Chapter 44: Go Ahead, Mesa My Day

Entry 1041
It’s a strange place. So many weird buildings made from hexagonal tiles and filled with big gears and satellites.

And the inhabitants — these Overseer people — aren’t afraid of me. They keep calling me “Necrozma” and saying more of me are out there. Just not in this universe. Which implies there are other universes.

I’m not sure how to feel about that. And after what happened on Earth, I don’t know I can trust them. It could be another trick. They might want me to lower my guard so they can hurt me. Just like everyone else.

Why am I even bothering with this place? I should just leave. I can’t take any more heartbreaks or betrayals.

The spaceship was a repurposed imperial cargo transporter. All the Eterna Empire colors and emblems were still in place, but the inside had extra leather seats and a couple of mewtwo sized bunkbeds built into the rear. Valkyrie immediately grabbed one and wedged her face into the corner of the ship.

After traveling through one of Gene’s rifts back to the sea east of Venish, they took off. Yuna had to admit, it was mystifying watching the ground grow further and further away, until the whole of Etherium was a round sphere with its pale moon behind it.

Rayquaza was on the drakloak’s shoulder, protesting the “blasphemous bucket of bolts” as some sort of affront to nature. But as the trip went on, his protests died down. Reshiram, on the other hand, was unreachable. He was probably upset Yuna had to leave Jade behind with Seifer, Quetzal, and Artemis.

“This mixtape’s not bad.” Nikki sat in the passenger seat opposite Gene, tapping her right foot on the dashboard. “Never took you for someone who likes more ambient pieces.”

“Nova made this for me,” Gene said, tightening his grip on the steering mechanism slightly.

“I can see that.” The toxtricity grabbed the cassette case. “Lofi beats to travel the cosmos to.” She smirked. “Aww, there are li’l hearts around it, too.”

The mewtwo ripped the case out of Nikki’s grip while she made a kissy face. “Knock it off,” he growled.

Yuna rolled her eyes. She looked down at Leo, who was napping in the drakloak’s lap. Yuna absentmindedly ran a hand through his starry fur. It sent a tingle up her arm and Leo’s starcloud hair and tail dimly glowed.

“Even in all my years orbiting the planet, I never saw this many stars,” Rayquaza said, tiny face pressed firmly to one of the glass windows. His black tail wagged side to side. “Mayhap this is why Sir Bahamut and Lady Chiron would go off on flights together.”

Yuna raised a brow at that. If the two frequently flew together in outer space, then wouldn’t they have been able to see Eternatus coming and prepare for it?

“Planet Chakran dead ahead.”

Yuna’s head snapped forward at Gene’s announcement, but she tilted her head. There were four gray spheres getting closer. “Hang on. Which one’s Chakran?” Her ectoplasm rippled. Leo’s eyes opened and he lifted his purple and gold head up.

“The middle one, probably.” Nikki shrugged. “It’s the biggest.”

Indeed, one gray sphere grew faster than the others. Much faster. Too fast, if Yuna was honest.

“Wait.” Noctum stood up, Malice Crystal sparking in his chest. “That looks a lot bigger than Planet Etherium!”

“Shocker.” Gene waved his right hand dismissively. “Some planets are larger than others. And this one has three moons to Etherium’s one.”

“Whoop-de-doo.” Valkyrie groaned from the back of the ship. “Why am I here, again? I said I’d stay back to take part in… whatever the hell you’re planning to do in Eterna City once you’ve dropped everyone off.”

“Not happening, Chompy. You and Zardy need to work through your little spat,” Gene said, snickering to himself. “What better place than a monastery?”

Nikki joined the mewtwo’s laughter, only for it to die down while she sat up. “Wait a tic. If this planet’s massive, how the hell are we gonna find this monastery?”

Silence followed, with everyone slowly looking at Nikki. Leo stood up and hopped onto the ship’s dashboard.

“Woah, hey!” Nikki leaned forward. “What do you think you’re doing?”

The cosmic arceus’ wheel glowed. A thin trail of gold light trickled toward the northern hemisphere of Chakran’s ragged, dusty-looking surface.

