It took several minutes for my body to stabilize. As the brilliant light of the transformation completely faded, my skeletal structure rapidly compressed. Muscles shifted and shrank back down to their normal human proportions. The concrete floor of the containment unit felt freezing beneath my boots. It was a stark contrast to the heat radiating from my skin, leaving me shivering as the ambient temperature of the room rushed back in.

  I leaned heavily against Lusamine and Nemona, letting out an exhausted sigh as the adrenaline drained from my system. My vision blurred for a second before the artificial lights of the room snapped back into focus.

  "Yeah, I am okay," I breathed out, wiping sweat from my forehead. "But I need a break before we even think about heading into that wormhole. I am not sure why, but absorbing that Pokémon took way more out of me than the first one. It felt like trying to swallow a hurricane."

  Nemona frowned. She reached out, steadying my shoulder as I regained my footing. "Why didn't you just use a Paradise Ball? It would have saved you all this physical recoil."

  I shook my head, standing up straight and rolling my aching shoulders. "I didn't exactly have a choice. The Pokémon pushed its head into my hand, and the next thing I knew, my consciousness was pulled out of my body. I ended up in some kind of mental projection. It felt like a tropical isnd, and I was riding on the Tyrantrum's back with a tether tied around its neck."

  I proceeded to expin the rest of the ordeal. I told them about the jungle illusion, the Tyrantrum transforming into a terrified woman, and the sudden arrival of the leviathan in the ocean. When I described the mother’s ultimatum and her threat of assimition, both women looked stunned.

  "Just what kind of Pokémon would violently consume its own child to fuel its evolution?" Nemona asked, her voice hushed with disbelief. "That goes against every natural instinct in the world. Predators hunt prey, not their own offspring."

  Lusamine crossed her arms, her expression darkening into a frown. "Nature can be exceptionally cruel, Nemona. Not all Pokémon are benevolent. Some apex predators might resort to cannibalizing their brood to ensure their own survival in hostile environments, especially if resources are scarce. But the real question here is the biology behind it. What kind of Pokémon possesses the psychic capability to force an assimition like that? This implies a parasitic lifecycle we have never encountered."

  Nemona turned to her. "How is that even possible? Is it some kind of prehistoric hybrid? A mutation that we don't have on record?"

  Lusamine shrugged gracefully, though the unease in her eyes was evident. "Honestly, this could be anything. The fact that we have never seen behavior like this before likely means we are dealing with a completely unique anomaly. To truly understand its biology, we would need to study it. In order to do that, we would need to catch it."

  I thought about the bck monstrosity rearing up from the freezing ocean. The memory of its size alone made my stomach drop. I immediately shook my head, shutting that idea down.

  "You have no idea what this thing was like, Lusamine," I warned, my voice dead serious. "I wasn't an ant compared to it. I was a speck of sand. I thought it was just a massive Tentacruel at first, but when it actually rose out of the water, it had a serpentine body like a Gyarados. It was just ten times as massive. If I had to take a guess, it isn't just a prehistoric anomaly. It has to be some kind of mythical entity that time deliberately forgot."

  "This entity you are talking about," Anabel interjected, her sharp voice cutting through the conversation as she walked over to join our circle. She adjusted her suit jacket, her posture rigid and professional. "It is from the past, correct?"

  I looked over at the Interpol agent and nodded. "As far as I know, yes. On the other side of that wormhole is a timeline set roughly one hundred million years in the past. I can't be entirely sure of the mechanics of the vision, but let's just say I experienced a glimpse of what is waiting for us. I can't imagine the Tyrantrum having such vivid memories of a pce she had never physically been, so the projection had to be pulled from somewhere real."

  "I have absolutely no idea what is going on with ancient mind-scapes and giant sea monsters," Nemona interrupted, throwing her hands up in exasperation. She turned toward the swirling vortex of the wormhole at the far end of the cavern. It pulsed with a violent energy, casting shifting shadows across the containment walls. "But can we just go and get this over with? If this wormhole leads to the distant past, then this pce is going to be incredibly dangerous. Which means I am absolutely not staying behind!"

  She stomped her foot, pointing a finger directly at my chest. "I have been getting tired of just sparring with the girls all the time! Grusha told me she actually gained a few levels from her fight with the Pyroar, and I am falling behind! I keep getting shafted from the real fights, so I demand you let me stay by your side for this one!"

  Nemona aggressively crossed her arms, jutting her chin out and staring up at me with competitive blue eyes. Despite the lingering exhaustion in my bones, I couldn't help but smile. Her relentless energy was infectious, and it grounded me back in reality.

