"Ain't lookin' for trouble but ya sure found it."

“Yes.”

No sense of embarrassment nor shyness about the fact that it was, indeed, a thong. Genji’s pink gaze dipped, eyeing the thin, lacy lingerie. He stretched it once, twice, thrice. Quickly, he set it down, and plucked free the other half of the set: an equally lacy bra.

Again, he stretched it.

“Bra as well. Cute, yes?”

Without any time for Bryce to comprehend, let alone stomach, the situation at hand, Genji threw the bra and thong at the man. A smirk flourished upon his features, positively devilish.

“Put it on.”

The confirmation didn’t exactly help his flustered cheeks, nor the normality that Genji seemed to carry into every situation. It certainly wasn’t everyday that a thong and-

“And bra? A set? You bought a set??”

He swallowed nervously, his instincts telling him something was about to happen, either the rug beneath his feet was about to take a tug or a blow to the gut. Watching that man pull the material again and again was as foreboding as any dark gray sky.

Either way, the next few symbols from the other man’s mouth nearly see Byrce to the goddamn floor.

“You expect me to wear somethin’ like that!? Not only would I rip that thing in half, I’m not exactly the type to wear a silly thing like that.”

Today, Genji had opted to stay inside. While Bryce was out doing whatever job-related shenanigans he needed to, it was cold, and rain kissed the earth in a loving though persisting manner; enshrouding the abode in chills far too ingraining for Genji to want to shuck his cosy blankets off. This time period had blankets so very thick and comfortable and not itchy. A miracle, really.

When the door clicked unlocked, his head craned from the couch to the entry hall. Bryce’s voice cut through the dull drone of the television—the evening news, not Genji’s favourite television time for every channel seemed to be groaning on about worldly troubles. Someone got murdered, some business went under, the police raided an illegal pokémon breeding farm, so on, so forth. Quite frankly, all the information about the world was both overwhelming and exhausting. But the anticipation of hearing one of his packages had come in brought a little light to his eyes.

“Lemme see.”

Quick he was to thrust the blanket away, lingering by the lounge room threshold. He spied the last second of Bryce analysing the label—discreet and ordinary as far as anyone could tell—before whisking the package away through a twirling gesture of his forefinger. Telekinesis plucked it clean from Bryce’s hands, luring them into Genji’s. Swift Genji was to beeline back to the couch, plop himself down, and tear through. While the masking tape did provide a bit of a challenge, a small, concentrated burst of psychic power shredded through it like naught but wet tissue.

He plucked the set of lingerie from the now open box. He turned towards Bryce, holding it up.

“Stretchy.”

The package was lifted out of his hands by what might as well been magic, like a few others, as he only shakes his head. Truth be told, he was a curious man. He had to be, being an ex-detective and a now private eye. It was his nature to be interest in seemingly even the most mundane of things, but he also a grown man who knows people still want some sort of privacy.

Genji was a person so he did not escape the clause. It wasn’t all secrets though since the man in question tended to want to share what new thing he discovered-

“Is that... a thong?”

It had been many a month since Bryce had invited Genji to settle in his abode. To say Genji was appreciative was an understatement; no more did he have to press himself flush against a tree’s gnarled roots, hoping its foliage were to thwart the rain. No more did he have to struggle to keep his stomach filled. No more did he have to worry about being cold enough that his teeth chattered and knees knocked. It was pleasant, not having to worry about these things.

They’d become, fortunately, quick friends. Though something else stirred beneath. They hadn’t had that talk yet.

Unfortunately for Bryce, who’d tasked himself with teaching Genji the ways of the modern world, Genji had recently found himself in tow with the greatly powerful (or perhaps annoying was better apt) skill of online shopping. Soon, Bryce were to find the odd, though small, package delivered to his door, in his name. Today, another package had found its way there; pressed crookedly against the door frame.

DELIVER TO: RICHARD SEBASTIAN BRYCE, it said. No indication of what lurked within it. Just a small, ordinary box.

The packages and spending had to be addressed. Truth be told, Bryce was doing far better than people usually did. Better in the sense he stopped drinking away his money. So the odd bits and bobs hadn’t hurt in any real impactful way, it still had to be brought up.

