[Pokémon] Dangerous Upgrade [GtI]

[Venia Silente]

Dangerous Upgrade

Only one save slot might not be enough to save us...​

Hello everyone! Here I'm now with a story to continue my small "Gates" inspired series. What started first with «Where we Live and Work» and continued with «Making the World Go 'Round», continues now when a new threat is revealed.

This story began as the counterpart to a crossover with JoshtheWriter's Pokémon: Legends Sinjoh but what was originally intended to be a small oneshot spiralled into... well, I'm still working on new chapters (who knew!).

[a id]story-act1[/a id]

Act Ⅰ

It had been quite an arduous day of work back at Post Town, and Gamañel for one needed a break for a few days. The Foongus marched out of town via one of the southern trails, pulling a cart that contained the charred remains of the day's business.

Gamañel stopped for a moment to slurp on a berry and try to swallow the bitter experiences from back at work, right in front of his store, to boot. He turned to take a look at the remains of the embroideries and trinkets he would have usually sold to his clientèle.

The Foongus narrowed his eyes.

The trinkets; not his trinkets. He still did not understand well what had happened, but what had happened definitively was not part of his 9‑to‑5... at least, he seriously hoped it wasn't. Considering that he was still the one who had to clean everything up after weird gates suddenly spawned among his gates and then everything caught otherworldly fire.^[ref]

[ref] As seen in JoshtheWriter's Pokemon: Legends Sinjoh [Chapter 1]​

"...Just what kind of worlds were those, anyway?" he asked to no one in particular.

Gamañel's trinkets were of the most peculiar kind. Much like Espeon and Umbreon's magic card back at town, Gamañel's ones could open paths to separate, sometimes unexplored worlds.

Yet the similarities ended there, for Gamañel knew more about the fabric of the multiverse and what even meant for worlds to be connected than the cute little cat and dog could ever achieve with their cute little tabletop game.

Gamañel suddenly had an idea. He hopped up to his cart and quickly examined the surroundings: there was mostly sparse vegetation around him and nothing that looked like a cave or any other protected space. Just a creek and wooden bridge ahead, and the trail heading further to the south.

Gamañel had not had the time to inspect the trinkets back at the town; certainly, not while the entire pile of them was spontaneously spawning and burning into ashes. Not willing to wait until he got home to find out more, Gamañel hopped down and pushed his cart to beneath the nearest tree, just short of the bridge.

He took a very brief rest and hopped back up the cart, to check on the destroyed goods.

On top of the pile was a small envelope, formerly sealed with a now broken "N" seal. Merely looking at it brought the Foongus some feelings of disgust. «Just what I needed on top of this foreclosure notice, too,» he reminded himself grinding his figurative teeth.

Nothing he could do about that for now, he knew that. So the best thing Gamañel could do would be to mind the weird events of today.

He picked one of the tapestries at random. Many of the tapestries were completely burned to ashes, but some pieces had survived here and there if only in the form of small unburned strands and pages of wool and hide. The various AZTEC-style patterns^[ref] were something that Gamañel was intimately familiar with, but between the strangeness of the patterns that had popped up recently and the damage done to the various impressions from the fire, he was not sure he could pick anything useful out of them right now.

[ref] AZTEC Code is a kind of bidimensional code similar to QR Code.​

Still, he gave it a look. The marker square at the centre and the two principal layers going outwards were damaged, so he tried and interpreted it by ear. He could read very generic details about the nature of a world, but not much else, at least nothing of relevance at the moment.

Gamañel let out a dissatisfied harumph and put it back where it belonged, on the pile of Things That Should Not Be.

Trying another charred decoration, Gamañel was weirded out by the "information-fat", square patterns on the edges. Information on how to enter that world was scarce, but in comparison information on how to describe the world was aplenty and complicated. Here Gamañel raised an eyebrow at how meta it all went, as the information strands included instructions such as to "cut selection" to separate landmass of a world into a "layer", fill layer with a "color bucket", apply a "transparency mask" to layer, select layer for "trigonometric deformation", select "CMYK profile" and then, at the very end, a "print" selection pointing to a rectangular map object.

Gamañel rubbed his temple at the thought.

«What kind of backards Kecleon would want to print on a Mercator projection?»

Truly, in such a print the arctic zones would widen to egregious levels. Gamañel could only imagine how much extra bizarrely the Great Glacier area would look in such a map. Not at all like decentmap projections such as Winkel-Tripel, Gamañel thought with a snicker, or like the ornamental asymmetry of the AZTEC codes that adorned his wares... when they did not spontaneously combust out of control.

