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Frontier Town The Wanderin' Zera

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“I know, but even here it feels like a good chunk of what we do is clean up human…”

Gladion’s eyes widened as his brain caught up to his mouth.

“Oh. Oh shit.”

What was he even supposed to say to that? Multiple child murders was not the kind of situation he had a social precedent to use. ‘I’m so sorry to hear that’ didn’t quite seem to fit the bill.

“Wish they could’ve just gotten the chance to live normally. Guess that’s an understatement. Doubt anything wouldn’t be.”

He wished he had a drink to sip from while he collected his thoughts. But he didn’t really want to start drinking alcohol. And either way, if there was ever a wrong time to pull his attention away from the conversation to order, it was now.

“Feels like we just can’t escape conflict. Like some people are just looking for excuses to find someone to hate.”
 
"Yup. People like to pick on whoever's different or vulnerable, and will make up whatever they need to justify it. Story of humanity."

Dave downed the rest of his glass. What more was there to say on that? Maybe they could talk about something other than dead kids.

"So you're considering studying genetics?" he said, turning back to Gladion. "Following in the footsteps of your, uh, relative?"
 
Gladion waved a talon ambiguously, the closest he could get to conveying the mood of a shrug. “Close. Got an interest in veterinary research. I’d have to pay tuition though, so… eh, we’ll see if it actually happens. Cons of bailing on my family. Combination of long-standing interest, plus… my Null partner still has the helmet. Friendship Power isn’t some actual thing there, so that problem’s gonna need solving in a realistic way. And I can’t check her into a center without a hell of a lot of questions, so it’s a good thing I’m already decent at it… I’m also incredibly lucky there haven’t been any major complications, obviously.”
 
Gladion nodded. “Yeah. All these metal bits are a post-hoc addition that takes manual control of our typing. There were some neurological issues with the original system, but… the typing control wasn’t really a necessary part of the solution. Part of the reason they were made to be intelligent was so they could handle their own typing, but Faba— the replacement project head guy— wouldn’t trust anything he couldn’t control. So he invented a shit system that can try to force typing artificially, but he did it wrong. The effected tissues get attacked by the immune system. The helmet served as a housing to store a second system to suppress the first system as well as the ability to change type in general so they wouldn’t dies, given there’s only so much space inside a head for electronics. That space was taken up by the first system and it was already taken and decidedly not coming back out. Hence the external housing.”

Gladion to a beat to breathe and make sure he wouldn’t manifest shadows in the middle of a public bar. His voice had already started dripping with venom. And it certainly wasn’t stopping now.

“I’m thin on the details, but I’m pretty sure one of them snapped and injured someone working in the project. Which is a pretty damn reasonable reaction to all that if you ask me. But the project got cancelled, and all three were scheduled to be frozen and archived. I got the third out of there in time, though. Illegally.”
 
"Jesus," Dave said. The Pokémorphs had definitely had their problems, Gabriel especially, but at least they hadn't had to deal with tissues being rejected and bolting on cyborg parts. "This Faba guy sounds like a piece of work. And a shitty scientist."

They would've been in constant pain, most likely. Gladion'd described them as not exactly sapient, to be fair, but they'd also been specially made to be intelligent (whatever that entailed), which was already dodgy territory when intentionally combined with let's make dubious physical changes. "I'm guessing this was all pretty fucking illegal in the first place. How intelligent are we talking, anyway? Pokémon intelligence seems to be all over the place in different universes."
 
“Don’t know exactly how much, but she seems to be able to understand a fair amount of words. Eight or ninth category? I think the way I use the word ‘sapient’ has shifted while I’ve been here, I’ve started using it as a shorthand of the difference between my world and this one. So, not like the local species here but really intelligent by the standards of my world. Think one of the smarter kinds of bird, I think that’s where it comes from.”

Gladion shifted in his seat. If he could break a sweat, he probably would. “It all happened in international waters. So… Technically, not exactly illegal, but conducted privately for a reason. I think some of the initial parts might have been legal either way, it wasn’t a trial of new research, and they were more or less healthy with some medical attention. But… the subsequent testing of the augmentations was definitely criminal, if not for the loophole.”

