"It's really gone, then."
Leo strode across the top of Destiny Tower, gazing up at the bright blue sky. Sparkles rained down from the sky. The sun was exactly as far away as it should be.
The arceus relaxed. Things had gotten too close. For a brief time, even he had been forced into the Voidlands by Dark Matter's power.
But those kids came through when it mattered most. Mew's ridiculous gambit worked.
He tilted his head up. Should he go and congratulate them on their accomplishments?
... No. Xerneas would be on top of that. Along with delivering the bad news to Mew. His presence would only make things more awkward.
For now, he would rest. Rest and figure out what his next move was.
Another rift, another Ginnungagap tunnel. Except this time, instead of giant blueberries, Leo was confronted with bright, erratically flashing monitors of all shapes and sizes. He galloped right, dodged a very bulky looking one with black and white footage of a cartoon incineroar getting whacked over the head with a plank of wood inexplicably held by a tiny rattata.
The cosmic arceus screeched to a halt, narrowly avoiding a collision with a flatscreen displaying the eeveelution family tree sitting in a line, circling their heads around to create a spiral.
Wait. What am I doing?
Leo'd seen his mother phase through things plenty of times. If she could do it, why couldn't he? He had the spooky plate.
Drawing on its energy, he shrank down into a tiny dreepy. There. He could move plenty fast like this. All he had to do was concentrate and...
Perfect!
He passed through the screen like it was nothing. A bit tingly, but he'd dealt with worse. Leo shot through the rest of the tunnel, passing through the screens with ease. It wasn't long before a bright white portal came into view. Leo flew into it and braced himself for what was to come.
... Which turned out, at first glance, to be remarkably similar to Wyndon. A cityscape at nighttime with a cool breeze to ripple his fake ectoplasm. Lots of tall buildings around him, made of a mixture of metals and large sheets of glass.
That was where the similarities ended, however. Because once he looked down from the night sky, a veritable army of bright neon screens assaulted Leo. He was on some sort of glowing platform over water. A sea or ocean, if Leo had to guess. And electronic banners surrounded him, advertising everything from sports drinks to shampoo for pokémon.
In the distance, colorful signs proudly hung over a variety of different restaurants open for business. Unovan-style pizza and pasta dishes. Kalosian cuisine. An authentic Johto-style sushi joint. And several tapas places.
Leo had no idea what half of that meant, but his ectoplasm quivered in hunger anyway.
Get a grip, dolt! The dreepy smacked his cheeks. He had to find Nikki, Shimmer, and Scarlett. Leo hadn't gotten to that rift that long after them, so they couldn't have gone that f—
Ah!
There they were! On the north edge of the glowing platform. Leo hastily floated toward them, frowning when he realized they were all out cold.
Out cold... with a variety of people and pokémon standing nearby. And yet none of them seemed to even notice his teammates. They were all looking at some of the big monitors erected on top of the advertising banners.
"What's up #XanFam? It's #YaBoiXander, officially rebranding as a VeeTuber extraordinaire!"
Leo's gills shriveled. Oh no.
He should've expected it. Xander had practically become the anomaly that swallowed up his teammates. But Xander didn't have the heart-shaped crystal Leo saw on the video feed from Khelifet. What was going on here?
"Whaaaaaaaat?" Lots of pixelated question marks appeared around him. "You don't know what a VeeTuber is?! Well it's obvious, you #dummies! A VeeTuber's an eeveelution that can do everything your favorite streamers can and more!"
Xander twirled around, creating trails of sparkles and fairy dust. "I mean, c'mon, #YaBoiXander's talking! What pokémon do you have that can do that?" He tugged on his face with his ribbons. "It's no rig! I'm #AuNaturale, bitches! But if you were watching my earlier streams, you already knew that!"
What did Xander mean by that? Leo could barely even focus on it, as the people around him were loudly talking to one another.
"Wow, a talking sylveon!"
"And he's real!"
"And he's funny!"
"He reminds me of Iono, but fluffy!"
