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This is a commission for FatesLover (FurAffinity).

Arcano belongs to FatesLover.

Warning: This story contains omni levels of macro growth and hyper proportions.

Disclaimer: Pokémon and its regional components belong to Nintendo.

---

Upper Management, by DragonMasterX.

Another day, another pile of forms to work through.

A well-dressed, anthropomorphic Arceus sat in the small office on the first floor of an auto-repair shop. It was still relatively warm so his coat was hung on his immobile desk chair, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up to the elbows on his lanky yet busy arms. Completely focused in his job, he only stopped every few minutes just to tilt his square spectacles to prevent them from getting crooked.

Methodically clicking away at his keyboard, the kirin steadily faced his mountainous work pile by transposing the insurance details on paper into digital reports. It was a simple job, although it could drone on for hours on end. Simple, he thought, when compared to managing a universe. He was no longer the one calling the shots up above, but one of many cogs in a big city company’s finely-tuned money printing machine.

And Arcano would have it no other way. He would come in every day Monday through Saturday at nine on the dot, coffee with one spoonful of sugar in hand, and take his rightful place in front of the computer. Music streaming from his phone to his Bluetooth speaker did pretty well at drowning out the grinding, scraping and buzzing coming from the car repair area just outside his office.

Whenever he needed a coffee refill, Arcano would leave the office and greet the repairmen outside before heading up to the first floor where the employee break room was. While he was a quiet guy that mostly kept to himself, he still led a cordial relationship with most of his coworkers. He was the only one of his type dealing with claim reports to send them off to the insurance companies so that they would get paid, so there wasn’t any competition he had to look out for unlike with the repairmen. Arcano was glad for that; he didn’t wish for conflict of any kind.

Inside the small break room, Arcano saw the pot was thankfully over half-full and noticed the scented fumes of steam rising from it; he didn’t squander his chance. As he mused on his uneventful yet peaceful life, the Arceus poured himself his second cup of the day. Taking one hasty sip, he hissed from getting his tongue burnt. “Gah, too hot.”

“Fresh always is.” Came the words from the entrance of the break room; people only came here for coffee so Arcano stepped back to give easy access to the pot. Glancing at the incoming person, he recognized one of the few people he spoke with every day without fail. “Blow on it if it’s still too hot, dummy.”

It was Anna, the boss’ secretary. Dry yet witty, the Audino seemed to wear a perpetually tired expression on her face. Good-looking and mature, Arcano still had not figured out precisely how old she was. “Thanks,” he quietly responded to her advice, his mask parting at the bottom to allow him to blow some air at his steaming cup.

Adjusting her pencil skirt after taking the cream out of the mini-fridge, Anna reached up into the pantry before turning towards Arcano. “You got the sugar?”

Perking up, Arcano reached back for the little shaker he had used and handed it out. “Was gonna put it back this time,” he assured. Anna gave him a scoff and a smirk for his trouble.

“I didn’t chew you out that hard last time, did I?” the Audino giggled, pouring not one but three coffees on a tray. Arcano deduced their boss was on a meeting and Anna was catering, as usual. “Sully’s gotta watch his blood-sugar, but he never listens. His wife keeps calling me to make sure he’s taking his meds, too. Do I look like a nurse to you, Arcano?”

Caught with the edge of his cup pressed on his lower lip, Arcano’s eyes remained on Anna’s slender back and sagging shoulders, noticing tension. “You’re a good secretary,” he dodged.

“Hmph,” Anna turned her head and offered the claims agent a little smile. “Better get back to it. Mondays are eternal,” she said, getting a nod of agreement. With the dexterity of a well-trained waitress, she silently picked up the tray and carried them out with an alluring saunter of her hips. Whatever her age, the secretary was fine.

In the now empty room, Arcano nodded again. “Back to it,” he repeated to himself. Finally taking that second sip, he let out a relieved sigh. “Blowing on it works.”

The next couple hours flew by. Coffee was a drink he had initially detested, but had quickly become accustomed to. The electrifying tingle helped him stay focused on his repetitive task. Seven reports had been filled by noon, which Arcano considered a good pace. But before he could give himself a pat in the back, the door to his little office swung open with an overly excited Electabuzz barging in.

It was Mr. Sullivan, company manager and Arcano’s direct supervisor. A stocky yet exuberant man getting on in his years. “Arcano, m’boy!” Mr. Sullivan briefly greeted and went straight to announce: “Great news! The deal went through.”

Sitting up on his chair, Arcano leaned in to listen to his boss. “The deal for…?”

“We got the all the clients from Marty’s division!” Intercepted by the Electabuzz swinging his arms in the air, Arcano could only listen to his excited boss ramble. “Heheh. I got a shot at executive district director this year, I just know it! Now, with all these new work orders, that means a bunch of claims for you to review, yeah? Had Annie print ‘em all out for you, m’boy. Bring ‘em in, Annie-kiiiins!”

Arcano looked from Mr. Sullivan to the entrance of his office only to see a cart being wheeled in by Anna. Stacks upon stacks of papers rose above open portfolios. It was enough to make even the usually stoic Arceus’ eyes bulge and his jaw drop a little.

“Now, I know these may seem like one too many,” Mr. Sullivan lifted an index while holding his other fist at his back, “But part of the deal is for us to get all these claims sorted out by tomorrow. And I know if anybody can do it, it’s you, m’boy!” he laughed heartily, pointing his digit at Arcano with a gleeful smile.

“By tomorrow…?” Arcano repeated in disbelief. His half-done pile and his proud work pace seemed like such infinitesimal details all of a sudden.

“By tomorrow!” the Electabuzz insisted, pumping his fist in the air in an encouraging manner. “I have faith you won’t disappoint me. Why, none of Marty’s three guys can hold a candle to your work ethic, m’boy. That’s why we’re going to show upper-management we’re the best choice for all this extra business! Oh yes. We’re all moving up in this company, haha!”

When he looked away from Mr. Sullivan to Anna, Arcano caught her sighing with a puff of her cheeks, her hands poised at her hips. She looked up from the stack of papers before meeting Arcano’s gaze, when she gave him a reassuring smile. “You got this, Ace,” the Audino encouraged, turning to leave the claims report office with their boss in tow. Without Arcano getting another word in, the door closed behind them.

Faced with two important mountains of paperwork, Arcano allowed himself a sigh before he quickly resumed taking care of his remaining pile in preparation of the decidedly monstrous task. In a way, Mr. Sullivan’s surprise hadn’t been that shocking. Despite his nice and energetic exterior, he was known for being exigent. It wasn’t the first time Arcano had been buried in work by him.

