TRIAL OF THE PILOT: BIG BEE

"Potential is an abstract weight," says the figure. Their sightless gaze regards you, immutable. "What could be, what could not be-- such things are beyond your control, or even mine."

They turn, and the grayness moves down the hall. They lead you to a door-shaped hole in the wall, Not a door, because that would require a barrier of some sort. Wood, a hinge. This is more like a taut black curtain strung up in a rectangular piece.

"The seed of this future, however," Seta says, standing next to the opening. "That, is within."

You pass through the darkness. It's as brief as blinking, and you find yourself in a new world.

TRIAL OF THE PILOT
You find yourself in a challenging situation, whether that be at the bottom of a ravine, the ocean, mid-battle, or something else. The catch: you're strapped in the cockpit of a giant mech, connected via wire and soul to the very machine you're piloting. And of course, you're not alone: your missing Pokemon is in the co-pilot's seat, and shares control.

Pilot the mech to safety together with your Pokemon.

SPOILER: Click to show

{THEME}

Big Bee

Bee stumbled forward and out of his leathery egg. His pincers grasped at the air for balance. His pudgy feet squished against the soft floor of his mother's giant mouth. The mouth was lit from deep within, where a studded gullet belched forth an endless stream of hot, glowing steam.

Luminous blue liquid beaded of Bee's black hide as the last of the clutch hatched around him. He was one of a thousand identical broodlings, each as black, spiky, and ravenous as the last. He shifted his weight uncertainly from foot to foot as he struggled for balance on the squishy floor. His identical siblings clacked their pincers, screamed and squeaked, and opened their mouths as wide as they would stretch. It was a declaration to the outside world.

FEED ME

Bee joined them, squealing and stomping his feet in agitation.

Left. Right.

Every one of his siblings stomped and rioted, demanding food from their giant mother. They were a thousand individual minds, yet all seemingly identical. They shared the same parents. They had the same shape. Most importantly they had a singular, shared memory; one event— still in progress— that would shape the creature that they would become.

His mother opened her mouth, an vast and fang-fenced aperture that stretched from one side of Bee's vision to the other. It was like being in an aircraft hangar. It was like watching the very sky split open at the horizon.

The light from outside was blinding. A waxy membrane —a second eyelid— in both of Big Bee's sets of eyes slicked closed. It felt like wearing sunglasses that sat right on your eyes.

The brood smelled food beyond the hangar mouth. They rushed forward, stomping and shoving and trampling each other in their haste. Bee was shoved across the tongue, pulled forward on a wave of siblings.

Left. Right.

He stomped along with them, desperate not to be knocked over. Desperate to make it to the double-row of teeth at the hangar entrance and to clamber over them to freedom. Bee knew on instinct that to fall here meant to be trampled and left behind. Forgotten and hungry. Or worse.

Left. Right.

His feet sank into the blue, marshmallow-membrane floor. He heaved onwards. These first steps were the most crucial of his life. Perhaps the most crucial he would ever make! He reached out with his pincers and grasping onto a sibling. They screeched as he pulled them backwards to make room for his bulk.

Two rows of teeth loomed up ahead, cutting his view of the outside light like cookies cutters against the sun. The broodlings swarmed up and over the teeth, and Bee went with them. Their unity gave them momentum. They flowed where a solitary soul would be stuck.

They cascaded out of the mouth and down onto a bed of cracked and stinking rock. Broken buildings slumped over the nesting site like ancient trees, their tangled metal balconies forming an rusted canopy. Asphalt flowers bloomed from the road surface, their chunky black petals soaking in the heat from an alien sun.

The scent of food emanated from every surface. Every chunk of this world was edible, digestible. His siblings were already gnawing at the overhanging building and gobbling up the synthetic flowers. They ate like locusts, devouring in an ever-moving front that carved away at the planet.

Bee pushed his way to the front and took a bite of the broken building. It was heavenly. An unparalleled combination of flavors and textures that caused his brain to set off fireworks of reward chemicals. This was it. It wasn't just the best thing he'd ever eaten, it was the first and only thing. It was gold medal in a race of one, and yet somehow Bee knew that this was IT. This was his purpose. To eat and grow and eat and eat, consuming the world and adding it to himself with each bite.

He lived to eat.

Bee chomped at the wall, using his pincers to tear up chunks of steel or peel up slabs of road surface. He crammed everything in his mouth, experiencing the symphony of flavors.

