Both Nemona and Grusha kissed my cheek, the warmth of their lips a sharp contrast to the cold, hollow void that still lingered in my chest. With a soft chime from the Paradise System, they turned into twin flashes of light—one a burning cosmic orange, the other a crystalline blue—and returned to the marks on my chest.
Even as they vanished, I could feel their lingering concern. Back in the holding cells of interpol, I'd been the one telling them not to worry, dismissively calling the Seven's abilities "parlor tricks." Now, after feeling the weight of the Primordial rage and the sting of Colress's superiority, those words tasted like ash. These seven weren't System holders; they were just humans. But as Guzmo had just proven, a human with a grudge and the right monster could still make me lose my mind.
[Your emotions are stable,] Cryo's voice echoed in my mind, sounding more like a concerned friend than a data-driven AI. [I didn't account for the effect of your loss against Colress. You need a break in Prisma, Landon. You have never stood in front of a true wall like Colress before. Giovanni is right about the mental tempering, but I am worried for you.]
I held back a sigh and nodded at the three women—Jennifer, Emma, and Anabel—who were all giving me varying looks. Jennifer looked impressed but wary, while Anabel's face was a masterpiece of "I told you so."
"Lead the way back," I said, scratching the back of my head. "And sorry if I worried, or scared any of you."
Jennifer shrugged and came over, slapping a hand on my back. The force caught me off guard, making me stumble slightly. "You did good," she said with a genuine smile that turned into a comically uneasy one. "But you may want to turn down that killer instinct. Believe me, I get the anger, but we aren't executioners. If Guzmo was actually that bad, they wouldn't give him a chance to reduce his time."
"She is right!" Emma chimed in, bouncing on her heels. She struck a dramatic pose, one that purposefully emphasized the 'Cakes of Distraction' her suit provided, and gave me a playful wink. "While Guzmo does have a bad rap sheet, he is way more bark than bite! Giovanni is a different case though! Watch out! He directs the Drafted, but he gets nothing but visual and audio access as reward. No time off!"
I frowned. "What about Team Rocket in this world?"
Emma's eyes turned serious, the playfulness vanishing for a split second. "I can't spoil the fun yet! But! Just know that this isn't the same one you poached Jessie and James from!"
I felt a chill. If Giovanni was the "consultant" for a version of Rocket that didn't play games, the training was about to get much darker.
"He's waiting," Anabel said, her voice dropping into her official tone as we reached the elevator. "And Landon? Don't underestimate the Seven just because they aren't System holders. A human psychic like Gigolo doesn't need a device to rewrite a woman's heart. He just needs to be in their presence."
We stepped into the elevator, the ascent starting with a smooth hum.
"The Seven are peak-human threats," Emma added, leaning against the wall and staring at the floor numbers. "But the reason Interpol is so desperate to train you is because of how they fit into the bigger picture. We finally figured out the labeling for the anomalies. We know about the AA to ZZ Scale."
The air in the elevator suddenly felt like it had been sucked out by a vacuum. Inside my head, I felt Cryo's data-stream screech to a halt.
[Landon,] Cryo whispered, his voice vibrating with absolute shock. [She shouldn't know that. That is the internal classification for the twenty-six Cryo-Units. No one in this timeline should have access to the alphabetized System Labels.]
I tried to keep my face neutral, but my heart was hammering against my ribs. I'd spent over two hundred chapters keeping the truth about the 26 Systems and the Endbringers a secret. I thought only Garon and I knew that the "PP" and "CC" weren't just random letters, but specific markers for the units.
"The... what scale?" I asked, trying to sound casually confused.
"The AA-ZZ Scale," Emma repeated, her eyes fixed on the display. "It's how the Systems are labeled. It's a rating of how strong they are; it's a designation for the specific 'code' they carry. Garon, the freak you caught in Paldea? He held the CC System, right. A 'Control Calamity' type if I am not that wrong. But Giovanni... he's the one who told Looker how far the alphabet actually goes."
I shot a look at Anabel, but she remained stone-faced. "How do you know all of this?"
"That is mostly a secret, but Giovanni is a survivor from a world where the ZZ System was active," Emma continued, her voice trembling. "He told us that in his world, a being appeared holding that final label. He called it an 'Endbringer.' It didn't just 'attack' his empire; it deleted his entire timeline because the data was 'needed.' He's here because he's tracked you down, and as the wielder of the PP System, is the only thing that can bridge the gap before the rest of the crazy other five alphabets arrive."
My breath hitched. This wasn't expected, but just how much did they know? This Giovanni wasn't just a mob boss. No, this one came from a timeline that had been stripped clean by the apex of my system. The very war Cryo and I had been hiding. He somehow knew that my Paradise Pokeball was actually the PP System, and he knew exactly what was coming to "collect" it.
[Landon, this is a catastrophe,] Cryo said, his voice cold and analytical. [If Giovanni knows the ZZ label, then Interpol has been building this island for more than what they say. This seems like it is specifically to monitor your System's growth. They aren't just training you to fight psychics. They are training you to be the counter-measure for the problem that we already know. What this means going forward is unknown.]