You can find more of this on by Subscribe/Star (dot adult slash KajaWilder), it's posted past Ch. 120 there. You can find the same on my new (via Discord per their ToS), under /WildErotica. The DISCORD is at h-t_t-p_s-:_/-/_discord-._g-g_/-N9yDASt6Cw (taking out hyphens and underscores, 'cause FFnet). If you prefer direct links, go to my Discord and follow the 'links in general' section to find the ones you want. All of my fics are well ahead of what I post here, often 10-30 chapters ahead.

You can also read my original fiction on Kindle, or Kindle Unlimited for free. My author page: www ._amazon ._com / stores / Kaja-Wilder/ (this time taking out underscores and spaces, but leave the one hyphen).

Enjoy!


Chap. 88: Sys/Mem:Crash

"Robin… are you… are you okay?" Alex could not remember feeling quite so… any sort of emotion toward, or from, the Combinant before. She always seemed so guarded, as if every little emote or 'ism', every word, was a carefully-chosen thing to project a very specific image or intention, while leaving the truth buried in hundreds of layers of deception, some thin, some miles deep.

Even though they'd recently become intimate, and he'd started to trust her a bit more, Alex still felt that caution thrumming strong in his own veins. Too many people were lying to them, and Robin DeVerl, if that was even her real name… well, she had too much motive and was just too good at it to be trusted. Wasn't she? She even admitted to lying to Game Freak, who had created her, made her what she was. Lying to them, while embracing the mission and the abilities they had given her wholeheartedly, as if there was nothing she would like more as a long-term goal.

But then why was she working against them? Was she?

Were they?

Alex sighed, as she walked through the moist, cool air of the clearing to pull Robin into a hug. "Robin… We'll figure it out."

Her arms circled him desperately, hugging painfully tightly, and he felt her body tremble like a leaf. Robin was just tall enough, at least currently, to tuck her head under his chin, which she did with a sob. A dozen feet away, Elle had stopped walking, confused as well. "Robin? Babe, are you…?"

The rosette sobbed, and shook her head, wiping her face on his sleeve, "I… I'm not, I hate… I hate not knowing. I… I should remember. I remember everything, you don't understand… Every moment in my training, when I was growing up… I remember being… tested. Sampled. Operated on, and how… how they changed me. I remember all of it. But I don't know her. She looks so familiar, like I should know her."

"You said that," Alex nodded, squeezing tighter as he shot Elle a worried look, "I remember you saying it when we were looking at Adisa in the cage."

Robin nodded. Elle came closer, enough to rest a hand on Robin's back. "Rob…"

"I should remember. But there's… just nothing. Her face, her voice, her body, I feel like I know them, that I've seen her before, and just… nothing. But she knows me! Why does she know me? What did I do? I don't know, and I- I just…" Robin's voice broke.

Elle closed her arms around the taller woman, barely able to touch fingertips on Alex's back. "We're here, sweetie. We aren't going anywhere. We'll- we'll help. I don't know how, but we will. Maybe Morpheus, or Loki can… do something. Maybe."

Another nod, and a sniffle, and Alex grunted as Robin's arms tightened even further, making his ribs creak. "We will," he forced out, "Elle's right… there's got to be something. Elle can sort of talk to her Pokémon. Morpheus can read her mind, I think, and Loki and her can talk while he's inside her head, or something like that. So maybe we can work something out."

"Th- Thanks," Robin whimpered.

They stayed like that for a few more minutes, as the Combinant fought to get her emotions back under control. Eventually, she pulled away, and Alex exhaled in relief before taking several deep, shuddering breaths himself. He hadn't realized how much Robin had restricted his breathing with her tight hug.

She turned away after that, and while Elle sent another concerned glance his way, both had little to do but watch as Robin crossed to her backpack, pulled out a small pack of tissues, and starting wiping away her tears without looking at them.

Alex only remembered their whole teams and then some were all out, watching the display, as he looked away from the obviously embarrassed young woman. Strange that this, of all things, is what embarrassed her, though. I suppose it fits with her back story… if it is a story. I'm starting to believe it, despite myself.

Too much just doesn't add up to be anything else.

"Alright, you guys, time to start coming back," he said softly to his team and backup Pokémon, "Spike, it's your turn to stay out if you want."

"Lar-Larvi," the still often-angry, territorial dinosaur-like Rock Pokémon grunted with a nod in his direction. Then he waddled toward Robin and, when he reached her, nuzzled his head against her arm. "Lar. La-larvi-vitar. Tar?"

