#midnightquill

I

The first time Emmet thinks something might be wrong, he doesn’t notice it as such. It is a fleeting moment, a wayward thought that not so much strikes him, as gently builds; almost imperceptible among other thoughts and tasks demanding his attention, until it is undeniable. 

He is manning the Singles train, waiting for a challenger to reach the requisite number of uninterrupted victories when, as the train pulls to a stop at a station, a small growing unease manifests into a singular thought. 

I am not supposed to be here.

A wave of panic follows the thought. Was he on the wrong train? Did he read the schedule wrong? If he wasn’t supposed to be here, where was he supposed to be? Who was supposed to be manning this line instead?

He manages to pull the emergency brake on the train of thought before it can derail him completely. He is Emmet. He is the Subway Boss of Gear Station. He would not mess up his schedules. Besides, he is already a third of the way through the route, and if he had somehow boarded the wrong train, one of his employees would have radioed him to let him know. He has received no such calls, ergo, he must be in the correct place.

If the train leaves the station a half second behind, the only one who knows is Emmet.

II

The second time it happens, the thought that something is wrong is a conscious one, but he has nothing to link it to. 

He is on the Multi Line this time, finishing a battle with Cameron at his side. He has just finished the first two sentences of his prepared script (“I am Emmet. I won together with Cameron.”) when he is almost overrun by a wave of intense sadness. He does not understand why he is sad. There is nothing to be sad over. They won the battle, and Emmet likes winning more than anything else! And yet, he is indescribably, unbearably sad.

He almost stumbles on the rest of his prepared response, but it is a script, a script he has said so, so many times since he became the Subway Boss, and he is able to finish it. If he seems more subdued than usual - if there is something of a peaked underlay to his already relatively flat tones - the two trainers disembarking as the train pulls to a stop do not notice. They wave, promise to come back and beat them (one of them makes a joke about coming on a week when Cameron is not there; an empty threat, Emmet knows this trainer only boards the trains where Cameron is on the schedule), and step off.

Just like that, the sadness is gone, but the memory of it is not. Emmet too, steps off the train in what he feels is a perfectly confident manner and makes his way towards his office. He hears Cameron’s call about taking care of disembarking procedures, and lifts his hand in an acknowledging wave as he climbs the stairs up from the platform.

He is supposed to be doing paperwork, but he can’t get his mind off the strange feeling. What could possibly have caused it? He has no reason to be sad. The Battle Subway is doing well, it is just as popular as ever, Emmet has only lost two battles today when he was on the Doubles line in the morning. All in all, it has been as normal a work day as work gets, and Emmet loves his work.

Given the onset of the feeling, it seems reasonable to link it to battling with Cameron, but, no. That doesn’t make sense either. Emmet has battled alongside Cameron countless times before. Cameron is a good battler; not quite on Emmet’s level, but he holds his own, and meshes well with Emmet’s tactics, as they have trained. Emmet may be the only Subway Boss, but his depot agents are formidable in their own right. They have to be, in order to cover for him on the lines where he is not working, as he moves around the schedule.

He wonders, sometimes, why they have so many battle lines. Emmet is only one person, and his love for the subway does not make up for the fact that the workload is far too much for one person. He could close some down, convert them to normal transit, but, no. 

That doesn’t feel right. 

He could promote one of his agents? None of them were on his level, but surely he could use the help of another full-time Subway Boss?

The thought of another Subway Boss who isn’t-

The thought of another Subway Boss makes him sick.

He grabs one of the pieces of paperwork from the stack and forces himself to focus on it, taking sips of water to settle the nausea. That was unfair of him. His Depot Agents are all good people. It is verrrry rude of him to react so poorly to even the thought of one of them sharing his job.

He chalks it up to an after effect of that weird feeling from earlier, and focuses on the feeling of pen moving across paper instead.

By the time Cameron comes to check on him, he has no answers for his slight derailment earlier, and the feeling that caused it is as good as forgotten.

V-VI

It is a long time before anything else occurs out of place enough for him to truly notice, and this time, it happens twice in 24 hours. He is visiting his Uncle Dryden for Iris’s birthday. He is not keen to leave the Battle Subway if not necessary, but even he knows that he needs to take a break for maintenance, and it is good to see family again. Uncle Drayden, and by extension, Iris, are the only family he has left (well, besides Elesa, who has become as near to a sister as he can imagine over the years). 

