- Professional Standards -
Charlie 3 looked sadly at the empty spot where she used to have a bunch of berry bushes, and sighed at how she had messed that up. In the end the Ampharos shaped Administrator had to send six of her Electric type pokemon to her younger sister for medical treatment, then apologized to her other little sister who had made the plants to start with, and now what had looked to be the solution to a longstanding problem was gone just in time for an Electric type trainer originally from Galar to sign up to use her Box.
The alert for an access event let her know it was time to meet her new arrivals, and in an instant she was on the other side of the partially forested hilly region that made up her Box. With a smile that was genuine despite the bad month she was having she waited for the three pokemon to be transferred from pokeballs. The first was a purple and yellow salamander pokemon that she recognized from the database as a Toxtricity, clearly well cared for and excited about the sight of her world.
The other two triggered her medical sensors immediately and had her send a priority alert to the transfer crew that something terrible seemed to have just happened. They both had the same upper bodies, thin yellow dinosaurs with fans of feathers and two clawed forelimbs clearly meant for grabbing. Their lower bodies on the other hand were both clearly from much larger pokemon of different species, with such a clear line between their two halves that Charlie 3 was already double and triple checking every part of the transfer process. One had two massive legs and a monumental tail with sharp spikes, while the other had the tail end of some sort of fish pokemon complete with two fins acting like legs.
"Wow, this place looks nice," that second one said with a stuffed up voice from inside the pile of snow that coated the top of its lower body, so much that it nearly buried its upper one. "A bit blocky, but a lot more open than the ranch we were at."
"Yeah, bro, this is great!" the first one said taking a few steps that were honestly far too sure of themselves for Charlie 3's first impression to be correct.
"Uh, guys, the welcoming committee has that look you two always get," the Toxtricity said with the tone of somebody who had to explain a horrible truth. It reminded her of her eldest sibling for a moment, and as a result she made sure to include A-0 on this new fiasco she possibly started without any need.
John Edge looked the young Chosen One in the eyes as he interviewed for a position that needed his experience quite a bit more than his last job. The Dynamax capabilities of his home region were clearly the result of unusual energy exposure on pokemon, and his work on further analyzing the sources and protecting against wild pokemon with access to them both easily applied to this work. It was an easy decision to help out another world with an even bigger problem of that kind.
"Okay, I'm starting to get used to the pokemon world having examples of every problem I find already," Taichi Yagami said seriously. "Now, is it possible for your pokemon to use this 'Dynamax' ability?"
"I have some highly limited ability to use that outside the Galar region, but it takes some time to prepare, and there are considerable concerns with where it is safe to use that ability," he admitted uneasily. "A Dynamax or Gigantamax pokemon can easily devastate a region beyond what a normal pokemon is capable of doing."
"Our world is one that is at risk of losing entire cities from just a pokemon League level monster," Taichi warned him still quite serious. "In fact one of the things we will be restricting is access to our world directly with any of your team."
"Half of them are staying with DSS for the time being. They are good battlers, but the other side of my team has a better handle on the technical side of things," John explained a bit sadly. His fossil pokemon tended to cause some problems when people saw them, and Toxtricity was a good choice to keep the two of them company. "I have a Magnezone with a translation program and improved sensor package, and a Pikachu capable of Gigantamax that is very familiar with the dangers and side effects of exposure to unusual energies."
Taichi looked to be about to answer when another voice cut in. "Tai, do you have Mr. Edge here?" a blue haired young man asked. "DSS just called me with some sort of emergency with his pokemon. Well, either that or they were already patchwork prehistoric monsters, which is still a bit of a problem."
"It's the second one," John responded with a cringe. He had been worried that the people he had set up the storage with had not been properly informed of that issue. "I still have copies of the medical data on them if those didn't get passed along properly."
"Tai, do you think you can pass them to me for this guy?" was the young man's reply, directed at Mr. Yagami.
"Joe, why can't he just do that himself?" Taichi questioned.
"Because Delta 2 is mad enough she might actually try disassembling anyone who is even partially responsible for their current state," Joe said entirely serious.
"Literally?" John had to ask with considerable horror, and then paused. "Wait, disassembling might actually help them a bit..." he started then trailed off at the looks he received.
"We've had medical checks for it before," Arctozolt said to Delta 2, and then the snow covered pokemon sniffled just to emphasize how ill suited the patchwork dinosaurs were to actually judge such things.