They were all whipping out their phones, recording or taking pictures of the screens. Even their pokémon seemed transfixed by Xander dancing and prancing around on his stream. It was... unsettling.
Leo shook his head. The vibes were off. Rancid, even. His gut told him to find somewhere to hide.
But he couldn't leave his teammates out here.
If no one's looking, I'll just...
Ghost to fighting. Dreepy became burly machamp. And no one batted an eye, all too engrossed as Xander showed off some strange animation involving squishing a woman with a crazy yellow jacket and head ornaments resembling magnemite.
As people and pokémon laughed, Leo scooped up his teammates and took off running. There were stairs at the south end of the circular platform that led onto the city streets. Many of the large buildings had big screens of their own. Some broadcasted Xander. Others advertised a variety of different things that seemed like websites.
FRIENDHUB: FIND YOUR FRIENDS TODAY
POKÉMON AMIE: FOR THE LOVE OF POKÉMON
JOIN CHATTER AND GETTING CHATTING
... Okay, Leo recognized that last one. Guess it existed here, too.
Up and down the street, people had their eyes glued to their phones or the large screens showing Xander's stream.
Leo winced. This had to be his plate, right? But why would the fairy-type plate let Xander do this? Did the sylveon have other plates Leo wasn't aware of?
"Guess what, #XanFam, #YaBoiXander's got some #BreakingNews!"
The screens cut to footage... of Leo's teammates lying in a collapsed heap back on the platform!
"Some #TotalLosers washed up in #Levincia," Xander declared. "These guys are total #buzzkills."
Leo heard buzzing overhead. He glanced up and saw rotom drones flying around. They swiveled their cameras as if they were looking for something.
Or someone. The machamp quickened his pace.
Hide. Hide. He had to find somewhere he could hide!
"These #TotalLosers are a bunch of #WildPokémon. And #YaBoiXander's ready to offer #FabulousPrizes to any trainer cool enough to catch them and post the proof on Chatter!"
The machamp quickened his pace, hurrying down a side street with buildings towering over it. He looked around. There were some metal doors lining the street. But was it worth going into any of them?
Wait, the one two buildings down on the left! It had a shutter and there was just a sliver of a crack on the bottom. It wasn't fully shut!
Leo dashed toward it, stretched his one free arm toward the handle on the bottom of the shatter. He was able to curl his fingers underneath and throw the shutter open juuuuust enough to duck underneath with his teammates in tow. Then he shut it behind him, making sure it was properly closed.
"Ahhh!"
(Bad!)
White light blinded Leo. Pain gripped his entire body, forcing him to drop his teammates. He furiously rubbed his eyes while trying to blink the stars out.
"Sylvee, Dazzling Gleam again!"
"Wait, stop!" Leo threw his arms up. The machamp still couldn't see properly. Had he gone into a dark room and gotten flashbanged? This was obnoxious!
The girl who gave the order yelped. Leo flopped onto his belly without even thinking. Fairy energy grazed his backside.
Finally, silhouettes came into view. There was some faint blue light on the other side of a mostly dark room. It looked maybe like a garage with nothing in it besides some boxes and whatever was making that light.
"Hang on!" Leo held an arm up. "I, uh, come in peace?"
"No way. No way that machamp's talking."
(Talk human?)
The second voice, shrill and squeaky, had to be Sylvee's. Leo blinked several times, and the silhouettes finally came into proper view. One was a sylveon, making him reflexively tense before realizing she couldn't be Xander. The other belonged to a girl with... red and blue hair?
... Eh, after Kieran, Leo couldn't be surprised by humans' hairstyles anymore.
"This has gotta be a dream." The girl took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes with her right arm while her left pulled at her brown sweater, then adjusted her leggings. Leggings under short shorts and a transparent skirt. "No more watching Ho-Oh's Insane Escapades before bed," she mumbled, gently tapping her forehead with her clenched fist.
Leo refrained from tilting his head. Human outfits were as weird as their hairstyles. Hell, he was so befuddled by the girl's appearance he didn't even realize Sylvee had come over to sniff him.