The league is throwing a proper party for her, all fancy outfits, and important trainers meeting at the same station to network (there are no cocktails, Iris is still a child after all). Even if he wasn’t family, Emmet would have been expected to make an appearance anyways as the head of Unova’s battle facility. If Iris had not been family, Emmet probably would not have gone. He does not like parties. He was not good at conversation, and he is afraid of making a scene if the lights and noises overwhelm him. Elesa, as a gym leader, is there, of course, but it is rude of him to expect Elesa to stay with him to make up for his lack of skill with words.

But Iris is family, so Emmet is standing at the side of a large event space, wearing a fancy outfit Elesa has picked out for him, and watching as Elesa steps away from his side to converse with a visiting gym leader from another region. He does not really want to be here, but Iris has agreed to have a double battle with him the next morning, which is at least something exciting to look forward to. 

As he watches Elesa flit from guest to guest with an ease he wishes he could mirror, a waiter passes by with a tray of canapés. Emmet takes one. It is good, and, on what seems like instinct, Emmet turns to his right, raising a hand as if to gesture, his lips slightly parted with unplanned speech. 

The words die on his lips. There is no one there. Of course there is no one there, he already knows Elesa is across the room. Why had he expected someone to be standing there? He lowers his hand and munches on the canapé. The strange occurrence settles over him in a funk that he cannot shake.

Emmet skips the rest of the party.

The next occurrence happens the next morning, after his battle with Iris. He had lost to her, but it had been verrrry fun, certainly much better than the formal party. They have relocated to a much more private setting; a private party just for family. Emmet is bringing food and water to their Pokémon outside, and as he steps back inside to grab some more dishes, he catches the tail end of a conversation Dryden and Iris are having in the kitchen.

He does not hear all of it, does not even hear anything significant. All in all, he hears only five words, buried in a sentence that blurs to nothing as static settles over him.

“...it's lonely at the top…”

He does not know why the words have such an effect on him. It is not a saying he is unfamiliar with, and Emmet is not lonely. Maybe, he does not have a large circle of friends, but his current circle is a manageable number. Sure, he would not say he is close to any of his employees, but isn’t that how it’s supposed to be? They work well together, keep the trains moving on time smoothly, day in, and day out. The Depot Agents put up with his eccentricities; if anything, he would say sometimes they find them almost endearing.

Emmet is not lonely, so why can he suddenly not breathe? Why is he filled with such a gut-wrenching feeling over a simple saying?

Grasping at the wall, he manages to stay upright, and turn himself around. It is Iris’s birthday, and he will not let unwanted feelings ruin the moment.

Outside, his Pokémon are happy to comfort him as he collapses among them; happy to fill a hole in his heart he cannot explain.

Emmet is not lonely. He has Elesa, and his Pokémon, and-

When Iris and Drayden come out to see what is taking Emmet so long, the static is gone. He is not even sure why he was upset in the first place.

IX

He is with Elesa this time. They are sitting on the couch in his apartment, watching a bad movie, the kind of movie he would normally provide brash, biting commentary for. His heart isn’t in it. He is still thinking about a moment earlier at work. One of the agents had brought up the idea of renovating the empty office across the hall from him, and Emmet had all but shouted him down. He had been required to switch tracks, excuse himself and end the meeting early before he fully derailed. He could not explain the outburst, Emmet never went into the office. It was not even in use for storage. It made sense to renovate it, to make efficient use of the space.

And yet, Emmet could not stomach the thought of it changing. When he closed his eyes, he could picture the layout: a perfect mirror to his own, the decorations in dark colours where his were light, but a similar collection of books and manuals stacked neatly on the shelves. He could imagine sitting across the desk, working on paperwork from the visitor’s chair. 

The image made no sense. Why would he ever do that? He could not ever remember doing such a thing when his own office was available. And yet, something about the image was so natural and comforting that he could not shake it.

And he could not allow the office to change.

The conviction of his feelings, the raw emotion that had caused his outburst were gone. He could not even locate their tracks if he tried. But the memory of the outburst was real and fresh, and embarrassing. He had not meant to shout at his agent. 

“Emmet, if you stare any harder you’re going to burn a hole in the TV. Everything Goodlett?”

Emmet does not bother responding to the extraordinarily bad pun except to sigh. 

“I am Emmet. I am sorry Elesa. I am not feeling well.”

There is a hand on his forehead. “Hmm… You don’t feel warm.”

“I do not think I am physically ill. It is the circuitry in my cab that has gone awry.”