MEMORY OVERLAP. INITIATING NEURAL JUMP

Bee sat at a cafe in San Francisco. It was his lunchbreak, on Thursday July 27th 2017. He took his first bite of the acai bowl and looked across at his coworker. "Whoa!" he said, as his mouth filled with tastes and sensations he'd never experienced before. The gentle tang of the fresh strawberries, the creamy chill of the gelato, the crunch of the granola pieces. And the overlaid warmth of the local honey. "This is really good!" he said earnestly. "Is this place new?"

"I think so. Yeah," his coworker replied.

Bee took another big bite. Then another. Somehow every mouthful was different to the last. More complex. More beautiful. It felt like his third eye was opening. "This is crazy," Bee said, spearing a piece of perfectly ripe mango. "And it's only $19?"

He shook his head in amazement. I'm going to remember this meal for the rest of my life.

Red light and blasting sirens pulled Bee back from the depths of his memories, and into reality: the depths of an unknown ocean. Neither he nor Guzzlord were screaming, and large percent readouts on the screens around them were showing a double-digit alignment.

The view out the front window twisted swiftly, with glowing coral careening into and out of vision.

EXTERNAL PRESSURE AT 800 ATMOSPHERES

IMPACT IMMINENT

"Impact? No!" Big Bee managed, as they hurtled towards the sea floor. He reached out on instinct, and beside him Guzzlord did the same with his black pincers. The mech lunged through the water, grabbing wildly at anything within reach. One giant hand latched onto a pillar of glowing coral. Ten-ton steel fingers dug into the coral bed, and Bee winced. Moving in sync with Guzzlord the pair swung around their other arm and grasped at the rock face behind the pillar, securing their grip to the ocean wall.

The 'IMPACT IMMINENT' warning disappeared.

"We did it!" Bee shouted. He looked over at Guzzlord, who mirrored his movements. They stared at each other for a while, six eyes inspecting the alien in front of them. "Great work," Bee said.

[tangent="Feed me."]"⎎⟒⟒⎅ ⋔⟒,"[/tangent] said the alien.

Bee nodded. Somehow he knew that they were both on the same page. And that page was 'stuck eight-thousand meters below sea level in a giant mech that they were still learning to operate'.

The coral they were gripping shifted, and Bee lunged forward, grabbing a new handful of rock and scrabbling for a foothold in the crumbling cliff face. It wasn't that the rock was weak. It was that no rock could stand a mech of their size hanging off of it for very long.

"Let's keep moving buddy," Bee said, as each footstep dug a crunching hole right into the cliff face. They were walking, or close enough, and with enough steps they would make it out of the sea.

Bee grasped at thin air, the haptic feedback pressing back into his fingers and feet to tell him that he was making direct contact. Beside him, Guzzlord was stomping and pinching at the air in sync with him.

EXTERNAL PRESSURE AT 750 ATMOSPHERES

"Hell yeah! You hear that?" Bee said, "we're making progress!" Guzzlord made a sound like crystal breaking underwater, which Bee assumed was a good thing. No. He knew it was a good thing. They were joined at the brain now. They shared deep memories, and had a full —Bee looked at the Neural Alignment display— 14% understanding of each other! Hey! It had gone up!

He heaved himself upwards with renewed vigor, towards the distant surface.

In his dreams, Bee swam for his life.

A voracious whirlpool ripped at the waters around him, dragging him backwards despite his powerful strokes.

He had no breath to shout. No time to think. He could only swim, kick, and feel his heart beat in fear.

"What's the matter?" asked a voice from under the water.

Bee opened his eyes to the salty water, embracing the sting as he tried to see the source of the voice through the white rushing waters. He couldn't slow down. Couldn't stop swimming. If he did it was all over. The whirlpool would suck him under.

"Do you need a hand?" asked the voice. It resonated through the water. A burbling, crackling voice that sounded more like mineral than muscle. "Or perhaps a claw?"

Bee timed his strokes, double breathed, and shouted out as loudly as he could on his next breath. [tangent="Help me!"]"⊑⟒⌰⌿ ⋔⟒!"[/tangent] The words came out strange, twisting and bending his vocal chords and making them burn. He coughed, convulsing and swallowing sea water. He struggled just to tread water, forcing his head above the surging sea so that he could get a clear breath. [tangent="I'm going to drown!']"⟟'⋔ ☌⍜⟟⋏☌ ⏁⍜ ⎅⍀⍜⍙⋏!"[/tangent] Bee said, forcing the words to form through his burning throat.

The whirlpool pulled him under, and a dark shape rushed past him.

