeaked. "But I don't have a Symbi. I-I have the Crossblade. Is that a Symbi?"

"Yeah, but it's flavor is distinct, and I've learned to separate it from non-Crusaders. Uh, thanks to Mars, a while back," Mari recalled. Right, what ever happened to Mars...? "But no. It wasn't you. Certainly wasn't Maya, and I can't imagine it being Rayse, so..."

My eyes searched Jira for any vulnerability, but that was like looking for a drop of water in a sea of, bwuh, water. So, instead, I ended up looking right... at... Patty. The others must have been looking at her, too – well, Jira was! The 'kip's mouth was open a little bit, watching us all cute and skeptical.

"Me? I?! What an assumption... Oh, pardon, but you didn't make an assumption – you have a sense for these things. Duly... noted!" Patty said, writing all while she spoke, sometimes not even looking at the paper. She talked like Didi sometimes. Did Didi like mudkips? These two would've been fast buddies, since they were all about the fine arts, right?

"There's no point in hiding it, hey," Mari suggested. "Other Symbis will find you and try to brainwash you."

"Well I won't let them. Patty's ours." Jira defended, like the die-hard buddy she was.

"Well..." Pat hummed.

"Patty? You're ours, aren't you?" asked the mythical. Oh so shaky with words~...

"Oh? Yes! My mind's not changed about you whatsoever, Jirachi. But, upon Mari's referral, and just based upon a number of other things, maybe she's right," Patty said. "If I truly have a Symbi, at what such depths within me does it lie? Maybe it's something pertinent to Willow?"

"Uh, kids," Mari interrupted. "We need to set down."

Huh?

I was watching Jira and Pat the whole time, so I didn't really know how far we'd gotten. Actually, that made me a little sick to my stomach. I desperately searched for the horizon to cure that, but when the horizon was nothing but enormous chunks of floating land blocking everything beyond it, the nauseated feeling in me decided to hang around a little longer and get the better of Rayse. We were right on the threshold! Or did we pass it? We must have passed that big barrier thingy, but I didn't feel anything. It was where one Gamma influence met another and didn't mix right.

The scale of this place was ridiculous! Looking at it from a distance was one thing, but being right here up in front of it, I felt like the sheer enormity of it was gonna swallow me whole. It didn't help that I was a little babby again. It went so far up that, even when I thought we were already high up, the steepness of the isle chain made it seem like we had miles to go before we reached its pinnacle. I couldn't even tell where it led beyond the clouds. Alli said she went to that place IN the clouds, so maybe there. What WAS that place? Was this really how you got there? L-like without Tripping?

We were descending. Mari made sure to go slow enough so that my feet could set down nice and soft. Before they did that, I found out why Mari stopped at all. It wasn't because of some giant floating island chain (although that was a good bet, too). Somebody was here, wings and antennae blowing in the stormy winds picked up and distorted by the unnatural flow of, like, nature, and everything around this place.

A waft of wet grass and its fresh dew met my nose, then my back paws, front paws, and I was standing on solid, clean ground, pure and un-Fluxed. I stared at it, shining waves of wet red light rippling out through the field of grass, dark dirt between each little blade. Soil.

A soft, satisfying crunch. Patty landed next to me. I looked up to her. She was absorbed with the same thing as me. This was all a lot nicer than before. We got out of that nightmare, and it was just sinking in. Just, Alli was still waiting for us, and we weren't by her side with Mari.

The skywisp went ahead of us. She was still quiet when faced with this person. This... new person. An upright butterfly. The pattern on her huge wings resembled a sunset over an ocean, the orange semi-circle centered at the junction of her wings, rectangular rays shooting out all the way to the black outline of their edges. Beneath the semi-circle was, of course, a caricature of the sea, blue, with a familiar pattern of squares dotted here and there.

Her skin was mostly bright gray, with her human-like hands and pointy feet much darker, and the little square-edged 'corset' around her chest being white, trimmed with the same orange that her sun design was colored. She had a little bit of hair too, weirdly enough! Upon on her super round head, she had two cute white pigtails bound by little square ties, and then a single puff of hair sticking tall between her two taller antennae, tipped off with an oval, half black, half white.

She was taller than Patty, just a little bit! The kind of Pokémon she was – that was a vivillon! But was she a mutant; or, was she a siren?

She was holding something broken in two hands. It was Cadi's staff, the natural Symbi Arcadia. Her head lowered. Her fists were really tight around those broken bits. I was getting something nasty from her. That aura – like... that anger. She knew we were here, and she was so mad that her arms were shaking. I thought she was cute before, but maybe she had a temper. I had such a bad feeling about this. Why was Cadi's staff like that? Was Cadi okay?! Mari said that she was chasing Cadi's owner, but... how could that be? What the heck happened?!

