At The End of All Things
Apollonia City - Luna
(The following story takes place in this universe several millennia before Arceus ever discovered the Earth, and gave it Pokémon. As such, this short story will be unique in this Saga, as it's still very much a Pokéverse story, but the lack of Pokémon technically makes it more of a 'crossover' between Pokémon and other franchises. This is meant to give you the readers foreknowledge that the humans in the present era of the Saga may not know, or have had certain facts twisted about, over time. These events will be relevant in the main plot eventually, and explained/alluded to, but if you're curious about the grim details of humanity's fall in this slice of the Multiverse, you should read this.)
When humanity first reached for the stars, their closest optimal colonization spot became the Moon, or Luna, as the residents of the first beyond-Earth city came to call it. From Luna, humanity built massive colony ships, at the bleeding edge of their society's technology, when it came to habitation and comfort. These artificial cylinders were massive, and capable of holding a permanent population of millions of humans. In the early days, they greatly reduced the overpopulation problem on the Earth, and every nation large enough, and rich enough, commissioned one from the colony of Apollonia, not wishing to be outdone by their political rivals.
Though the nations of Earth birthed these new space homes in a desperate last bid to ease the pollution effect humanity was causing on the Earth, in the end, they were what sealed humanity's fate, and their planet's. Each nation that birthed such a colony, and made the moon-based city of Apollonia absurdly wealthy in the process. Eventually the nations on the Earth lost touch with their people sent to space, namely because exerting influence from the Earth was all but impossible over their communication technology.
Though some, like Neo China, America, and Russia, were and remained heavily monitored by their respective governments until the very end of this era of expansion, other colony ships, and usually newer ones, began diverging from their nations of birth, with the goal of uniting the people of space, under a space ruler. Many agreed that the greedy gravity bound dictators upon the Earth shouldn't have much, or any, say in how 'Spacenoids' lived their lives. Within three centuries of launching the colonies, this new self-proclaimed group of humans made an effort to diverge from Earth and its politics and encouraged other oppressed Earthlings to do the same, so they could spend their lives admiring the planet from above, without polluting it further.
Many humans saw an appeal in this, and despite their overbearing leader's words cautioning against living in space, hundreds of thousands took the offered opportunity to live on the final frontier, and presumably away from the power hungry fools driving their planet towards economic and natural disaster.
As conditions on Earth worsened, despite numerous all-country attempts to stymie pollution and end wars between major powers, which contributed greatly to the planet's pollution levels, the Spacenoids eventually decided to revolt as a unified whole, and it was Neo Russia's colony that led them, first breaking ties with their motherland, and then killing her representatives, quickly and quietly, and all at once. Neo Russia operatives did the same across the other colonies from world superpowers, many of which had, over the centuries, added more colony ships to the originals, and connected them into orbiting hives of humanity, larger than any city on Earth had ever come close to being. These massive space cities, despite not having a planet, were classified as ecumenopoli due to their population size, which only boomed once the colonies were linked together.
Though some might have protested such violent methods of control, the Neo Russians didn't care, and they seized power mere hours after their grisly deeds were completed, taking out anyone in a position of authority who was still tied to the Earth, and anyone from a foreign colony that would dispute their rule. Their leader was, of course, propagandized as a hero, liberating Spacenoids from their oppressive earth bound leech countries, and promising them a new almost tax-free era of prosperity, if they but followed Neo Russia's chosen leader.
Their names and deeds would eventually be forgotten, entirely, but in that era, Neo Russia's conqueror was convinced that he would live forever in history as its greatest ruler. He was an atypical despot, with a mind tempered by logic, science, and a severe lack of morality. What he lacked in morals, he made up in charisma, and in the decades to come, whenever he was challenged by the media networks that gave the colonies news, he boldly lied to them, about what the colony's combined military forces were constructing. In privacy only a space bound empire could achieve, he set the foundation for a dynasty that he and his family intended to rule for the foreseeable future.
