Rayo

[Spiteful Murkrow]

Hi everyone, it’s been another year, and I fell for the contest bug again with Thousand Roads' 2026 Professional Interest One-Shot Contest. I didn’t do quite as well this year thanks to my entry not sticking the landing with integrating the target theme, but given how all the judge feedback had nothing but positive things to say about the underlying narrative, I figured that it was about time to tighten things up and throw it out there in a bit of a different and less one-shotty format. As those of you who followed said contest results or else looked at the thread icon likely surmised, this fic is a story about Miraidon.

No, not the Miraidon you went on your journey around Paldea with. The other one.

Now, there were a few assumptions that were made as part of the intended reading experience for this story. First and foremost is that this is a companion story for my more musical Violet not-quite-a-novelization, Trueno. While the average chapter lengths between the two are about the same, this story is written in a very different style and is significantly less upbeat and cheery for reasons related to major backstory events in Scarlet / Violet, even if the content in the end I felt still fit within a PG rating. While the two stories do share a common set of assumptions for event chronology and the depictions of its characters, they are both intentionally written to be enjoyable as standalone works without needing to know anything about the other. Additionally, due to the inherent nature of this story’s viewpoint character, there’s unmarked spoilers for the Pokémon Scarlet / Violet campaign… well, in this very preamble, really. So if you care about those, take that as a sign to come back sometime after seeing the credits roll in those games.

Beyond that, there’s a few flourishes that you’ll likely notice because I couldn’t help myself if you’ve read a few of my other stories. One of them is that there is Spanish-language dialogue present in various chapters of this story, which is how this story chose to render the human characters’ dialogue as heard from across a language barrier. Unlike some of my other stories, there were no hovertext translations provided for them as a very deliberate meta choice to capture the same degree of understanding that the viewpoint character has, with translations provided in author’s commentaries at each chapter. Said sections also include some explanations for some computer-related jargon that comes up in this story, which come up to sell the sense of being in the head of a robot anole but otherwise might fly over the heads of some readers.

As a “third wheel” to another “third wheel” story, this story runs on a publishing schedule of “whenever I have the time and personal motivation for it”, even if the majority of this story was originally aiming to be uploaded as part of a twice-a-week schedule. At the time of this post, there were 14 chapters that had been planned for this story. It wouldn’t be particularly hard to pick things up and keep going after that point, but that’s a bridge to be crossed when I get there. Just don’t be too shocked if this story flips back to ‘In-Progress’ sometime after a stretch of being ‘Completed’.

I would like to take a moment to extend my special thanks to @Venia Silente and Eric566 from AO3, who beta-read this story and provided the Spanish-language lines and their translations. I would also like to thank @Dragonfree along with Flyg0n from FFN and Wolflyn from AO3 for the feedback they provided as contest judges, which helped shape the final release of this story. For the curious, as has become a bit of a tradition of mine, an archival version of the story as-submitted to the Professional Interest contest will be uploaded to AO3 after the final version catches up with it in full.

Though that’s enough talking for now, let’s take you below the mists of the Great Crater of Paldea, through the eyes of the Guardian of Paradise that watches over it.

---

Rayo

Your old friend used to call you ‘Miraidon’. You used to help him build his dreams, until that fateful battle which ruined everything and left you watching over your lab all alone. Sometimes, you revisit your past, wondering about the future that could’ve been.

This is the story of a time you reviewed those memories of how you became your lab’s sole remaining Guardian of Paradise.​

---

$ history

1 cat /etc/os-release​

2 memplay part-00003-log-20220531T120000Z.1008 &​

3 memplay part-00007-log-20220531T140000Z.1008 &​

4 memplay part-00009-log-20220531T140000Z.1008 &​

5 memplay part-00010-log-20220531T150000Z.1008 &​

6 memplay part-00012-log-20220601T060000Z.1008 &​

7 memplay part-00001-log-20220601T070000Z.1008 &​

8 memplay part-00002-log-20220601T090000Z.1008 &​

9 memplay part-00003-log-20220601T090000Z.1008 &​

10 memplay part-00004-log-20220601T090000Z.1008 &​

11 pkill -9 memplay​

12 memplay part-00005-log-20220601T090000Z.1008 &​

13 pkill -9 memplay​

14 memplay part-00008-log-20220603T030000Z.1008 &​

15 pkill -9 memplay​

16 memplay part-00007-log-20220615T110000Z.1008 &​

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

memplay part-00003-log-20220531T120000Z.1008 &

Low hums linger in the air as you float forward and down a grassy path. You pass through a natural arch in between sharp cliffs made of gray stone, when you tense up, blue static crackling around you…​

​

«Cálmate, todo se encuentra dentro de los parámetros normales».​

​

You glance back over your shoulder, your tail lashing agitatedly to and fro in the air as you turn your head down towards that human-sounding voice. It was almost identical to your human friend’s—except for the faint electronic drone that it carries, a reminder that he ultimately has more in common with you than your friend.​

​

You’re being accompanied by a human-looking figure that sports your friend’s brown swept-back hair. He wears a white labcoat much like your friend’s, draped over form-hugging black-and-violet garb that looks and even smells just as the one that he also wears.​

​

The spitting image of Turo, except this clone of him made of metal and circuits underneath his lookalike shell is merely the assistant he built even before you two first met.​

​

At the same time, as annoying as it is to be stuck with this mimicry of your real friend, you suppose that this isn’t abnormal. It’s your week to go along with Turo’s assistant and check the research stations and other outer portions of the lab that you guard over. Your Hadron Engine is running as it ought to be today: it keeps your thrusters running and your body floating safely off the ground and over any potential obstructions. The resident pokémon know better than to stay in your path: organics, like a herd of Girafarig, who hurriedly gallop as they hear the sound of your thrusters, or synthetics, like the Iron Hands. Those colossal bipedal creatures with bodies of steel and vibrant yellow markings above their hips and palms drift away as you approach.​

​

As they should. Everything is normal.​

​

You train your vision after the Iron Hands and count them as they depart. Four… five… six… the same number that Turo’s assistant introduced here under your watchful gaze last month. Future inhabitants of the paradise that Turo’s been slowly building up thanks to your strength and your diligent help. Your work allows you to keep Turo and his assistant safe and eliminate any threats that would harm them or the Paradise they’ve been building. Not that you expect you will be necessary today from the healthy berth the other Pokémon give at your approach.​

​

Yes, everything is proper right now…​

​

Except that Turo isn’t there with you as he ought to be…​

​

You sigterm the thought and turn your attention to the cluster of steel-walled, hexagonal modules further up ahead—the third Research Station of your lab here in this ‘Great Crater’. It too, appears to be fully in order. The green lighting strips are functional, there’s no visible damage to the entrance or the ventilation grates. You suppose that there’s those plants creeping up the wall, but Turo explained some time ago that they were harmless extraneous variables, and the transmitters above are—​

​

You turn your gaze up towards them and pause. There’s some sort of splotch resting on top of the highest transmitter’s antenna. At first you think it’s just dirt or dust that got onto your optical diodes, but those doubts are swiftly disabused when a dark, winged shape flies up to it.​

​

Clearly things aren’t as in order as you thought.​

​

“HEY!”​

​

Your surroundings come awash with yellow static as your Hadron Engine runs faster with a sharp hum and you rocket into the air with your thrusters. You would’ve thought that the Pokémon here would’ve learned and changed their behavioral routines by now. That they’d leave the places Turo needs for his research and building his paradise alone.​

​

Clearly some of them are more stubborn and slower to change than you expected.​

​

You see the culprit as you near—a Corviknight. She sees you approaching and beats her wings out with a sharp caw. You don’t clearly make out her words, but she’s clearly trying to intimidate you.​

​

It’s laughable that she’d think you’d be frightened by that, really, as you answer with a loud roar:​

​

“Get off of there!”​

​

Light gathers between your electrified horns and you promptly shut her up with a beam of light which gleams like gemstones. It knocks the wind out of her and throws her off the transmitter. She loses altitude before beating her wings, and evening out, and hastily flying off in retreat.​

​

You start to chase her, thrusters wooshing and static crackling along your scales, when that faintly droning voice calls out from below. Turo’s assistant, motioning at the door to the Research Station.​

​

… Right. Even if the Corviknight might come back later, you suppose you’ve already neutralized her as a threat well enough. And the more you drag this morning patrol out, the longer it’ll take to return to the actual Turo…​

​

“... Tch, fine. Just let me make sure she didn’t damage anything.”​

​

You float up to the transmitter’s top and spot a bowl-like mass of twigs and vegetation, almost like the crater that you’re currently in. All along it, there’s soft, downy feathers—as if it was meant to make someone comfortable lying against it. A ‘nest’, as Turo calls it.​

​

It’s also a sign that the Corviknight will surely come back when you’re gone. But you think you know how you can ensure she won’t stay for long when she does.​

​

You bring your claws down and grab the matted vegetation, disentangling it from the antenna as carefully as you can, until you can lift it up cleanly into your grasp. You toss it up ahead of you as it comes apart in midair and lands on the ground beside the Research Station in a heap, heat building up in your throat all the while.​

​

And then you split your jaws wide, and with a pulse of fiery, blue light, you burn it to cinders and ash.​

Exiting... (End of file)

---

Commentary:

Heya, for those of you who have been reading my other robot anole story, you’ll probably find these blocks familiar as the part where I throw in some additional flavor notes for the stuff going on in this chapter, if usually a bit shorter.

The primary thing that I’ll be pointing out this time is the computer-ese in this chapter, since there’s a few separate layers going on here for the more tech-savvy. The opening message is based on how one would use a utility like MPlayer on a Unix-based operating system to play media files (specifically, using it while loading the player into a subshell), with the trailing message being based on MPlayer’s default terminal output when it finishes playing a file. The .1008 extension is a twofer of being a play off Miraidon’s National Pokédex number, while being a nod to file extensions for raw video streams encoded by compression standards such as Advanced Video Coding/H.264, with the filename structure being based off of how Apache Parquet partitions up large data inputs across multiple files and using a more common format for timestamping dates in UTC time. As for the throwaway mention of 'sigterm'-ing, it's a reference to a command used in Unix-based operating systems to safely terminate an ongoing computer process, which our viewpoint character uses here to dispel his ongoing thought process.

Translation Notes:

- «Cálmate, todo se encuentra dentro de los parámetros normales». - “Calm down, everything is still within operating parameters.”

