Battle for Peace

by SugarcaneSoldier

The war was over, and Tanya won. Then, Being X destroys her second life and makes a mistake. Tanya is no longer under his thumb, for now. He'll be back though, and with an unknown deadline, who has time to mess about with a bunch of magical animals?

11. Chapter 11

Jehovah grinned.

He imagined that what he was experiencing was similar to what innumerable humans had, standing at the bow or helm of a ship and watching everything, be it a river or an ocean or the vast expanse of space, pass by. Similar, but also…

Greater.

It was not the gentle babble of a stream that sounded off of shallow banks and gently waving grasses that wound from one village to the next that frothed at the edges of his continuum. It was not towering white waves, frothing and cold and but a portent of the yawning depths of an ocean unexplored. It was not the steaking, linear expressions of starlight stretched by swift travel between small islands of refuge called planets in empty, intractable space.

Jehovah was pulling-pushing-guiding-following all that made him him and the continuum that he monitored through an ever-growing unfolding-folding mass of unbeing.

Concepts, neither existing nor not-existing, teemed at the edges of his mind, seeking purchase and a chance to infect, to take hold, and to turn all that wasn't and was into unbeing. He rejected it out of hand, severing the connections between his senses and himself as was required. His sense of smell told him to sever the nerves in his eyes, he heard a noise and deadened his sense of touch, he took in a breath and tasted a threat on the horizon and twisted his form until he had no ability to perceive sound, and when a sense of deja vu overcame him he separated the hemispheres of his brain until the feeling passed.

So, too, did the barrier of perfectly incompatible unbeing fizzle at the edges of that which he protected. Jehovah, in his infinite power, banished any and all attempts to claw away even a quark.

Grin twisting into a scowl, he sneered furiously as the thin, shrinking trail he was following continued. She had caused quite enough damage. He was not going to let her do more through a lack of diligence.

If the trail he was following and the girl that had created it had fled away from him with any purpose, he would have reason to be incredibly upset. As it was, he was only annoyed that he'd punched her hard enough to pass through several other continuums.

He'd met a few new deities and pantheons in his travels and had polite conversations with most of them. He'd run into two that he had a quite fractious relationship with, a dozen friends, and even… one of his brothers.

He grimaced. He was going to find a way to make her pay. Expending this much energy to chase after her was already unforgivable, but making him run into his brother, and having to explain what he was doing?

Hell was not a concept within Jehovah's continuum, but he was wondering if he should make it just for her.

The only real way this could be worse was if she'd somehow become contaminated, with unbeing or the essence of some other continuum. Then, he'd-

The path began to unfade as Jehovah approached another continuum, and he banished the half-formed thought from his head. A matter for later.

If a deity were to limit their mind enough to conceptualize something as vast and myriad as a continuum as a mere three dimensional object, one might think of the meeting of two continuum as the touching of two spheres at exactly one point. To be polite, Jehovah reached out with his infinite power and rapped his knuckles against the edge.

The two points dissolved, and Jehovah slipped from his own continuum into this one. He sucked in a breath – not of air, but of higher-sacred-holy things – and his eyes widened in surprise as a grin reappeared on his face. He recognized that feeling!

"Arceus!" he called out jovially. It took a moment, but his friend appeared before him without enough time elapsing for Jehovah to feel too impatient. His grin widened into a joyful smile, and, though someone unused to interacting with the deity might not have seen it, Jehovah saw Arceus smile right back.

They could not shake hands or bow, but twin flares of power visible as light and warm as moonbeams and smelling of dusty, clay-inscribed knowledge served as a greeting of its own.

In his early days, Jehovah had studied Arceus's creations, and Arceus had studied Jehovah's. It'd even asked to use the design of humanity within its own continuum – with tweaks to ensure they survive Arceus's own creations, of course. He'd turned down its offer to borrow some of its creations after he'd expressed admiration for their variety, and Arceus had been nothing but polite.

He made it a priority to visit every few billion years, as long as neither of them were especially busy.

"Jehovah," Arceus responded. "My apologies for the wait. Things have been especially hectic lately."

"Still not taking time off?" Jehovah teased. Arceus shook its head ruefully, and the void around them twisted into an illusory solar system. A miniaturized version of the standard Sol model, if Jehovah wasn't mistaken.

"Not even that," Arceus said. "Things have been more chaotic as of late, and I and my friends imbued with divinity have been having quite the hard time as of late."

Years and years ago, Jehovah probably would have teased Arceus about its methods for achieving growth on its worlds. Now, he recognized the frustrated tone and did his best to express his sympathy. "Hard times come for us all. Most of the continuums I met on the way here are having similar problems, and I would be remiss not to mention my own struggles."

Arceus nodded back. As they stepped across the solar system, passing between the sun and Mercury, Arceus asked, "Others? What has brought you here, friend?"

"I," he began, "have… lost a soul from my continuum. I've been following their trail, and I was wondering whether you or your creations saw which way they went."

-OxOxO-

Arceus didn't have eyebrows to raise, but the tilt of its head expressed the same inquisitiveness.

"Jehovah," it began carefully, "if I swear to tell you the truth, will you swear to do the same?"

He nodded absentmindedly as they began walking towards the Earth. "Of course." Their powers flashed, and Jehovah continued, "It's no problem at all. You know, I had to do it when I ran into that bastard-"

"Jehovah. I have seen her. She came to a stop within my continuum, and she mentioned that you've been using my creations."

The joviality Arceus had been putting on, had been wearing like the impenetrable shroud of death, fell away, revealing the naked wariness and hurt beneath.

Jehovah froze as his hand hovered above the Earth, his motion to take it up and study it interrupted.

"How did you manage to pull that off?"

Using another living deity's creations was beyond taboo. Arceus had needed to get permission from Jehovah to use humanity, just as he would have needed to get permission from the deities that had created the concepts of gravity and electromagnetism and the twin weak and strong nuclear forces and gravity and matter and light and the Sol System and love and more, if those deities had not died and allowed their creations to pass into common usage.

If Arceus told others of Jehovah's actions, they would be wary of interacting with him, and might feel justified in using his creations without bothering to ask.

Jehovah rose up to his full height and turned to face Arceus, mingled anger and chagrin warring on Jehovah's face. Arceus was sure the anger was because it hadn't immediately told Jehovah about having found his wayward soul.

"Technically," Jehovah said, "I only passed on pale imitations of your creations within my worlds. I arranged things so that a few companies from your worlds were created within mine and then gave them the ideas for the actual Pokemon."

"What kind of companies?"

He didn't have to answer the question. Just because they were telling the truth didn't mean they were compelled to answer. Still, he did, because he expected reciprocity. "Video game companies are where it starts. Do you recognize the name Game Freak?"

Arceus's lips curled slightly. "Battle simulators?"

Being X shrugged. "When the hardware is more limited, they're one of the easier ways to spawn them into existence."

Arceus's ire grew into a red-and-black miasma around it, and Being X held up his hands. "I didn't dare make them real."

"I know," Arceus said, fighting to keep his power and anger reigned in, "because then I would have found out."

Jehovah looked down into the vast emptiness below them. "Yes, well, people were surprisingly close to making them a reality a few too many times in worlds with magic or wacky science, so I stopped implementing them there. Even in worlds with more stable forms of energy, they got shockingly close before I put a stop to it."

For a moment, the miasma roiled around Arceus. Then, it pushed the anger away, and the miasma faded with it. A long sigh echoed around the solar system. "Why do it?"

He grinned nervously. "Well, in some worlds, it was meant to inspire people to think about the relationship they had with animals or the environment in the long term. In others, it was meant to test people's faith. Sometimes it was just to increase the cultural bandwidth of the country it originated from."

"And you couldn't have come up with your own ideas, if you felt it was so important?" Arceus asked. Jehovah sighed.

"I did it the first time almost half a trillion years ago, Arceus. I was young!"

They slipped into silence once more, and then, seemingly remembering himself, Jehovah's nervous expression faded into one of quiet fury. "Where is the girl?"

Arceus didn't answer, at first. It was not thinking. It had already thought about what would happen if Jehovah arrived looking for his lost soul, or whenever they met next, for six months.

It was allowing time to pass. It was making Jehovah, in all of his vast power, wait a few seconds to get his answer.

"We are even," Arceus began. "Completely."

Jehovah did not move an inch.

"Secondly," it said, "I would like to make a deal."

One of Jehovah's eyebrows twitched.

"As I told you, I am facing some instability. We are coping, but we could use some help," Arceus continued. "There must be at least a few people from your continuum that might wish to come to mine to experience Pokemon in actuality rather than as simple media, yes?"

Jehovah's stony expression faded slightly. "Perhaps. If you were to give me the girl, I might be able to scrounge up some people with the right mindset willing to aid you."

Arceus ignored Jehovah's offer, though it was good to confirm he wanted her back. "In return," Arceus said, "I will allow you to search my realm unimpeded, if you so choose."

He looked very unimpressed with the offer. "Tell me where she is, Arceus. What could she-"

"She told me what you have been doing," Arceus replied. "Alternatively, we can continue to negotiate. You could also explain why you did what you did to her."

Jehovah's stormy expression shifted into fury for a moment before instantly cooling. "I will accept your first offer," he said, "if you agree to a bit of… competition."

