immediately, she felt the pressure of lugia, like an ominous, cold breeze suddenly hitting her face when the door opened. her eyes looked over her brother’s shoulder for the window, knowing she would see it there, staring back. but then it swam away.

a crisp amber stare, uncannily similar to gavin’s, regarded mars for a long, careful moment. ”mr. del mar,” she greeted after a beat, before her attention finally fell on rocket’s senior underboss. ”mr. merlino.”

she found a familiar seat, and settled into it. offered the floor, her chin raised an inch.

”there is plenty to discuss, of course, but in particular, i’ve requested this meeting with both of you because of our mutual interest in dialga. i saw it in the cloud, along with palkia. they are surely the reason for many of the things currently happening in our world, from the spacetime distortions, to the things that happened in sootopolis during our takeover.”

she paused.

”but of course, i’m also curious about what you both saw.” her eyes passed to Martín del Mar again, distrusting. ”i did read your report.” and i told you so.

Cillian Quinn Martín del Mar

☉

martin? it took her a second, before she realized that he meant mr. del mar, which is what she had always referred to him as. her gaze panned briefly between them again. not everyone on the sub did the whole last names bit, but it was professional wasn’t it? they didn’t call the boss declan.

about dialga, she almost reminded him that they’d spoken about it before, but refrained. not suspicious at all. this was her brother, right?

”well, it’s definitely out there.”

her attention turned to mars, who seemed to have arrived at the same conclusion she had about palkia and dialga. something told her they were not in this for the same things, but had they ever been?

now, she wondered if he didn’t want them simply to kill them. to strangle them like the hands of arceus had meant to, and end their world—or at least their region. and if he didn’t want to, would the unown he kept around convince him to do it anyways?

an act of god?

”they’re fighting. they know something’s wrong, but something is also after them. something gold and white, and given our collective reports, i would reason to guess that thing is arceus.” honestly, she didn’t care if that one died. it had served its purpose to them, and now it was a dangerous nuisance.

”the unown follow it. they’re linked, somehow.” other nuisances.

her amber eyes turned again.

”how are you feeling, mr. del mar?”

Cillian Quinn Martín del Mar

☉

dialga and palkia didn’t look the same as they had pictured? ”well, the ones i saw looked like what we’re accustomed to. could be different pokémon, or different forms.”

mars agreed with her theory. she refrained from an ’i just said that’, merely nodding over at him. indeed, she’d always been good at speculating. paranoia ran deep. it had been the reason for her suspicion from the beginning, when the mysterious devices had appeared. it was the reason she had dug to discover the code within them: dark triad.

but this? she had seen this. she had seen the unown move with the appendages of arceus, with her own eyes. this was no speculation. this was fact.

she would not have the dark triad steer her away, if that’s what he was.

about mars’ communication with the unown, she responded, ”i see. well, that certainly sounds distressing, but surely you didn’t get where you are without being good under pressure. i’m glad to hear you’re feeling well.”

and to the rest, ”i think it’s trying to stop them from fixing whatever’s happening to our region. perhaps so we’re extinguished as a threat to the rest of what it built. as we’ve been made aware, unless we stop it, we’re on the course to ending literally everything. why would arceus not stop its creations from enabling the destruction of its life’s work?”

Cillian Quinn Martín del Mar

☉

palkia and dialga, if tied to their universe, were fighting for their own lives and realms as well. that would make sense, while raising plenty of other questions.

”i agree,” she responded after mars, and her attention turned to him again at his question. it was both exciting and worrisome, because by working together, it’d mean that they’d all have access to the gods—even him, and by extension perhaps, the dark triad.

did she think it was possible?

”i do.”

but how?

”i think we have to go to ultra space.” a pause. ”and i think i may know how to do it.”

after a moment, she dared to look back at her brother. they were in the wake of necrozma’s attack, and they knew another one lingered, waiting to pry its way back into their world through the smallest tear in their dimensional barrier. what would he think?

Cillian Quinn Martín del Mar

☉