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“Alola!”
Stars glances up from his tablet, fingers freezing mid-tap against the screen. Just in time to see the woman cresting the stairway of Mt Battle, her silhouette blazing against the frigid sky.
In any other version of Orre, she wouldn’t be underdressed. Tropical clothing of black and sunburst orange, the kind of garish that hurts to look at. Sunglasses and sandals and a billed cap to shield her from the sun. But this Orre is a cold desert—and this Mt Battle is an icy volcano of black rock and frozen vapors, and it’s a miracle she isn’t hypothermic.
Her kitten heels click against the metal dais of the stadium. The iron is besieged by permafrost, and the whole thing is circled by dark metal bleachers that slope inwards like the walls of a cauldron. He sits on those bleachers, one knee folded up to prop his digital device against.
But now he clicks the power button off, and sets the device aside. “Challengers need to climb the mountain from the very bottom.”
She turns to him, grinning. Electric blue, eye-meltingly lurid hair tumbles past her shoulders. “Ara, ara. Who says I’m a challenger?”
He stands. Crosses the distance. Powder snow occasional flutters down when the frozen plume rising from the mountain shifts overhead, but it never dares to touch him. The flakes part around her, as well—because she’s as much an intruder to this reality as she is.
“Moon,” he greets smoothly, and smiles as genially he as can manage.
Kahuna Moon grins wider. The z-bangle rolls further down her arm as she reaches up and plucks her sunglasses off, revealing unnaturally prismatic eyes. “Yokatta! I was worried I’d gotten the wrong Stars-kun.”
So. She knows about the split. Understandable, since it’s rather infamous at this point. He still has to resist the urge to grit his teeth. “What brings you by?”
“Just to chat.” Her sunglasses snap as she folds them up. “But we’ll freeze out here. Let’s go find somewhere warmer, yeah? Ikuzo!”
Parafox isn’t here right now. Off investigating some unusual activity they heard was going down in Alola. And now... Moon is here.
That can’t be a coincidence.
“Sure.”
Mt Battle’s staff lives on the site, at the mountain’s base. It’s a small village built where white sand meets black rock, constructed from slate-grey stone. Incredibly modest, very quaint, and the kind of quiet that means everyone is at least peripherally aware of each other. Strangers earn skeptical, side-long glances as rumors circulate, until their presence becomes known through the entire town.
“Nande?!” Moon thwacks her palm against the tabletop, loud enough to make Stars wince. “What kind of place doesn’t even serve sake?”
Moon, though. Moon gathers open staring and unconcealed befuddlement. Moon is dressed loudly and brightly, and she blazes like a solar flare against the tavern’s modest grey walls and dim, sleepy lighting.
The regulars duck their heads and murmur and try to avert their gaze when Stars sends them warning looks. The bartender is peering at them from across the counter, despite the bags under his eyes. The corner booth they’re tucked into isn’t enough to hide her loud hair, her loud clothes, her loud voice.
He stifles a sigh, smile tightening. “I don’t know what to tell you, Moon. Orre doesn’t exactly have rice wine.”
That earns a distinctly unladylike snort and a derisive look. Then she turns to wave over at the bartender. “Oiiii, bartender-san? Bring us two of whatever’s best, hai? Ano... Stars-kun, you’re paying, aren’t you?”
“Now when did I say that?”
“Ehhhhh? So rude! That’s no way to treat a kawaii young lady, Stars-kun!”
“Moon, could you maybe lose the weeb talk before we get kicked out?”
They won’t, of course. After all, they know Stars as the master of Mt Battle, the champion at the mountain’s peak. There’s too much awe and cautious reverence surrounding him for anyone to dare make a complaint over something so trivial. At best, the other area leaders might approach him, but they’re too indulgent and mild-tempered to make a big deal over a temporary guest, especially if she’s in his company.
...Oh fuck, please let no one make any stupid assumptions. That’s the last thing Stars needs today.
“Fine,” Moon sniffs, and waves at the bartender again. “Scratch that—gimme the best thing you’ve got that’ll go easy on my wallet, okay?”
The bartender nods and turns away to prepare their drinks. Never mind that Stars hasn’t even placed his order yet. Sheesh.
“So.” Moon props her chin on her knuckles and regards him through a veil of dark cerulean lashes, far too long and lush to not be false. “What on earth are you doing here?”
Stars drums his fingers against the tabletop. “I could ask you the same thing.”