Genji might’ve been some interdimensional traveler but the man looked to have some sort of currency. A reminder of watching the price did ensure the infrequency of the spending but it didn’t stop fully. Bryce couldn’t really mind.

So the investigator didn’t think twice as he scooped up the box as he unlocked his front door and stepped inside.

“Genji! You got another one.”

The malodour of the scraggly, orange-tipped stick marred Genji’s features with disgust. Arceus, that smelled awful. Smelled like … he didn’t even think he could bridge together a real-life comparison. All he knew was it smelled like death incarnate.

Indiscreetly craning his head away from the stench, he muttered something in his mother tongue, though still tried to keep his ears pinned to the subject. Proved more difficult than desired—didn’t help that the stink tickled the urge to disclose his breakfast—but he managed to latch onto those latter queries.

“No one place. Mostly there,” again, he pointed south, towards the Wild Area. It was hard to tell, thanks to the layered, billowing robes and the fact that Bryce hadn’t seen this man before in his lifetime, but Genji was thin. Far thinner than what he was when he was yanked from his makeshift home in the kingdom capital. Hard to provide for one’s self when you didn’t have any means to procure the currency. And the fact that no one really bartered here? Pshaw.

“It’s hard when it rains. It rains a lot here. Surprised this place isn’t underwater. Tokutoku.”

The least he could and offer to Genji was exhaling the smoke in the opposite direction, letting it trail behind them on his end. He knows it ain’t for everyone, especially one from a whole different world at that.

He blinked.

“Wait-  a month out in the Wild Area? With nothing else?”

His brows furrowed together as he looked around the nearby buildings. He wasn’t even truthfully staying in the area for this business trip he was on.

“I can only imagine your luck trying to catch something to eat.”

He sighs yet again and runs his hand through his hair. Again.

A bit of an odd, long name, but really, what wasn’t odd in this land? Genji’s gaze followed Bryce’s, up unto the sky above. It was relatively cloudless, a rarity in Galar, and so cerulean stretched in vast expanses overhead. It was beautiful; however, Genji wasn’t in the right headspace to think of anything here as pretty. To him, weirdness prevailed.

The latter question earned a moment of mulling, lines marring his forehead as brows furrowed, lips pursed. He didn’t quite understand the word reality, but he extrapolated where need be.

“I don’t know. A month?” Frankly, his perception of time felt twisted. It felt like it’d been years here, stumbling haplessly like a newly born ponyta, but a hiss of logic spoke otherwise. Slowly did his gaze return onto Bryce. “Yes, it looks like a tear in the sky, Private Investigator Richard Bryce. White on outside, like claws? Claws holding onto the sky. The insides had many, many colours, swirling. Fell over there.” He abruptly pointed south, towards the sturdy, cobblestone entrance that marked the Wild Area.

“Is that what they’re called? ‘Tears in reality’?”

A tried sigh passed his lips as he lifted his hands from his pockets, retrieving both a lighter and cigarette. The cancer stick was lit, puffed on, and blown before he finally spoke again.

“Somethin’ like that. Another word for them are called ‘Portals’. Wormholes. Anything that means opening up some sort of pathway between two points that may or may not be on the same planet.”

He rubbed through his short cut black hair as he looked back to Genji, frowning.

Now Genji had the gall to look offended; his face scrunched up like a wad of paper. Though the question was both genuine and logical, Genji’s split-second interpretation took it as a jab—or an otherwise concerned, though wholehearted, insinuation of him being too far gone. Okay, yeah, sure, he struggled to remember some details of his past. Like the names of certain places and things.

But to not remember his own name?

“It’s Genji,” he said, not quite a snap but still wielding a slight, biting edge to it. “I think I just—uh, hit my head. When I fell from the colour swirl. It will come back to me.” A sidelong glance, forcing himself to quell the look of annoyance lavish upon skin. “So. What’s yours? Do you remember yours?”

