The glow of a Nintendo Switch Lite—the cheap one, the yellow one with the slightly cracked screen protector that had been "fine, it's fine, it still works"—illuminated the face of Marcus Alden Webb, age twenty-four, sitting in a beanbag chair that had long since lost any structural integrity and was now essentially a fabric puddle filled with sadness and polystyrene beads.
Marcus was not, by any reasonable metric, having a good night.
Oh, the game was going fine. Better than fine. The game was going spectacularly, because Marcus was currently in the process of speed-demolishing Cyrus's entire team atop Spear Pillar with a Garchomp he had over-leveled to the point of absurdity, and the blue-haired nihilist's Pokémon were dropping like flies in a microwave. But everything around the game—the context, the vibes, the general state of Marcus's existence as a human being in the year of our Lord—was, to put it charitably, suboptimal.
His phone had been buzzing for the last forty-five minutes.
Not the good kind of buzzing. Not the "hey man, want to grab food" kind of buzzing, or the "your package has been delivered" kind of buzzing, or even the "a Nigerian prince needs your help" kind of buzzing, which at least would have been entertaining. No. This was the Twitter kind of buzzing, which was the worst kind of buzzing, because it meant that people on the internet were Wrong and they were being Wrong at him specifically.
It had started, as all terrible things start, with a single innocuous post.
He had written, at approximately 8:47 PM Eastern Standard Time, the following:
"Pokemon Legends Z-A looks incredible and I cannot WAIT to play it. The trailer gave me chills. Actual chills. Lumiose City redesign? Chef's kiss. Mega Evolution returning? I'm going to CRY. This is going to be the best Pokemon game in years."
This, apparently, was a declaration of war.
Within minutes—minutes—his notifications had become a warzone. A digital Verdun. A pixelated Somme. People he had never met, would never meet, and frankly hoped to never meet were crawling out of the algorithmic woodwork to inform him, in no uncertain terms, that he was Wrong, that Legends Z-A was going to be Terrible, and that the primary evidence for this assertion was—
Graphics.
Graphics.
"The textures look muddy," said someone with an anime profile picture and zero media literacy.
"It literally looks like a PS2 game," said someone who had clearly never seen a PS2 game in their natural life, because PS2 games looked like someone had rendered a human face using exclusively triangles and a vague sense of optimism.
"Game Freak is lazy and the graphics prove it," said someone whose entire posting history was complaining about things they claimed to not care about.
Marcus had stared at these replies with the hollow, thousand-yard gaze of a man who had been through this exact same discourse cycle approximately forty-seven thousand times before. He had typed out a response, deleted it, typed another one, deleted that one too, and then finally settled on the response that would define the rest of his evening:
"Graphics mean literally nothing to me. I play games on an iPhone SE—the old one, the SMALL one—and a Switch Lite with a cracked screen protector. I have played Breath of the Wild at what I'm fairly certain was twelve frames per second and had the time of my life. I played Legends Arceus and the draw distance was so bad that Pokémon were rendering in at like fifteen feet away like they were emerging from the fog in Silent Hill and I STILL gave it a 9/10. Fun is fun. Enjoyment is enjoyment. If a game is good, I do not care if it looks like it was rendered on a TI-84 calculator. I will play it. I will love it. I will put two hundred hours into it. Die mad about it."
This, predictably, had made things worse.
But Marcus didn't care. Marcus had stopped caring about Twitter discourse approximately three years ago, right around the time someone had tried to convince him that Pokémon Scarlet and Violet were "actually masterpieces" and he had laughed so hard he'd pulled a muscle in his abdomen.
Because oh, oh, Marcus had opinions about Pokémon Scarlet and Violet.
He minimized his Twitter notifications—he didn't mute them, because he was a masochist, but he minimized them—and returned his attention to Pokémon Platinum, where his Garchomp had just used Earthquake on Cyrus's Honchkrow and reduced it to a fine paste.
"See, Cyrus," Marcus muttered to his screen, tapping the A button with the kind of aggressive nonchalance that only comes from fighting a boss you've already mentally defeated, "this is what a good Pokémon game looks like. This is storytelling. This is atmosphere. You know what Spear Pillar has that the entirety of Paldea doesn't? A point."
He was ranting to himself. He knew he was ranting to himself. This was fine. This was normal behavior. Everybody talked to their video games. Probably.
"You know what Gen 9 had?" he continued, as Cyrus sent out his Weavile and Marcus's Garchomp prepared to turn it into a cautionary tale. "An empty open world. An empty. Open. World. Do you know how hard it is to make an open world empty? Other games struggle to fill their open worlds and still manage to put something in them. A rock. A tree. A mysterious old man who gives you a side quest about his missing cat. Something. But Paldea? Paldea looked like someone had generated a terrain map, scattered some Pokémon on it like sprinkles on a cupcake that was ninety percent frosting and zero percent cake, and then said 'ship it.' There was nothing there. You could walk for ten minutes in any direction and find nothing. Just grass. Just empty, barren, soulless grass stretching to the horizon, rendered at a resolution that made your eyes water."
Earthquake. Weavile down.
"And Area Zero!" Marcus's voice rose in pitch, which was impressive given that it was already at a pitch usually reserved for people who had strong opinions about Star Wars. "Area Zero! The big mysterious crater at the center of the map! The final dungeon! The culmination of the entire story! And what did it have? What Pokémon were lurking in the depths of this ancient, primordial, supposedly terrifying place?"
He paused for dramatic effect, even though no one was listening.
"The worst-designed Pokémon in the history of the franchise. Bar none. The Paradox Pokémon looked like someone had taken existing Pokémon, run them through three different AI art generators simultaneously, and then picked the results that made the least anatomical sense. Great Tusk looked like Donphan had been left in the microwave. Iron Bundle looked like Delibird had been redesigned by someone who had only ever had Delibird described to them over a bad phone connection. And don't even get me started on Walking Wake, which looked like Suicune had gotten into a fight with a lawnmower and lost."
Cyrus sent out Crobat.
Marcus paused.
He stared at the screen.
He stared at the Crobat.
He stared at Cyrus's dialogue box, which read something about the uselessness of emotions and the imperfection of the human spirit.
"Cyrus," Marcus said slowly, leaning forward in his beanbag puddle. "Cyrus, my guy. My dude. My brother in nihilism. You have spent the entire game—the ENTIRE game—giving speeches about how emotions are worthless. How the human spirit is flawed. How love and compassion and friendship are chains that bind us to an imperfect world, and that only by creating a new universe—a universe without spirit, without emotion, without the messy, complicated, feeling parts of existence—can perfection be achieved. That is your whole thing. That is your entire character motivation. You want to unmake reality because you think feelings are bad."
He gestured at the screen with his free hand, nearly knocking over a half-empty can of Mountain Dew that had been sitting on the floor next to him for an indeterminate number of hours.
"So why," he continued, his voice dropping to a whisper that somehow contained more intensity than most people's shouting, "do you have a Crobat?"
The Crobat on screen flapped its wings cheerfully—well, as cheerfully as a Crobat could flap, which was more "menacingly" than "cheerfully," but the point stood.
"You cannot get a Crobat," Marcus explained to the fictional character who could not hear him, "without raising a Golbat's happiness. Friendship. Affection. You have to make that Golbat love you. You have to pet it and feed it and walk with it and battle with it and do all the warm, fuzzy, emotionally rich things that you have spent forty hours of gameplay telling me are the root of all suffering. So either—" He held up one finger. "—you are a massive hypocrite who actually does care about your Pokémon and this entire plan is an elaborate cry for help, which, honestly, tracks, given your backstory—or—" He held up a second finger. "—Game Freak is absolutely terrible at writing cohesive character narratives, which also tracks, given that this is the same company that wrote the Team Star storyline."