Regardless of how time-sensitive the sudden assignment was, Arcano couldn’t feel phenomenally excited about it. He usually worked until late anyways, this just meant having additional pressure on top of everything. What had started looking to be a dozen e-mails had been multiplied by a factor of ten. But Arcano had long decided he would be the diligent sort no matter how daunting the challenge.

“This’ll take me all night to properly finish,” Arcano thought to himself by the end of the work day. The mechanics and repairmen had all gone home for the day, and his boss and his secretary were long gone by then as well. Realizing he had to take his work home, Arcano organized the remaining files into one of the portfolio briefcases and prepared to leave. “Looks like I won’t get to catch up on those last two chapters…” he lamented, getting his coat and shutting the lights.

Arcano rented an apartment in one of the more low-income areas of the city. It was some thirteen blocks away from the company branch he worked at, but he didn’t mind; it was a good way to get his daily steps. Plus, half-way back home there was a convenience store that opened ‘til late where he could usually get a good deal on ready-meals or if all failed, cheap cup-noodles. He had no significant other or pet waiting for him back home, so he never had to worry about getting back late.

Without much of a social life, the salaryman of an Arceus didn’t have much going for him other than the comfort of late-night novel reading. Sundays were when he could just loose himself in his books, since every other day he was way too exhausted to do more than a few chapters at a time. A mostly unchanging routine which ensured the sort of constancy most people would languish.

But as one might observe Arcano’s state as a lonely prisoner of mundanity, he had never felt closer to other people until now. The people whose struggles he had never bothered to empathize with. Indeed, for Arceus is as singular as its cosmic purpose, and mortals might as well had been dust in the whirlwind of his divine providence. With his past as an almighty God behind him, the mortal kirin could now enjoy the freedom and anxieties that made finite life so unique.

And yet, even as Arcano worked through the last few reports he had to e-mails out, he couldn’t stop his tired mind from projecting interrogatives borne of his insecurity. He was so tired after working all day just to come back home and work some more. His novel was within arms’ reach at the nightstand, but his better judgment assured him a lack of money would hurt more in the long run.

With each tap on his laptop’s trackpad, Arcano thought deeply. These people, his people. The people he was now a part of. Their lives ruled by their desires and modern life’s exigence. Money, homes, food, entertainment. Nothing was readily provided or able to be conjured instantaneously. That made the struggle fulfilling, speaking volumes of the virtues of freedom. And yet Arcano couldn’t shake the anxiety he was feeling. “Couldn’t we stand to be helped a little more…?” he thought to himself with the last tap of the Send button on his screen.

His eyelids grew heavier. Arcano barely had enough time to close the lid of his computer and set it aside safely before his consciousness began to fade…

---

Everything was hazy. Arcano woke up to a greyscale background that seemed to go on forever. He was floating in the infinite void, surrounded by shimmering dots that appeared to be simultaneously far away and right next to him. These innumerable twinkles that were of every color imaginable shifted in place, attracting others like them until they had gathered in clusters. They circled around Arcano, shimmering with their various colors like fireworks remaining still at the moment of their detonation in the heavens.

The colorful dance culminated with the clusters taking some distance away from their observer. They began to shift once again, this time rearranging themselves into a familiar silhouette. The platinum cluster took the form of an Arceus with its unmistakable bent horn at the top and its signature ring at the back. Arcano recognized himself, his slouched posture, and the tiredness with which he sat down crisscrossed, both hands rested on his knees an equal distance away from each other.

Even before he had become a mortal, Arcano had been exhausted.

The rest of the clusters floated above him and his silhouette-double, hovering above them in a circle. Each cluster turned into a different although familiar silhouette, resembling Arcano’s previous peers. The smallest pink cluster morphed into the shape of a Mew, with its thin long tail and feline ears. It was gesturing to the rest of the shimmering silhouettes with its right hand while pointing at the Arceus cluster with its left.

Arcano had lost the faith of his fellow Legendary Pokémon.

But three stood opposites of the majority. The goddess of time and the god of space spoke against the council’s criticisms, with the third figure remaining behind his siblings. Their voices echoed in the empty void.

“Has He not overseen everything from the beginning?”

“Was He not present in every crisis threatening the land as a whole?”

Yet the council argued about flights of whimsy and later placid inaction, invariably inviting disasters upon mortal kind. Trials and conflict-breeding prophecies meant to strengthen those who stand among the weakest; deemed as nothing but self-indulging theatre from a capricious deity who had outlived his position.

Arcano couldn’t deny he had not had his fun. He could neither agree all of his decisions had been for the better.

“What about me?” All attention focused on cluster Giratina. “Had He not imprisoned me when he did, I would still be known as nothing more than a lord of destruction.”

A small bit of warmth swelled in Arcano’s chest, mirrored by the manner in which the until then immutable Arceus cluster turned to look at the ex-demon. The destruction or sealing of powerful forces of chaos only ever bred further resentment, but nobody could argue Giratina had learned to temper his fearsome strength in the service of creation.

Deeds of divinity were a powerful argument. Yet, in the end, the council argued louder. They would have the Arceus stripped of his position and title. The age of the Alpha had come to an end.

Arcano finally woke from his dream. A manifestation of long-forgotten memories. The final, bittersweet period of his previous life. But no matter how many times the dream reoccurred, he forced himself to face his new life; his new reality; head on. As mundane as it was, and as menial and ultimately inconsequential his current actions were, he still had responsibilities to meet.

“Time to get back to work.” He said to himself as he got off the bed, ready to tackle another day. One of many in the coming busier weeks.

---

Days became weeks inside of the Arceus’ little office. After successfully meeting expectations with all of his reports, a massively pleasing influx of cash which had impressed the higher ups had authorized the district to take on more and more clients.

As a result, Arcano quickly found his workload more than tripling. He didn’t mind. So long as he got his daily 8 hours of sleep, the only downtime he required at his job was his coffee breaks. Like that, although more exhausting, Arcano’s routine remained largely the same as it had been since he had started working at the repair company.

At least, that was until a certain day during one of Arcano’s coffee breaks. When Anna surprised him with something that wasn’t more insurance claims for him to process, the tired and usually ambivalent Arceus naturally became curious.

“This got here earlier, Ace. Didn’t want to bother you while you were in the zone,” the Audino said while handing out a small blue parcel to her coworker. Arcano took it in his hand, getting a feel for the weight of the package like someone trying to figure out its contents ahead of time. “If you’re gonna act like you’re five, shouldn’t you also be shaking it next to your ears, too?” Anna teased, folding an arm under her generous chest while sitting back against the break room counter and taking her coffee cup for a sip.

Arcano glanced back at her with a flat, half-lidded stare of his eyes before returning his attention to the package. He didn’t remember buying anything that might be mailed to his workplace, and he could count on one hand the number of people outside of work who knew where his place of employment was.