Gamañel decided to discard such meta, very distracting lines of thought for later and focus instead on the pieces of theorems and equations that made the tendrils of the code. As far as he could decipher, they apparently described the energy conversion process of a strange device, perhaps a weapon system. Gamañel raised an eyebrow; the scale had to be wrong, these numbers... from what he knew, only creatures like the mirage dragons could ever try and develop a machine of this kind, at the least capable of (if he was reading the magnitudes alright) casting a planet off its orbit in a single stroke.

Gamañel lifted two or three charred tapestries, put this tapestry under the others. Best Lake Afar or Dragons Gate never find out about this kind of world, the Foongus decided.

«Hmmm yes, best they not.»

After mulling it over for a bit more time, Gamañel put the tapestry out again, and then put the entire stack of charred remains on top of it so that it'd remain at the bottom.

The Foongus nodded to himself, extra sure and content in his good work.

Trying another charred decoration, Gamañel noticed that the data markers on how to open the gate to the world had been destroyed, and whatever instructions remained were duplicated, or rewritten, even scattered and corrupted, as if a looking glass had been shattered in small pieces and then the pointy ends sanded over so they could never attach into a full form again.

What made Gamañel shuffle uneasily as he checked the tapestry however was the instruction set that would have been encoded in it. The instructions spoke not only of a world, but of any world, and from what he could read even constructing the gate could only bring randomness. Danger resided everywhere in creation, starting from a particular world — and the only, remote chance of salvation for everyone and everything was that a woman of fate would unshackle the champion of the Primigenial One.

«...Champion?»

Gamañel squinted at some of the codewords, loose strands etched in the outer layers of their finite field polynomial. Some error correction data had survived the burning — to whisper its own threats of oblivion: for, as Gamañel knew, the Primeval Kin tended to pick their "champions" to champion their causes and their own desires to remake the universe, and not because of such things as the worthiness and honour of their subjects. The Primigenial One surely would be no exception... and Gamañel was not sure this chosen champion would fully understand that.

Certainly the pick of "champion" had to be relevant. Thus the narrative turned its focus on a region that was only mostly seen in older Pokémon Legends: Sinjoh, a land of myth and power that stretched some distance north from Johto, and saw the champion following the instructions of the Primigenial One...

...Already be captured as soon as their new quest started.

Gamañel held the remains of tapestry at more of a distance. «Yeah, a great start there, pal. Might as well place my bets on the Tepig.»

Gamañel groaned, feeling a bit tired. He looked up to see the sky had darkened. Almighty Sinnoh look at the time! Had he really been checking tapestries for this long...?

That particular latest remnants-of-a‑tapestry Gamañel was careful to separate from the others; he wrapped it in a towel and stored it under the carriage's seat. The Foongus mumbled all the while, unsure if it was a good or a bad thing that it had not been fully destroyed, and recalled that this very Mystery Dungeon world was soon enough to see the designation of a champion of the Primeval Kin.

Gamañel pondered for a moment. «I might have to consider offering that Prinplup a warning... for a price.»^[offer]

[offer] In the future of PMD, Dialga will attempt to recruit Dalvin for the Primeval Kin, as seen in [Beyond Today].​

Gamañel felt cold at various levels; he shivered and took a moment to check that it was the growing breeze and not just the ill omens from the parchment that were the cause. He picked up a small Foongus-sized wool vest and put it on, to stave off the wind.

The Foongus did not really notice it at first, when the ash from the remains of his stock started lifting up from the rising winds.

In the corner of his eye, Gamañel saw something move... eerily, tumultuously, as if it wanted to leave this world as much as his clients did. He turned and looked around more, but saw nothing out of the ordinary.

The Foongus covered his cart with a mantle and returned to the front, grumbling all the while. He could only hope that the forces that had once created such realities, were still able to keep them sustained and thriving.

Gamañel had just finished tidying up the cart and covering and tying the various tapestries' remains so the wind wouldn't send them flying, when he noticed the wind, while still cold, had suddenly dulled down. Perhaps it was his tiredness seeping into his vision, but he thought it was pretty dark, almost at night already.

The Foongus hopped up the heap of assorted clutter and took a look around. The sky around him was quickly darkening and... closing in? Like the world was getting smaller and smaller by the minute, it was the best way Gamañel could describe it.

He could see a veil of light, flowing down from the sky from some sort of crack far above him, and eating at the ground around him as it inched closer and closer from all directions.

He really did not like the "from all directions" part.

Gamañel hopped down the cart and checked the trail he had come from; about fifty metres ahead he could see the white border between the ground and the light-veil, slithering closer as it phased through trees and rocks. And if he focused hard enough, he could distinguish some trails of smoke and hear guttural voices coming from whatever lay past the edge.

The Foongus frowned. «And to think this is not the weirdest thing I've seen today.»

To be continued!
​

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Author's Notes

Official article: "Dangerous Upgrade" at the Suocéverse wiki - which still has to be fully updated but will contain information on both the new release and the original version.