"This is just about the only location on the entire planet that has someone with past experience with actual medical treatment for our kind of existence," TyranoGazimon said with a glare that everyone could feel due to her still fairly untrained Psychic type. "And yes, I have actually checked that fact out. None of this paperwork lists the few other sites I know about, and the first place on the list is a site I've been specifically warned to watch out for." They had moved the pair to Box 201 as quickly as they could, and the two questionably made pokemon were still inside of a pair of rather advanced sensor systems while their teammate waited with their trainer in another room.
"Cara Liss," Delta 2 spat as she triple checked the documents they had just been given by the trainer. "Grant, why the hell hasn't she been arrested yet?"
"Because as horrible as the results end up she is one of the only Fossil revival specialists that have managed non-Rock type Fossil pokemon in the entire world," the Armaldo replied sounding if anything angrier than the medical Administrator. "The downside to her method is that it requires a complete fossil to properly create a pokemon, with rather obvious side effects when she has to make do with the pieces at hand." He motioned a claw at one 'zolt, and then the other. "I've seen images of the other two variants that are stable enough to give to a trainer, and can tell you these two are the lucky ones."
"Dracovish didn't seem to be doing that badly," Dracozolt said with a cringe that informed them all that the yellow, green, and red pokemon knew what he was saying was mostly wrong. "At least as long as she kept water on her head."
"They put that one with the head on the end of what is his tail," Quagsire bluntly told the group. "I got a bit sick from looking at one of them." She then frowned at the pair of stitched together Fossil pokemon. "Actually, I think it might have been a picture that specifically had you in it."
"I do not want to try and work out how one of those works," Tyra said with a sigh. "I think I've got a start on everything that s wrong with you two and how I can fix it." She took her handheld scanner from the dock on the side of the computer systems connected to the main scanners. "Let's give your trainer the news."
Delta 2 flickered across the Box instead of walking, which was a good sign that she was entirely done with the situation. The other five monsters then somewhat quickly walked into the other room where John Edge was waiting with the rest of his and Grant's teams while Joe was keeping an eye on them. Tyranomon was currently holding Dugtrio's ball without the Ground type out and about, so Joe had probably had a rough time of it.
"Delta 2, can everyone understand everyone?" Tyra asked with a huff. Both John and Joe were clearly quite shaken by the instant appearance of the Administrator, but the Chansey shaped pokemon simply gave her a nod to continue. "Right, I will preface this explanation of my initial findings with a note about pokemon. Pokemon energies can handle a lot of stuff, I mean a whole lot of weird shit that I never expected to see in a non-digital creature. So when I say these two are only functional because their energies are sustaining their messed up bodies, I mean they have more in common with manmade pokemon that you can open up and replace the parts inside of than the average biological pokemon."
"I'm not entirely sure I know what pokemon would count as an 'average biological pokemon'," Delta 2 grumbled. "But I understand what she means. There are major segments of their bodies that only work because they are instinctively reacting to their condition and correcting for it. The less drastic comparison would be if a normal pokemon was over or underweight, their energies need to work harder to maintain the same status as a pokemon in better condition."
"Actually, all of that makes a lot of sense to me," John admitted as he looked at his own mechanical pokemon. "Magnezone has gotten a bad upgrade before, and we ended up needing to fix more of his systems than just the bad one after the fact. How bad is it for those two?"
"In Dracozolt's case his heart is undersized for his lower body, and is overworking massively as a result," the patchwork digimon noted gripping her scanner a bit tighter. "Your energy is honestly working so hard to keep you from having a heart attack that you could probably use it to save someone else that was having one. That has some secondary effects, but those can be handled much more easily."
"Let me guess," Arctozolt snuffled as his brother contemplated that. "I'm in constant danger of freezing to death."
"Heatstroke actually," Tyra said a bit smugly, but still not happily. "Your lower body has a very large layer of natural fat that insulates it, and if you were entirely that creature you'd probably find the temperature of this room uncomfortable, but able to handle. Unfortunately your body can't regulate your internal temperature quite right, so it tries to use your much thinner upper body to vent heat." The former digimon looked at him and pointed at his snow. "If it wasn't for your Ice type's abilities giving you that ablative coating of frost your upper body would rapidly overheat and cook itself."
"Wait, is that why it tends to melt off him when he overdoes things?" Toxtricity asked with considerable worry. "We thought that he was just having trouble getting warmed up."
"Heatstroke," Arctozolt dully repeated. "I'm freezing myself to the point that I'm always sick because otherwise I'd get heatstroke?" He huffed out a cloud of cold air.