He returned both hands to his Switch and selected Earthquake again.
"Oh, Team Star," he groaned, as the attack animation played and Crobat's HP bar evaporated like morning dew on a hot sidewalk. "Team Star. The great antagonists of Generation Nine. A group of bullied kids who formed a gang to stand up against their oppressors. Except—and here's the thing—they weren't actually bullied. At worst—at absolute worst—they were teased. A little bit. Mildly. The game bends over backwards to show you flashbacks of their 'terrible suffering' and it's like... someone made fun of Eri's hair? Mela got called weird? That's the traumatic backstory that justifies forming an entire criminal organization and taking over sections of the school? I got called worse things in a single game of Call of Duty. These kids weren't bullied, they were mildly inconvenienced, and the game wants me to feel sympathy for them as if they went through some Dickensian nightmare when in reality their villain origin story is 'someone was mean to me once in homeroom.'"
Crobat fainted. Cyrus sent out Gyarados.
"And the structure!" Marcus was fully ranting now, his voice echoing off the walls of his small apartment with the fervor of a man who had been holding this in for far too long. "They said—they SAID—you could tackle the three storylines in any order! 'Freedom!' they said. 'Player choice!' they said. 'A TRUE open-world Pokémon experience!' they said. And that was a lie. A bald-faced, bare-knuckled, brazen lie. Because you couldn't do them in any order. You had to do the first gym to unlock the Team Star bases. You couldn't do the Titan storyline without doing a bunch of gyms first because the Titans were level-gated to match gym progression. The whole thing was linear. It was a linear game wearing an open-world costume. It was linearity in drag. And nobody called them on it! Well, some people called them on it. I called them on it. On Twitter. Which is why people are now yelling at me about Legends Z-A graphics, because the internet has the memory of a goldfish with a concussion."
Garchomp used Dragon Claw. Gyarados went down like a sack of particularly aquatic bricks.
"And Nemona!" Marcus practically spat the name. "Nemona! The 'rival'! The 'friend'! The most annoying character in Pokémon history, and I say that in a franchise that includes Hop, who at least had the decency to have a character arc. Nemona was just... there. Constantly. Relentlessly. Popping up every twelve seconds like a caffeinated jack-in-the-box to tell you how EXCITED she was about BATTLING and how she COULDN'T WAIT to fight you and oh WOW you're SO STRONG and let's BATTLE AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN. She had the personality of a golden retriever that had been given espresso and a Pokédex. She was exhausting. She was inescapable. She was the human equivalent of a pop-up ad that you couldn't close because the X button was hidden behind another pop-up ad."
Cyrus sent out his final Pokémon—Houndoom. Marcus almost felt bad. Almost.
"And don't even get me started on Terastallizing," he muttered, selecting Earthquake one final time. "Oh wow, my Pokémon gets a crystal hat. A sparkly little tiara. And a type change. Revolutionary. Truly groundbreaking game design. Mega Evolution gave your Pokémon entirely new forms, new abilities, new stat distributions, new everything. Z-Moves were at least dramatic. Dynamaxing was stupid but at least it was big stupid—your Pokémon got enormous, there were raid battles, it was a spectacle. But Terastallizing? Your Pikachu puts on a little crystal birthday hat and becomes a Water type. Wow. I am overwhelmed with innovation. Truly, Game Freak has outdone themselves. Someone get Shigeru Miyamoto on the phone, because this is what peak game design looks like—a hat. A hat."
Earthquake connected. Houndoom collapsed. The battle was over.
Cyrus stood there, on Spear Pillar, defeated, the swirling vortex of Giratina's portal looming behind him, and Marcus stared at his sprite with a mixture of contempt and grudging respect.
"You know what really gets me about you, Cyrus?" Marcus said, leaning back in his beanbag. "Your team is actually good. Like, genuinely good. Honchkrow, Weavile, Crobat, Gyarados, Houndoom—that's a solid, well-rounded team with excellent type coverage. Dark, Flying, Ice, Water, Fire, Poison—you've got answers for a lot of threats. On paper, you should be one of the hardest boss fights in the game."
He shook his head.
"But you're not. Because you're an idiot. You're one of the easiest bosses in Pokémon history, and it's not because of your Pokémon—it's because of you. Because you, Cyrus, leader of Team Galactic, the man who wants to literally unmake reality and rewrite the universe from scratch, decided that the best way to achieve this goal was to stand at the top of a mountain and politely send out your Pokémon one at a time to fight a child."
Marcus threw his hands up.
"You're trying to END THE UNIVERSE, Cyrus! You are attempting to DESTROY ALL OF REALITY! And you're still following the rules? You're still doing the whole 'I choose you, Honchkrow, please fight this child's dragon in a fair and honorable one-on-one battle' routine? WHY? Send out all six! At once! Forget the rules—you're abolishing reality, the Pokémon League rulebook is the least of your concerns! Attack the trainer directly! You have a Gyarados—have it use Hydro Pump on the ten-year-old! You have a Honchkrow—have it divebomb the child! You are literally planning to erase the current universe from existence, which means every living thing in it is going to die anyway, so ending one particularly troublesome kid shouldn't even register as a moral dilemma for you! It should be a Tuesday!"
He stared at the screen as Cyrus delivered his post-defeat monologue about the imperfection of the world and the inevitability of his vision.
"You're a clown, Cyrus," Marcus said flatly. "A well-dressed, philosophically interesting, team-building-savant clown, but a clown nonetheless."
He pressed A to advance the dialogue.
And then he pressed A again.
And then—
The screen froze.
Not the normal kind of freeze, where the game hitches for a second and then continues. Not even the bad kind of freeze, where the game locks up and you have to restart and lose your progress and contemplate the fleeting nature of all things. This was something else entirely. The screen didn't go black, didn't show an error message, didn't do any of the things a frozen screen was supposed to do. Instead, it turned white. A pure, absolute, blinding white that seemed to emanate not just from the screen but from within it, as if the Switch itself had become a miniature sun, a handheld supernova, a pocket-sized Big Bang.
Marcus squinted. "What the—"
The light intensified.
"Okay, that's—that's really bright, that's—"
It got brighter.
"Is my Switch exploding? Is this a battery thing? Because I swear to God, if Nintendo's hardware kills me, I'm going to haunt Shigeru Miyamoto's—"
The light consumed everything.
Not metaphorically. Not poetically. Everything. The beanbag, the Mountain Dew, the apartment, the walls, the floor, the ceiling, the concept of floors and ceilings as architectural features—all of it dissolved into white, pure and total and absolute, and Marcus felt himself dissolving with it, his body coming apart not painfully but thoroughly, like sugar in hot water, like morning fog in sunlight, like a save file being corrupted by a power surge.
His last coherent thought, before coherent thoughts became a luxury he could no longer afford, was: I swear to God, if I get isekai'd into Gen 9, I'm going to lose my entire mind.
And then there was nothing.
And then, after a period of nothing that lasted either an eternity or a fraction of a second or possibly both simultaneously—
There was something.
The something was cold.
That was the first thing Marcus noticed. Not the existential cold of the void, not the metaphorical cold of despair, but actual, physical, biting cold—the kind of cold that crawled into your bones and set up a timeshare. The kind of cold that made your breath visible. The kind of cold that suggested, strongly and without ambiguity, that wherever he was, it was not his apartment in suburban Maryland.
The second thing Marcus noticed was that he was standing up.
