With two Pokemon being treated by Nurse Joy, Mimikyu and Lucas having wandered off somewhere when he wasn’t paying attention, and Marowak trying, and failing, to piece his phone back together at his side, N was not in the best of moods at the moment. It was one thing after the other these last few days, and it was beginning to seriously weigh on him.

  That did not, however, exempt him from his duties. He couldn’t trust the League to handle this Galactic group, not when they were clearly working together, and with Rotom’s ramblings about them destroying the universe fresh on his mind he needed to hear what the Shadows had discovered.

  He could feel them judging him silently. They said not a word, but their eyes expressed an exasperation that he’d somehow gotten into another mess in the single hour they’d been away, and while in the confines of the Pokemon Center no less.

  “If you’re ready now, we’ll begin our report…” the one standing closest to him began.

  He nodded halfheartedly.

  “As far as we are able to ascertain, the Team Galactic member that was spotted outside the observatory is the only one in Pastoria. It is possible that they have some sort of hidden location they’re hiding in, or that they’re blending in with regular people, but the situation here isn’t as bad as Veilstone. There’s no obvious base with their logo plastered on it.”

  N let out a sigh of relief. Perhaps this wouldn’t be so much of a problem then, and he could focus his efforts on the problems within his little friend group.

  “The one we spotted was saying some concerning things, however.”

  “Isn’t everything about them concerning?” They’d certainly left an impression on him in Veilstone.

  “...he was rambling about explosives, Lord N. Something about waiting for a delivery from Veilstone to arrive.”

  N blinked. “You mean like actual explosives? Or a Pokemon using Explosion…?”

  The one to the right spoke up this time. “He wasn’t exactly clear in his intentions, my Lord. He appears to be a madman, quite literally talking to a wall when I overheard him. In my opinion, it would not be unreasonable to assume that this delivery from Veilstone is in fact some sort of explosive device.”

  N grimaced. “Handling some scum who abuse Pokemon is one thing, but bombs…?”

  “Our thoughts exactly, Lord N.” The Shadow on the left took over. “We would be remiss in our duties if we were to allow you to risk your safety in such a way, and getting involved ourselves…”

  “...what exactly are you suggesting?” N reluctantly asked, not liking the conclusion his mind was jumping to.

  “It is our suggestion that you bring this to an outside authority, Lord N.”

  N scoffed. “Who? The League? I saw with my own eyes how the League treated Galactic when faced with their crimes.”

  “I think there’s a difference between overlooking the conflict you were in and allowing them to bomb what–”

  The Shadow grunted as another elbowed him in the gut. “I believe what he means to say is that this Wake figure doesn’t seem the type to let his city get attacked, hidden allegiances or not. And even beyond that, there’s another possibility. During our investigation, we spotted an individual who may be of interest.”

  Someone outside the League with the authority to actually do something? He’d already informed them of how helpless the Veilstone Officer Jenny had been when Lucian decided to mess with their minds. “Who?”

  “There was someone else doing an investigation of his own. With the time available, I wasn’t able to get many details, but I suspect that he’s a member of Interpol.”

  There was a pause as they waited for his thoughts on the matter. N had a slight issue, though.

  “Am I meant to know what Interpol is?”

  A Shadow let out a sigh, he wasn’t sure which one.

  “The international police, shortened to Interpol, is a group responsible for tracking down and arresting criminals who cross region borders.”

  N frowned. “And the League just lets them do that? That’s… surprising.” With how much they liked to abuse their power, he couldn’t see them letting an outside force make arrests. Especially if they were working together with Galactic.

  “The League sees them as a necessity.” A Shadow explained. “If someone commits a crime in say… Kalos, and flees to Unova, then the League and Kalos’ political class are unlikely to allow Jennys on either side to cooperate or share information. They see it as a risk, working with their enemy like that. At the same time, you can hardly just let criminals get away. The League doesn’t want to be where the worst of other regions run to, nor does it want League criminals to escape justice. Interpol operates outside of the system, working not at the behest of any particular region, but with the approval of all of them. They have very strict rules they have to follow because of this, but they do have the power to arrest people. The man we saw could help us.”

  That made some sort of sense, he supposed. But it did raise some concerns. Willingly approaching someone whose job it was to investigate criminal groups…. N by no means thought that Plasma was in the wrong with what they were set to do, but he was well aware that the League would not so easily accept the changes he was bringing. If they played this wrong, this Interpol guy may very well end up investigating them rather than Galactic.

  “Keep an eye out for him. I’m not so sure about approaching him just yet, but I’d like to know a bit about his character if we do need to involve him.”

  They bowed their heads. “Of course, Lord N.”