“Leo?” Yuna leaned over Nikki’s seat.

“I think I sense him.” Leo’s tail wagged. “The nice birdie from before.”

“Good enough for me.” Chuckling, Gene tilted the steering mechanism forward and the ship sped off in the direction of the golden light.

“Son of a— another desert? Are you freaking kidding me?!”

Nikki dropped to her knees and punched the brown dirt with a fist. “What kind of dumbasses put a monastery in the desert?! Why couldn’t it be on a tropical isl— hey!“

Gene grabbed Nikki by the neck of her leather jacket and hoisted her back to her feet. “Enough with the theatrics. This ain’t a desert.”

Yuna agreed with the mewtwo. It wasn’t sweltering… or even frigid like Aquardah. Instead of sandy dunes stretching out into the distance, brown, dusty trails ran off in different directions. Bedrock clusters and huge stone spires jutted out of the ground. Several had bits of rusted metal interspersed with them. Some pipes here, a few broken satellite dishes there. The strange mixture of nature and dilapidated machine stretched toward rocky hills in the distance.

In some regards, it reminded Yuna of home… if someone filed off the tops of the volcanoes and cleared all the ash from the air, of course.

“Then what do you call this shit, huh?” Nikki freed herself from Gene’s grip and stomped over to a patch of crabby gray grass. “Looks pretty dead to me.”

“This is a mesa.” Gene tapped his temple. “Makes sense a slacker would mistake it for a desert, I suppose.”

Nikki’s mohawk crackled. “Gee thanks, professor.“

“A mesa?” Noctum walked to Yuna’s side. He was transfixed on one of the raised areas in the distance. A large dome sat behind it, reflecting light from the two moons sitting high in the planet’s orange sky. “Is that like a plateau?”

“Ehh… close enough.” Gene flicked his right hand dismissively. “It’s got a lot to do with the composition of the raised ground. Don’t need to bother with the details.” He turned away from the others, yawning. “Anyway, I should head back. Have fun.”

“Wait, what?” Nikki’s mohawk sparked again. “You’re not seriously dumping us in the middle of freaking nowhere and hightailing it!” She shot Yuna an accusatory look. “Come on, Princess, back me up here.”

Yuna was about to do that when Leo hopped up onto her head. He looked at the same dome in the distance. “There.” He pointed his forehoof ahead. “It’s like it’s speaking to me.”

“Then send it to voicemail,” Nikki scoffed. “The adults are talking.”

Gene smirked. “See? You’ve got better directions than I can offer.” The mewtwo’s yellow-tipped tail lazily drifted back and forth. “Plus, you got two rift-makers who could portal you back to Etherium at a moment’s notice.”

Noctum and Yuna exchanged skeptical looks. Their portal abilities weren’t that strong, were they? That would be on par with Bahamut himself!

Then again, if Eternatus can produce infinite energy from nothing, Gene might be right. Gulping, Yuna rubbed her Soul Dew. “Just… tell me what you’re planning that makes you want to go back to the Qliphoth so quickly.”

Gene’s expression hardened. “I’m going to attack Eterna City. While I do, Cyril’s going to spread the word about the rifts. And hopefully the others can figure out what happened to the people Guile Hideout supposedly abducted.”

“Attacking by yourself?” Valkyrie snorted. “Sounds like an idiotic move for a so-called genius psychic ty—”

The spaceship whirred to life behind Team Bastion. Squeaking, Yuna hovered higher in the air. Leo tumbled off her head, but simply floated in front of the drakloak like nothing was wrong. By the time she turned around, the ship was already halfway through a closing rift.

“Kitty didn’t say goodbye. Rude!” Leo puffed out his cheeks despite lacking a mouth.

“It’s okay, Leo.” Yuna pet the cosmic arceus’ shoulder. “Let’s go and find Alder.”

To make things as simple as possible, Yuna summoned Rayquaza to carry Nikki and Valkyrie while whipping up some wind to help the group fly across the plains faster.