 

[Venia Silente]

On to with our meta shenanigans!

---

[a id]story-act2[/a id]

Act Ⅱ

Gamañel scurried to a random fallen tree nearby and got up the trunk; there he remained for a few seconds looking around as he saw the veil inching closer, slower and slower, until it finally froze about twenty metres from him in all directions.

Gamañel looked up at the sky, it had been completely darkened and replaced with something like a rocky cavern or as much of it as he could make out from past the light's edge. He could hear some creatures beyond the edge, but it was all muffled by an indistinct light and those guttural calls.

Thunder boomed somewhere nearby, the Foongus turned and looked around seeing nothing but dust lifting around.

Then a bolt of purple energy hit the ground closer by the bridge, and another one, and another one. As the bolts neared Gamañel's position he could see they scattered dust and pebbles, that tried to form into Pokémon — or into something — but they couldn't, for as soon as the light and sound from the bolts dissipated, the little dust they had lifted was also undone.

This lasted for about half a minute until a gust of wind carrying malevolent energy reached to where Gamañel was and he shielded himself for a moment as he could. He dug himself into his little refuge, and once the wind had subsided, he emerged from his spot.

He could now watch as the wind around floated down to the ground and remade itself into a spectre. One that was not instantly unmade like the others, but instead persisted and solidified its existence.

It took a few seconds before the spectre evolved, so to speak, into a silverish, hollow form, largely similar to the more recognizable form of a Hydreigon yet sporting some minute differences, broader wings, more ragged fur, a shining mark branding its lower neck that was only visible for a moment before the apparition's own fur of sorts materialized and grew to cover it.

«Great.» Gamañel tilted his head. «What's the problem this time?»

Gamañel dropped down from the tree to go meet the now fully realized spectre halfway as it approached the cart and came to rest a short distance from it. The lights that formed the eyes of this apparition turned to him, and the head of the Hydreigon-creature beckoned Gamañel to move forward.

For his part the Foongus groaned.

"I'll humour you and ask what brings you around town, sort of," Gamañel announced, looking up at the main head of the apparition.

The Hydreigon-being's arm heads seemed to examine the surroundings, and then they craned down on the Foongus. Finally, the apparition lifted herself up in the air and spoke with a whistling voice as she shaked her head-arms. "So it is you. Looking always so confident!"

Gamañel blinked. He had never got really used to how energetic the dragoness could be, even in telepresence form.

The Hydreigon apparition for her part inched closer just a bit. "Given that confidence I have to wonder if you are involved in this problem."

Had he had arms longer than a Foongus has, Gamañel would have made gesture to cross them in exasperation at the accusation. "Whenever you involve yourself around, my customers die, Erish. I'd say I'm not the problem around here."

For an answer the Hydreigon-being bared her fangs, eerily blue and unlit, down at the Foongus, who hopped just a step back. She then reared her heads up and took notice of the cart with the pile of burnt objects.

"You dare. That problem is something I am working on, mister, I can assure you."

"Like that's helped much," Gamañel spat back without thinking. He had enough sense of self-preservation to not make eye contact when one of the Hydreigon's heads glared down at him hissing all the while.

The Hydreigon-imitation meandered about for a few seconds then made way to the front of Gamañel's cart, where she took notice of the burnt materials lying on top of it.

She seemed to notice the ash spread around, and craned down to lick some of the remains with her main head. As soon as she did, the apparition reared up with a rather startled expression, her wings and tail ruffled, her body's light turned slightly more yellow ever so briefly. "What happened here?" she asked in acrimonious tone. "What unnatural things were you trying to do?"

Gamañel hopped ahead to catch up and sat besides the cart. "Take notice, Erish, I'm the victim here! If I didn't know better I'd be filing for damages."

The Hydreigon-like construct grumbled and observed patiently as the Foongus hopped up the cart and pulled the rug cover to reveal some of the remains of the tapestries that had burned back in town.

"There was an... incident earlier and I was forced to close the shop for the day."

The dragoness opened her luminous eyes wide. "You? Close shop?"

The Hydreigon-being's three heads seemed to converse to themselves for a moment, and the form of the Hydreigon even seemed to fade out into a gust of wind and then back in into a more solid existence in the blink of an eye when it was finished "talking" to herself. In the end, the dragoness seemed to relax.

"Walk me through this 'incident'. Make it brief," the central head commanded.

"Well, it started with Espeon's and Umbreon's gates not working correctly, and it ended with my crafts spawning with weird gate patterns that made them combust as soon as they realized."

"But those gates did still work?"

Gamañel shook his head and pointed to the pile of burnt stuff. "I did not exactly get a chance to test."

