[One-Shot] Indebted

I entered Never-Turn-Back, the vast expanse of whiteness that had a tendency to get distorted and messed-up when people were in it, completely exhausted.

'I' was Giratina the Celestial Librarian of Arceus' Archives, High Goddess/Conductor Lady of Never-Turn-Back the Interdimensional Bus Terminal (or just Giratina for short). If that wasn't a clear enough description, I'm the person (Pokémon?) who chronicles everything everyone does and writes it down on a Word document, which is then processed into book form and added to the Archives. The best ones are then reposted on the human Internet under a completely innocent account that gives no hints that I am anything more than a me-

Wait.

Oh, whatever.

Well, anyway, I was exhausted. Using part of what small power I had left at the time, I transported myself to the Godly Computer of Ultimate Chronicling (that was Arceus' name for it) or the Dea Procol Machina ('Goddess at the machine' – my name for it, and a pun on the term 'deus ex machina'). Having done this, I waved the wireless mouse that was sitting near the computer itself, and the screen whirred to life from the blackness.

What? Arceus was paying the bills.

I raised my eyebrows as a pop-up appeared on screen. 'MESSAGE FROM ARCEUS,' it declared in important-looking lettering. Knowing what this was about, I selected the 'View' option below it. A picture of Arceus and an Arcanine with glowing blue eyes appeared in another screen.

"Greetings, Legendaries," said the Arcanine, but I wasn't fooled – I knew that Arceus liked to manipulate Pokémon around him to speak because he was unable to do so himself.

"As you may be aware of by now," the Arcanine continued, "there has been dangerous human activity near a mountainous area of the Coronet Island – or, as it is referred to by some, 'Sinnoh'. Though Ho-oh's pawn and his friends had dispatched the human, he is still sitting in a frozen ship on an iceberg near the region. This man had caused great damage to our resident Librarian, Giratina, and her realm in a different dimension.

"I am sending out this bulletin to ask if anyone receiving this message would like to handle punishment of the troublemaker before I do so myself. You have until Cresselia pulls the Moon high in the sky to respond."

I frowned. I'm taking this one, definitely.

I pressed a button on the keyboard in front of me and stared into the camera that had now bothered to reveal itself. "Hi, Arceus," I said. "If you don't mind, I'd like to take care of the guy in the airship."

I finished recording my short message to the higher-ups and sent it.

Almost immediately after, there was a short transmission back of Arceus nodding. "Giratina," the Arcanine said, "you may punish him. I will tell the others immediately."

I nodded and reclined in my floating position above the white floor, stretching like I was in a recliner chair. Smiling, I transported back to my couch. I'll handle Zero tomorrow. I'm beat.

-

Sogneshi.

Miraculously, people had done something correctly – this little mountain town and the bumps and foliage surrounding it was certainly a sight to behold. There wasn't a great amount of smog bursting from the city limits, and in all honesty the human race had done a pretty good job of preserving the natural beauty of this 'mountainous area of Coronet Island'.

That's not why I'm here, I reminded myself. Stop sightseeing and get the show on the road.

Poking my head down below the clouds to search for the crash site, I scrutinized the blended green and brown that made up the land below me. Finally, in the natural colors appeared an enormous, gleaming white blob. Figuring this was the glacier I was looking for (how many glaciers are you going to find in Sogneshi, when there's not even any in Snowpoint?), I very stealthily dropped out of the sky.

As I fell, my body slowly began to transform, and by the time I hit the ground I was a human girl again. It was proper attire for hiking up an iceberg; thick gray clothes, a fleece hat, and so forth. However, I had black claws with red tips instead of hands, and they hardly ever got cold – which means I could use them to wedge myself into the ice to climb.

Sort of like what humans called a… uh… what's the word… toothpick, or something.

I progressed slowly, heading towards the glacier that now looked much, much bigger from a ground view. In the process, I became re-accustomed to the workings of the human body. Even if I was granted a body like this from Arceus, and even if I did used to use it all the stinkin' time, my knowledge of the human body had waned from disuse, blocking itself in the darkest depths of my head.

As I pondered this, I seemed to have forgotten one of the most important rules – 'Look where you're going'. I tripped over an Aron who was snoozing on the ground.

As I jumped and frantically attempted to speak Pokémon in these unusual vocal cords, the Aron glowered at me. Finally, after some scratchy, odd noises, I was able to do a strangely-accented impression.

"GrooOOOoooh," I said. "GrrrarrroooOOOOoongh." This basically meant, 'I'm sorry I tripped over you, I wasn't looking where I was going."