The voice came again, resonating in the water. "I can't understand you, little one. Do you need help?"

Water rushed into Bee's mouth, and in desperation he spoke underwater. "Help me!" The words came out as a stream of bent bubbles, and the salt water splashed against his throat. It soothed his burning vocal chords like seawater in a nuclear reactor.

Dark pincers closed around his torso and one of his flailing arms, and Bee was hauled through and up, out of the rip of the whirlpool and onto the black sands of an unknown beech.

Bee smeared the seawater out of his face with one hand to look at his savior.

It was Guzzlord.

The alien unclenched its pincers, and Bee fell back onto the dark sand. Guzzlord looked down at him with an unreadable expression.

[tangent="Where are we? Is this Hawai'i?']"⍙⊑⟒⍀⟒ ⏃⍀⟒ ⍙⟒? ⟟⌇ ⏁⊑⟟⌇ ⊑⏃⍙⏃⟟'⟟?"[/tangent] Bee asked. He coughed as his throat fought the foreign sounds.

[tangent="Are you in pain?]"⏃⍀⟒ ⊬⍜⎍ ⟟⋏ ⌿⏃⟟⋏?"[/tangent] asked Guzzlord.

Bee pushed himself up, his hair and clothes slick with muddy black sand. He cupped his hands and scooped sea water into his mouth so that he could speak without his throat turning inside out. "Thanks for saving me," he said, voice bubbling up through the brine. "We can understand each other!"

Guzzlord's body shivered, his spines prickling in an inscrutable gesture. [tangent="Not for long.]"⋏⍜⏁ ⎎⍜⍀ ⌰⍜⋏☌."[/tangent] The rush of water grew in Big Bee's ears, as if a giant wave were building right behind him. [tangent="But maybe one day.]"⏚⎍⏁ ⋔⏃⊬⏚⟒ ⍜⋏⟒ ⎅⏃⊬."[/tangent]

HYPNIC SYNCHRONIZATION COMPLETE

NEURAL ALIGNMENT 37%

Bee and Guzzlord twisted their heads, pulling the mech with them as they cast around for the [tangent=food]threat[/tangent]. Bee backed against the stone wall, his heart beating a shallow rhythm to match his breaths. "Where is this damn thing?" he shouted at the mech. "I should be able to see something called Leviathan from miles away!"

His mouth [tangent=watered]went dry[/tangent] at the prospect of [tangent=sating his hunger]battling the beast[/tangent].

"Keep our back to the wall," Bee said. "That way it can't ambush us."

An alien roar thundered through the ocean around them. The sound of something impossibly large moving through the deep. The shudder of the Leviathan moving through the deep resonated at a frequency deeper than the Mariana Trench. It shook his blood like water in a cup. The sound was deep. Primeval. It was a cavernous roar. The groan of a beast pulling itself up from the bedrock.

Bee's gut [tangent=rumbled]twisted[/tangent].

The water around them pressed in like fingers closing to crush a tin can. He felt claustrophobic, like the whole mech was about to buckle around him.

Leviathan was coming.

"Actually I changed my mind. We need to get out of the water. Let's go. LET'S GO!"

They scrambled up the rock wall with unbelievable speed, hand over hand and left before right before left again as they heaved themselves towards the surface.

EXTERNAL PRESSURE AT 100 ATMOSPHERES

Bee was driven by fear, but parts of his brain were shaded by hunger. "Are you crazy!" Bee shouted. "We're [tangent=waiting]climbing[/tangent] for our [tangent=meal]lives[/tangent]! We're going to [tangent=ambush]escape[/tangent] that thing! We're not the [tangent=prey]predator[/tangent] here!"

Shared neurons bounced back and forth between amygdala and hypothalamus. His mind was an overflowing pot of mixed signals.

He wanted to run away from breakfast. The thought of eating made them sweat cold bullets. They wanted to rip apart the thing under their bed. Drowning was an endless buffet that set his mouth watering.

They were going to eat the Leviathan.

EXTERNAL PRESSURE AT 50 ATMOSPHERES

They shot into Leviathan's mouth and down through its immense gullet, never even touching the sides. They were a goldfish in a river, an unimportant crumb in the meal of this massive creature.

Guzzlord was silent now.

It wasn't used to being the one getting eaten.

"It's okay buddy, we'll get out of here," Bee promised. He looked over at Guzzlord. "We're in this together. No matter what."

They stared at each other for a while, six eyes inspecting the friend in front of them.

"And then I'll feed you," Bee said. He smiled.