The Hydreigon-fascimile nodded, and prompted for Gamañel to continue his debriefing. Gamañel harrumphed at the curt gesture but still, he proceeded to explain how the incident went in more depth; he did leave some of the more private, customer-oriented details for himself, considering he was probably subject to such regulations as the GDPR. Just to emphasize the point and make sure the Hydreigon would get a clear picture of the events, he used some of the remains as visual aids, explaining how with the damage to the carpets, the full patterns could not be accessed to open the gates.

"So on that end, you don't have to worry," Gamañel stated, hopping proudly to nail down the point. "I've done my part to keep the business of life running, so to speak, and these gates should no longer be a problem."

The Hydreigon-imitation remained silent and, in her minute gestures of rumbling and fretting, Gamañel thought for a moment that he read something worrying. In the face of a thing that as much as he could tell represented a dragon creature hiding elsewhere, the best way he could read it would be her figuratively biting her lip.

Gamañel's posture straightened.

"...I thought this would make matters clear," he inquired.

Wind started blowing, faintly, as had been doing before the dome had formed. The Hydreigon-esque being looked uneasy just for a moment.

"It does... however," the Hydreigon stated matter‑of‑factly, adding a shake of her head, "this turns out to not be our original concern."

"I'm not sure I follow. With 'our', you mean...?" The Foongus recalled details he knew about the dragoness's origins and raised an eyebrow. "You and...?"

The Hydreigon made a motion to look around, at the dome of light hiding them from the beyond. She narrowed her eyes at the finite sky, as if fearing it would fall, and she turned to Gamañel with a hint of disappointment.

"I'm here on borrowed time, so I shall wrap up this current matter and fall back."

"Aha." Gamañel hopped atop the pile of things on his cart and gave the Hydreigon a wave, then made a motion to move ahead of his cart. "Speaking of, I should be going home too. Business some other time?"

The Hydreigon-construct let out a warning roar and floated up. Her six wings fanned out, making her look even larger and more other-worldly than she already was in this form. "You are not in the clear yet, Gamañel. We would see these threats properly disposed of," she stated, pointing a head at the cart.

There was that plural again. The Foongus gulped, but otherwise remained in composure.

"Now now." Gamañel wiggled about, worked up at the prospect of a lengthened meeting. "That all‑you‑pointed‑to happens to be my livelihood and I'm responsible for it. Besides I could still try to work with them."

"You won't," the monster roared.

Thunder boomed once again, as if reminidng of the purpose of the Hydreigon-being's visit. She floated about the cart to reach the back, with Gamañel eyeing her all the while.

Gamañel found himself conflicted, he wondered what exactly could the dragon do via this remote apparition, yet at the same did not want to stay around to find out.

He saw how the Hydreigon-imitation craned up and breathed in — at least, he assumed she was breathing in. In as much as he could tell, it was the sign for dragon breath or somesuch.

Waving his little arms, Gamañel tried the first feeble excuse that came to his mind.

"Agh! Come on, this is all shrinkage. You really don't have to worry about lost stock!"

The Hydreigon-imitation didn't seem to be swayed though, and as she exhaled, Gamañel yelled and hopped down for dear life from his cart to the ground, landing hat-first and bouncing on the ground.

The Foongus rolled unceremoniously on the ground while the Hydreigon-imitation grumbled at the intact cart, her own form not being able to breathe out dragon fire.

Gamañel stood himself up and narrowed his eyes, watching how the Hydreigon-apparition made a second attempt at breathing out flame, to just about as much a nothing of an effect as the first attempt.

The Hydreigon-imitation harrumphed. One of the two arm heads looked back at the main one with a hint of disapproval.

"This usually works," she hissed.

Gamañel put on an indignant display of tidying himself up and loosening some dirt off his cap, while the Hydreigon-imitation traded dissatisfied glances with the two heads in her arms and gave sheepish grumbles for a moment. Half-grateful that at least his cart was still in one piece, the Foongus stared up the Hydreigon.

"I hope this counts as a labour accident for insurance," Gamañel said mostly to himself.

Other than the growing winds and the thunderbolts hitting every once in a while near the edge of the strange dome in the sky, there was no other sound that accompanied the two Pokémon.

So for a long while, they engaged in a stiff, patently cross-accusatory staredown, though they both knew with the winds blowing, that could not last for very long.

---

To be continued...

 

[Venia Silente]

Even more meta shenanigans but now with danger and with some nifty BBCode / CSS additions from the PC staff! o3o

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[a id]story-act3[/a id]

Act Ⅲ

Darkness covered the crossing, whatever was going on in the outside world was a mystery for the Hydreigon and Foongus under the dome of darkness. The most they could see of it were the random lightning bolts here and there that the darkness unleashed.

Not that Gamañel cared that much right then. He had just avoided death by dragonfire, although at a cost.