This was unusual, because the last thing he remembered doing was sitting down, and in his experience, the transition between sitting and standing typically involved a conscious decision and at least a moderate amount of effort, neither of which he had provided.
The third thing he noticed was that he was wearing a suit.
Not his clothes. Not his comfortable, lived-in, slightly stained hoodie and sweatpants combo that he had been wearing for—he preferred not to think about how long he had been wearing them. A suit. A well-tailored, dark grey suit with a high collar and silver trim, the kind of suit that said "I am a person of consequence" and "I have opinions about architecture" and "I have never once in my life worn sweatpants."
The fourth thing he noticed was his hands.
They were not his hands.
Marcus's hands were soft, slightly pudgy, with bitten nails and a callus on his right thumb from years of pressing buttons on controllers and handheld consoles. These hands were different. These hands were pale—pale pale, the kind of pale that suggested their owner had a complicated relationship with sunlight—and long-fingered and elegant in a way that Marcus's hands had never been and would never be.
The fifth thing he noticed was his reflection.
There was a window to his left—a large window, floor-to-ceiling, looking out over a cityscape that he recognized instantly, because he had seen it rendered in pixels approximately ten thousand times: Veilstone City. The Galactic Veilstone Building. The headquarters of Team Galactic.
And in the reflection in that window, staring back at him with an expression of flat, affectless calm that did not even remotely match the internal screaming that was currently happening inside his skull, was Cyrus.
Cyrus.
Blue hair—that distinctive, spiky, angular blue hair that looked like it had been styled by a geometry textbook. Sharp features. Pale skin. Dark eyes that managed to convey absolutely no emotion whatsoever despite the fact that, behind them, Marcus's consciousness was currently experiencing the psychological equivalent of a five-car pileup on a major interstate.
"Oh," said Marcus.
Except it wasn't Marcus's voice that came out. It was Cyrus's voice—deep, measured, utterly devoid of warmth, the vocal equivalent of a concrete wall in winter.
"Oh no," he said again, and even the "no" came out sounding not panicked but contemplative, as if he were making a philosophical observation about the nature of negation rather than experiencing the kind of dawning horror that typically accompanies the realization that you have been reincarnated as a fictional nihilist.
He lifted his—Cyrus's—hands and looked at them. He touched his—Cyrus's—face. He patted his—Cyrus's—hair, which was, against all reason and physics, exactly as spiky and structurally unsound as it looked in the games.
"This is..." he began, and then stopped, because what came out of his mouth next was not what he intended to say. What he intended to say was "this is insane, what the hell is happening, I need to sit down, I need a drink, I need an adult." What came out, in Cyrus's flat, authoritative monotone, was:
"...an unexpected deviation from the predicted parameters of existence."
Marcus blinked.
He tried again. "What I mean is, I'm freaking out—"
"What I mean is," his mouth said, with precisely zero input from the panicking consciousness behind it, "the current situation presents variables that were not accounted for in my original calculations."
"No, that's not—I'm trying to say that I'm scared—"
"The current emotional response is... noted... and deemed irrelevant to the operational framework."
"STOP THAT," Marcus screamed internally, and what came out was:
"Enough." Flat. Cold. Final. The kind of "enough" that ended conversations, silenced rooms, and made small children cry.
He stood there for a moment, Cyrus's body rigid and composed, while inside, Marcus's transplanted consciousness ran around in circles like a Pachirisu that had gotten into the espresso.
Okay, he thought, since at least his thoughts were still his own. Okay. Let's... let's process this. I was playing Pokémon Platinum. I was fighting Cyrus. My Switch did something weird. There was a bright light. And now I'm... Cyrus. I am Cyrus. The leader of Team Galactic. The man who wants to destroy the universe and rebuild it without emotion. I am that man. I am inside that man's body. I am—
He caught his reflection again and paused.
Actually, I look kind of good. The suit is nice. The hair is... a choice, but it's a committed choice, and I respect commitment. I'm taller than I was. I have cheekbones. I've never had cheekbones before. These are good cheekbones. These are "could cut glass" cheekbones. These are—
Focus, Marcus. FOCUS.
He turned from the window and surveyed the room. It was an office—Cyrus's office, presumably, at the top of the Galactic Building. Sparse. Minimalist. Every surface clean, every object precisely placed, every angle exact and deliberate. It was the kind of room that had never once contained a beanbag chair, and it was, Marcus had to admit, the kind of room that suited a man who wanted to erase the imperfect universe and start over. No clutter. No personality. No warmth.
There was a desk—large, dark, immaculate—with a computer terminal on it. There was a chair behind the desk that looked like it had been designed by someone who believed comfort was a moral failing. There were no personal items. No photographs. No decorations. No indication that a human being occupied this space, rather than a particularly fastidious robot.
Okay, Marcus thought. So I'm Cyrus. At the beginning of Platinum, presumably, given that I'm in the Galactic Building and nothing has exploded yet. I have... Cyrus's body. Cyrus's voice. Cyrus's apparent inability to express a single goddamn emotion verbally. But I have my memories, my personality, my—
A knock at the door.
Marcus—Cyrus—turned. "Enter," his mouth said, before he could even think about what word to use, and of course it came out sounding like a command from a dictator rather than a casual "come in."
The door opened.
And Marcus's brain shut down.
Not metaphorically. Not in the "oh wow, I'm surprised" sense. His brain actually, genuinely, catastrophically ceased to function for approximately three and a half seconds, because what walked through that door was so thoroughly, completely, impossibly outside the bounds of anything he had expected, anything he had imagined, anything he had ever conceived of as a possibility in any universe, real or fictional, that his neurons simply refused to process the information and went on strike.
It was a woman.
A Team Galactic grunt.
She was wearing the standard Team Galactic uniform—the grey bodysuit with the stylized G on the chest, the white boots, the bowl cut wig—and she was carrying a clipboard, and she had a professional expression on her face, and she said "Commander Cyrus, sir, I have the morning briefing reports," and all of that was normal, all of that was expected, all of that was exactly what a Team Galactic grunt should look like and say and do.
What was not normal—what was so far from normal that normal was a distant speck on the horizon, visible only with a telescope and a generous imagination—was her body.
Marcus had seen a lot of things in his twenty-four years on Earth. He had seen the Grand Canyon. He had seen a double rainbow. He had seen a man eat an entire watermelon at a Fourth of July barbecue in under six minutes. He had seen beauty, he had seen wonder, he had seen things that defied explanation and challenged comprehension.
He had never seen anything like this.
The Team Galactic grunt was thick.
Not "thick" in the colloquial, Instagram-caption, peach-emoji sense. Not the kind of "thick" that gets a few appreciative glances at a beach. No. This woman was thick in a way that challenged the fundamental laws of physics, biology, and structural engineering simultaneously. She was thick in a way that should not have been anatomically possible. She was thick in a way that made Marcus's brain try to calculate the load-bearing capacity of her spine and then give up because the numbers didn't work. Her hips were wide—comically, cartoonishly, catastrophically wide, the kind of wide that meant she had to turn sideways to get through the door, and even then it was a near thing. Her thighs were massive, each one roughly the circumference of a mature oak tree, straining against the fabric of the Team Galactic bodysuit in a way that suggested the suit was fighting a war it could not win. Her rear was—
Marcus's brain tried to find the word. It was not merely large. "Large" was an insult. "Large" was like calling the ocean "damp." It was enormous. It was colossal. It was the kind of asset that had its own gravitational field, its own weather system, its own zip code. It jutted out behind her with a proud, physics-defying majesty that seemed to actively mock Sir Isaac Newton and everything he had ever stood for. It was so pronounced that Marcus was genuinely unsure how she didn't simply topple over backwards every time she stood still.
