When last we went off, I was trying to chase Zinnia and find out what plan she thought was going on so I could do that instead of the current idea of throwing genocide at the problem until it goes away.

Sadly, there’s no sign of her outside.

Hey, backpacker, did you see some forest ninja person?

Oh, it’s you! You’ve come to help me make some memories!

Does no one listen to me when I’m talking?

And somehow he has a L51 slaking WHY DIDN’T YOU HELP WITH ANY OF THE STUFF THAT WAS HAPPENING ARE YOU STUPID OR ARE YOU EVIL AND STUPID?

Look. I know we all whined a whole lot about the endgame in the early generations, how all you could do to level your pokemon was fight the elite four over and over. But this isn’t the solution! The solution is to make wild pokemon viable to train against rather than deliberately lowering the amount of exp they give out opposed to trained pokemon. Have an Unknown Dungeon/Mt Silver setup where there’s a place full of terrifyingly strong pokemon you’re not allowed to enter until you prove yourself, but then make it actually worth people’s time to grind there. The recent games did a bunch of stuff with pokemon ambushing people or strings of trainers attacking without giving you a chance to recover, so take the existing horde mechanics and add on that sometimes pokemon attack you one after another and you’d even have situations that were similar to fighting actual trainers. There’s been various challenge areas where you have to do a lot of fighting all in one go without being able to retreat, so the developers don’t have an objection to making you face more than six pokemon in a row, and having to face a higher number when all you can carry is six would be a good way to make the endgame have a different element to it. Just stop tying it to trainers so I can stop wondering why these people are just sitting around in a room as part of a pointless tournament while the sky cracks open outside.

(To mimic the part where also trainers give you money, you could have respawning items wherever’s being explored.)

Thank you for helping me make memories! I’ll give you this as thanks!

It’s a max repel. Why would I ever want that.

I catch an abra. Thank you, masterballs! And a timburr pops out too.

Abra sleeps for eighteen hours a day. However it can sense the presence of foes even while it is sleeping. In such a situation, this Pokemon immediately teleports to safety.

These Pokemon appear at building sites and help out with construction. They always carry squared logs.

This raises so many questions, like, what is the pokemon doing in this cave then?

Also wild timburr make so much more sense as parasitizing construction for materials they need. Not only does it generally make no sense for a creature’s main purpose to do hard labor for another, but when construction finishes, there aren’t going to be any more construction materials.

So also apparently there’s sky stuff to check out? EON FLUTE GO.

I don’t see sky stuff but there is a red glow on Mirage Island and a star piece and a larvesta. I catch her.

Said to have been born from the sun, it spews fire from its horns and encases itself in a cocoon of fire when it evolves.

Awesome.

Also darmanitan.

When one is injured in a fierce battle, it hardens into a stone-like form. Then it meditates and sharpens its mind.

What a cool idea that was, and yet for some stupid reason it’s only accessible through the hidden ability. Why? Why lock away half your cool stuff?

I head up again and see more red glow. One is apparently named Nameless Cavern. Inside is another vortex.

A mysterious ring is floating in the air. Something is visible deep in the hole… Would you like to put your hand deep in the hole?

WOULD I EVER!

Somehow that triggers a pokemon to fall out and the world to turn misty, rather than something reasonable, like Lucki losing the hand. It’s Azelf.

Known as “The Being of Willpower.” It sleeps at the bottom of a lake to keep the world in balance.

So…what is it doing in the middle of the ocean in a cave with a bit of water behind a vortex ring?

The vortex ring smacks of reusing an element, but where is the fitting vortex ring encounter the designer copied for all the others ? It’s been a bizarre out of nowhere thing both times I’ve seen it.

I think I’ll table this for now. Getting too many legendaries all at once spoils the specialness.

Oh hey wait there’s another mirage island somehow? Landing.

Zebstrika!

When this ill-tempered Pokemon runs wild, it shoots lightning from its mane in all directions.

Venomoth! Aw, it’s been a while since I’ve seen one of you.