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

memplay part-00007-log-20220531T140000Z.1008 &

You’re now floating ahead in a darkened space, deep in the bowels of a cave with luminous crystals punctuating the darkness, including the towering ones which presently dominate your vision. The beating heart of Turo’s paradise-to-be lies encased in the one just ahead of you. His assistant is manipulating the terminal at the base of the entrance ramp to gain permissions to open the entrance hatch, but your own attention’s focused elsewhere right now as the sound of your Hadron Engine lingers in the air with an agitated hum:​

​

You're performing an area survey of your surroundings. The Iron Bundles Turo and his assistant have been introducing have become numerous enough that you don't have to deliberately seek them out like the other Pokémon they've been introducing, but they're not what you're worried about right now. Your optical diodes are focused for signs of things not being quite right. For any evidence of potential damage or threats to Turo's hard work. Yes, you know that you're not supposed to worry about doing that here until tomorrow, when you'll properly be on rotation with Turo again…​

​

But there’s a reason why you couldn’t help it and launched this routine early.​

​

Ever since you passed Research Station Four and noticed the Tera Crystals next to it were starting to visibly encroach on its structure, you felt a flash of annoyance that you couldn’t shake. You started noticing all the little things that you wouldn’t have missed had you been the one tending this part of the crater—like the clawed tracks going right up to the crystal surface next to the ramp and the gouges hacked into it. The sight of them makes you arc annoyed electricity along your hide, since you know what it means:​

​

He’s failing at his duties as a guardian. Again.​

​

A mechanical whirr and thumps ring out as you look up the ramp and see the hatch undoing itself as radial panels retract one after another. You glance back at Turo’s assistant as the last of the eight panels sealing its aperture pulls back, opening the path to Zero Lab ahead.​

​

Not a moment too soon. You turn back to Turo’s assistant and tug him away from the terminal with your claws, eager to hurry along and get moving.​

​

“Come on, we’ve been running late enough as it is,” you tell him.​

​

He looks up at you briefly, before pulling his body free as he points a violet orb at you and taps it center. The world around you melts into light as your surroundings start resembling the cave around you again—your Pokéball’s simulated environment, which was set when Turo first paired it to you. It appears as a cave with glittering crystals in it and large skylights overhead that open up towards a simulated sky.​

​

It looks much the same as the cave that Zero Lab is in. The same one that’s been driving you crazy from the signs of his neglect, except none of it is real—as going too far in any one direction will quickly reveal when it inevitably loops back to the place where you started from. The real world is visible in faint afterimages in the ‘sky’ that’s visible through the cave’s skylights, even if you’ve seen these particular sights countless times:​

​

The same threshold to Zero Lab’s interior while entering from the caves outside—one of the outtake tubes that has a service exit on the right sized for humans. All the while, you bat your tail back and forth agitatedly—you’re not sure just what sort of mess you’re going to have to untangle on the other end when you get out of here.​

​

You see light again—fluorescent lighting along with bits and pieces of the lab’s interior. All the machines look in order, including the chambers for culturing Tera Crystal samples. The whiteboards are… a mess as usual, but not any more than they would normally be for Turo and he’s somehow able to make sense of them.​

​

As hard as it is for you to really believe, in spite of him, everything looks in order at first glance.​

​

«Te veo orgulloso de ti mismo hoy. ¿Todo bien en el paraíso?»​

​

Turo’s voice comes faintly from the world outside your Pokéball, and after seeing him, your scales bristle with electricity. There, amidst the afterimages up in the sky, Turo’s patting another Pokémon that looks just like you—another ‘Miraidon’, as Turo calls you. The other ‘Miraidon’ lets out a contented rumble as he floats in place and your friend strokes him again and again.​

​

… It’s him, and seeing him basking in Turo’s attention like he’s ever done anything to deserve it just makes you feel sick.​

​

You run your thrusters and fly up before starting to spin faster and faster in midair. Electricity arcs around you before you lunge down and pounce against the simulated ground with all the force you can muster. There’s the sharp crackle of electric discharge as the world around you melts into light again and you’re now back inside Zero Lab. Turo briefly turns at your presence, as you lock eyes with him and your voice comes out in a sharp, impatient snarl.​

​

“Are you done?”​

​

He’s the Beta that Turo brought to your lab—he predates you, but he’s also less adept and more error-prone. The static on his horns dies down and he shrinks back as you float up and push him out of his spot in front of Turo—the actual Turo.​

​

Turo shoots an askew glance at you briefly. What’s that about? Has he somehow forgotten? There’s a very special task that Turo needs to do today to help build up his Paradise. Ever since you came here, you’re the one that’s been the best at helping him see it through. He knows that.​

​

“Turo, shouldn’t you be calibrating the time machine?” you ask. “According to the routine that was set for today, it was supposed to be turned on a little over 900 seconds ago.”​

​

You motion off at a sheaf of papers fixed to one of the boards filled with Turo’s research notes. There’s a picture of plateau plains with mountains in the distance and a human city at their foothills. It has a skyline dominated by tapering spires, with five violet ones sprouting from a tower clustered together at the center. More importantly, there’s also human glyphs below the image organized into a grid of boxes used to track days, with today’s marked in bright red ink.​

​

A flash of realization comes over Turo, as he calls for his assistant and starts gathering up the purple-topped Pokéballs that he’ll need as failsafes for today’s task. No thanks to the Beta distracting him and making him forget about it.​

​

You whirl around, and fix your optical diodes into a sharp glare that makes him squirm under your gaze.​

​

“What are you even doing here?” you snap. “There’s an entire cave outside that you’re supposed to be patrolling right now.”​

​

“I-I was taking a break—”​

​

“Yes, and the threats outside weren’t,” you retort. “The wilds were chipping away at the crystal outside the lab. Again.”​

​

You crane your neck and head up as he shrinks his down, as he rightfully ought to. Who does this weakling think he is being so flippant about his tasks as a guardian of this budding paradise? Especially when he’s been making excuses just like these for his failures for years.​

​

“And what about that Research Station you’re supposed to be personally watching over?” you press. “I could see those Tera Crystals creeping up onto the structure—”​

​

Turo’s voice calls out for you to stop and your words hang in your mouth. He walks up to you and pats along the scales on your neck, slow and guarded. There’s a serious look on his face as he speaks up.​

​

«Hoy tenéis que ayudar los dos».​

​

Help both? No… Help ‘from… both’...? You’re not sure what Turo means by that, when Turo says something to him that you both miss before his assistant goes over to the Beta’s side. Turo and his assistant exchange violet-topped Pokéballs with each other as your friend goes up to you and points at the elevator.​

​

You swallow your reservations and begin floating forward.​

​

You’re here with him now. As you wanted. And things have run on long enough as is.​

​

It’s time to help build Turo’s Paradise.​

Exiting... (End of file)

---

Commentary:

Not too much to say this time around, other than that the calendar image is strongly implied to be a shot of Mesagoza centered around Uva Academy. Everything here is more or less as you remembered, with the primary departure being that the pipe you used to get into Zero Lab doesn’t have that hole punched into it just yet and the interior is less of a mess. For now, anyways.

Translation Notes:

- «Te veo orgulloso de ti mismo hoy. ¿Todo bien en el paraíso?» - “I see you’re quite proud of yourself today. Everything’s fine in (the) Paradise?”
- «Hoy tenéis que ayudar los dos». - “I need both of you helping today.”

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

memplay part-00009-log-20220531T140000Z.1008 &

You’re in a chamber lined with tall, crystalline walls, static crackling all around and your Hadron Engine humming loud and fierce. Behind you is Turo, his hand wrapped tight around a purple-topped Pokéball. In front of you, there’s a black tower of extended metal panels tapering up to the iris-like aperture of the time machine.​

​

… And of course, to your right, he’s here. Static arcs about his hide, as his body’s poised for battle… if you can call it that.​

​

There’s a tense nervousness about him. You remembered also seeing it years ago when you came into this room after breaking out from the Pokéball that brought you into it. You parsed him as a threat from his demeanor while facing him down back then, but in the end he was all snarl and no spark. You bested him and Turo then brought out one of his other companions who gave you actual trouble. A green and white one with a pink energy lance—an Iron Valiant. It was how Turo managed to pair you to your present Pokéball.​

​

It… still stings your pride a bit thinking about that battle, but as you replayed the memories in your head afterwards, you realized the Iron Valiant’s strength and cleverness in battle came from the guidance that Turo gave him. And you knew that you needed it for yourself. Since then, Turo won your respect and you won his; it’s the entire reason why you’re here right now.​

​

You just don’t understand what Turo ever saw in him. Especially now when he still falters and lags behind your abilities in spite of being there with him for years before your arrival.​

​

«Error de contención. Ten cuidado, Turo».​

​

You tense up as Turo’s assistant drones something about a ‘containment failure’. You glance up at the iris and its glowing white light as the Pokémon crossing over through the time machine’s portal begin forming.​

​

Except, instead of little spheres as to be expected when Pokéballs sent through the time machine come back, you see distinct bodily shapes—ones that don’t look like anything that you’ve encountered before. There’s three creatures with steely bodies and quadrupedal gaits: a green-and-red one with a slender build—probably female from the softer cadence of their vocalizations, a gray-and-black one with sharp forward-pointing horns glowing orange that lets out rougher-sounding grunts, and a blue-and-gray one with swept-back horns. From the corner of your eye, you can see the Beta faltering—visible unease creeping over his face.​

​

“What– What are those things?”​

​

You don’t know what they are yourself. But they’re clearly strong, and their postures are tense and wound-up—they’re sizing you up just as you are doing the same to them. All of a sudden, the blue one’s horns stand and light up as his eyes meet yours and he speaks.​

​

“Threat detected. React to contact.”​

​

They lunge forward, the green and the brown ones descending in a blur as the pair leap down while the blue one springs up into the air. Suddenly, Turo cries out from behind you for a Discharge.​

​

Your Hadron Engine picks up pace and you hurriedly gather sparks, before flinging them out far and wide. You can hear from their droning bellows that your bolts have found their mark on the three, and can even see it breaking up a blade of white light coming in through the air from Blue’s direction—except you see Blue is on his feet again right before a second one suddenly sails in straight for you.​

​

You try to dodge it, but a slicing pain digs into your shoulder. You roar in pain, as Turo’s assistant calls for him to use Discharge in the background. It buys precious moments to assess the damage: splatters of grayish liquid on the floor, while more oozes from a torn-up patch of hide near the top of your left arm.​

​

Your connective fluid.​

​

You snarl as seething heat builds up at the back of your throat and turn your eyes back to the green-and-red creature that came from the portal, pacing about and sizing you up. You need to stay focused here. Turo merely needs to pair a ball with these creatures to contain them, but they clearly aren’t going to make it easy for you right now.​