"You just made me have a work accident," he spat at the comparatively gigantic Hydreigon. "And my insurance plan expires next March."^[ref]

[ref]The 3DS Nintendo eShop closes in March 2023, presumably also ending service for Gates's DLC shop.​

The Hydreigon — or rather, this Hydreigon-imitation, silverish and faintly luminous wrapping over nothingness that Gamañel would rather mistake for a giant chess piece, were its movements not so lifelike and hungry — circled and floated around the cart, looking down at its sides, and came to rest a few steps away from where Gamañel had fallen from his previous leap. The two Pokemon then looked at the completely intact cart in silence.

"For the record," the Foongus spat after a moment, "all that's happened from this 'accident' is not my fault."

The Hydreigon-imitation stopped her self-recrimination between her heads; the central head turned down at Gamañel but avoided making direct eye contact.

"It is a limitation upon my actions," mumbled the Hydreigon-being, "as I am only projecting my form here."

The Foongus carefully hopped back up on his cart and waved his arms for the Hydreigon's attention. "Is that so? Then you should take care of more important business, Erish," he said, assuming a more thoughtful posture, "Listen, as of recently I've got a Tepig customer who's been dying to meet you."

The Hydreigon-apparition tensed up and her luminous eyes opened wide. "Dying?" she asked in a tone half fearful, half demanding.

Gamañel opened his mouth... and for a moment found himself at a lack of words, limiting himself only to a groan. Remembering the dragoness was not used to some idioms, he narrowed his eyes for a moment and sorted out his thoughts. "Er... bad choice of words," he finally answered, unsure if he was reading the dragoness' expressions any well.

"He's safe in town, then?" the dragoness inquired.

Gamañel's mind momentarily wandered into a repeat reel of all the various misadventures he had seen the Tepig and his little band of losers go through. Lost children, thieves, kidnappers, outlaws, myths; at least Feremiz's team was no stranger to any kind of job offering, albeit with varied degrees of success. And while he couldn't be around to see it in person, he knew from hearing La Signorina talk that every once in a while the team would be brought back to Quagsire's stand by some travellers or even by some other team that had received a rescue notice.

"«Safe» is not the word I'd use," Gamañel explained in the end, adding a wave of a hand. "He and his little party of dweebs had an accident while trying to reach the Redlands, another while helping rescue the Umbreon researcher, and thenanother one two days ago, while exploring Kilionea,"^[ref1] he explained. "I heard from Quagsire it wasn't even lunch time when Feremiz and his team were brought in to his stand in a cart pulled by Puruglys, who then tried to extort payment from him for that 'service'."^[ref2]

[ref1]In a normal game run Kilionea opens up a plot flag.
[ref2]The team explored the road to the Redlands previously on Where We Live and Work.
​

The dragon-apparition fussed about for a moment. As Gamañel eyed her up with hidden curiosity, the thought occurred to him that passing along news of the Tepig's misadventures might be a handy way for him to lead the luminous dragoness away from this unwelcome encounter.

The darkened dome flashed briefly around them, and the Hydreigon-apparition shook her heads. She hovered idly around the cart, brooding for a moment. Gamañel could only assume she was trying to find a shortcut around the limits the luminous avatar imposed upon her visit. As inconvenient for him as it was, it left him assured that the manifestation of the alternate gates was surely a matter that deserved attention from the "higher-ups".

"Look," Gamañel offered amicably, "it's not like you can do much in your... current state."

The form of the dragoness straightened up; her tail and neck swished around and the creature held a firm glare on Gamañel.

"You—" she hissed.

"Now now, I assure you I have these matters under control... more or less." The Foongus straightened himself and made sure to try and look about as sincere as he could, considering that this once he was genuinely trying to be. "I was already heading off to dispose of these embroideries anyway."

The mock-Hydreigon suddenly stopped and craned her two arm-heads; she inched up close to the Foongus, sniffing him, growling at him softly.

"What is what you seek?" the heads asked him.

Gamañel thought about the situation for a moment, and planted himself firmly on top of his wares.

"Simple. How about you do worry about your own job, and I do mine," he offered.

The dragoness grinned. Perhaps she could, somehow, sense how far away Gamañel wanted to be right now. And as if allured by the idea of the Foongus going so far as to do her job for her, and seeing where it all would lead, the dragoness lowered her head and glowered down at him, baring her clean, blue-ish fangs as a challenge. "I know what your business is, so what is mine?"

"You've put lots of time into bringing those "Pokémon" in yet you've not been able to meet most of them, so maybe you ought to be around when that Tepig comes asking." Gamañel narrowed his eyes in contemplation. "You can lodge somewhere nearby in the me— wait, yeah!"

Assured he had finally found a way to get the Hydreigon off his back, the Foongus waved his hands happily as he explained his idea.