(Weird smell,) she barked, ribbons tensing. (Why weird?) Sylvee stole glanced at his teammates. (Also weird!)
"Hmm?" The girl followed Sylvee's gaze to Leo's downed teammates and recoiled. "W-Whoa, hey, what's the deal?"
"It's okay!" Leo held up two of his hands and waved them around. "They're my friends. They're just knocked out, that's all. I, uh—"
He'd revealed himself to Kieran. Was it really a big deal to do it here, too?
"I can explain everything. Trust."
The girl blinked, as if Leo's choice of phrasing had hit on something. She stuck her hands in her sweatshirt pockets and called Sylvee back to her side. In the far corner of the room, where the light was coming from, a vaporeon and flareon stuck their heads out and watched curiously.
Leo returned to his cosmic arceus form in a flash of light... only for his head to bang against the ceiling. "Ow! Sonofa—"
He shrank himself down, ignoring the snickers from Vaporeon and Flareon. Sylvee stared blankly at him, while the girl had taken out a phone in an eevee case and was swiping furiously at it.
"No way." She shook her head. "This is totally a Ho-Oh's Insane Escapades fever dream. O-Or maybe—"
"It's not a dream," Leo insisted. This was getting nowhere fast. At this rate, the others would come to. He didn't need Nikki's lip right now. "I'm Leo. I'm from another dimension. The same one as that awful sylveon that's taken over the airwaves."
The girl squinted at him. "Seriously? How much are you going to try and flex on me, huh? You already look like you jumped outta one of my favorite anime."
"It's the truth, fam."
"What kind of celestial being talks like Glitch chat?" the girl scoffed.
... Well, now Leo just felt silly. "Uh, this kind?"
Wait, was he doing? He had to take some initiative, here!
"Look, the talking sylveon has rotom drones swarming the city cuz he thinks my friends and I are sus," the cosmic arceus continued, gesturing to the others with a foreleg. "But he's the sus one. He's got my plates and I need them back so I can seal up the rift linking our worlds together. I'm only here to lay low until my friends recover."
He waited for the girl's response. Vaporeon and Flareon had emerged from the corner of the room, along with a jolteon, espeon, and umbreon.
(Big!) Sparks crackled on Jolteon's spiky fur.
(Fluffy!) Espeon chirped, eyes sparkling. She tippy-tapped her paws on the floor excitedly, like she was going to pounce on Leo.
"Settle down, Espvee." The girl held her right arm out. She held her phone up at Leo. A click sounded.
"H-Hey—"
The girl tugged her ear. "Not a dream. Haaaah." She tapped away furiously on her phone. "C'mon, internet. Tell Penny what to do when literal God crashes her secret lair..."
"So your name's Penny, then?"
Penny stiffened. She fumbled her eevee phone, but Espvee managed to catch it before it dropped to the floor.
(Safe.) Espvee returned the phone to Penny, beaming.
"Thanks." Penny scratched the espeon's ear while putting her phone in her sweatshirt pocket. Espvee purred in content. "So, you're for reals, then?" she asked Leo.
"For reals."
"Haaaaaaaaaaah." Penny rapped her forehead with her fist again. It was... similar to what Kieran did with his leg, now that Leo thought of it. These two weren't related, were they? Or, like, dimensional counterparts?
Nah, he was totally overthinking this.
"Look, this is my lay low lair," Penny continued while Espvee brushed against her leg, demanding more attention. She scratched Espvee's back. Espvee arced her back up, purring, until Flareon nudged her out of the way. "I can't have you give it away. How long do you need to lay low for?"
As if to answer Penny, something groaned to Leo's right. He turned toward his teammates to see Nikki stirring. Her yellow mohawk came to life, showering sparks onto Shimmer that fwumped up his icy mane and tails.
"Urrrrrggggggghhh." The toxtricity rolled onto her back, groaning. "Anyone get the number of that charjabus that ran me down?"