"I- I'll be okay, little guy," Robin sniffed quietly, then turned and pulled him into a hug, too. "Thanks for caring… all of you. I'm not… not used to that."

"They didn't give you any affection in- in the sim?" Elle asked softly.

Robin shook her head, "Not… not really. Some, but not like… that. Mostly, we had to rely on each other. And when I was the only one left, the only one who survived… most people couldn't handle that much Ditto DNA, after all, and rejected it. That's why they're giving your real bodies such small doses, I think. Letting you adapt over weeks and months."

"And it still pisses me off," Alex muttered, "But I don't blame you for it."

"You might want to," Robin hiccuped, "It's probably the same Ditto I'm made from. Might even be my DNA, for all I know… might be more compatible."

"Even if they are doing that, it wouldn't be your fault, would it?" Alex asked.

There was silence for several seconds, as Robin put away her now half-empty package of tissues, stowed her medical kit away in her pack and then stood up tall. "No," she said finally, her voice more level and firm now as she turned to look at them, "It wouldn't be. I'm an adult now in the eyes of Pacific Mega-City law… but Game Freak owns me. I'm still not okay with giving up what makes me unique, really unique. I get why they'd do it… but I don't like it. And I think they should've told people what they were doing, instead of hiding it. You know we three are probably the only ones who know, right? At least among the 'testers'? I don't know why Greengrass even told you, Alex. I can't see a reason for it."

"She did, though," he muttered, then shook his head a she slipped his backpack on as well and adjusted the straps. "Anyway… are you alright? Do you want to go back?"

"No, I'm not," Robin replied quietly, with a look to Elle and back at him, "I'm really not. But like Elle said… we have things we can do, maybe. And moping about it isn't going to help anyway. So… maybe give me a bit to think things through, but I'm not… I'm not going to give up. It scares me. Terrifies me, that something could just… erase my memory, or whatever happened. But Psychics exist."

"Like that monster in the club," Elle realized, her eyes wide, "The big blue eyes! That's why everyone calmed down so fast and didn't panic when a fight started!"

"What monster…? Oh, the one with the eyes?" Alex asked, frowning. "In the Sea Scale?"

Elle nodded rapidly and started calling back most of her team, too, though she left out Nike this time. Robin didn't call back three of hers, and had left Onahole in her ball anyway, so she was still surrounded by her Rattata, Happiny, and Nidoran as she started away from the Rocket's campsite toward the trail once more. "Yeah, Megu and I saw these gigantic fucking blue eyes way up in the rafters- way above even the fifth floor. Did you notice the buildings' like thirty stories, but the club only goes up to five or six? I think it nests, or something, up there. And it did something. Shocked me a bit, brought the guy that grabbed me down in one hit- but I didn't hear lightning or thunder. And it just felt… well, heavy, the moment the eyes opened. Like there was just this… pressure, pushing down on everything, but it came from all directions, even downward. Kind of like being underwater, everything just took more. More work, more effort. We could still move, talk, but…"

"Huh," Alex said as they started to follow Robin, the cast-off gear from the Rockets falling behind them, "That does sound kind of like a powerful Psychic, but I'm not sure what kind it would be. Maybe strong enough to help Robin, too, but…"

"Yeah," Elle replied quietly, "Not sure I'd want to be in debt to Ariana, even if it's to help Robin."

"I wouldn't be, either," Robin joined in from a dozen feet away, reminding them once more that her ears were extremely sensitive. "Maybe if there's no other option."

With her Pokémon surrounding her, for the rest of the day Robin led the way down the trail, down the valley-side to cross the large river, and back up another that began to follow an even larger riverside some half-mile or more across that wended its way slowly west.

A day later, overcast and cloudy, windy, the trio walked further, out of the wider valley and its hills into rolling farmland that stretched for miles on the south side of the river, and cut past high mountains on the opposite side. They stopped for the night in a small farming town, so tiny it had maybe fifty whole businesses, a few hundred houses, and no PMC at all.

Thankfully, they were at least now comfortable sharing a bed, though no real fun was had aside from Alex enjoying Gobbler's attention in the morning before the girls woke up. The shower, after all, wasn't large enough for them to share.

And though a group of rough-looking, rowdy teenagers gave them several wary looks (Alex could have sworn one or two were in the beta, too, but he couldn't place their faces and neither Elle nor Robin remembered them when he pointed the group out, and they'd scattered when he did), no one bothered them as they moved east once more under a steady, slowly increasing drizzle, onto Route 25.