With a little smirk, Anna nodded at the envelope tied against the parcel; in specific, seal in the shape of an azure heart. “Looks like someone’s got an old fashioned admirer, heh.”

Gently sliding the envelope off from the bottom of the string tying the parcel up, Arcano turned the letter around but found no clues as to its provenance. Only his name was written in the parcel, and aside the pretty penmanship Arcano couldn’t find anything outstanding about it.

After finishing with her coffee and setting her mug down at the sink, Anna addressed the suspicious Arcano while filling the mug with water to rinse it. “You should at least read the letter. If it was a bomb, I’d put it in the parcel. As if!” she giggled, turning to saunter out of the break room.

With the Audino out of the picture, Arcano approached the counter to set the blue parcel down. His finger slid under the fold of the envelope, pushing until the seal had separated with a tiny little snap. He fished a twice-folded piece of paper out and held it in his right hand to read the letter’s contents with great interest. The Arceus’ eyes lit up to the contents, his heart beginning to race with every word.

Dear Arcano,

_ _

I hope this letter has found you well! Have you become accustomed to your new life? Mortals have it difficult as I’m sure you now understand. Or maybe you understood it all along, and that is why you so readily accepted your demotion? Whatever the case, I’ve been privy to your actions for a long time and if I know you as well as I think I do, I assume you must still be a little upset with the council’s decision.

_ _

In observing your trials and tribulations most ancient and recent alike, I have come to understand fate has dealt you an unusually unfair hand. Whether almighty or mortal, you have always been admirably steadfast in the execution of your duties. I just know you still have so much to offer.

_ _

As a firm believer of not judging others based solely on their lowest points, I have decided your merits far outweigh your past mistakes. It would be to the detriment of everything there is to leave you to stagnate when there is so much you may contribute to the mortals you’ve learned from, as well as other Gods you may teach.

_ _

I may be an outsider, so heed me only if it is your wish. Enclosed is an item of great importance to you. Use it and not even the council will get in the way of your vision.

_ _

Your far away admirer,

Reyna

The name at the end was one he had only heard in passing a long while ago. A rumor that faded and reemerged with millennia, almost capriciously. With all the privy knowledge inside of the letter, Arcano could tell this letter was no elaborate prank. His hesitation to open the parcel melted when he held his hand above it again; its velvety wrappings coming undone as the string untied itself as if by art of magic.

Nestled in the open wrappings, the parcel’s contents were revealed: It was a thick, rectangular slab of a dusky red color. A flawless piece of stone, as pristine as it was unassuming in its appearance. Yet Arcano recognized the design as well as its aura, which explained to him why he had been so suspicious of its weight and shape before. This was one of his most important belongings.

“I thought all of my plates had been lost to time…” Arcano whispered to himself as he carefully put Reyna’s letter in his back pocket and lifted the slab up in both of his hands. Red irises glinted inside with his pupils lightly dilating at the sense of warmth he could feel from the Draco Plate when he held it up to the light of the break room. But that was all he felt.

Arcano lowered the palm-filling tablet to chest level “It is now delivered once again to me. Alas, I won’t be able to channel its energies without my godly form or deific powers…” he sighed. “Reyna must have known this. But in that case, why send it?” he mused to himself.

Before he could think too deeply about it, however, Mr. Sullivan’s voice snapped the Arceus back to reality. “Arcano, m’boy! I’d been looking around for you. It’s so odd to find you here for longer than 5 minutes, bwahaha!”

Slipping the Draco Plate in his button-up’s breast pocket, Arcano turned around to greet his boss with a nod. “I’ll be making my way back to the office now, sir.”

The Electabuzz nodded his head multiple times, standing off to the side of the break room door to give way to his employee. “Make sure you do, m’boy. It’s been hell lately, I should know! But we’re this close to moving to the big leagues; getting a bigger and better building, and offices too, hoho!” he belly-laughed, “Can you imagine not having to use the first floor as a warehouse?! You just keep doing what you’re doing, son. Just got off the phone with Hubert uptown; Annie will be bringing you more paperwork soon! Chop chop!”

With every word promising more and more weight on Arcano’s shoulders, he made sure to straighten his posture before exiting the break room. He had no time to entertain fantasies. No matter how tempting they might be. He’d have to figure out what to do about his decision later.

Unbeknownst to the dutiful office worker, his mind and heart differed on their yearnings. And the pleasantly warm Draco Plate was right next to the latter, its answer already delivered.

---

Any thought related to Reyna’s words took a backseat when the sheer number of forms Arcano had to fill out hit him like a crashing wave in a sea of data. His was a fast typist but his fingers were a blur that morning. “Mm. They did start buying that better quality coffee last week,” Arcano briefly thought as he uploaded attachments en masse to send off. He wondered if this time he’d finish his pile off before more stacks arrived.

Halfway into the following batch of claims, Arcano began to notice an increasing number of mistakes that forced him to go back and correct them. No matter how fast he typed, he was usually careful, but he was starting to notice several compounding errors in his spelling. Letters that should not be there appeared mixed-in with many words on his document. “Rtenovcation?” he read aloud before deleting the entire word in frustration and retyping it: “Renovcation… curses. Is this a different keyboard? These keys appear closer to one another.”

Arcano stopped, putting a finger above the next key he had been about to stroke, this time putting his eye on the board itself. With his digit hovering above the H key, he was about to consciously test what he had been doing when there was a knock at the door to his office.

“Hey, Ace, little help?” Anna called out from the other side. His extra paperwork had arrived. Arcano hopped off his chair, pausing when he heard an unfamiliar squeak coming it. He glanced back curiously.

“Must be getting worn off after all this time,” Arcano thought to himself, resuming his trip to open the door to his office with some difficulty. His clothes were tugging at him, which he was used to during hotter days, but strangely, even his shoes seemed to be tighter around his feet as well. Now that he had left his workstation and his mind was free, he was becoming cognizant of the fact his apparel was uncomfortably snug on his person. But before he could give it more thought, Anna’s insistent voice on the other side hastened him to open the door.

“Sorry about the hurry, big guy,” Anna said from behind a tower of paper, “Back’s killing me from pushing this cart around. I gotta go on an errand after this and…” she paused when her fingers slipped off the handle of the cart as it quickly and silently slid in, as if pulled in by some strong magnetic force. But Anna was able to tell no such phenomenon had occurred; her coworker had pulled that hefty cart inside with barely any effort. “O-oh wow. Thanks…” she trailed off, staring at the visuals ahead.

Arcano was looking at his open hand in a bit of a shock, as if he did not understand his own strength. Anna could sympathize since he had never been a particularly forceful kind of person, but something of considerably more note was going on; and it was visually apparent.

“… really big guy.” Anna rubbed her eyes, staring at Arcano in a dumbfounded way. “Have you been working out lately?” she asked, prompting the distracting Arcano to give himself a broader look. “You keep it all so well hidden under your coat.”