​

“A-AAH!”​

​

Off to the right, he’s clumsily floating back from orange-horns, whose horns have extended and fused together in a cleaving swipe. No, stay focused. Whatever happens to him isn’t your problem, and if Turo’s assistant gets damaged again, he can always be repair—​

​

A sharp bellow snaps you to attention. The green creature rushes in, markings awash in red as she vaults up and pinkish light gathers along a raised, glowing spike atop her head that wasn’t there earlier. As her body reaches the apex of her jump, and throws her head back to bring it down. Except something's wrong. She should be aiming for your center of mass or cerebral unit but from the way she's angling her body it's like she's trying to jump far past you.​

​

... Unless Green’s not aiming for you at all!​

​

“Turo!”​

​

You hurriedly spit up fiery bluish light to knock the creature out of the air. The pinkish light extends into an ethereal blade that rakes across the panels in the background with a deafening crash as Green hits the ground with a clang and you rush her unprompted.​

​

The creature is a threat to Turo. She must be eliminated.​

​

You spit up another Dragon Pulse. And then another, as Green screeches and writhes on the ground. A stronger heat builds within you amidst her cries, it’s a move that Turo taught you which if it hits hard and close enough, will surely put her down for good.​

​

Except, in the middle of Green’s struggles, a purple orb suddenly flies in. It swallows her up in light and rocks once before going still on the ground. Another bellow from behind suddenly gets cut short, as you see him panting, connective fluid dribbling down his flank, looking down wide-eyed at an inert violet orb on the ground.​

​

There’s a sharp clanging noise as the heat inside you lingers, and you see Blue faltering slightly. His head swivels in place on top of his neck, and his eyes settle on you.​

​

“Threat assessment updated. I don’t know what those things with you just did, but I will dispatch you first—”​

​

“Quick! While he’s distracted!”​

​

His voice cries out as a beam of mixed blue-and-yellow light zips in. It hits Blue’s flank and explodes into a bluish, twinkling haze—Tera Blast, a move Turo taught the Beta as part of his ongoing research into Terastalization.​

​

… Except Turo still has his Tera Orb right now. If this was an attempt to put this last remaining Pokémon down, the Beta should have known to wait for a better moment instead of spewing it up in a panic. He didn’t accomplish anything other than obstruct your view of your target!​

​

“You idiot!”​

​

You angrily snarl as you steal the briefest of glances over at him and see his eyes suddenly shrinking. A glance back at the thinning haze reveals Blue’s silhouette is crouched and his horns are standing upright again, glowing just like when he threw those particle blades through the air at you.​

​

Looks like you’ll have to do everything yourself today. Heat wells up in your body as blinding, searing light gathers in your jaws.​

​

You bellow and spew its energy forward in a bright, overpowering beam aimed just under the creature’s horns. It blots out your vision as for a moment you can’t hear anything coherently over the woosh of superheated air and the piercing whine of your Hadron Engine.​

​

Hyper Beam. The move Turo taught you which humbles threats without fail.​

​

The light fades. Your body sags in the air and the static along your horns flickers as your breaths are heavy and tired. The haze is now gone, while Blue is now pinned back against the black tower. A large scorch mark covers the side of his head and neck as he stumbles onto his feet, his head swiveling back and forth unsteadily.​

​

You optical diodes contract and your breath tightens in your throat. No. He shouldn’t be standing after all of that—​

​

A purple-topped sphere suddenly sails in and bounces off Blue’s chest. He vanishes into a flash of light that gets sucked into it. It rocks once. Twice.​

​

Is– Is it actually going to break out? Your Hadron Engine is running at full strength again as you dart forward towards the ball, when Turo’s voice suddenly cries out sharply.​

​

«¡Basta!»​

​

You look back towards him as he motions for a stop, with your Pokéball in his grasp. You falter briefly and turn your attention towards the purple sphere on the ground as it rocks a third time.​

​

Click.​

​

And at last, it finally goes still.​

Exiting... (End of file)

---

Commentary:

This was where I went a bit off on a limb relative to the firm official canon of how the Time Machine is explained to work in the games. While it does indeed send Pokéballs out to nab Pokémon and bring them back, nobody ever said they ever had to stay in said Pokéballs in less-than-ideal circumstances, especially since something similar is implied to have happened to the Guardian of Paradise in some capacity in between the very end of the campaign and its postgame in Scarlet/Violet. Also, it allowed me to do a cool throwdown between the Paradox Swords of Justice and the anole duo, so good enough.

As for why Iron Leaves was singled out in particular for having a bad time, we’ll get to that eventually, but think of where exactly you’d run into each one of the Paradox Swords of Justice in-game and you’ll get some ideas.

Translation Notes:

- «Error de contención. Ten cuidado, Turo». - "Containment breach. Be careful, Turo."
- «¡Basta!» - “(That’s) Enough!”

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

memplay part-00010-log-20220531T150000Z.1008 &

You look down at your shoulder—the gouge in it has self-annealed, the process having accelerated after Turo applied a Potion to it. To your right’s one of the staging machines connected to the pipe that Turo’s assistant took to get inside. To your left are boxes packed full of documents and samples stacked together in a space between a pair of cylindrical gray machines. A little further still, there’s a set of boards with papers and calculations pinned on them.​

​

Just past the boards, Turo and his assistant are reviewing human glyphs on computer screens atop tables strewn with papers and books. Turo’s Tera Orb and that purple-covered book he’s so fond of—a replacement for a copy he lost some years ago—are resting opposite of a shelf with a microwave.​

​

You… still don’t understand enough human language to follow everything they’re saying, but you think you’ve gathered the gist of it: they’ve named today’s Pokémon after traits of one from Turo’s book that they resemble. Orange-tusks’ name means something along the lines of ‘Iron Boulder’, Green’s is something like ‘Iron Leaves’, and Blue’s you’re pretty sure is ‘Iron Crown’. Turo and his assistant have been talking a lot about the three, and how to fit them into Turo’s future paradise—​

​

“Wh-What on earth were you doing earlier back at the time machine?”​

​

Your horns flatten against your head by the second after hearing his voice. Sure enough, the Beta is there behind you. Except, his claws and tail are tense. Even though his voice has a not-particularly-hidden stammer, he speaks with an agitated growl.​

​

“Why did you keep attacking Iron Leaves like that?” he asks. “We were supposed to be helping Turo move the Pokémon that came from the time machine. She only needed to be stunned a little bit to be paired with that Pokéball and—”​

​

“She was a threat to Turo,” you reply. “I dealt with her accordingly.”​

​

“You almost decommissioned her! She’s hurt right now because of you!” he protests. “You don’t understand, humans don’t like seeing it when–”​

​

“Oh just shut up!”​

​

There’s heat at the back of your throat, as you spit up a pulse of bluish, fiery light. It knocks him to the ground, and that would normally be the end of things, except there’s a strange fierceness in his eyes today as he digs his claws in. He answers with a snarl as sparks suddenly start dancing on the surfaces all around you. He glares at you as blue and yellow light gathers in his mouth—​

​

«¡Oigan! ¡Dejen eso!»​

​

His eyes suddenly widen and you float back. A blue-and-yellow beam zips wide and up towards the ceiling. A loud blast follows as that bluish, crystalline haze kicks up and much to your alarm, there’s things falling from it this time.​

​

“Turo! Get back!”​

​

You lunge and pull Turo away from the falling shapes as one loud crash after another follows and concrete dust swirls in the air. You hold him tight until the racket stops, as Turo warily pulls himself free and his assistant comes over to check up on him and the damage.​

​

About two-thirds of the way up to the ceiling, there’s a large, almost triangular hole blasted into it—concrete and rebar lying strewn about in a pile at the bottom where the boxes of samples and documents were. Off at the cylindrical machines, he’s squirming and shrinking, his eyes widened and his body pulled into a defensive curl.​

​

“A-Aah! Turo! That wasn’t—! I d-didn’t mean to—!”​

​

You growl as sparks of your own start dancing around, including blue ones along your hide. Your Hadron Engine spins up as you raise your claws and snarl back at him. You see Turo running up, Pokéball in hand, surely to recall him.​

​

Good riddance, really. Who knows how long it’ll take for Turo to replace everything the Beta just destroyed? It’d be for the best for everyone if he just stayed in his ball and out of everyone’s way until then.​

​

Except, much to your surprise, it’s your vision suddenly fills with white and the surrounding lab melts away.​

Exiting... (End of file)

---

Commentary:

This one’s also going off on a bit of a limb relative to what the games officially communicate as a backstory for the Raidons in-game, but we do know that their fateful clash happened to some extent at Research Station Four… while there’s very obvious interior damage within Zero Lab as well. The particular take that this story rolls with is that that one patch of rubble that is lying on what used to be a bunch of boxes is a casualty of an earlier and less destructive spat between two very powerful lizards who didn’t particularly like each other all that much.

The xenofiction was out in full force again for today’s chapter, with ‘decommission’ being rolled as terminology for this story’s robot anoles as a machine-ism. In IT/tech parlance, it refers to permanently removing software or hardware from service. In the latter case, it’s often accompanied by a swift trip to an industrial shredder to make sure that whatever proprietary data used to be on that hardware can’t be recovered in any way, shape, or form.

Make what you will of what that implies ‘decommissioning’ is like from their perspective.

Translation Notes:

For those wondering why the viewpoint character wavers so much on the names of the Paradox Swords of Justice, it’s a small mythology gag to how in the Spanish localization, they are of a small subset of Pokémon that have localization-specific names, which actually differ a bit in nuance from their English ones. For the curious, they are as follows:

- Iron Boulder is Ferromole, which is equivalent to ‘Iron Chunk/Slab’
- Iron Leaves is Ferroverdor, or roughly equivalent to ‘Iron Greenery’
- Iron Crown is Ferrotesta, which is equivalent to ‘Iron Head’

I considered putting them in in some capacity given how this story uses Spanish language to render human dialogue from the perspective of the viewpoint character, but couldn’t figure out a clean way to pull it off without being confusing for readers without that meta knowledge. So explaining things in the author’s commentaries it was.

- «Error de contención. Ten cuidado, Turo». - "Containment breach. Be careful, Turo."
- «¡Oigan! ¡Dejen eso!» - “Hey! (All of you) Stop that!”