“Ah, ah, ah!” A manicured finger is waggled in his face, and then darts away before he can slap it aside. “I asked first!”
He smiles. Yeah, he’s going to need that drink, asap. “It’s Orre, Moon.”
Her lips purse tight, unamused. “It’s Ultra Space Orre. It’s cold as ass. Doesn’t strike me as your cup of tea.”
Part of him wants to outright laugh. Her, knowing anything about him—that has to be one of the more delusional things he’s heard in quite a while.
It must show on his face, because she drops her knuckles against the tabletop and straightens to scowl at him. “Yamete! Don’t you laugh. Seriously—the Orre I remember you being from was hot. Like, annoyingly hot. But at least the sand was yellow and the sky was blue. This place is just grey all the way down. Very not-sugoi.”
Infuriatingly, she is not entirely wrong. Orre is—should be—vast and golden, an endless expanse unbroken from corner to distant corner. It should be the kind of desert where rocky outcrops reach from the sunbeaten sands like curling fingers, where heat warps along the horizon by high noon. It should be blue skies so bright they make your head spin, and a sun blistering so brightly overhead it leaves starbursts behind your eyelids just from stepping outside.
In comparison, this Orre is silver and chilly and just a bit dreary. There’s a stalwartness about it, something subtle and iron-willed that’s admittedly admirable. But its skies are too dull a color to truly be called blue and its sunlight is wan. Pale twilight seeps in through fingerprint-smudged glass, and it’s the sort of light that threatens to bleach everything it touches.
It isn’t bad. Not really. And there’s a certain simple tranquility in its skyline that he’s come to appreciate far more. At the end of the day, this Orre just feels a bit lacking in the eyes of someone who knows a different Orre, and isn’t used to wearing thermal clothing all day long.
Not that Moon needs to know this. Much less have the satisfaction of having pegged him correctly. Stars drums his fingers against the table. “Surprised you remember all that from the twenty minutes you spent there.”
She half-jumps from her seat. “It was more than twenty minutes!”
“Okay, twenty-five.” He gestures wordlessly for her to sit back down.
But she doesn’t. Because of course she doesn’t.
Hands to her hips, she leans over the table until she is two seconds away from losing her balance, until she is close enough that he can see each iridescent fleck in her irises. “Gee-e-eez. Were you always this rude, Stars-kun?”
Fossils almighty. That drink cannot get here fast enough.
Speaking of which—from his periphery, Stars catches the bartender drifting over with drinks in hand. One is a tumbler of something dark amber that he assumes is meant for him, either whiskey or scotch or something else equally strong that would be very much appreciated right now. The other is a tall glass that clinks with ice cubes, the liquid bleeding from yellow to orange to a flowery pink like a bottled sunset. Perfect fucking timing.
Moon has the decency to smile apologetically as she leans away, though she doesn’t sit down again just yet. Stars nods his thanks as the bartender leaves their drinks on the table, then turns and leaves them be.
“I’m just saying,” Moon huffs, sinking back into her seat. “You wouldn’t need to hide those pretty eyes of yours.”
...How the hell does one even respond to that with a straight face.
He catches himself before he can instinctively adjust his goggles. She’s right about one thing, unfortunately—having to hide his eyes in public is a natural consequence. Orreans here have iridescent irises, the colors shifting and flickering in hues with each different angle of the light. His eyes don’t do that, mark him as an invader, and he has to keep up appearances.
It’s probably the same reason Moon has sunglasses for herself, though she has no reason to wear them now. The colored flecks in her eyes are prismatic, and he wonders for a moment if that was a trait from her world, or if it’s just a natural consequence of hopping around Ultra Space for Arceus-knows-how-long.
Okay... Enough of that train of thought.
“I’m checking out the type-chart over here.” He tastes his drink—heady, smoky, woody, the kind of burn that claws its way down your throat, thrashing and protesting all the way. Whiskey is exactly he needs right now. “Your turn.”
Startled, she glances up, the black plastic straw pinched between her fingertips. “My turn to what?”
Smile, Stars. Just keep smiling. It does wonders if you just keep smiling. “C’mon, really? Climbing Mt. Battle to look for me, specifically, doesn’t strike me as your idea of a pitstop.”
“Pitstop”, she had called Orre during that first, brief meeting. More like the site of a crash-landing, her eyes wild and the ends of her tousled hair a bit singed, her clothes all askew and coated in space-dust. What a wild, wild sight she had made then.