"How about you move to the Jaws? It's currently unoccupied, you can even spend some time at your darling's..."[sup'][ref][/sup] He watched as the Hydreigon's form seemed to wilfully melt into nonexistence, as if admitting she really preferred to be elsewhere.

[ref]The Jaws of the Abyss, a dungeon location in the postgame of Gates that does not have a boss fight.​

The imitation resumed her solid form and gave a pitiful shake of her main head, the other two languishing about as if commiserating.

Gamañel pressed on. "Not a bad plan, isn't it...? How's 'Gungi' doing, anyway?"

The Hydreigon apparition raised her head at the mention of the name. She briefly checked her own body, even if it was a falsehood, with her arm heads for a moment, as if wanting to make sure she was well materialized and presentable. Her eyes shone blue like her fangs; she tilted her head left and one of her arm heads pointed Gamañel to the near end of the bridge.

"Girŋ·neryá(JIR·ng·ner·YAH) is coming as well," she spat with a tint of mockery in her voice, "you can ask him yourself."

"He is—"

Gamañel's heart skipped a beat, he blurted something out then hopped in place; repeating the Hydreigon's message to himself to make sure he had heard it correctly. He turned around and followed the arm head's gaze, hoping against hope that the Hydreigon-apparition had just been teasing him.

At once his eyes tracked the the winds coming down to the ground the other side of the bridge, and assembling into a silverish form. Hollow at first, it quickly filled with light and substance and presence, distinguishing itself from the ethereal glow and sound around as it promptly took the more solid form of a large dragon Pokémon — even if still noticeably smaller than the Hydreigon's avatar — with two legs and two arms all fully covered in gray light.

The new creature took probing steps on two legs, and with each step those legs sprouted covers made of chains of hooked oval scales; then more scale chains sprouted on his arms, then on his chest and —to Gamañel' audibly gulped dread — a set of four on the previously featureless tail that turned into a baleful Kommo-o club clanging and rattling its threats.

Whatever confidence Gamañel had built up on his attempt to get the Hydreigon to just leave him be, promptly vanished.

The Kommo‑o apparition approached menacingly as it took the more familiar form, so lifelike outside of some specific details here and there such as a couple of reversed bladescale chains on the arms. He seemed to loosen up as he passed the bridge and reached the small clearing where the cart was parked. The new dragon first eyed Gamañel and then the cart. He lingered for a moment, then let out an amused snarl as he noticed the carpet covering Gamañel's burned wares.

The Kommo-o turned his head at Gamañel and inched a bit closer, clanging the scales on his crown.

"Gamañel," he greeted in a tone that the Foongus supposed was intended to be friendly... yet was everything but.

"G-Girŋ·neryá, hey," the Foongus answered curtly, in a tone that he expected to come off as self-assured... yet was everything but.

The Kommo-o apparition turned then to the Hydreigon-apparition, craning his head up to look up at her for a moment, then bowed to her in greeting, arms spread to the sides.

"Eriš·keryá(Eh·RISH·kher·YAH) beloved," he greeted her, "our connection here abates."

The Hydreigon-apparition gave a solemn nod back and flew to the cart, settling herself on the ground right ahead of it, all the while her mate tracking her dutifully. She unfurled her wings and made a gesture of pointing to the whole of the cart, as if wanting to surround it from all angles. "I need to make sure this matter gets settled, Girng."

The new dragon-being nodded in acknowledgement and eyed Gamañel and his cart. "Here I thought this was a matter about the humans crossing over that have been happening lately. Let us see..."

The Kommo-o figure then raised a foot and brushed the cart, in clear gesture to topple it and spread its contents; yet he stopped short of doing so, eyeing Gamañel's ever so slightly shaking form standing on top of it.

The dragon held his foot claw barely pressed against the cart, and pointed an arm at the Foongus' cap. "Do you still struggle with saying my name?" he teased with a draconic, bare-fanged grin.

Gamañel hopped on his post and looked away. "Seriously? Give people a break. Late Uruk era script is so out of vogue," he complained, in an openly judgmental tone before he could notice.

The Kommo-o apparition lowered his foot and looked up the sky dome for a while, with Gamañel echoing the motion.

Gamañel heard the Kommo-o apparition snicker and rattle his crown, and Gamañel assumed his oblique jab at the dragon's age had not gone unnoticed. He ventured a distraction. "I-I mean, is it really so unreasonable? Even the Nintendo Switch won't render extended Latin script fully, and I'm counting the Folder Update."

To Gamañel's surprise, "Gungi" drew his claw and relaxed his posture, resting his tail on the ground and dedicating a moment to scratch his arms against it. "And you thought such hurdles would keep me away, I wager? But this matter is important, see."

