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Ranger HQ Ranger Union HQ

Reader mode
Sybil responded with a curious look. Then, without missing a beat, pulled forth an empty scroll of parchment, a quill and an inkwell. "Are you saying that you're a Saint?" she asked to make sure. "If you are, could you tell me more about your powers?"
 
"Not necessarily. But in my own world... I was built after the supposed Creator of the universe itself: Arceus, the Original One."

Nova set his satchel down. "You can read auras, right? Your psychic sense would tell you I have a normal aura, then." He looked to the wyrdeer for confirmation.
 
"Ah, I see," Sybil said with a nod. "So you believe that the presence of the ARK on Forlas indicates that the source of inspiration may be the same to point to this 'Original One's' existence here?" While she waited for an answer, her orbs flashed as she got a read on Nova. "I don't sense anything out of the ordinary, no," she confirmed. "Why do you ask?"
 
"It's a possibility. Back home, Arceus is said to embody all the types. And has artifacts to change its type at will."

Nova's left cheek bolt opened with a hydraulic hiss. He reached into his satchel and pulled out the yellow electric-type disk to slot in to the open cheek bolt. It shut and a matching yellow color spread over his eyes, feathers, cheek bolts, and tail membrane.

"What's your psychic sense telling you now?"
 
Sybil had closed her eyes to focus more on her psychic sense. "Just a simple type-shift," she answered, "possibly electric." It was clear that Sybil thought it to be an odd question based on her expression and when she reopened her eyes she asked, "Did you expect anything else?"
 
Nova shook his head. "It's different, though. Compared to the likes of, say, kecleon or greninja, who need to focus their auras or be struck by attacks for their types to change. This is an at-will thing. And with it..."

He concentrated. That bubbling power from the fight in the outskirts didn't show up, but he didn't need it to. Even without much offense, the attack still looked the same. A golden wheel surrounded his torso, then turning to yellow lightning that wrapped itself around his claws.

"The Original One's the same way. They have an attack that always changes to match their type. And these disks I'm using were made for ARK. Who's native to Forlas."
 
Sybil watched Nova with interest. "Well it does read the same to my sense but I think I get what you are trying to understand with your Hidden Power." She glanced at Nova's satchel then back at him. "Can you only change typings with those objects or is if something achieved through that Hidden Power? If it's the former, that just means your and the other chimeras' auras are more malleable and thus easily influenced towards certain typings but the latter would indicate that you have a flexible soul or it's a hold-over of your abilities from your world."

A thoughtful look crossed her features. "Although developing one so quickly is unheard of, even if it does match the rest of your and the other Wayfarers' exponential growth in power. Ah, tangents," she muttered. "It is an interesting theory. Who made ARK? Perhaps their creator can shine more light on their origins."
 
"Not really, no," Sybil replied. "I've only heard that title mentioned in rumour and conspiracy theories, which is far from my area of expertise."
 
"Ah." Nova's crest feathers dimmed. "I don't really know much myself, but from what the Cipher admins told us, they sound like a group obsessed with the Saints and legendary pokémon. They sold ARK to Cipher in exchange for scraps of their technology." He had to bite back the resentment in his tone. They made an artificial life then pawned it off to be forcibly corrupted with shadow energy in exchange for busted machines and piles of metal.

"But I did want to circle back to that point you brought up. That exponential growth in power." He looked around the room, trying to find any maps. "Have any Rangers kept tabs on the Grand Quarry?"
 
"I see. I could ask around more to see if any of the other Rangers may know more about this," Sybil offered.

"As for the Quarry," she then continued. "We have been notified about the odd activity and shifts in the Dungeon. As the Dungeon expert, I will be stationed there to investigate and document the overall scope of the changes to see if it requires a reclassification. Purple seems wary of the idea though and doesn't seem to happy about letting me go there, and I am inclined to agree with him. At least that's the impression I got from him, you know how he is if you'd met him before."
 
"Some Wayfarers went there," Nova said. "It seems to have become the home of the zweilous that attacked your caravan. And, from what I understand, the insides now resemble where Mhynt and that zweilous are from."

