PATHOGEN. ⁽ᵃᵖ⁾

“ Are we finally eviscerating humans? ”

  Palkia hummed, delighted he did know her after all. After all, to be able to travel the confines of space so indefinitely involved knowing it extensively. How could one know of it’s reaches without knowing of the designer themselves? 

  The way he looked her up and down conveyed his confusion. She smiled.

   “It’s true, you have been making my work a little disappointing. It takes me quite a long time to put together the proper conditions for a planet to naturally start fostering life. Fortunately– there are literally trillions of galaxies in the universe and it continues to expand at a rapid pace. 

 Your existence in terms of a potential threat is insignificant. You are life that came to be just as any other did. There could be a great deal just like you that I have yet to discover within my vast creation. If you were indeed a threat,          You would have already be erased.”

   She twirled a finger in the air as she spoke. Palkia had a habit of speaking a lot and often. When she went on her tangents, her hands became part of the conversation.

 “However, I have come to be quite fond of this particular little spot. Human life has become a source of relaxation for me away from my duties. It’s fun to be among those who are free to choose how they live and have no real comprehension of the world around them. 

 So I ask that you live this one alone. If you really have the need to consume and destroy I can point you in another direction. As I said, there are trillions   of galaxies. I just want this one for me and my siblings to play with.”

“ ... so you are saying... ”

His smile remained, but everything about his face tightened. His lips grew taut and his impossibly dark eyes froze into shards of black ice, staring at Palkia  ( through Palkia? )  as if scanning for any hint of deceit. Not that he was fantastic at judging human faces, but... 

No. She seemed genuine. But if not her — who? What? His final memories of his home planet were frazzled and frenzied; he remembered panic, he remembered the sensation of millions of his siblings dying, consumed by a fiery inferno caused by something unseen. In the billions of lonesome years he’d spent hurtling through the universe, he’d always assumed it to have been Palkia’s wrath that destroyed Allele. They’d grown too strong, and that was Her form of maintaining the cosmic balance.

But if that wasn’t the case...

          “ Ａｈａｈａ. ”

He laughed, his voice stuttering and distorting worse than it had before.     “ Palkia, Palkia, ”     and was it a trick of the ear, or was some of the reverence gone from his tone?     “ I am so sick of discussing this planet, Palkia — surely, you must understand where I come from. Earthlings... does it not drive you mad, living as a god among insects? 

...do you know what insects are? They are vermin, Palkia. So inconsequential that human beings squash them beneath their feet without even realizing. Do you see the worthless knowledge this planet has burdened me with?

——I have spoken of nothing but this rock since I was revived here. So indulge me, Palkia. Let us talk about my planet, shall we? Let us talk about Allele. ”

“ What do you know of it, Palkia? You speak as if we are still a presence — surely you must have been made aware of its obliteration. Why else would I be here — alone, dressed up in human skin? It is not a pleasure trip, I assure you. You must know that if I were capable, you would have no say in the matter — this planet would be destroyed. Yet, it remains; you know why, yes? Palkia, do you understand this? ”

In time with his last question, he raised both of his hands in front of him. A spark of aurora danced from one palm to the other, electric hues of blue and yellow racing across the gap. It persisted for only a second before it dissipated into thin air — only for him to repeat it again, and again, and again. Four times in total.

                    HOME.                                                            HOME.                                                       HOME.                                                                HOME.

But he took no time to wait for her response.     “ Are you familiar with the five moons, Palkia? If I reference the weather of the twilight border, will you understand me? Or are such things as lost on you as they are the rest of this miserable rock? ”

As he spoke he’d hunched over more and more, his smile never waning, his eyes dark and bright all at once. He wasn’t trying to be intimidating, per se — perhaps imposing, but the way that questions and thoughts spilled freely from his lips lent to the narrative that he quite wasn’t aware of what he was doing. This was, after all, Palkia. He wouldn’t be so foolhardy as to challenge her. Not alone.

