Blaguarro Town T2 Deepest Lab

[Jackie Cat]

Laura took a breath. The 'ARK' was okay. She was okay. Not too badly hurt, and the fatigue was fading. The feeling of bone-deep exhaustion. She glanced over at Lovrina, in need of some restraints, and pinched the bridge of her nose with fatigued frustration. Maybe if she just generated a little Radiance, the feeling would pass...

"Thanks, Dave," she said to the Poochyena supporting her, quietly.

It did. The feeling of exhaustion faded into irrelevancy. A moment ago she'd been overthinking saying anything, now she just said what she wanted. Neat. Mental note: don't overdo it. Best not to fuck around and burn out.

"I got cuffs," she muttered. Odette was closer. She could do it. "Odette, heads up."

Laura tossed a pair of Ranger-issue cuffs to the Mawile. They weren't a foolproof measure, but they were proofed and imbued with an Ability-nullifying effect, so they'd make starting another fight a hell of a lot harder.

So, ARK did feel like seeing the sun. Good.

"You might not have much idea what you want at first," she told them. "That's okay. You have time to figure it out, now."

 

[Chibi Pika]

Jade sank against the floor, still breathing hard, taking a long moment to adjust to the fact that the fight was over. The ARK Unit was no longer attacking. It had actually calmed down. Still a Shadow Pokémon, but no longer frenzied. For now, at least, everything was okay.

She watched grimly as Dave and Odette made sure Odette and Naps were properly restrained, and then turned back to where Nova was rooting around through the wreckage of the shadow machine.

"Well, they probably won't have an easy time making more shadows now," she said, idly shifting through some of the rubble along with him. They'd accomplished their goal, right? Not much else to do here, but...

Something glinted under a crumpled metal panel. Jade reached down and delicately held it between two digits. A small disc, sort of like a TM, but smaller.

"This look familiar?" she asked, holding it up to Nova and Gladion. If it was related to the ARK Unit, odds were that they'd recognize it.

 

[Shiny Phantump]

Gladion’s eyes widened. “That’s… probably a type memory? Please tell me it’s not scratched. It’s for manually overwriting our typing. If we can’t figure out a way to disable the manual control the RKS System has over our… over the type stuff, then that’ll be our only way to be anything other than a normal type.”

He lowered his head and pressed on the side of it, and a shallow disk drive release. (If it was like the one he knew, there’s be a facial muscle trigger too, but he’d have to practice that later.)

“Huh. I expected that to feel weird. It doesn’t really feel it anything at all.”

At first he’d been thinking about asking her to give it to him if it was on good condition, but once he was standing there, drive open, the idea of actually putting it into his head made him uncomfortable. He closed the drive again. “I’m not looking to run arbitrary stuff from Cipher on my body right now, though. Honestly on giving it a second thought, I’m not sure it’s ever going to be a good idea. Especially if it’s related to the shadow typing machine.”

I’m not sure if I want it to be a good idea.

 

[Ambyssin]

"I... might have a means of duplicating it." Nova looked at Jade and Gladion because they knew the answer, too. Well, sort of. He didn't want to pull Mewtwo into the conversation. "Gerome's son is apparently some sort of crazy genius inventor. I bet he could replicate it. He'd probably froth at the mouth from the offer."

Nova started putting any pieces of machinery that looked intact into his bag. "But only one disk? That's how it worked for me. The Legend Memory was what Professor Cynthia called it."

 

[Sinderella]

Control. Control. Control. It’s all under control.

Her gun was doing what it was supposed to do. Lorvina was getting tired. The stupid fucking murkrow could barely hit them. But that Null…

No, the focus was Lorvina and her stupid hammer. The others could handle that for now. She wanted Lorvina right now. And when she finally managed to get that fucking hammer out of her stupid pink gremlin hands, she felt the light within her surge.

This is control. She’s down, she’s out, she can’t do anything.

The Shadow machine wasn’t too far behind. Done.