Her waist, by contrast, was almost impossibly narrow, which only served to accentuate everything above and below it, creating a silhouette that looked like it had been drawn by an artist who had never seen a real human woman but had very strong opinions about what one should look like.
And her chest was—
Oh, Marcus's brain said weakly, oh no.
Her chest was in a similar predicament. The Team Galactic bodysuit—which, in the games, was a fairly modest, functional garment—was here being pushed to the absolute limits of its structural integrity by a bosom that could only be described as "aggressive." Each breast was roughly the size of her head—larger than her head, actually, now that Marcus looked more carefully—and they strained against the grey fabric with a barely contained energy that suggested the zipper was one deep breath away from catastrophic failure. They were round and full and heavy, visibly so, the kind of heavy that made you wonder about back problems and specialized bra fittings and the tensile strength of various textiles.
She was, in summary, built like a cartoon hourglass that had been designed by a committee of deeply unhinged artists, each of whom had been given a different body part to exaggerate and told "more."
She should not have been able to stand up straight.
She should not have been able to walk.
She should not have been able to do anything except exist as a testament to the universe's complete disregard for biomechanical plausibility.
And yet there she was, standing in the doorway, holding her clipboard, looking at him expectantly with an expression that said "I am a professional" despite the fact that everything from the neck down said "I am a violation of the Geneva Convention."
"...Sir?" she said, tilting her head slightly. "The morning briefing?"
Marcus's brain rebooted. Slowly. With visible effort. Like a Windows XP computer trying to load after a crash, complete with the little loading bar and the faint sense of despair.
Say something, he told himself. Say literally anything. Open your mouth and produce words. You are a human consciousness inside the body of a fictional character and there is a woman in front of you whose proportions defy the known laws of physics and she is waiting for you to respond. SAY. SOMETHING.
What came out was:
"The reports are acceptable. Place them on the desk and remove yourself from my presence."
Cold. Efficient. Dismissive. Not a single word out of place, not a single syllable that betrayed the fact that Marcus's internal monologue was currently just the Windows error sound playing on repeat.
The grunt nodded. "Yes, Commander Cyrus, sir!" she said brightly—too brightly, with a warmth and enthusiasm that seemed wildly inappropriate for a woman addressing a man who had explicitly and repeatedly stated that emotions were the enemy of progress. She walked to his desk—and the walk was something, the way her hips swayed with each step was less "walking" and more "geological event," each stride sending ripples through her lower half that were frankly hypnotic—and placed the clipboard on the desk. Then she turned to go.
And stopped.
And turned back.
And smiled at him.
It was a warm smile. A genuine smile. The kind of smile that someone gives to a person they genuinely like, genuinely admire, genuinely adore. It was the kind of smile that had no business being directed at a man whose entire philosophy was built on the rejection of human connection.
"Is there anything else you need, sir?" she asked, and her voice was soft, almost tender, and Marcus's consciousness did a backflip inside Cyrus's skull.
"No," Cyrus's voice said flatly. "Your presence is no longer required. Leave."
Not what Marcus wanted to say. Marcus wanted to say "what is happening, why do you look like that, where am I, is this real, am I dead, is this the afterlife, and if so, who designed this place." But Cyrus's voice didn't do "confused" or "vulnerable" or "having an existential crisis." Cyrus's voice did "cold" and "commanding" and "I would rather gargle battery acid than express a human emotion."
The grunt's smile didn't falter. If anything, it got warmer. "Of course, Commander. I'll be right outside if you need anything." She lingered on the word "anything" in a way that made Marcus deeply uncomfortable and deeply something else that he refused to examine too closely.
She left, her hips performing their own gravitational ballet as she squeezed back through the doorway, and Marcus was alone again.
He stood very still.
He breathed very carefully.
And then, internally, with the full force of his transplanted consciousness, he screamed.
WHAT. THE. ACTUAL. F—
It took Marcus approximately twenty minutes to calm down enough to think coherently.
During those twenty minutes, he paced around Cyrus's office—Cyrus's long legs eating up the distance with efficient, purposeful strides that made him feel like a shark circling a pool rather than a panicking millennial trying to process interdimensional body-swapping—and attempted to catalogue what he knew.
Fact one: I am Cyrus. I look like Cyrus. I sound like Cyrus. I cannot stop sounding like Cyrus. Every word that comes out of my mouth is filtered through some kind of Cyrus-ification process that strips away all warmth, humor, and humanity and replaces it with cold philosophical pronouncements.
Fact two: This is Pokémon Platinum. I am in the Galactic Building in Veilstone City. Based on the briefing reports—which I actually read after the grunt left, because I am nothing if not thorough—we are in the early stages of Team Galactic's plan. The Red Chain has not been forged. The Lake Trio have not been captured. Spear Pillar has not been climbed. I am at the beginning.
Fact three: The women in this universe are... different. From what I expected. From what the games depicted. From what is physically possible in any universe that respects the laws of thermodynamics and skeletal biology.
He paused by the window, staring out at Veilstone City, and noticed—now that he was looking for it—that it wasn't just the grunt. Down on the street, visible from his high vantage point, the women of Veilstone City were all like that. Every single one. The female trainers, the shopkeepers, the random NPCs walking back and forth—all of them possessed the same impossible, reality-warping proportions that the grunt had displayed. Hips that could be measured in feet. Thighs that strained against fabric like trapped animals. Chests that preceded their owners into rooms by a significant margin. Rears that followed their owners out of rooms several seconds after the rest of them had already left.
And the men were... normal. Completely, boringly, unremarkably normal. Average builds, average proportions, average everything.
It was only the women.
Every woman.
What kind of universe IS this? Marcus thought desperately.
He turned from the window and sat down in Cyrus's chair—which was, as he had predicted, approximately as comfortable as sitting on a park bench made of fossilized disapproval—and put his head in his hands.
Okay. Okay. Let's... let's think about this strategically. I'm Cyrus. I'm at the beginning of the game. I know everything that's going to happen because I've played this game approximately forty times. I know about the Red Chain, the Lake Trio, Dialga, Palkia, Giratina, the Distortion World—I know all of it. I have insider knowledge. I have meta-knowledge. I am, effectively, omniscient about the plot of my own story.
Which means... I don't have to follow it.
I don't have to do the evil plan.
I don't WANT to do the evil plan. I don't want to destroy the universe. I LIKE the universe. The universe has pizza and Pokémon games and—well, the universe HAD those things. I'm not sure this universe has pizza. But it probably has something equivalent, and I'd like to keep existing in a universe that has things in it, rather than unmaking reality because I'm emotionally constipated.
So the plan is simple: Don't be evil. Don't capture the Lake Trio. Don't forge the Red Chain. Don't climb Spear Pillar. Don't summon Dialga and Palkia. Don't try to unmake reality. Just... be a guy. A normal guy. Who happens to be the leader of a criminal organization. I can reform Team Galactic. Turn it into something legitimate. A corporation, maybe. A charity. A Pokémon daycare. Something that doesn't involve interdimensional terrorism.
Easy. Simple. Straightforward.
He nodded to himself. Good plan. Solid plan. The kind of plan that a reasonable person would come up with when faced with the choice between "destroy the universe" and "don't do that."
He stood up.
He straightened his suit.
He walked to the door.
He opened it.
On the other side of the door, arranged in a neat row along the hallway, were approximately fifteen Team Galactic grunts, all female, all waiting, all staring at him with expressions of rapt, adoring attention, and all possessing the same catastrophically exaggerated proportions that the first grunt had displayed.