i love vesper too. i want to marry him

deoxys as a species communicate exclusively through aurora, having constructed a light-based language that can easily be used to broadcast a message halfway across a planet. despite being stranded on earth and maintaining a human disguise, vesper retains the ability to express and comprehend aurora. however, aside from organism one  ( and any other deoxys that might be lurking about on the planet )  there is no one for him to communicate with.

when it comes to earth-based communication  ( speaking and writing )  he... is not quite as proficient.

vesper is unable to produce unique sounds, and in fact relies on mimicry to verbally communicate. although he is capable of replacing syllables  ( so as to maintain a similar voice throughout extended dialogue )  he cannot speak a word until he has heard it spoken by someone else. he has a habit of repeating any new word that he learns, often unnervingly, with the exact same tonality and inflection as whoever had just spoken it.

by extension, vesper is a master of vocal imitation, as he is capable of literally repeating exactly what a person has said. assuming that he has heard said person speak certain syllables, he could even speak new words with that same voice, literally stealing it and using it as his own — but that takes a considerable amount of effort, on top of having to listen to that person speak for extended periods of time.

sometimes, rarely, vesper’s voice will glitch out — usually when he’s not focusing on keeping his voice consistent  ( be it voluntarily dropping his disguise, or involuntarily as his focus is demanded elsewhere )  but also occasionally as he simply lacks a syllable he needs for a word. sometimes he’ll slip into a completely different voice for only a single syllable, and then be right back to normal. more frequently his voice will distort, clip, and hang — similarly to this.

hearing words spoken is the only way for vesper to add them to his vocabulary, as vesper cannot read. despite written text being more similar to his native language, he finds the small, stationary symbols confusing and has no desire to dabble that much in human affairs.

    It appears she’s caught his attention. It was turning into a game now and Palkia wondered how far she could go. Would pulling him along be a dangerous move? She felt a thrill she hadn’t ever gotten from the humans on Earth.   Far too fragile and predictable. 

  She placed her hands behind her back and leaned away from him.    Her body rocked back and forth like a smug little girl with a secret.

  “I am called Palkia. The Ruler of Space and Dimension.” 

   She twirled her index finger and touched his cheek. 

   “That’s how I can tell you’re not human either. In fact your collection of proteins and other elements to replicate human bone is quite impressive. Atoms and molecules are just as much a part of space and physics as the stars above, you know.”

Palkia — PALKIA. It took him a moment to recognize the name, because in his native language, it was pronounced differently — sharp splashes of violets and silvers, commanding attention no matter how many other aurorae occupied the sky. Conveyed with reverence and fear, because Her creation was their host, their lifeblood — but they were the deadliest of pathogens, purging space of any other living thing. Deoxys had taken Her creation and claimed it for themselves.

Encountering her face-to-face? Here? Like this?

“ ...Ah. ”     It was a barely-perceptible movement, but he straightened up ever-so-slightly. Did he believe her? Perhaps. It certainly would explain a few things, and yet...

“ Why would Palkia gallivant about in the skin of a human girl? ”     he asked, eyeing her from head-to-toe, and then toe-to-head.     “ Why would Palkia reside on this rock, with the entirety of the cosmos at her fingertips? ”

They weren’t condescending questions; his curiosity seemed genuine.

   Ordinarily, Palkia would be more than happy to shout her name to the skies and everyone around her. She is, after all, very proud of her title. Ruler of Space and Dimension? That deserved an announcement for sure. 

    However this being had a cheekiness about him that she was enjoying. He didn’t give a single damn who she was or who she could be. He also had no idea who, in fact, she was. That was the best part.

  Palkia locked eyes with him. She wore a grin that rivaled his as her irises changed from dull silver to a blood red. As they began to glow, the pressure around her increased significantly. She let out a taste of her true nature just to give him a hint. 

              “ Would you like to~? ” 

“ ...Ｏｈ? ”

His voice crackled, took on an odd quality that made it sound less like a human sound and more like a corrupted audio file. It skipped, jumped, distorted — and finally settled close to how it’d began. Maybe she’d misheard.

          Or maybe not.