Arceus tilted its head again. "Three contests," Jehovah began, "the contender – me first, because I am issuing the challenge, and then the loser of the last contest becomes the contender for the next – will choose the contest. Either party may withdraw from a contest at any time. If I win, you bring me to her. If you win…"

He licked his lips. "Then I will forswear any dominion I have over her at present and cease any attempts to retrieve her."

Arceus frowned as much as its face allowed. Jehovah clearly believed that his victory was assured if he was willing to wager his control of a soul he had traveled who knew how far to retrieve.

But…

Arceus took in a deep breath of stardust and tension. It had promised to protect her as if she was one of its own.

"I'd prefer we simply wager favors on such a match," Arceus said.

"Well," Jehovah said, "If we're renegotiating, how about favorable terms for the trade? I'll take on seventy percent of the energy load for transferring people from my continuum to yours, if you agree to cut out the bit where I have to search for the girl and you just bring me to her."

"No," it said. "I swore to protect her as if she were one of my own."

It held up a leg. "I acknowledge that she is yours, so I will let you search. I will not bring you to her."

Jehovah growled, "Then I will only allow souls of mine to come to your world if you win my challenge."

"Then I will only allow you to search if you win," Arceus responded swiftly.

"Fine."

The deal was sealed, and Arceus could only blink. What? He actually-

"Of course," Jehovah said spitefully, "if you lose and still want souls from my continuum to cross over, we can always make another deal."

For a moment, Arceus could only stare at Jehovah. Was he so desperate, so angry, that he was willing to throw away the chance to search in return for certainty that Arceus would have to make another deal if it wanted help?

Arceus growled. "Choose your game, contender."

"One week of setup," Jehovah began, "one match. Dee Pee Pee Oh You."

It took Arceus a full twenty seconds to figure out what the end of that sentence was supposed to mean. Then, it took a further ten seconds after it did figure it out to reign in its displeasure.

Arceus did not hate battle simulators. Arceus found them… wanting. Many of them limited the creativity of their users and the uncertainty inherent to battle, and very few tried to replicate the emotional core inherent to Pokemon battling.

Jehovah's smirk offered little sympathy to Arceus's displeasure.

In the blink of an eye, a week passed. Arceus did not speak to Jehovah, and Jehovah did not speak to Arceus. Arceus planned and trained and honed its mind in preparation for the coming fight. It assumed Jehovah did the same.

The week passed. The two deities fought.

Two computer monitors stood back to back, and the two deities before their computers. They pressed the keys or moved the mouse with thought instead of their limbs, though their eyes were trained on the screens.

Jehovah sent out a Smeargle, and Arceus sent out a Bronzong. The small sprites moved for a moment and then stopped, and Arceus sighed as it looked at the screen.

Neither talked, still. The damage of Smeargle's unorthodox Fire Blast was weathered thanks to Bronzong's Heatproof ability. Magnezone was flinched repeatedly by Togekiss. Arceus switched and switched to maneuver around Jirachi.

Finally, when Arceus forced Jehovah to switch out Jirachi, Arceus opened his mouth. It was quite clear to him that Jehovah had no intention of winning this particular match and was instead intent on being as annoying as possible within the bounds of their contest.

"I don't have the full story," it began, its words and intonation selected weeks ago. "But what she explained does not paint you in the best light. Would you care to talk about it?"

Jehovah explained, in between being as annoying as possible in their game and running out the clock every turn, how he'd reincarnated the mortal in a life of hardship in order to inspire faith in them to steer her away from her unsympathetic outlook on life. An outlook that had directly led to her death, according to Jehovah.

Arceus merely hummed as he spoke. "And you felt her being unsympathetic was justification for how you treated her?" it asked.

The clock wore on, their turns progressed, and Jehovah scowled. "She was a prideful brat."

"And you are not prideful, Jehovah?"

His eyes narrowed, but its opponents said nothing.

Another five turns passed in silence. Arceus was frowning in concentration now as Jehovah's team continued to pester its own.

Arceus looked up. "What was that?" it asked.

Jehovah didn't respond, as if he hadn't mumbled something unintelligible and Arceus hadn't tried to respond.

Another two turns passed. Smeargle switched in again, and Arceus thought that this was quite like pulling teeth.

Or, it assumed that was just as painful. There had to be a reason it had become an idiom.

"I said," Jehovah tried again, "that she expected perfection from me, as if the scrawlings of iron age urbanites and desperate priests and nihilistic intellectuals has anything to do with the work of deities like us.

Arceus nodded as the clock for the turn wound down. Indeed, quite a lot was often attributed to deities like them that had very little to do with what they actually did: keeping the worlds they protected relatively ordered, ensuring people were relatively happy, and protecting all under their purview from unbeing and hostile deities alike.

There was some complexity: which of their jobs required their focus at a given time, whether to attempt to do all three jobs on their own with the certainty they would face no obstruction or to delegate their power to chosen creations but also introduce uncertainty about dissent.

It supposed, when what they did on a day-to-day basis was so divorced from what was often expected of them, any deity might be frustrated, especially when they were trying to interact with a mortal.

The lull in the continuation continued. In its absence, Arceus strategized.

Arceus was fairly sure it understood what kind of team it was facing. Jehovah was either trying to win by being unfathomably lucky, or it was trying to be annoying enough to get Arceus to concede.

Neither was working. Arceus's team was not built for taking on such a slippery team, but it was certainly defensive enough to withstand the annoying, constant assault. Even if it were to take days, it was certain its realm would be watched over by its creations.

Jehovah had no creations to rely on in this regard.

Moreover, while Arceus understood that frustration, it doubted it justified what Jehovah had done. Arceus had spent years walking among its creations, looking at all it protected to truly understand where they were coming from, to understand how they saw the world and, when the beliefs were there, how they saw itself.

Arceus tilted its head as the game continued. Perhaps…

The game ground on, Jehovah wearing down the clock each and every turn, and neither of them said a word. One, two, five, ten, twenty-five, and even fifty turns passed without a word being exchanged.

But, eventually, Jehovah did speak again. "In the face of my majesty, he refused to take even the smallest leap in logic, as if the lives of humans don't revolve around such things."

Arceus blinked. Pushing aside the ego-stroking, Arceus asked, "'He?'"

Jehovah also blinked in confusion, then he waved a hand. "Ah, right, she used to be a he. His gender got switched when I had him reborn."

Arceus momentarily regretted not having chosen to give itself a bipedal form with arms, because it desperately wanted to pinch the bridge of a nose it didn't have. "Jehovah. Did you think that might not engender more animosity?"

"What?" he asked, "No, of course not. Why would it matter? They're all my creations, regardless of their form."

Arceus frowned again, but now wasn't the time. For the moment…

"All I'll say is that I can, of course, understand wanting to be appreciated for your work."

Jehovah smiled, and they continued the game.

Another twenty turns passed. "With all of that in mind," Arceus carefully began, "Why put her in, as she put it, hell on Earth?"

He scoffed. "Oh please. You shouldn't believe everything she said. She obviously has it out for me. I might have reincarnated her in that world, but she got herself involved in the army. I've put my thumb on the scale from time to time," he admitted, "but her misfortune has mostly been her own doing. I'll show you the recordings sometime," he said with a wave of his hand and a scowl.

Arceus frowned. It… hadn't expected that. From the way she'd described it, it had sounded like she was being tormented constantly.

Still, even then…

"Perhaps," Arceus suggested, "your response wasn't entirely proportional?

He sighed as the turn ended with yet more switching. "I'll admit, I had hoped that, if I reincarnated her and her devotion turned away from her own self-interested, egotistical outlook and towards one of spreading faith, or even just towards people other than herself, she could be a force for good instead of one of misery. A test of a new method of instilling faith."

"Even then," Arceus said, "Besides, how did she even get here? I know she was just a mortal," it paused, considered its words, and then tilted its head back and smiled. "Having second thoughts after banishing her or something?"

The space around them burned away, the planets and asteroids and sun and the starry void around them burnt away in a wave of white hot fury and leaving only a black, unending expanse around them.

"I concede this contest. The next contest will be a contest of power."

Arceus's eyes narrowed. This was worse than it thought, then.

"I concede," Arceus said immediately.

Jehovah would have been seen as quite rude if any other deities were around to witness this.

Both of them knew that a contest of power could have detrimental effects on Arceus's continuum, which could only be avoided by holding back and, necessarily, losing.

Both of them knew that Being X was more powerful than Arceus, who had distributed its power among its creations and friends to help it in its duties.

"Wonderful," Jehovah said, his voice filled with saccharine plasticity, "what shall our next contest be?"

Arceus sighed again. They were tied at the moment. Arceus was certain it could probably think of a contest that Jehovah could not win, but he was not going to give this up. He seemed incredibly angry about the girl it had promised to treat as its own. If he didn't get permission to search, he'd probably try anyway. Not to the extent that it would harm his continuum, but…

He just didn't give things up. He wasn't that kind of deity.

As one of the successors of YHWH, he couldn't be. He had to fight, to banish unbeing from the edges of his domain with fervor. He had to claw and bicker and argue with every other splintering version of the religion devoted to worshiping a Levantine deity, a deity that had grown beyond its ability to exist. He had to fight against those versions of himself that had, together, been YHWH. He'd had to defend his right to safeguard YHWH's portion of the rights to the idea of the human race, from those he had once been joined with, and from all other partial holders of that idea.