But that Null…

She watched with a mixture of suspicion and apprehension as the others worked to bring it down. Her finger remained curled around the trigger of her gun, and Jawile had taken upon themselves to hold Lorvina’s stupid hammer between their teeth like a fucking bone. She must have looked like a whole ass menace standing there with that glare on her face.

Smash the Null if it doesn’t calm. Smash it if it can’t be controlled.

The thought startled her back into awareness, and the weight of her own existence pulled her down from her light-induced high. Wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait…

Focusing on the sound of her own breath, she filled her own lungs with the stench of leaking Shadow, smashed metal, and the shed blood of herself and her comrades. Not the ideal replacement, but something was better than going too far up toward the sun.

When her vision refocused, the ARK looked…a little more calm. And it was speaking clearly. Her finger joints screamed in protest when she loosened her grip on her gun’s trigger; she hadn’t realized she’d been holding it so tight.

What the fuck?

“Yeah, I got it,” she said to Laura, shaking off the unsettling feeling that had started to creep up her spine. She caught the cuffs with more ease than she thought she had, and turned back to the downed tinkaton, her deep frown now reaching her eyes. “My fucking pleasure.”

She wasn’t conservative with the cuff’s tightness. In fact, she’d have dug them into the stupid pink fuck’s skin if she could. When she was done, she examined her handiwork.

“That should do the trick,” she said, voice oozing a deep vitriol. “You can #sit in time out and #think about what you did.”

“And maybe I can bass dose kneecaps wiff dish hammar?” Jawile said. “Shweet, shweet irony.” She paused before cackling. “HA. GET IT? IRON-Y.”

Grimacing, she looked over her shoulder to see Jawile was still holding the hammer, and drool now poured down the handle in waves. Every time the jaws spoke, they sent sprinkles of saliva in every direction. A splash zone, for all intents and purposes.

Odile wrinkled her beak in disgust. “Ew-uh, why are you fucking like this?” she whined.

 

[Butterfree]

Dave blinked as Laura put her weight on him to support herself upright, without even asking, momentarily reminded of the times Jean would just lean on him or drape herself over his shoulder or tug on his arm.

And then she offered to be friends with the big Shadow beast. That also sounded like something Jean would do.

He didn't move. She probably needed the physical support, after the move that'd hit her. The coldness was slowly receding from his chest. He watched warily as the chimera slowly sat down and asked what to do. Everyone had nice things to say about whatever they wanted. And what they wanted was... the fucking sun?

"So... you're okay?" he asked the chimera, wary. "You're not in pain, or feeling any feral instinct trying to take control of you, or anything? Just, feeling fine, let's go outside?"

 

[Chibi Pika]

Gladion had... opened the slot on the side of his head. Jade stared at it for a few seconds, trying to figure out if he wanted her to insert the disk, but he shut the drive before she could figure out how to ask, which was probably for the best.

The ARK Unit's eyes were fixed on the disc. "Changing types, that is something I had been designed to do, before I was repurposed," the chimera said. "Now, those would no longer work for me, I believe."

Jade clicked her tongue. "Huh. There might be other discs around here somewhere, then." Maybe they wouldn't work for the ARK Unit anymore, but there was good chance Nova or Gladion could get some use out of them. She carefully slipped it into her bag and went back to opening drawers in the desks that hadn't been destroyed by the battle.

The ARK Unit tilted its head at Dave's questions.

"I control me," it just said. "I am a perfect shadow."

Meanwhile, Lovrina let out a pained groan, shifting her head slightly. Naps glanced at her, then back at the Wayfarers. "So, what, you guys are taking the ARK Unit? What else do you want from us?"

 

[Ambyssin]

"Let me know if you find one that looks, uh, psychic-y? I can put that one to especially good use."

Nova paused in the midst of looking for more parts to salvage when the murkow spoke. He took a deep breath and forced a smile at ARK. "We don't have to talk about that now if you don't want to." Nova paused, then said, "My apologies for the next part."

"So, what, you guys are taking the ARK Unit? What else do you want from us?"