The reference seems to soften her humor, and the smile that graces her face seems a bit more genuine that before. “Maybe I just wanted to visit an old nakama.”
Not enough to kill her evasiveness, though. “That’s awfully generous from someone I met once, years ago. Most would say we’re barely acquaintances.”
“Ehhhhh? It wasn’t that long ago, was it?”
“It really was.”
Hell, it was back when he was first starting out. A little after he met that prick Larry for the first time, and long before he got the oh-so-brilliant idea to try and control the Voices. Back when he was still experimenting and testing the limits of what he could do, what he could get away with.
And then some girl with electric blue hair tumbled out of the sky.
Ahhh, when life was simpler, and that kind of whacky shit still freaked him out. Fun times.
Ca-link, ca-link, ca-link. Patrons murmur and the ice in Moon’s cocktail clatters against the glass. Her straw makes slow, measured laps around her cocktail. A sluggish whirl of sunset colors, distorting around ice cubes, watercolor and muddying with each subsequent stir.
Ca-link, ca-link, ca-link. Her movements are not listless, are not absentminded. They are far too measured, far too deliberate. Unbidden, his nerves start to jangle.
“I finally met the Voices.”
A cold flutter goes down his spine, because ninety-five percent of the time, that means nothing good.
“Oh?” Just keep smiling. Just keep her talking. Just keep her in a good mood.
“You never told me about them, you know.” Her drink stills, and she slides her straw out from it with the same reverence as one unsheathing a ceremonial knife. “That was very not-sugoi of you, Stars-kun.”
At some point, her gaze drifted down to study her drink. Her eyes gleam with a lambent mistiness, a subtle intensity that has a prickle rising along his arms. Dust motes dance silver amidst the twilight rays filtering in through the windows, a fine haze haloing her brilliant hair. She regards the glass as though imagining something else—something she would open up and dismantle in a heartbeat, and then be too bored to put back together again.
“Well... In my defence, I had only just learned of them myself,” he says, which actually isn’t a lie. And besides that, aggressively incompetent extra-dimensional forces aren’t the usual subject of small-talk.
Her smile is as sweet and slow as a knife sliding painlessly between your ribs. “Still. I’m hurt, Stars-kun.”
“My apologies.” He swallows another burning mouthful of his drink. Shit, shit, shit.
“That’s okay. I forgive you.” She swipes her tongue down the length of her straw, then jabs it back into the glass so sharply the ice doesn’t even rattle.
“Well! That’s a relief on my conscience!” If the buzz doesn’t kick in soon, he’s going to need another drink. “So... You ran into them?”
“Mm. Just a little while ago, back in Alola.” Her fingers curl around the glass, cradling it tight. Possessive. “Had the honor of battling their kawaii little host-chan.”
Oh, wow, okay. So not only did she meet the Voices, but they now know who she is, what she is. That bodes even worse. “Who won?”
Though her smile doesn’t twitch, he notes how her grip on the glass tightens. “Shou ga nai, does it really matter?”
Stars can’t keep his smile from widening. “They thrashed you hard, didn’t they?”
“Urusai!” Moon protests, slapping the table again. “It was close!”
“Sure, sure.”
Her eyes narrow. Stars smiles, bobs his glass in a mock-cheers, and takes another sip.
“...Would’ve won if Metronome worked out,” she mutters, and then starts slurping loudly at her drink before he can retort.
Somehow, he resists the urge to roll his eyes. Her annoyance is palpable, but hey, that’s on her for expecting anything else. If sympathy is what she wanted, she was better off seeking out someone that the Voices have similarly overcome with enough luck and effort. Not someone who is in the rare, coveted position of not only defeating the Voices, but remaining undefeated.
Yes, the host was himself—his other self, younger and far less experienced—but it counts. The Voices haven’t beat him yet, and that’s worth taking pride in. For however long it lasts.
Especially if they do resurface here, of all places...
After a long moment, the slurping stops. Yellow to orange to pink, the cocktail is half-drained. Moon sets her elbows against the tabletop, her sunburst orange z-bangle burning against the half-light. “I only mentioned it ‘cause there’s a rumor you’re on the lookout for them, Stars-kun.”
“Oh? Now who told you that?” His glass clinks against the tabletop, and he can feel his smile going tight.