And, of course, if the girl did call out to him, it was all but guaranteed that he would find her.

"Is your domain whole and hale?" Arceus asked tersely.

"Nearly," Jehovah said, and Arceus felt a kernel of dread forming in its gut. "Besides her, it is. It was hard, dragging everything here and keeping it unmolested, but I did it."

The kernel of fear faded away, and Arceus nodded in response. Good. He wasn't completely obsessed then.

For a moment longer, Arceus considered what contest they should do. Then, it tilted its head back once more. If losing would not get Jehovah to stop his pursuit, then perhaps…

"I choose," Arceus said, "A game of war."

-OxOxO-

Being X blinked. Really?

He voiced his question, and Arceus nodded like the self-righteous goat it was. His mind scrambled furiously, wondering what Arceus could possibly be thinking with this. There was no way it'd win. Arceus was conflict averse. He knew there had to be some kind of trick, but…

"What kind?" he asked.

Arceus gestured with a leg, and the blank black page around them gained another member. Jehovah tilted his head as he looked at it.

It resembled a crystal ball, at first glance, but a cursory inspection quickly revealed the differences. Yes, the dark, insectoid legs poking out of a jagged hole on top of it and the two spectral arms next to them clearly set it apart from a crystal ball, but there was more to it than that. The surface of the sphere was covered in geometric designs, words from various languages whose intent seemed to be to seal away evil, and the symbols of various holy faiths. The cross, the crescent and star, and the star of David were very familiar to him, as were the yin and yang and the dharmachakra, among over a few dozen he vaguely recognized without recalling their names and others he didn't have the faintest clue about.

He couldn't find the will to suppress his bitterness that his own symbol was absent.

The inside of the sphere, on the other hand, appeared to be scratched to such a degree that the only thing that could be perceived through the blue-tinted glass was darkness. In a few curiously blank portions of the glass, glowing yellow eyes could occasionally be seen before they ducked away.

Jehovah opened his mouth to ask what it'd summoned this creature for, but Arceus spoke to the creature. "Feisto, the Illusion Seer Pokemon," Arceus intoned. The whirling of the eyes within the sphere and the panicked movement of its legs, seemingly able to find purchase despite the void around them, stilled as the eyes stopped jumping from the other parts of the glass sphere to regard Arceus totally.

"A- Arceus?" Its sibilant voice echoed both within the glass sphere and in the void around them.

It nodded. "Indeed. I wanted to know if my friend and I," it said unhesitatingly, "could make use of your powers?"

Jehovah felt a wave of regret pass over him. Maybe he'd been a bit harsh in tricking Arceus-

His rage returned as he thought of the question he'd been asked. As if! As if his response wasn't entirely proportional! It was certainly justified! Even if she hadn't had many options, she'd gotten herself involved in that damn war, so-

"Yes, I am sure." Jehovah blinked as Arceus's words reached him, and he realized they'd been having a conversation entirely without him. He shook his head, crossed his arms, and looked at the pair. "Alright. So, how will we be playing? Based on your classification," he said, eyes flicking to the creature for a moment, "I presume we will be having our contest in an illusion?"

Arceus nodded. "Indeed. Feisto, if you will?"

The arms of the Pokemon gave a thumbs up, and Jehovah felt its power building. Plans whirled through his mind. Would they be put in place of a general, or the leader of a country? How long would the illusion be kept up? What-

A flash of blinding light, and then darkness.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Jehovah could not breathe.

He didn't know where he was, he could barely feel his power, in some distant recess of his being.

He felt cold, and wet.

He could not see.

He tried to move. He found his limbs sluggish. Now that he was feeling his arms, he could feel the rest of him, and he realized that he was facedown in something that was imparting the cold, wet feeling onto him.

He tried to move again. Still, his body was sluggish.

The ground rumbled around him, and burning fear built in his gut. What was that? Where- where was he?

The burning fear turning into a burning in his upper chest, and he opened his mouth-

Cold and wet slipped into his mouth, then his lungs and fear burned, and he pulled himself free with a wet sucking sound.

His body took in heaping gulps of air, when it was not coughing reflexively, and Jehovah whirled around, desperately trying to clear whatever was on his eyes away. Where-

Rubbing his eyes and feeling tears build up and was the grime away, his vision began to clear and his body stopped hurting quite as much as it had.

Gray-brown stretched out as far as his eyes could see, rolling over fields around him. Lines and gouges were carved into the landscape, while heaping holes had been blown asunder. Something boomed in the distance, but he just continued to stumble, trying to gain his footing. Had something gone wrong? Were they under attack? He needed-

"Jehovah."

He whirled around and he blinked.

He did not recognize them. They were covered in muck and grime and filthy, rugged, worn clothing. An oddly shaped helmet, squat and dish-like, sat atop his head, while his hands sat limp at his sides like his posture. Only the dirt and mud streaked across the face was familiar, because he felt the same on his own face.

Gunfire echoed in the distance, and another explosion sounded that made him flinch. There was a roar, and his vision snapped to the side. Peeking above the ground, he saw great gouts of flame rise in the distance. Humans were screaming.

He turned back to the unknown man. An explosion rang out some distance away, and in the flash of light, the man changed.

The hair flowed out of the helmet and was shockingly, sharply white and pristine. The eyes, tired and hopeless, flashed brightly.

"Arceus?" Jehovah asked.

His breath caught in his throat. His voice was not his own.

It was accented, yes, but more than that, it was younger. Much younger. Right around the age YHWH-

He stopped thinking as the man's hopeless visage twisted into a coy grin. "Right in one, chap."

It stepped forward, down off of the small mound of earth it'd been on, and it landed in front of Jehovah. Jehovah looked around himself.

He was standing on slats of wood that were half-sunk into the mud and water, just as gray as everything else, while walls of earth and plank rose around him. The sky was overcast, pregnant with rain and lightning.

Steps, Arceus's steps, sounded in the wet mud around them.

Jehovah was wearing equally filthy, sopping clothing, though it was different in ways Jehovah couldn't put into words. The shape on his head, too, felt different than how the one on Arceus's head looked.

The steps stopped, and Jehovah looked up, panicked. Did Arceus know-

"The illusion," Arceus said, "and the contest end when one of our avatars dies."

Jehovah's brain was scrambling, and he stumbled backwards. What? "But- but you said a contest of-"

"Jehovah," Arceus said, voice remonstative, "This is war."

Jehovah suddenly realized that Arceus was taller than him.

Jehovah tried to gulp. Arceus barreled forward, yelling.

They tumbled into the ground, and Arceus began to pummel him. Shouting back, Jehovah sluggishly raised his arms above his head, desperate, his mind slowly realized what, exactly, this was.

A fist landed in his gut, and he felt his mind go blank again. He tried to kick and turn and get Arceus off of him, to do more than protect his face.

Another blow landed in his gut, and Jehovah howled.

He grabbed onto Arceus and with all of his insignificant strength rolled them off of the wood and into the muck, raising a fist of his own. It struck one of its arms, but the hand lashed out and tried to twist it. Jehovah's other arm struck Arceus's face.

He panted, trying to regain his strength, and Arceus bucked Jehovah off of it. He groaned, and Arceus rose onto its knees. "Why?"

What? "What?"

"Why'd you send her here, to me!"

RAGE.

He dove towards Arceus, and they were back in the muck, arms scratching and punching and blocking and fighting, desperately, to come out on top.

It was pathetic. They were two insignificant humans fighting in a trench in no-man's land, without any weapons but their fists, and stumbling around through the mud like drunkards, just as likely to drown as they were to land a killing blow.

Jehovah didn't care.

"I was MAD!"

Lightning crashed, and rain poured.

He shouted and pushed Arceus away. It backpedaled with surprising grace, but it landed on its ass as the trench opened up onto flat land.

"I got fucking angry!" he ran after Arceus and wound up a kick. Arceus just smirked at him and rolled away. Jehovah almost tripped, and Arceus growled as it rose onto its feet.

"Because," he continued as he steadied himself. "She survived the fucking war, and she was escaping beyond my ability to fuck with her, not without doing something drastic. I was angry she still hadn't prayed to me without meaning a bit of it. That she was proving me WRONG!"

He panted heavily. Rain poured on top of his helmet, and he barely noticed.

"I smoked some fucking weed and I thought it would be funny," he spat, shame masking his face. It was so fucking embarrassing to have to go from deity to deity, asking after a lost soul, and having to explain that yeah, he'd punched a mortal so hard their soul had left his continuum because he was high and thought-

The jeering from the ones he didn't like, he could deal with. The scorn and disdain from those he was only acquainted with, he could deal with.

The reproach of his brothers was BOILING under his skin.

"She doesn't know that."

Jehovah started-

Arceus tackled him again. Gunfire, barely distinguishable from the now pouring rain, echoed distantly.

"Why continue this, then? You are Jehovah, beholden to yourself and your peers. She," it said as it batted away Jehovah's fists with one arm, "is neither. So why TRY!?"

Because if they'd seen her passing through or by their continuums, they'd know she was one of his anyway. They'd ask, and he couldn't lie because if they caught him lying he'd be an ever bigger laughing stock. Because the disapproval of his brothers would have burned him even more if they learned that he hadn't gone after her after making such a mistake.