  I reached out and lightly patted the top of her head. "Alright. I think this will be good training for all of us. But we have to stay alert. There are going to be more than just wild Pokémon in the pce we are going. If it is really a hundred million years in the past, the environment itself is going to try and kill us."

  I dropped my hand and turned my attention back to Anabel. My expression hardened. "You are coming with us, right? But before we jump through time, how exactly do you pn to lock these escaped prisoners up? And can I get a briefing on what we are walking into? Who are these people, and what are their specific abilities? You said this was the high-security psychic holding area, right? That means they aren't standard criminals."

  Anabel didn't answer immediately. She simply stared at me for a quiet moment. Her eyes flicked toward the Pokéballs resting at my belt, and then back up to my face.

  "Can you just catch them?" she asked ftly.

  Now it was my turn to stare. I blinked, momentarily thrown off bance. This woman—the same Interpol agent who had implied I had a people-collecting fetish just hours ago—was now casually asking me to capture human criminals. She was suggesting I use my system to solve her jurisdiction problem.

  "It is not that simple, Anabel," I said, my voice dropping an octave as the gravity of the request settled over the room. "Once I catch someone inside the System, I can never truly let them go. There is no normal release function built into my interface. Every single person and Pokémon that joins my roster is locked into the Prisma sanctuary for life. The only other alternative is having their entire memory wiped completely bnk and being violently ejected into a random timeline."

  Anabel's stoic expression finally cracked. It softened into something resembling apprehension. "I know you don't mean to sound so ominous," she murmured, "but that sounds terrifying. If we capture these dangerous psychics, you are saying you will either wipe their identities entirely or banish them to a random era?"

  "That," I said quietly, "or I keep them inside Prisma and let the sanctuary slowly convert their minds over to my side."

  I let that sink in for a second, watching the unease ripple across Anabel's face.

  "This is the actual terrifying reality of my world and my abilities," I continued. "I don't just hold people in cells. I alter them."

  I held out both of my hands, palms facing upward. With a mere thought, the system responded. Two distinct spheres materialized into reality out of thin air.

  In my left hand rested Garon’s ball. It was a sphere of pitch bck. It was so dark it seemed to actively swallow the harsh artificial light of the containment room. However, if you looked closely, the very edges of the darkness were slowly beginning to fray.

  In my right hand rested Joy’s ball. It was a vibrant neon pink, radiating a comforting warmth that starkly contrasted the void in my other hand.

  "The bck one is Garon," I expined, gesturing with my left hand. "The man who actively tried to destroy this world. When I first captured him, this ball was an absolute void. It was pure hatred. But the darkness is slowly fading. The System is wearing him down. It is breaking his hostility day by day."

  I lifted my right hand slightly. "The pink one is the very first woman that I caught. Someone who I love deeply, and who loves me very much in return. I honestly don't even know how drastically the System affects a person's free will after they are fully converted, since Garon is the only one I currently hold in a bck ball. For context, people and Pokémon that exist within Prisma neutrally—holding no strong feelings of love or hate toward me—reside in standard white balls. But eventually, the system pulls everyone toward pink."

  Anabel stared at the two spheres. Her mind was clearly racing as she processed the ethical nightmare I had just outlined. She was a w enforcement officer, sworn to uphold justice, and I was offering a solution that bypassed the legal system entirely in favor of biological reprogramming.

  "So what happens if someone is currently in a pink ball, but they suddenly decide they want to go free?" Anabel asked. "Would you wipe their memories and let them go, or would they be forced to stay?"

  I frowned, the weight of my own power pressing heavily against my chest. "If their ball is pink, the System ensures they wouldn't ever want to ask to leave. But, hypothetically, even if they did want to leave, the rules remain absolute. Their memories would still have to be completely wiped, and they would be sent away to an unknown reality. I didn't create Prisma, Anabel, and I didn't write its rules. But I am bound to follow them."

  The silence that followed was suffocating. The four of us stood before the swirling temporal gate, grappling with the fact that my power wasn't just physical. It was a complete usurpation of free will.

  Before anyone could speak again, a cheerful fsh of light erupted from my chest. The energy cascaded onto the concrete, rapidly forming into the familiar, welcoming shape of Jolene.

  She stood there, completely oblivious to the tension hanging in the air. She was holding up a massive pte of steaming, perfectly roasted food.

  "I thought you guys might be getting hungry!" Jolene chirped, a bright smile on her face.