It was like someone had cloned the concept of "thicc" and then told each clone to try harder.
They were, collectively, a structural engineering nightmare. The hallway—which was a standard-width hallway, designed for standard-width humans—was barely containing them. They were wedged in side by side, their hips pressing against each other and against the walls, creating a wall of curves that was less "group of employees" and more "topographical feature." Some of them had turned sideways to fit, which didn't help as much as you'd think, because turning sideways just meant their chests and rears jutted out in opposite directions like the prow and stern of a particularly provocative ship.
"Good morning, Commander Cyrus!" they chirped in unison, with a synchronized enthusiasm that would have been impressive in a military context and was deeply unsettling in the context of a criminal organization led by a man who had explicitly stated, on multiple occasions, that he viewed his subordinates as tools to be used and discarded.
Marcus stared at them.
They stared at him.
Their eyes were shining. With affection. With adoration. With the kind of unconditional, absolute, slightly unhinged devotion that you typically only saw in particularly obsessive fan communities and certain religious movements.
Why, Marcus thought, do they look at me like that? Cyrus—the REAL Cyrus—made it abundantly clear that he doesn't care about Team Galactic. He has said, explicitly, out loud, with his mouth, that they are all expendable. That he would sacrifice every single one of them without hesitation to achieve his goals. That their loyalty is useful but their personhood is irrelevant. He has treated them like furniture—no, worse than furniture, because at least you polish furniture occasionally. He has shown them less warmth than most people show their lawn. And they ADORE him? They look at him like he hung the moon? They greet him in the MORNING like he's a returning war hero?
WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?
"Your... enthusiasm is noted," Cyrus's voice said, because of course it did, "and deemed... unnecessary."
He had tried to say "good morning." He had tried. The words "good morning" had formed in his brain, traveled down the neural pathways to his mouth, and somewhere along the way had been intercepted by whatever cosmic force was running the Cyrus-ification filter and replaced with dismissive coldness.
The grunts did not seem deterred. If anything, his dismissal made them happier. Several of them sighed dreamily. One of them clutched her clipboard to her ample chest and murmured "he's so cool" to the grunt next to her. Another one actually swooned, which, given her proportions, was a seismic event that caused the grunt behind her to stumble.
"Commander Cyrus, sir!" One of the grunts stepped forward—or rather, squeezed forward, her hips brushing against both walls of the hallway as she maneuvered through the crowd of her equally endowed colleagues. She was slightly taller than the others, with short-cropped dark hair beneath her bowl-cut wig and an eager expression that reminded Marcus uncomfortably of a very specific Pokémon rival he did not want to think about. "I have the operational status reports for all Galactic branches!"
She thrust her clipboard toward him, and Marcus tried very hard to maintain eye contact, which was a Herculean effort given that the act of thrusting the clipboard forward had caused a chain reaction of movement across her upper body that was physically impossible to not notice, like trying to ignore an avalanche happening three feet in front of your face.
"Additionally," she continued breathlessly, her eyes wide and gleaming, "I've taken the liberty of preparing a summary of our current resource allocation, a projection of our energy output for the next quarter, and a personalized breakfast selection based on your previously expressed preferences, which are, and I quote, 'I do not care what I eat, sustenance is merely fuel for the body's continued operation,' so I just got you everything on the menu because I wasn't sure which type of 'not caring' you meant!"
Marcus looked at the breakfast cart behind her, which he had not noticed because it had been obscured by the wall of Team Galactic femininity. It was laden with food—eggs, toast, pancakes, rice, miso soup, berries of various Pokémon-universe varieties, coffee, tea, juice, and what appeared to be an entire roasted Combusken, which raised ethical questions that Marcus was not prepared to engage with.
"I..." Marcus began, and tried—really, genuinely, with every fiber of his borrowed being—to say "thank you." Just "thank you." Two words. Two syllables. The most basic expression of gratitude in the human language.
"Adequate," Cyrus's voice said.
The grunt beamed. As if "adequate" were the highest praise conceivable. As if Cyrus had just told her she had single-handedly saved the world. Her face lit up like a Christmas tree, and she actually bounced on her heels, which created a secondary physics demonstration that Marcus had to physically look away from.
"He said 'adequate!'" she whispered to the grunt next to her. "That's the nicest thing he's ever said to me!"
"I'm so jealous," the other grunt whispered back, her own enormous chest heaving with a sigh that strained the limits of her bodysuit's stitching. "Last week he told me my report was 'not entirely useless' and I almost cried."
Marcus—Cyrus—took the clipboard and the breakfast cart and retreated into his office and closed the door behind him and stood there, alone, in the cold, minimalist silence, and thought:
I am in hell.
This is hell.
I have died and I am in hell and the punishment is being trapped in the body of a man who cannot express warmth while being surrounded by women who look like they were designed by a committee of artists who were told "make her thicker" until the word lost all meaning.
He sat down at his desk. He ate some toast—it was good toast, which was somehow the most upsetting thing that had happened so far, because it meant this universe had good toast and therefore destroying it would be an actual loss. He drank some coffee—black, bitter, exactly the kind of coffee that Cyrus would drink, because of course this body rejected sugar and cream the way a vampire rejected sunlight.
And he read the operational reports.
Which was when the true scope of his situation became clear.
Because the reports detailed Team Galactic's current operations, goals, timelines, and personnel, and Marcus read them with the frantic attention of a man who was trying to figure out exactly how far along the "destroy the universe" plan had progressed and whether there was still time to stop it.
The answer was: he was early. Very early. The plan was in its initial stages. The energy extraction from the Valley Windworks had not yet occurred. The Galactic Bomb had not been built. The Lake Trio were still swimming peacefully in their respective lakes, unaware that a blue-haired nihilist had plans to kidnap them and use their psychic essence to forge chains capable of binding gods.
This was good. This meant he had time. Time to dismantle the plan from within. Time to redirect Team Galactic's resources toward something that wasn't cosmic annihilation. Time to—
Wait, Marcus thought, pausing mid-bite of toast. If I stop the plan, Cyrus—me—never goes to Spear Pillar. Never summons Dialga and Palkia. Never gets dragged into the Distortion World by Giratina. Never... confronts the protagonist.
The protagonist.
Oh God.
Dawn. Or Lucas. Whichever one it is. The player character. They're going to start their journey in Twinleaf Town. They're going to get their starter from Professor Rowan. They're going to go on the standard Pokémon journey—eight gyms, the Elite Four, the Champion. And along the way, they're going to run into Team Galactic, because that's how the story goes. And if I'm NOT doing evil things... they'll have nothing to stop. The entire narrative will collapse. The game—this world—might not... WORK.
He set down his toast.
Or maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe this is a real universe now, not a game, and the narrative doesn't need to follow the script. Maybe I can just... live. Be Cyrus. Run Team Galactic as a legitimate organization. Avoid the protagonist entirely. Never climb Spear Pillar. Never destroy anything. Just... exist.
Yeah. That's the plan. Don't be evil.
How hard can it be?
The answer, as it turned out, was: impossibly hard.
It started within the hour.
Marcus had finished breakfast, reviewed the reports, and decided that his first act as the New, Reformed, Not-Going-To-Destroy-The-Universe Cyrus would be to call a meeting of his Commanders and inform them that the plan was off. No more energy extraction. No more Galactic Bombs. No more capturing legendary Pokémon. Team Galactic was going straight.
He stood up from his desk, straightened his suit, and walked to the door of his office with the confident, purposeful stride of a man who was about to change the course of history.
He opened the door.