Correctly predicting that the space colonies would one day rebel, much like the ancient colonies of Earth's old naval superpowers had, the nations of Earth had refused to launch many tanks or weapons up to the space colonies, and without sources of ore to mine, making them became difficult, until the new government, based in Neo Russia's mass of interconnected colony ships known collectively as Kosmik Gorod, began sending humans into the Asteroid Belt, to mine the ores on the larger asteroids there. Mining in the belt itself quickly became more trouble than it was worth, and instead, Neo Japan was contracted to build something that could safely drag these massive ore-rich rocks towards the colonies, and keep them in a synchronized orbit, as the humans mined them for everything they had.
What ores they did manage to mine yielded something new, something not found on earth. An alloy of this ore and classic metalworking techniques from multiple cultures and metalsmiths, yielded a new metal alloy that was light enough for what Neo Japan insisted they needed, in order to safely move such massive asteroids. The result, was giant humanoid shaped suits of this metal, dubbed Luna Titanium. With these sturdy but lightweight machines, piloted by Neo Japan's best, the Asteroid Belt was quickly harvested from, over the course of several decades. With each massive rock brought back being reduced to space debris once the space bound humans were finished, the belt of dangerous asteroids began to become more navigable, though only pirates and other societal undesirables brought their space faring ships out beyond the belt.
This surge in resources, ones that the Earth had long since run out of when it came to mining, caused the governments still on Earth to panic, and in that panic, yet another tyrant saw the opportunity for control. Five centuries after mankind embarked to colonize the space around the Earth, operatives from the planet managed to sneak into Kosmik Gorod, Neo Tokyo, and the head colony of the America's that was the direct connection to the other fifty two cylinders, designated only as Washington. Five of the massive machine suits were successfully stolen, and piloted back to Earth, where the Allied Nations then reverse-engineered them, and began melting down old aircraft, seacraft, and land-bound war machines en masse to create new ones.
When the Spacenoids discovered what Earth was doing to their marvels of science and engineering, Neo Russia urged their people to do the same, claiming that at that point, war was inevitable. Surprisingly to Neo Russia, a massive group of Spacenoids, all from 'less important' colonies, petitioned their great leader for a chance to both avoid a war with their homelands and families, and to further the Spacenoid cause. They had many great scientific minds in their number, and said minds claimed that, with a little help from the colonies, they could terraform Mars itself into another Earth, and were convinced that the distance between the planets would dissuade the Earthlings from continuing to harass them.
While Neo Russia's current dynastic leader had no intention of letting Mars split off on its own, he did think it would be good to fall back to, if things went wrong. The nations of Earth were making greater strides than expected in developing their newest weapons of war, machines in the shape of men they had dubbed 'mobile suits', and were even then outfitting with rockets and weapons, to undoubtedly be used against every Spacenoid who resisted their impotent bid for power.
The Allied Nations managed to create enough mobile suits to take Apollonia, and Luna itself. From there, they turned the Moon's manufacturing facilities, ones that had grown both massive and profitable in the intervening centuries, towards producing spaceships that could hold, launch, and support their mobile suits with covering fire in space combat.
Unfortunately for the Earth, Neo Russia's dynasty of quiet subjugation had done the same, and they had done it earlier. Thus, they knew the difficulties of battling in space, and while mobile suits as weapons were a newer idea, Kosmik Gorod had produced enough to attempt to take Apollonia, leading to the first battle of the war that would bring humanity, as a species, to its knees. The Earth forces quickly found themselves besieged in Apollonia, and were only freed at the last minute by several rebel spacecraft, carrying crews of Spacenoids who still had ties to the planet, many of whom were branded traitors by Neo Russia's puppet dynasty. They were able to drive off Neo Russia's mobile suits, and the Allied Nations were seemingly glad to welcome these last minute heroes back into the fold.
By this point, Mars had indeed been successfully terraformed, and while the new colony of Mars was eager to use this technology on other planets in the Sol System, Kosmik Gorod forbid them from doing so, while the war with Earth was still ongoing. As Apollonia's foundries produced more and more mobile suits, the Spacenoids struggled to keep up with them, and when they finally did take Apollonia, it was discovered that the Allied Nations had sabotaged and destroyed anything useful remaining on Luna, before leaving to fight entirely in space, as their enemy did.