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

memplay part-00012-log-20220601T060000Z.1008 &

“T-Turo? Do I really have to be a guardian along with him?”​

​

You huff at the faint sound of his voice and look up through a hole in your mock cave and its crystals towards the simulated sky. There’s translucent afterimages of the Beta drooping his head and averting his gaze—you gather it’s Turo who’s been holding your Pokéball, and the one who’s been fighting your recent attempts to force your way out.​

​

How’d this even happen to begin with? Yes… you shouldn’t have lost your temper next to Turo’s research materials yesterday, and maybe it’d have been more prudent to show your displeasure with the Beta by grappling him with your claws and shoving him to the ground to remind him of his place. Even if you don’t really understand how or why, that subroutine for asserting dominance is a part of you and Turo is generally more approving of it than when you two get into open battle…​

​

But you weren’t the one who punched that hole into the wall and crushed all those samples and research notes! So why is he the one outside his Pokéball and getting Turo’s attention right now? He’s not even getting chastised or scolded over anything that happened!​

​

“I… I like being there helping you and I don’t want that to stop… b-but I just can’t take this anymore! I’m telling you, he likes making me miserable!”​

​

You growl at the voice from beyond the simulated sky and your Pokéball’s confines. ‘You like making him miserable’? Does he seriously think you’re happy with him being a dead weight who keeps faltering in battle and making stupid mistakes like the damage he caused yesterday? The least he could do is to recognize when you can do his tasks better and stay out of your way!​

​

You spin up your Hadron Engine and vault up, spinning into an Electro Drift before you dive towards the ground. You slam it, hard, as electricity flies out ahead of you and your surroundings briefly flicker. They reform almost as quickly afterwards as you see there’s fingers blocking out parts of the sky now—grasping it tight to keep you from triggering the release mechanism.​

​

You sigh and shake your head with a sullen huff. You just don’t understand Turo sometimes. The Beta is weaker than you. He loses his nerve in battle at times when you don’t. He’s less effective performing the tasks that Turo needs for building out the paradise he’s been working on. Why, he doesn’t even understand Turo as well as you do!​

​

To top it off, the Beta still hasn’t caught up with you after multiple years., and he has the audacity to act as if he shouldn’t be taking direction from you.​

​

The only thing the Beta does have over you is that he came out of the time machine first. But why does it sometimes feel as if that’s the only thing that matters to Turo…?​

​

“If… If you really need him to help build your paradise, isn’t there someplace where we can just be together like old times? Wh-What if we went back to the lighthouse? It’s been so long since everything happened, maybe everyone’s forgotten all about it by now…”​

​

You look up at the sky. He’s hanging his head and brushing his claws against each other. Great, so he’s whining and playing pity games. Again.​

​

Honestly, a part of you just wishes that Turo would grant his wish. That lighthouse the Beta brings up from time to time used to be another lab Turo did research before you two met, and you can't say that things wouldn't be better if the Beta was sent there so he could stay out of your way. The only real place he watches over that you don’t have any experience with yet is Research Lab Four where Turo has him help perform experiments involving Terastalization. It couldn’t possibly take that long for you to learn to fill in for him, could it?​

​

Why does Turo insist on clinging to him, anyways? It’s been years now, so how does Turo still not see that you’re the better guardian? And all the work that you’ve done watching over and defending the paradise he’s been building…​

​

«Mañana debo ocuparme de unas investigaciones en la Unidad de Observación Cuatro. Por favor, llévatelo contigo para que ayude a distribuir los Pokémon transferidos».​

​

For a moment, your heart skips a beat. Is- Is Turo actually bringing you to Research Station Four for your upcoming rotation? You thought you’d never see the day with how content Turo seemed with letting him bumble around with it indefinitely.​

​

Wait, this is perfect! You’ll be able to show off that you can do this task better, too! You’ll learn how to use that ‘Tera Blast’ and wield it stronger, and—​

​

Except, the images in the simulated sky suddenly shift. The desks and machines of Zero Lab go by, while you see Turo’s spitting image briefly in it.​

​

And your friend’s fingers in the sky fade away and are replaced by another set.​

​

His assistant’s.​

Exiting... (End of file)

---

Commentary:

Not too much to say about this chapter here, other than that there’s some meta mythology gags here and there about things like our sandwich-munching buddy having his mind on that lighthouse. Especially since he’ll be seeing it again relatively soon. Other than that, the main thing really worth commenting on is the story showing off the limits of Pokéball self-release that this story rolls with, since it felt like a handy enough explanation for why the Guardian of Paradise doesn’t just settle scores with your game Raidon in the elevator ride down to the Time Machine in the endgame.

Translation Notes:

Turo’s dialogue in today’s chapter leans fairly directly on a localization-specific quirk of the Spanish localization of Scarlet / Violet, in particular for place names. In it, the official name for the various research stations around Area Zero are in format ‘Unidad de Observación [Number]’. For the sake of clarity, their translations in this story have been rendered according to their English localization names as opposed to a more direct translation, where they would otherwise be more properly translated as ‘Observation Unit [Number]’.

- «Mañana debo ocuparme de unas investigaciones en la Unidad de Observación Cuatro. Por favor, llévatelo contigo para que ayude a distribuir los Pokémon transferidos». - “Tomorrow, I need to attend to some research at Research Station Four. Please take him with you so he can help distribute the transferred Pokémon.”

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

memplay part-00001-log-20220601T070000Z.1008 &

You're floating in place in the shadow of one of those dish arrays, near the upper rim of the crater that your lab is in. All the while, static faintly arcs along the grass and the white flowers all around you. A few Jumpluff watch on from a healthy distance, while behind you, Turo's assistant looks ahead with that same flat expression he usually has. Ahead of you is that 'Iron Crown' from yesterday—hooves dug in as his blue electronic irises bore into yours with a piercing glare.

You meet it and return it with one of your own, the static on your horns crackling as the sound of your Hadron Engine lingers in the air—ready for you to draw on its strength and lunge ahead at a moment's notice.

… If you need to, anyways.

"This is your home now," you growl. "Make yourself comfortable and don't ever threaten Turo or any humans like him the way you did yesterday again. If there's ever a next time, I won't let you just walk away from it."

You remind yourself that you don't have to battle right now. Turo would most likely be disappointed with you if you did. This is all expected and part of the population introduction protocol that Turo set up, even if you can't hold back the agitated hum of your Hadron Engine.

Your tail lashes back and forth as you wait for a response. Did 'Iron Crown' not understand you? That 'Iron Boulder' did well enough earlier to take the hint and leave after you kicked up your Electric Terrain, but this one does nothing in response other than to stand his horns up as they start to extend.

You snarl and after a brief moment of hesitation from Turo's assistant, start gathering electricity about your body in a Charge at his prompting. Your Hadron Engine's hum grows louder and louder, as blue static arcs along your hide. Iron Crown meets your eyes the entire time, but his horns don't come aglow like they did while he was using that 'Tachyon Cutter' attack yesterday.

His scowl doesn't fade, but his horns revert back to their inert state. He turns away from you, training his attention for a cliff leading up to another patch of flat grassland further behind.

"... Beginning area survey."

He saunters off, taking steps which are surprisingly spry and light for a Pokémon with a metal-coated body and no thrusters to keep it off the ground. Though at least he did learn something from your battle yesterday in the time machine's room. Good enough.

You sigh and start to turn away, when you hear a sudden woosh and a crunching noise from the direction of the cliff.

"What the–?"

You turn back, where much to your astonishment, Iron Crown is now at the top of the cliff and scowling down at you. You… didn't realize that he could do that. From the droning remarks in Turo's language, his assistant didn't realize it either.

… Whatever, you're sure it will be fine. It's not like you're supposed to be worrying about this right now anyways.

The grassy ledge returns to an uneasy calm, the organics in the background drifting off while still keeping a wary eye on you as they depart. You look back at Turo's assistant as he pockets the ball that Iron Crown was transported in before releasing him—to be reflashed and reused for future containment failures. But your attention is elsewhere as you float up to the edge of your current bluff and peer down into the cascading levels that go deeper and deeper into a fog-shrouded pit in the middle of the crater.

Towards the place where Turo is right now. Towards where you were supposed to be today as part of your rotation.

You screw your eyes shut and grumble. Why would Turo change the routine so suddenly like this? It's not as if the Beta would be any less inept at his tasks from spending an extra few days with Turo, and Turo hadn't even planned on doing additional Terastalization experiments until just this morning.

… It's not the first time something like this has happened. Turo always winds up spending more time with him. You could understand it if the Beta would show some progress and stop being so pathetic as a result of it, but he never improves. You swear that he's even been regressing and getting worse at carrying out his routines and more error-prone as a guardian than he was at the time you first joined Turo.

How on earth can Turo just tolerate all of that? Especially when it's slowing down the process of building the paradise that he spends hours at a time and long nights researching and working to make a reality. Doesn't Turo understand how much more you could do for him if he'd just spent that time with you instead?

You pin your horns against your head and let your attention drift downwards with a defeated murmur.

"... What do you even want from me, Turo?"

You hadn't really thought about it much until now, but does Turo even know what he wants from you? As your optical diodes scan the crater below, you spot a natural bridge a ways below, with a tree with Tera Crystals growing along its roots that stirs up thought processes from your memory banks. Somewhere further down and past the ledge the tree's sprouting from, there's a rocky patch with a rusted pile of scrap in it from a Pokémon that you decommissioned a while back.

It wasn't something that Turo had asked of you to do as part of a routine, but it was the time when Turo seemed to be the happiest and proudest of you…

«Vamos, deberíamos empezar a revisar las unidades de observación».

You jolt up to attention and turn your body around as it hovers above the grass. There behind you, Turo's assistant is motioning for you to come along, your Pokéball in his hand. A sign that he's about ready to move on to the rest of your day's tasks.

Finally. You thought that he'd never get started at this rate.​

Exiting... (End of file)

---

Commentary:

Another more straightforward chapter today, and a bit on the shorter side, too. For those wondering why Iron Crown was depicted as being a strong jumper, well, it certainly would explain a thing or two about how it managed to get into a glorified sinkhole as its canonical in-game encounter location in Area Zero, now wouldn't it?

Translation Notes:

- «Vamos, deberíamos empezar a revisar las unidades de observación». - "Let's get going, we have to check those research stations."