"Summon the Commanders," he said to the nearest grunt—a woman whose body was doing things to the laws of physics that would have made Einstein weep, and who responded to his command with a breathless "Yes, Commander Cyrus, sir, right away, sir!" accompanied by a full-body salute that caused an earthquake of motion across her torso.
He retreated to his office to wait.
And while he waited, he decided to check on something that had been nagging at the back of his mind since he'd arrived in this body.
He reached for his belt.
Not like that. For his Poké Balls. Cyrus's Pokémon. His team.
He found them clipped to his belt—five Poké Balls, each one polished and precisely positioned. He unclipped them, held them in his hands, and then, after a moment of hesitation, tossed them all into the air simultaneously.
Five flashes of light. Five Pokémon, materializing in the confined space of Cyrus's office.
Honchkrow appeared on the desk, ruffling its feathers with aristocratic disdain, looking like a mob boss who had been inconvenienced. It was big—bigger than Marcus had expected, easily three feet tall, with dark plumage that gleamed blue-black in the fluorescent lighting and a "hat" of feathers that looked like it cost more than Marcus's entire wardrobe in his previous life.
Weavile materialized on the floor, sleek and sharp and fast, its claws glinting as it immediately began prowling the perimeter of the room with the focused intensity of a creature that was always, always looking for something to cut. It was smaller than Honchkrow but radiated a menace that more than compensated for its size.
Gyarados was... a problem. Gyarados was a big problem, because Gyarados was twenty-one feet long and Cyrus's office was not twenty-one feet long, and the result was that approximately forty percent of Gyarados was coiled on the floor, thirty percent was draped over the desk, twenty percent was pressed against the ceiling, and the remaining ten percent—specifically, the head, the massive, toothy, rage-filled head—was approximately six inches from Marcus's face, staring at him with the perpetually furious expression that Gyarados had been born with and would die with and would, in the interim, use to terrify everything it ever encountered.
Houndoom appeared in the corner, its skeletal horns gleaming, its tail curling behind it, smoke curling from its nostrils in lazy spirals. It looked like a dog that had been designed by a heavy metal album cover artist, and it was gorgeous, in the way that things that could kill you were often gorgeous.
And Crobat—
Crobat appeared directly above Marcus's head, because Crobat always appeared directly above Marcus's head, because Crobat was, in this universe as in all universes, apparently obsessed with sitting on Cyrus's head.
It landed with a soft fwump, its four wings folding around Marcus's skull like a living hat, its tiny feet gripping his spiky blue hair with a practiced ease that suggested this was not the first time it had done this. Not even close. This was clearly Crobat's spot. This was Crobat's place in the world. This was where Crobat lived now, and it intended to die here, preferably of old age, and preferably while still sitting on Cyrus's head.
"Get off—" Marcus began, and reached up to remove the bat.
"Your position is noted," Cyrus's voice said instead, flat and unamused. "Your defiance of spatial propriety is... predictable."
Crobat chirped happily and nestled deeper into his hair.
Marcus looked at his Pokémon. His team. The team that, in the game, he had just demolished with a single over-leveled Garchomp. And despite everything—despite the insanity of his situation, despite the body he was trapped in, despite the voice that refused to cooperate, despite the fact that he was surrounded by women whose proportions violated several international treaties—he felt a swell of genuine affection.
These were good Pokémon. Great Pokémon. He'd always thought Cyrus had one of the best villain teams in the franchise, and seeing them in person—in the flesh, in three dimensions, breathing and moving and alive—was something else entirely.
Honchkrow preened on the desk, radiating dark elegance.
Weavile prowled, sharp and lethal and beautiful.
Gyarados... existed, enormously, taking up most of the available space and looking angry about it. Or just looking angry in general. It was hard to tell with Gyarados.
Houndoom curled up in the corner, its tail wagging slowly, smoke puffing from its nostrils.
And Crobat sat on his head, warm and content and happy, because Crobat loved him, because Crobat had been raised with enough friendship and affection to evolve from Golbat, because somewhere in Cyrus's cold, emotion-denying heart, there was enough warmth to make a Golbat happy.
Marcus wanted to tell them he loved them.
He opened his mouth.
"Your continued existence serves the operational objectives of Team Galactic," Cyrus's voice said. "Do not interpret proximity as affection. You are tools. Resources. Means to an end. Nothing more."
Every word was a lie. Every single word was an absolute, bald-faced, transparent lie, and Marcus hated it, hated that his mouth produced these cold, sterile dismissals when his heart—or whatever organ was handling emotions in this body—was full of warmth and fondness and the urge to scratch Houndoom behind the ears and tell it it was a good boy.
And the Pokémon?
The Pokémon didn't care.
They didn't flinch. They didn't recoil. They didn't even seem to hear the dismissive words, or if they did, they processed them through some kind of filter that translated "you are tools and resources" into "I love you very much."
Honchkrow cawed softly and hopped closer to him on the desk, its dark eyes warm.
Weavile paused in its prowling and rubbed its head against his leg, purring—could Weavile purr? Apparently in this universe they could—like a razor-sharp cat.
Gyarados lowered its massive head and nuzzled him, which, given the size differential, was less "nuzzle" and more "gently pushed him three feet sideways with its face," but the intent was clear.
Houndoom's tail wagged faster, and it padded over to sit at his feet, looking up at him with eyes full of unconditional love and also literal hellfire.
And Crobat settled more firmly onto his head, wrapping its wings around his skull in what could only be described as a hug.
"This is..." Marcus tried.
"Unacceptable," Cyrus's voice said. "Remove yourselves from my person. Physical contact is—"
None of them moved. They all just... stayed. Close. Warm. Present. As if they had heard this speech a thousand times before—which they probably had—and had long since learned that the words meant nothing. That the cold exterior was just that—an exterior. That somewhere underneath the nihilism and the philosophy and the "emotions are the enemy of progress" rhetoric, there was a person who fed them, and trained them, and kept them warm, and raised a Golbat with enough love to make it evolve.
Marcus gave up trying to push them away and stood there, in the middle of his office, covered in Pokémon, with a Crobat on his head, surrounded by a Gyarados, and thought:
Okay. This part isn't so bad.
The Commanders arrived twenty minutes later.
Marcus had returned his Pokémon to their balls—all except Crobat, who had refused to leave his head and who he had eventually given up on removing, because every time he reached for it, it just chirped and gripped harder, and Cyrus's voice kept saying things like "your insubordination is noted" which Crobat clearly interpreted as "I love you, please stay"—and was sitting behind his desk, trying to project the kind of cold, authoritative presence that a leader of a criminal organization should project, when the door opened and the Commanders of Team Galactic filed in.
And Marcus's brain broke. Again.
Because the Commanders of Team Galactic—Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn—were here. In person. In three dimensions. In this universe.
And they were—
Oh no.
Oh no no no no no.
If the grunts had been thick, the Commanders were beyond. They were beyond thick. They were beyond any word that existed in the English language or any other language or any theoretical language that could be constructed from the phonetic building blocks available to the human vocal apparatus. They were in a category that had no name, because no one had ever needed to name it, because nothing like this had ever existed before in any reality, real or fictional.