The Arceus’ eyes widened in disbelief. Not at what he was seeing, but that it had taken him this long between all distractions to take full notice of it. His clothes weren’t merely clinging to him due to heat and humidity. They were an ill-fit around his frame which now sported considerably more muscle mass than before.

Always having remained lean where beef was concerned, Arcano had never bothered to exercise other than his daily walk. As a result, he had largely ignored any intense workout that could lead into the kind of rippling musculature currently pushing against the fabric of his outfit. “This doesn’t make sense,” the suddenly buff kirin thought to himself as he brought both of his hands up to inspect his larger arms.

He could see small peaks on his sleeve where his flexing biceps were. Fabric was tenser at his widened shoulders, however. With his eyes tracing downwards, Arcano saw the dividing line of his pectorals which until then had been flat as a board, now bulging with enlarged muscle mass. Although not oversized, his chest certainly created a shelf through which he couldn’t properly see his abdomen anymore. He brought a hand to the latter only to feel his shirt getting pulled up by his enlarged torso. And he would have continued inspecting the rest of his Adonis-like frame were it not for the speechless Anna still standing at the door to his office with red-tinted cheeks.

“Ruh-right,” Arcano stammered before clearing his throat; he had no idea what was going on but that was no reason to make Anna panic. “I don’t have a lot of free time, so I got myself a set of weights at home. Does it uh…” he paused uncomfortably at the silent way in which the Audino kept staring at him, “…does it show?” he sheepishly grinned under his mask. Cool as he was trying to look, he kept having to readjust his spectacles to prevent them from sliding off; they felt too small all of a sudden.

When Anna finally spoke, she did it with an embarrassed little giggle. “You might uhm… Want to shop for new shirts soon, stud!” She said, pointing at Arcano and laughing when he looked down at himself, noticing how the top button on his shirt appeared to be hanging on for dear life.

Arcano was worried. His shirt didn’t just look tight on him, it looked tighter. He instinctively brought an arm up to cover his bulging chest and addressed his clearly interested coworker: “Sorry for being presumptuous, Anna, but didn’t you say you were on a hurry? Something about an errand…?”

Anna’s eyes widened as she scrambled to fish her phone out, “Oh shi- Sully’s pastries! Bakery closes in 10. Gotta go!” the secretary excused herself, doing Arcano the favor of shutting the door closed as she left.

Arcano sighed in relief. The moment he took his deep breath and let his arms sag however, he saw something getting stabbed into the doorframe at high speed. It had only been a split second, but the top button of his shirt had turned into a dangerous projectile thanks to his chest. Looking down at his burgeoning, meaty pectorals, he brought a hand up to feel their weight out of curiosity only to witness his flexing bicep shred a hole through his sleeve. “Confound this…!” the confused Arceus grunted in frustration.

“I’m growing stronger!” was the thought at the forefront of his racing mind. Arcano could feel his body expanding with enlarging muscle mass now, but he realized the effect seemed to stretch out to the rest of his being as well. The realization of why his shoes had felt so tight around his feet came to a head when he felt his toes poking holes through the leather like it was cellophane. It wasn’t just his physique. “I’m growing bigger…!”

With his disbelieving stare still caught by the roundness of his exposed biceps, his eyes inevitably dropped to his breast pocket. No wonder he had been feeling so hot until now; the Draco Plate was glowing a hot pink, searing a hole in his clothes as it fused with his skin. “It’s being absorbed into my body! What did she do to this relic…?” Arcano asked aloud as he tried, and failed, to retrieve the Draco Plate before it completely sank into his chest to become a part of him. And then his entire body began to rumble as it filled with power.

Arcano gasped. The warmth he had been feeling transformed to pleasant electricity running its blissful current through him. It hit him in waves, and with each one his body pulsed and swelled larger. With his muscles pumping larger and shredding through his clothes, focus was getting harder to come by the second. He winced each time he heard the air-cutting noise from another shirt button exploding off his bulging torso. Between the additional muscle mass and his height increasing, his already badly-damaged clothes were on the road to hopeless defeat.

Busting at the seams, his grey pants ripped open with his growing quads tearing their way out, followed by his bulging calves. Beefier and stronger as they were getting, Arcano’s legs started to wobble with uneasy purchase thanks to the overwhelming sensations. As he stumbled backwards, slamming his hand down on his desk was all he could do to prevent himself from collapsing. But he still fell down when the unexpectedly strong force of his arm snapped the wooden desk in half right there.

As he went down with a thud, the beefy Arceus rattled the entire office, his spectacles finally flying off and shattering against a wall. “Gah, clumsy!” he lamented with a whimper when he saw his computer display tilting forwards, with its sturdy cables being the only things prevent it from joining him on the floor. Arcano let out a sigh of relief, and with that disaster averted, he quickly moved his attention back to himself to measure how large he had gotten so far.

It wasn’t easy to bid good-bye to the lanky appearance he had gotten used to after all these years as a mortal. He was now rippling with muscles wherever one looked, and yet it wasn’t just his bulk causing his torn office clothes to hang off him like tattered old rags; Arcano could tell he had been growing taller as well, accumulating inch after inch, all of which put together made his height reach an excessive 9ft. With his heart racing, he looked at the door to his office and shifted on hands and knees, careful not to crush anymore of his office than he already had. “That was close. Maybe I can get out before I…”

But he could not. With his entire body suddenly jerking with the jolting throb of power feeding into its every last cell, Arcano let out an uneasy moan as he began to rapidly surge with size. Clothes exploded off him with his side knocking the demolished desk over as he filled the increasingly claustrophobic space of his office.

“Hnnnggh…!” he babbled and growled, stifling a moan as he attempted to reach for the door only to pull it off its hinges with his surging hand. “Too big!” he grunted and immediately let go of the door in order to crouch and ball himself up in an attempt to make himself as small as he could. But no matter how much he was trying to repress the wonderful feeling, he could not stop the effect it had on his body. 10ft. tall moved on to 11, then to 12, 13, 14… His personal office had never felt smaller.

When Arcano hit his head on the ceiling, it forced him to crane his neck downwards, his back sliding against the hard surface. “This place won’t last at this rate!” He mumbled while tensing up. His growth still pulsing, the musclebound Arceus felt himself flare out by the second, his feet and rump crushing the floor under his vastly increasing physical weight. And with his elbows steadily pressing out into the walls surrounding him, he understood this phenomenon had only just begun.

Arcano knew he would run out of space in his bottom floor office soon. But the people on the first floor weren’t aware. By the time the incredibly growing salaryman remembered which room of the floor above was directly contiguous with his office, it was too late.