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

memplay part-00002-log-20220601T090000Z.1008 &

You hover in place with your thrusters above concrete inside a gray, hexagonal chamber with the same interior as any of the Research Stations in your lab: two large metal doors to the left and right, gray hexagonal canisters, and tall blue cylindrical ones along the walls. The same hexagonal tiling surrounding the lab’s sigil is on the floor, the same prototype teleporter pad is in the right corner, along with the same motion-activated entrance door. There’s even the same wraparound desk, blue office chair on the left, and bed with red sheets on the right.​

​

Turo’s assistant is at the back of the room, manipulating buttons on a green-screened terminal. You float over and steal a glance from the side and see his eyes blinking with light as they do when he updates his neural routines, when his hands abruptly stop.​

​

«Reprocesando datos del registro del sistema con marcas de tiempo 20220601T030000Z».​

​

Your jaw flops open in disbelief. What on earth is going on with him? He’s usually able to review the daily data gathered by the research stations and their reporting probes after reviewing their contents once—twice if there’s an unusually high number of irregularities. It doesn’t take six attempts to review the data that they gathered, and you two have wasted an hour here in this very first Research Station.​

​

If you didn’t know any better, you’d say he was doing this on purpose…​

​

“... I’m going to check the outside perimeter,” you growl.​

​

The assistant only briefly acknowledges you as you float off. It’s partly because you’ve done this often enough that Turo and his assistant trust you to do perimeter checks autonomously… but also partly because the assistant doesn’t seem to understand you any better than Turo does. You return to the entrance, as the door’s motion sensors kick in and it opens for you, letting you out into the sunlight and into the grassy environment outside.​

​

For your own mood, you need to desperately think about anything other than the assistant’s trouble with the logstash. You float up to the roof of the Research Station and begin to circle around it, examining the steel panels with your optical diodes. No new irregularities today, and the transmitter here is exactly the way it was yesterday. You lower yourself back down to the ground with your thrusters and start circling the wall—there’s some more plants growing on it, but once again, there’s nothing of note there that requires your intervention.​

​

Your mind drifts as you reach the entrance of the Research Station again, as you find your gaze drifting off for the crater’s center. You float up to a ledge blocked off by a rope-and-post fence and turn your gaze upwards and to the left, looking off at where you and Turo’s assistant sent Iron Crown off—just in case he’s causing any trouble. You see no sign of him, but below that place, there’s natural bridges standing on towering, stony pillars. Cascading layers of grassland unevenly descend deeper and deeper into the crater below them, almost as if they were in a terrace.​

​

Your memory banks drift back to that decommissioning that you remembered back up on the ledge. It all happened one day when you observed one of the Pokémon that had been introduced as part of Turo’s research attacking some younger human. One with gray hair who’d been accompanied by a Mabosstiff. The human’s Mabosstiff was badly wounded from the encounter, and you weren’t sure what to do about it, but they managed to slip away on their own. Naturally, since the human posed no threat to Turo or his paradise, you did nothing to interfere with his escape—just as Turo had instructed you to do in the past when dealing with humans who came to your lab.​

​

You realized that something was wrong when Turo grew frantic and distraught after reviewing the observation footage from the different probes around the lab, to the point where he was on the verge of leaving it entirely. You still don’t know what the full story was, but the young human clearly meant something to Turo, since your friend reacted as if that Pokémon went and destroyed an entire Research Station.​

​

You updated your threat assessment and tracked the attacker down afterwards. After a short fight, you eliminated it. With how shaken Turo had been, you thought that he’d calm down with proof of your accomplishment. So you brought the threat’s cerebral unit along with you from the wreckage—to reassure Turo that it would never distress him like that ever again.​

​

His startled reaction caught you off-guard at first, but he seemed genuinely happy after the shock wore off. He abandoned his plans to leave the lab and spent more time with you by your side—three entire straight rotations—in both the inner and outer portions of the crater.​

​

You were so proud back then. You’d thought that Turo finally understood how much you wanted to see him and his paradise succeed… That you were willing to move the heavens and earth to make him happy and proud of you…​

​

And then Turo just went back to him after he noticed the Beta moping from being separated from him for a few weeks.​

​

… Maybe Turo just needs a bit of reinforcement for things to sink in. For you to do something to show him what you can do as a guardian, so that way he’ll know he can spend more time with you and that you’ll make the most of it.​

​

And with the Beta fresh off an incident that will surely make Turo question his judgement, right now’s one of your best possible chances to get him to finally see things your way.​

​

Your turn your optical diodes down to the fog-shrouded pit as your Hadron Engine audibly spins up. It’s… not what Turo ordered you to do, but neither was decommissioning the Pokémon that attacked the human with the Mabosstiff. And you made him happy that time, so—​

​

You hear the door to the Research Station open as Turo’s assistant comes running up, Pokéball in hand. Your eyes widen as you realize that he’s about to recall you, as you float over the fence and enter a steep dive.​

​

You keep going, angling your thrusters and running your Hadron Engine as hard as you can to rocket you deeper into the crater. The assistant’s cries fade off behind you as your eyes are trained only on the curtain of fog shrouding the pit leading to the caves further below.​

​

Where your friend is waiting for you.​

Exiting... (End of file)

---

Commentary:

This was another one of those chapters that went off a bit on a limb again, this time through establishing that the Paradox Pokémon that wounded Arven’s Mabosstiff in Area Zero wound up becoming an ex-Paradox Pokémon thanks to our viewpoint character’s intervention. At the time of posting that was purely an invention whipped up for this story, but I figured that A: Turo would’ve logically found out about it and reacted to it in some capacity, and B: a character with an ever-so-unhealthy obsession with winning Turo’s affection and attention would also take notice of it, and the rest of the scenario basically wrote itself.

Translation Notes:

- «Reprocesando datos del registro del sistema con marcas de tiempo 20220601T030000Z». - “Reprocessing the syslog data entries timestamped 20220601T030000Z.”

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

memplay part-00003-log-20220601T090000Z.1008 &

You float along in the air amidst a cave filled with slate-colored rock faces and punctuated by glittering crystals, including a set of particularly large ones that rise up against each other almost like a terrace. You can already see the hexagonal modules of Research Station Four coming into view, wedged up against the crystalline mass. It’d been built there some time before you came along in order to facilitate research into Terastalization, research Turo still regularly performs…​

​

And even from your distance, you can already feel the corners of your mouth sagging as you can clearly see Tera crystals encroaching on the lab’s roof.​

​

“Really?”​

​

The Beta still hasn’t taken care of that even after an extra day on rotation with Turo. How on earth does he have the nerve to still be this tardy and deficient with his tasks on a day that’s supposed to be one that you should be spending at Turo’s side—​

​

You breathe in and fight back the sparks on your hide. No. No. You can make this work in your favor. You wanted a chance to prove to Turo that you could do the tasks that Turo trusted him with better, and here he’s dropping an opportunity straight into your claws. Most of the crystal growths are relatively small, so it shouldn’t take too long to prune them back.​

​

You float up into the air, for the roof of the modules and settle in. You diminish the power to your thrusters and your body down, scraping your claws against the roof and at the base of the Tera crystals you come across. The little ones give way quickly enough, allowing you to shove them over the edge of the roof and to the cave floor. You’ll heap them up later to dispose of them when you’re done.​

​

The process goes by surprisingly quickly even if the clock cycles say otherwise as you methodically pick them off and the roof starts looking visibly clearer. Before long, all that’s left are the bigger crystalline growths that are more of a problem to remove, like one that’s about the size of your face which doesn’t yield to your attempts to scrape it off. Looks like you’ll have to break this one with an attack first to loosen the pieces and make them more manageable to deal with.​

​

You start gathering light between your eyes as you ready a Power Gem. It’s not your strongest attack, but precision matters more than raw power anyways for paring back Tera Crystals like these without damaging the Research Station’s underlying structure.​

​

You focus, your Hadron Engine picking up strength as the light between your horns gathers and grows stronger and stronger…​

​

«¿Qué quieres decir con que “huyó”? ¿Está bien? No es propio de él abandonar un turno de guardia».​

​

Only for it to abruptly fade from surprise as your thrusters jolt your body up into the air after hearing a sudden voice. Turo’s sudden voice.​

​

You crane your head around searching for him. It’s not like Turo to be up on the roof of one of the Research Stations, but—​

​

«Sí, está aquí conmigo».​

​

You twitch your horns and turn your eyes past the edge of the roof and see a ventilation grate on the wall further below. You quiet your Hadron Engine as much as you can without leaving Ultimate Mode and lean forward, grappling the edge of the roof with your claws and craning your neck and head down to hear your friend better.​

​

«Parecía estar en un estado anímico depresivo, así que pasamos un tiempo volando juntos, como en los viejos tiempos».​

​

Your breath catches in your throat and your claws tremble and dig into the awning of the roof. You thought maybe your ears’ sensors had picked the audio up wrong, but no, you heard it as clear as day:​

​

All this time today, he’s… been… playing with Turo.​

​

You let go of the roof’s edge and push yourself back, your breaths coming hot and short. Heat swells in your chest and blue sparks crackle along your hide, all as your vision perceptibly blurs from electrical pulses in your optical diodes.​

​

It’s not fair! You’re the one who does all the tasks that Turo gives out better! And Turo would rather waste time with that stupid, unserious, screwup rather than actually build his paradise alongside you! Why?! Why would Turo do this to you?!​

​

… It’s his fault somehow, isn’t it? Somehow the Beta and his pathetic mediocrity is dragging Turo down from the potential he could have at your side.​

​

Clearly this is one of those matters where Turo doesn’t know what he wants from you. You just need to get him out of the way and you can finally show Turo what he really wants.​

​

What he really deserves.​

​

You blink back the interference in your optical diodes and snarl. You float back to the ground and make your way over to the Research Station’s entrance. At first you’re worried that you’ll have to force the bulkhead door open, but thankfully the motion and video sensors automatically activate at your approach.​

​

Inside is the interior of a Research Station that aside from its lack of natural lighting, looks just like the one you left. Except that he’s here in it. That useless idiot is hovering in front of the bed on the right side with his tail and dewlap’s colors dulled and his horns resting inert—snoring away in sleep mode.​

​

“Get up.”​

​

He jolts awake with a startled yelp at your snarl, his colors returning and the electricity coming back to his horns. You float forward as he backs away from you. There’s a flash of fear in his optical diodes, as there should be after such a disgraceful display.​

​

“Wh-What are you doing here?” he stammers.​

​

“Doing your job,” you growl. “Since you clearly have nothing better to do right now.”​

​

“B-But I got up bright and early to start my rotation with Turo!” he says. “I-I even put off my breakfast—!”​

​

“To play with him.”​

​

From the way his optical diodes shrink, he wasn’t expecting you to know that. He clamps his jaw shut and cringes as you float up and narrow your optical diodes into a withering glare.​