Mars came through the door first—or rather, Mars attempted to come through the door first, and the door attempted to accommodate her, and there was a brief, tense negotiation between Mars's hips and the doorframe that ended with Mars winning through sheer determination and the doorframe creaking in protest. She was short—the shortest of the three Commanders—but what she lacked in height, she compensated for with a figure that could only be described as "weaponized curves." Her red hair—the distinctive, sharp, fire-red hair from the games—framed a pretty, sharp-featured face with mischievous eyes, and below that face was a body that looked like it had been sculpted by someone who had strong opinions about the golden ratio and no concept of moderation. Her Team Galactic Commander uniform—the white and grey ensemble with the skirt—was fighting for its life. The skirt, specifically, was engaged in an epic, losing battle against her hips and rear, stretching and straining and clinging in ways that made Marcus want to write a letter of apology to the fabric on behalf of the universe that had done this to it. Her thighs were thick enough that they touched—no, that was an understatement. Her thighs were thick enough that they merged. They were less "two separate limbs" and more "one continuous structure that happened to diverge at the knee." And her chest, barely contained by her uniform top, moved with each step like two planets in synchronized orbit, heavy and round and impossible.
"Commander Cyrus!" Mars chirped, her voice bright and cheerful and utterly at odds with the fact that she worked for a man whose life goal was to destroy all of existence. "Good morning! You look amazing today, sir!"
"I look the same as I look every day," Cyrus's voice replied. "Your observation is irrelevant."
Mars clasped her hands together, her face flushing pink, her chest squishing together between her arms. "He's so cool," she whispered, loud enough for everyone to hear.
Jupiter entered next, and Jupiter was—
Jupiter was tall. Significantly taller than Mars, with long legs that seemed to go on forever, encased in white boots that somehow managed to contain her calves, which were themselves thick and sculpted and powerful-looking. Her purple hair fell around her face in the sharp, angular style from the games, and her expression was cooler than Mars's, more collected, more controlled—but there was a softness in her eyes when she looked at Cyrus that betrayed the composed exterior. She was, if anything, even more impossibly proportioned than Mars—her height seemed to have given the universe more room to work with, and it had taken that opportunity and run with it. Her hips were wider. Her waist was narrower. Her thighs were thicker. Her chest was more. Everything was more. She was "more" given human form. She was "more" wearing a Team Galactic Commander uniform. She was "more" squeezing through a doorway with an expression of practiced nonchalance that suggested she had long since accepted the fact that doorways were her natural enemy.
"Commander," Jupiter said, her voice low and smooth and carrying an undercurrent of warmth that she probably thought she was hiding but was not hiding even slightly. "I trust the morning finds you... well?"
"The morning finds me as it always finds me," Cyrus's voice said. "Occupying a body in a universe that fails to meet even the most basic standards of perfection. Satisfactory is not a state I aspire to."
Jupiter's lips curved into the smallest, most controlled smile Marcus had ever seen. "Of course, Commander. How foolish of me to ask."
She took her position to the left of the desk, and Marcus became acutely aware that she was standing close. Closer than was strictly professional. Close enough that he could smell her perfume—something floral and sharp and probably expensive—and close enough that the sheer presence of her body in his peripheral vision was like trying to ignore a solar eclipse.
Saturn entered last, and Saturn was—
Saturn was the anomaly. Of the three Commanders, Saturn was the only male, and true to the pattern Marcus had already observed, he was boringly, unremarkably normal. Average height, average build, average everything. Blue hair in a bowl cut, calm expression, standard Commander uniform that fit him without incident or struggle or any negotiation with the laws of physics whatsoever.
"Commander Cyrus," Saturn said, with a simple, respectful nod.
"Saturn," Cyrus's voice replied.
That was it. No fanfare. No adoring gaze. Just two men acknowledging each other's existence with the minimum required social interaction, like two acquaintances passing each other in a hallway and doing the polite nod thing.
At least ONE person in this organization is normal, Marcus thought with relief.
The three Commanders arranged themselves in front of his desk—Mars to the right, bouncing on her heels with barely contained energy, her entire body jiggling with each bounce in ways that made Marcus question the structural integrity of her uniform; Jupiter to the left, standing with composed elegance, her arms crossed beneath her chest in a way that pushed things up that did not need to be pushed up; and Saturn in the center, being normal, blessedly, wonderfully normal.
"I have called you here," Marcus—Cyrus—began, and this was it, this was the moment, this was where he told them the plan was off, that Team Galactic was going legitimate, that there would be no universe-destroying, no Lake Trio-kidnapping, no Red Chain-forging—
"I have called you here to discuss an acceleration of our operational timeline."
WHAT?!
Marcus's internal scream could have shattered glass. That was NOT what he had been trying to say! He had been trying to say "I've decided to abandon the plan"! He had been trying to say "we're going straight"! He had been trying to say "let's all just be normal people and maybe open a restaurant or something"!
But the words that had come out—the words that Cyrus's voice had produced, unbidden and unwanted—were the exact opposite. Not only had he not cancelled the plan, he had accelerated it.
"Sir!" Mars perked up, her eyes sparkling. "An acceleration? That's wonderful! I was hoping you'd say that! I've already prepared contingency plans for an expedited timeline!" She pulled a folder from somewhere—Marcus didn't want to think about where she had been keeping a folder, given the tightness of her uniform—and waved it enthusiastically.
"Excellent initiative," Cyrus's voice said, and Marcus wanted to die, because not only was he accelerating the evil plan, he was now praising his subordinates for being prepared to accelerate the evil plan.
No! he screamed internally. NO! I don't want to accelerate anything! I want to STOP! I want to DISBAND! I want to open a Pokémon daycare and live a quiet life and never think about the Red Chain again!
"The Valley Windworks operation will commence ahead of schedule," Cyrus's voice continued, calm and authoritative and completely, utterly outside of Marcus's control. "I want energy extraction to begin within the week. Saturn, you will oversee logistics. Mars, you will handle field operations. Jupiter, you will coordinate intelligence and ensure that the Pokémon League remains unaware of our activities."
"Yes, Commander!" all three said in unison, and Mars actually saluted, which caused a whole situation with her chest that Marcus pretended not to notice.
"Additionally," Cyrus's voice said—and Marcus could feel the words forming, could feel them traveling from whatever cursed part of his brain was generating them, could feel them approaching his mouth with the inevitability of a freight train—"I want increased recruitment efforts. Our numbers are insufficient for the operational scope I am envisioning. I want every city, every town, every route in Sinnoh to know the name of Team Galactic. I want our presence to be felt."
I DON'T WANT THAT! Marcus howled inside his own skull. I WANT THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF THAT! I WANT TO SHRINK! I WANT TO DOWNSIZE! I WANT TO FIRE EVERYONE AND CLOSE UP SHOP AND GO HOME!
"Commander," Jupiter said, and her voice was soft, almost sultry, and she leaned forward slightly, which was a strategic error on Marcus's ability to maintain eye contact, "if I may... your ambition is... inspiring."
The way she said "inspiring" made Marcus's borrowed body temperature increase by approximately three degrees.
"Your admiration is unnecessary," Cyrus's voice said coldly. "Your obedience is what is required."
Jupiter's composure cracked, just slightly, and a faint blush appeared on her cheeks. "Obedience. Of course, Commander. I am... entirely at your disposal."
Marcus wanted to be anywhere else. Literally anywhere. The Distortion World. The bottom of the ocean. Gen 9. He would take Gen 9 over this. He would sit through an entire Nemona dialogue tree if it meant he could stop accidentally being evil and accidentally making beautiful, impossibly-proportioned women blush.
"If there is nothing else," Cyrus's voice said, "you are dismissed."
Mars pouted. Actually pouted. Her lower lip pushed out and her eyes went wide and she looked at him with an expression of pure, unadulterated disappointment, like a child who had been told Christmas was cancelled. "Already? But we just got here! Don't you want to discuss strategy some more? Or... or have lunch? Or—"
"Dismissed," Cyrus's voice repeated, and the word hit the air like a gavel.