He lifted a foreleg and waved it around in the air. "There was a horde of these shadowy creatures inside. Not even resembling pokémon anymore. The horde chased my teammates back toward Frontier Town. A few of us stepped in and helped them fend off the horde. It fell back and took one of the 'mon under the zweilous' control with it."

Sighing, Nova lowered his foreleg. "That's what I'm curious about. That one person -- one offworlder -- corrupted an entire dungeon, creating a pool of formless shadows. He was practically able to control them from a distance. And he can corrupt other pokémon, make them do his bidding, and take their powers as his own.

"Doesn't that sound an awful lot like the kind of influential power a Saint would wield?"
 
Sybil's eyes widened and quickly jotted down Nova's descriptions of the dungeon. "I see, I see. Then going there to investigate does not sound like a very good idea. I will need to track down someone who went in later to get a good descriptor."

She set her quill aside and tapped the ground with a hoof. "Yes, a shift so drastic certainly does sound similar to how a Saint shapes the domain of a Divine Dungeon, though it is possible for a pokémon to become an extension of the dungeon itself, like Sinopa though those shifts do sound very out of scope for such a thing. Where did he get so much influence over Shadows anyway?"
 
"I think that's... what he's like back home. You'd have to ask Mhynt for the details, though."

Nova shook his head. "It's not just him, though. There's us, of course. But also the Cipher admins." He paused. "And what about the Entropic Crisis a while back? It was an offworlder who solved that, wasn't it?"
 
"A human, yes. Many stories of them involve them being summoned to stop disasters, they come up a fair bit in my research since large scale disaster often correlated with more Dungeons turning up."

Sybil pulled out another scroll, this one detailing a sketch of some kind of distortion filled with many surrounding notes. "But there have also been accounts of offworlders who had not been summoned but fell through one of these." She tapped the sketch with her quill. "Sometimes the distortions that the dungeons are made from become far deeper and end up creating a passage between worlds for a very brief amount of time. Most often just enough for one or two offworlders to come through, though prior accounts of these typically refer to those individuals as 'Fallers'.

"I have been informed that the dungeon beneath Blaguarro had one such distortion that had been kept open through artificial means, which allowed for a larger intake of people to travel through. Though it has now been rendered unusable with Terminal Two down."
 
So, other humans had fallen through by complete and total accident? Good to know, Nova supposed.

"Either way..." He looked down at his gold talons. "Intentional or accident. One or multiple. Don't you think it's--"

Nova stopped himself, unsure how to finish his question. There were a few words he could pick, that ranged from gentle to forceful. And a flickering silhouette in the back of his head was nudging him toward the latter.

"Isn't that concerning?" he whispered. "It is to me... and I haven't lived here that long."
 
"Many unprecedented things have been happening a lot as of late. The Wayfarers are living proof of that," answered Sybil with a small nod. "It is a natural cause for concern, I certainly am, but as for the precedent itself, I do not have a say in how the world works," she added with a shrug. "It was how previous crises were handled, it is a how a distortion can manifest. We can only react to new knowledge or information as it comes, whether it be a full blown crisis or a natural Dungeon phenomena."
 
"What if you could change it?" Nova wondered. "Would you... want it to be different? For the world to stop granting immense strength to outsiders regardless of whether they want to help or harm Forlas?"
 
There was a pause as Sybil considered Nova's question. "It certainly would stop any human from taking advantage of others through their power alone but then who would stop the crises as they appear?" she then asked. "If the common 'mon and human is outclassed and most of the Saints have left Relics or have little care to help, then who would be left?"
 
"What about the people of Forlas?" Nova tilted his head. "I mean, both you guys and the Escarpa helped with the Terminal Two raid, for example."

He looked up at the ceiling. "Whether Forlas was created by Saints like an arceus or through some... cosmic phenomenon -- and whether it always gave outsiders greater power than common 'mon or it shifted at some point in history -- it shouldn't have to stay that way. That power should belong to you guys. This place is your home."

Nova curled his claws. "If Saints have great power, maybe they can make it happen?"
 
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