Weary of war already, the citizens of Luna petitioned their new ruler for ships to take them to Mars, and safety, and the comparatively kind hearted latest dynastic ruler of Neo Russia allowed it. This initial migration had unforeseen consequences though, for as Apollonia and the other Luna cities emptied, so too did many colonies, using civilian ships retrofitted for longer distance space travel to reach the Red Planet, and escape the fires of the rapidly building war. Occupied as they were by the Allied Nation's attrition tactics, Neo Russia had no choice but to ignore their fleeing citizens, and lock down those who remained, indoctrinate them with more nationalist rhetoric than ever before, and send them to kill Earthlings.
Five years passed before the war came to a head, it was only the military forces of Neo Russia, America, China, and Germany who stayed as a majority, in the fight on the side of all Spacenoids. Within three years, the colonies had become empty husks, home only to abandoned pets, and human dredges not deemed worth saving by their semi-tyrannical regime. The Allied Nations had, after abandoning Apollonia, become a self-sustaining guerilla force, striking at the Spacenoids whenever they tried shifting from hunting the Allies down, to manufacturing more mobile suits.
At the end of five years, the Luna Titanium had run out, nobody on Mars was willing to risk their life to go get more, and by the time they did, the Allied Nations would have bled the Spacenoids dry anyway. To prevent a total loss, Kosmik Gorod's current dynastic leader was urged at the advice of his advisors to utilize the colonies themselves, as weapons. Their reasoning was that the Earth had suffered little in this war, compared to the billions of Spacenoids who'd given up their homes and lives to flee rather than resist being controlled by the Earth again.
The erroneous belief in the space colony turned fortress was that the people of Earth had it easy. The proposed plan would ensure that they also lost their homes, as so many Spacenoids had, and even if they did eventually lose to the Allied Nation's superior pilots and strategies, the Earth would never be able to recover from the devastation enough to reach Mars, and the war would well and truly end.
Kozmotzar Nikolai Alexeyev, who would become the last of his dynasty to rule Kosmik Gorod and the colonies loyal to it, initially denied this plan. He refused to doom those remaining on the Earth, and by all accounts doing all they could to stop the planet from dying. He claimed that this plan would seal Earth's fate, and though his advisors argued for many galactic standard hours, the young ruler's mind, tempered by war and exhaustion, held true to his morals. He did not order the colonies to drop...but unfortunately for him, history always requires a scapegoat, and as with most kind natured rulers, his authority was not as solid as he assumed it was.
His advisors went ahead with the plan regardless, planting their operatives on now abandoned colonies on every side of what had come to be known as the 'Earth Sphere' when the humans had needed a name for the theater in which this latest war was being waged. Each of these colonies was then disconnected from their hive of origin, and in a twist of fateful irony, focused back upon the major urban centers that had originally paid for their construction. While the young ruler slept soundly in Kosmik Gorod's finest bed, the colonies began moving, and by the time the Allied Nation forces in space noticed, it was already too late to stop them all.
Nobody who survived the disaster to come would ever forget the sight of hundreds of massive metal cylinders, descending from space to exact misguided vengeance on the people below. Each major city had been targeted, and unfortunately, there were enough abandoned colonies by that point of humankind's expansion for additional targets as well.
North America - Low Earth Orbit
"Do what you can, Rei...we don't have enough firepower to stop all of them...no matter what we do today, people are going to die. By the billions. The greatest loss of human life in our history...just...do your best. We won't be able to save them all...but those of us still up here will avenge them..."
Amuro switched off his comm once the message from Captain Akarui finished, and he turned his mobile suit towards the colony ships above him. There were six headed for North America alone, and he knew the Captain was correct. No matter what he did, the people below would inevitably suffer. All he could choose, was who. The brown haired Japan native looked again at the scans, and grimaced. The eastern seaboard was, as it had always been, more populated than the western one. The west's population was more spread out, but two entire colony ships had been focused on that part of the planet anyway.