Mars's pout deepened. Jupiter's blush faded, replaced by her usual composed mask, though her eyes lingered on Cyrus for a moment longer than was professional. Saturn nodded and turned to leave, because Saturn was normal.
They filed out—a process that took significantly longer than it should have due to the doorway situation—and Marcus was alone again.
Alone with his thoughts.
Alone with the crushing realization that he could not stop being evil.
What just happened? he thought frantically. I tried to CANCEL the plan and I ACCELERATED it instead! My mouth won't cooperate! This stupid Cyrus voice filter doesn't just change HOW I say things, it changes WHAT I say! Every time I try to do something good, something NOT evil, it comes out as the most evil, most Cyrus thing possible!
He stood up and began pacing again, Crobat clinging to his head like a purple security blanket.
Okay. Okay. So I can't verbally cancel the plan. Every time I try to say "let's not be evil," my mouth says "let's be MORE evil." That's... that's a problem. That's a significant problem. But maybe I can work around it. Maybe I can sabotage the plan from within. I'll give orders that SEEM evil but actually undermine the plan. I'll send Mars to the wrong location. I'll have Saturn procure the wrong materials. I'll—
He stopped pacing.
Or... I could just leave. Walk out. Resign. I'm Cyrus. I'm the boss. I can quit whenever I want. I'll just... walk out of the building, hand in my resignation, and go live a quiet life somewhere in Sinnoh. Pastoria City is nice. I could move to Pastoria City and—
He walked to the door. Opened it. Stepped into the hallway.
Thirty Team Galactic grunts turned to look at him, their faces lighting up like he was the sun emerging from behind clouds.
"Commander Cyrus! Where are you going? Can we come? Do you need an escort? I'll carry your things! I'll be your personal attendant!"
The offers came from all directions, a chorus of adoring voices attached to bodies that made the hallway look like a surrealist painting, and Marcus tried—God, he tried—to say "I'm leaving, I'm done, Team Galactic is over, go home."
What came out was:
"I am conducting a personal inspection of our Veilstone operations. All units will maintain their current positions. Any deviation from standard protocol will be met with consequences."
I said the OPPOSITE THING AGAIN!
The grunts snapped to attention—all of them, simultaneously, a synchronized movement that sent ripples through the collective mass of the hallway like a stone dropped in a very curvy pond.
"Yes, Commander Cyrus, sir!"
Marcus—Cyrus—walked past them, his stride long and purposeful and commanding, his face set in an expression of cold authority, Crobat perched on his head like a crown of purple wings, and internally he was screaming.
Every time I try to leave, I give orders! Every time I try to quit, I do MORE WORK! Every time I try to be NOT EVIL, I become MORE EVIL! This universe won't LET me be good! It's like... it's like the narrative NEEDS me to be the villain, and every time I try to deviate from the script, reality course-corrects and shoves me back on track!
He walked through the Galactic Building—which was, he noted, staffed almost entirely by women with the same impossible proportions, all of whom stopped what they were doing to stare at him with adoring eyes as he passed, some of them sighing, some of them whispering to each other, one of them actually fainting—and tried to process the full scope of his predicament.
I am stuck in the body of Cyrus.
I cannot express positive emotions verbally.
I cannot stop being evil.
I cannot quit Team Galactic.
Every woman in this universe looks like they were designed by someone with a very specific and extremely exaggerated aesthetic preference.
All of said women appear to be deeply, obsessively in love with me despite the fact that I—Cyrus—have explicitly told them I don't care about them.
My Pokémon love me unconditionally no matter how mean I am to them.
And I have a Crobat on my head that will not leave.
He reached the ground floor of the Galactic Building and stepped outside into the cold Veilstone air. The sun was bright, the sky was clear, and the streets of Veilstone City were populated by citizens going about their daily lives, many of whom—the female ones, specifically—were built like they had been sculpted by a deity with a very particular artistic vision and unlimited divine clay.
Marcus stood on the steps of the Galactic Building, the crisp Sinnoh wind cutting through his suit, Crobat's wings fluttering slightly atop his head, and stared out at the world—his world, now, for better or worse.
A world he knew the future of.
A world he couldn't stop himself from trying to destroy.
A world full of women who defied physics and loved a man who couldn't love them back—or rather, couldn't say he loved them back, which was entirely different and infinitely more frustrating.
I need a plan, he thought. A REAL plan. Not "destroy the universe." Not "take over Sinnoh"—that would mean dealing with Cynthia, and I have SEEN what that woman's Garchomp does to unprepared challengers, and I am NOT dealing with that. Not "reform Team Galactic"—I've already proven I can't do that because my mouth won't cooperate.
I need a plan that works WITHIN the constraints of this body, this voice, this universe.
I need to figure out how to be a good person... while being Cyrus.
I need to figure out how to say "I love you" to my Pokémon when the best my mouth can manage is "your existence is tolerable."
I need to figure out why every woman within a fifty-mile radius looks at me like I'm the last glass of water in a desert.
And I need to figure out what to do about the protagonist, who is, at this very moment, probably starting their journey in Twinleaf Town, and who will, inevitably, come for me.
He took a deep breath. The cold air filled Cyrus's lungs—which were, he noted, in excellent shape, the lungs of a man who took care of his body even if he didn't care about anything else—and he exhaled slowly.
"The path forward is clear," Cyrus's voice said, unprompted, and Marcus didn't even bother being surprised anymore. "The universe, in its current form, remains... imperfect. But perhaps imperfection is not the void I once believed it to be. Perhaps it is merely... the starting point."
That was actually kind of nice, Marcus thought, startled. Did I just say something that WASN'T completely evil? Did the Cyrus filter actually let something ALMOST philosophical and ALMOST positive through?
Crobat chirped on his head.
Houndoom's Poké Ball vibrated on his belt—not opening, just... vibrating. As if the Pokémon inside could sense his emotional state and was responding to it. As if it was saying, in its own way, I'm here.
Marcus reached up and touched Crobat's wing. The bat leaned into his hand, warm and soft and trusting.
"Your attachment is a weakness," Cyrus's voice said quietly. "One that I have failed to eliminate."
But the way his hand stayed on Crobat's wing—gentle, careful, tender—said something entirely different.
And Crobat, being Crobat, understood the language that mattered.
It settled deeper into his hair, wrapped its wings around his head, and purred—because apparently, in this universe, Crobat could purr too—and Marcus stood on the steps of the Galactic Building, in the body of a villain, in a world he couldn't stop himself from threatening, surrounded by women he couldn't stop himself from dismissing, with Pokémon he couldn't stop himself from verbally abusing—
And he thought:
This is going to be a disaster.
An absolute, unmitigated, catastrophic disaster.
But somewhere, deep in Cyrus's cold chest, in a place that Cyrus probably didn't know existed and that Marcus was only just discovering—
Something warm flickered.
And Crobat purred.
And somewhere in Twinleaf Town, a young trainer was about to begin a journey that would bring them crashing into the orbit of the strangest, most conflicted, most accidentally evil villain in Pokémon history.
And somewhere in Celestic Town, a woman named Cynthia was training with her Garchomp, completely unaware that the leader of Team Galactic had been replaced by a panicking twenty-four-year-old from another dimension who thought she was terrifying.
And somewhere in the depths of the Distortion World, Giratina stirred in its exile, sensing that something in the fabric of reality had shifted—that the man who was supposed to threaten the universe was now a man who didn't want to threaten the universe but couldn't stop threatening the universe—and found, for the first time in its long and lonely existence, that it was... curious.
And the world turned.
And the story began.
END OF CHAPTER ONE