"Astraea!" Mari called for the girl.

The siren, I think, shook her head, but didn't show us her face. She brought the pieces of Cadi's staff closer to her head, fists so tight that I was scared for her little fingers.

"Astraea, what happened? Where's Nikki?!" asked the skywisp.

She turned, then faced us all the way, her eyes unlike what I was expecting. The odd, compound square pattern didn't show on her eyes. They were bigger, rounder, more colorful, more (ironically) bug-eyed than her natural form's own, as bright and beautiful as the orange sun on her wings and the freakishly adorable square-shaped blush on her white cheeks. Seeing all of that pulled down by the flood of anger in her face didn't look good.

"That doesn't matter." said the siren. Whoa, she sounded young!

"What do you mean? Of course that matters!" Mari argued.

"No it doesn't. Without Arcadia, Nikki will just turn into another gross Flux. Nikki doesn't matter. None of the... stupid Pokémon matter." she said.

"RUDE," I told her. "Besides, you still ARE a Pokémon! You're a vivillon!"

"That doesn't mean anything to me," she shook her head, once again absorbed with the fragments of the fancy staff. "I was fighting so hard to change Joel's mind and I was so close. Now, I lose Arcadia, too? Why...? Aren't we better than this...? It makes me... so mad."

"Try and keep yourself focused. If you get too angry, the Flux might creep in. Trust me, I-" she stopped me.

"Please, I'm above Flux." she scoffed. "Are you completely stupid? Haven't you noticed that Flux and Symbis don't mix? It wouldn't surprise me if you didn't."

"Whoa, hey...! Can we please tone down the aggression just a little bit?" Jira requested.

"Joel...?" I heard Patty mumble. Right around now was the time I expected her to be jotting down notes, but I was a little too offended to give a poop.

"Astraea, hey, you're right. You ARE better than this," Mari told her. She tried to keep her voice low, but the currents of confused air made that impossible. "Don't let John's sacrifice for you go to waste. This was his home, his friends... so, give him and give yourself that luxury. Give yourself friends. Stop chasing other Symbis because they're Symbis. Stop chasing the Crossblade."

"Oh puh-leeeease..." Astraea... almost laughed. "Don't you even start telling me what to do. Stop chasing Symbis? Stop chasing the Crossblade?! WHAT?! What kind of massive hypocrite are you?!

I know what you're trying to do. You did it to Joel and I know you did it to Arcadia.

You really are on the Pokémon's side, aren't'cha? You want them to win, because you're scared of the Crossblade. You're scared, 'cause you can't REALLY heal people with it, and that makes you a sucky doctor."

"Oh, and how long have you been waiting to ambush me with that?" Mari asked, armored with too much integrity to let that get to her. You go, wisp~!

"Huh...?" Astraea blinked.

"I'm as sucky a doctor as you are as sucky a villain. It doesn't work for you, Astraea. Stop trying to be evil." Mari told her, unamused.

"Evil?! Hey, th-the Crossblade is the only surefire way to save this world! It's NOT evil! I don't care WHAT it is. I won't live in a world where there's Flux, and if we gotta get rid of Pokémon to stop Flux, I'll do that. I'll do that happily! But the first step is... the Crossblade. Not all us Symbis can infect the world. The Crossblade can!" Astraea explained.

"B-but... why would you need to get rid of Pokémon when you know the Crossblade already works? Right?" I inquired.

She didn't say anything.

"I have the Crossblade," I continued. "I'm a Pokémon. I'm the Pokémonest of Pokémon! AND, I'm a Flux. But I still have the Crossblade, and I'm okay. Maybe not picture perfect, but I'm o'tay~! And maybe there's some truth to what you say about the Cross – that it's... a necessary thing, if just to counterbalance the Flux. I'm all 'kay with that. But getting rid of Pokémon? That just makes you all nasty like the Flux. I don't want you to be all nasty. You're too cute!"

"Cute...?" she sighed.

"Yeah~," I exclaimed. Did she like that? Oooh I hope she liked that. "Uhm-mum, Astraea? Wouldn't it be better to understand the Flux, too? After all, I want to get rid of it. It's awful. But we have to understand it first. We have to understand each other, all four colors, not just Fluxy Red. It's... it's like a big opportunity! It's huge – like this is our one chance to be cosmic friends! And even if you don't agree, I... really don't wanna be erased."

"If you have the Crossblade, then maybe you don't need to be erased. You could still be useful." she blankly noted.

"'Useful'?! Is that ALL you gleaned from my obligatory protagonist's heartfelt speech?!" I asked.

"I..." she hesitated, her bottom lip quivering. "I didn't... ask for any of this... I don't know why I'm here... I-I don't know why... Xima just-..."

