Chapter 133: Interlude XXVIII – Null Reference
TL;DR
A dream of scientific glory turns into a cascading lab disaster — Artum wakes to an emergency at the Cinnabar Unown lab, arrives to find the cloud behaving in eerie formations, and learns three fossils—Omanyte, Kabuto, and Aerodactyl—have already been revived.
Red shows up like a fire alarm with authority behind him — teleporting straight into Artum’s office in full hunter gear, Red warns that a Unown lab in Rustboro has suffered multiple casualties and pushes Director Tai to release the cloud before Cinnabar follows suit.
The core fight is research ambition versus vague but credible existential risk — Tai refuses to destroy months of work without direct League orders or an obvious threat, while Red argues that safety systems won’t matter if the Unown start turning the lab’s own defenses into Pokémon.
The attempted controlled merge becomes the trigger point — after Elite Agatha arrives and Red prepares to merge with a small isolated Unown group, the entire cloud across the lab freezes at once, then erupts into chaotic attacks and reality-warping Pokémon manifestations.
Artum’s most vivid moment is facing a Pokémon that looks like broken rendering code — he describes a blocky, impossible creature as if “a bunch of objects in a sim” were clipped together, needs silk goggles just to look at it, and barely captures it in an Ultra Ball while the lab falls apart around him.
The chapter ends by widening the threat from one lab to all of Kanto’s infrastructure — Bill detects a spreading network corruption he can only describe as a null-pointer-like reference bug infecting Pokédex systems, shuts down EVA and Indigo networks manually, and realizes the crisis has escaped the lab entirely.
The Breakdown
Artum Wakes Up to the Breakthrough He’s Been Dreaming About
The chapter opens with Artum literally dreaming of a career-defining scientific moment—big names visiting the lab, some vague world-changing breakthrough—before Leon’s phone call yanks him into reality. That emotional setup matters: this is exactly the kind of moment he’s wanted ever since Lavender Town, where first contact with the truly unknown made ordinary research feel too small.
The Unown Cloud Has Become Something New
At the lab, Artum walks into a scene that feels half miracle, half omen. The Unown aren’t just a chaotic cloud anymore; they’re moving in strings, clusters, and near-patterns, producing sounds with enough structure that researchers can pick out individual warbles and clicks. Then Jen drops the bomb: three fossils—Omanyte, Kabuto, and Aerodactyl—have been revived, and Aerodactyl even ate part of the cloud.
Red Arrives With Bad News From Rustboro
While Artum is diving into logs, Red calls, then appears in person, fully armored and instantly all business. His warning is blunt: a Unown lab in Rustboro suffered multiple casualties, and whatever is happening there may be starting here too. The energy shifts hard from “this is huge” to “this may be a catastrophe,” and Artum immediately helps take Red to Director Tai.
Director Tai Refuses to Blink
This section is basically a high-stakes argument over precaution versus proof. Tai insists the lab’s capture systems, trainer redundancies, and protocols are designed for mass Pokégenesis events; Red counters that those assumptions break if the Unown start turning the capture systems themselves into Pokémon. Artum backs Red, invoking Devon-funded Rustboro as proof that “prepared” doesn’t mean safe, but Tai only agrees to voluntary shifts and heightened caution—not releasing the cloud.
Red’s Backup Plan: Merge With the Unown
Away from the director, Red drops the calmer official tone and admits he has a “really bad feeling” he can’t explain. Since he can’t justify a full release order, he asks Artum for something much riskier: isolate a small group so he can merge with them and maybe learn enough to justify action in Hoenn. Artum is rattled—especially by the Rowan comparison—but he agrees, then quietly messages contacts at six other Unown labs and gets confirmation that odd activity is happening elsewhere too.
Agatha Arrives, and Then Everything Breaks
Elite Agatha enters with dry humor, a cane, and immediate authority, still openly skeptical of Red doing the merge himself. But once Red and Jensen go into the prepared chamber, every Unown in the lab suddenly freezes midair like they’ve been pinned in an invisible web. A beat later they explode into violence—energy spheres, destruction, screams, and newly generated horrors—turning the lab from research site into battlefield.
Artum Sees a Pokémon That Shouldn’t Exist
In the chaos, Artum encounters the chapter’s most unsettling image: a creature that looks less like a species and more like glitched geometry, “a mashed together bunch of objects in a sim.” Looking at it hurts his brain badly enough that he puts on silk goggles, a Lavender-style defense against cognitohazard weirdness, and even then it still only partially resolves into an impossible shifting tower. He captures it, fights through the wreckage, and helps trigger the roof release—only for the Unown to ignore the open sky.
Agatha Cleans Up the Lab, Bill Discovers the Bigger Attack
Agatha ends the immediate crisis with a single terrifying command—“Feast”—sending her ghosts through the Unown cloud “like Sharpedo in a school of fish.” Just when the chapter seems ready to settle into aftermath, it cuts to Bill, who learns a corruption is spreading through the Kanto Pokédex network and can barely be described because it’s eating references themselves. He isolates Indigo’s systems, shuts EVA down by hand, kills power to his lab, and realizes this isn’t just a Unown lab incident anymore—it’s become a network-level outbreak.