​

“Go and patrol the rest of the cave. Or better yet, go and be dead weight in your Pokéball and doze off there.”​

​

He recoils in shock for a moment as there’s a confused, dumbfounded expression on his face.​

​

“But this is my territory! It’s supposed to be my place to watch over!” he protests. “T-Turo said it was mine!”​

​

… He’s really expecting that to be a convincing argument? Do you seriously have to spell out everything for him right now?​

​

“Clearly Turo misjudged your capabilities as a guardian when you can’t even deal with minding one Research Station adequately,” you snarl. “So just hurry and get out of the way so I can actually tend to it.”​

​

“Wh-What?”​

​

“You heard me. You've only gotten weaker and more inept since I came to this lab,” you snap. “So go off and play your games flying around and let me be the guardian that you’re clearly never going to be any good at!”​

​

He shrinks back and his jaw flops open. There’s a faint tremor through his body, and his breath and voice begin to hitch and whine, as they sometimes do when he’s hurt. And occasionally sometimes after you point out when he’s being particularly useless.​

​

Except, that same expression he had when he tried using that Tera Blast against you yesterday comes back. He grits his jaws, floating over towards the center of the room as the pupils on his optical diodes dilate and his voice comes out in an angry snarl.​

​

“No! This place isn’t yours! It’s mine! It belongs to me! You’re not even supposed to be here!”​

​

His Hadron Engine spins up with a noticeable whine. Static begins to dance about the surroundings and the green screen from the terminal at the center of the room visibly distorts from interference. That hesitance he had earlier is gone now, as he rears his head and neck up and grits his jaws with a seething growl.​

​

“Get out. Now.”​

​

You eye the Electric Terrain all around you. What does this idiot think he’s doing? Surely he knows that he’s outmatched right now. That unlike when you’re grappling and shoving each other where he can occasionally get a lucky win, attempting to properly fight things out won’t result in anything other than him damaging the surrounding Research Station and getting hurt in the process.​

​

“You’re actually going to pick a fight again?” you scoff. “Like you’d ever measure up-”​

​

Light suddenly zips in just above your claws, and a burning pain that feels like stones scraping against your dewlap follows. You almost fall out of the air and choke, reflexively bringing your claws up. You feel dampness against them and pull them back dripping gray liquid.​

​

Connective fluid. Your connective fluid.​

​

The heat in your chest flares, as your Hadron Engine spins up and static of your own fans out all around the ground and surfaces nearby you. You would’ve been content with him just slinking off with his tail between his thrusters earlier, but no. Clearly you will need to show the Beta the error of his ways.​

​

Bluntly and painfully.​

Exiting... (End of file)

---

Commentary:

And yes, this is the part where things start escalating very hard very fast in this story. This story and its companion takes the tack that it does with the game Raidon being the main initial escalating party of that fateful territorial dispute to play into the parallels the game draws between him and Penny. As such, it felt like it made thematic sense to have him proactively attempt to similarly trying to stand up to his bully, even if it should go without saying that his outcome will wind up being a bit different from how Penny’s own go at things in the backstory of Scarlet / Violet’s campaign shook out.

Translation Notes:

- «¿Qué quieres decir con que “huyó”? ¿Está bien? No es propio de él abandonar un turno de guardia». - "What do you mean 'ran away'? Is he okay? It is not like him to abandon a guard rotation."
- «Sí, está aquí conmigo». - “Yes, he’s here with me.”
- «Parecía estar en un estado anímico depresivo, así que pasamos un tiempo volando juntos, como en los viejos tiempos». - “He seemed to be in a depressed mood, so we spent some time flying together, like in the old days.”

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

memplay part-00004-log-20220601T090000Z.1008 &

“Oh, so you want a fight? Let me remind you exactly why you’re outmoded, you useless pile of scrap!”​

​

His only answer to your snarl is a furious roar—a sign that he’s fallen for your Taunt. You circle about with him, waiting for an opening, when he suddenly spews up a pulse of fiery blue light at you.​

​

His Dragon Pulse is the same as you’ve always remembered it: predictable and inaccurate—probably because he keeps trying to graze his foes instead of attacking them squarely. The portion of it you weren’t able to fully avoid barely singes the scales that it grazes, as it sails up and strikes in between the leftmost blue canister and the ceiling.​

​

There’s a loud crash and an awful screeching noise. A glance back reveals a large pipe from the ceiling dangling near the bulkhead, while the canister along the adjacent wall has toppled forward and is resting precariously against it, creaking and groaning.​

​

That idiot. You almost wish he had hit you instead. It’ll take weeks for Turo and his assistant to sort that damage out!​

​

You spit up a Dragon Pulse of your own. It strikes him with a yelp and sends him crashing into those hexagonal containers on the opposite end of the chamber. You give chase briefly only to hesitate after you hear pounding and a voice coming from the other end of the bulkhead on the left side of the room—one that’s unmistakably Turo’s.​

​

A quick glance reveals that the lights all along the left side of the wall are darkened. The Beta’s attack must’ve damaged the wiring that controls the door mechanism—​

​

There’s a deafening peal like thunder and numbing pain that courses through your body. You sail back, your head and shoulders striking something hard behind you. You look back to see more of those hexagonal containers that you’re lying against. There’s a scorch mark on your chest between your claws with a burn pattern consistent with an Electro Drift—the Beta must’ve landed a lucky hit while you were distracted.​

​

There’s a sudden sharp creak from above. Your optical diodes contract as you see the pipe overhead sagging further, as you vault your body back up against the wall. It comes falling down with a deafening crash into the space you were in just afterwards, throwing concrete dust everywhere.​

​

You cough, your breaths coming out tense as you look down at the pipe and at the violet and yellow lights from his body coming through the haze. Had you been just a few moments slower, it likely would’ve decommissioned you. And if the bulkhead wasn’t broken, Turo could’ve—!​

​

“What’s the matter? You suddenly don’t like fighting when you’re the one who’s being hurt more?”​

​

You angrily spit a Dragon Pulse back at the lights. It hits something and there’s a creaking noise followed by a metallic crash. There’s no yelp of pain, but the Beta’s lights vanish all the same, probably a tactical retreat. Even still, his voice keeps coming through the haze. Mocking. Carrying an arrogance that a weakling like him has no right to have.​

​

“Well guess what? I’m chasing you off this time!” he shouts. “Let’s see how you like it being miserable and getting shoved around by someone else!”​

​

You hate him. Even after all his failures as a guardian, Turo still favors him over you. You’re sure that Turo will inevitably forgive him for all of this, too.​

​

No. He’s not a guardian anymore. He’s a threat. Turo would consider literally any other Pokémon who caused this much damage to the lab to be one.​

​

And you eliminate threats.​

​

You start gathering electricity about your body, floating along the trashed left side of the enclosure towards the blue canister—now toppled and lying against the collapsed pipe. Your Hadron Engine’s now all but howling. The dust’s largely settled, and he’s up in the air, glaring down at you.​

​

“All you’ve done since coming here is just constantly be awful!” he spits. “It’d have been better if you’d never come from the time machine!”​

​

How dare he. Your connective fluid starts pulsing inside your body. Your chest burns with heat and hatred as white light starts gathering in your jaws and blue and yellow energy gathers in his.​

​

You roar. He answers you, and spews the light in his jaws at you. It finds its mark on your dewlap as the world around you explodes into bluish haze and your neck and chest burn in pain.​

​

But something keeps driving you on. It keeps your thrusters running and your Hadron Engine spinning. The next thing you know, you’re out of the haze and almost directly upon him. His electronic irises shrink briefly as the light in your jaws is almost blinding now.​

​

And then you spit it up.​

​

The world around you fades out with the roar of your Hyper Beam as its flash disorients your optical diodes. Even so, you can still make out the satisfying sound of his screams. As the light fades, your Hadron Engine slows down and your body and limbs suddenly feel heavy—a side effect of the exertion required to use Hyper Beam in battle. You briefly cringe after noticing an entire chunk of wall above and to the left of the entrance is just gone and revealing a bare metal skeleton, with metal wreckage strewn all about the entrance.​

​

You briefly forget all about the fight and start floating up for the breach, when a hitching and whining voice turns your attention backwards and down towards the ground. It’s him. He’s slumped up against that pipe, scorch marks along his scales and gray fluid smeared against its metal and dribbling onto the floor as his voice comes out in pained whimpers.​

​

Your eyes meet. He screams and frantically hobbles off for the left bulkhead, knocking that office chair out of the way in his panic. He desperately claws at the door and cries out for Turo a few times, only for him to wince and slump over, gasping for air.​

​

He’s clearly been significantly damaged from your blow, and his Hadron Engine must barely be running right now. But you can’t press your advantage just yet. Once your energy returns to you, it’ll be time to ensure this whole sorry saga never happens ever again. But before then, there’s something that you want your lesser counterpart to know first:​

​

“It’s my turn to tell you how I feel about you,” you snarl. “You were a mistake. Turo would’ve been better off if he hadn’t wasted his time on a useless failure like you for all these years. When he finishes building his paradise without you, he’ll finally understand that.”​

​

The Beta’s trembling right now. He’s hanging his head and his eyelids are drooping down with the lights of his optical diodes collapsed down to quivering lines. You’d like to believe that it’s because on some level he knows that you’re right, but that’s probably giving him too much credit.​

​

Your Hadron Engine’s cadence has returned to normal again. It’s time to end this, for good—​

​

«¡¿Qué estás haciendo?!»​

​

There’s a whooshing noise as you see the right bulkhead suddenly retracts and slides shut again. There, racing around a toppled blue canister, is Turo. He runs up to you with widened eyes, one hand reaching out and grabbing onto your right forearm, a Pokéball in his other one.​

​

«¡Dejad de pelear! ¡Está herido!»​

​

Turo’s cries for you to stop reach your ears, as you clench your jaws in response.​

​

No. Not now. If the Beta just slinks off yet again, this’ll all have been for nothing.​

​

You push Turo away. Far enough that he will be safe and unaffected from what you’re about to do. Except, this time, you’re unable to keep your frustration from cresting over into a snarl.​

​

“Turo, stay out of this!” you snap. “It’s for the good of your Paradise!”​

​

You look over at him as he’s lost his grip on the Beta’s Pokéball and he stares back at you. The startled expression on his face makes you briefly waver, but you sigterm those thoughts and force your attention back to him. Turo will surely understand things after the initial shock fades away.​

​

You start gathering light in your jaws as your chest and dewlap heats up again. It grows brighter and brighter as he looks back at you, whimpering and trying to curl up to shield himself.​