Venomoth are nocturnal–it is a Pokemon that only becomes active at night. Its favorite prey are small insects that gather around streetlights, attracted by the light in the darkness.

Pokedex, the whole point of the world nocturnal is saving yourself from having to spend all the extra letters in “this creature is active at night”.

But it is amusing that this is a moth that preys on things that are drawn like moths to the flame. On the other hand, what “small insects” are there? In the pokeworld, is it caterpie and weedle that cluster around streetlights rather than their bigger winged forms? Just imagine, in place of the image of a bright glow surrounded by a swarm of fluttering moths, giant caterpilars crawling across the glass, their thick bodies obscuring the light.

Okay but for real now I’ll do this later. Time to move on.

Well, with no leads, I guess I have to go to Mossdeep and meet up with Genocide Jr.

(So amid all the debate about if videogames make us violent, I wonder if anyone’s ever tried to find out if videogames make you do other stupid things? It doesn’t seem like constantly reinforcing “everything about this seems a bad idea, but I don’t know what else to do so I’ll go along with it” would be particularly helpful.)

I swap back to my pile of water pokemon that need leveling. I decide to take my sceptile with me as well, since she’s much too low level for a beloved starter.

In the space center, all is proceeding as usual. One scientist proudly informs me of their 18th successful rocket launch, presumably with a manic look to his eyes knowing it’ll all be over so very, very soon and so happy they managed to get that last rocket up before their streak was ended by something so much more final than budget cuts. How terrible it’d be, after all, if the meteor killed them all just before they managed another successful launch, right? Right? RIGhT??? HAHAHA! Ahahaha. Eighteen. Eighteen.

Eighteen.

I decide to leave and talk to the woman standing in the way of the stairs instead.

You must be Lucki. Mr. Steven Stone told me he was expecting you.

On second thought, maybe I should have my ass-kicking team ready just in case Lucki grows enough of a conscience to unlock the “take down the evil corporation” option midway through.

This way, please. And she leads Lucki up. Professor Cozmo. If I may interrupt you…

And Lucki, sweet amoral Lucki, happily runs over to the people whose plan is to turn their currently churning genocide machine to yet another use.

Oh! Lucki! Thank you for coming! chirps Steven. They are sociopath buddies. And you brought the Meteorite Shard with you. Well done!

As that Meteorite Shard has to be picked out from all the worthless shards of meteorite, it actually makes sense he’d be impressed by how fast we got it done. Little does he know it was our ninja buddy who did the hard work of mashing A over all of them until she found the key item she could interact with rather than the identical looking rocks that were untouchable scenery.

I was rather surprised to learn that you knew the professor.

He may be surprised to learn how well I know him now.

You really do seem to make connections everywhere you go.

It’s some lovely irony, yeah.

Now then, Professor…

ALSO HEY LOOK EVERYONE THAT WAS WRITTEN IN ACCORDANCE WITH ACTUAL GRAMMAR.

Could I ask you to explain once more about the current plan?

The general writing’s still unbelievably awful, sadly. You don’t need to invoke clunky shit like this when you actually have a perfectly good justification for someone to tell us! “Professor could I ask you to explain to Lucki what the current plan is? would have worked! WHY U DO THIS

Indeed… Please come this way.

And now we’re back at the room of NASA screens we saw in the very early cutscenes with everyone flipping out.

I imagine you’ve heard some of the situation from Professor Stone already.

Mostly I just heard

Our current plan involves using the Infinity Energy within our rocket.

So you’re making the argument that since you’ve already rendered them down anyway, it’s not like there’s any moral component to using the results for soap.

A good villain argument, my friend, but it is wasted on Lucki. She’ll do the rendering herself so long as everyone agrees it’s very heroic and she’s great.

combined with the life energy of humans

So what you’re saying is you’re not Nazis because you’re equal opportunity genociders.

found in Key Stones

WAIT WAIT WAIT

“Key Stones” are what the human side of the mega stones are called for no discernible reason and which I generally ignore.

