CHAPTER 7: SCOUTING OUT FROM SPACE

Outer Space, 2 hours ago

A space station that looked straight out of a science fiction movie drifted through the inky blackness of outer space as the people aboard it, and their pokemon, went about their days. Today, the window of the command bay opened out onto the aforementioned planet.

“There it is, once again,” a middle-aged, muscular human wearing an navy-gray uniform said in awe, “Earth, the planet those first interstellar colonists, our ancestors, left one thousand years ago… the pictures in the database really don’t do it justice, do they?”

A gardevoir, who was standing on the right, nodded in agreement. “I thought the pictures were a sight to behold, but in person… this is really something else. Even after over a month, it still hasn’t gotten old,” he agreed through telepathy. “Why did we ever leave, anyways?”

“Well, not everyone left, but simply put, some people wanted to go explore beyond our own planet. Other people stayed behind, but about fifty years after the first colonists left all communications with Earth were cut off. Many Commanders-in-Chief over the last nine-hundred fifty years promised that we would investigate, but none actually did… until now.”

Just then, a older teenager with long, curly lavender hair that had a red highlight strolled into the room, a clipboard under her arm.

“Commander Harlingen, sir, the Cloakable Search Probe is ready to be launched. Remember, we’re here to study how life on Earth has changed and what happened to the humans who stayed behind here.”

Martin Harlingen waved a hand dismissively. “Yeah, yeah, Kori Berkeley, you… do that.”

Kori looked annoyed at her boss’ dismissiveness. “Uh, sir, it’s remote controlled. Not only that, but Commander-in-Chief Reynolds told me to give you specific orders that you were to control it.”

The commander’s smile fell from his face at the mention of his boss. “Oh yeah, her. That bi- sorry, female stoutland is the reason my daughter’s gone. She can go suck a lemon,” he added, stopping himself from swearing because he could get reprimanded for sounding ‘unprofessional’ in front of an intern. He walked away from the window and towards the intern, who was holding out a remote control that bore a close resemblance to one that might come with a games console. The man with jet-black hair containing streaks of red took the controller from her, sat down in a nearby lounge chair, and turned it on. A light activated in the controller and a brief jingle played.

“Cloakable Search Probe activated. Launching now…” a feminine, robotic voice announced.

Outside, a porthole in the ship opened, and out sailed a machine that bore a strong resemblance to a beldum, even sharing a similar color to the shiny coloration of the pokemon. It started to propel itself towards the planet it was instructed to investigate.

Back in the command bay, the same voice from before was emitted from the controller again. “Probe successfully launched. Estimated arrival time: two hours from now.”

Martin groaned impatiently. “Seriously? We have faster-than-light tech for our ship but not for that knockoff beldum?” He stood up forcefully and started to walk out of the room. “Forget waiting, I’m getting myself dinner. Intern, let me know when the probe makes impact.”

The intern saluted as his boss and his humanoid pokemon partner both passed through the opening left by a door that had lifted into the ceiling.

Later…

When the commander returned, he had a pizza box in hand.

“Hey, Kori! Want some pizza? It’s only fair that I reward you for all the hard work you’ve been putting in.”

The intern grunted at that, mainly because she was slightly bitter that this internship was unpaid. The mention of a reward was sort of like a slap in the face to her.

“No answer, huh?” Commander Harlingen stated. “Well, if you decide you want any, it’ll be sitting on that table.” He gestured with his free hand toward the table where him and other commanders had meetings sometimes. After setting down the box, he checked the alarm he had set on his holo-phone. It read that there were 14 minutes and 37 seconds left on the timer.

“So, we have about 15 minutes left, so what now?” the commander asked.

“Actually,” Kori said, still slightly annoyed from her boss’s previous remark, “the probe crash-landed 5 minutes ago.”

“What?!” Martin exclaimed. “And you didn’t think to contact me?”

“Did you seriously forget?” Kori said, crossing her arms. “Interplanetary Exploration Federation interns aren’t allowed to have their holo-phone on their person during work hours.”