“Bad day at work?” He nods, and Elesa continues. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Does he? He is not good with words, but Elesa is like a sister to him. He is comfortable with her in a way he is not with strangers. He knows she will be patient if he stumbles over his words. He is not sure he can explain, but Elesa is good at understanding him (Not perfect, not in the way In-), maybe she will be able to make sense of the things that have been happening.

It takes him several minutes to put together the words he wants to use. Elesa pretends to watch the movie the entire time, as though she is not waiting for a response to her question.

“I do not want to change the empty office at Gear Station.”

Elesa looks over at him and makes a small hum in the back of her throat. “So don’t. It’s not like you need the space for anything right?”

Emmet nods.

Elesa scrunches up her face at him. “I’m definitely missing something here. This shouldn’t derail you that much Emmet.”

Emmet sinks into the couch. His smile falters. “I... yelled at Furze when they suggested it. They are on schedule for the Multi line with me tomorrow. Our coupling may come undone.”

Elesa reaches forward and grabs the take-out boxes off the coffee table, handing one the Emmet. He takes it, hurriedly putting food in his mouth as Elesa speaks around much more careful bites. “You apologized, right?” Emmet nods. He does not mention the cut-short meeting, or the fact that it had not occurred to him that he needed to apologize to Furze until hours later, because they should have known that changing that office was not an option.

“Then I’m sure it’ll be fine. Ask Furze tomorrow if they want to switch schedules, if you think you can handle that,” Elesa is continuing. Emmet lets her speak.

 “Don’t feel you have to answer this Emmet, but why is it such an issue? It’s just an empty office, right? I mean, you’re blunt, and to the point - anyone who knows you knows that - but you don’t yell. You barely even raise your voice, not like-” she cuts off, a strange look passing over her face. Emmet freezes, and forces himself to swallow. Was she feeling it too? Experiencing one of those strange, inexplicable moments he thought only plagued him? The look passes and Elesa continues, no sign of oddity in her voice. “You must have felt very strongly about it to yell.”

It is the question he has been dreading. The one he cannot even answer to himself. He puts the takeout box back down, appetite gone, and stares down at his hands, playing with the edge of the blanket that is spread out across their legs. He cannot meet her gaze, and when he finally speaks, it is in little more than a whisper. “I do not know.”

Elesa does not say anything, and he does not look up at her, but he knows, all the same, from the years they have known each other, the worried expression on her face. He knows she is waiting for him to say more, but is giving him the time he needs to find the words. He knows too, that Elesa will not blame him, will not be mad if he says nothing more, if he cannot find the words. For this reason, and many more, he wants to be able to explain further. So he sits, willing his mind to find the tracks that led to his outburst earlier.

“Did you want me to pause the movie?” Elesa interrupts his thoughts only once. He shrugs, then nods his head, still lost in his thoughts. The background noise of the movie stops, replaced by the quiet beeps and pings of Elesa fiddling with her phone.

He does not know how long it takes, but finally he finds the tracks that lead to the station he has been searching for - or at least ones that lead somewhere close. He remembers the thoughts he had earlier, about the strange recollection of events that never happened, the way the thought of change had filled him with such an intense nausea.

He relays this, shaky and stuttering over his words, to Elesa.

She does not respond, and when he looks up at her, she is staring at him with that same strange look on her face. “It’s oddish,” she finally says, turning to stare over the back of the couch, in the direction of Emmet’s bedroom, “But I know what you’re talking about. It’s like with your spare room. I don’t think I’ve ever been in there, but when you were talking about the inside of that office, I realized I know exactly what that bedroom looks like.” She frowns, her expression twisting as she places a well-manicured hand over her heart. “I don’t normally even think about it, but you have a perfectly serviceable spare room, and yet you sleep on the couch when I stay over.”

Emmet says what he knows they are both thinking. “That room belongs to someone else.”

It is a thought that doesn’t make sense - a train on a solitary track, unconnected to the rest of the system. Emmet lives alone, has lived alone since the day he moved to Nimbasa…. and yet it feels right. That room, with its black duvet, and trinkets that are like Emmet’s, but not quite, belongs to someone who isn’t Emmet.

Elesa is nodding rapidly now. “Eggs-xactly! It’s like that mug I have. You know, the black one, with the trains on it?” Emmet nods. He has seen the one she is talking about, he gave her one with the same pattern but in white some years ago, “Every time you come over and I pull that white cup down, I find myself wondering why I have the black one. You don’t use it, and yet, I feel like I’m supposed to be pulling it down at the same time. I have no reason to still have it, yet the thought of getting rid of it breaks my heart.”