Dirt, gray grass, and dry brush passed below Team Bastion as they flew. The further north they went, the more ruined buildings they passed. Rusted pipes and decaying towers with dented remnants of metal structures littered the slopes and hilltops. Some were even built into the bedrock sheets that formed the mesa’s raised areas.

“Are you sure we’re going the right way?” Nikki shouted over the wind. “This place is abandoned!”

“Mayhap that is why Eternatus passed it over,” Rayquaza thought aloud. “There doth be so little life here, the daemon thought it useless.”

But Yuna looked ahead toward the nearest platform, squinting. “Explain that, then.” She pointed ahead, where the ruined buildings had multicolored cloth on some of their outer walls. Rope ran between some buildings. Assorted fabrics flapped in the wind.

Nikki shrugged. “I guess they ditched this place so quick they never finished their laundry?”

Yuna rolled her eyes. That had to be sarcasm, right?

“Whoa!”

Rayquaza suddenly corkscrewed through the air, narrowly avoiding three purple fireballs. Yuna looked behind him, blinking.

Yes, they were purple fireballs! What was that about?

The drakloak stopped and looked down. A couple of figures stood at the edge of one of the rock structures, but Yuna couldn’t make out any details. “There are people down there!”

Rayquaza was busy looking his black, serpentine body over. “Thou speaketh the obvious.” He looked down. “We art under attack! A weird, purple-furred typhlosion and a samurott whose helmet is purple instead of yellow.” He coiled the tip of his tail around. “Say the word and I shalt send them flying.”

Nikki quirked a brow. “You can see that far? Cripes, you got like luxray vision or something?”

“A good knight always eats his carrots.” Rayquaza proudly snorted some dragonfire.

“Uh, how about I deal with it?” Yuna offered, not wanting to create any unnecessary headaches when they hadn’t found Alder yet. She encouraged Leo to stay back with the others and started descending.

“Watch out, Princess!”

Noctum swooped by her and blew apart a black beam with a Flamethrower. “Stop!” the black charizard shouted. “We’re not your enemies!”

At least, I hope we’re not. Nevertheless, Yuna pressed forward. Or down, in this case. And Rayquaza was right. There were some typhlosion in Aeon. Samurott, too. None of the typhlosion had purple back fur… or a collar of purple flames. And this samurott’s armor-like shells were lavender with strips of red. His long, wavy beard and whiskers rippled in the wind.

Samurott leveled his horn at Yuna. “Not enemies, eh? There ain’t no one livin’ on this planet ‘side me and me shipmates. So, how did a little scamp like yerself and yer cap’n end up here? And with a frightening fella like that?” He pointed a flipper skyward toward Rayquaza. The large golden anchor he wore around his neck jingled like a line of bells.

Yuna flinched. Atrocious accent aside, she had half a mind to tell Samurott she called the shots, not Noctum. But that wasn’t going to accomplish anything. Honesty was the way to go. “We’re here to see Alder. It’s about, um, a dimensional crisis?”

“Are ye asking me or telling me?” Samurott narrowed his eyes. To Yuna’s shock, there was dark energy crackling around his jagged, branch-like horn.

But then Typhlosion stepped forward and put a paw on Samurott’s shoulder. “Calm yourself, Archie.” He nudged the goggles over his eyes with his other hand. Curiously, they held a similar glowing stone as Archie’s anchor. “It sounds to me like this child—”

“I’m not a kid. I’m a princess,” Yuna growled, ectoplasmic tail rippling. A pang of self-directed guilt followed. So much for keeping her attitude in check.

Typhlosion smirked in amusement. “Quaint.” He took his hand off Archie. “As I was saying, she sounds like one of the people Brother Alder met in the anomaly.”

“Yer too trusting, Maxie,” Archie growled, horn still trained on Yuna.

“No. I’m simply using my head for more than slashing things.” Maxie shook his head disapprovingly. “Forgive my boorish compatriot’s attitude. He gets feisty if he doesn’t get to fight something.”

Archie scowled. “We guard a monastery on an abandoned planet. Ye should be just as jumpy as me when someone be showing up outta the deep blue. Especially when one of ’em got a might cursed looking doubloon in his belly!”