“…and that’s why I won’t have him transferred. He’s my rising star, after all, bwahaha!” Mr. Sullivan belly-laughed. He had been in the middle of a meeting with some of the company’s bigwigs when that unfortunate turn of phrase preceded the carpeted floor ripping apart with Arcano’s head punching into the center of the room. Mr. Sullivan cried out as the sudden entrance knocked his large couch back along with him, with the other two executives diving out of the way as soon as the massive Arceus grew in.

Dust cleared with a few shakes of Arcano’s head. Looking down at his extra small boss with a unsettled frown, he was quick to apologize: “I’m so sorry about this, sir.”

“Ack! Gahhh…” Mr. Sullivan coughed as he struggled to get back up to his feet before one of the two higher-ranked executives, an Exploud, helped him up. “What’s the meaning of this?” he hurried to demand, when his eyes recognized the head of that giant male, “Wait… Arcano, m’boy, is that you?”

Whereas Arcano was aware his boss deserved a proper explanation, there was no time for him to formulate the most efficient summary for him to understand before the next bout of growth occurred. “Nnghh…” he grunted, feeling his muscles throb as his ascending shoulders widened the hole he had created with his head. “Forgive me for this.” Each word he spoke saw him surge larger still, further reducing the available space even in the sprawling meeting room.

Before any of the participants could voice any meaningful or properly audible objection, all three of them saw Arcano’s right arm tearing its way inside as it forcefully entered the first floor with them. Surrounding them with it before sliding it back towards himself, the swelling Arceus caught all three people against his immense pectorals, holding them in a protective and burly embrace.

By now, Arcano was aware that his expansion was only ramping up instead of ebbing. Every spurt put him closer to the ceiling of the first floor with walls crumbling against his sides, his rump behind and the advance of his knees at the front. Knowing he couldn’t stop this process any longer, he didn’t even chance the mechanics’ safety outside and bellowed out a deep: “ EVERYONE LEAVE THE BUILDING RIGHT NOW.”

So big and powerful the giant had become that his elevated voice carried with itself not only an increased masculine baritone, but also depth which rolled through the ground, making everything tremble. Such a strong, quake-summoning announcement could not be ignored even by the repairmen wearing noise-cancelling headphones. Even if one was skeptic about a possibly overly elaborate fire drill, the moment people saw the walls of the claims report guy’s office bulge and crumble with his lateral body crashing through, they dropped their tools and heeded that thundering command from above.

“Hell no, they don’t pay me enough for this.”

Arcano had to trust the panicked mumbling and loud shouting from below meant his plight had been answered. The truth was that he couldn’t hold himself back any longer, if the possibility even had been available to him from the start. Although he wished had the time to release his muffled boss and his bosses with the others, his upper body had already filled up the entire first floor meeting room and the risk of crushing them before they could leave was too great. “Just hold on for a moment!” he begged of his captives, feeling himself tingle all over.

The giant’s shoulders smashed into the ceiling alongside his head with the garage in the bottom floor being breached by his lower body. Arcano found himself pushing down, kneeling, pushing his feet back and using his free arm to give himself stability and prevent falling. Legs scraped along the ground as they continued to expand, allowing him to feel his soles pressing up against the wall of the garage at the bottom floor.

With every intense passing second, Arcano felt his place of employment in its attempt to contain his rampant enlargement. By the way he could hold those three people to his chest as if they were scaled-up dolls, Arcano judged he had already pushed past the 30ft. mark, and yet he wasn’t slowing down at all. He could sense the building’s final throes as he saw dust getting loose and falling all around him, cracks forming on surfaces near and far, as well as the vibrations of the edification slowly starting to come down around him. Like ripping off a band aid, he made the choice to not hold off any longer.

Pushing himself up with a hand and shifting his weight onto his right leg, Arcano stood up. In an instant, he brought his free arm up just under his chin to shield the smaller people clinging to his pecs for dear life from falling debris as he crashed through the ceiling. Those that had evacuated the building had fortunately decided to observe from the other side of the street as the two story garage was demolished by a surging giant.

When the dust cleared, fingers pointed up at the 45ft. tall beefcake of a kirin looming over their smallness. Upon picking apart his coworkers from pedestrian bystanders, Arcano cringed at the realization he had crunched no less than half a dozen cars into metal pancakes under his feet. “All that hard work scrubbed out in an instant,” he thought sadly, with only one reasoning keeping him from lamenting it too much: “At least they all seem to have gotten out safely.”

Already at 50ft. tall and still ascending, Arcano couldn’t properly understand what the people at his feet were whispering about. Before he could consider extending his apologies to them however, Mr. Sullivan finally yelped from the crevice of his pectoral muscles. “M’boy, what in the ever loving custard is going on?! When I said we’re moving up in the world, I assure you, this is not what I meant!”

Arcano didn’t have an easy answer for that demand, even though it was plain for all to see: He had just outgrown and demolished one of the buildings owned by the company which had taken care of him for a number of years. “One day, I will make this right,” he promised. And although he spoke softly, his voice was carried by powerful gusts of winds which could’ve destabilized a chopper flying near his head. Since he was continuously expanding, Arcano didn’t waste any more time proverbially holding his bosses hostage, and momentarily crouched to gently set all three of them down on the street. “Please get to safety,” he begged before rising up tall. It was hard to argue with someone who was as equally polite as he was utterly massive.

A true mountain of a man, Arcano turned around to get his bearings, having a bit of trouble adjusting to his new perspective with everything looking so diminutive now. He was still growing even now. Every moment, he felt himself scale to new heights, with pleasure pounding his head and threatening to make him lose his mind to the tingling sensation. 60ft. tall, 70ft. tall, 80… His impressive, thick and wide shadow was starting extend over the streets. Arcano couldn’t allow himself to get innocent people caught up in any potential destruction he caused. So he chose to move away from the city and out into the deserted part of the countryside.

Anna was on her way back from the bakery with a couple of pastry boxes hanging inside of the plastic bag she was carrying. When she finally looked up from her phone as she felt the walkway vibrate, she nearly dropped it alongside her jaw. “Ace?!” she cried out at the shock of seeing her buffed out coworker not only nude but walking away from their destroyed workplace, nearly 100ft. tall in height. The Audino could only laugh. “I knew there was something different about that guy…” she trailed off, with her eyes trailing after his muscular behind. “He always had a cute butt. But he’s rocking that testosterone mountain look!” she thought to herself as she admired that thick kirin’s bulk. And she wasn’t the only one staring.

Every individual foot fall from Arcano was a spectacle to behold. People from all over were getting alerted to his presence merely from his loud and mighty stomps. Downtown citizens glued themselves to their apartment windows and even climbed to the rooftops to see and film that hunky Arceus taking to their streets. It wasn’t just his gigantic appearance that surprised the masses, but the fact that he could be seen growing even larger with seemingly every breath he drew. It wasn’t long before the taller apartment buildings were barely level with the upper section of his abdominal region, but muscle admirers didn’t seem to mind.