“I know that; I should really start a motion to get that pointless rule changed…” Martin said as he rushed to the controller, activated the holo-screen that materialized opposite his chair, and switched the input to the supercomputer that the probe was set to transmit audiovisual data to. Please still work, he thought as he opened the Cloakable Search Probe OS Virtual Machine. The IEF logo and words in Calibri font that read ‘Cloakable Search Probe OS V21.11.2002’ appeared in a window, and fortunately, in smaller Calibri font, more words read ‘CSP-374 – connected. Starting camera…’, leading the commander to sigh with relief.

“Thank Arceus,” he said. “If the thing had been broken, I would’ve been in so much trouble…”

As soon as the camera activated, which, on the machine itself was in the position that a beldum’s normal eye would usually be, it started to levitate out of the sand on the island that it had crashed into. With the push of a button, six seconds passed before the beldum-shaped machine activated it’s cloaking. Damn delay… the commander thought before experimenting with the controls to get a feel for them. The right joystick caused the machine to face a different direction, while the left would cause it to move in whatever direction it was tilted. The ‘A’ button fired a laser, ‘X’ opened a menu, ‘B’ could activate and deactivate the cloaking, and ‘Y’ could allow the beldum-like machine to store items in a pocket dimension accessed through a compartment on its left side. Since the IEF used an actual controller from a games console, modified to add a speaker and robotic voice, to save money, there were also shoulder buttons, which all had the same function: activating the shield, and a d-pad, which was not programmed to any functions at all.

Commander Harlingen used these controls to get a bearing on the probe’s surroundings, finding that it had landed on a small, tropical island, with nothing more than several coconut palms, planted in a bank of sand. When he pointed the probe eastward, however, he saw what appeared to be a lighthouse in disrepair. Ah, he thought, that’s a surefire sign of land!

He directed the probe towards the land, not worrying about the quartet of an eevee, pachirisu, sneasel and litten that were sitting together on the beach. In fact, he moved the probe in their direction because it looked like they were discussing something. To Martin’s shock, and not a little delight, he was able to understand what they were saying.

“No way, they learned how to speak like humans?!” he shouted excitedly, startling both Kori and the gardevoir, thrusting his arms into the air, and nearly losing ahold of his controller. “This is an absolutely groundbreaking discovery!”

“Actually sir,” Kori said, recomposing herself, “if you had read the manual, you’d know that all CSP models have a built-in, real-time, Pokemon-to-Human translator.”

Martin’s mood sank nearly as much as he did back into his chair. “Wish I’d known that before… still, let’s see what they have to say.”

Luneria Beach

“…and that’s why I said ‘what da dog doin’?’ earlier to Ryan,” Terry said.

The eevee looked irritated, while Lena and Ben gave him blank looks. “Now I have more questions,” the litten said. “Like, what’s a ‘YouTube’? Or a ‘Reddit’?”

“Believe me when I say some questions are better left unanswered,” Ryan deadpanned. Then, trying to change the subject, he asked Ben, “So, what inspired you to call ourselves ‘Team Seekers’ anyways?”

“Well,” the litten began, pawing at the sand, “we formed this team with the objective of each of us seeking something out, right? You and Terry want a way home, Lena wants her memories back. As for me…” he stared out at the horizon. “I want to explore the world, see everything there is to offer out there. This village is nice and all, but it’s getting old, you know?”

“I see,” Ryan responded before turning to Lena. Speaking of memories, Lena… did that… erm, interesting story of Terry’s spark anything in your mind?”

The sneasel shook her head wistfully. “No, sorry…”

Ben patted her on the back with a forepaw. “Don’t worry, you don’t need to apologize. It’s not your fault. I mean, that’s literally not how amnesia works, I don’t think.”

“Wait, did that litten call the sneasel ‘Lena’?” a gravelly voice said behind Ryan.

“Huh? Who said that?” Ryan asked, twisting his head about in either direction. Whatever it was nudged into the eevee’s head from behind, causing him to leap forward, startled, right into the water, and his fur got sopping wet, with some of the salty water even getting in his mouth.

“Plegh!” he spat to force the seawater out. “Alright!” the eevee shouted. “Whoever did this, show yourself!” He swung his head around as he crawled back onto the dry sand before shaking himself dry.

Although none of his companions moved their lips, he heard the gravelly voice again. “Tch, stupid stick drift. Why couldn’t the federation use something more durable?”