Yuna offered Noctum a sympathetic look, but he wasn’t bothered. In fact, the black charizard had a slight grin. Perhaps because this bickering was familiar to him. It certainly reminded Yuna of when she argued with her little siblings.

“Hey! What’re you scamps smiling about?” Archie growled.

“Nothing.” Noctum shook his head. “But, uh, I think it’s probably best we head to the monastery. Don’t you?”

Yuna nodded her agreement. “Alder was the one who told us to find him on Planet Chakran.”

“He said much the same.” Maxie nudged up his goggles. “Very well. Summon your overpowered taxi and we’ll take you to Brother Alder.”

Noctum and Yuna snickered. Neither of them would let Rayquaza know about that comment.

Sticky didn’t like having to leave his tablet unattended when in Paradox Tower. Sure, it was behind a naganadel-specific locker with stinger, voice, and claw identification, but the rebel mewtwo was a crafty one. If anyone could find a way to get access to Sticky’s files, it would be him.

Nevertheless, his emperor told him to report to the tower’s underground facility with absolutely no equipment, so here Sticky was. Floating in the middle of the small room with his head swiveling from security cameras connected to wall-mounted Hidden Power turrets to a giant metal vault door whose latches slowly unfastened.

The gray door slid open to reveal a red door. The red door retracted into the ground to reveal a purple door with the Eterna Empire sigil. The purple door lifted into the ceiling to reveal steel bars, which slid into the ground and left a long glass tunnel stretching ahead of Sticky.

He hovered forward. Lights clicked on underneath the naganadel. Every click echoed all around him. The lights illuminated a black, hazy abyss beneath the glass tunnel. Sticky faintly saw outlines of more turrets swiveling around. Their muzzles trained on him. They must have had aura-seeking sensors on them.

Sticky always knew Paradox Tower was a stroke of architectural brilliance, but this was on another level. The building had to go as deep underground as it rose high above Eterna City’s streets.

After several minutes, Sticky finally saw the end of the tunnel. Another metal door with a red “W1-DG3T” welded into it. There were no handles or doorknobs, however. The naganadel approached the door and looked around, before he finally noticed a small doorbell painted to look like a deoxys. He gingerly pressed a claw to the dooroxys’ head.

Four pleasant chimes sounded, reverberating down the glass tunnel.

With hydraulic hisses loud enough to make Sticky drift back nervously, the bunker door opened. Paradox stood on the other side.

“Good, you made it.” The deoxys’ right tentacles coiled into an arm. He beckoned the nagandel forward with his right hand. “Oh, W1-DG3T! Be a good boy and say hello to your father’s assistant.”

Father? Sticky was fairly certain that if Paradox could reproduce, he would’ve done it long ago. He hovered through the door cautiously, unsure what to expect.

The massive computer terminal, hive of wires, and Eterna energy tubes sitting in the center brought the poipole hive Sticky was born in to mind. What Sticky wasn’t expecting was everything surrounding the terminal and the large glass pod it was connected to.

Comic books — or were they manga? — strewn all over the floor. Posters of buff pokémon like incineroar and hawlucha in brightly colored spandex, masks, and capes haphazardly stuck to the bunker’s floor and circular wall. Tiny Eternavision screens showing what appeared to be old reruns of Pokémon Superfriends and Ultra Dragonite Ball. A bizarre juxtaposition, but no doubt the kind of show a kid would like.

Did that mean Paradox truly had a secret child? Who was the mother, then?

“Hello, father’s assistant!”

The voice was so high and shrill it startled Sticky. He nearly shot paint out of his needles in surprise, but managed to steady himself and locate the voice’s source: an honest-to-life type: full unit loafing next to a cabinet, scribbling with crayon on a piece of paper. But this type: full was littered with dark purple spines along its back and… empty torso.

Sticky couldn’t keep his jaw from dropping. Type: Full’s red body was glass-like and transparent. There were no organs. Or even mechanics! Only a glowing white sphere that remained suspended inside the unit’s torso even as he approached the naganadel. If there was fluid inside, Sticky couldn’t tell. Nothing sloshed around.