Guzzlord's maw twisted in an unfamiliar way.

"Jesus Christ! Was that a smile?" Bee laughed, and suddenly the tension was broken. It didn't matter that they were hurtling down the throat of an impossible beast. They were doing it together. They were linked in brain, body, and heart. They had shared deep memories and languages and if there was any way out of this they would find it.

And they would do it as one.

Their momentum shifted. The mech crashed against a soft inner wall, and suddenly they were flying upwards.

"Up? Why are we going up?" Bee shouted, as they got a personal tour of its inner workings. "Is the Leviathan turning?"

EXTERNAL PRESSURE AT 700 ATMOSPHERES

"Is it diving?" Be asked. But no. That wasn't it. They were rocketing along inside one of Leviathan's tubes. Unless the creature flipped completely upside down? He couldn't make sense of the situation.

EXTERNAL PRESSURE AT 800 ATMOSPHERES

APPROACHING SURFACE AT UNSTABLE ACCELERATION

There was a roar loud enough to trigger a volcano, and Bee's eyes went wide a moment before he had to slam them shut against the blast of unexpected sunlight.

Seawater fell away around them, until it was just their mech shooting upwards into the sky.

Bee forced his eyes open and saw the cockpit spinning.

They were flying! Leviathan had blown them out and sent them rocketing into the sky!

APPROACHING STRATOSPHERE

This was it. This was their final test, it had to be. If they could get out of this situation then they could truly conquer anything.

They learned how to walk.

How to share thoughts and understand each other's speech.

And now they had to learn how to fly.

ENTERING STRATOSPHERE

"I think I know what we need to do," Bee said, as he closed his eyes. "We need to think of flying."

He was at the local park, playing on the swings as the light was fading. He and Nick were having a competition, kicking themselves as high as possible. He swung his legs hard with each swing, the momentum pulling him higher and higher until the hanging moment at the end of each swing felt like an eternity.

He was on his first flight, headed to San Francisco for a job interview. He was boarded and seated and sitting with his belt buckled a bit too tight. It was nerve wracking being on a plane. He pulled out a pack of ginger flavored gum and chewed it, eyes closed, as they started to taxi down the runway. They picked up speed, and he felt an unfamiliar lurch as the engines kicked in. The plane tilted backwards, and they started to rise.

DESYNC IMMINENT

"Desync?! But we were doing so well!" Bee shouted. He looked over and saw Guzzlord looking back with clueless eyes.

And then it hit him, like a punch from a giant robot. This Ultra Beast couldn't fly. Had never flown. It had no concept of the ground not being below its feet, of the strange and terrifying joy of soaring through the air.

Of the weirdly human urge to go as fast as possible, and to feel that breathtaking moment right at the apex of it all.

DESYNC IMMINENT

That were they supposed to do if Guzzlord had no memories? How could they merge their minds in this moment and work together?

Inspiration shot through Bee like lightning. The answer was right here. Right in front of him.

If they didn't have any common memories then they would just have to make one.

"Follow my lead!" Bee called, and he reached out with his arms. He shoved them out as hard as possible, fighting the spinning and the wind resistance and shaping their mech body into a T-pose. He felt Guzzlord's mind flail, and then felt the pincers overlay his arms, supporting them like a brace or a guiding hand.

The curved pincers clicked into place, slotting perfectly into the gaps around their arms and widening them so they resembled paddles. The weren't arms or pincers anymore.

They were wings.

Minds moving as one they moved the tail. It clicked in place along their legs, extending their length and forming a rudder.

The spines on their back flattened, and with great effort they tilted their wings until they were flying right side up, soaring straight for the bounds of space.

They were moving faster than ever.

And they were flying.

A new memory for Guzzlord.

And the first of many that they were going to share together.

COMMON MEMORY LOCATED

SIMILARITY 100%

NEURAL ALIGNMENT 61%

They soared upwards, cutting a vapor trail through the sky as they passed through the atmospheric layers one by one.

ENTERING MESOSPHERE

NEURAL ALIGNMENT 75%

ENTERING THERMOSPHERE

NEURAL ALIGNMENT 87%

ENTERING EXOSPHERE

NEURAL ALIGNMENT 99%

This was it. The edge of the world. A place of infinite possibilities, stretching out for all of space and time.

And they would face them together.

As one.

"Are you ready for a new adventure, buddy?" Bee asked.

"⎎⟒⟒⎅ ⋔⟒?"

Bee smiled. "You better believe it."

They shot through the planet's outer bounds.

And the world turned gray.