I mean yes probably this is them being totally Nazis and this will involve some negligible mega stone energy non-sacrifice from the human side, but that’s not important. There’s the Odd Keystone that summons a spiritomb that lives in an odd keystone. It’s not even a coincidence because that’s exactly what the Sea Mauville people were screwing with while working on the genocide stuff there! And the “energy” in that is ghosts, and whatever the ghost type is seem to be formed from humans and not pokemon. (At the least, I don’t believe there’s any reference to ones suggesting they started off live pokemon, while there’s multiple ones connected to humans.

So it’s not “life energy”, they’re burning our immortal souls. To power lightbulbs and cellphones.

….there is actually a Junji Ito comic about that.

The keystone connection suggests that the mega stone thing itself has some sort of soul/ghost aspect, with the “odd keystone” being a broken version where those ghosts are spilling out chaotically rather than working as they should. Hm.

We will start off by artificially replicating the massive energy that is triggered at the time of Mega Evolution!

See, that just suggests further that it’s not a healthy thing to be putting your pokemon through.

Well, if we go with the idea that training is all about stockholming your slaves to be more useful, the idea mega evolution is a sign of high bond works quite well, you have to have a strong connection with your pokemon to get it to perform the dangerous and likely painful mega evolution but you have to lack any corresponding connection or you wouldn’t do it to your pokemon in the first place. Lucki’s failing as a trainer isn’t that she doesn’t care about her pokemon, it’s that her ability to manipulate them isn’t enough to keep them from realizing.

Combining this with the game’s plot and an actually decent protagonist trainer could make for some fun. Trainer finds themself in situations where mega evolution is actually needed for some good, not just to win a trophy, but struggles with the question if it they should do it and if their judgement can even be trusted after a life surrounded by people who use mega evolution for the slightest gain.

We will fire the energy produced from our rocket into space… And create a “warp hole”.

…oh, is that where the vortex ring originates?

By creating a warp hole in the path of the incoming meteoroid, we hope to be able to transport it somewhere far away from here.

Hm. Counterargument: pokemon are more durable than humans and the fact Groudon waking up and screwing with the climate somehow made more pokemon spontaneously appear suggests they weather adversity pretty well regardless of what you lot claim about it being the result of catching it, and killing all humans is starting to look like a net positive in total murders per week, so maybe instead we could not create the warp hole and we just all burn.

(Unrelated but fun idea – they transport it into the past, causing whatever cataclysm crashed the civilization of the first humans who colonized this planet with their fancy space tech. They could easily have used their rockets to redirect any regular meteorite, but having one appear out of nowhere into their atmosphere was too much even for them.)

As a master of fact, this technology already exists

Hey, or what if the vortexes are them locking away the legendaries so the pokemon gods can’t kill them for what they do?

and has been incorporated in some of our commonly used devices.

Oh you’re just talking about the whole everything is genocide revelation.

An exclamation mark appears over his head and then he spins around like a top.

I think you know what I mean, says what I can only assume is the demon possessing Cozmo, probably as his head continues to rotate independently. Being super evil lowers your moral fiber and makes you more digestible to demons. With how evil he is, he could’ve been possessed ages ago and the demon was just biding its time.

Those panels that spin you about and then out you come, warped to another spot.

Okay, so either Silph is also running on genocide despite it being a plot point that they actually did have morals OR it’s trivial to do with without needing mass graves full of pikachu and Devon just didn’t bother.

I imagine you’ve stepped on a few such?

Oh god Lucki that can’t have been good for your soul. Maybe that’s why everyone’s awful, they’ve been getting mutilated disintegrating souls pumped through them whenever that happens.

I must say, some great elements of a villain speech here. “I imagine you’ve stepped on a few such?” is such a great Omelas sort of line – that you’ve just discovered the status quo is maintained by horror but aren’t you already complicit by living a life built atop it, and if you are, and if that’s already tainted you, then why make a big deal, why argue, why try to do anything about it?

An audacious plan… says Steven because he’s an amoral fucker. And using such technology you would… May I ask exactly where the asteroid will be warped to?

Their political enemies? N? Can’t see N being happy with this. Where are you, N?

Well. We’re not entirely sure, but…

Not us so who cares really.