Amuro leveled his Beam Cannon at the ship designated for New York City and Washington. With the power in the weapon, he knew his suit would only survive for about five shots, before the stress of the recoil within the Earth's gravity tore his suit apart, and sent him hurtling to his own demise. At that moment, as he lined up the shot, he wished he was guarding his home of Japan, which had three colonies focused upon it. Even then though, he could hear Japan's chosen pilot on the comm link between the Allied Nations mobile suits, shouting about victory, and the east burning red, or something.
"Alpha Gundam...firing first shot!" Was the only warning he gave, before the massive purple energy beam shot forth, and hit the colony. When the dust and smoke of the hit cleared, he swore, and an angry voice came over his comm, one of the officers still on the Earth, most likely.
"Rei! You idiot! You only took out half of it...projections have the debris landing on...on Florida." Amuro wiped the sweat from his brow, responding quickly, "I can still take it out!"
"Negative, Alpha." A new voice cut in. "You only have enough shots for the six ships headed your way. We don't have spare beam cartridges. Once you're spent, that's it. Your suit wouldn't be able to handle an extra anyway. Don't waste your ammo on those already dead! Focus your aim on the one targeting Chicago! And don't miss!"
Amuro knew the voice of the Allied Nation's morally questionable leader, but as much as he disagreed with the man's methods and politics, the end of the world was not the time to argue. And, he had a point. "Acknowledged." Amuro grumbled, before shifting his aim from the piece of colony headed for Florida, and focusing on the still intact colony going for Chicago, just entering the atmosphere, given away by the cherry red metal burning up on the outside.
Thankfully, the colony ships had not all been launched at once, they came one at a time but they had all been deadlocked into descending, so boarding them wasn't an option. They came hurtling down on multiple areas of the planet one by one, lest they crash into each other on their descent, and it was this computer logic that had given the Earth their last best chance to stop total destruction. Desperate Mobile Suit pilots, scattered across the planet, had been armed with an experimental energy cannon that was supposed to have been able to eradicate a colony entirely with a single shot. Evidently, they had been overhyped. Amuro shifted the Alpha Gundam, going lower, and adjusting for debris before he took another shot. This one, hit the colony's energy station as intended, and the ferocity of the explosion left only tiny but still not insignificant shards hurtling towards the planet. They too would cause damage, but nowhere near the scale that a colony would have, and their trajectory sent them towards Canada, the only nation that hadn't produced a colony, officially, but had instead focused on walling off their southern border, and secluding themselves from the world as they kept their natural lands as intact as they could as the planet descended into nuclear winter.
Even at the end of the world, they had staunchly refused to get involved in the war, and now the rain of fiery metal would be their punishment. Amuro felt the least sympathy for the now insular nation. They'd abandoned the rest of the world to focus their attention inward, despite most of their land being tundra. Getting their beloved ice paradise pelted by some debris remnants was the least they'd earned in Amuro's opinion, and it was an opinion shared by the rest of the planet, once they'd discovered the imminent world-ending threat, and Canada had still refused to help. He hoped one of the debris shards punched a hole in their obnoxiously large wall, and as the third colony descended through the clouds, he moved the Alpha Gundam. again, this time aiming the debris for the Atlantic, where it probably wouldn't kill any humans, at least.
He successfully scored his hits again and again until the second to last beam cartridge malfunctioned. By the time he ejected and manually replaced it, Neo Mexico's largest Earth city, located on the 'tip' that extended south from California, took the hit. The devastation was complete, and the new capital of the nation that had expanded into space completely, and then returned to the Earth years later in search of resources, was obliterated. America had claimed their old capital Mexico City for themselves, but oddly enough, that one had not been targeted by the Spacenoids.