"Sounds wonderful," Dracozolt said as he attempted to check his pulse. "What did you mean by 'fix it' earlier?"
"I have three options that I can work on for each of you," Tyra replied. "The first and least drastic is a simple tune up. Your bodies stay the same, I just alter the internals and energies so the problems aren't as bad."
"I would not recommend that option," Magnezone droned. "Problems reduced to 'not as bad' are still problems that can cause you to require significant replacement parts later on." The three eyes of the disk shaped pokemon shifted to their trainer. "If they can inspect internals at this level then we might require a checkup as well," they added in a slightly different tone.
"The other two options are basically variants on the same idea," the patchwork digimon continued with her reptilian claw placed over her face. "Of those the first is that we modify your lower bodies to match up with your upper bodies better. The most likely result of those changes is an increase in your Electric type capabilities at a cost to your other type."
"I really wouldn't like to be that much smaller," Dracozolt said almost instantly.
"It doesn't sound too bad to me," Arctozolt added far more thoughtfully. "But, could you find a way to not make me less of an Ice type with that? Sniffles aside I really do like my typing."
"The last option is to try and bulk up your upper half to fit your lower better," Tyra told Dracozolt. "As for the type issue, given how much we will be messing with you for these two options some custom work is to be expected."
"Be aware that there will be a delay for these corrections if they have to include changes that are harder for us to implement," Delta 2 warned both of the Fossil pokemon. "The warning was that the easiest implementation is most likely to have that effect on your types."
"Altering both halves would likely result in a mid sized final form," Tyra said mostly to herself. "And the mixing might help with cohesion as well as keep the types stable..." She continued more quietly, clearly interested in the idea.
"We are staying here a while, right?" John's Pikachu grumbled at this result.
"I'm a bit worried that I didn't get the job," John mumbled back as he took note of how excited two members of his team were about what was probably an experimental procedure that would take a while.
Tai hoped that whatever had just come up counted as the 'weird stuff' going on with John, because what the guy provided looked really good for the position. There was still the test to see what he could spot out of a set of readings on the contaminated bird, to be compared to what Izzy and DSS had found while looking at it, but so far it looked like the pokemon world inhabitant would get the position. As long as the guy could manage that, he would fill a very needed slot in their technical team for someone who had a background in the energy contamination issue.
Unfortunately that was just one of far too many positions Tai had discovered that the MRT now needed to fill in order to actually deal with real monsters being a thing. He needed to get people who understood the government enough to work with various other groups when they needed to react to issues. For one thing Cody's grandfather passing details to the police was nowhere near enough if an attack occurred or another person started turning people into monsters. Then there was the media aspect, which Kichiro Ono had begged him to get some help on. Matt's dad was able to get a position with the TV station to be dedicated to helping them out, but that still left a lot of other places they needed to work with in case they needed to provide news on events. Cody's mom was still building their earthquake disaster group, which had recently expanded when they learned of the infused bird and realized that monster generated natural disasters in general could be a problem. The last thing they needed was this new bird whipping up tornados somehow.
There were some good parts. The digimon world itself was easy to cover with just the Digidestined, the fact that they were just kids like him meant less there. The Dark Empire was managing itself fine and even providing some nice reports. The technical side of things was pretty much the same, with this latest position being the main thing they needed there. Medical was a bit better than expected, as both Joy and Beatrice were good enough to double what that hiring gave them. Upload was still working on untangling the mess they made, but actually were a complete and functional organization compared to the rest of them. Additionally Agumon was having a lot of success with getting the various digimon villages, towns, and cities on board with trying to get them digimon recruits to assist with smaller problems and who knew to escalate to the MRT if things were particularly complex.
The big issue, however, was that he didn't have anybody left who could actually be taken seriously when investigating anything that happened in his home world. Ryuuji was needed to get started with interacting with the government given the former MRT leader actually knew a lot of them already, Kurou was a technical expert that could keep up with Izzy, Ono was begging him for help with PR issues already, Kazuo honestly was too close to retirement to ask to do that, Aiko was a secretary that still hadn't found a comfortable way to stay human yet, and the rest of their parents had other things to do because they were adults with their own lives. Well, Yolei's dad had extra time apparently, but that was causing them problems instead of helping with any.
"Well, Agumon, what do you think of the options?" Tai asked his brother. He had given the digimon the stack of resumes and questionnaires that they had gotten so far for the investigator positions to see what a non-human set of eyes thought of them.