"I have to be BETTER!" his mouth hollered into the wind. "They expect so much," he sobbed as he tried to buck Arceus off of him once more, "I-"

He was crying. "I want to live up to it, to do better, but I can't! I don't know how!"

"With COMPASSION!"

Arceus screamed over the downpour, and a meaty fist smacked into Jehovah's face.

"And TEAMWORK!"

Another fist. Jehovah felt something break. He landed a blow on his opponent's ribs.

"And the POWER OF FRIENDSHIP!"

Another fist. Heavy breathing from the man atop him. Jehovah couldn't move.

It hurt.

"So goddamn cheesy," he mustered. As he breathed the words into the world, he realized that a liquid was filling his mouth with the tang of metal.

He was bleeding.

Arceus only chuckled. "Then you'd certainly know."

He tried, he really tried, to figure out what that meant. "Huh?" his mouth asked when the fuzzy clouds in his head wouldn't let him.

Arceus rose, its form shaking and a hand gripping its side. Its grinning face contradicted the blood and dirt staining its clothes. "How do humans eventually spread to every corner of the world, Jehovah?"

"Their biology," he answered automatically, the fire of the fight fading into the cold of the ground. "Their evolution."

Arceus shook its head vehemently. "Their teamwork."

It splayed its arms wide. "It is by working together that humanity overcomes any hurdle facing them, it is by working together that they spread like a tide around the globe, and it is by working together that, even when they stumble and veer from the path, they give their lives, and life itself, meaning."

Jehovah laid there, panting. Arceus leaned down, a wild, manic grin covering its face. "I've seen it in my worlds, and I've seen it in yours. Whether Pokemon, or animal and crops, or other humans, it is by working with others that humans flourish, on scales large or small."

He laid there, for a moment, and then he realized that Arceus had stretched out a hand for him to take.

He took another two breaths-

Searing, white hot pain ripped through him-

Jehovah jolted upwards, blinking and breathing rapidly. Arceus was doing the same. What-

"An explosion, Arceus. My apologies-"

"You have nothing to apologize for," Arceus said, his voice still tinged with breathlessness. "Go back from whence you came with my thanks."

The Pokemon disappeared, leaving the two deities alone once more.

"Now what?" Arceus asked Jehovah.

He took a few more moments, to still his mind and breath. "That-"

He was shocked again by the sound of his own voice, no longer young and foolish but wizened with experience. He brushed it aside. "That counts as a tie, does it not?"

"I suppose so," Arceus said. Jehovah waited, but it said nothing more.

He thought. He thought back to the small hell they'd just been in. She'd gone through something like that, then? He wasn't, he couldn't, watch her all the time. He thought back to their conversation during the battle simulator match. He…

He thought of his own actions, and what the salaryman had said to him.

Slowly, he spoke. "I imagine," he began, "that she has no desire to see me again?"

Arceus shook its head. "Not at all."

He nodded slowly. "As I said," Arceus repeated, "she asked me to protect her as one of my own. She knows-"

"Considering," he cut it off, "my treatment of her and her cynical worldview, I think she very much doubts you would go to any great lengths to protect her."

Arceus blinked, and it dipped its head. "I suppose you are correct. Perhaps if she saw how hard you've been fighting to reclaim her, she would reconsider?"

He grimaced. Then, he let out a long, long sigh.

"I will leave her, then. I will not track her if she calls upon my power," he intoned, "though if she does, I'll ask you to bring me to her."

He held up a hand. "Not to reclaim her. I won't do so, nor will I send anyone after her on my behalf. Until her current life is over, at any rate. When she dies next, we can have a more in depth chat about the future of her soul."

Arceus was silent. "And the contest?"

He shrugged. "We call it null and void, and we can work on the specifics of sending people from my continuum to yours."

Arceus was smiling. Jehovah smiled back…

Well, there was one thing…

"Could I perhaps have some recordings of her?" he asked.

Arcues's head tilted to the side, and Jehovah explained. "Her body is still alive, and her efforts did help bring an end to the war. For her friends, and to for the people she somehow managed to help despite-"

He cut off the building tirade and sighed again. "They pray to me, to bring her back," he admitted. "They miss her. I don't think she'd want them sitting at her bedside hoping for a miracle that won't come. I don't either. I'd like to give them something so they can put their fears to rest and move on without any regrets."

Arceus nodded solemnly. "Of course. As long as you give me some of them to give to her in return, one day." Jehovah nodded.

"Right!" he said, clapping his hands together. He hadn't worked on any projects with other deities in a while, and it would be nice to hear about how Arceus's friends were doing. "Let's-"

"Wait," Arceus said, "You haven't mentioned the other one."

Jehovah frowned in confusion. "Other one?"

Arceus blinked in shock. "Her friend?"

He stood there, motionless, and Arceus continued. "Not too long after her arrival, another one arrived, and I sent her after Degurechaff. You… didn't realize?"

Arceus summoned a recording of it talking to the girl, and Jehovah had no recollection of seeing her, especially not in the recordings of her fighting in battle.

Odd.

Pushing past his embarrassment, and his anger that the other fuckers he talked to didn't mention another of his flock-

"I'll look into it, but I don't recognize her appearance or her name." He sighed. "It will take some effort. Perhaps I just missed her in Tanya's recollections…"

He shook his head. "For now, with our realms closer together to facilitate the transfer of souls from my realm to yours, I'll return eventually so that we may discuss them as well."

"Excellent," Arceus said. "Hopefully, she'll call on one of us eventually so that we may break the good news, but for now, I will honor my word."

Jehovah grumbled. "In your worlds? I doubt she'll face any threat great enough to break her."

-OxOxO-

"Hello, and welcome to the Central Saffron Pokemon Center! How may I help you?"

Tanya gave the nurse, who shared a passing resemblance with the nurse that had been at the Center in Ochre, a small smile and handed over her Poke ball. "My name is Tanya Degurechaff. I called earlier about the-"

"Oh, of course!" the nurse responded. "The intermediate test. And you said you wanted us to take a look at your newly caught Pokemon as well?"

Tanya nodded and thanked the woman. She responded in kind and told Tanya the correct sequence of halls to turn down to head to the testing room.

She wasn't going to be using a pencil and paper, she was assured, but it was a quiet place for people to fill out the questions needed to obtain their intermediate license.

Tanya thanked her and then strode off, still slightly disgruntled at how much effort it had taken to get Weedle into its Pokeball today compared to yesterday.

She grimaced, and tugged at the sleeves of the jacket she'd ordered yesterday. It was but one piece of a number of more athletic outfits she'd bought to ensure she didn't wear out or ruin her more formal work clothing. They were hardly high class, but they were rugged and would serve her well, despite being second hand.

She licked her lips as she entered one of the empty rooms. They felt a little like her uniform.

She ignored the thought and swept into the room, choosing to focus on the questions she'd memorized the answers to. At the very least, she'd been able to gather the necessary information yesterday.

It hardly made up for how utterly unproductive she'd been, but she could do little about the past now except learn from it. She slipped into the chair at the desk in the room and began to navigate her phone, scanning the QR code prominently displayed on the wall.

Weedle was fidgeting and constantly bothering her? Returning it to its Poke ball had worked a few times, but Weedle could get out whenever it felt like it. Rigid training would strip it of its nervousness.

Weedle felt the need to run off when she was taking it outside to eat? Chasing it had done little to curb the behavior in the morning, while not engaging with it in the evening had fixed the problem.

It indicated it wanted to fight? Fighting had done little to actually curb its desire, while practicing her katas had calmed it down.

Her phone finished loading, and Tanya closed her eyes and took one last steadying breath.

They flicked open, and her eyes jumped down the pages, leaping from question to question and gauging whether she immediately knew the answer and how long it would take to type it out. She reached the end of the test within five minutes, spent the next fifteen effortlessly answering the ones she knew, and then twenty more on the few she wasn't quite positive about.

The only interruption was a notification that Weedle had finished its- his checkup and had a clean bill of health.

As she finished answering the last question, Tanya checked the clock. There was no official timer, but she was not allowing this to take more than an hour.

Deciding to spend ten minutes checking and revising her questions, she began looking down the page on her phone. She was almost certain that she had answered the easy questions correctly, but she wasn't going to slack and not check them over just in case.

What kind of Pokemon does the Intermediate License for Practicing Pocket Monster Training in Kanto entitle you to train?

The license would entitle her to train and care for up to eight Pokemon species, with five on her person at any one time and three stored in the PSS or at facilities capable of housing and providing for them, that each matched the following criteria:

Native to Kanto

Smaller than five feet on average

As a species, require less than 750K Yen on average per year for upkeep according to the IPLF's Nutrition and Health Department's most recent publication of 'A Trainer's Guide to Pokemon Upkeep' webbook and physical publication

As a species, do not have a BST higher than 475 as outlined in the IPLF's Notation and Analytics Department's most recent publication of 'Basic Statistics and Notations of Pocket Monster Characteristic Analysis' webbook and physical manual

Are not Dragon-type

Furthermore, each Pokemon trained:

Do not and commonly access any moves with a larger power than 100 before its second evolution or level forty

Cannot be stronger than level fifty

Tanya nodded at the question – it was much easier this time now that she was more familiar with the terminology.