He really wanted to believe everything was fine before Faba took over.
 
Dave raised an eyebrow. "Well, I'd say if you need to conduct your research in international waters for legal reasons, that's probably a sign you should think twice about the ethics of it. What was the reasoning for this chimera research there, anyway? Like, what were they created for? Not gene-splicing proof of concept, I'm guessing, if a big part of it was engineering type-changing and making it 'controllable'. Was this some sort of weapons program? And... what's that about the testing of the augmentations?"

Nova'd been a weapon in his universe, after all, or whatever you'd call a weapon whose purpose was just to absorb damage. Pretty fucking bizarre for scientists to put together recognizably the same goddamn chimera for totally different purposes in multiple different universes, though.
 
“The whole place I grew up is… Like a small metal island out in international waters. For a number of reasons, but yeah most of them are shady. But it predates my father ending up there by decades. Lab’s there one way or another. Even the conservation work Aether does often happens there.”

There was a part of Gladion that wanted to just disavow everything, including his father, and distance himself as much as possible. It would be the best way to get Dave’s approval.

Instead, he developed a strong interest in staring the bar counter trying to decide what to say about parts of the project he didn’t even fully understand, hoping to find a satisfactory answer.

“I’m thinnest on the details when it comes to why. I know the project was to deal with something they called ‘Ultra Beasts’ which are… otherworldly. Body’s supposed to be as adaptable as possible, since we don’t really know much about them. Think my father knew more about it, and they worried him. One of them did him in, in the end, so I guess he was right. He… didn’t talk about that part of his work much.”
 
Dave considered that. "Hmm. So these 'Ultra Beasts', they were, what? Did everyone know about them and nobody else was doing anything about it? Or did your father discover them, think they were dangerous, and then just, didn't tell anyone, just turn to shady experimentation trying to save the world on his own?"

He tried to shake the feeling he'd heard the term 'Ultra Beasts' before. Wasn't that some kind of monster movie franchise or something? Bizarre-looking aliens coming from outer space to wreak havoc on Earth? Those were just casually real? Real enough to kill Gladion's father, at any rate? What the fuck.

"Anyway, uh, sorry about your dad."
 
“Thanks,” Gladion accepted. Seemed like he more Dave were completely confident in their discussion of dead people. He didn’t want to linger on it. Didn’t know how to talk about it.

“At one point, researchers managed to open a nano-wormhole to… what gets called ‘another world’ back home, but not in the Forlas sense. It’s just small enough for light and a minuscule amount of gas to pass through. Can’t even see through it with the naked eye, too small. The idea that there could be life there has captured some of the niche alien life used to hold. In sci-fi for the most part, but there’s also people who think they have history in Alola, or people who swear they’ve seen them sometime after research about it went public, but only before cell phone cameras were invented. So…” Gladion rolled his eyes. “Y’know, not credible sightings. Personally, I only know of just the one. Thing looks like a little Gastly with pom-poms.”
 
Gladion winced. That sounded fucking stupid. “Explosive…” he uttered before partially collecting himself and retrying.

“Um. It seems to be able to create its own wormholes. Ultra Wormholes, big enough for people and the like to pass through. It found one of those nano-wormhole setups, while my father was around, and kinda just… blew it up until it swallowed everything in the room. And went through it. I don’t think it was trying to kill anyone, it just… doesn’t understand how destructive it is.”

Gladion winced. That sounded like pathos for the UB. He didn’t care for it at all, it was dangerous, it needed to be contained. He’d thought it was insane of Lillie to take it, but saying out loud it was hard to not see the reasoning a little bit. He sat there for a moment, wearing all the confidence of a withering plant on his face before adding a small amount more.

“Recently, My sister stole it and left. Family of thieves, it seems we are. Don’t know if that’s a good idea, but I guess she could say the same of me.”
 
"Oh. Shit. Jesus."

Never underestimate what a tiny, ridiculous-looking Pokémon could do in other worlds, he supposed. The thing could just create wormholes? With no understanding of the consequences? What the fuck.