"Arrr-rrron," it responded. 'Don't do it again, moron.' The tiny gray eyes glowered at me from under a steel mask of a head, as big as the Pokémon's body. It was entirely armored in gray iron, except for a few areas where the black flesh showed through.

I rolled my eyes as the Aron slowly plodded away towards a structure that looked large and extremely pointy. Noticing the shadow cast by the large, pointy thing, I turned around to examine what he seemed to be progressing towards. I couldn't help but whistle in surprise at the sight of it.

It was a giant airship, slowly being eaten down to a plot of smeared dirt by every variety of steel-eating Pokémon imaginable.

Mostly the iron-plated Aron and Lairon were hooked onto various parts of the enormous structure, ripping off shreds of metal and eating them for breakfast. There was also a stray Magnemite or two hovering around the metal contraption and probably looking for some electricity that may have been retained, but most of them were clinging magnetically onto the higher parts and trying not to get themselves eaten by the Lairon.

I shook my head sadly, letting the blond hair dangle down behind me. After pushing the black mask that covered half of my face up higher, I continued to walk towards the giant slab of ice. I tried to keep a slow pace to enjoy the scenery. Despite my best efforts, the shadow of the enormous machine that was built to harness me constantly loomed overhead. I soon broke into a run.

Scrambling up the iceberg, I desperately hoped nobody could see me.

Sometimes, I didn't stick in my claws hard enough and slipped from the water slowly dripping down the slab of ice. Another good reason, I thought. If he isn't evacuated from this thing, the water will fill in the ship and he'll drown. That's not a fitting punishment for something like this.

I could see a few pointy remains of the OTHER ship sticking out from the ice a little ways above me, so that served as a reminder that I was getting closer to my victim. As much as I wanted to strangle that man until he dropped, Arceus still had rules – and death by suffocation wasn't acceptable in this situation, unfortunately.

And provoking Arceus was not a good thing to do.

In fact, provoking Arceus was like doing something very similar to a fictional Italy-based group of published characters who are practically ageless, have a leader with a tendency to dramatize things, and are in a series that I most definitely did NOT think was utterly horrible except for a few redeeming points in a certain scene in a certain book-

Okay, I'll stop now. To use an easier synonym to the masses: Provoking Arceus was like provoking the Volturi clan and screaming in their faces, "HI, I'M PROVOKING YOU, AREN'T I? YEAH, I JUST [whatever provoking thing you did] UNDER YOUR NOSE AND I'M BEING TOTALLY EVIL NOW AND THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT, YOU STUPID OLD ITALIAN MORON VULTURE PEOPLE! HA HA HA!"

So strangling was not, unfortunately, an option.

I scrambled up the last few feet to my destination: the cockpit of Zero's freakishly familiar flying machine. It was at this point that I realized I should have brought a Fire-type with me, which I unfortunately didn't. Scanning the surrounding area for any Pokémon capable of spewing flammable gas from their mouths, I came up empty. In fact, the only Pokémon around were the Steel-types feasting on the big ship and a bird in the distance, flying towards the iceberg.

I briefly considered asking it for help, but then remembered that the only Fire Pokémon that looked like that were Ho-oh (who was in Johto right now) and Moltres, whose destination was unknown.

However, Moltres' destination soon became known as it hovered a few feet above the ice.

"Wassup, girl?" it squawked, a soft chattering noise accompanying it from the narrow orange beak clacking together. "Why you in a person's body now?"

"Because, Moltres," I explained, inching away from the broad yellow wings that happened to be tipped with bright (and very hot) fire, "If I were a thirty-foot-high dragon thing I'd be spotted immediately. And plus the mechanic over here might freak out too early." I patted the closed hood that sat encrusted in ice.

Moltres nodded, wanting to look like he understood. He preened his pale yellow chest feathers for a few seconds, and then spoke again. "Oh. Cool. Well, uh, I'll just be going now…" Small black eyes darted skyward, probably trying to find a way to get out of here as soon as possible - how he saw past the big plume of fire on his head, I don't know.

"No, I need you!" I said as he flapped his wings to get moving again. "Could you melt off the little ice that's here so I can get to Zero before he dies of hypothermia or something?"

Moltres lowered one wing to the ice. It melted slightly. Frowning, the giant yellow bird Legendary spat a small tongue of flame at it. This did the job, and I waved him away with a thank you.

"Now…" I murmured, pulling open the lid. "We've got to get you out of here."