  There was an awkward pause as they stared at Marowak’s bumbling repair attempts for a moment, and N eventually realized they were waiting for him to talk about what had happened.

  “As you can see, I’m going to need a new phone.”

  “I still think I can fix it!” Marowak chimed in.

  “And if you can, I will appreciate it, Marowak, but this is too advanced for me, and I have fingers.”

  Marowak grumbled something, trying harder to put the pieces back together.

  Something snapped in his grasp, and he let out a little squeak before pretending it hadn’t happened.

  “...if you’re willing to wait a short while, Lord N, I believe the C-Gear is set to be released within the next few weeks. I’ve heard it said that they are… sturdier than any phones currently on the market.”

  N ignored that last part. “Really? We did promise Rotom access to one, so that would work out well…”

  “Lord N,” a Shadow stepped forward, head lowered. “It is not our place to cast judgement on your decisions, but may I advise that you… reconsider allowing Rotom access to any of your devices? It would be unfortunate for a second one to end up like that.”

  “No, no, that wasn’t…” he hesitated. “That wasn’t entirely Rotom’s fault. Mawile is the one who bit down on it, even if Rotom was acting…”

  “Rotom was being mean,” Marowak finished with a pout.

  Not that the Shadows could understand him.

  “Rotom was being… accusatory and erratic, after we were presented with a problem with Lucas’ Porygon.”

  The Shadows turned to each other for a moment. “When did the boy get a Porygon?”

  N awkwardly laughed. “That’s, ah, part of the problem…”

  The conversation was interrupted by the door opening, Mimikyu making his way inside before closing it behind him.

  “I ‘ave good news!”

  N’s eyes narrowed. “What good news could you possibly have? You’ve only been gone a few minutes.”

  “I solved the Porygon problem!” Mimikyu responded with a hint of smugness in his voice. “I dug through Lucas’ bag of hoardin’ ‘n’ found an Upgrade!”

  N frowned. “Am I supposed to know what that means?”

  “It means Porygon is currently evolvin’, ‘n’ we won’t ‘ave ta worry about any Galactic files.”

  “What does evolving have to do with the Galactic files Porygon has? And what’s an upgrade? Is it some sort of evolution item?”

  “Well if Silph Co is puttin’ a new operatin’ system in–”

  A Shadow held up his hand. “I’m sorry, did you say this Porygon had Galactic files? I think you may need to start from the beginning.”

  “Is that why Lucas backed off…?” Another muttered.

  “You knew? Why didn’t you say something?!” The third glared at the second.

  N sighed.

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  As it turned out, Porygon took a long time to evolve into Porygon2. Lucas sat there watching the screen for five, maybe ten minutes, waiting for something, some sort of indication that it was progressing, but nothing happened.

  It did, however, serve as enough of a distraction that he stopped beating himself up for what had happened with Rotom quite so much.

  He wanted to really get his mind off of that, though, so he did what he normally did.

  Exploring and treasure hunting.

  The city of Pastoria itself wasn’t terribly big, and he managed to snatch up what little goodies were laying around rather quickly, but there was a big, obvious spot for him to search.

  He’d overheard the locals talking about that observatory the Galactic Grunt was standing outside of, and how it led into something called the Great Marsh.

  A big spot for tourists and trainers, left largely undisturbed so that they wouldn’t bother the local Pokemon, that Lucas could explore as much as he wanted? He was certain that he’d find something worthwhile.

  Or at least, that’s what he thought until his smile was wiped off his face at the entrance.

  “All you can catch for just 500 dollars! Would you like to play a Safari Game?”

  500 dollars!? And he was on a timer, too! That was an outrage! Why couldn’t he just explore all he liked?

  But… the thought of all the treasure…

  Lucas scowled at the lady as he coughed over the entrance fee, which she seemed confused about, but that wasn’t his problem.

  “Ah…,” she hesitated as she quickly counted it, “Here are your Safari Balls. We’ll let you know when your game is over. Until then, enjoy yourself, please! Off you go on your wild excursion!”

  Lucas quickly grabbed the bag full of balls and scurried away, eager to make full use of his time.

  Did he actually care about using the Safari Balls? Not at all. Yeah, some of the Pokemon he’d seen from the second floor of the observatory had been interesting. If the other people who had been in there were to be believed, and he had no choice but to believe them with Porygon’s evolution making his Pokedex useless at the moment, there were some Carnivine and Tangela roaming around. Supposedly, those two could only be found in the Great Marsh. But did he really want either of them? Rare Pokemon were cool and all, but Lucas cared about battles and what were obviously two Grass types didn’t really appeal to him. He already had Torterra to take care of anything he might need a Grass type for, like his upcoming battle against that loud guy he’d seen in Veilstone. If Torterra couldn’t handle some Water types, he really doubted a Carnivine or Tangela that he might capture right before the battle would make much of a difference.