“It’s not stopping!” Arcano groaned as he waddled through the city, doing his best to avoid stepping on abandoned cars, but soon he had grown so large that even his toes on their own could snap them like gnats under their sheer weight. The smaller skyscrapers were starting to look pathetic next to him as he passed 200ft. tall. He had to get out of the city before its destruction became a matter of merely standing on it. And although he was being careful to choose the less busy driveways to avoid active drivers and panicked mobs of running away to safety, he inevitably grew so huge that he had to take to the double-width avenues to give his thick buff legs and wide hips more wiggle room.

“Think those brownies I took from your lunchbox’s are hitting me hard, Ed,” a window cleaner said to his partner.

“I told you they don’t have any- my wife made them!” Ed insisted, trying to get back to work cleaning tall office windows. “Everything’s shaking like hell. They remodeling on the other side? No one said anything about…”

“Ed, there’s a giant man coming up, right? I’m not hallucinating, right?”

“Reggie, I’m so tired of your bull…” Ed turned to address his partner. But the lazy lout, for once, was not pulling his chain. “…shit,” he gasped at the realization of that white furred Hercules of an Arceus approaching them. Each one of his steps felt like an earthquake by now. The old cables of the suspended scaffolding they were using were starting to loudly grind.

“Ed!” Reggie called out when he saw the sparks fly out. Before Ed could reach the controls though, the wires loosened and their scaffolding was lowered several dozen feet at once. Flailing his arm to pull on the stop lever, he managed to stop them from falling, but the resulting brusque stop applied such strain to the worn cabling that it snapped. With the scaffolding hanging on to a single cable, it rocked to the side with both workers holding on for dear life.

The window cleaners’ cries reached Arcano’s ears, who hurried to the apartment before holding his open palm up to catch the loosely hanging scaffolding. “Are you two alright?” the titanic Pokémon’s voice boomed out. Ed and Reggie both nodded so quickly and repeatedly that their heads looked like they might come off.

“You saved our life…” Ed was shaking, unable to get up even though Arcano’s hand seemed to have perfect balance. “Thank you so much!”

“I’m sure I caused this, so I should be apologizing to be honest,” Arcano allowed himself an ironic little chuckle. With his sheer immensity backing him up, he stretched his arm up and gently put the scaffolding and its passengers on the rooftop of the apartment building as if he had been placing a cookie jar back on its tall pantry.

“Gosh. Wasn’t that monster awful nice, Ed?” Reggie, unable to tear his eyes from Arcano.

“Monsters don’t apologize, though…” Ed reasoned aloud, his eyes freezing when he realized he no longer had to peer over the edge of the rooftop with Arcano’s shoulders now being level with their skyscraper. “Holy shit, you see that? He’s still growing!”

Reggie couldn’t deny what his eyes were seeing. Even though Arcano was making steady progress in exiting town, at the rate he was growing it seemed like he was never actually getting any farther away from them. “This is nuts. How big is he going to get, though…?”

And that was the question everybody in the city was asking themselves. Not just the people who knew Arcano and even strangers, but even Arcano himself. Already past 500ft. tall and rapidly climbing, he realized he had to think of a way to control this or else it wouldn’t matter where in the countryside he was at; he’d eventually outgrow it all!

By the time he had made it outside of the city, he had already doubled his size to over a thousand feet tall. Soon after having stepped out into the old dirt roads, Arcano was looming over every last building behind him, his shadow cast over them as his silhouette took over the afternoon sun. Despite how uneasy he felt about his unbridled expansion, the Arceus couldn’t deny how good soaking up all that sunlight also felt. It had been longer than he cared to remember since he had just stood in the sun, allowing its warmth to tickle him.

But Arcano had no time to bask. Even now he could feel the ground below him shaking and even sinking from his steadily increasing weight. At his sheer size, with the way his rippling musculature was glistening, it meant that even a single drop of sweat could mean a hazard for anything it dripped down on. That’s why he pushed on further away, avoiding the neighboring cities and taking to the mountains which were starting to become a short trek thanks to his increasingly longer stride.

1,200ft. tall, 1,400ft., 1,600… It wasn’t going to take long before he was a literal mountain of a man. Although concerned with how fast he was swelling, Arcano appreciated the added ease with which he could just hop over the steep outcropping land and move to unpopulated areas.

Now that he had had a chance to get used to the tingling sensation and he didn’t have to worry too much about innocents getting caught up in this insane process, the beefy kirin could stop to think: “The plate must’ve been infused with divine energy. But mortal bodies aren’t meant to hold this much power…” he reasoned while looking at his meaty hands.

Arcano could feel fearsome power gathered at each individual fingertip. In a curious attempt to pluck the peak of one of the nearby mountains, he found that even the smallest bit of pressure carried such monstrous strength that he could shatter the entire half of the mountain. Looking back at the trail of increasingly larger footprints leading to the mountain range, he found that each depression displayed numerous fissures and cracks that spread out, indicating worse impact with every step. His heart skipped a beat. “I am fortunate to have decided to leave the city when I did. At this size, a simple stroll would demolish everything…” he reasoned.

Indeed. All the power his body had thus far absorbed, and continued to assimilate even now, was power no mortal was meant to have. At half-a-mile tall, the Arceus could only draw one conclusion: “I’m being returned to my former power. But it’s far too…” his train of thought derailed when he felt his every muscle rumble, sending vibrations all across the mountain range he had taken refuge in. From one moment to the next, he absolutely surged with size, simply blooming skyward like a growing weed as he doubled in size. With all that power coursing through his body, Arcano doubled over, needing to use his hands to stop himself which ended with two more mountains being absolutely crushed under his brute strength. “…too chaotic in nature. I can’t let this run rampant any longer; I will put this continent, no, this world in danger at this rate!”

Arcano tried to remember. Even through the constant growth, the electrifying pleasure, he put his brain to work. It had been so long since he had exerted control over everything. To dominate every last atom in existence, including his own. Easy as cake for a God, not so much for a mortal struggling with the overwhelming need to cater to his own desires. And right now, all Arcano desired was to allow this transformation to run its course, damn the consequences.

But he couldn’t. That wasn’t the kind of person he was any longer. Arcano had to, he wanted to funnel some of that burgeoning power as a means to take control. In response, his body doubled in size yet again, putting him over 2 miles tall. His bulk crashed through Alpine peaks which had loomed proud for untold generations, making Arcano gasp and pant in a mixture of fluster and failure.