“Oh, I get it!” Ryan laughed. “It must be a ghost!”

“And apparently an insane one,” Ben said, scratching a head with his paw. “Sticks can’t drift!”

The eevee paid no attention to what Ben said, and his smile changed to a more confused expression. “Whoever you are, um… uninvisify?” he requested, stating the last word slower than the rest of the sentence.

Nothing happened, much to Ryan’s chagrin.

“Argh,” he groaned before facing Lena again. “Lena, you’re strong against ghosts! Try to hit it with a dark-type move!”

“I can’t see it either,” she said, shrugging, “but I’ll try, I guess.” She leapt into the air and used a pursuit attack on where she assumed the ghost had been, and, to her surprise, not only had it not even tried to move out of the way, Lena had successfully gotten a hit in. It didn’t even feel ethereal, but like… metal? She scraped it with a metal claw, and sure enough, she heard the scrape of metal against metal.

It was then that the ‘ghost’ ‘uninvisified’ and revealed itself to not actually be a ghost, instead having the form of a clawed robotic limb with a ball and socket joint containing a circular pane of red glass disguising a camera as an eye. The body was gray, and the claws at the back were golden.

“Man, this world has weird ghosts,” Terry remarked.

“That’s no ghost,” the eevee said in shock, “that’s a beldum! A shiny one at that!”

“Cloaking device compromised,” a robotic, feminine voice stated. “Evacuation override activated.”

Ryan’s ears twitched in his confusion. “Huh?”

It vibrated so hard that the sneasel, who was still tightly gripping the being newly revealed to be a robot, lost her grip and fell to the sand. The beldum-like machine then pointed toward the twilight sky and rocketed away. The quartet watched in awe as the beldum left the planet’s orbit, and their sight. They looked at each other curiously.

“Whaddaya say we all go sleep this whole thing off?” Terry asked.

“Yeah,” the others said in unison before they started to head back for the guild to retire for the night.

Outer Space

After the damaged CSP-374 reentered the porthole it had launched from in order to start getting repaired, Commander Harlingen deactivated his computer, and Kori sighed.

“Man, damaged already, and we didn’t even get to see if the pokemon have any settlements.”

Ignoring his intern, Martin got up from his chair, saying, “I can’t believe that sneasel’s name is Lena. It’s almost like the universe is mocking me somehow for… for not doing enough to protect my daughter.”

“Sorry to be a bother sir, but you mentioned that it was Commander-in-Chief Tara Reynolds’ fault that Lena- er, your daughter died. Can I ask how so?”

The imposing man sighed. “Well, I don’t actually know if she’s dead or not, but… a month ago, when we first got here, Tara told me that she wanted to send a human to Gaia. Lena, my only child, volunteered to do it. She was seventeen and, normally, you have to be eighteen to be sent on missions for the IEF, but a commander can let someone as young as thirteen go as long as the child is okay with it. I refused to let her, but she appealed to Chief Tara, who overruled me and let her go anyways…. She was supposed to be back within a week, but that week came and went… and she never returned.” In a rare moment of emotional vulnerability for him, a tear rolled down Martin’s cheek. “I’m scared that some rabid pokemon got her,” he sobbed, “and it’s all Tara’s fault!” He threw his chair, and Jack had to duck out of the way as it slammed into the wall, damaging neither the projectile or its target.

“Calm down, sir!” Kori said shocked, raising her hands defensively as she picked herself up. “Property damage isn’t going to bring your daughter back!”

After moving his chair back to where it sat previously, Martin flopped down into it, buried his face in his hands, and sighed. “You’re right. It’s just… what I would give to see her again…”

As his gardevoir patted him on the back, comforting him telepathically, Kori just stood there awkwardly. “Um, if it’s okay, I’m gonna excuse myself.”

The commander waved him away. “Yeah, that’s fine…” he said, and the intern left the room.

He picked himself up and stared out the window again when a thought occurred to him that hadn’t before.

What if, he thought, somehow, that sneasel named Lena… what if she’s my Lena? He shook the thought out of his head. No, that’s a ludicrous thought. People can’t just be transformed into pokemon… can they?