"I think... Xander did something to us," Scarlett mumbled, rubbing her face with her tail.
"H-Hey, watch it!" Shimmer shoved Nikki. "Your static's messing up my hair!"
"Oh, okay. Yeah. They talk, too." Penny had her phone out. She was no doubt recording this. "Because this isn't weird enough already."
Leo cleared his throat, catching his teammates' attention.
"Where the hell did you come from, Squirt?" Nikki slowly got to her feet, cracking her knuckles. "And where's Xandumbass? I'm boutta knot up his ribbons."
"Xander was hiding an anomaly. We're in a new mystery dungeon," Leo said, opting for a quick explanation. "Xander's broadcasting to the city and has drones out looking for us. So, I took you into this tiny garage—"
"My lay low lair," Penny butted in.
"—and ran into Penny." Leo gestured left with a forelet. "Along with her, uh..."
"My veevees!" she exclaimed, gesturing like the proudest parent in the world. "Flarevee, Vapvee, Joltvee, Espvee, Umbvee, and Sylvee!"
Nikki stared blankly at the eeveelutions. "Soooo, they're all fer— ow!"
Shimmer's horn jabbed her left thigh. The ponytales picked himself up and nodded. "It's nice to meet you all. Sorry we, uh, showed up unannounced."
Penny was back to tapping her forehead with her fist. "Well, your teammates are up, so you can leave now."
Leo's starcloud fur bristled. "But we need more time. To, y'know, come up with a plan and stuff."
"A plan?"
"For Xander," Leo said. "The, uh, weird streaming sylveon?"
"You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?" Scarlett fluttered her eyelids in an attempt to come off as friendly.
"I caught a glimpse. Looked cringe." Penny shrugged.
Nikki's mohawk shrank. "Oh, what fresh hell is this? She speaks like Squirt," she muttered under her breath.
"What was that?" Penny squinted at the toxtricity.
"I said you got that right!" Nikki quickly lied. "The dude's a giant bully back home who's become a massive headache out of nowhere."
That got a reaction out of Penny. She stiffened and struggled to maintain her disinterested look. Sylvee went up to her side, wrapped two ribbons around her leg, and squeezed.
"Behave, Nikki," Shimmer said, jabbing her with his horn again.
"Ow! Hey!" Nikki rubbed her side. "I didn't do nothing, Pillow Prince!"
"Is something wrong?" Scarlett asked. The dragonair slithered forward a bit, but Vapvee stepped in her path and she stopped.
"It's nothing." Penny firmly tucked her hands into her sweatshirt pocket.
"It doesn't sound like nothing," Leo pointed out.
Penny recoiled. "Yeah, well, why would I blab about my secrets to a bunch of strangers who broke into my lair?"
The quartet looked at one another. Nikki rubbed the back of her head. "I mean... she's got a point."
But at the same time, if she knew anything else that could help them deal with Xander, Leo wanted those deets. Still, he could only press so hard without causing problems. And it wasn't like this was the type of thing to wager on a battle, either.
He was mulling things over and didn't realize that Shimmer walked past him until the ponytales started speaking.
"That sylveon... was my friend." Shimmer paused. "Boyfriend, actually."
Penny eyed him skeptically. Leo wondered what Shimmer's game was.
"And I was... a bully, too." His ears folded. He tapped a hind hoof against the concrete floor nervously. "We encouraged each other in the wrong ways. In a manner of speaking, a lot of this is my fault."
Shimmer stepped toward Penny. "I need to help these guys stop him before things get out of control." He bowed his head. "Would you be willing to help us out?"
Leo had spent the past month around Shimmer. Sort of. He knew Shimmer was being sincere. Whether that would actually sway Penny was another matter.
"So, you were a jerk?" Penny tapped her forehead with her fist. "And now you're trying to undergo your anime redemption arc?"
The ponytales' tails bristled. "I, uh, think that's accurate."
Sylvee squeezed Penny's legs with her ribbons. She sighed and scratched Sylvee's ear.