He marched toward the downed Cipher members. Nova grasped a tiny bit of that radiant energy to let the gold color overtake the turquoise in his electronic eyes and cheek bolts.

"I think you vastly misunderstand your situation, buddy," he said, forcing a fake enthusiasm in his voice that almost matched Lovrina's. Save for the terminally online slang. "You should consider yourselves lucky I'm showing restraint. I would love nothing more than to have you two join your colleague Fein. On a slab. In the coroner's office."

Nova gave that comment a moment to sink in as he skulked closer to them. "You'll be coming with us, too, naturally. Answering every question. Doing exactly what we tell you. And not trying any funny business."

He turned back to the wreckage of the machine to resume his tech search. "In case that fight didn't make it clear, anything you two do to try and hurt me will just hurt yourselves twice as badly."

 

[Chibi Pika]

Jade winced at Nova's display. "I don't think that's... necessary. They're already restrained..." She rubbed her arm awkwardly.

"Geez, I thought we'd be dealing with wannabe heroes, but you guys make Cipher look like kittens," Naps mumbled.

Jade ignored him. She'd found a couple more discs that seemed similar to the first one, sliding the into her back alongside it.

"So, RKS system, huh... that's what lets you guys change type?" she asked.

The chimera turned to face her, its gaze sharp and unblinking. Not too different from Nine. "ARK system is what I have. That is where the name designation comes from."

Jade tilted her head. "Do those, like... stand for something? RKS? ARK...?"

"ARK. Yes. It stands for Artificial Radiant Knight."

 

[Shiny Phantump]

“Huh.” Gladion wasn’t sure what to make of that. “That’s not close to what I’m familiar with at all. I wonder why that’s the name they went with when the system is built to wield types that aren’t radiant… but it does fit the other half of the dual purpose.”

Gladion narrowed his eyes, like he was annoyed to even have to think about it. This was because he was annoyed to have to think about it. “Formally, RKS System stands for Regulated Kinase Signalling System. It’s supposed to manually control the kinds of signals that manage typing in Oricorio, but using a machine instead of biology. It was named by an egotistical loser who wanted to LARP his shitty disk paper-over job being like the old myth of Arceus imbuing each type in the world into a tablet to make it sound cool. Y’know, RKS, Arceus, similar pronunciation. ARK.. doesn’t have the last syllable but still seems to fit that general note. And it’s more clearly a backronym, you can’t convince me they didn’t just stick ‘knight’ in there to make it say ARK.”

 

[Ambyssin]

Radiant Knight?

"Wait, could you use Radiance, then?" Nova wondered. What else were those initials supposed to mean? It was way too on the nose.

"It doesn't stand for anything where I'm from," Nova mumbled. "It was just in reference to the pokémon Arceus."

He frowned. "Except... that pokémon didn't exist where I'm from until a month ago. And now there are at least two of them..."

 

[Chibi Pika]

The ARK Unit paused, thinking. "No. The system did not work. For me, the light was not usable."

"It didn't work, because those weirdos so didn't have any clue what they were doing," a voice piped up. "I'm the one who got the system working, because I'm a genius."

Jade spun around to see that Lovrina had sat up, arms still cuffed behind her back. So she wasn't exactly hesitant to brag about her handiwork, then. That would probably be useful for getting information...

"Wait, what do you mean, 'those weirdos'?" Jade asked.

"The guys who made the ARK Unit, duh," Lovrina said, as though this were obvious. "They were all, like, fixated on making their 'Radiant Knight,' and they couldn't even figure out how to synthesize Radiance. Like, come onn."

 

[Shiny Phantump]

Gladion raised a brow. “They still have an RK— ARK suppression helmet on, so I’m not sure this is you getting the system working so much as it’s crank magnetism at a slightly lesser degree of failure. From where I’m standing it looks like you didn’t get it working at all, you just…” Gladion shot her a death glare. “Did something worse.”

