Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Hands of Creation ~ The Final Chapters

Final Special Episode - The Thousand-Year Plan

Nothing was left to chance. From behind the veil of the Worldcore, Owen took hold of the 'Hand of Fate,' feeble as it was, and tried to correct the doomed course of his world. I was there to guide him, even if, at first, I was reluctant to interfere with what I knew, as opposed to trying for a grand unknown.

Owen was very persuasive. And I owed him a great deal for granting me full sentience. In the end, I also agreed with him. He took on the responsibilities of being a world's guardian even more than I had, for better or worse.

For much of those thousand years, we saved our energy. Then, when it was needed most, at the apex of horrible conflicts, and certainly when time ran out for a second time...

We stepped in.

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Year 1018

The Worldcore distorted Owen's sense of time. Without the sun, Owen didn't notice when day became night. Without a true body, Owen did not need sleep or food. And without a true 'brain' anymore, things like mental fatigue no longer slowed down his research. Sure, sometimes he would prefer to do something else and would switch to observing parts of Quartz through the 'eyes' that the Worldcore had. But other times, most of his time, he spent the days reading one of the stars of the Worldcore.

Each one was a set of arcane rules for the world. Everything from gravity to Pokémon's innate elements to the way the spirit and body interacted to create aura.

Most of it was far beyond his comprehension. Even to the Worldcore, all these stars were used to change other parts of the sphere. It couldn't be altered or modified.

Owen quickly found it more productive to treat those stars as a set of broad rules rather than try to understand what every detail meant when it ran through his mind.

The more interesting stars were the ones that were made by someone else. It felt like these were new rules given by Barky and Star atop an old tried-and-true constellation.

"So, they started with the basics," Owen said, "and added more to it..."

One of the first things Owen did, once he figured out how, was giving himself a pseudo-body to float around the Worldcore's stars. Charmeleon would do fine. He didn't need wings but liked the longer arms for pointing. It helped him concentrate.

He wondered, now and then, how much of that was a trick of his spirit emulating when he had a brain. He decided not to think about it; the Worldcore had said that 'the spirit mimics its old body' here.

Every so often, when Owen remembered, he checked on Wishkeeper.

As it turned out, the Worldcore had many eyes. Anyone who had interfaced with the Worldcore through divine power also left a trace of themselves in it. Through this trace, Owen could peer through their eyes, through their senses, to experience the world.

All Legends and all who were part of the original population when Quartz was created were part of this set, since it was through direct divine intervention they were born, reborn, or ascended. Like flipping channels through those fancy light boxes back in Kanto, Owen checked on one person or another to see how they were doing.

And if he ever wanted a scenic view, the Tree of Life also had 'eyes.' From the treetop, he saw the horizon beyond the ocean.

Owen envied Worldcore for how much it got to see, but he also pitied Worldcore for spending a thousand years not realizing it.

As the months passed, Owen often forgot that Worldcore was there. It was more like a presence than a person, even with new emotions, and Worldcore didn't mind. They exchanged notes and viewed different parts of the world in calm silence. Owen commandeered one of the stars—a blank one with no function—to act more like a repository for his notes, plans, scribbles, and visualizations. He'd always reach for it, flow a few thoughts inside, and push it away, like a notepad.