​

«¡Sal de aquí!»​

​

There’s suddenly a blur in the corner of your vision. The overwhelming roar and glow of your Hyper Beam follows, along with shouts and cries you can’t quite make out. As it fades and the dust settles, there’s coughing and labored breathing. As you start taking stock of your surroundings, your irises shrink as you see that off just a few paces to the right, he’s still standing.​

​

H-How on earth did he avoid that?! Did he Endure your Hyper Beam? It shouldn’t be possible! He’s in Low-Power Mode! Except, something’s strange right now. The Beta’s keeping his attention trained on the left side of the chamber. In between his tremors, he’s breathing shakily, and he’s audibly struggling to say something.​

​

“A-AAAH!”​

​

The Beta screams as if he’s in pain and suddenly loops up his tail and dewlap. They come aglow with flickering light as it dawns on you that he’s trying to run away.​

​

“Get back here!”​

​

He unevenly zips for the door as you fight against your tired body to pursue him, when you suddenly realize that the room’s quiet and Turo’s not saying anything.​

​

“... Turo?”​

​

You stop, ignoring the entrance door as it retracts and the sound of the Beta’s thrusters fades away. You look back towards the left side of the chamber, past the collapsed pipe.
​

Your heart skips a beat after seeing a smoldering book lying on the ground, the unburned portions revealing a violet cover. A little ways away, there’s a black orb, lying cracked on the ground:​

​

Turo’s book and Tera Orb.​

​

Your breath catches. A flash of panic comes over you as you realize that wasn’t the Beta you heard coughing and struggling for breath earlier. You rush over, following the ruined items back to the left bulkhead that wouldn’t open earlier.​

​

You round the pipe, and see-​

​

pkill -9 memplay

---

Commentary:

Yeah, I spent a lot of time poring over the interior and general surroundings of Research Station Four for this chapter, as the eagle-eyed will find a lot of familiar details lying around. For those wondering why the chapter cuts off abruptly, that’s a feature and not a bug for this story’s framing device. On Unix-based operating systems that support it, ‘pkill -9’ is a sigkill prompt. When executed, it will prompt a selected process to terminate immediately without performing any additional handling or cleanup that would normally be done to avoid issues such as data loss or corruption, and is typically a last resort command for stopping unresponsive programs.

Make what you will of what that implies for what our narrator here was doing in this chapter.

Translation Notes:

Thar be a mythology gag buried in Turo’s lines for this chapter that deliberately references an event from the main campaign of Scarlet / Violet. If you’ve gotten far enough in a Spanish-language run of Scarlet / Violet, you know exactly what said line is and what it’s nodding towards.

- «¡¿Qué estás haciendo?!» - “What are you doing?!”
- «¡Dejad de pelear! ¡Está herido!» - “Stop fighting! He’s hurt!”
- «¡Sal de aquí!» - “Get out of here!”

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

memplay part-00005-log-20220601T090000Z.1008 &

Fog parts from your optical diodes as the first glimpses of your lab’s crater above its caves fill in. Your thrusters scream and push your body up higher and higher as your surroundings fly by in a vertical blur.​

​

This wasn’t supposed to happen. You had a clear line of sight with him. You had even pushed Turo out of the way and to safety to keep him from getting swept up by things! H-How did he manage to get in the way of your Hyper Beam?! Turo would’ve had to actively try to get hit by it!​

​

Your breaths are shallow and tense right now. Your heart’s racing, your cerebral unit feels hot and faint, almost as if it’s overheating internally. And there’s a faint, strange tremor you can’t control that’s running down your scales.​

​

You don’t know how much of that’s really happening or just your sensors playing tricks on you, but as the weight in your arms reminds you, it doesn’t matter at this moment. Turo’s body hangs limp and unresponsive in your grasp. His coat and suit are in tatters and there’s ugly burns on his back and left that you mercifully can’t see right now since he’s lying face up. When you first saw him lying slumped against the bulkhead door, you briefly hoped he might have fainted much as you do on the rare occasions you get overwhelmed. They faded and you quickly realized something was very wrong after you saw his injuries more clearly.​

​

You sigkill that thought process and try not to think about the things you saw. You know Turo’s badly hurt right now since you haven’t been able to hear his breathing and his body’s been losing warmth. Worse still, his connective fluid won’t stop leaking out from his body 255 seconds and counting after you first noticed it.​

​

He needs help, and there’s only one other being in this crater who knows him and his body well enough to be able to provide it.​

​

On your flight up for Research Station One, you spot Turo’s assistant on the grasslands far below. You wonder at first how on earth he could’ve gotten down there so quickly when you spot a three-headed dragon with black steely wings following along after him. Right, Turo assigns half his partners at a time to help his assistant as part of your rotations. The Iron Jugulis there is one of them. He must’ve been the one who helped Turo’s assistant get down to look for you.​

​

You change course and cut your thrusters, allowing your body to drop freely as you point them down and slowly break your fall just a few paces away from the assistant. He looks up and lets out a surprised-sounding drone, as you shakily lower your friend’s body down onto the grass and cry out to the assistant.​

​

“Come here! Turo needs medical attention!”​

​

Blue lights blink in his eyes briefly one after the other, before he snaps to attention and breaks into a sprint over to your side. You never thought you’d be relieved to see him, but you feel a twinge of relief as he settles in: he’s a reflection of Turo, down to sharing memories and knowledge that Turo uploaded into him. Turo always trusted him to fix things that were going wrong, he’ll surely know what to do to heal his wounds.​

​

The assistant recalls the Iron Jugulis as he catches up after him, before stooping down at your friend’s side. He begins to reach out for Turo as he speaks up in that droning voice of his.​

​

«Iniciando el protocolo de respuesta médica de emergencia».​

​

His fingers go to Turo’s neck as your optical diodes drift back down to your claws. Your left one which was supporting the site near Turo’s injuries is almost completely red with his connective fluid, and the tremors start coming back again as doubts start racing through your head.​

​

Can Turo’s assistant really treat injuries like these in the field? You need to get them both back to the Research Station—no, better, to Zero Lab. There’ll be supplies there to treat Turo and heal his wounds. When Turo’s fully recovered, you’ll apologize to him for your failure and do whatever he wants you to do to make things up—even if it means him having to be around or you having to be alongside him.​

​

Except, Turo’s assistant isn’t moving. He keeps his hand held up against Turo’s neck for a long moment. The assistant’s eyes widen as he keeps his hand there before pulling it back, but there’s no urgency about him at all as his face falls and he just stares down at him.​

​

What on earth is his problem?! He can see the same injuries that you can, so why is he dragging his claws like this?!​

​

“Why are you just standing there?!” you snarl. “Do something!”​

​

He stands up and looks at you, before shaking his head back at you. You stare back, as a sinking realization starts coming over you.​

​

Turo made his assistant for the express purpose of helping him to solve and manage problems. Except sometimes, there would be problems that he simply couldn’t do anything about.​

​

Th-Then… this hesitance of his is…​

​

“Wh-Why are you saying ‘no’? What’s wrong—”​

pkill -9 mеmplay

---

Commentary:

Definitely pushing the boundaries of that ‘General Audiences’ rating I slapped on the AO3 version of this story here, but I figured that in the end, that things were tame enough to still just own it given that it’s explicitly canon in Scarlet / Violet that the Professor dies as a result of shielding your in-game Raidon from the Guardian of Paradise. The whole desperate attempt to get medical assistance afterwards isn’t definitive canon, but I felt like it was plausible enough with the way that the AI Professor characterizes the way the original Professor died from the aftermath of the Territorial Dispute. Also, it was a convenient means of doing a knife twist and making this moment nice and painful to read, so good enough there.

Translation Notes:

«Iniciando el protocolo de respuesta médica de emergencia». - “Initiating emergency medical response protocol.”

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

memplay part-00008-log-20220603T030000Z.1008 &

You fight against your own tiredness and push air through your thrusters as your Hadron Engine reverberates off the cave-like surroundings with a low, deflated hum. You jet up and begin spinning faster and faster with an Electro Drift, swooping down and ramming the ground with all the force you can muster as electricity flies about you with a deafening crackle.​

​

The world around you suddenly melts into light and you start getting your hopes up that you’ll finally get out. Except it fades almost as quickly as the light does. The not-cave and its not-crystals reform again, as the translucent images in the skylights reveal fingers curled tight against the outside of your Pokéball.​

​

Turo’s assistant. Blocking you from leaving, like he’s been doing for more than a day now. Including at times when Turo would’ve been asleep. An electrical pulse flickers over your vision, your breath hitching and shuddering as you bellow out to the world outside.​

​

“Stop keeping me in here already!”​

​

He gives no response as you wrench away and spit up a gout of dragonfire at some not-rocks in frustration.​

​

Everything has gone wrong since you tried sneaking off to Turo. His assistant’s been keeping you in here, much in the way Turo might have kept a Pokémon he deemed a threat that he didn’t want just summarily dealt with for whatever reason. The last you heard before Turo’s assistant recalled you, Turo’s body was injured badly enough that it was unable to sustain life. Wording that you last heard his assistant use in the past when you decommissioned threats.​

​

Th-Then that means that back then, that you decommissioned—​

​

You sigkill the thought process as those electrical pulses are interfering with your vision again. Your breaths are shallow and tense right now, and that faint, strange tremor you can’t control which you first had after seeing Turo hurt is running down your scales again. The thought briefly occurs to you that the last two are things he’d do when he was afraid, but you sigkill that thought process, too.​

​

You’re not supposed to be like him. He is the one who fails and makes mistakes, you’re not! You’re not a threat! You didn’t want any of this to happen! It wasn’t even you who started the battle in Research Station Four!​

​

I-It’s not your fault. You just wanted the Beta to be gone after everything he’d done so you could help Turo better! You literally pushed Turo out of the way of where you knew your Hyper Beam was going to go!​

​

It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. It’s not your—​

​

The world suddenly melts away from your vision as you see that you’re in Zero Lab again, in front of a set of monitors. You at first snarl your frustration over being kept inside your Pokéball for so long only for a sharp, chiming reprimand to hang in the air.​

​

“Stand down.”​

​

You see there’s that Iron Valiant that Turo and his assistant would pass off between each other standing firm, with his energy blade extended and held stiff. He’s the one that you struggled with when Turo first paired your ball and standing tense and at attention.​

​

You catch yourself as a brief flash of fear comes over you:​

​

Does Turo’s assistant see you as a threat? Then i-is he deciding whether or not you should be-?​