 

[Ambyssin]

Oh, goody. The blabbermouth was awake. But at least her loose lips had sprung a very interesting bit of information... if not a rather concerning one. Synthesizing radiance? This had to be that other group over in the Commonwealth. And it sounded like Cipher knew about them. Nova wondered if there were Cipher agents already embedded within the Commonwealth. Planting seeds for something big once their Blaguarro operation had reached a critical juncture.

Was Luz aware of any of this? Nova made a mental note to tell her.

He added more pieces of presumably-intact machinery to his bags and scanning around for any Memory Drives. Nothing immediately jumped out to him. "Hey, Gladion. You recognize these disks better than me. Can you take a look and see if there are anymore around here?"

Nova approached Lovrina. "Okay, Gamer Girl, I think it's time we respec'd some of your intelligence points into wisdom." He doubted anyone was going to get that reference, even her. "Who built them? Why? And whatever other details you have."

 

[Jackie Cat]

"Snrk," laughed Laura, into her paw. "Wisdom won't help, Nova. She needs an alignment change, not a characteristic reallocation."

So, the chimera played TTRPGs? Nerd. Maybe she should start a D&D club for offworlders...

Laura sniffed, and approached the Tinkaton, wishing she had her walking stick to lean on.

"Gonna take a wild fucking guess and say that the Radiant Knight was a Covenant of Light project. An artificial Saint? It's gotta be them. Only organisation we've heard of that's all occult and obsessed with Radiance and Saints and superpowered individuals divinely ordained to protect the people."

She frowned.

"What I want to know is, what the hell is the relationship between them and Cipher, anyway? Did they bring you lot here, or did you tunnel into their lap all on your own?"

 

[Ambyssin]

"Wisdom won't help, Nova. She needs an alignment change, not a characteristic reallocation."

Nova clicked his tongue. "True. But I'm just a big birddogfish thing, not a miracle worker. Or a therapist."

Maybe therapists existed on Forlas? He sure hoped so.

 

[Chibi Pika]

"Silver tabby over here got it," Lovrina said with a smirk. "Buncha weirdos LARPing as the Round Table or something."

She made a face at the suggestion that the Covenant had brought Cipher here, though. "Ugh, no way, we got here on our own, thank-you-very-much. Those plebs had nothing to do with it. They just happened to figure out that we were human and were like, totally amazed by our technology. They, like, wanted to trade, so we gave them some old computer parts and stuff. But then! They had the nerve to say that we scammed them!"

Jade gave the Tinkaton an incredulous look. "Was it a scam?"

Lovrina let out a snort. "Well, duh. None of the stuff we gave them worked. But like, c'mon! They so thought they were scamming us too. They had no idea I'd be able to get the ARK system to generate Shadow after they totally screwed up with the Radiance thing."

 

[Ambyssin]

They had no idea I'd be able to get the ARK system to generate Shadow after they totally screwed up with the Radiance thing.

"Congratulations." It was rather hard to try and sarcastically slow clap as a four-legged birddogfish, but Nova gave it his best shot. "And now you get to tell us how to reverse it."

 

[Shiny Phantump]

Gladion scowled at her. "And step one wasn't taking off the helmet that suppresses the system you, ahem, 'got working' at all? That was just never a part of the process? Come on. Are you sure you didn't just create a normal perfect shadow?"

They were just playing her ego for info now, weren't they? He'd meant what he said last time, now he wasn't so sure— but it didn't matter as long as it kept her talking, so he put on the most smug tone possible. "I don't think you understand what you did any better than they did. You just had the resources to fall upwards into the illusion of making a system that could do that, without even knowing how to turn it on."

 

[Butterfree]

Of fucking course it all came back to the Covenant of fucking Light.

"Computer parts?" Dave asked, eyebrow raised. Laura had taken her weight off him and stepped away to approach the Tinkaton; he warily came closer, too. "Did they seem to know computers, and wanted those parts specifically?"

Not that he was quite sure what the Covenant of Light would be doing with computer technology in cowboy world, but it couldn't be anything good.