A Saga of Tanya the Chansey 77-Reticularis

Jack, the head engineer of a bunch of country killing madn, is a coward.

He knows he’s a coward, when the ti for the activation of the amplifier ca and he stayed behind, he’d told himself it was to figure out a way to get a warning out. When he realized he couldn't figure out how to bypass the restrictions on the satellite uplink he moved on to the prototype warp panel, looking for a way to link it to another destination panel.

But the true depths of his cowardice shone through when he started feeling the bunker shudder, and when the power cut off he gave up on trying to save anyone but himself. He took the warp panel to the only other receiver address in the system, the main bunker complex sowhere else far away from Mt. Chimney.

He was lucky the warp panel had an internal ergency battery and capacitor bank to prevent power flickers from interfering with the transit process. He’s even more lucky that it worked.

Now he’s sitting quietly in the private room that had apparently already been set aside for him in this new bunker, though he’d realized a long ti ago that this ‘luxury’ is just a way of keeping a tight control over him and keeping him away from the other Magma mbers.

But before he was led to this room and given the ‘request’ he remain there, the engineer heard confused, tense murmurs from a few of the enforcers, transitioning to full shouts of alarm and to people rushing back toward the warp panel room with a stretcher in hand.

That chaos was hours ago, and in that ti Jack can do nothing but sit on his small bed and look at his hands, wondering if the chaos he’d heard before being sealed in here was a sign of success or failure, hoping against hope that the scientist he’d never been able to learn the na of actually did manage to sabotage the machine after all.

Or if he’s sitting in one of the few safe places in the country as the world outside is consud by flaming rock and ash.

The engineer clenches his hands into fists, takes a wavering breath, then slowly rises from the bed and takes a step toward the small desk sitting on the opposite side of the ro–

The rap of knuckles on tal gives Jack just enough ti to look at the door before it opens to reveal an enforcer he doesn't recognize, flanked by a slightly taller but still unfamiliar woman half obscured by the doorfra.

The man takes a second to scan the room then looks at the engineer impassively.

“...The Leader wants to see you.” He says in a matter of fact tone, opening the door wider. “Co with .”

Jack hesitates, but he can do nothing but obey, stepping out the door to be led down the underground hallways as the other Magma mber follows half a step behind.

The bunker is a ss of activity, like a disturbed hive people in identical red hoods are running around in every direction, individuals carrying boxes while groups discuss in lowered tones as they go into and out of the many doors in this hall at a speed just short of a jog.

Though the engineer has never actually been here before to compare, it seems like this place is nearly full to capacity, every space occupied by soone and everyone doing sothing.

But sohow, despite the apparent chaos, his group and his two escorts walk through the hall as if it were empty, people hurriedly getting out of their way as they walk up to a two wide elevator bank and step inside. Once in, the female enforcer steps up to the floor buttons and reaches up to her neck, pulling a key attached to a tal chain, inserting it, then pressing a button at the sa ti as she turns the key.

As the elevator gets started, Jack blinks as he hears soft piano music emanating from the ceiling, and the incongruity of it has him distracted as he looks up at the sound. But eventually, with a small shudder the elevator dings to the floor and the door opens again.

The following hallway is much of the sa, endless and branching hallways made of the sa dark grey concrete as the bunker on the volcano, until they co to a stop at a door marked ‘clinic’ flanked by two more enforcers.

There’s only a montary pause as both enforcers carefully look over all three of them and the one on the left gives a nod, opening the door, a raspy yet familiar voice emanating from the other side.

“I don't care what your excuses are!” Maxie shouts with a loudly dehydrated voice. “This facility has so of the most advanced dical technology on the planet. You are going to use it!”

As he’s shouting Jack is led down a final corridor and into a moderately sized but incredibly cluttered room on the other side. Despite the size there are only five beds, the rest of the space is covered in dical machinery, every surface covered like they’re trying to stuff an entire hospital into a room the size of a large bus.