Her own smile flashes back to life. “Does it matter?”
Yes. Yes, it fucking does. The idea of anyone tracking his movements is... unsettling, to say the least.
But Moon continues before he can press further, “Aaaaaanyway—they might still be in Alola right now. If you move fast, maybe you can catch them.”
Ah. So that’s it.
Part of him can’t help but feel a bit pleased. It’s an accomplishment, really, to reach a point where your favor means something. That point where others will ingratiate themselves to you, because they know your allyship is a net benefit.
Stars drums his fingers against the tabletop, the last of the whiskey scorching his throat on the way down. On the other hand—this is also Moon, and she may be banking off the fact that they’ve met once already to tip the scales in her favor. Not to mention it begs the question of why.
Actually, no. It doesn’t really matter.
“I appreciate the offer,” he says at last, and sets his now-empty glass aside, “but I respectfully decline.”
“Oro? Nande?”
He shrugs. “If there’s a chance they’ll be gone by the time I get there, then it isn’t worth it. I’ll just find them later on my own.”
There is a moment where she slips, her brows furrowing in visible confusion. She corrects herself quickly, smoothing her expression back into a neutral smile once more—but by then it’s too late and she’s already let her ignorance show. It seems she doesn’t realize that the Voices have this funny little tendency to visit Orre twice before they inevitably move on. And that Stars is here, mainly, because there’s more Cipher activity in this Orre than in the one they visited more recently.
Amateur as Moon is, she at least knows well enough to mask her ignorance behind a casual shrug. “Well... Suit yourself, I suppose. But—” And here, her gaze flashes up to meet his, glittering sharp and faceted as gemstones. “—Don’t say I never did anything for you, Stars-kun.”
Well gee. That almost sounds like a threat, now doesn’t it?
In his periphery, Stars notices the bartender trying to catch his eye. Probably having noticed that his glass is empty, and looking for an opportunity to eek a little more money out from his tab. He gives a subtle shake of his head. The bartender nods, taking the decline gracefully, and turns instead to one of the barflies crowding up the counter.
Noisy slurping draws his attention back to Moon. Her glass drains rapidly, yellow to orange to pink, until there is only colorless ice remaining.
Once she’s done, she swipes the back of her hand over her mouth, and then reaches for her sunglasses with the other. “This was totes sugoi. We oughta do this again sometime.”
Huh. So her business in Orre begins and ends with trying to entice an allyship from him. Interesting. Probably for the better, because the alternative is some slapdash, half-realized hacker running loose in the desert.
Still... While she’s here...
“Moon.”
Moon stills halfway out of her seat. She cocks her head over her shoulder, waves of electric blue fluttering down her back, iridescent flecks glittering in her irises. “Hai?”
“You’ve been messing around with Alola, haven’t you?”
Soft delight alights in her eyes as she slides back into her seat. One leg folded over the other, smile cocked, elbow to the tabletop. “Noticed, did you?”
It’s the look of someone who has finally been acknowledged. Someone who has beat their hands bloody against a door and then tries to hide the broken pulp of their knuckles behind their back when it finally opens. There would be something a tad more pitiable about it, really, if she didn’t have her chin raised as though this acknowledgement was more right than reward. If she didn’t peer at him down her nose, as though looking for the best angle to cut him down.
Another uneasy jangle goes through his nerves.
“It’s hard not to.” He leans back against his seat. Of all the times for the buzz to set in, sweet and heady, now is the worst time. “It practically had your name all over it.” And in bright bold glitter pen, no less.
She curls a lock of burning blue around her pale finger, z-bangle sliding further down her forearm. “Yokatta. Aren’t you observant.”
“Any particular reason?” Light. Keep it light. Smile as indulgently as you can without turning condescending.
“Mm... Just having a little fun.”
“Fun?”
“Fun.”
Alarm bells ring in the back of Stars’s head. Keep it light, keep it light, keep it light. “May I ask why?”
“I’ve got a better question for you, Stars-kun.” A stray sunbeam catches on Moon’s left cheek, and casts a sharp, bone-white shape over it. Her lashes bat, casting heavy shadows. “Why aren’t you?”
And here he was thinking those alarm bells in his head couldn’t get any louder.