What are some resources you can refer to if you need help with your Pokemon?

The IPLF's Trainer App contains many resources that can provide help with a Pokemon, including a basic Pokedex function and access to the IPLF's curated Trainer Forums. Numerous websites cater to helping trainers, such as Pokebase and Bulbapedia. If a trainer is in danger due to a violent Pokemon, Rangers can be contacted by calling 191. If there is a medical emergency and you cannot readily contact a medical professional, WebPMMD and the Japanese Pocket Monster Welfare Society have resources online that outline basic treatment. Acquaintances and coworkers may have advice that could prove helpful, though any non-professional advice should always be verified before being implemented. If a town has a local Gym, a chapter of the Pokemon Fan Club, or other facilities devoted to Pokemon training or care, they may also be able to help.

Since her answer had been correct last time, she'd copied it to answer the identical question, with a few more resources she'd learned of thrown in for good measure.

What are some resources that are not helpful?

Smogon is a battle simulator website whose forums often contain information that is unhelpful or even contrary to advice given by professionals. Serebii is a database devoted to the company Game Freak's Pokemon Adventures video game series and also contains information that is unhelpful or contrary to advice given by professionals. The quality of advice found on unmoderated and/or anonymous forums such as Futaba Channel and 4chan is dubious and unreliable.

Ichigo had been particularly loud about this answer when she'd asked him, and his complaining had drowned out any desire she'd had to interrogate why he knew the answer to this question when his only Pokemon was his Sentret.

She idly wondered if she could find the answers to the Champion or Master level licenses and just use those if she had to take a test like this for a third time.

Where are the gyms in Kanto? What type do they specialize in? Who are the gym leaders?

Lavender City - Ghost - Faith Graves

Autumna West/Celadon City - Ice - Dedrick Kayano

Pallet City - Fairy - Noa Oak

Pewter City - Rock - Bridget Takeshi

Autumna South/Vermillion City - Water - Sanjuhachi Yamamoto

Seafoam City - Electric - Michelle Gauzze

Autumna Central/Saffron City - Fighting - Hammond Takenori

Viridian City - Normal - Joseph 'Joey' Gorou

She rolled her eyes at that question – finding the answers had been as easy as looking up 'Kanto gyms' and copy-pasting the answers.

What is Pokemon Evolution?

A process by which a Pokemon undergoes a permanent metamorphosis into a new species. The evolutionary reason for why a Pokemon metamorphoses in this way, whether to reach maturity, to simply gain more power, or for other reasons, vary wildly. The reasons weakly correlate among homologous Pokemon and certain typings. To date, no Pokemon has been discovered that can evolve more than twice.

Thankfully, someone had complained that they'd almost lost a point for including information about Gigantimaxing, Mega Evolution, and Embodiment, and she'd proceeded to avoid including anything besides the basics.

Also, apparently a Pokemon called Eevee could evolve 18 times, and each of its evolutions could also evolve that many times, meaning it had 324 distinct third-stage evolutions. The places she'd looked for answers regarding the last sentence of her answer were adamant that if there was any Pokemon that could evolve a third time, it would be Eevee.

Explain type immunities, name a type and its type immunities, an ability and a move that grant type immunities, and an ability and a move that nullify type immunities:

A type immunity is a characteristic of a Pokemon, wherein it is immune to most attacking moves of a certain type, which is achieved by either the Pokemon's typing, a move, an item, or an ability

Ghost-type Pokemon are immune to Normal and Fighting-type attacks

The ability Foundry makes the Pokemon with the ability immune to Steel-type attacks

Magnet Rise makes the Pokemon that uses the move immune to Ground-type attacks

One of the effects of the ability Scrappy is that it removes the opponent Ghost-type Pokemon's immunity to Normal and Fighting-type attacks

Draconic Sneer removes a Fairy-type Pokemon's immunity to the user's Dragon-type moves

Not the hardest question to answer, though she was sure that she would have begun getting a lot of the information she was trying to cram into her head mixed up if she wasn't regularly doing her memory exercises.

Explain the differences between a Regional Champion, a Champion-level trainer, and a Champion-tier License, generally:

The regional champion is the leader of that region's Pokemon League. How one attains the position varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but being able to beat the last champion is a basic requirement in almost all regions. The current champion of the Kanto-Johto Pokemon League is Silver Sakaki.

A Champion-level trainer is a trainer who has beaten the Champion of a region.

A Champion-tier license is usually, but not always, given out to trainers that have proven themselves invaluable to a Pokemon League or the IPLF, beaten a region's champion, or attained sufficient strength as judged by the entities and people with the power to give out the license. Notably, a Champion-tier license is valid in all regions currently recognized by the IPLF.

There was more that she could say about the last part of the question, but similar answers had apparently gotten full marks in the past and Tanya had no desire to lose any points because she went into the minutiae of who in the Kanto-Johto League could give out Champion-tier licenses when they wanted an answer that was unspecific.

Define Field Conditions, according to the IPLF, and list some of the common individual conditions for each category:

Field Conditions are conditions on the battlefield that affect Pokemon in a variety of ways and interact with abilities, moves, stats, and items. The four basic categories are Weather, which includes Sun, Rain, Fog, Hail, and Snow, Rooms, which include Trick, Wonder, Magic, and Power, Terrain, which includes Grassy, Electric, Psychic, and Misty, and a Miscellaneous category that contains any conditions that do not fit in the first three, which includes Reflect, Tailwind, and Gravity.

Why they had decided to give the name terrain to a category of field conditions when the terrain of a battlefield – whether if was a pool suited to aquatic Pokemon, or something simpler like whether there were obstructions or not – already existed still boggled her mind, but she moved on from the question to the next one.

What is a ruleset?

A ruleset is a series of guidelines for the conduct and actions of a trainer and their Pokemon during a battle. Breaking the rules of a ruleset is grounds for penalization, disqualification, or a loss, depending on the ruleset, formality, and general context the battle is taking place in.

What might not be included in a ruleset?

Some rules, such as the number of times a Pokemon may be switched out, the implementation of a time limit, and the consequences of winning or losing a battle (e.g., the exchange of money or other items of value, house chores, bragging rights) are not included in many standardized rulesets and are insead expected to be implemented at the start of a battle, tournament, league championship, etc.

Give a brief overview of the most common ruleset used in Kanto, and give a brief overview of two other popular rulesets:

The most common ruleset in usage in Kanto is the IPLF Standard Ruleset, chiefly among casual trainers, and a variant of the ruleset is used in the Kanto-Johto Pokemon League Championship, as well as the eight Pokemon Gyms. Some rules in the ruleset include the recommendation that a referee is utilized, that no move may use more than five Power Points, and that One-hit Knockout moves are prohibited.

One popular ruleset is the IPLF Simplified Ruleset. It is used among children. It was made in emulation of the ritualized mock battles present in many cultures, the battling that occurs between very young wild Pokemon, as well as in the mating rituals of many wild Pokemon. Some rules in the ruleset include the signaling of moves by both trainers simultaneously, the usage of only 'standardized' moves, as defined by the IPLF's Categorization Department, a fifteen minutes timer, and half as many switches as the highest number of Pokemon one trainer will use, rounded up, and the prohibition of One-hit Knockout moves and accuracy lowering or evasiveness raising moves.

A second popular ruleset is the IPLF Double's Standard Ruleset. It shares most of the same rules as the IPLF Standard Ruleset, with added measures for the usage of two Pokemon on each side rather than one.

Overall, this question was just more fact regurgitating, though it was a very useful question to have to answer as it gave her an excuse to begin memorizing every rule she would have to function under.

Hopefully, she'd figure out how best to twist them to her advantage in no time.

What are the dangers of Ice, Poison, Fire, and Dragon-type Pokemon?

All Pokemon are capable of damaging people, other Pokemon, and property, but Pokemon with these four typings have an increased capability of doing so due to their physiology. Fire-type Pokemon can cause burns or fires. Ice-type Pokemon can cause frostbite or crack pipes and foundations. The various substances that Poison-type Pokemon excrete or produce as part of their moves or physiology are harmful to living things and to infrastructure. A Dragon-type Pokemon's danger is more behavioral than physiological, as the young ones are often unaware of their power; generally, Dragon-types are temperamental and difficult for inexperienced trainers to train.

Tanya wasn't actually allowed to train a Dragon-type Pokemon with an Intermediate License, but the consensus was that a basic trainer was unlikely to catch one, accidentally or purposefully, and thus there was little reason to make them aware of anything besides their ineligibility to train one.

What are the different tiers of Trainer Licenses?

A Basic-tier License is the license for trainers who are just starting out, or for people who own a Pokemon for companionship rather than for the battling experience

An Intermediate-tier License for trainers who plan to battle or use regularly in their free time.

An Expert-tier license is for trainers planning on interacting with Pokemon as a part or the majority of their professional career. This includes battling, but is certainly not limited to it.

A Champion-tier License is for trainers who have beaten the champion of a region. A Champion-tier license is usually, but not always, given out to trainers that have proven themselves invaluable to a Pokemon League or the IPLF, beaten a region's champion, or attained sufficient strength as judged by the entities and people with the power to give out the license. A Champion-tier license is valid in all regions currently recognized by the IPLF, and there is an expectation that these trainers have years of experience in battling, are financially stable, and not liable to get themselves or the region where they obtained the license in trouble.