We do have a device that links the warp holes. We’ve named it the Link Cable. But there’s no need to worry. Based on our theory, we can at least guarantee that we will be sending it far away from our planet. However, we’ve realized that we will need far more energy than originally anticipated to control the Link Cable properly…

See, in a proper villain speech, this would be slowly trying to get you to buy into the whole sunk cost fallacy – first that well, they already murdered the pikachu, might as well not waste it, and then once you accept this, well, by the way, gotta murder another few hundred, but hey, if we don’t then the first murders will just go to waste, so…

I’m sorry to ask this of you, but with one more Meteorite Shard…

What the hell is in these things that they’re interchangeable with pikachu furnace energy? Are they getting spat out from Hell or something?

Everyone then looks around and gets question marks over their heads and oh thank god Zinnia’s here please tell me whatever non-evil plan you think I’m following so I can do that instead.

Nice! So this is the heart of the famous Space Center everyone talks about! Pretty impressive, huh, Aster?

Mur mur mur!

She is followed up by the lady whose job it is to stand at the bottom of the stairs.

Excuse me! Young lady! You can’t just let yourself in here!

So Zinnia has done what every player has always dreamed of and just walked past the damn NPC.

Oh? Where’s the harm in it? Don’t be such a stick in the mud! (Music note)

I must agree that given we’re currently measuring harm in kilonazis, it’s unlikely anything like this could even register.

She then walks up to the lady. Right?

And the woman backs away. Ugh…

Not sure what that was! Anyway, the rest of the gang heads over.

Who…are you? asks Steven. You’re not sightseer…

Oh me, we do seem to keep running into one another, says Zinnia. You are a busy gal, Lucki.

!!!!!!

EVERYONE DID YOU SEE HOW THE NPC IGNORED THE OTHER NPC TO PAY ATTENTION TO ME, INSTEAD OF THE EXACT OPPOSITE?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Cozmo hops up and down while spiky-screaming, Wh-who are you?! What’re you doing here?!

Me? I’m Zinnia. Just your regular ol’ tourist, nothing more. Dreaming of taking a little trip into space… Heh. She turns to face the screens. Oh, I seeeeee… So this is what has come of human technology and of hope and blood and sweat and tears and… Well, the list gets kinda long and boring. But it contains everything, huh? I know all about it. About just what kinda energy you’re using to fuel this rocket this…

And the fact you make a big deal suggests that it really isn’t common knowledge! Yay!

The abominable technology humanity first thought up 3,000 years ago…

Doesn’t it really seem like this was supposed to be the first reveal, where the player realizes what the “infinite energy” their allies were babbling on about actually was, rather than hearing about it right from the start and then having to go along with it anyway until someone comes along to point out that genocide energy is made of genocide?

So you’re once again planning to claim that this is best for humanity, or best for the whole darn world… It’s a snap of your fingers to repeat the sins of the past. Worse, if what I overheard was true… This time, you’re about to commit an error more abominable than before!

Actually, Zinnia, it’s way worse than that! They’ve been doing this the whole time and not even as like a warcrime thing but just whenever for any reason at all! For three generations straight! All their machines are already running on the stuff!

(Seriously wtf is with this? Everything else is even written like they did it the sane way of Devon just having the evil blueprints on hand in a locked bunker somewhere that they pulled out for the meteor. But they didn’t! Why didn’t they? Why won’t they stop telling us everything is made of dead pikachu?)

Steven speaks up. Shut up, Steven. Tell me, would you rather we sit here wringing our hands, waiting for that meteorioid to strike us? Yeah, that’d be a lot more convincing if it wasn’t that you guys are just planning on temporarily reorienting the existing ever-running genocide engine to a more useful task, so yes, this is utterly deserved by all of you. If I figure out a way to stop it, I’m going to ask all of you be loaded into a cannon and shot into it first.

Ahahahaha! What’s up with that? replies Zinnia. You’re a pretty simple guy for a former Pokemon League Champion.

Going by the idea mega evolution is itself an evil, quite possibly the position selects for sociopathy.

