Frontier Town Traveller's Haus - Lobby

[Chibi Pika]

It's a pretty close bond! Jade did her best to keep a neutral face. "Ah, not exactly first partners, no. Virga was the last one I met. And we weren't on great terms before, so..." She didn't want Lillian to feel bad for asking, so she quickly added, "Virga was the strongest Pokemon I knew back home though! So, y'know, a powerful ally--I figure that's why the summoning program brought her here. We just, uh, have some stuff to work on. You know how it is with strong Pokemon." She wasn't actually sure if Lillian knew, but it felt like a normal sentiment that applied to non-Legendaries just as well.

Her tail swished as she racked her brain for a continuation with a more positive note. "Oh, and my actual first partner was Swift, he's a Pidgeot." That wasn't actually relevant to the question since the question had been about Virga, and Swift wasn't here. "Who's yours?" she asked, only narrowly stopping herself from adding "and are they here?" to the end of it, as she managed to temporarily forget that Lillian was herself in the second wave of summons, and would not have a summoned partner.

 

[Shiny Phantump]

"Oh, yeah," Lillian said, as if she knew how it was with strong pokemon. The program must have different reasons to pick different people, because Lillie was hardly Gladion's most powerful connection. Quite the opposite, realistically. Maybe it was because she could rise to the challenge and become the best fit for the job? No, that felt too self-aggrandizing.

"Mine is Nebby, they're, uhh..." This required caution, so as not to openly contradict herself calling them a pokemon several seconds ago. "We call them a 'Cosmog', and they're odd. Actively destructive to any ball I've tried to put them in. But cute! Like a little cloud of stardust. Chaotic personality, honestly probably dangerous." Absolutely dangerous. They had some inadvertent role in the death of one person, nearly two. Somehow, that felt like bad information to share in casual conversation. "Wormholes and distortions and stuff, would probably beg a lot of legal questions if people knew about it. But we've both saved each other by now, so I guess that makes us partners? In a way?"

She hadn't really thought of her relationship with Nebby that way. But once she started describing it that way to Jade, she had to admit it wasn't far off. The main problem is that neither she nor Nebby really listened to the other, otherwise you could call it a non-trainer partnership.

 

[Chibi Pika]

Jade tilted her head, ears forward with interest. “Huh. Never heard of a Cosmog before.” Then again, wasn’t Gladion (and by extension, his family) from Alola? There were a lot of Pokémon in Alola that weren’t found anywhere else in the world. But the way Lillian talked about it made it sound like not an ordinary Pokémon. Almost like…

(Gladion had mentioned how he’d saved his partner too.)

“Is Nebby… sort of like Hazel? You know…” Different. Unique. “Special?” Not the most effective word.

Jade narrowly held herself back from coming right out and saying Is Cosmog a genetic experiment too? I have one of those! She was gonna feel real dumb if she was jumping to conclusions here.

 

[Shiny Phantump]

Lillie took a step back, startled. Did she know? Did she know what Nebby was all along??? Had she been trying to salvage a dumb obvious lie that Jade had seen through from the start??? Also, Hazel... Hazel was... Right! That was what Gladion called the Null he'd saved. Not an ultra beast. Of course.

"Nebby's certainly special, but in a different sort of way from Hazel. Not a chimera, but an Ultra Beast. A faller whose species doesn't exist in out world. Although maybe a little more self-directed than the fallers here, they can make cut holes between where we live and 'ultra space,' which is..." Lillian took a moment to consider her choice of words. "Bad. Technically, I've been a faller in my own world ever since Nebby saved me. They dragged out of my world, and back into my world somewhere else. Except, I don't know, I'd already heard that most fallers don't end up in their own world, but now that I've met Gladius I'm really having to think about how much worse that could've gone."

If she was a more cautious person, she would have thought about that in the first place, she'd already known Nebby had made Father disappear. Instead, she'd acted like her belief that Nebby didn't do anything malicious would protect her from getting hurt by them. As if another accident couldn't happen if she were only kinder. So far, she'd narrowly avoided being proven wrong twice. And if maybe Gladius had gotten involved with his world's Nebby and been less fortunate.

That would be a real bummer thought to drop on a stranger.

"I guess that's probably not what you meant by special, is it? I assume we both know the nulls are chimera?" She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Wait, there's not a reason for the codewords, is there? Am I not supposed to be saying that aloud?"

 

[Chibi Pika]

Jade blinked. "Not a chimera but... whoa. That is special." Not that it was supposed to be a competition or anything. "I, uh... can't say I've ever heard of any Pokemon that can do that." She'd sort of taken for granted that Pokemon species seemed to be one of the very few things that was consistent across worlds, especially with Forlas having all the same ones she was already familiar with. Then again, could she really say for certain that these 'Ultra Beasts' had never visited her own world? It's not like she would've known, if it were kept under wraps the same way the Null project was.

Speaking of Nulls...