As the Alpha Gundam began tearing from stress fractures and the mostly titanium structure became ever more brittle, Amuro lined up his final shot. The debris from New Tork's colony had descended slowly as it slowly arced towards Florida, and Amuro had discovered a brief chance to take out both it, and the colony headed for Sacramento in one single, final shot, if he aimed well enough. He ignored the voices in his ear as they realized what he was attempting, but if it meant saving the [heavily densely populated Florida area as well as the west coast's largest megalopolis, he had to try.
As he lined up and took the final shot, his final purple beam arced across the majority of the continent, as the debris over Florida became negligible. While he did hit the colony aiming for Sacramento as well, he only spun it slightly off course, and only destroyed its upper half. It impacted at the northern part of the Valley of Death, and the wave of force and destruction from the impact wiped out the city anyway, as well as the relatively eroded mountain range that should have protected it. Some people managed to survive the catastrophic devastation, but their buildings had been leveled in the wave of concussive force following the impact, and thousands of tons of mountain bombarding their city as well hadn't helped.
Amuro had a good view of the sky as the Alpha Gundam finally broke in half, and sent him hurtling towards the Atlantic. He hadn't been the only pilot to miss, or take a shot that would've taken out two colonies at once. The Middle East's west bank had been one such shot, as the pilot for that area of the world managed to save India, only to then lose Istanbul and one of humanity's ancient holy sites all at once with his final shot, unable to decide between the crossroads of the old world, or the holy land that, to that final day, had still been drenched in blood, as people fought over the right to claim it.
In the end, Japan was the only nation left untouched by a colony, but the raining debris left in the wake of the Burning Gundam's destruction efforts hit not one, not two, but three of the five nuclear power plants that kept the lights on for the island. The resulting meltdowns drenched the majority of the island in radiation, and doomed her people to a slow decay into infertility and other side effects of nuclear fallout.
Shiro Base - Orbit Between Luna and Earth
The flagship of the Allied Nations watched helplessly from orbit as, despite their pilots best efforts, the lack of mega particle beams and last ditch attempts to save as many people as possible ultimately resulted in a planet consumed by fire. Captain Akarui's voice came over the comm, as every passenger aboard the stark white warship watched in horror. "Today...humanity suffered a blow we will never recover from...the Earth is burning, an uncountable number of humans are dead, and as we speak...the man responsible for the order is planning to flee Kosmik Gorod, for Mars, with the rest of the godless Spacenoids!"
A few people looked up, at their Captain's words. His usual calm tone was gone, and the desire for revenge was obvious to anyone with ears. "As long as we have fuel, and oxygen, we will not give up this fight! I don't intend to let Alexeyev flee to his terraformed paradise...not after this! All remaining crew with above average mobile suit simulator skills are to report to the Hangar! We assault Kosmik Gorod immediately, and we will take the Spacenoid's head, or die trying. Either way...there's no going back to Earth. Our pilots are gone, and the internet just went dead. Our societies have essentially collapsed. It's all up to us now, to make sure that we take the bastards responsible for this atrocity with us! Prepare to attack!"
And in short, they did. In a heroic struggle of guaranteed suicide, the members of the Shiro Base, and their remaining forces, laid siege to Kosmik Gorod. While the ships distracted what military remained in service of the dying dynasty, one group of mobile suits moved to plant explosives on the city's many colony energy stations. Enough reactions from them would bring the entire space bound Ecumenopolis down in an explosion not all that dissimilar from those currently ravaging the Earth.
The other group of mobile suits went to find the Kozmotzar, who looked to have recently awakened. Captain Akarui led that squad himself, and when he asked the leader of Neo Russia's Spacenoid army why he had doomed unknown billions to fiery death, all he got as a response, was "I told them not to…"
Once, that would've been enough for the Captain to lose steam, and fall to sadness. Once, the sincerity of the young man's voice would've reached him, as the truth. But the truth no longer mattered. Everyone he loved had probably burned to death in flames, or would suffer a worse fate, as humanity's barbarity would return with a vengeance, as it always had, when society failed. The people on the planet would, if history repeated once more as it was wont to do, continue slaughtering each other for an endless list of pointless, and objectively meaningless reasons, until all they had left to fight with was sticks and stones.