“I am W1-DG3T and I am going to save the universe!” the type: full chirped, his luminescent red fish tail wagging. “Oh, right.” He bowed his head respectfully. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Assistant. Would you like to engage in the traditional handshake? Or are you more of a ‘fist bump’ person?”

“I’m… good, thank you.” Sticky kept his arms by his sides. He was still in disbelief.

“Oh, have we moved on to exchanging pleasantries already?” W1-DG3T’s tail wagged faster. “I will update my protocols to allow for occasional skipping of formal greetings.” He turned to Paradox. “I am doing quite well today. Son Golurk and his friends just defeated Golden Mewtwo! It was great! That nasty evildoer tried to destroy their home planet, but they rewound time to stop him. I will stay vigilant for any sneaky planet-busting desperation attacks from evil mewtwo!”

Sticky didn’t know which of the two EV shows W1-DG3T referred to, but it wouldn’t surprise him that a caricature of Gene would serve as the bad guy. Had to instill in kids from a young age that the resistance was nothing but trouble.

“That’s good to hear,” Paradox said, coiling his left tentacles into a hand to pat the top of W1-DG3T’s navy blue beak.

“So, Father, when will I have the opportunity to bring our enemies to justice?” W1-DG3T wondered, cheek bolts glowing bright red in their purple sockets.

“That’s actually why I’m here,” the deoxys replied, folding his arms behind his back. “Our Benefactor’s captors know all about us. And I believe they’re going to mount an attempt at stopping us from freeing Him.”

W1-DG3T’s eyes lit up. “And you would like me to deliver justice onto their evil plans?”

“Precisely.” Paradox snapped his right fingers. “I have the perfect test assignment for you, actually. But first… why don’t you give Father’s assistant a little demonstration?”

“Hell yeah!” W1-DG3T’s tail wagged again. “I will prepare the demonstration immediately.” The type: full turned and trotted toward the computer terminal. Sticky couldn’t take his eye off the guy.

“Sir, I don’t understand,” the naganadel whispered. “I thought all type: fulls were indefinitely out of commission.”

“Oh, that’s still true.” Paradox hung his head and shook it. “Try as my science division might, they’ve remained inert wastes of space since Matriarch went offline. They’re collecting dust in a separate bunker.”

A loud klaxon sounded. W1-DG3T stepped away from the terminal while a portion of the bunker floor opened.

“Then how do you explain this?” Sticky gestured toward the type: full.

“The culmination of agonizing research using the mew DNA I’ve harvested and what little information we salvaged from Valhalla before we were completely locked out,” Paradox explained. “What you’re looking at… is a prototype for a new, mobile Matriarch. W1-DG3T is the codename, but you could consider him the alpha build for Zodiark 2.0!”

Sticky paused for a moment, before realizing the deoxys was using Matriarch’s real name. That kind of information was off limits even amongst his Paradigm lieutenants. The naganadel was honored the emperor considered him worthy of knowing it.

“I am ready!” W1-DG3T announced, hopping back from a raggedy mewtwo doll tied to a metal pole. It was covered in bite and claw marks.

“Show the move that Father taught you,” Paradox instructed.

“Command acknowledged!” W1-DG3T widened his stance. “Eterna Justice Beam!”

The type: full’s torso filled with blinding light. A giant purple and red beam enveloped the doll. A giant “KABLAM!” appeared within the beam.

“Uh, sir… am I seeing things or is that attack displaying an action bubble?” Sticky had his right arm held up slightly to shield his eyes from the intense light.

“Ah, yes. He is, perhaps, a bit too eager.” Paradox chuckled. “But it’s a harmless little thing that amuses him. Go along with it.”

When the attack finally died down, there wasn’t a trace of the mewtwo doll left. The pole was vaporized too. Ash and purple sparks drifted aimlessly around the room. W1-DG3T hopped about excitedly. “Hell yeah! I totally schooled him!”

“Well done, W1-DG3T.” Paradox golf clapped. “Now, be a good little type: full and clean up the mess you made.”

“Understood.” W1-DG3T bobbed his head. “I do not deserve to fight crime if I cannot fight grime.”