"Xima? Hey, Xima's important! Is there something you know about her?" I pressed, maybe a little too hard.

"Let's not interrogate her. I don't think she's in the right frame of mind to help us," Mari spoke up before I had even finished talking. "Well, unless we put our objectives together. You want to know why things went for Arcadia... like they did. So do I. Let's find Nikki. If we find her, maybe she can tell us what happened."

"You already know what happened," Astraea snapped again. This was starting to look hopeless. "You KNOW how she is about the Crossblade. It shouldn't be a surprise that YOUR ranting made her... do this."

"Come on, hey, you can't put that on me," Mari defended. "If someone is inclined to do something because of how they feel, it's probably that this was meant to happen."

"I don't believe you. Arcadia would never have given up. I'll bet Andromeda's your next victim, too. Or maybe it's HER!" Astraea claimed, pointing straight to our mudkip with one of the staff fragments.

"Me? This is becoming a conundrum." Patty mused.

"Whatever it is, it's not hard to see how little Glitra has changed." said the siren.

"Glitra? Oh, Mars?" Mari inquired.

"Mph, she..." Astraea sighed. "Glitra unified us and brought us all to the ends of an impossible world. She fought to the death with us – well... until the Crossblade caught her eye and she found out she could live longer with it... And now the tables have turned.

Glitra's still a selfish hypocrite. She only cares about keeping herself alive. She thinks she's the only one who can make the difference, and she has to do so by turning her back on her ideals. If it really scared her to death, she would be clinging to the Crossblade, just so she could stay alive and save her own scales. We didn't learn that about her until it was too late. Stupid... Solacea. But, not Solacea anymore, because she DID end up dying, huh?!"

"What are you talking about?! This is the first time I've heard any of this!" Mari, commented, appalled and confused.

"No surprise there. It's also no surprise that she ended up with you. You two are so alike. She didn't even take over your mind and body because of that..." Astraea grumbled. "Mmf, why am I even telling you dunces all of this?!"

"Because exposition?" I asked. Really, I did wanna learn more about who this Glitra gal was and what she did for these people, who I assumed were other Symbis in some other world. Oh! No! I know what that was! Okay, YES, it WAS that! This was like all my nonsense with Aza and my memories and things – that stuff! Except, it was the 'other side'. It was Hypera's memory. It seemed obvious, but even Hypera had a history they brought to Earth. It wasn't just the Champions or the Flux. The Crossblade and the Symbis must have had a huge story to tell.

"Exposition?" Astraea quipped. "Oh yeah. I'm the 'evil' one, and I'm doing that thing where I talk at you for a while. Shut you down with... insults 'n stuff. LOSERS. Nooo, hold on, that doesn't feel as spirited...

You know, Mari, it's so tempting...

It'd be easier if you were alone though."

"Aaaand again, WHAT are you saying?" Mari queried.

"Someone put a big bounty on your dumb head. Same person who told me I could find you here! I gotta wonder why he told me that. Didn't he know you weren't alone? Or maybe he wanted to trap me..." she explained.

"Nope," somebody said – whoa, what, where – I looked around and found another new person! No, wait, not a new person, but a familiar person! It was Fluffy! I-it was Flicker, walking into the fray with a Flux at her side – like a buizel boy! She-! "You're not alone. We just can't get away from each other, even if we Trip."

Stillness between us. Tension was so thick that I could see it frozen against the air. It didn't smell nice, either. Smelled like every color of Gamma coming together to make a big mess. My heart fluttered with apprehension. Was I gonna need to fight? I watched Flicker and her Flux companion – who was that boy? Both of them didn't look so good, but I wasn't getting any scents of Flux from Flicker. She looked hurt. Behind a floppy ear covering her face, there was scarring. It could've been mistaken for Flux, but that was just scarring. Did somebody hurt her? Did she... hurt herself? She looked so different now. All her goals, aspirations, and... I dunno – other wants, looked like they were ugly, led to ugly places, and had ugly faces. A lot like Autumnridge nowadays.

"How perfect." I heard Mari mumble.

Flicker raised an arm. There came flashes of green, white, and blue, all coalescing to create solid matter around which Flicker's hand grasped a handle, and outward from the handle came shapes that created a device, something high-tech and aglow with the same green light it was born from. A Symbi – a cannon of some kind – with rings around its barrel, pointed right at the popular skywisp.

"Hi 'Daddy-wisp', kkhkhkheeheheheHEHEHE~!" the buizel cackled. Ugh, what kind of gross feeling did he get locked away into? Or, better yet, why was he following Flicker around like he was loyal? That MUST have been a false pretense.

"Let's pick up from where we left off." Flicker said.


To Be Continued...