The Captain ended the Kozmotzar, and then his warriors turned their weapons on themselves. Akarui had selected them specifically from among Shiro base's crew, as they were people whose homes and familial ties had been brutally severed. Not one of them intended to leave Kosmik Gorod alive, and not one of them did. The station did eventually explode, but only the outer colonies of the ecumenopolis in space were ravaged. The inner colonies remained intact, though they too were empty, they were also too massive for the angry Earthlings to search through.
In the shadows, the men and women responsible for pulling the strings of both the Spacenoids and Allied forces hid quietly, with their hoard of supplies. Food, and fuel for whatever ship they could find intact, as well as spacesuits that could reach Apollonia, for if they found nothing that would get them to Mars.
The group of greedy humans did not rouse themselves until two months after the battle of Kosmik Gorod, when their food stores had finally started to dwindle. Just as quietly, hidden by shadow, they gathered what supplies had survived from where they'd been cached, and eventually found and retrofitted a hidden top tier naval ship for Mars travel. Their suits would keep them in suspended animation, until the ship finally reached Mars. Despite their fuel, the journey would still be long.
Fifteen Years After the Colonies Dropped - Mars, Colony Alpha
The people of Mars, most of whom had fled to the Red Planet with nothing but food and sleeping supplies, arrived to find the planet terraformed into a crimson paradise. The grass was red, the water was clear enough to reflect the same color, and the newly fashioned and replenished atmosphere took on a similar hue.
Despite the color though, many of the colony refugees considered the planet to be a paradise. The colonies had always provided rather decent facsimiles of life on Earth, but compared to the majesty of a newly terraformed planet once barren, many realized they'd spent most of their existence thus far in a metal tube. Gravity, and an unspoiled planet, were new concepts to the Spacenoids, many of whom had been living in space for centuries, and could trace their family lines all the way back to the country that had built their space home.
The minds running this last bastion of human civilization had been careful to record as much of their history as possible, and to cull any elements of the old Earth that would bring the division and hatred of their birth planet here, to this new, crimson paradise. There were only a few individuals that had warranted a close eye, and even fewer that the leaders had been forced to end, and then bury in the red sands of Mars' remaining deserts. Most of the people embraced the hardships of their new life with honesty and eagerness, and under the guide of scientists, journalists, musicians, artists, essentially anyone that wasn't anything resembling a 'lawyer', the people flourished and in time removed such labels entirely.
It was to this crimson paradise that the shadow rulers of Kosmik Gorod went, once they managed to survive humanity's fall, and quietly escape. They posed as members of a little known religious cult that they claimed had carved out a niche to survive in back on Kosmik Gorod. Many of the Spacenoids who'd come to Mars had left their old religions behind them, convinced by the rationalized arguments of their new leaders that their new planet did not, and would not, suffer from the same idiocy that had helped drive humanity into a seemingly endless space war driven by greed and a lust for power.
They were allowed to still practice of course, those who wished to do so, but the official directive was to do so privately, to keep such matters away from the public, so that one religion did not rise up over the others. Naturally, some tried to resist this dilution of religious influence on society, only to find themselves outnumbered by the majority of humans from other superstition based groups, that were more than willing to get violent to keep one group from controlling and inevitably oppressing the others.
As that had been among the first of the Mars colony's issues, the people had since let them go, and learned to live in some semblance of harmony for several years. Most of the Martian Council welcomed the newcomers, and were all too willing to let them practice their strange faith, whose tenets they refused to elaborate on. Others, were immediately suspicious, and in due course, after about a week of investigation, realized who exactly had shown up on their unspoiled paradise.
What happened next set the tone for the red planet for the next ten millennia, and longer. The former advisors to the Kozmotzar managed to recruit many gullible Martians to their fold, though the exact practices of their group were kept very hidden. Upon realizing that their own council members, as well as a majority of the colony population was buying into the newcomer's strange cult, one of the other council members decided to get a gun involved, and went to personally disassemble the so-called 'Church of Mars'. After four long years of their recruiting rhetoric and arrogant tone, he had never bought that the group's cult hadn't had a name before arriving, just like he had rightly realized it was nothing even close to resembling the kind of religion mankind had been embracing for the better part of four hundred thousand years.