​

«Cálmate».​

​

You feel your heart pounding in your chest and look over to see Turo’s assistant. He’s dispassionate as he normally is, but your Pokéball is in his hand as he puts it in his pocket and shakes his head.​

​

«No tienes la culpa. Fue un error de cálculo por parte de la profesora en la estimación de tu fuerza».​

​

You blink and float in place briefly, trading befuddled glances between the two. You know that Turo was nowhere near finished with that library for his assistant that was supposed to allow him to communicate with you and other Pokémon, so you turn to the Iron Valiant to ensure that your hearing didn’t deceive you.​

​

“Wh-Wha-? He doesn’t think it’s my fault?”​

​

“He’s been reviewing the surveillance footage from Research Station Four,” the Iron Valiant explains. “He made a judgement after completing his analysis.”​

​

“Surveillance footage—?”​

​

The words die in your mouth as your optical diodes glimpses a figure like yours on the screen in the background. You float forward and crane your head down as you see it is you, amidst the trashed entrance chamber to Research Station Four right when you cornered the beta against the broken left bulkhead. From the angle, the camera must’ve been mounted over the bulkhead that Turo came from​

​

There’s no audio for the footage, but as the images flicker along the screen, everything comes back along with all the details you didn’t notice:​

​

Turo running around the toppled blue canister and grabbing at your shoulder.​

​

You snarling at him and shoving him aside, and the startled shock that carried over into his very body language. Did— Did you really scare him that much?​

​

You turning back to the Beta and gathering the light of your Hyper Beam in your jaws.​

​

And then comes the moment that makes your voice come out in a hitching gasp and your heart briefly stop:​

​

Turo, picking himself up off the ground and running in between you and him, frantically gesturing and calling out to the Beta as he stumbles aside.​

​

And then the Hyper Beam leaving your jaws. And how just as the flash blinded the camera, it struck—​

​

pkill -9 memplay

---

Commentary:

See, that Iron Valiant was going to actually appear onscreen. Granted, Turo’s other Pokémon kinda play second fiddle in this story, but it felt like a good enough excuse to get in a cameo of members of that endgame team that you wind up facing down at the end of Pokémon Violet.

Translation Notes:

Those of you who played the Spanish localization of Pokémon Scarlet / Violet, you likely found Turo’s line familiar. That’s very deliberate since it’s an intentional homage to a line you’ll run across late in the campaign.

- «No tienes la culpa. Fue un error de cálculo por parte de la profesora en la estimación de tu fuerza». - "It’s not your fault. It was a miscalculation on the Professor’s part while estimating your strength."

 

[Spiteful Murkrow]

memplay part-00007-log-20220615T110000Z.1008 &

You’re in your Pokéball, surrounded by that mock cave again, with Zero Lab visible in the translucent outlines of the world outside. From the way it’s partly obstructed, Turo’s assistant likely has your Pokéball right now in that lab coat of his that Turo gave him. You’re running a bit late from your scheduled tasks today, since he’s currently in the middle of some sort of conversation with other voices in the lab you can’t really make out.​

​

It’s hard to believe it’s been almost two weeks by now. Turo’s assistant has spent much of the time in between doing things that are supposed to help preserve Turo’s body, but things have settled into a sort of equilibrium now. You’ve been doing both sets of tasks you’d normally would have done in rotations with the Beta:​

​

Checking in on the time machine since it hasn’t powered down since the day of the accident for whatever reason. Collecting the Pokémon it gathered and introducing them into the crater to try and keep up with the pace they’ve been coming from the time machine. There’s the morning and evening checks of the perimeter of the lab and the Research Stations, not that there’d be anything worth checking of Research Station Four in its present state—​

​

You sigkill the thought process and breathe in and out sharply. No. You don’t want to think about Research Station Four right now. You still don’t understand why Turo got up from the ground like that on that awful day. Why he ran into the path of your Hyper Beam. For him of all things…​

​

You just wish you could forget about that place entirely. The only reason why you haven’t burned it down yourself is because you know that it mattered to Turo and the Paradise he dreamed of.​

​

The dream that you worked so hard to protect…​

​

«Me llamo Turo y me dedico a estudiar a los Pokémon desde las profundidades del foso de Paldea, o lo que es lo mismo, el Área Cero».​

​

You jolt your head up towards the sky as Turo’s assistant keeps talking with those voices you can’t quite make out, and grit your teeth with an irritated huff. What on earth is he doing right now? You know that Turo would sometimes have his assistant stand in for him for calls with humans outside the crater when Turo’s body was in need of rest or healing or he was preoccupied with research, but Turo would always take things over as soon as he could. Why is his assistant just doing this when he surely knows that Turo will never be able to take any conversations over again?​

​

… Did Turo ever account for that when he made his assistant? Or is this just something that he’s been falling back on since it’s the subroutine whose logical branch that most closely matches up with this moment?​

​

«… número de matrícula 805C393... Te acompaña un extraño Pokémon llamado Miraidon, ¿verdad?»​

​

Your mind drifts from the rest of his conversation as you stiffen upright and your thrusters jolt you up briefly.​

​

What is he talking about? ‘Accompanied by Miraidon’? You missed the name of whoever the assistant was talking to, but there was a mention of an ‘ID number 805C393’, which you know is not the one that Turo had for his trainer ID—​

​

“Turo?”​

​

Suddenly, you hear his voice from somewhere off in the outside world. Your breath catches in your throat as it all clicks together for you.​

​

«Cuánto tiempo sin vernos, ¿eh? Qué alivio saber que te encuentras bien».​

​

“You’re okay!”​

​

Sparks crackle around you as your Hadron Engine takes on a louder and louder hum, your connective fluid pounds in your body as heat and an angry snarl builds at the back of your throat.​

​

He came back. After everything that happened because of him.​

​

You zoom upwards, your Hadron Engine all but screaming as you swivel your thrusters downwards. There’s a sharp crack as thick bolts fly down towards the ground and your surroundings start melting into light, only to abruptly stop as you look up and see fingers tightly latched onto your Pokéball.​

​

He’s keeping you blocked inside again.​

​

“No! Let me out! Right now!”​

​

You shout out your displeasure, throwing attacks about wildly to try and break out. A Dragon Pulse. An Electro Drift. But every time, Turo’s assistant just blocks you and your surroundings reform each time.​

​

Sparks dance on your hide and your connective fluid pounds inside your cerebral unit. How dare he?! After everything you’ve done to help guard this Paradise?! That you’re still doing?! Turo would’ve never stood for this! If Turo was here right now, he’d-!​

​

You sigkill the thought as your mouth is open for a bellowing roar, one that you know would be about to be heard outside… except all that comes is a stifled gasp and shudder as your voice hitches. You look back up into the sky as the heat inside you and the sparks on you die down as you realize that even as Turo’s assistant is still speaking, the glimpses of the world outside your Pokéball you can see in between the assistant’s coat and his fingers are all of boxes and the undersides of desks.​

​

… He’s just doing one of those video calls. The Beta isn’t actually here right now.​

​

He’s far away… just like you wished he would be.​

​

Except none of it makes you feel any better right now.​

​

«… Así podré contactar contigo periódicamente para comprobar cómo marchan las cosas».​

​

The world outside shifts as Turo’s assistant suddenly turns away from the desk. His hand loosens from the top of your Pokéball and from the way the world’s shifting around, he’s starting to walk off.​

​

«Hasta otra».​

​

He makes it a few paces before you spit a stream of blue dragonfire down at the ground. Your surroundings warp and melt away into blinding light. This time, they don’t reform, and soon enough, you see Zero Lab all around you. The service entrance is just a little ways ahead—with no sight of the Beta anywhere to be found.​

​

You float in place and coil your body around as sure enough, Turo’s assistant is behind you. You grit your jaws together as voice comes out in a frustrated growl, and you crane your head and neck down with a sharp glare.​

​

“Who was that back there and why was he with them?” you demand. “And why would you just pretend to be Turo when he’s not around anymore?”​

​

He gives no response other than to tighten his grip on your Pokéball and stare back at you firmly. You have half a mind to roar back at him, but it dies in your throat as he just continues staring at you, surely quietly trying to analyze you.​

​

You suppose you should know better. You’re doubtful that he understood a single word that you said. And even if he did, would he even be able to explain why he pretended to be Turo? Does he even have a subroutine for managing that?​

​

Your eyes drift down towards the ground as you feel patting. Turo’s assistant looks up at you as he speaks with that voice that is so close, and yet so far from the one that you loved so much…​

​

«Vamos. Deberíamos empezar con las tareas de hoy».​

​

… Right. You suppose you should get started on the daily tasks. Especially now that there’s no one else left to worry about sharing them with…​

Exiting... (End of file)

---

Commentary:

A bit of a slower and more introspective chapter today, but we’re just getting in a perspective flip of that moment in Clavell’s office early on in the game. Hits a bit differently when you get to see things with the full backstory leading up to it, huh? Especially since for want of a moment of demoralized hesitation, that cutscene would’ve gotten pretty thoroughly derailed considering what the Guardian of Paradise is depicted as being capable of doing even inside its Pokéball in the postgame.

Translation Notes:

Ah yes, gamerips. My beloved. A good number of the lines that AI Turo uses in today’s chapter are pulled straight from the game script, you just get a very different view of him when he says them, and your bike buddy is a bit less intelligible during the exchange. There is one line that is edited to sound more natural in peninsular Spanish, while another with a mention of the Great Crater’s Spanish Localization name ‘(El) Foso de Paldea’, is semantically translated instead of being given its literal translation of ‘(The) Pit of Paldea’

- «Me llamo Turo y me dedico a estudiar a los Pokémon desde las profundidades del foso de Paldea, o lo que es lo mismo, el Área Cero». - "My name is Turo, and I study Pokémon from the depths of the Great Crater of Paldea—also known as Area Zero."
- «… número de matrícula 805C393... Te acompaña un extraño Pokémon llamado Miraidon, ¿verdad?» - "… ID number 805C393... You’re accompanied by a strange Pokémon named Miraidon, aren't you?"
- «Cuánto tiempo sin vernos, ¿eh? Qué alivio saber que te encuentras bien». - "It’s been a while, hasn't it? What a relief to know you’re doing well."
- «… Así podré contactar contigo periódicamente para comprobar cómo marchan las cosas». - "... That way, I can contact you periodically to check on how things are going."
- «Hasta otra». - “See you later.” In the original game script, the line is rendered as «Hasta más ver».
- «Vamos. Deberíamos empezar con las tareas de hoy». - "Come on. We should get started on today's tasks."