A Master-tier License is for Pokemon trainers who have won multiple championships, command exceptionally powerful Pokemon, and/or have proven instrumental in the completion of the IPLF's goals. Most Master-tier trainers are the champions of a region.

Why are there restrictions on what a Trainer of a certain tier can and cannot do? Are there exceptions?

The restrictions exist in order to keep people, Pokemon, property, and the environment safe.

Waivers, Extensions, and Certifications exist that may be amended to a trainer's License so that trainers and Pokemon in common or special circumstances may continue to be together without excessively burdening either party and also without endangering themselves and the people and places around them.

Tanya wasn't unsympathetic or willfully ignorant of why all of this had to be in place. Many Pokemon could cause quite a lot of damage to others and property because of their power, and these were freedoms Tanya would not exercise if she had a choice in the matter.

Still. She felt herself slightly chafing at all the impositions on her freedom.

Tanya skimmed over the last few easy questions, and then went back to the top to review the remaining questions she wasn't totally sure about.

How do the legal rights of a person and a Pokemon change when the latter is caught by the former?

Generally, ownership of a Pokemon is analogous to being a parent or taking care of a dependent. The welfare and needs of the Pokemon must be met, otherwise regional, national, or various Pokemon Rights organizations may sue to have the Pokemon removed from a trainer's ownership. A Pokemon and their trainer both have the right to leave each other.

That was all she had written, because a more complete answer eluded her.

Determining what was abuse and what was simply part of regular battling was basically left up to the judgment of the people around the trainer and their Pokemon, as well as a judge if such a case went to trial.

Not that a trainer could force a Pokemon not to get itself beaten until unconsciousness, because battling regularly was a part of providing for a Pokemon's welfare.

Tanya had given up creating a more thorough answer last night when a lot of the links she'd found had just led back to legal codes involving dependent care, civil union, personal friends, guardianship, and adoption. It seemed that Pokemon were given a lot more rights in this world than the animals in her last two, which tracked with their increased capability to cause damage.

How does a trainer access the Pokemon Storage System?

When a person becomes a trainer, a Trainer Account is created for them, whose data is managed by either the region they first register in or with a third party service, such as Pokemon Bank or Pokemon Home. Depending on the policies of a region, one option or the other may be required of its trainers in order to legally practice Pokemon training in their region.

The IPLF's Trainer App is automatically linked to this account, and having an account allows a trainer to access the Pokemon Storage System.

How does the Pokemon Storage System work?

When a Poke ball is placed in a PSS terminal, the Pokemon is taken from their Poke ball and placed into a miniaturized environment appropriate for their physiology. The Poke ball is placed into storage. Like with trading, this is accomplished via teleportation technology.

Tanya had tried, desperately, to look deeper into the hows of the process, or even just teleportation, but the terminology was obtuse, opaque, and complicated, and most of the information she could readily find online was mostly arguments about whether or not it 'should' work, according to the current understanding of physics.

Tanya had, eventually, found a few reputable sources claiming you didn't need to go that in depth for her test, and she'd moved on.

Tanya sighed once more and hit the submit button. Overall, she was happy with her work and nearly certain she would pass. This time, there wasn't even a verbal portion of the test she needed to take.

She stood and began making her way back to the lobby. Better to get her Weedle back while waiting for her results.

She arrived in short order, and the woman behind the counter gave her a smile and a nod and pushed into the room behind the counter. Tanya idly looked at her phone, reviewing her current plans for Weedle's training. Should-

"Wow, look at THIS place!" Footsteps pounded behind her and-

Tanya stumbled forward, her shock quickly fading into cold fury as her phone skidded across the ground. She whirled around-

It was a kid at least a year younger than her, with dark eyes and dark hair and enough of a chubby baby-face left that indicated he had been at least somewhat spoiled by his caretakers. She eyed the expensive outdoors equipment on his back and clothing his body, which was definitely color coded, if the grays and burgundies were anything to go by, as well as the five balls on his belt that she didn't recognize as being from the most popular three, and she turned around with a grumble.

She didn't have the kind of money to-

"Ah, sorry about that," the boy apologized. She waved a hand. "I'm sure it was an accident," she replied, checking her phone for cracks. She might not-

"It was. Sorry. Again. Umm, what's your name? Mine's Aeon Bishuma. What are you doing here? I've gotta heal my Pokemon and get directions to the gym. I've been to every other Gym besides Autumna's three. Autumna's great! Do you live here? Are you also a trainer? You look like it. Do you know where the gyms are? I know I just got here, but I've just gotta scope out the competition. You get me? Know your enemy and all that. Do you know who said that? My dad says it a lot. Do your parents ever say anything you don't understand? My dad-"

The kid would not shut up.

She tried to ignore him, but he just talked faster and started apologizing for talking. She gave him her name and what she was doing there to try and shut him up, but that just encouraged him.

"Really? Neato! I'd like to train at a gym, but I've gotta get all of Kantos badges! I've been traveling for ten months now, and I'm getting tired. My dad works here. What does your dad do? Or mom. I can't wait to see him. Anyway, uh, Saffron's gym! So cool! Have you met the gym leader? He's ranked number two of Kanto's Gym Leaders, though some people think he's third and Michelle Gauzze should be second. No one doubts number one, though they've all fought and it's been close for the top three. He's got all six of Tyrogue's evolutions on his main team. Do you specialize in fighting types? Are you planning on challenging the gym?"

"My parents," she desperately cut in, her voice bullying his, "are dead. The gym circuit seems to mostly be a waste of time that I will interact with as little as possible so it doesn't negatively impact my career."

She barely stopped herself from calling him a brat at the end of her last sentence, and only because she couldn't be more than two years older than him.

He blinked owlishly at her. Rather than apologizing for her parents being dead and bringing it up, as she expected, he said something completely different.

"And I thought my Dad was uptight."

He clapped his hands over his face.

Before she could snap back at him and insinuate that his father clearly didn't care about him if he hadn't taught him basic manners, the nurse returned with a tray holding a single Poke ball on it. She strode forward, thankful she could disengage from the chatterbox.

"Congratulations on passing your test! Your physical license will be mailed promptly to you, though you shouldn't expect to receive it within twenty-four hours," she said as Tanya picked up Weedle's Poke ball. "Additionally, your new Pokemon has been checked from head to toe. His results should already be in your Trainer App."

Tanya nodded. "And here," she said, pulling out her vial of Weedle antivenom, "is this." The woman inspected it for a moment, and then she pulled away.

The woman's expression didn't move an inch. "Wonderful! Is there anything else I can do for you?"

For a single, desperate moment, Tanya was overcome by deja vu and wanted to know why this nurse looked like the one from Ochre. Were they siblings or cousins? Was it a requirement of the job?

She kept her mouth closed long enough for the moment to pass and turned to leave.

She made it three steps before Weedle popped out of his ball, wrapped himself around her neck, and made her squawk indignantly.

He refused to part from her body, and she swore profusely at it in German while trying to tear it off.

She did manage eventually, glaring hatefully at him. For his part, the Weedle was trying to squirm out of her grasp to latch onto her arm. "It couldn't have been that bad," she groused at it before allowing it to grab onto her arm. Really, her physicals hadn't been particularly obnoxious.

She didn't expect much from what had to be a massively subsidized waste of tax dollars, but Japan was a health conscious country. If this place's doctors were too bad at their jobs, they would have been fired by now.

"Wow," said a voice from her right, "that sure was… a lot. Can you teach me what some of those words mean?"

Tanya blinked and turned to find that the voice was the kid's from earlier. He looked like he was desperately trying not to ask more questions.

Well, it was an improvement, and she had made time in her schedule for delays like observing social niceties. She asked him if he spoke German.

He did. He got one question off – are you from Germany? – before she interjected. "Sure. Don't tell anyone I told you, and if you see me again, please, keep your questions to a minimum."

Tanya then taught the impressionable, spoiled preteen some of the most foul curse words that the 203rd could muster. The German ones were quite long, the Polish ones were graphic, the Danish ones forced you to think for a few seconds to comprehend them, and the Russian ones were caustic to the extreme.

The kid offered to trade numbers, and Tanya agreed without a moment of hesitation. If he'd visited every other city before coming to Autumna to get its three badges, then he had five, which meant he was the most experienced trainer she now knew.

Considering how poorly her aborted attempts to train Weedle had gone yesterday, and her general lack of experience with Pokemon, she needed all the help she could get.

"Goodbye!" he called after her. She waved half-heartedly and looked down at the Weedle still clinging to her arm.

"You," she said, "are supposed to stay in your ball." She knew it didn't do much. She'd hardly trained it and could hardly expect an insect to understand her scolding.

It- he chittered, and Tanya observed the Poke ball stuck to her new belt. Perhaps the ball was defective in some way she didn't understand?

The insides of the various kinds of Poke balls varied, but a standard one like Weedle's had enough interior space that Weedle had dozens of times the space inside the ball than her apartment, when he was shrunken down. Considering Pokemon were invisible to the naked eye when they shrank, she was sure that it is far, far more.

Despite certainly having more space inside his ball, he seemed to prefer to be outside of it.