When pressed on the fact that they were forming a religion, they denied steadily, and called it a different word. When their strange but telling practice of steadily disassociating cult members from their families became an issue of worry to said families, they denied such practices even existed, before going right back to telling, and sometimes outright threatening, their members into obedience. For every morally respectable approach the unswayed council members tried in an effort to coexist with the new and popular group, they were blocked by the smooth talking strangers, and eventually, irritation boiled over into rage.
The Councilor of Ancient Knowledge managed to take out nine of ten of the ruling and influential members of the cult, before he was stopped. Yet, the one that survived proved to be the worst, and in short order, he whipped his followers into a frenzy, convincing them that too much knowledge, and access to it, was what had poisoned an otherwise decent human being into committing an atrocity, the first murders on Mars (that anyone knew of). Thus, it was their sworn duty to zealously guard their colony's knowledge. Only the privileged few would have access to it, and use it to guide their colony in the right direction, and of course only members of their group would handle such knowledge.
As Earth continued to labor in what was known on Mars as the Age of Strife, the cult that ruled the people eventually expanded to include all Martians. The only contact from the Earth Sphere came from remnants of the cities on Luna, and while the new Martian society was rapidly advancing, humanity's old tendency to establish a violent differential between 'us' and 'them' caused the refugees from Luna's ever shrinking bio spheres to be treated as a lower class of citizen, all across the planet. They were given labor intensive jobs, as the Martians elevated their society to one more focused on knowledge, and eventually technology as well, while their lesser caste served them dutifully.
Naturally, this was doomed to fall, eventually, and as humanity on Earth gained a second chance in the form of Arceus, the flash of his Judgement had a very different effect on Mars, for it came at the exact moment that the servile caste rose up against their Martian masters after a hard thirty one thousand years of slavery. By that point, the refugees from Luna had long since stopped coming, and in their arrogance, the Martians had urged the people, often by force, to procreate rapidly, so that the workforce would not disappear, and the Martians would remain free to ponder and create new marvels of science. In time, the former Moon dwellers had outnumbered the 'native' Martians.
All but a chosen few of these self-important fonts of knowledge were killed in the event that Martians would come to call the Schism. Instead of fracturing their world, it managed to unite them for the first time in millennia, and marked a new golden age of free knowledge, for all humans. The last venerated sages of the knowledge cult were ultimately preserved, presumably forever, in machine bodies that took as little human components as possible, and replaced the rest with mechanical apparatus. Through these Knowledge Sages, the people of Mars were able to have their questions answered, their debates settled, and over time their society eschewed violence entirely, in favor of spirited debate, and a contest of will, not blood.
It is this somewhat secret Martian paradise, the final enduring remnant of a few old Earth traditions, that managed to survive to the modern era. For this society, it was only a matter of time before a Pokémon appeared among them, and thankfully, their kind natures convinced the Knowledge Sages to accept them, what few Pokémon there were. Unlike Earth, they did not explode in population, as Mars had little in the way of wildlife that wasn't a pet. Even then, such pets were, like the humans, a sometimes excessive fusion of flesh and machine.
Naturally, a machine that translated Pokémon noises into English, the last surviving language and the one the early cult leaders had chosen to embrace, was one of the first creations made soon after they appeared, and the relationship between the often space-capable Pokémon and the humans dwelling on the red planet was one of deep friendship. Over time, many species that float through the abyss of space learned that Mars was a haven of kindness in the void, and eventually, some Pokémon decided to stay.