  He already had a ton of Normal types on his team, he didn’t need to start hoarding Grass types on top of that.

  Really, he only saw it as a way to piss N off even more, and he wasn’t looking for that sort of thing. Maybe he could just stash some of the Safari Balls away in his bag and walk out with them when he was done… the receptionist lady had said he’d need to return them, but how would she know how many he’d used? If he just claimed to have used all thirty…

  He shook those thoughts from his head. He was on a timer! Ignoring the idiots lingering around the entrance and wasting their time, he quickly made his way over to a platform a short distance from the entrance. There, a bright orange shuttle train was waiting for him. He thought one of the guys in the observatory had called it a Quick Tram? He hadn’t been paying much attention…

  Regardless of the proper terminology, he found a terminal to interact with, having options to travel to four different areas. The receptionist lady hadn’t mentioned them, and they were just numbered rather than named…

  Well, starting in Area 1 made sense, didn’t it? He pressed the button and quickly hopped on the Quick Tram, the observatory being left behind as it started making its way down the tracks.

  It was sort of pretty, the way that the sunlight reflected off the water out here. But as he got further and further out, Lucas found himself wondering something.

  Where were the paths?

  There were a few areas of solid ground here and there, and obviously the area immediately surrounding the tracks were solid, but everything else was just kind of… swampy.

  …

  …this place was called the Great Marsh.

  As the Quick Tram slowed to a stop, Lucas felt his excitement for treasure starting to leave him. That only got worse as he spotted a lady in a set of rain boots and a coat slowly trudging her way through the marsh. A parasol was shielding her from the sun, but the hand not holding it was reaching down for a boot, tugging at it as she tried to pull her foot out of the gross, muddy mess.

  She pulled too hard.

  She ended up face first in the marsh.

  The Pokemon in the area laughed at her, and after a moment a Tangela took pity, reaching over with its long vines to pull her upright and set her back on solid ground. Her pink outfit was now stained brown, and she was missing the boot that had gotten stuck. Her shoulders slumped, defeated.

  Lucas took a deep breath.

  Part of him considered going straight back. Just pressing whatever button took him to the observatory and not dealing with this mess.

  But as he looked out into the marsh, he spotted a few things that shined in the sunlight just a little bit different from the water.

  Treasure. Right there. If he would just step out into the swampy water.

  He considered the bag on his back. The Pokemon egg in the incubator he had managed to fit in there. It should be fine so long as he didn’t really get it soaked, right?

  …

  There had better be some really good treasure in this marsh.

  Lucas had found… somewhat interesting things in the marsh? It was mostly useless shards of varying colors, but he’d found a Leaf Stone! And another one of those plate things with the weird text on them? This one was purple.

  “The rightful bearer of a Plate draws from the Plate it holds.”

  The rightful bearer… There was definitely something more to these things. If only they had clear instructions written on them instead of this cryptic stuff that barely made sense.

  Not that he particularly felt like researching them as he trekked mud out of the observatory. He felt disgusting.

  Luckily he hadn’t fallen in like that woman he’d seen earlier, having kept a careful eye out for where the marsh got too deep to make a mess of more than just his shoes. His face wasn’t covered in it or anything.

  It was just… well…

  There’d been treasure in the middle of a deep pit…

  Lucas sighed.

  He would not admit to N or anyone else that he had willingly gone waist deep in that stupid marsh water to pick up some treasure.

  And he hadn’t even managed to keep the Safari Balls at the end! Stupid receptionist lady somehow knew exactly where they were in his bag and made him return every last one…

  Whatever. He’d just wanted some goodies, and he got them.

  He should probably take a shower though… or maybe just go straight to the gym? It had water types, so maybe they could just hose him down or something….

  That’s when he heard a muffled noise from his bag.

  His eyes widened, and he quickly tore it off his back, digging out his Pokedex.

  “–been updated. Some programs didn’t shut down correctly, would you like to restore them?”

  復元ギンガプログラム?

  –> はい

  - いいえ

  Lucas read the words on the screen. He briefly considered what restoring the “Galactic Program” might mean.

  He quickly switched to the “no” option and furiously pressed the button to choose it.

  “Understood. Now that you’ve updated, we at Silph Co. would just like to run you through a few quick steps to ensure a smooth transition to your new operating system. Would you like to do that now?”

  Lucas didn’t really understand, but maybe it was best to get this out of the way? He wasn’t sure the Galactic stuff was actually gone after all. Stepping off to the side so he wasn’t in anyone’s way, against the treeline between the observatory and Pokemon Center, he pressed the yes button.