She shook her head as she remembered the rest of yesterday's interaction with the bug-type. He had thoroughly explored the areas of her apartment he hadn't been able to reach before, which included her cabinets and under the covers of her bed.

Worryingly, he hadn't tried to inspect her toilet bowl despite being enamored with the interior of the tank.

After that, he had been incessant about something. She'd given him water, food, and shelter, which meant it had probably been after another battle. She couldn't think of what else he might have wanted with all its flailing around – whatever her Trainer App said, she thought it had been more belligerent than Sassy.

Unless there was some other kind of enrichment it might have desired.

Regardless, it had made something of a nuisance of itself whenever she got quiet and took to doing an odd head movement whenever she half-heartedly reprimanded it.

She'd allow his dissident actions for now, but she would be disabusing it of such notions during training. She did not have the money to buy supplies for starting out as a trainer, find somewhere new to live, and pay for daycare services.

With one final glare at the ball and her Pokemon, she turned her attention to the Trainer App on her phone. A few taps against its surface, and she could see the results of Weedle's first physical.

GENDER: Male

SIZE: 1 ft., 7.1 lbs

LEVEL: 5

ABILITY: Shield Dust

NATURE: Sassy (SpD, Spe-)

EVs: 3 Spe, 2 HP

IVs: 10 HP/12 Atk/10 Def/7 SpA/5 SpD/13 Spe

Tanya nodded. It certainly wasn't the best start, but its IVs could be worse.

Not that she'd be going to the (admittedly reasonable) lengths required to train those anytime soon. She would need to, if she wanted her Pokemon to be as strong as possible. But not for now.

As much as she didn't want to, it was looking like she would need to take on a few gyms to obtain the kind of protection she wanted.

She changed apps, looking instead for a quick route to the Katsura Library in downtown Autumna. She needed to learn more about Fallers and the phenomena surrounding them without using her phone. She was still paranoid about the seemingly constant government certification of clandestine activity.

Which was something else she would be researching. She'd found a few leads while desperately trying to wrap her head around how the PSS worked.

Tanya was hoping that the sections of the library devoted to science or Alola would give her answers without having to look it up on a computer.

She picked a route on her phone that would be all on foot; she would need to be doing a lot more of it if she was going to train Weedle.

Speaking of, she looked down at her arm to see that Weedle was seemingly content hanging on. Such a prospect might have been hard for her, but she supposed that a worm… thing that hung onto trees all day didn't feel tired in the slightest.

She looked back at her phone and went over the different plans for training it. While there were a lot of different guides online, she had been able to parse which were decent and which were either bad or for video games thanks to the information she'd gathered for her first two tests. Some of the ones for games were decidedly close to the look of the actual guides; considering those guides were for the higher-end battle simulators that were made with the explicit purpose of practicing for actual battles, she supposed they couldn't be otherwise to be effective for passing on knowledge.

Unfortunately, no matter how good the guide was, there was no overcome some hard facts:

Weedle was not a strong Pokemon.

Among the Pokemon that called Kanto home year-round, less than half a dozen had the same Base Stat Total or were within ten points of it, from 185 to 205, and that included its evolution, Kakuna. Weedles were bottom of the barrel in terms of strength, and the only year-round, Kanto native Pokemon that were arguably as bad were Caterpie, Azurill, and Magikarp.

All three of which had arguably more medium and long-term use than a Beedrill would.

She wanted to complain verbally, to heap her ire on the Pokemon grasping her arm, but it would be a waste of breath. It- he could not help what he was.

Still, she could go over the myriad weaknesses in her head without wasting breath. His species's BST was pathetic, even for a first-stage Pokemon. The only way he could learn another move was to have him hold an Everstone until it hit level 9, at which point its evolution into Beedrill would be delayed a level. Other region's Weedle populations could learn other moves – the Weedle population in Alola had bred with the region's native insect Pokemon to be born knowing Electro Web, while the Weedle in the northern part of China sometimes knew Razor Wire. When he evolved into a Kakuna, it would be a pain to evolve through battle.

Just about the only upside was that he would achieve his third-stage evolution at only level 10. That would help her through her first two or three Gyms, but after that, his mediocre stats, shallow level-up learnset, and limited useful options for learning moves by TM would hold him back.

But. Tanya hadn't had to pay to own him or apply to a starter program that asked for more details than she could provide. He was what she was starting with, and he would serve his purpose as acting as a stopgap measure in her inability to protect herself for the time being – or, at least, he would serve as an excellent distraction once evolved while she ran, if that was what it came to.

It didn't take particularly long for them to reach the library. A sign on the front reminded people coming in that while they allowed Pokemon of human-size or smaller out of their Poke balls on the premises, they needed to remain polite and courteous or face removal.

Tanya marveled at the sign. She supposed, knowing how trainers and their Pokemon are legally tied together, that it makes a bit more sense.

The library was vast and grand, but she wasn't there for the architecture or the other people inside, so she brushed past most everything on her way towards her goal. She couldn't spot the area for literature from other region's right away, but it was only a matter of time.

Perhaps she could study a few other subjects as well? Maybe there were some books that held the answer to shaping up Weedle's training that wouldn't involve training for battle.

-OxOxO-

Pulling her jacket closer to her body – had she ordered the right size? – she turned another page of the trivia book. Around her were other books that were definitely not about Alola or Fallers.

She hadn't been able to help herself. Historical trivia was a weakness of hers… although reading it did serve a purpose! A lot of the information seemed like stuff that most people would give her weird looks if she didn't know it.

Like the fact that almost all Nurses with the last name 'Joy' were related to Ghengis Khan, who apparently conquered even more of this world than her last two and did so with a flowing pink mane of hair that accompanied a flowing pink beard while riding atop a pink horse that scholars were still debating the identity of.

She'd even found the answer to why every website she visited had a 'protected and certifiably hazard-free' message displayed beneath the search bar. Such a message was a reflection of the heightened risks floating around the internet.

She'd known that cyberwarfare had gotten bad enough during the Third World War that basically the entire internet, along with most devices connected to it, had been corrupted beyond repair. She'd not known that most soldiers had learned at least basic skills involving cybersecurity in order to safeguard themselves from such threats or utilize them on the battlefield.

Such knowledge had, of course, been used against untrained civilian populations during and after the war, which meant a large and stable demand for digital security services and training.

None of which even touched on the existence of Virtualmon.

Well, they were often colloquially referred to as Digimon, but that company apparently existed here and was virulent about protecting their brand. They created the idea of digital Pokemon by combining the already extant ideas about Pokemon in speculative fiction as well as the large number of man-made Pokemon to suppose that digital Pokemon would eventually be created. Over a decade later, they were proven right with the creation of the first Porygon by Silph Co.

They did not let any of those facts impinge upon their copyright.

Virtualmon were, essentially, AI, though they were limited to the form of a Pokemon so that they wouldn't have the capability to take over the world.

Upon reading that line, she'd supposed that was certainly one way to mitigate the problem of an AI taking over the world.

Regardless, Porygon had only been the first. Some were benign, such as Combit and Digitaleon, while others, like Vitiromb and Blotwore, actively sought to damage software or hardware in order to survive. Regardless, many militaries had branches devoted to cyberwarfare, while countries and businesses competed to provide the service of digital protection from human and Pokemon threats to the general population. Silph's Silph Company Digital had a subsection devoted to internal security, as well as protection for higher-end customers and Tanya really should be researching the thing she'd come to figure out and not trivia!

She shook her head as she read one last line – Rotom were not digital but could be trained enough to seem like it – and began to put away the books and begin searching for a map that would direct her away from trivia and towards Alola.

As she put the last book away, she did at least take solace in the fact that her read had been nice and quiet and-

She blinked. Wait.

Her hand darted to the Poke ball at her hip and opened it to find it unoccupied. She quickly closed it and whirled around.

Where was Weedle?

Looking back towards the small, quiet room she'd been in revealed that she hadn't left him behind.

Tanya gulped.

Shit.

Tanya took a deep breath before panic could seize her. Her assumption is that the reprimand for losing track of her Pokemon in the library is probably not as bad as she fears, because of the generally lax attitude she has seen towards Pokemon in general wandering in the open. Perhaps it'll be treated as a minor indiscretion, like a parent letting their child out of sight in a grocery store.

On the other hand, this place is a multi-storied library. If he starts to eat books or bother other people, she might have to answer for his delinquency. Perhaps she'll even be kicked out, or barred from returning.

Tanya searched. She searched the room she'd been in. She searched the shelves she'd pulled books from. She searched every inch of every room she'd been in, besides the main entryway where she'd be seen.

She licked her lips. "Weedle?" she hesitantly whispered. "Where-"

"Can I help you?"

Tanya shot up off of the ground, spun on her heel, and closed her eyes while giving her best disarming smile to whoever had said that. "No, I think I'm-"

"Did you lose your Pokemon?"

Tanya's eyes opened, but she otherwise remained frozen as she assessed. The person across from her. Younger, wearing a uniform with a badge that said 'Katsura Library' in one corner and 'Ami Rigeaux' in the center. She probably wasn't asking unless she was sure Tanya needed help, which meant she'd seen Tanya tearing out her hair looking for her Pokemon.

She hung her head a little, trying to give off the air of a troubled child. She held her jacket closer to her body. "Um… yeah, I think so. I think… my Pokemon might have wandered off? I can't seem to find him… we're not going to get in trouble, are we?"