"Seriously?" Maline Greengrass growled to the technicians and scientists in Lab 199, "You lost an entire twenty minutes of data? Off RDV? How?"

"We- we don't know," the older scientist, a Kawasaki Niwa if she remembered right, stammered. No doubt he was worried his job was on the line. It was, of course… if this was at all his fault. But Maline had always made it a point to punish those who deserved it, not random people who were just caught up in things. She was harsh sometimes… but tried to be fair.

Tried, at least. But her patience was running out. This was the second major malfunction of Yggdrassil and/or the Portal in the last month! It was supposed to be stable, damn it!

Maline took a deep breath, as her hands tightened into fists, and glared around the Lab Director's office at the dozen scientists and computer experts there. The men who'd essentially designed the recording and data-tabulation parts of Yggdrasil's hyper-program from the ground up. The best in their fields. "You are the best, aren't you? This team?"

"Y- Yes, Ma'am," Director Farling replied from behind his desk. He was at least standing up… because he probably was going to be held responsible. "This whole team is the best. And we can't figure out what happened. We had that data, there's logs of it being made, but the data just… isn't there."

"What else is missing?" she growled.

"Nothing as far as we can tell, so far," Kawasaki replied quietly, more sure now, "We've always had some small glitches in the system. Even Yggdrassil just doesn't have the processing power to keep track of every moment of every tester's day without errors. There's too many variables. We also know that some Pokémon, especially Ghosts and Psychics, emit a field that interferes with data collection on occasion. Hijacking Magnemites and their line helps, but their own fields sometimes interfere, for example."

"Not what I asked," Maline growled.

The Nipponese man sighed, "I'm sorry, Ma'am, there's not much more we can say. Yggdrassil is running a scan for gaps of more than a few seconds, but so far it hasn't shown anything. At least it hadn't by the time we were called in here, and my datapad hasn't given an alert, either. As far as the system knows, it's just that one twenty- to thirty-minute interval, and only RDV."

"Which means it might be a coincidence," another lab tech spoke up, "I know it's weird that it'd be that one, but it had to be someone."

"I don't believe in coincidence," Maline growled quietly, and the woman's mouth clapped shut. "No… there's something going on. I feel it, I know it. I just don't know what. Did we get hacked? Did an outside agent, another MegaCorp maybe, get wind of what we're doing? Or were they just looking to see if they could get in and get a random bit of data?"

"We don't know," the director sighed, "We only even realized that bit was missing when your pet project called our attention to it."

Her eyes narrowed, "What do you mean?"

The director gulped.

Dr. Kawasaki Niwa spoke up again after it became clear his boss wouldn't, at least not soon enough for Maline's liking. "Your personal stars. Ward, Berkman, and RDV. They rescued another Tester you interviewed… a Miss Chuke, Adisa Chuke."

Her sharp eyes turned to him, and Niwa stiffened. "You know her. You actually reported that… when you asked for permission to contact her mother. Grandmother? An old friend, at any rate."

Niwa nodded, "Yes, Ma'am. I asked because I knew it was outside the NDA, but she happily signed one as well, said she was happy to know what her daughter was doing even if she couldn't spread it around. Of course I didn't tell her anything, and all my correspondence with Mrs. Chuke is logged on my account."

She nodded, "That's going to be reviewed, then. You understand."

He nodded, but blushed a little, "Ye- Yes, well, as I said, it's all there. We were just… old friends. It was nice to catch up. Aside from meeting her in person next month when she's back from Afrikaans, there's… well, not much to tell that isn't personal. Nothing relevant, I'm sure."

"Yet this glitch happened- or at least it was noticed- when the two with the highest sync rate, plus RDV, met up with our sixth-highest, who just happens to be someone you shared an unknown connection with until recently. Someone who helped design the very SoNinten system we are using."

Kawasaki nodded once, "Yes, Ma'am. Again, I have nothing to hide. I would submit my personal correspondence for review if it matters, but as I live on-site and have for the last ten years, and have very little family or reason to leave Headquarters…"

She nodded too, then, "Good. Expect that to happen, if we're even the slightest bit suspicious after the review of your correspondence with this… Mrs. Chuke. Now, Director, I'd like you to explain to me what you will be doing to make sure there are zero- and I mean absolutely zero- memory gaps in the recording software in the future. It's concerning enough that RDV stated that she can't remember. Being emotional about it is even more concerning. But surely even an imbecile like you can understand why her recorded data having a significant gap is very concerning. Isn't that right? The rest of you, out. Back to work. Find anything else missing. The Director and I have a conversation to have about his future with this company… and whether he will remain in Lab 199, or be transferred to Lab 5 as a test subject."