“I can’t take control of this chaotic expansion…” the Arceus lamented, balling a hand into a fist and rising it to pound it down in frustration. But he stopped himself, not wanting to deliver a devastating impact to the earth that might obliterate everything around it. Then it hit him. “Maybe I don’t have to,” he thought, looking out to his hometown with fondness.

“All this power…” he said aloud, pushing himself back up to his feet the gentlest he could. He had to compensate for every involuntary twitch from his body which happened with every continuous growth spurt. Five miles, eight miles, eleven… He wasn’t going to stop anytime soon. But Arcano realized he didn’t have to stop or control it. “It’s not just for my benefit!” he declared, holding a hand out in the direction of the city with the other pointed down at the mountains he was dwarfing.

All of a sudden, a yellow shimmer manifested around his fingers, enveloping Arcano’s hands down to the wrist in a golden weave. From his digits sprung out energy which cut through the air at uncanny speed, bathing the surface with its divine-like glow.

As the giant projected this energy, his feet began to separate from the ground, and the ground itself began to elevate with what had been displaced by his presence taking its former place back. What his monstrous size and strength had upended, inverted, and what had been destroyed, mended. The repair company’s garage and offices, the city, the stomped countryside and even the mountain side.

The levitating Arcano’s energy seeped into the earth, efficiently turning back time for it. With conscious effort in healing and protecting, he didn’t have to worry about allowing his rampant evolution to continue. That moment of realization was when more golden light began to gather around his torso, rapidly spinning until it had solidified into the four-pronged ring, divine signature for Arceus. His ascension was well underway.

Without Arcano fighting the process, it only accelerated. And he grew and grew, eclipsing the continent as he surged hundreds of miles taller at a time. Entire cities were witness to the massive white God’s perfect physique, soon becoming whole states, countries, continents. Even as he grew along the curvature of the planet, Arcano kept himself afloat, taking great care to extend his holy protection across every corner of the globe. Even if he faltered and an errant twitch sent any of his body parts on collision course, the world would bounce him back as if it was made of rubber, maintaining its integrity without upsetting the landscape and the living beings populating it. His evolution would not harm anybody; he wouldn’t allow it.

Before long, the thousands of miles tall, ascending Arceus was gradually pulling himself back, away from the world whose size he didn’t take long surpassing. His hands forming a basket above of his rigid 8-pack, he delicately held his world above his palms and observed it with endearment even his mask couldn’t hide.

“I no longer exist solely for my own sake.” Arcano spoke to the void around him as he harmlessly dug the moon out of his pectoral wedge, allowing it to rejoin the Earth when he replaced them back in orbit. Looking out to the vastness of outer space, the God took stock of his truly leviathanic form. Muscles atop muscles. Deltoids so well-developed they threatened to swallow his neck. Biceps clearly larger than his own head. Limbs so powerful they could equally destroy and protect anything he put his mind to. Getting his ring back had been a pretty good indicative, but Arcano was now cottoning to the fact he had shed his mortality. It was time to take his place back as the Alpha.

No sooner than he had finally set his heart on reclaiming his true divinity, the glow of his ring intensified to a blinding degree. A searing heat in his breast coaxed Arcano into holding his right palm to it, feeling a series of paused yet strong thumps. He could hear his heart beating with renewed purpose after having been deaf to his own yearnings for so long. And those yearnings were loud, like the roar of a mighty dragon.

Now swelling thousands of miles taller with every second, swirling flames of gold ignited around Arcano, shooting out of the prongs of his segmented halo. Each segment shot off, propelled by the yellow flames like the exhaust of a space rocket, spinning in circles around him before settling at his back. A pair fused to below the shoulders while the remaining two glued to the small of his back. And then they began to lengthen, to twist and curve until their shape resembled the bone structure of wings, with pure aureate energy filling their membranes.

As Arcano began to dwarf planets such as Earth and Mars, he made sure to use his newly formed wings to give himself direction so as to remove himself from the Sun’s orbit and avoid unwanted collisions. Even though his divine energies were overflowing and casting a protective weave upon celestial bodies was child’s play at this point, he didn’t want even a nanosecond of distraction to bring preventable disaster upon the solar system. And in using those wings, his dexterity with them increased along with their size, his wingspan soon tripling to majestic proportions.

And that wasn’t all. The more Arcano grew, the more the tingling effect began to focus on different parts of his being: His once short kirin tail began to extend, each strand of pristine white fur fusing together and becoming encased in smooth shell-like growth that turned out to be scales. Jutting out above his perfect rump, the appendage grew longer and longer and longer until it was no less than twice the length of his own legs, ending at a slightly crooked tip with three small yellow rings distributed equidistantly along its length.

Already looming over the gas giant Jupiter, the changes continued with Arcano’s nails growing longer, eventually fusing to his finger and toe tips into talons of fearsome sharpness. With their proportions also enlarged, hands and feet had morphed into powerful claws. The Draco Plate’s power had suffused the essence of dragons into Arcano, and his body was evolving mid-ascension into a heretofore unknown form.

Once clenched shut while bearing the pleasurable strain of that transformation, Arcano’s eyes opened to reveal his once diminutive round pupils filling the space of his red irises with their new and elongated, slit-like shape. Remaining burly, his neck began to grow longer much like his tail had, extending above his shoulders a proverbial four heads away. His jaw separating from his mask, it also enlarged in proportion in order to accommodate pointy, pearly-white fangs. Arcano’s face bulged out into a rounder, longer, snout-like form.

Now comparable to the star at the center of the system in size, Arcano could allow himself a sigh of relief, feeling his empowered new form simply crackling with power after the transformation was done. He looked considerably more bestial, especially with his utterly hulked out muscles, but there was a dignified and regal appearance to him now. Not even the Sol itself could compare to his sheer incandescence.

Looking over his sharp claws and seeing them click, peering back at his enormous and thick tail, hearing his four gloriously immense wings flap: Arcano was convinced: “This is a most ancient power, I can feel it in my veins. This is not the channeling of a Type essence… I have truly become one with it!”

Indeed. The new Dragon-Type God was simply brimming with size and energy. Such was his incredible geometry that it was rapidly becoming impossible for the Sun to remain relevant where mass was concerned. As Arcano doubled and tripled the star’s size, his gravitational pull inevitably tore every last bit of matter in the system off orbit, to be joined his intensifying one. Prepared for such an event, the deific dragon extended an arm, blessing every last object he could grasp in this collection with his protection. Even if they collided against his solid, muscle-bound frame or against each other on the way to settle in their respective new orbits, there would be no damage. Such was the decree of that almighty Pokémon.

Fortunately for Arcano, he didn’t need to gripe about his inexorable expansion any longer. Its chaotic and unstoppable nature could easily be tempered by his directly proportionally strengthening divine influence. Even as he outgrew the entire solar system and his unbelievably large started to encroach upon the neighboring ones, so too did his blessing, enabling him to guard everything and everyone from being hopelessly crushed by the approach of his legendary immensity.