“I mean, really. Hackers can make the world their bitch. We’re one step down from gods. Here you are, though, ten times better at it than I am, at least, and there’s apparently others out there even better than that!” She gives a leisurely roll of her shoulders as she leans back against the booth, her hair offensively brilliant against the dark, dingy leather. “Soooooo... how come I’m the only one out here having any fun?”
Ah. Aha. AhahahahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHA.
“Oi!” Moon snaps. “What’s so fucking funny?”
It takes everything Stars has to cover his mouth, and even then, he can’t help it. Oh fossils and Arceus and all the ancient gods. “Fun”, she calls it!
Now he’s the one drawing eyes from all corners. Patrons lean around corners to regard him in befuddlement. The bartender arches a brow, stilling in the midst of wiping down his counter. Some luridly-dressed, loudmouthed stranger is an oddity—but the elusive master of the mountain, doubled over and cackling, is an outright spectacle.
Eyes watering, he manages to haul himself to his feet, and gestures to the bartender. “Go ahead and put both drinks on my tab after all.”
Moon stands. “Oi—”
“You’re welcome,” Stars says, and strides towards the door. No one stops him, because even if the bartender didn’t already know he was good for the money—which he is, of course—no one is going to call him out on it.
Somewhere behind him, Moon huffs loudly. From his periphery, he catches her pausing long enough to give the bartender a deep, exaggerated bow—then she scampers after him.
Moonglow strains against a thick veil of pale clouds, and turns the entire night sky into a glaring yellow-grey. It is bright and starless through windowpanes, and even brighter standing underneath it, with Mt. Battle’s black peak at your back. Nowhere else in the desert—in any other corner of any other Orre—has a night sky like this, where frozen vapors fill the heavens to brimming and choke the galaxy out.
The cold is persistent, gnawing with blunt teeth. Streetlights are flickering to life, pooling garnish yellow on the stone-cut sidewalk. The village was built on steep slopes, harsh inclines, and the angle might have Stars stumbling if he didn’t know it so well at this point.
Kitten heels click after him. Moon, clumsy and awkward in unfamiliar territory. “Oi, oi! Matte! Nani was that all abou—”
“Ever heard the expression ‘fuck around and find out’?” Stars’s breath silvers when he exhales. His head buzzes from the whiskey. He stretches, arms high over his head. “Who’m I kidding? Of course you have. It’s practically our motto.”
Her footsteps slow, and she trails after him at a distance. The empty space is roughly a half-foot of shallow darkness and thrumming skepticism.
Sighing, Stars folds his arms behind his head. He must be flushed, because the cold is even less tolerable than normal. “Here’s what they don’t tell ya, though—sometimes when you fuck around and find out, you get fucked over.”
That earns a snort. “Is this you speaking from experience?”
It flashes in his mind’s eye—the friction-burn of contradicting causalities, the heat-shimmer of warping dimensions. Reality’s fibers unraveling just to slice deep into his being, squeezing through skin and bone and DNA strands. The indescribable, mind-bending horror of feeling your existence being split down to your very atoms... and then limping away later, inexplicably in-tact, checking yourself over frantically because something happened, but all evidence points to the contrary, and you start doubting whether you imagine the whole thing after all.
At least until sometime later, when a duplicate of yourself with the Voices in his head stumbled his way to the peak of Mt. Battle. And then all the pieces fall into place, and you want to laugh so hard you stop breathing, and now you realize just how stupid you were.
It isn’t until Moon has flitted to his side like a shadow that he realizes he’s stopped walking. A streetlight shines directly overhead, waxy-white and obnoxious.
“Ano... Gomen, gomen. That was a bit blunt, wasn’t it?” She stands just beyond the streetlight’s reach, wreathed in gloom.
He snorts. It’s nothing he’s not used to, at this point.
Her smile reappears, and it would be pretty if its softness weren’t touched by self-satisfaction. “Still... I’m a bit flattered, Stars-kun, that you’re concerned—”
“Just cut to the chase already,” Stars interrupts, not unkindly, because he’s been very patient up until now and it’s wearing thin.
That seems to surprise her, but really, it shouldn’t. He’s not stupid. You don’t put up a safety net unless you plan to walk the tightrope.
But she sighs her concession. “Fine, fine. Be boring...” She brushes neon-brilliant bangs from her eyes. “So. I’ve heard the Voices are omnipotent. That they put even that baka fence-horse to shame. That true?”
Well, shit. It’s one of those situations, huh? “They’re also incompetent, like, ninety-nine-point-nine-nine-nine percent of the time.”