Then I guess I’ll hang my hopes on what our current Champion will have to say.

ZINNIA’S PLAN ZINNIA’S PLAN

So how about it, Lucki?

YES YOUR PLAN LET’S DO THAT

What is it?

What do you think? Do you have some better idea?

No, but you do, right?

Zinnia it’s a videogame with a mute protagonist I can’t actually have ideas, just pick what’s put out in front of me.

You bet I do!
I’ve got nothing…

Hm. Well, my better idea is Zinnia’s plan, so – yes! I do! It has something to do with Rayquaza? I can also just give you my precious Groudon for whatever your Plan A was. Or go Latios flying, release Groudon to inexplicably float on the air as all battles do, and have him punch the meteorite as it comes down. Also, like, there’s apparently legendaries all over, and I could just keep collecting them and throw all of them at the problem at once. That’d make those actually tie into the plot, which you’d think they must after just Groudon was such a big deal. So lots and lots of better ideas. Who ever thought the last resort evil plan should be our first option?

Though admittedly the evil of the specific plan is questionable when it’s not clear if it actually involves more genocide than regular business as usual with Devon.

Oooh! Really? Well, that’s promising… You’ll have to tell me so we can set these guys straight.

ZINNIA NOW IS NOT THE TIME FOR GAMES THEY’VE PROBABLY ALREADY CALLED SECURITY OR SOMETHING TELL ME THE PLAN

Look, I’m not here to criticize the way you guys are looking at this.

Yeah, I mean, there’s so many higher priority things to criticize, like the pure evil.

But I want to be sure you’ve thought this through well and good. You know, there are necessary sacrifices, and there are unnecessary sacrifices.

An especially good point when what people are calling the “necessary sacrifice” doesn’t involve any sacrifice on their own part.

What a disappointment! This is the best you could do with all your knowledge and technology?

Zinnia, I know it looks bad, but this really isn’t a technology and knowledge thing. Silph totally doesn’t have any pikachu furnaces I’m pretty sure. These guys, instead of really inventing stuff, just piggybacked off something invented thousands of years ago and used that to brute-force everything else. Their actual technology is probably the least efficient on the planet. Like imagine what mill design would be like if everyone else was using waterwheels and one group had a nuclear reactor. Their mills would probably be really shitty. Now imagine that the nuclear reactor group appears to not even be doing any better than the waterwheel guys we see in all the other regions and possibly worse. How unspeakably shitty must their mill be? It probably works by overloading the reactor and using the explosion to lift the rock that then crushes some grain when it lands.

I mean, did you know, Steven’s been calling on a one-way not-cellphone and he actually sounded proud of the fact they’d managed to invent even that much. Like what the hell even. Over in Kalos where this genocide stuff was totally taboo, they have six way video-hologram cellphones!

Technology is good. Devon is bad at technology.

Instead of trying to make something outta nothing, you’d rather repeat the mistakes of the past, straight up?

God damn you Lucki tell her about the fact that their entire company is that ongoing mistake already.

No, you’re gonna add new mistakes on top–that really takes the cake.

Hm. Well, maybe we shouldn’t tell her because she seems like she might be a bit upset to learn that she wasn’t in time to do anything about the genocide and also it wasn’t a genocide but many, many genocides and there’s another one happening as we speak just for those glowing monitors over there. That’s probably the sort of thing normal people don’t like. Instead, we’ll just quietly kill everyone ourselves and never tell her.

You guys need some imagination.

… says Cozmo, perhaps trying to think of where to start on the “we totally have already been doing that for three generations actually” thing. Lucki, ready Groudon to eat him.

An exclamation mark pops over her head. Oops! But you were all in the middle of a conversation or something, right? Sorry about that.

Oh god is Zinnia going to leave again? Am I still trapped in the genocide fetch quest?

I guess we’ll just let ourselves out, then.

NO ZINNIA DON’T LEAVE ME WITH THEM

C’mon, Aster.

Mur mur mur!

noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Steven wants to talk more but I must mourn Zinnia abandoning me again for a while before I can possibly continue.