Then his legs and tail vanished in bursts of red and purple light, replaced by hoses that wouldn’t look out of place on various vacuum cleaners. Sticky almost hid behind Paradox out of surprise. “Sir?” he squeaked.

The deoxys pat Sticky’s circular gut. “Like I said… the mew DNA experiments are finally bearing fruit. A stable, shapeshifting biosynthetic framework that can interface directly with the Benefactor.”

Sticky watched W1-DG3T scoot across the floor, sucking up ash and bits of metal debris. “Yes, but why did you need this?” he wondered.

“The seal on Eternatus is releasing… but my efforts to complete the broken Red Chain are stalling.” Paradox shook his head, tsking loudly. “That Phantom remnant continues to vex my efforts at taking his fragment. And that’s not even accounting for the ones I have no leads on.” His arms uncurled into tentacles. “As much as I hate to say it, we have to acknowledge the possibility that Matriarch will remain inert even once the Benefactor is free.”

Sticky gulped. “And no Matriarch means—”

“No guiding the Benefactor through the cosmos,” Paradox grimly declared. He turned away from the naganadel. “Thus, I’m pursuing a backup. If W1-DG3T continues to show promise, I will iterate on him until we have operational replacements for Matriarch.”

The type: full dinged like a vintage toaster. “Grime successfully collected. Proceeding to emptying phase.” He turned and hovered further away from Paradox and Sticky, who frowned and clicked his claws together nervously.

“If the goal is to make Zodiark 2.0, then why does this type: full have the mind of a child?” he asked.

“Oh, Sticky, Sticky, Sticky.” Paradox chuckled and shook his head like a parent watching their child make a fool of themselves. “Because your brilliant emperor learns from other’s mistakes.”

“I don’t follow.”

“The original type: full unit was an AI,” Paradox said. “He developed a conscience— a twisted conscience that led him to rebel against Zodiark and lay the groundwork for the traitor, Chiron, to deactivate Matriarch in the first place.”

Off in the distance, W1-DG3T connected himself to a nozzle in the wall. All the dirt he sucked up went through the nozzle.

“The type: fulls that came after it were nothing more than programmable machines,” Paradox continued. “Unable to think for themselves. And, of course, completely useless after Zodiark went offline.” The deoxys leaned forward. “You see where I’m going with this?”

Sticky tapped his chin. “Zodiark wasn’t a machine. So, you can’t expect a machine to replicate how she interfaced with the Benefactor?”

“Exactly!” Paradox’s right tentacles merged into a hand whose fingers snapped. “But I can’t risk my creation rebelling against me. So, I thought it better to start from scratch. An infantile, blank slate of a mind that I could cultivate precisely to my liking.”

The way Paradox phrased it unsettled Sticky. But he believed in his emperor. The deoxys knew what he was doing.

W1-DG3T dinged again. He disconnected from the nozzle, then his limbs reappeared. “Clean up complete.” His fish tail wagged. “What shall we do next, Father?”

“Aren’t you worried about sending him out into Etherium?” Sticky whispered. “Couldn’t that undo all your, um, hard work?”

“No. He’s far enough along that my views are entrenched within his psyche,” Paradox whispered back. He cupped his hand around his face. “That’s going to be all for now, I’m afraid. Father and his assistant have a very important meeting to attend.”

“Okay.” W1-DG3T didn’t sound bothered. “Then I will return to watching Son Golurk’s battle against the evil forces of the universe!” He happily trotted back toward the EVs.

“He fully believes he’s a superhero that will save the galaxy by restoring our Benefactor to His former glory,” Paradox continued to Sticky in a whisper. “And besides, he’s the prototype. If things go awry, I’ll simply destroy him and immediately begin building the next model. I have encrypted copies of everything I’ve done with this project, so it will be much faster.”

The deoxys turned toward the door. “Now, come along. I wasn’t lying. We have some very important guests to greet.”

Right, the Etherians. Sticky took one last look at W1-DG3T before following Paradox toward the bunker door, wondering what the emperor had in store for his captives.