"Oh, uh... yeah, we kind of weren't sure if that was the sort of thing we should keep hush at first?" Jade replied with a shrug. "Gladion and Nova showing up here as chimeras, I mean. We thought that a man-made Pokemon appearing on Forlas might draw too much attention. But then Nova ended up on the front page of the Gazette, so that sorta... went out the window pretty fast." She laughed awkwardly. "He told everyone that he and Gladion were 'Graydians' and everyone was cool with it? And, well, since we're offworlders, it was hardly the weirdest thing about them."

She scratched her chin and then added, "Also it turns out they're not the only ARK Units here anyway? That was a whole thing. Did Gladion tell you about Sage?"

 

[Shiny Phantump]

Lillian tried not to sigh. "Oh... he did. He was really worried about them!"

It was part of his crusade to convince her that she wasn't allowed to care about the other version of him, which left her with a strong reflex not to get involved in it. Despite that, his concern wasn't performative. She was certain of that.

"He cared a lot about them and Leona." She tapped the left scale on the side of her head a few times. "I could tell that. I wish it just... y'know." (Did Jade know what was going on with those two? That really wasn't a given, but she wasn't sure she wanted to explain that right now.) "One brother is bad enough, having two of them fighting is a whole other matter."

Ideally, she'd get to change the subject. Jade was learning a lot about her, but not the other way around. She was supposed to be contentious of things like that, to try to learn more than she volunteered. Maybe she didn't have to live up to that as much as she used to now that she wasn't constantly stuck playing information games in every social setting, but it still felt rude to start a conversation with someone and spend the whole thing talking about yourself. Even if Jade didn't seem terribly uncomfortable with it.

"Is it just Virga for you?" An open-ended question, even if Jade had no one else in this world, she could take it wherever she wanted. And if she didn't want to answer, it should be deflectable.

 

[Chibi Pika]

"I could tell that. I wish it just... y'know."

Jade had already nodded along before realizing that she didn't actually know what Lillian was getting at. Two brothers... because Neo was also Gladion. But he wasn't an ARK Unit, he was actually a Zoroark, so what did he have to do with--RIGHT he made Sage!! that was the connection point, got it, she could follow along.

Part of her really wanted to ask what it was like to have two versions of the same brother, but it seemed like a sensitive topic...

"Is it just Virga for you?"

Jade nodded. "I think the summoning program was only supposed to bring one partner for each of us, so--" She realized she might have been stupid.

"Er, that is. Aside from..." She took a deep breath, forcing her brain to reboot. "I dunno if anyone explained already, but before any of us got here, the World-Spirit summoned a human hero to help with stuff. Only, I guess when the World-Spirit does it, they lose all memory of their previous life? So it's, uh, different than what happened with us, or with the Fallers." This was so pointlessly roundabout, why couldn't she just say it?

"And, well... the hero was my friend. Starr." Jade tapped her paws together. "Only, it's kinda hard to feel like we have anything, given the circumstances..."

 

[Shiny Phantump]

"Ah, I see..."

Navigating Gladius' damaged memory was already difficult. This sounded worse.

"I don't mean to pry, you don't have to answer... but have you told her? I don't know what it would do, but..."

Giving advice didn't come naturally to Lillie. (It was hard not to think of herself as Lillie when she wasn't performing the heroism that Forlas seemed to need from her.) She felt compelled by some sense of pathos to try anyway. Which was odd, because really, the thought in her head wasn't applicable to Gladius, who had remembered her from the start...

"I think it would matter. To her. If she knew you cared about her, you know? Even if she didn't remember any of the time you two spent together before, maybe she'd still feel safe with you if she knew that, and you'd still be friends."

...But despite that, intuitively, it felt applicable. Like she'd seen it work, even though that wasn't remotely what she'd done with Gladius. In fact, she was so disarmed by the idea of multiple people that, if anything, she was the one who wasn't expecting it. She didn't know if she had any shared history with him, and didn't recognize who he now was as someone she'd met before.

Oh.

"I guess it's why I trusted Gladius. I didn't really understand who he was. But stuff like that... Works? Is what I'm saying, I think?"

 

[Chibi Pika]

Jade blinked. "O-oh. Yeah, you're probably right. And um, it's fine to pry, I'm the one that brought it up! Also, everyone kinda knew about it before you got here. Gladion was actually the one who helped brace me for the possibility that it might be a different 'her' than the one I knew." Which was kind of wild to think about given that they didn't know about Gladius back then.

She leaned back in her seat, idly swishing her tail. "But, I think it might be worse than just 'not remembering', is the thing. Brisa told me Starr had got some memories back from this weird dungeon that messes with your head." Jade grimaced. "Bad ones. Specifically some stuff she did to me." She clutched her arm where the scar wasn't.

"So, she's probably avoiding me because I remind her of that. Of who she used to be. But like, that's not who she is anymore, at least not back home!" Jade quickly added, hoping the seriousness came through in her voice. "I just gotta push through the awkwardness so I can remind her of that."