So it sounded like, more specifically, Gladion's father had gone through a wormhole. In all likelihood, floating decompressed and frozen somewhere in outer space, but no way to know for certain. Shitty fucking way to lose someone.

"So, uh, your sister? The fuck does she want with the wormhole Pokémon? It sounds wildly dangerous to keep that around. I guess she's just keeping it in the ball, or what?"
 
“Nope!” Gladion laughed, though in a dry and humourless sound that could just as well have been pain. “It won’t stay in a ball. It won’t stay in a master ball. I haven’t seen her since I left. Betel got me just a bit too early, we were planning to meet at some point.”

He took a deep breath, reaching for something sane to say. “She is staying with one of my father’s old friends, a professor in that field. Burnet. Hopefully she’s keeping it contained, since I don’t trust Lillie can. Or that any ordinary person could keep it.”

Gladion laughed. More genuinely this time, an entertaining thought having struck him. “Can you believe I thought of myself of having a relatively normal life for a wayfarer? Haven’t dealt with most any of this stuff other than having a Null partner for years, guess I settled into the normalcy of that. Laying it all out like this, yeah, it’s pretty weird.”
 
Well, that was pretty fucking worrying.

"So, uh, has it been long enough to think they do have it contained, or are you half-expecting to return home to news reports of spontaneous wormholes jacking Professor Burnet into outer space?"

Jesus. All these weird fucking fantasy universes had whole new exciting kinds of problems.

"This does all sound pretty fucking weird, but judging from some of the other people I've talked to here, a lot of Wayfarers have some pretty bonkers stuff going on in their universes."
 
“If anyone’s qualified, it’s her.”

Gladion’s tone placed more emphasis on the first clause of the sentence, though. As though he thought it was a substantial ‘if’ to consider.

“I guess the weirdness is a matter of perspective. I mean, as much as your world sounds shitter than them all, an ensemble of genetically engineered kids is certainly the premise for some science-fantasy media back in my world…” In a cold deadpan, he added that “You figured out how to give cat ears to humans.”

He immediately cringed at his own attempt at humour and tried to course-correct. “Not saying that’s what you did with it per se. Just saying that you have ticked a substantial number of fictional media checkboxes with that one.”
 
Dave snorted. "Fucking literally, actually. One of them's part Meowth. Was."

He took a long breath through his nose and asked Gerome for another whiskey.

"Didn't exactly play out like all the cool Pokémorph stories, of course. My daughter loves these trashy books about kids who get captured by an evil organization and transformed through technobabble into Pokémorphs. Gave her all sorts of fantasies of having cool powers and beating bad guys. And then, you know, they figure they can go up against a bunch of nutjobs with guns. Doesn't work out that way in real life. At least not in my universe."
 
Gladion winced. “I see. That’s… what I’d expect if someone tried that in mine. I’d like to think it wouldn’t come to that there. Maybe I’m being naive, though. We’ve got our own problems of bigotry, probably’d get some legislative issues, but not… Cultist gun violence.”

He shot Dave a concerned glance. “Dare I ask about them?”

Gladion did very much want to know. He was offering Dave an out, if he didn’t want to talk about it. Might be none of Gladion’s business.
 
Dave picked up his new glass. "It's this batshit church that likes to picket funerals and talk about how God hates humanity now because of the sins of modernity, by which they mean shit like how we don't stone gay people and women aren't baby-making factories and science has advanced beyond 'God did it', and everyone but them is going to burn in Hell. Always used to be this one patriarch over the whole thing, mostly members of his extended family plus some stragglers that joined up because I guess they needed more misanthropic cultism in their lives. Couple years ago the patriarch died and his son took over, they already thought the Pokémorphs were abominations but the son got to work on straight-up plotting murder. Just doing God's bidding, cleansing the world of greater evils, et cetera. Cult followed him, because that's what cults fucking do."

He took a chug of his whiskey. "Some sentences were handed down after it all went down, but most of them got off pretty easy. Argued they were attacked and acting in self-defense, the Pokémorphs are scary to the jury so they buy it."
 
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