In the bed closest to the door lies a ss of bandages wearing an unmistakable pair of glasses, looking at a person in blue scrubs while anotherunfamiliar enforcer stands guard at the foot of the bed.

“Sir I’m sorry but– I’m a doctor of General Human dicine, even if all this stuff can help you’ll need an entire panel of specialists for your condition.” The doctor takes a second to glance down at a clipboard. “But sir, even if I can't treat the more… exotic damage, non-congenital hearing impairnts are a solved problem, if you would let bring in a pokemon capable of even basic healing we could restore the majority of your hearing as long as the teleportation complications didnt–”

“No!” Maxie shouts, voice slightly too loud for his tone. “We are beyondthis! Humanity has mastered the natural world!” He pauses to take a few breaths. “...Give more morphine then get out. Co back when you’ve found a realsolution.”

The doctor hesitates, then complies, reaching up to adjust the knob on a hanging bag before walking out a side door to the right of the hallway Jack had just co through.

The mont the door closes Maxie lets out a pained exhale then lets his head drop to the pillow, and despite laying on his back he continues to rest so his head is facing to the door.

Both of Jack's escorts loudly lead him up to the foot of the bed and, after a small pause, the man inhales.

“Sir. The Engineer is here.”

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There’s a pause, just a second too long to be normal, before Maxie grunts into motion, lifting his head back up and looking ove–

Jack flinches back.

Only half of Maxie’s face is covered in bandages, he’d been laying on the bare skin, but just because that skin is uncovered doesn't an it isn't injured.

Red welts that look like burns clash with pristine skin and splotches of perfect white, like a drawing with the color erased. This ss of violent color covers every bit of exposed skin, but instead of being in any kind or organic pattern it’s an unnatural ss of stretched rectangles and squares, streaks of natural color stretched or repeated across a span before being interrupted by another perfectly straight line seemingly at random. The rectangular blotches grow worse as they approach the bandages, and peaking out from the bandage on his cheek there’s a line that almost looks like a seam.

He looks like a corrupted image co to life, or the result of a broken printer running out of ink.

Maxie takes a mont to push himself up on the bed, leaning against the pillows with his back while carefully studying Jack with his singular uncovered eye.

“...Engineer, how good of you to join us.” He says, revealing neither his tongue nor his teeth were exempt from the rectangular corruption. “I thought you were in your quarters on the Mt. Chimney base, imagine my surprise when I learned that you were here.”

Jack flinches again, but he can't think of anything to say in his defence before Maxie continues.

“Before we continue, I have to ask.” He enunciates with a hoarse casualness. “Was the power still online when you’d left?”

The engineer struggles to keep his eyes from flicking to rectangular splotches and keeps them locked to the singular eye opposite, then jerkily nods his head.

“Y-Yes sir. Power was still on. I was just… I was just… concerned about another earthquake taking out the power or damaging the machine before I left.” He says in a mixture of lies and half lies, hoping against hope no one calls him on it.

But when he finishes speaking, Maxie doesn't react, expression unchanging until a tiny speck of light on the lens of his glasses flickers and his eye darts about as if reading sothing only he can see.

As he does a variety of emotions run across his face, ending on a softly twitching expression of barely restrained rage. But just as quickly it fades back to his normal passive calm, and he focuses back on the engineer.

“...Good.” He rasps, then breaks into a choked gasping cough for a solid half minute, only stopping when he grabs a glass of water at the bedside table and drains it, revealing the entire arm is covered in the corrupted rectangles, the growing larger and more corrupted up to where they’re covered by more bandages. “Good. Now for the next step of my plan.” He says, once more too loudly. “I have to apologize for deceiving you, but the attempted sabotage and the violent attack against us proves my caution and team siloing necessary.”

Maxie makes the motion of snapping his fingers but fails to create the sound, he doesn't seem to notice and after a second the enforcer standing at the foot of the bed jolts and reaches under the bed, pulling out a yellow plastic carrying case as the leader continues.