Blind to human faces he may have been, but changes of that caliber were impossible to slip by undetected. Who — or what — was he dealing with, exactly? A psychic? No, certainly not, there was no telltale impression of one  anywhere nearby. An illusionist, perhaps. Or maybe a shapeshifter. But that did nothing to explain the raised atmospheric pressure; he was back at square one.

  It really was a very impressive piece of handiwork he had here. Anyone else wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference between his body and that of any other human being. Even his skin was as soft and fragile looking as the human organ. 

   Palkia, however, had eyes trained to be able to pick out every single small element and molecule that a form of mass possessed. How else was she supposed to calculate and label all of the stars in the galaxy? 

 She giggled again at his joke but this one was less funny. Palkia had never been a fan of that silly kind of sci-fi version of space. Instead her fingers continued along every bit of his body until it nearly hit said crystal in his chest. 

 Palkia avoided touching it but was aware of what it was immediately.   Her eyes rose to meet his. “You don’t know who I am, do you?”

Vesper didn’t flinch away as her hands neared his nucleocapsid; he didn’t need to. His speed and reflexes vastly exceeded those of anything here on earth. If she made a move to touch it, he’d be a hundred yards away before she’d even had time to blink.

          Her hands would also have been severed from her body.

                    ( But that’s neither here nor there. )

“ I don’t. ”     There wasn’t an inkling of an apology in his tone. He may have been a creature of the cosmos, more greatly in-tune with DNA than anything else in the universe — but without a sample of that DNA, this earthgirl was a nonentity. A presumptuous human, face identical to every other face in the sea of humanity, assuming that her identity mattered to a destroyer of worlds like him.

[ @novaphage ] [ x ]

   She did exactly take note of such things. His disguise proved unreliable as she picked up immediately that he wasn’t of this Earth. This only made Palkia that much more curious. His words coupled with his unwavering smile made her giggle as she tilted his head upwards. 

  “Oh really?” Palkia finally met his eyes, raising a brow. “I don’t think I’ve   ever had a human sniff me before.      I can’t imagine their sense of smell is that impressive,” 

Now that she’s finished with his face, Palkia sways her entire body to get a look under his arms. She lifts them up and runs her fingers along where the supposed bone structure should be. 

 “Now, you are not comprised of the typical human structure.        Quite the guise you’ve got going on there,”

“ You are correct — a human’s sense of smell is sub-par at best. But being sub-par never stopped the great seas of humanity from attempting anything, now did it? Even if the result is absolutely embarrassing to watch. ”

He craned his head downward, deepening his slouch. And when she took to examining his body he willingly obliged, raising each arm in turn, even allowing her to get as much of a feel as she desired. And she’d find a bone structure — at least, an impressive likeness of one! By touch alone, it’d be impossible to tell that they were proteins artificially hardened into the shape of a skeleton as opposed to any actual bones.

As long as she didn’t try to touch what appeared to be a crystal embedded into his chest  ( giant, green, impossible to miss )  then she’d have full-reign.

“ Ah? ”     She accused him of not being human and his response was to laugh.      “ You think so? I worked very, very hard on it before I was beamed down from the mothership. I was aiming for something in between ‘we come in peace’ and ‘take me to your leader. ”

He laughed again  — the exact same laugh, as if this was an .OGG file that he whipped out whenever the occasion arose.

i really want to flesh out vespers exact role / purpose / permissions within team rocket but i dont hecking... know where to even begin... i have a notepad open and all that’s on it is just

Oh—?

What a forward one. Most earthlings seemed to prefer to keep their distance, especially from someone like him  ( with the off-putting eyes and the off-putting smile and the off-putting demeanor, everything was wrong, wrong, WRONG!! )  but this one just took what she wanted, didn’t she?

He didn’t budge, instead letting her squish and manhandle his face to her heart’s content. In addition to whatever had fascinated her before, she’d now have another point of interest: he was cold. There was an absolute lack of body-heat; it was like he was a statue, or perhaps a corpse.

“All of the above. That’s why I was vague.”

He leaned in, smile never waning.