"Okay, fine." She turned around. "This way. Keep quiet." And she marched toward where the light was coming from.
Leo glanced at the others, then nudged his head in the direction Penny went. They followed after her in single file. It wasn't much, but they had some sort of progress.
Despite the concerns about potential security, the group had no real issues finding Bahamut's tunneling spot. It wasn't that close to Eterna City. Sure, there were some bright lights in the distance, but Yuna couldn't make out any actual buildings. Only silhouettes of what had to be smaller, residential areas on Eterna City's outskirts.
The tunnel was, in fact, hidden in some sort of industrial dump. Thankfully not full of garbage, but instead broken steel beams, cinder blocks, sheet metal, and other varieties of building equipment the dragapult couldn't quite identify. Bahamut had located it fairly quickly and Gene easily levitated all the rubble off the sheet metal covering the hole. Once they'd all entered it, Gene placed the cover and rubble back on top.
Their descent was dark and quiet. Even though Gene seemed confident there wouldn't be any Troopers burrowing through the ground, everyone chose to stay silent. Bahamut couldn't fly in his new lucario form and was stuck riding Widget, who'd shifted to his miraivally flight mode.
Yuna found she had a much easier time employing her night vision than she used to. A result of evolving... or a result of Yaldabaoth's added power bolstering her ghostly aura?
"It could be both," Reshiram noted.
Let's not dwell on it. She focused instead on the tunnel. It was a simple circle with jagged edges that plunged straight down underground. There was a slight purple and orange tinge to the walls. Mostly a result of Bahamut and Gene's starry pelts and Widget's thrusters.
Eventually, after Yuna had lost track of how long they'd been flying through the tunnel, Gene broke the silence. "Sheesh. How deep is this thing?"
"I don't recall," Bahamut said. His eyes were shut and aura feelers twitching. Was he trying to sense how close they were? "But given how long Necrozma spent digging to find this place, it wouldn't surprise me if it's incredibly deep."
Gene scratched his right horn. "Thaaaaat'd probably explain how it completely stayed off our radar all this time." The mega mewtwo turned upside down and began flying faster. "I'll give that much to Paradox. Building his capital around Eternatus' core and making it flashy enough to distract everyone and have 'em forget the core even existed is a pretty smart move."
"Don't give your enemy such praise," Bahamut scoffed. "With Matriarch dead, people would've forgotten anyway. Because they'd die off and be replaced by generations raised on Paradox's lies."
"I guess you never heard about his mewgenics program," Gene said, tilting his head to smirk at Bahamut.
"His what?" The cosmic lucario glanced at Widget, who shook his head.
"A conversation for another time," the miraivally mumbled. His gaze remained fixed downward.
"Are you okay?" Yuna asked. "You've been staring down for a while now... almost like you're lost in thought."
"I, uh—" Sparks crackled in Widget's yellow feathers.
"Watch it," Bahamut growled, holding his hands up to avoid the sparks.
"S-Sorry." Widget's crest tightened. "It's just... I think I sense something."
Yuna looked down. The jagged rocky walls continued to stretch down farther than Yuna could see.
... No, wait! There was something. A small speck of light in the distance.
"I doth see it as well," Rayquaza exclaimed.
"It must be the barrier," Bahamut said. He batted one of his aura feelers with a frown. "I can't sense it. But it's at least circumstantial evidence to suggest your theory that you can exert an effect on it is valid."
That last line brought about memories of Vegna's assorted legal ramblings. So there were some of his attributes within Bahamut. It was, if nothing else, a small bit of reassurance that Bahamut really did intend to cooperate with them.
"Even if he were to lose control, you guys outnumber him," Reshiram reminded her. "And Gene seems pretty keen on not letting him get away with anything."
The light was much more visible now. Even Gene and Bahamut could see it, judging by their expressions. Intrigue from the former and vague recollection from the latter.
"Not too much longer," the cosmic lucario muttered.