Gamañel frowned. He kept some thoughts to himself. «This is so not fair,» Gamañel demanded to whatever deity could hear him. «Kommo-o is not even a Generation 5 Pokémon... All of this is so out of bounds!»

Gamañel gulped and collected whatever bit of that confidence he had a minute ago. He hopped about and pointed to Erish. "And I've been telling Erish that I'm taking care of it. Look at her? Voice of Life or not, she is in no condition to—"

The Kommo-o raised a claw and added a very brief growl to silence Gamañel's complaint. He turned to the Hydreigon and grunted something in dragon-tongue; for an answer Erish gave an exasperated growl back for an answer and held her gaze upon the Kommo-o for a moment.

Girŋ·neryá hunched over and carefully approached Erish, growling softly and looking up at her. He held a claw up as if asking for permission, which with a marked crane of one of her arm heads she granted. The two dragon-avatars then circled around each other with guiding, purposeful steps, brushing and sniffing and pecking at each other's otherwise illusory feathers and scales for assurance.

Gamañel shrugged at the scene; he knew those dragon-tongue messages they had for each other were not for his ear to comprehend, so he pretended that the hissing winds were enough to drown them out and turned to look away at the encroaching, yet slowly dissipating dome of thunder and darkness.

«Figures...» the Foongus thought, complaining mostly to himself. «They all sappy and then they complain they are in a hurry...»

Not a moment after, the ruffling of feather and the clanging of scales stopped, and before Gamañel could turn around, he saw a faint shadow cover him. He sighed and slowly turned around only to see Girŋ·neryá towering above him and looking down at him; he looked past the dragon and could see the Hydreigon female hovering back at her place.

Gamañel looked up at the Kommo-o. The dragon tilted his head in reply, tapped the cart a few times with a foot and lifted a hand.

"Eriš·keryá beloved says she's healthy but..." the Kommo-o indicated in an unamused tone patently betrayed by his obviously content make-out grin, "insists that you have recently bitten more than you could chew..."

The Kommo-o craned his head lower to about Gamañel's level, letting his crown rattle, and he narrowed his luminiscent eyes at the Foongus.

"Trader." He breathed out the word slowly and let his jaw hang open, giving Gamañel a full display of his fangs and the void they led into.

Gamañel knew he was small in the world, but still he felt his heart shrink further at the image. It took him a moment to recover composure and when he did he harrumphed at the emphasis on the last word. He looked past the Kommo-o apparition and locked eyes with the Hydreigon-apparition. The two of them traded eye-daggers for a few seconds, but in the end the Foongus sighed and returned his attention to his cart.

The Foongus sighed. "Well then..."

He hopped aside and carefully removed the covering over the cart, allowing the Kommo-o to inspect the charred remains of his tapestries. "I did not wake up today seeking trouble," he explained. "Trouble found me, not to mention a few others. And we three all know, those world passages are dangerous."

'Girng' grabbed one tapestry and tried to inspect it. He eyed the patterns, keeping his eyes narrowed as if trying to understand them. He discarded it and went for another, he grabbed it and sniffed the fabric, reacting with a brief gesture of revulsion, and then morosely traced it with a claw.

"We can sense they are dangerous," the Kommo-o conceded, "thus it is fortunate I came. Erish beloved regards this side matter as something to be dealt with today. Immediately." He stressed that last word with a clanging of his arm scales.

"Side matter?"

Gamañel blinked a couple times. He knew the Voice of Life had spent a few years researching a latent threat. It wasn't the usual affairs with meteors falling or rampaging time gods either; even he did not bother paying attention to those kinds of issues since they did not seem to merit a DLC shop.

But was the dragoness' task so big, that multiversal breakage would be considered a "side matter"?

"So... what is this costing you two?" He asked, facing the Hydreigon. "You are occupied with another subject."

Erish stepped around the cart. The Hydreigon had been digging info about this particular threat for about as long as Gamañel had been working his own business. Now, it seemed to him, she finally seemed sluggish and tired. "I feared this would be tied to the Rancor Worm," she spoke, "so I... spent my energy hoping I would come for the final battle."

The Foongus stared at the Hydreigon accusingly. "Well, it seems that was not the case."

She bitterly flicked her tongue. "I'm unsure if to feel happy or sad about that."

Gamañel frowned at the mention of the certain threat. He fumbled trying to approach the subject; it was certainly not one of his favourites. "The 'Rancor Worm'? That what you call...?"

Erish's form lost colour and wavered for a moment, and upon returning to reality she seemed to be more distraught and tired. In the corner of her otherwise blue eye, Gamañel could see for a moment a twitching movement. A heavy form of uneasiness, perhaps even dread.

Girng for his part gave a brief, worried look at the dragoness, then turned to Gamañel.