“So? They can still bullshit reality better than anything else. Break anything. Fix anything.” Lamplight catches the flecks in her eyes and stains them orange. Like embers set in her irises, burning, burning, burning. “Restore anything.”
...Oh fuck.
“And don’t tell me they can’t,” she murmurs, breath fogging against the cold. “I heard all about how they helped put the universe back together each time it broke. If they can do that, then they can restore one little dimension.”
Ugh. Why couldn’t she just be plotting to resurrect Olden or something? That would be so much fucking easier to deal with...
“You said you met them already, yeah?”
“...Hai.”
“And I assume you told them everything, when you did.”
“Duh.”
Valiantly, Stars resists the urge to massage at his temples. “And they didn’t do shit about it, right?”
Her silence burns with frustration.
“There you go. If they didn’t do it then, they aren’t likely to change their mind anytime soon.”
“I can convince them,” Moon says with a strange, sharp light in her eyes.
“...How.”
The smile she gives him, then, is the kind of cold and terrible that makes Mt. Silver feel hospitable. Another round of chills rolls down his spine. “I have a few ideas.”
Red alert. Abort, abort, abort. “Count me out.”
As he turns away, he can feel her eyes narrow. “Oro? I haven’t even gotten to the sugoiest part.”
The buzz is wearing off far too quickly, and what feels like the after-booze headache is coming in. “What part of ‘no’ do you not—”
“I found a way to sew your existence back together.”
He stops.
It’s horrible that it works. Even more horrible that she realizes, and seizes the opportunity to continue, rapid-fire and eager, “As I said, the sugoiest part! Apparently, someone else had a similar whoopsie recently—but the super-duper, very-extra-sugoi URS-sans found a way to fix it.”
URS. Ultra Recon Squad. Dimension-hoppers. They specialized in Ultra Space travel and cracking cold fusion, and they seemed so content with this that Stars hadn’t realized they’d begun to dabble in reality manipulation as well.
Perhaps it was a closely-guarded secret. The kind that would have never gotten out on its own. The kind that Moon could keep close to her chest until just the right moment.
“Well?” Her fingers brush against his forearm, and he nearly jumps out of his skin. He hadn’t even noticed she’d gotten so close, but now she stands there, so close the only thing keeping him from making out the flecks in her eyes is the stale darkness. “Ne, Stars-kun, you want me to introduce you?”
...Sewing his existence back together, huh?
“Not interested.”
“...Nani the fuck?”
If she’d approached him like this a few years earlier, he’d be wrapped around her finger in ten seconds flat. His pride still smarts a bit from the blunder, sure—but that was then, and this is now, and he just shrugs at her dumbstruck face. “Nothing out there is worth getting on the Voices’ shit-list, Moon. Count. Me. Out.”
A flurry of emotion sends her expression in rapid fits, spasming from disbelief to dismay to confusion to indignation as she tries to reconcile her trump card failing to land. The knuckles of her fists start to whiten. And it would almost be amusing—like watching a baby bird tumble after its first failed attempt at flight—if they didn’t both know she doesn’t have a leg to stand on otherwise.
Finally, she settles on quiet, scalding fury. “It’s Kahuna Moon,” she snaps, as if this were an argument.
Yeah. Looks like they’re done here. “Alright, Kahuna Moon. Same answer: Not interested.”
A tremor goes through her fists. Bangs fringe her eyes, her hair so bright it glares against his vision. Yeah, they are absolutely done here. He sighs, and turns away.
From his periphery, he catches the movement of her blaring orange z-bangle just before she sinks her nails into his wrist. Her grip is iron, and while her nails aren’t sharp, he can feel the pressure through his gloves. He can only imagine how painful it would be against unprotected skin.
Uh oh.
“Oi.” Against the dark, her eyes burn. “You owe me, Stars.”
His heart lurches. “...And how do I owe y—”
The next thing he knows, his shirtfront has been seized. And she tugs—hard enough that the back of his shirt collar bites into his neck, hard enough that he’s nearly doubled over. Hard enough that he can almost imagine the moment of terror a hanged man feels as the noose begins to pull.
Stars stumbles, struggles to right himself, and suddenly everything is invaded by Moon. Her vitriol assaults his vision, the world narrowing down to glaring neon hair and the feral twist in her snarl. All the saccharine pride and feigned ditziness shatters beneath something ferocious—wrinkled brows and searing eyes and teeth bared like she wants nothing more than to tear his throat out. This close, he can count each and every one of her eyelashes. If she bats them too fast, she would easily poke his eyes out.