They proceeded down the remainder of the tunnel in silence. The light steadily grew closer, shifting from white to a mixture of faint blue and purple. Once the light was much brighter, the tunnel fell away to reveal a barrier of interlocking blue and purple hexagons. It was translucent enough for Yuna to see a large brown sphere underneath it.
"This is it?" The dragapult frowned. "Uh, Widget, are you sensing anything?"
"Just the barrier." The miraivally hovered around it. "It's like a wall of aura to me. Really strange."
"That's because we're on the wrong side," Bahamut said. He tapped Widget's right cheek bolt and pointed forward. "Fly around."
Yuna followed Widget. She caught a bit of gray as they went around the brown sphere. It quickly turned into a steel door. It brought the vault in Wyndon to mind, only it was at least twenty times bigger.
"Okay, yeah." Gene lazily swished his starcloud tail back and forth. "That sure does look like the entrance to a mysterious magical core of the universe." He glanced toward Widget. "What now? You work your magic?"
"I... still have to figure out what that entails." Widget drifted toward the barrier, but stopped. "Erm, if someone could take him?" His crest tightened, as if the feathers were pointing to Bahamut.
Gene levitated the cosmic lucario, who grunted in annoyance. Yuna drifted away from the barrier as Widget floated up to it. He pressed his chitinous forelegs against the barrier. Ripples spread over the glowing hexagons.
Yuna held her breath, waiting to see what would happen. She hadn't been there when Widget and Leo interacted, but she hoped things would be... calmer. For everyone's sake.
The barrier rippled again. Then again. Then once more. The hexagons flashed, then evaporated in unison into a fine blue-purple mist that quickly disappeared.
"... truth... close... Yalda..."
Yuna tensed, grabbing the back of head. "Did anyone else hear that?" she asked, rubbing her ectoplasm.
"Hear what?" Gene raised a brow.
The dragapult looked at the door. Its gray steel looked considerably duller with the barrier gone.
Her head pounded again.
"... side... want... truth..."
"I saw them again."
Widget's voice snapped Yuna to attention. Her long tail curled, then uncurled. "Hmm?"
"Those others mes," the miraivally whispered, feathers and tail dimming. "The... Voices of Life I used to be."
"Did they say anything?" Yuna wondered. Maybe Widget heard the same thing as her.
Widget swallowed hard. "They said that... the answers I seek are inside." He glanced at Yuna. "Is that what you saw?"
"I—" Yuna blinked several times. "It was too garbled, but 'truth' came up a couple of times."
"Logically." Bahamut crossed his arms from within Gene's psychic grasp. "This was the site where we felled Matriarch. Surely, there's something lying around in there that can fill in this gap in our timeline of events." He looked down and mumbled. "And help me remember."
Gene clapped his hands together. "Then there's nothing left to do but dive right in." The mega mewtwo plopped Bahamut down on Widget's back and flew toward the door. Slowly, the steel door opened. It turned out to have six pieces, much like the hexagons making up the barrier. Each piece receded to reveal another tunnel. This one gray and metallic with dim, flickering lights in the corners of the floor and ceiling.
"It's kinda creepy," Yuna mumbled.
"Hmph. It's only natural." Bahamut shrugged. "No one's been through it in ages." The cosmic lucario tapped Widget's flank. He flew into the tunnel. Yuna hesitantly followed.
Within the tunnel proper, the metal had rusted in places and completely eroded in others, revealing underlying frayed wires and tubing. Patches of moss and other vegetation littered the floor and walls. Some even had weird, luminous mushrooms casting a strange pink glow over the hallway.
There wasn't a light at the end of the tunnel this time. Instead it was another metal door with yellow and black hazard lines drawn into it. The metal in the walls gave way to glass display cases, kind of like the exhibits in the LaRousse Learnatorium. Their display lights had long since died, however.
Yuna stopped by one and drew on her night vision. The display had... completely fallen apart. It was a mess of metal and plastic that, like the floor and walls, had big patches of moss and grass growing over it.
"Hey, this one's got crystals growing in it."