Unlike Earth, the practice of combat wasn't one the Martians came up with, but eventually, a Pokémon who had been to Earth did arrive, find a human to be its Trainer, and that human quickly rose to prominence when he explained what the sport of Pokémon Battles was, and how it was evidently a new and very popular Earth custom. Any mention of their ancient home was, of course, very interesting to a society that had subsisted on second hand knowledge of the place for thousands of years, and over time, the romantic appeal of the sport did start to catch on, though much like the Earth, it didn't take long for humans to find other ways to compete with their Pokémon that didn't involve injury or pain.
Also like Earth, there were those willing to endure such pain to prove they were the strongest, and others who wanted no part of it. The Martians managed to find a balance between the two halves of their society, though as more Pokémon eventually showed up, more Trainers began appearing. After hearing of devices used on Earth to help carry Pokémon around at all times, the Martians created their own versions that included a full heal function, and machines capable of repairing any genetic damage as well.
Though the obvious design of their genetic structure hinted at Arceus' existence, to the planet as a whole, the 'where' of Pokémon origins is not so important, largely because the Pokémon asked about their origins either don't know, or say it's not something humans need to know, and leave it at that. Some Martian Trainers still seek the answer to who or what created the perfect yet mutable DNA structure of Pokémon while others seek it for darker purposes, typically to extend their own existences, when immortality via machine upgrade is too financially out of reach.
It is this Mars that the Imperator on Terra wishes to reach, and it is Luna that has thus far blocked him from doing so. This will not be the case forever, though. Eventually, Luna's bio-shields will need the Imperium's technology to keep functioning, the Imperator will take them and their planetoid for his own, and use it as a stepping stone to a much greater prize.
Temple of All Knowledge - Olympus Mons, Mars
A low chime echoed through the upper levels of the Martian's most sacred temple, and again, the Knowledge Sages gathered. There were twenty in all. They were essentially perma-stasis brains operating a series of mechanical attachments that acted as their 'body' and none of them were identical.
One of them floated forward, as moving about on limbs was a preference many of them had opted to indulge in, when they were turned from humans into...something else. "Grand Fabricator. It is the same dream. Again. It haunts all of us, a warning, a hope, an indecipherable message from the Future."
The Grand Fabricator was like the rest of them, and yet not. He alone had an ornamentation of gold, that even then hummed with light as his brain processed. The circular golden shaped apparatus served as extra memory and 'processing power' for his brain, and though he was not aware that it was Arceus' symbol he bore, he had seen it in a vision of his own long ago, and adopted it as a symbol of his authority on Mars.
He hovered forward, looming over the other nineteen with the wisdom and authoritative presence that had seen them come to him, and eventually elevate him as a leader, over the long eons they had taken care of Mars. "The Future is always in motion...what is seen may change...easily. Yet one theme remains clear, in all of your recorded visions. A visitor is coming. He comes from ancient Earth. What he brings is unclear. Hope. Doom. Friendship. Enslavement. These themes are both similar, and yet opposite."
Another of the sages chimed in then, quite literally, as her voice box, or vox, had a chime-like affectation to it. "Perhaps there will be two visitors, Grand Fabricator. One good, one not. We should be wary, and deny both."
This, naturally, caused an eruption of discussion from the sage's logic circuits, as several members found the idea of shunning knowledge and contact from the Earth to be blasphemous, while others agreed, and claimed Mars could look after its own already. It needed no one.
Eventually, the Grand Fabricator emanated golden light from his back piece, and called silence to the gathering. "Both sides have made good points. As always, we will think, we will examine, and we will hypothesize. If there are to be two visitors, if one is to be beneficial and the other harmful, surely time will be the lens by which the truth is revealed. Our methods are proven, my kin. We will be able to discern which is which, and the benefits of an ally from the Earth cannot simply be ignored. There is too much history we have missed to simply ignore them. Our most ancient tenets command us to record our species' actions, and yet we are ignorant of what has happened on Earth. We will await this visitor, we will welcome them with the ancient hospitality customs, and we will determine which one is the danger. Knowledge, is power."
"Knowledge is power." They repeated, in unison. The most basic, most used chant of their knowledge cult only served to reaffirm the Grand Fabricator's proposal. Even those reluctant could not ignore the allure of Earth's new unknown history.