  “Great! We at Silph Co. appreciate your patience with us! To start with, now that your Porygon has evolved, its designation is Porygon2. Your files do not show a nickname, would you like to add one now?”

  A nickname? That’d be kind of useless in his case, wouldn’t it? He selected no.

  “Understood. Remember that you can change this at any time by accessing the “Nickname” setting in your Options!”

  Lucas frowned. Options? Wasn’t this thing a Pokemon?

  “Next, when installing your Porygon2 update, we detected some abnormalities on your device. We'd like to run a quick scan of your Porygon2 to check for threats. Would you like to do so now?”

  That was perfect! Lucas instantly pressed yes.

  “Scanning…”

  “Scanning…”

  “This may take a moment…”

  The longer it went on, the more Lucas questioned if he’d made the right move. Mimikyu seemed to know what was going on, given that he’d used the Upgrade thing. Maybe he should go find the little Ghost type and see if he knew how this stuff worked?

  “Thirty-five malicious files detected. Would you like to quarantine them or delete them?”

  Lucas’ eyes widened. That was a lot, wasn’t it?! Or, well, he thought it was? He wasn’t a computer guy. Quickly looking at the names displayed on the screen, he found files named stuff like “Galactic_Home_Unit_Scan”, “Galactic_Exposure_Protocol”, and “Trace_Distribution_Receiver_Only”.

  Obviously he chose the delete option.

  “Deleting files…”

  “Files Deleted.”

  Lucas sagged against the tree behind him. Had Mimikyu really saved him so easily? He’d have to do something to thank him…

  “Finally, we’ve detected proprietary software. Files show the user as “ルカス?プラチナム”. Would you like your Porygon2 to use this profile when interacting with you?”

  Well, that was his name. Shrugging, Lucas accepted.

  “Thank you for your patience in setting up your Porygon2. We at Silph Co. hope that you enjoy your new Pokemon!”

  In an instant, his Pokedex was no longer infected with a Porygon.

  A flash of light blinded Lucas for a moment, and when he could see again there was… well, he guessed it must be a Porygon2. But if his Pokedex was working now…

  “Porygon2,” his Pokedex announced. “It was upgraded to enable the exploration of other planets. However, it failed to measure up.”

  Porygon2 was similar to Porygon in a lot of ways. Same pink and blue colors, same beak-like thing on its face, stubby legs, and long tail. The big difference was that where Porygon had been all angles, Porygon2 had none. It was all smooth curves, with not a single point on it. It looked less like something he’d seen in old magazines and more like something he’d see in one of his Wii games. It slowly bobbed up and down in the air as the Pokedex spoke.

  Its eyes narrowed a bit, and it tapped its beak against the Pokedex, disappearing inside once more. “Well, I can’t say that’s wrong, but it’s a bit rude, isn’t it? Don’t you have anything nicer to say?”

  ”It was created by humans using the power of science. It has been given artificial intelligence that enables it to learn gestures and emotions on its own. With planetary development software installed, it became capable of working in space. It can’t fly, though.”

  The image his Pokedex contained of Porygon2 started moving. It took a moment for Lucas to realize that really was Porygon2, the actual Pokemon showing up on the screen. “I guess that’s fair enough. My kind did fail to live up to a few goals Silph Co. set. That and I almost ended up a permanent host for malicious Team Galactic files… thanks for deleting those, by the way. Not a pleasant feeling at all.”

  Lucas stared at his newly evolved Pokemon.

  This… was going to take some getting used to.

  Restore Galactic Program? Honestly not sure I'm using the right word for "restore" here but fukugen was my best guess. The words after this in the chapter are just options for yes and no.

  My other regularly updated story, Semblance Sapience, has come to an end. Unbroken Disguise will now be getting more updates. At the moment I'm thinking 3 weeks of UD, one week off, but I guess we'll see how that works out.

  Shout out to whoever did the fanart near fortescue on wplace. The discord did a where's waldo for different UD art on wplace and you caused some confusion. 10/10, was fun to watch.

  Yes, I am aware that this is not how the actual international police works. IRL they basically just help police communicate between countries, share info and whatnot. But Looker says he works for interpol, and he goes and investigates stuff himself, so… blame GameFreak.

  While mentioning Lucas' Riolu egg I realized that it hasn't really come up at all for like ten chapters or something. Obviously that's because nothing has happened with it, the actual in-universe travel time hasn't been very much, but part of me feels like I should have brought it up at some point? Oh well.

  As always, feedback is appreciated. (If you're actually looking for a response, discord is the place to be)