"I'm pretty sure most of these people didn't think the questions were serious," the dinosaur said with a slightly puzzled tone. "Maybe even didn't think any of it was serious, a lot of the resumes seem fake." The dinosaur held up one with a name that was just the word "monster" three times.
"Wonderful. People from the human world don't know monsters are real, humans from the pokemon world can't fit in well enough to work, and none of the monsters would be any better at looking normal," Tai complained. "The worst part of all that is that we can't use any of the Digidestined because nobody knows monsters are real. A kid talking about monsters seriously is a lot easier to ignore than another adult."
His brother frowned at one of the questionnaires. "Tai, this one sounds odd. Should we be checking these for people to investigate too?" Agumon asked a touch tiredly.
Tai sighed and covered his face with a hand. "Set any like that aside so we can check them against our other data," he groaned. "Maybe we can use those ones to get a start on finding the better candidates."
Charlie 3 listened to Delta 2's subordinate Water type explain the issue, and then looked at her three new inhabitants. "Be honest with me, how much more do I need to worry about them getting hurt by corruption?" she asked the other pokemon, the world itself altered so only he could hear her and vice versa.
"It would be a good idea to make sure anything new that comes in doesn't get close to them," Joe replied quietly. "They are already enough of a mess that any corruption influence could be really bad for them. Janice actually went off on sales for not forwarding the medical documents to begin with because of how we need to worry about that. A-0 actually went over to their part of the building, but I don't know what they said."
"It," she corrected the new Troubleshooter with a cringe. "A-0 is fairly specific about that. If it isn't in a good mood you should probably be a bit more careful about that. My oldest sibling doesn't take threats to our job well." She rubbed the back of her neck. "A-0 is a bit overprotective of the rest of us." She looked over to where the Toxtricity was starting to show off what she had gone over with the Electric/Poison type very quickly between when she sent his teammates to the medical Box and when his trainer picked him up to get the news with the rest of his team.
"I think I can understand why," Joe agreed with a sympathetic look. "Are you up for dealing with them?"
"You really are new," Charlie 3 sighed at how seriously he asked that. "Let me put it to you this way, I genuinely thought they were the result of our systems causing something to go wrong. Delta 2's professional standards aside they are the kind of thing some of my siblings might just cause in a misguided attempt at entertaining their own inhabitants."
"Like using berries to let them fight a bit less carefully?" the Floatzels dryly replied with a glance in the direction of her now empty garden patch.
"Really new. Have you heard why Shawn and Serperior have switched eyes yet?" she sadly informed him.
"Something about being in each others' original body that I've been trying to avoid," Joe replied. "Because Delta 2 is definitely going to make me go over that data at some point, and I do not need a head start there."
"It isn't just their eyes?" the Ampharos shaped Administrator grumbled. "Anyway, that was a long time coming. Those two have had little things like that happen to them since the start of this, and most of the time they have been lucky to not get side effects. I'm honestly surprised they aren't part corruption themselves."
She did not like how her conversation partner very clearly did not respond to that joke.
"This is the single most terrifying scan I have ever seen, and I don't care if you pay me or not I am going to try and help you with this," John Edge said after about three minutes of triple checking the data he had just been given as a test.
"That was on the list of responses DSS gave me," Taichi replied easily. "Now, can you give any details on what the exact issues you see are?" That reply only served to further tell John that, compared to what they wanted to hire him to work with, his team issues were actually a minor concern.
"This animal didn't have energy before," he started, still rather boggled by the reality of that. "Nothing, not even a non-type energy. That means that it has no protections against typed energy latching onto it from other sources. From this scan it appears to be getting the energy from plants, but I suspect they also have this issue because it is a bit-" He sighed, at a loss for words. "You absolutely need to worry about whatever trees this bird is using turning into monsters, but since they got the energy first I can rather easily say this bird will likely develop the Grass type."
"How long before it starts being able to talk to pokemon?" Tai asked with a serious nod.
He looked back down at the papers. The energy readings were miniscule, but he had worked with the side effects of Dynamax, Mega, and even one time Ultra energies before. He had even seen a rare set of scans of the Flameheart not-pokemon monsters sealed under glacial ice by dedicated Legendary pokemon, and one time he had even seen an amount of typed energy this small before. "It probably already can say something, but it likely doesn't have the intelligence to make use of that yet," the Electric type trainer reluctantly admitted. "Smaller pokemon many times use energy to think just as much as their minds, and this is a very tiny bird."
"Alright then, that covers enough of the stuff I've got," the leader of the MRT said far too happily. "When can you start?"