“You’re an intelligent man, so the fact that both the construction of the amplifier and its location was unsuitable for safe land creation must have been obvious to you for so ti.” He takes a case from his enforcer and begins fumbling with the latches with bandaged hands. “Had I known the damage that would have co from the improperly attuned machine, I would have found another way, but I still stand by my reasoning. As you likely knew, the amplifier was never for activating the volcano, though it played a no less vital role. Our machine was actually for mapping geothermal activity beneath the oceans among other points of interest, exposing saboteurs and spies, forcing our enemies to move against us, revealing how much of our organization is exposed, and most importantly, acting as a smokescreen for us to ensure this doesn't fall into the wrong hands.”

He finally clicks open the case and lifts the top, pulling out a small handheld device the size of a portable cassette player. After a second he hands it to the enforcer who’d given the case, who then hands it to the engineer.

Jack turns the device over in his hands, looking for a manufacturer's label or any kind of clue to what it is as he tries to get over the cognitive dissonance at how he thought this eting would go.

A thorough inspection of the device finds nothing, and eventually looking back up at his boss with a puzzled expression.

“Sorry sir, what… is it?”

There’s another too-long pause, the flicker of light on the lenses, then a flash of emotion before it stabilizes to anable calm.

“That is one of the most advanced type energy scanning arrays in the world. It–” He breaks off into another fit of coughing. “...It represents the final evolution of the technology, and your new task is to recalibrate it to scan for pure water type energy.”

The first thing that crosses the engineer’s mind is annoyance, bemoaning how impossibly difficult it’s going to be to find the reference tone unit, then curiosity at how the managed to fit a reference tone unit into this thing, let alone the rest of the necessary hardware, then back to a mood of yet moreannoyance at an almost guaranteed lack of docuntation and the microscopic scale parts he’s going to need to reverse engineer before he can start fiddling with it.

But as he thinks about the goal of all these modifications, his thoughts trail off.

…Water type energy?

He looks up from the scanner with a confused expression.

“Sorry sir but… why do you want to scan for watertype energy?”

There’s another pause, another flicker, but this ti as Maxie’s eye darts across empty space his face twists into a hissing expression of rage.

“Just–” Then he stops, expression smoothing out to calm just as quickly as the anger ca as he closes his eyes, takes a breath, then opens them again with a self-deprecating laugh. “...I apologize. I don't think that morphine has kicked in quite yet. I hope you understand, but in light of current events I’d rather keep information of future plans a very close secret. But for what you’ve done I trust you more than almost anyone else here, so I will tell you this; our organization is locked in a battle with a group bent on drowning the world under a planetwide ocean, it is this organisations mandate to oppose this insidious group and as of now we are the only ones who can stop them.” He says in a perfectly level tone and hands the plastic case to the enforcer who then walks over to the engineer and takes the scanner, putting it back in the case as Maxie continues. “But for right now I’m afraid you’ll have to live with not knowing any more than that. Your lab will be ready tomorrow. Goodbye.”

With that abrupt dismissal and the device taken, the engineer feels a hand gently lay itself on his shoulder, guiding him back the way he ca by the sa two escorts, leaving Jack to consider everything he’d learned in such a short conversation as he walks.

It almost reminds the man of when he’d first t his boss, the anxiety of being blindfolded by strangers and taken sowhere, only for the blindfold to be removed to be t with a firm handshake and an apology for the necessity of the treatnt.

He’s not sure how to feel right now, before he’d spoken to the boss he’d been almost certain the world above was being buried in flaming ash and he was directly responsible. Now he’s forced to deal with being told he was right to be concerned. That his fears of people trying to destroy the world were correct, just misaid,then given a clear direction on what to do to stop it.

But as he’s led into his quarters and the door closes behind him, as he stands in the middle of the bare concrete room no matter how hard he tries he can't get rid of the persistent sense that he’s being lied to.