"A parasitic weapon planted in this world, yes," he explained. He pointed to some direction which, relative to the nearby bridge, Gamañel assumed was the north. "Stop me if this sounds familiar: people look drained and more apathetic every passing day. They lack willpower, and thus they lack power. They ignore each other and themselves, as if they would disappear..."

Gamañel tensed up. The description did indeed sound familiar to him, and for a moment his mind pulled a tally of customers no longer available to the forefront, one that the Foongus had to make an effort to make go away.

The Kommo-o seemed to sense Gamañel's uneasiness and huffed. "And once they don't care to fight back, they're made to disappear." He stressed that last part with a rattling of his arm scales.

Gamañel growled. His favourite clients certainly tended to disappear. To no one's care or notice as of late.

The drake could read Gamañel's discomfort quite clearly, he inched closer to the Foongus and leaned his head down besides him.

"You know of this hidden force too, trader?"

Gamañel shuddered. "I've only heard some concerns... I mostly go on about my business."

Erish behind the duo let out an angry snarl, and bared her fangs at the Foongus. "As if," she muttered.

Gamañel shot an angered look at the dragoness' callout, and would have made motion to go face her off; as soon as he noticed though he tried to regain his composure in front of the Kommo-o companion she had brought. He was already tired of the male dragon making him feel small and weak.

Girng for his part swung about his tail and tilted his head. He seemed to be pleased with Gamañel's failure to keep face. "So you merrily ignore that your best clients flatly disappear, trader?" Girŋ·neryá teased, adding a snort. "It's not just any death that they meet."

Erish snarled at Gamañel, even as her form seemed to once again fade out of existence for a moment. "Not like that costs you!"

As she spoke, lightning broke out up in the dome overhead.

Gamañel breathed hard. He knew exactly what had the dragoness involved herself with, for it was the source of Gamañel's own clientèle. "Say what?" He snapped back at her, waving his little arms in her direction. "The 'Bittercold' was your issue to handle in the first place."

The dragoness lifted into the air, violet strands of energy swirled around her, chasing her as she let out a thunderous roar; the summoned energy tried to reach her as she floated closer to the cart, but ended up bursting out into aimlessly wandering energy. Gamañel shuddered in his place as the angered creature approached.

"We are fighting this," Erish shouted, as she noticed the violet energy fade away. Her arm heads frowned. "And a constant fight it is."

The wind grew a bit stronger, the light under the dome a bit dimmer. Gamañel held his ground even as the shadow of the larger dragoness towered above him, even if it was technically an apparition. He didn't like what Erish was implying, considering one of the side effects was how long has Gamañel's business in this world lasted.

He scoffed in defiance. "L-last month or so was what, ten years, of you... t-throwing bodies at the problem?"^[ref]

[ref] Gates to Infinity was first released on Nov. 2012.​

Girng raised an eyebrow and stepped aside, carefully walking around the cart to place himself on the side opposite from Erish. The dragoness meanwhile breathed in and out hard in front of Gamañel, her arm heads craning about and making patent desire to want to grab and crunch the Foongus for speaking out of turn.

"The people—" The dragoness's form briefly became less solid, less opaque; she had to visibly rein in her anger in order to retain her presence in the meeting, as more lightning bolts struck around.

"The strategy that works is summoning those people," she offered as a counter. She hissed at the Foongus. "We work to save this world, we don't make a profit out of its death."

Gamañel figuratively arqued his brows, and pointed at the dragoness with one of his arms.

"What you don't like is that I can offer the humans actual help in this unfair deal," Gamañel spat back at her.

The Foongus and the Hydreigon held murderous glares at each other for a while. Thunder boomed and the two Pokémon blinked as they thought they had heard a voice in the thunder.

"Hey!"

Gamañel and Erish turned to the other side of the cart where they saw Girŋ·neryá holding one of Gamañel's tapestries, rubbing it against the frame of the cart. The Kommo-o looked at his two interlocutors and let out a sardonic smile.

"If you darlings wish to waste your limited time bickering over an ongoing plan, just do so." He then held the tapestry up and crumpled it in his paw, licking his tongue all the while. "I'm here for these, and the death they bring."

Whiteish energy flashed for a moment in the male dragon's hand. When he opened it, the dust that once was a broken tapestry vanished into the winds.

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To be continued...

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Author's Notes

This chapter was originally released in a different platform in time for the 10th year Anniversary of Gates. Gamañel's line regarding the ten years since is slightly modified from the original to account for the delay in syndication to other platforms.

This story features PC's [ ruby ] tag that allows to add Furigana annotations. PC Staff was so kind to add this feature after a feature request that itself followed some discussion on Furigana support on Reddit and AO3. Let's hope it is retained in the Xenforo migration!

The events of Where We Live and Work are referred to. The story also has an official wiki article.