But Arcano didn’t have the chance to observe the cosmos in relation to himself for long. With ever accelerating growth, other solar systems became visible and again invisible in almost the blink of an eye. His draconic bulk filled up the entire Milky Way within a minute, his stature so incredible that soon whole galaxies were dwarfed by his biceps. The embrace of a universe whose nigh-infinite expansion could not outrun Arcano’s divine ascension was soon tight.

The Dragon-type Arceus closed his eyes, tasting the edge which his snout was pressing up against. That all-too-familiar limit which matter and energy was conscripted to remain contained by. An invisible membrane, an outline of pure white light representing the end of the observable universe was the final obstacle for Arcano to outgrow. There wasn’t any remaining space for the two of them at once. Arcano didn’t fight with the universe for, however. Just like with every other thing he had outgrown and blessed, he extended his protection to that expansive wave of creative energy and allowed himself to push out.

Bigger and bigger, Arcano glowed the brightest yet, and eventually he started to phase through his constraint rather than demolish it. In that way, he outgrew his home universe and was welcomed into the next plain of existence.

A sea even more vast than himself opened up to the divine dragon. Populated by countless, slightly different, yet similar spherical objects, the white space was full of it. Every sphere was transparent with a light blue shimmer glowing around it; even the one he had just separated from. Arcano didn’t have to think too deeply to understand where his seemingly endless journey of elevation had brought him to. Sensing his expansion finally ebbing away, the deity gently levitated above the flat sea of marbles, able to observe infinity and eternity coming together in a singular void. The multi-verse awaited.

Arcano was, of course, overwhelmed. Each sphere was like a diminutive window into an entire universe, like the one of his provenance. And soon, they too were infinitesimal to Arcano, who outgrew even the multi-verse itself in order to protectively hold it in his mighty arms. The dragon was feeling powerful enough, more powerful in fact than he used to remember he was, to guide and influence every last one of those existences according to his design. However, his hand was stayed by a thought. A memory.

He recalled Anna wheeling in the cart into that cramped city office.

Mr. Sullivan constantly depending on him despite being his boss.

He thought further back to even the Gods and goddesses from his ancient days as well. Their companionship, loyalty and well as their assistance.

As melancholy invaded him, so did rationality. “I must be different, this time,” he told himself, turning his attention to the tiny glint of the universe he had emerged from. “I’m not alone.”

Power projected from Arcano’s eyes. He focused on finding three old friends, who had believed in him to the very end.

One by one, these deities were infused and empowered by Arcano’s blessing. Dialga, eternity in the flesh, emerged a cobalt amazon, ever voluptuous and beautiful. The goddess gracefully outgrew Arcano’s universe. Following her was her brother, Palkia, chiseled infinity, a lilac Hercules whose every breath sent his muscles rippling. And the last but not lesser brother, the personification of the void, Giratina, whose dusky exterior hid the promise of a bright new dawn with his toned and masculine physique.

All three Gods floated among the universes with looks of dumbfounded confusion across their masks and snouts. They pointed at each other, exclaiming their bewilderment at their new, exacerbated physical features and the explosive new power they had received. Their surprise was understandable, however, for they had been plucked from their respective posts and ascended beyond the ken of every other deity in their council.

When they finally went through the same realization as Arcano had after breaching into the multiverse, one glance above the flat sea of universes let the trio see whose grace they had reached this level of existence by. Although changed in appearance, none of them could deny who the white and golden dragon above them was. Overjoyed and falling to their knees, both Dialga and Palkia joined their hands in prayer, with even Giratina standing in reverence for their long-lost leader.

“It is you, lord Arcano.” The griseous, ex-lord of darkness spoke in greeting.

“Mind your manners, brother!” Dialga repudiated. “On your knees! It’s been generations…!”

“I thought we’d never seen you again,” Palkia rose his head to meet a gentle smile from above.

“My loyal kin.” Arcano said in a welcoming tone, “I have dreamed of this moment. I have also dreamed of your unforgettable kindness, time and again. You must forgive my capricious nature once more. As you can tell, I’m at fault for your new station.”

“You… you were reinstated?” Dialga was quick to ask, “But I never heard of any such plans…”

Arcano shook his head. “The council had nothing to do with this, my dear. My placid ‘vacation’ period is over. And I wish for us to undergo a new mission, together.”

“A new mission?”

“Together?”

With the two brothers exchanging looks, Arcano felt the need to explain further. “As you know, I have been living among mortals… as a mortal, for half a generation. That was the decree of the council. The truth was that I was never in agreement with their choice, but at the time it was the perfect escape to my responsibilities. However, experience has, as always, been the greatest of teachers. And I now find myself with my mind both expanded and enriched by my new life.”

“But this is…” Palkia looked at the immense amount of universes at their feet and then back at the sky that was their master’s face, “…this is entirely too much. I can sense we’re beyond the space that even the council is aware of. That we, until now, were aware of!”

“It will no doubt take us time to get used to it, including myself,” Arcano admitted, “But I have faith in you three. Your kindness and personal experiences with mortals and other Gods; your loyalty, always welcome, is but secondary to me. I wish to continue to observe and guide them all, protect them, with your help. Will you do me the honor of assisting in this tremendous undertaking…?”

The way Arcano addressed his creation trio was less a command and more a request born of humility. A recently crowned, truly ascended God with power enough to conquer and reshape reality was bowing his head at them. Inspired and invigorated, the response was unanimous.

Arcano lightly applied pressure with his musclebound arms, harmlessly yet clearly hugging his multiverse. His three fellow dragons could feel warmth and fatherly pride at the same time. “Mortals have it exceptionally rough, to the point of having their wills broken. Gods become jealous with keeping their power and control, choosing stagnation over progress and coexistence. We must strive to guide both without enforcing our ideals. This cannot be solved by tyrannical trials or by burning it all with what we consider to be righteous flame. I’m afraid we have generations of debate and listening to go, my supporters.”

“Our support is forever yours, milord!” the three dragons assured in unison. But Giratina had something to add, a question before they began with their mission: “Just… something on my mind, lord Arcano. If the council is not responsible for this ascension, then…?”

Softly laughing, Arcano nodded down at his cohorts. “What is it, young Giratina? Are you wondering about my breakthrough and ascension into new heights?” he gently let the multiverse go before curling his arm and adapting a flexing pose, allowing not only the smaller dragons, but the owner of those deific muscles to admire that Godly beauty. “I couldn’t claim all credit for it. I certainly had help.”

“But who could help the Alpha in this way…?” Giratina insisted, making Arcano grin with his draconic fangs cutely bared.

“Let us just call her… an Admirer.”

The End.