Widget's voice drew Yuna to the display case further ahead on the left. There was a faint white glow inside it. She hovered up to Widget and found it full of very dim crystals. Colorless crystals with a dull white glow to them.
She turned to the display case across from her. Crystals.
Yuna floated to the next pair of display cases. More crystals. Hell, even the patches of grass on the floor had little crystals in them.
"Weird," the dragapult mumbled. "They almost remind me... of the crystals that have been stuck in the Whispers."
"But they don't have any colors or fancy designs to them," Widget noted. He'd shifted from flight mode back to his base cosmic form to walk along the ground. "Are they, like, normal-type crystals, then? Do you think Leo has a plate here?"
"Would normal-type even get a plate?" Reshiram wondered. "That seems silly, if you ask me."
"Yeeeaaaaawwwwwm." Cresselia was rubbing her eyes in the back of Yuna's mind. "What do you think Diaaaawwmcie?"
Yuna's griseous core glistened. Diancie emerged in pink and brown light. She studied some of the crystals by Widget's gold talons intently.
"Dunno. I think Widget's onto something." Diancie crossed her arms. "There's some strange energy about 'em. No normal crystals sprout up in the middle of a metal tunnel. Or on a patch of grass."
"Celestica Labs."
Everyone turned toward Gene, who was standing by the door at the end of the tunnel. He had dug through grass and dirt clinging to the wall. There was some faint writing underneath. "It's what this says," the mega mewtwo said. "That mean anything to anyone?"
Silence. Everyone exchanged shrugs and shakes of their heads.
"Well then... I don't think we're gonna get much else out of this." Gene wrung his hands out, flinging some dirt around. "And this thing's not opening. Widget?"
"Look, just because I got through the barrier doesn't mean I can get this door open." Widget walked up to it, shaking his head. "Nothing even feels... Eternatus-y about it."
Gene audibly snrked. "Natussy."
Widget frowned at Gene. Bahamut facepalmed.
"Childish fool," the cosmic lucario grumbled.
"What?" Gene shrugged. "I thought it was funny."
Rolling his eyes, Widget propped his forelegs up against the door. Yuna wondered what, if anything, he could possibly do. But his cheek bolts suddenly glowed bright and his starcloud ruff expanded.
A loud whirr echoed through the hallway. Widget dropped to all fours and stepped back, ruff returning to normal.
"Oh. Wasn't expecting that to actually work."
Slowly, the metal door opened, with the halves retracting into the floor and ceiling. Soft light streamed in from the other side. Yuna floated forward so she and Widget were the first to enter in unison. But nothing could prepare her for what lay on the other side.
It was a large valley surrounded by sweeping plains of grass. Giant colorless crystals jutted out of the ground in place of rocks or trees. Similar crystals lined the rim of the valley. And the small collection of buildings and tents within had bits of crystal clinging to them as well.
But all that paled in comparison to the dozens of silvally she spotted within the village. In fact, there wasn't anyone there but silvally.
"This is..."
Claws scraped the ground. Yuna glanced at Widget, whose crest had constricted. His starcloud shriveled around his neck.
"This can't be," he whispered. "What... what's going on here?"
Gene hovered between them, his expression sharpening.
"It shouldn't be possible, but... those are the mass-produced type: fulls that served under Matriarch." His starcloud tail lashed at the air. "I'm sure of it."
GL Exploration Log: Levincia, Paldea (Dimension POV-2011)
This place has everything I hated about my folks dragging me on vacations to big cities like Vegas. Bright signs everywhere. Flashy lights. Streams of people crowding around restaurants and attractions. The big difference is this place is like if a tourist trap city and some big tech office complex had a baby. There are hubs for a whole bunch of websites related to, like, social media and video streaming and stuff.
And like, yeah, way back when I was human I watched way too many videos on the internet instead of being productive. But they weren't nearly this in-your-face when my time as a human was up. It's rather dizzying, if I'm honest.
Maybe other Overseers don't check on this world because of it...
Path of Valor Almanac
2011 was the year that major streaming platform Twitch was founded as JustinTV.