Somehow, her sad sack act seemed to amuse the young woman, if the quirk of her lips was anything to go by. "Have you tried looking in the most obvious places?"

Tanya nodded rapidly. "He's not in his Poke ball, and he wasn't anywhere I've been reading or getting books…"

The woman's smile only grew, and Tanya had to fight the brief urge to glare. What was so funny?

"Even simpler than that," she said.

Tanya blinked. What? What could possibly be-

The jacket she was clasping in her hands moved ever-so-slightly, and Tanya felt an eyelid twitch as she turned her head.

There, on her back, was the Pokemon in question, looking up at her.

Weedle was an insect. He could not emote. He did not possess facial muscles – or, she didn't think so. Did insects even have muscles? Did Bug-type Pokemon have-

Despite all that, the human brain was wired to see patterns. Labyrinths in carpets and objects in the clouds and faces in electrical sockets.

So, when Tanya looked at Weedle's face and saw the crinkling around his eyes, she imagined that her Pokemon thought his behavior was real fucking funny.

Her head swung back around. "I am so sorry to have taken up your time-" she began.

The woman waved a hand. "It's no problem, little miss. Did you need help with anything else?"

Tanya sighed to hide her annoyance at being called little, and Weedle climbed up her jacket and onto her shoulders. She allowed it. There, at least, he would not get lost. "I don't suppose you can point me towards the Alola section?"

She blinked suddenly. "Are you looking for information on Ultra Wormholes?"

Tanya panicked again. How-

"You won't find much there," the woman said, her voice sympathetic. "Most of the books on that subject have been checked out."

Tanya blinked, and then she sighed. Of course they were. The incursion, as it had been dubbed, was still headline news. It probably would be for a week or two longer while the cleanup continued. Was it any wonder that-

"However," she said, pulling a book out from her satchel, "I have one right here. I was going to return it later, but if you'd like to read it first…?"

Tanya nodded and almost swiped the book from her. She hadn't wanted any record of her looking at the information to exist, but being seen by only one person was better than leaving a record online or on the computers of the library that might have scans of the books she wanted to look at.

Tanya asked where she should go to return the book, and the woman gave her the directions to the book return on the ground floor. Tanya thanked her and then retreated back to the quiet room that lacked any camera's she could see to begin reading. As the door closed, she scowled.

"You," Tanya threatened her Pokemon, "are-"

She'd been about to threaten the Weedle for hiding from her and not coming out when she'd called for him, but considering his doing so had resulted in her obtaining the information she wanted anyway…

She shook her head. "Well, we are training later. I'll save the insults until then."

Without another word, she began to pour over the book. Weedle settled around her shoulders, and Tanya absentmindedly stoked the side of his head. Despite not interacting with them, she knew cats and dogs liked being pet. It seemed the same held true for foot-long insects.

-OxOxO-

Tanya steepled her hands together. She was no longer looking down at the open books in front of her, but at the closed door that opened into the rest of the library.

It was hard to believe that any of the science she had read was even tangentially related to the truth.

"Then again," she sighed aloud, "it makes about as much sense as Pokemon being able to shrink beyond the ability of the human eye to see or the sheer magnitude of strength and power Pokemon can utilize." It made about as much sense as her presence here.

Faller, a term invented by the international police when they first discovered a faller some decades ago, referred to any human who had traveled through an Ultra Wormhole, which was a wormhole that connected one place and time to another via a higher dimension called Ultra Space. Anything that traveled through said higher dimension was exposed to a specific kind of energy most often referred to as Ultra Energy or Z-Power, depending on the context.

Tanya didn't know for a fact that Arceus had used an Ultra Wormhole to transport her above Vermillion Bay, but she also didn't exactly know any other way that it could have transported her from its realm to this world. The sheer number of Ultra Beasts that had come to Silph, and her floor specifically, seemed to support the idea.

Whether she was transported using one or not, Ultra Wormholes were hard to create on purpose. There were specific places where they happened on a semi-regular basis. The Alola region was the place on Earth where it was easiest.

Considering that, while most species of Pokemon on a global scale would not fall through them often enough to evolutionarily adapt to being flung across time and space, when that logic was expanded beyond a single planet to hundreds, a few dozen had. They were initially dubbed 'Ultra Beasts' around sixty years ago, and though the name was stuck in popular consciousness, academic circles referred to them as 'Ultra Pokemon' in an effort to destigmatize them.

Regardless of the vocabulary, each species of Ultra Beast had spent enough time, evolutionarily, that they could sense Ultra Energy. Their instincts would push them to find the source of the Ultra Energy in order to return to an Ultra Wormhole and hopefully return to their natural habitat. That meant that if any Ultra Beasts came to Kanto and perhaps even the surrounding regions, they would be drawn to one of the only signatures of Ultra Energy in the country: her.

However, that assumed Ultra Wormhole appearances became much more common than they currently were in Japan. The incursion from a few days ago was the ninth in the two thousand year written history of Japan.

So, Tanya was incredibly unlikely to have to face a wild Ultra Beast.

Unfortunately, even with the relative lack of Ultra Wormholes in Japan, Interpol was always on the lookout for Fallers. The fact that they were useful to the organization meant they had an incentive to pursue any Faller they caught a whiff of, and a Faller's ability to draw strong, powerful Pokemon to them in heavily populated areas where the presence of strong trainers wasn't a guarantee meant regional and national governments were often very happy to help Interpol remove 'threats to public safety' from their borders.

Worse, a number of people owned Ultra Beasts. Capture did little to lessen their ability to track Fallers.

Worse still, Ultra Energy could be detected by the right equipment. Somewhere like the Central Saffron Hospital would certainly have them, and it was only luck that she'd been taken to a smaller one last night.

Well, luck, and the fact that so many people had probably been injured that someone without any visible wounds was a low priority. Her injury didn't look infected, but Tanya would be getting it checked out at the smallest hospital in Ochre she could find.

Additionally, the incursion in Autumna mean that Interpol had loudly announced the reconstitution of the Ultra Beast Task Force yesterday, along with promises that it would be a public facing organization, its actions would not be classified, and it would have fewer casualties this time. They were even constructing a secondary headquarters in the mountains north of Fern, the slice of suburbia wedged between what had been Celadon and Saffron.

To top it all off, she could find no mention in the book of Faller being from a world without Pokemon. Different planets? Yes. Even alternate versions of the planet Earth? Apparently. Tanya got the feeling, however, that with how Pokemon-centric the economy, culture, society, and life in general seemed to be, that someone claiming they came from a world without them would not be the one secret they managed to keep instead of, say, the double-digit casualties.

Tanya took another calming breath.

So. If she was captured, she would certainly become the proverbial bait on a hook to capture any Ultra Beasts, which were generally very dangerous and certainly stronger than she was likely to become in anything less than months or years. If her capture was public, she might not know a moment of peace, considering how much news the latest announcement had garnered. If her capture wasn't public, they might do experiments on her for whatever purpose suited them, especially if they found out she was from a world without Pokemon.

According to the basic medical book she had open, that would take approximately ten to twenty minutes if they sequenced her genome and Tanya was especially genetically different from the humans on this planet.

Tanya closed her books one by one and began to return the ones she had pulled from shelves, her mind whirling.

She needed to train in case they came for her. She needed to come up with a reason to train that Ikube would believe. She needed to talk with her other acquaintances. She needed to train Weedle. She needed a bigger apartment for when he evolved. She probably needed therapy. She had to get away from Interpol and the Ultra Beasts and Arceus and Being X and-

As Tanya walked down the stairs towards the book return, she stopped momentarily. She quickly began walking again, depositing the book and turning away quickly while her mind raced.

Ultra Space… was it a possible means of escape? She certainly didn't have access to a Lunala or a Solgaleo and was incredibly unlikely to run into either, but if she did, or she found some other way, could she leave this planet, entirely undetected, and live out her days in peace?

Tanya shook her head and again brushed her hand against Weedle's head. For now, she'd focus on training. Ideas about finally being free could wait for another day.

Or maybe not. She pulled her phone out of her bag and typed in 'park.' She had access to the internet, and through it, access to the combined knowledge of the human race, which undoubtedly included more information about training Pokemon than she could ever consume. She had trained soldiers to go to war.

Training a foot-long insect couldn't be anything but trivial.

-OxOxO-

A/N 1: Believe it or not, this chapter was going to be even longer, but I want to post something considering I'm already a few days late.

The idea for Ghengis Khan and Nurse Joy came from the idea that Ghengis Khan is related to a lot of people today, and the image of a warrior-king conquering a huge portion of the world in pink being very funny. To me, anyway.

I do have names for all of the Eeveelutions. I do not have much more beyond that. Yukimarmeon, mentioned as being one of Cynthia's Pokemon, is the Ice/Electric evolution of Glaceon, while Digitaleon is the Normal/Electric evolution of Eeveeon, the normal-type Eevee evolution. No, coming up with all those names was not a good use of my time. I do not care.

A/N 2: If you'd like to donate to support me monetarily, search for Sugarcane Soldier on the website of the Patrons.

Thank you to WarmasterOku, Afforess, UNSC_Kawakaze, Theewizzz, Vee, and malenkaya for supporting this story and everything else I write. Make sure to vote if you haven't yet!