“Do you know how my world got deleted?” Her breath hits him like a slap to the face. He can smell the cocktail on it, heady and sickly sweet and muggy. “Turns out some fuckers were messing around with space-time, and the whole of temporality fell apart. And my world just happened to get caught in the crossfire.” Her grip tightens further. It’s starting to hurt. “How’s that for tragic, eh?”
Panic stings the back of his throat. “Moon—”
“So imagine my surprise when I found out later that you were one of those fuckers.”
“...Moon—”
“What’s that?” A sharp, vicious little smile. “It had to have happened before we even met? True! But it’s time bullshit. Causality doesn’t matter anymore. You fucked around and found out, and you fucking erased my dimension from existence.”
“Moon—”
“Oh, oh, oh! Lemme guess—‘I was just one of the fuckers that were doing that, you can’t pin this whole thing on me!’.” Her voice goes shrill, and he winces. “And you’re right! You weren’t the only one. And maybe it didn’t make a difference. But y’know, maybe it did. Maybe if one less fucker was playing around, it wouldn’t have been enough. And maybe—just fucking maybe—my home would still be here!”
All around them, the night is silent and timorous. Her words hang, rumbling, hot as a solar flare—until it hangs so long it ebbs into smoke and stardust, and stale, empty space.
A tremor goes through her hands, knuckles bloodless from the pressure. Light refracts in the glossiness of her eyes. Her breath hitches, sharp as a fishhook catching a carp’s belly. He can practically hear the wounded stutter of her heartbeat, trapped behind crooked bones and dried bloodstains and sutures that only made the flesh decay around the edges.
After a long, long moment, she looks up at him again. And she smiles like fractured glass. “It must seem so fucking funny to you, the way I ‘have fun’. But hell, at least I’m making people happy. Bringing them together, helping tie up loose ends, healing broken families. Not—Not deleting someone’s mother—so they can meet her later and she’s running the URS and doesn’t even fucking know who you are.”
...Fuck.
Her smile is framed by trembling lips. “You fucking owe me, Stars.”
More silence. It bends and creaks around them, heavy with stale aches. Stars closes his eyes. Thinks back to his younger self doing all the calculations, making all the preparations, oh so very sure of himself.
When he opens his eyes again, Moon and all her vitriol have not vanished. She’s not stupid. She was always going to find out, one way or another. He had no illusions about that, the moment he put the pieces together himself. But it is one thing to realize how that skinny, frazzled girl with wild, wild eyes ended up crash-landing in the desert one day before she vanished, never to be seen again. It is another thing for that same girl to be standing here now, cold and livid and almost immaculate in her hatred.
“...Can I talk now?”
A wordless, biting sneer is his only response. It’s as best permission as he’s going to get.
Slowly—no sudden movements—he reaches up with one hand to hold her wrist. The one that isn’t snared by a vermillion z-bangle, which lingers at the edge of his vision, mocking. “Maybe you’re right, and I am partially culpable for what happened to your Alola.” Gently, he tries to pry her hands off. Her fingers only clench harder, viciously stubborn. “And if that’s the case—then I’m sorry. I really am.”
What can only be silent, jagged laughter makes her eyes blaze. She restrains it beneath another smile, a cold mask to bury her loathing behind.
“But,” Stars continues, before she can press her broken edges into him, before she has a chance to make him bleed, “you’re greatly overestimating my sense of morality if you think that means I’m going to help you get on the Voices’ shit-list. I’m not suicidal.” His grip on her wrist tightens, firm, unyielding. “And I don’t owe you shit.”
Immediately, her face shatters again. “You bastard—”
“We all are.” Now it’s Stars’s turn to smile, sharp and bitter and knifelike. Slice her along papercut edges. “Don’t tell me it took you this long to figure that out.”
Violent twitches contort her expression. Her hands quiver. Her shoulders tremble. He thinks he can feel her nails threatening to scrape against his collarbone through the shirt fabric. For a moment, he genuinely wonders if she’s going to lunge at him.
Then something seems to come over her. A realization, perhaps, that any sharp edge she has at her disposal will only scrape harmlessly against him. After all, it is impossible to squeeze blood from a stone. She inhales deeply, face smoothing again to cold fury.