There was a chorus of gasps, but no one, not even the director who had earned her ire, dared make a single peep otherwise in protest.

Once the door was closed behind the last, Dr. Kawasaki, she turned to the director once more. "Your plan going forward, Director… and it had better be a good one."

She knew full well he would struggle. He was a scientist and computer engineer too, of course. Game Freak only hired those actually qualified to lead teams to do that. But that didn't mean he wasn't an idiot. Even a genius would struggle to come up with the depth of plan that would satisfy her on their own, on the spot, in a timely fashion.

That was alright.

Lab 5 always needed new test subjects of moderate intelligence… rats just didn't last very long under Psychic scrutiny. This idiot would last a few weeks, at least, before his brain melted. And Lab 199 would get a new director. That Kawasaki man, perhaps, if he were indeed honest about his connection and dealings with Adisa Chuke's grandmother. Mother? Whatever she was. Unimportant, in the grand scheme of things.

In truth, Maline Greengrass wasn't even listening to the Director's stammering, halting monologue of an explanation. She was too busy trying to remember every detail of her first meeting with Adisa Chuke, her hesitance… why she'd hesitated, but eventually passed on with an acceptance. Why she was now in room six, just down the hall from her stars.

And now they'd met in the other world. What was she going to do when they inevitably met in the real world?

I'm going to have to talk to Jones and Phillips. We'll need to bring RDV back on this reset. She'll have to see the real world for the first time, if we're going to pull this… whatever it is… off. Talk to her in-person, as ourselves. Fuck… this had better work. I'd better be able to convince them! At least Jones will be easy enough with a good fuck, but Phillips is a bit harder to convince. Maybe if I play that it's for RDV's own safety… he always did seem to have a bit of a soft spot, more than he should. But that's been useful until now. One more play on it couldn't hurt, right…?

Fuck, this idiot's still going on. I need to blow off some steam after this. Maybe I'll have Niwa in my office, he was handsome enough for a warm-up before I talk to Jones and Phillips.


Waves crashed on the shore far below them, as Alex, Elle, and Robin stood atop the cliffs on the northeastern-most region of Kanto. It was raining, hard, and a mile or two out to sea, not that they could really see the horizon at all through the rain, lightning flashed regularly.

To the north, across the wide river that flowed down into a massive cataract even bigger than the great falls in Cerulean City, a mansion sat on the high hills overlooking the mountains in one direction, the valleys they had just crossed through, and the wide expanse of storm-tossed ocean everywhere from the south, to the east, and back to the north along the rocky coast.

"I… Guess we just camp here," Elle sighed, "I was kind of hoping for a good view, but with this rain…"

"Yeah," Robin grumbled, "It's still pretty in its own way, but I want to get dry. It's been days!"

"Come on," Alex muttered, turning away and adjusting his pack again, "Let's go down into the copse of trees there, and set up the tarp over the tents. It's big enough it should be dry, anyway, once we get it hung up. Ugh… stupid bad weather."

The storm didn't let up, neither rain or wind, so it took the trio of Trainers a good hour and a half to hike down the slope toward the copse of sheltering trees, barely more than a light wood, but enough to at least provide some shade (if it had been at all sunny), and secure the large waterproof tarpaulin high overhead. At an angle, it was just enough to really protect them from the wind and rain, though it still whipped Elle's twintails, sodden and frazzled from three days in the wet air, relentlessly as they tried to first dry out some wood and then get an actual fire going.

Their Pokémon stayed in their balls that night, and as the storm had brought with it early darkness, Robin, Elle, and Alex had simply decided to turn in early, hoping that the Pokéradio's weather report on their 'gear would be accurate, and that the next day would be much, much more clear.

They even cuddled together, much as they had for the last two nights, in one tent, though each was too cold and clammy to do more than that.

Maybe they should have been on-guard, however.

Because storm or not, they were not alone in that clearing. Eyes watched them, unblinking, while the tent was set up, and the fire prepared.

Patiently, those same eyes watched as the three climbed into the larger tent and settled in, conversation growing slowly softer and less frequent as the girls used Alex's body heat to stay warm.

And once all three had finally drifted off to sleep at around ten, those eyes blinked once, and began to move.