I grabbed the still-unconscious Zero's right arm and pulled him out of the machine, noticing the lowered heat his body radiated. He's already too cold, I noticed, frowning. Cold enough to have tears frozen on his face, in fact. I shouldn't have waited a day. Hopefully I can get him to wake up again…

I hauled the man over my shoulder, kneeled down in an attempt to support his body weight, and conjured a hole to Never-Turn-Back right below me. Within a few seconds gravity took over, and two humans disappeared from the mountain.

---

Meanwhile, a troop of Officer Joes and their Arcanines arrived at the base of the icy tower. After having a lot easier time getting up, they noticed some things were slightly wrong: the ship was already melted, the cockpit was already opened, and the suspect (commonly referred to while not on an investigation or in front of a nearby Officer Jenny as 'that dude in yellow') had mysteriously disappeared…

-

I arrived in Never-Turn-Back as a giant, flying gray snake with some guy on my back. Miraculously, he didn't wake up. I was just celebrating this fact when an earsplitting scream erupted from behind me. There was some jabbing of my body, scrambling, swatting, a whoosh, and Zero finally landed on the ground.

I turned around to look at him with a raised eyebrow.

He probably considered this expression one of ultimate evil, as he began scuttling backwards immediately.

"Where are you going, Zero?" I asked, placing one paw behind his white-haired head. Yellow eyes glanced over at the giant black wing-appendage, and then he focused back on me. If he was pale before, that was nothing compared to the color of his skin now. This was probably more from cold than shock – in fact, he was shivering violently.

"A-am… am I…" he managed to stutter. "d-d-dead?"

"Nope," I said, making a popping sound on the P. "You've just been evacuated from Terra Creatura for an indefinite amount of time."

He opened his mouth to speak again, but a particularly violent cold seemed to sweep over him and he shuddered.

"Oh, see," I sighed. "Sorry about that. Here, this should warm you up a bit…"

A large amount of warm water dumped on him from an unspecified source above. "Hnnngh!" he squeaked. "Hot! Hot! Hooot!" His white hair flopped down around his face, having lost its shape from the downpour. He was soaking wet.

I rolled my eyes and waved one claw, and the excess moisture went away. Putting one claw to his chest (while holding the squirming man in place with the other), I felt his body temperature. It was better.

"Why am I here?" he whimpered, trying to scoot away from my body.

"For punishment," I said simply. "Did you honestly expect to pull something so illegal as what you just did and get off the hook? Drowning in your own sorrow won't work for Arceus, unfortunately."

"But…" Zero stuttered. "Nobody got hurt, did they?"

Wonderful, his mind has been messed up, I thought. "Oh, no, now that you think about it, nope. Nobody got hurt. I mean, they were close to getting hurt what with all the flying laser beams and fireballs and the goddess of Never-Turn-Back being dragged through Darkrai's inferno and then some just so you could do some dimension flicking between here and the real world…"

Zero's mouth slacked for a few moments. "So then… this place is…" he looked around frantically. "But all I see is white!"

"Never-Turn-Back won't retain the same form forever," I grunted. "Maybe, when you saw it, it was a twisted mess of gravity-defying strangeness. But that's just because you only saw a small fraction of this place; the place that I wanted you to see."

"But… but I have explored the Reverse World fully, and I've never seen… this!"

"There was no entrance to this place from what you like to call the Reverse World," I said, staring away from him and far to the horizon. "They exist on separate dimensions. Palkia hooked it up for me."

Zero made spluttering noises.

"So no, you're not dead," I continued. "You're very much alive. In fact… I think, in a few minutes, you'll be more alive than ever before." I held my hand out to Zero, who simply stared at me, dumbfounded. Mumbling some things in the language of the ancient Unown, I closed my eyes and lowered them to the floor to block the bags of fluid from the mystical light show that was about to start.

"Close your eyes too, and duck your head," I whispered in between incantations. He did so, and as soon as that happened there was some sort of fancy-schmancy light that would probably blind you if your eyes were open and not ducked down to your chest. Eventually, it died down, and I opened my eyes again.

"Open," I commanded him.

Too scared to argue, he did so silently.

"Take off the glove of your right hand," I said boredly.

He pulled off the yellow glove and stared at his palm. I noticed that it hadn't been exposed to much sunlight recently, as it didn't look very tanned. "It's not different," he noted. I flipped my own claw in order to tell him to turn it over.

He screamed again.

Imprinted on the back of his hand was a black picture of an Unown. It had the usual rounded eye, but also with a quarter-circle connected on top and a jagged line down the bottom. It was the Unown rune G, for Giratina.