“...Of course. How silly of me.”
Slowly, her grip releases from his shirt. Immediately, it’s easier to breathe.
Then, in a flash—her hands around his throat.
“Tell me why I shouldn’t just kill you right now, then.” Moon’s eyes are wild, manic.
Pressure threatens his windpipe. Not enough to crush, not enough to asphyxiate—that requires sheer strength she doesn’t have. But nor does she need it.
Power hums in her palms, in the lines of her tendons. In his periphery, Stars glimpses the faintest of shimmers in the air, just above the ridge of her knuckles. How easy it is to forget, with how sloppy and unpolished she is, that she at least has the basics down. And that’s it takes, really—take the world, shift it a little in whatever direction you please, invert someone’s windpipe and leave them gasping breathlessly on the pavement.
Wordlessly, Stars raises his other hand. Ozone hums in the air. Reality warps and contracts around his fingertips. Moon notices and regards his hand with wide, wary eyes.
“By all means, you can try. But like you said, I’m at least ten times better at this than you are.”
His threat hangs. Her hands spasm, nails pricking at his arteries.
But she’s outclassed here, in every sense of the word. She would be even if they didn’t resort to this. Her Pokemon team—on paper—seems stronger than his, but the reason they got so strong in the first place is because the logic in her world is inherently different. What little information he’s managed to scrounge up about her Alola screams of bullshit and plot armor and eleventh-hour power-ups to bail you out at the most crucial moment.
Not here. Battling in almost every other corner of the multiverse is far more calculated and strategic, and she doesn’t have those skills. Truthfully, he genuinely wonders if she ever truly lost a battle in her home world. If she ever had to sit down and genuinely think her way out. It would explain a lot if she hadn’t.
Eventually, it seems to sink in that she’s lost. Thoroughly, utterly, completely. Not unless she wants to gamble that he can’t react faster than she can. Which isn’t a gamble at all—just stupidity.
And they both know it.
With a shuddering, furious breath, her hands drop.
She takes a step back. Empty space yawns between them, heavy and stale. Orre’s darkness presses against her silhouette. The black stretches of her clothes threaten to melt into it, devour massive swathes from her body and limbs.
“...For now,” Moon says, coolly, eyes glittering. “But I’m a fast learner. Don’t think you’ll be safe forever.”
“Leave. Now.”
Her next smile is truly terrible. “Sayonara, Stars-kun—oh, gomen nasai. Hacker Stars.”
Behind her, reality splits along a hairline fracture. Ozone sings in the air, the friction-burn of colliding dimensions, as more cracks spiderweb from the source. They thicken, widen, flare to light with an unholy neon blue. The pattern of breakage rewrites itself with every blink.
Still smiling, Moon takes a single step backwards. Her silhouette flickers, phases from existence. And with a snap, the Ultra Wormhole vanishes.
Stars waits until a full minute of stillness has passed before he lowers his hand. The tendons in it ache from holding onto reality-warping power for so long. Everything still reeks of ozone and burning atoms. And he is way, way too sober.
He pinches the bridge of his nose. The post-booze headache is kicking in already. “Gotta be fucking kidding me...”
Explaining this to Parafox will be... an experience. She’d been paranoid about leaving him alone for even a week—and then this had to fucking happen. And now he’s going to have to explain who the fuck Moon even is, because he never mentioned someone he met once and then barely spared a second thought years and years later.
Above him, the sky is yellow-grey and looming. In any other world, this would be a portent for snow. But any Orre, all Orres, are deserts devoid of precipitation. The yellow tint is nothing but a false promise. A taunt to those that dare to hope for miracles.
“I am not fixing this,” he mumbles to himself. “I am not fixing this. I am so not fixing this.”
Moon is the Voices’ problem now. If she wants to get on their shit-list, she’ll discover for herself just how well that’s ended historically.
Briefly, he considers that she might track down his other self—the host version, a bit more naïve, a bit less skilled than himself but getting better every day. He dismisses it quickly enough, because if the core of themselves really is the same person, he’ll see through Moon’s bullshit immediately. And probably will be far less patient with her.
Whatever the case, it’s not his problem.
“...I am not fixing this!”
Only desert darkness answers him. Orre is silent, and cold, and unsympathetic.
Stars stifles a groan.
You assholes better show up fast. I may need to get that for-emergency favor sooner than I thought.