It’d happened sporadically over the past months, in this region. Cropping up predominantly in the icy tundra, reports were vague and cryptic. They urged people to stay away, though the media coverage compelled many a trainer to tempt fate—resulting in someone, something canning the reports entirely. While these technicolour holes in the sky continued—some big and some small, some lasting days and others only minutes—it was just everyday people catching sightings, posting them online, sharing amongst gasp-evoked friends.

It was mostly pokémon popping in and out of the skyward tears.

Mostly.

“Genji.”

It’s repeated and carefully stored away with the face of the man in his mind.

The name wasn’t strange by any means, but the manner of which the man had found himself here. Instead of getting hammered the night before and looking confused, which would be far more understandable, he fell from a color... swirl?

“Private Investigator, Richard Bryce. And by... ‘color swirl’ do you mean those tears in reality that’s been happening? You fell out one of those?”

Purely for emphasis, the man looked up at the sky and back toward the other man. Who... did walk on air only a few moments ago. Suppose stranger things have happened.

The man’s body wept vexation—from the folded arms to the disapproving glare, some were surprised Genji wasn’t simply vanquished from the sight. Those some that’d decided to hover, linger, observed the exchange, while most went about their routine now that no mangled bodies were to taint their day.

Genji wasn’t deterred, he wasn’t slighted, but the lightness was retracted at the stranger’s quip; the one where he said that he didn’t know where Genji was from.

“That makes two of us, then,” Genji said, gaze sweeping around him. He grumbled something in his native tongue—resembling Kantonian, Johtonese, but not quite clicking as exact. Pink eyes slid back unto the other’s. A brief stint of silence made the atmosphere thick enough that not even a knife could slice it through before Genji’s face lit up—happy that he’d remembered the word in this weird, clunky language. “Arcane! That’s the word. Arcane? Yes, arcane. It’s like … pokémon type.” He scrunched his face some. He couldn’t remember the word for it in this language. He gestured vaguely, braids moving in a swishing fashion, in tune with the flow of his hands but out of tune with the flow of wind. “You know … pokémon with spoons? It’s like that but with people.”

The language change wasn’t lost to the man. He was well traveled now which meant being soaked in the various different languages and dialects. Of course he hasn’t traveled everywhere, but the fact he couldn’t even use an educated guess to place not only the accent nor the language was... impressive.

And disappointing the moment the man didn’t seem to have a name for his place of origin. Bryce could chalk up the interesting vocabulary use if only for Galarian not being his first language (or in Bryce’s case, Unovan).

 Overall, the man could only sigh and uncross his arms and drop his hands into the deep pockets of his trench coat.

“The word you’re looking for is ‘psychic’. You don’t know where you are, presumably. Don’t know where your home is. Do you know your name?”

His descent was slow, gradual. There was no denying that the display was bordering on the grandiose side of things—but their collective response served only to further confuse him. Were the ways of the arcane really lost to these people?

Genji’s gaze swivelled around, watching how people stared up at him—terrified and awestricken—before his eyes landed on the man directly below him. The way either hand extended skywards, hoping to catch him, to act as something of a fleshy cushion. There was no need for it, and Genji gingerly adjusted his earthbound route to ensure that the two didn’t collide.

When his bare feet pressed flush with the pavement, the glow subsided. His robes fluttered. He then stared sidelong at the other man. A blink, two, before tucking a thick tress behind his left ear and feeling a small smirk crack upon lips.

“’What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck.’ Why does everyone here sound like bunch of chatots?” Genji paused for a beat, lips angled, thinning. “… Have none of you seen—Arceus, what’s your word for this … People floating? Moving stuff? Blowing things up? Weird.”

The accent was a foreign as the man’s attire. In a place like Galar? The robes stuck out like the sorest thumb he’s ever seen. Unova? There would a few less heads turning, but not from the stunt that was just pulled.

“What do you mean why?” Bryce huffed, his outstretched arms coming to fold over his chest. Nearly had a heart attack the moment before, who could really blame him for not entertaining the light tone from the stranger.

“-People here ain’t used to fancy dressed people flinging themselves over railings tall enough to end a life! I don’t know where you’re from, but they don’t do that here.”