"Congratulations," I said. "As punishment for your actions, you are now an immortal human who is to assist me with all of my Legendary duties. You must feel special now, no?"

He squeaked loudly.

"They always respond when we do that," I sighed. "Well, yes, you're immortal now. Congratulations. There's also another perk that comes with being chained to me... I'm sure you'll like it quite a lot." I smiled before continuing. Zero looked upwards, visible eye wide. "Yep, you guessed it. You're now entitled to do what you wanted to do with that big clumsy battleship, right in the palm of your own hand. For one hour and one hour exactly, you'll be allowed to access the human and reversed worlds, an hour each, once per day."

He simply dragged out letting out breath as he clenched his uncovered fist.

"However, this is simply a side effect of being my assistant, so there are of course limitations past the time limit." I said. "There are only three. You must not talk about three subjects…"

He looked up, wanting to know what they were.

"…One, that you are my assistant or know me in any way…" His face fell. "…Two, that Legendaries are more than myths in the first place…" He frowned. "…and Three, where you stand on the burrito versus sandwich wrap argument."

"Why the burrito thing?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "Arceus said it was a bug in the program, and that a bunch of tech Arcanine have been sent to dispatch the problem, but it's been like that for a few centuries and I doubt he was telling the truth…"

"I could fix it," he offered.

After holding down my first impression – to curl up on the ground and laugh for five minutes straight – I rolled my eyes and gave him my best I Am God And You Are Not glare. "Go reconsider the events of the past seventy-two hours, and then figure out my response to letting you mess with complex stuff beyond your understanding on the first day."

"I could do it better than you," he muttered under his breath.

"WHAT WAS THAT?" I boomed.

He jumped, startled, and then assured me. "Nothing…."

I frowned and crossed my arms. "Well, you'd better get used to loud noises, because talking back to the creature that just saved you from certain death is not going to go down quietly, I assure you."

Zero rolled his eyes. I frowned. "Now, get over here. I need to introduce you to Dea Procol Machina's interface."

"Isn't that Latin for so-" Zero started.

"No," I said quickly. "It is not, there is no such thing as Latin. Ha ha ha, silly, foolish immortal."

I scooped him up in one hand (successfully making him fall on his back) and transported to Dea Procol Machina's little laboratory. Zero's eyes widened when he saw the lab, complete with a flat-screen television modified into a computer screen by Arceus' techies.

"This is Dea Procol Machina, the heart of my job," I explained. "With this thing, I can watch everything going on down on Earth and pick the interesting ones to keep in a… special area of Arceus' Archives."

"Archives… like a library."

"Yep. And don't even think about trying to find it, either. That place is for authorized personnel only."

"Aren't I technically personnel, seeing as I'm your…" he apparently had a bit of trouble accepting the fact that he now had a Legendary Pokémon for a boss, "...your… assistant?"

"No," I said. "You're not authorized."

Putting my hand to the ground so that he could step off, I shrunk to a more manageable size (much to Zero's surprise, I might add) and brought the computer back to life.

"You can… distort yourself here, it seems," he noted.

"Not just me," I explained. "Everything. How do you think I got that black mark on your hand?" I pointed to his right hand, which he had placed the glove back over. He followed my gaze.

"I guessed it was some sort of… ancient power," he said, "with no pun intended." He stepped out of the way to avoid any glowing rocks that may have cascaded on top of him. Oh, how I wanted to drop glowing rocks on that guy… You can't let him see that part, I reminded myself. He'd freak out and do something stupid. If anything, Zero is prone to freaking out…

I nodded distantly and opened up a video transmission to Arceus. "Arceus," I said after the glow-eyed Arcanine and head honcho itself had appeared onscreen, "I've got Zero. We're handling his punishment now. I didn't think that what he did was bad enough for a little trip to Treasure Town, so instead I've got him controlled and busy as my assistant."

The Arcanine raised his eyebrows, barely visible above the ridiculous amount of cream fur that covered his face (honestly, it's a miracle he could see through that stuff). "Assistant?" Arceus' green eyes narrowed, and the billowing flap of skin attached to his head flew slightly to the left. Arceus' head was like a 'football' helmet; white everywhere, except for one black strip where the eyes are.

"Unown seal," I explained. "He could be useful, and I need human help to run errands around here, delivering messages to mortals secretly and all that. Playing people gets tiring after a while. And besides, I don't think he'll do anything with that seal and his free will…" I pushed Zero away from a large box of wires that I didn't know the function of, which he was evidently trying to modify in some way.

"…after all, he's indebted."


...hey, check it out, my 500th post.
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