Finally Emmet has someone else to talk to about the strange moments that seem to keep happening. About the little pieces he cannot explain of a life he has not lived, a person he does not know, and yet misses wholeheartedly.

They never un-pause the movie. Elesa has an early morning at work the next day; Emmet has an early morning at work every day of the week but one. They promise to talk more about strange feelings, to tell each other the moment one happens, before they can forget. Elesa hugs him goodbye, and Emmet goes to bed.

In the morning, neither of them remember what they had discussed the night before.

X

When he finally breaks, it is an accident. He is running late. A delay in his schedule caused by an unexpected communication breakdown between his Pokémon over who would join him on the Singles line that day. It is an easy argument to resolve, but it causes enough of a delay that he needs to rush in order to arrive at the station on time.

As he is sweeping through the apartment, grabbing everything he needs for the day, the edge of his coat catches on a photo frame and sends it crashing to the ground. Emmet stoops, barely breaking his movement to pick it up and set it back on the shelf where it belongs, but when he does, the glass has cracked, and he feels that static settle over him again. The cracked glass should not be a big deal. He can get it replaced, and it is not as though the crack, although large, is actually obscuring anything important in the photo. It is a photo of him and Elesa, his arm over her shoulders, hers around his waist, smiling brightly in front of Gear Station. The crack stretches from the top of the frame, above Elesa’s head, and down over her shoulder; splitting as a point just beside her to fork out to the left and down. The two of them can still be seen clearly, so why does the crack bother him so much?

He squints, peering down closer at the photo. Why was it taken at that distance, and with that framing? They are standing in front of Gear Station, which he knows because of course he knows what Gear Station’s entrance looks like, but the station is not the focus of the shot. The shot is too tight for the subject to be anything but Elesa and himself, and yet…. It is framed in such an odd way. There is only the two of them, but Elesa is centered in the frame, and enough space has been given to her right for an entire other person to be there. Emmet's field of knowledge is not photography, but even he knows it is a bad photo, so why does he have it displayed so prominently in his home?

He brings the photo closer to his face, as though that will somehow erase the crack and let him see what is beneath it clearer. It doesn’t, of course, and yet, there is a strange feeling as he moves the photo around. As though his eyes are sliding off of the frame, away from where the crack is, even when he centers it in his field of view. It is as though his mind does not want to look at what is to the right of Elesa in the photo. 

His mind urges him to put the photo down, to stop delaying his schedule any further and to get his cab moving. His heart has locked his fingers on the frame, locked his feet to the floor, unwilling to let go of even the faintest hint of-

Of-

Of something. No, someone. Someone who he misses with an intensity so hard it is blinding. Someone who he is profoundly lonely without.

He sinks to his knees, his schedule abandoned, clutching the frame to his chest. 

He is reminded, suddenly, of a moment in science class at school. Of the teacher handing out sheets of paper with a spaced out ‘R’ and ‘L’ on them. Of being walked through the process of closing one eye and focusing on the paper, moving it back and forth until one of the letters disappeared. ‘The physiological blind spot’ the teacher had called it. A spot where the eye doesn’t have any way to receive the light that comes in, but that the brain fills in so it is not noticed.

It is not the same thing. He is not trying to make a letter disappear on a paper, he is trying to see a cracked spot in a photo that his mind refuses to acknowledge. But…

Maybe it will work all the same.

Emmet closes his left eye and holds the photo up, staring intently at the crack in the photo, willing his eyes to stay stable, to not slide away. He moved the photo back and forth, in and out from his face in varying distances, and-

There.

It is a man.

There is a man standing to Elesa’s right in the photo. The split in the crack is right where his face is, obscuring it from view, but Emmet can make out the rest of him. He is Emmet’s height. He is wearing a version of Emmet’s uniform, but black, where Emmet’s is white. Like Emmet, he has an arm wrapped around Elesa’s shoulders, their arms over-lapping behind her, their gloved hands resting casually on each other’s arms. How… How had he not noticed that before?

Both Emmet and the man are pointing towards the camera. Emmet with his left hand, the man with his right.

The photo blurs, but this time, it is because his eyes have filled with tears. He cannot make out the man’s face, but he knows, with a certainty that rises from the depth of his soul, that the man shares his face. He can see, maybe not in his mind’s eye, but in his heart, the frown on the man’s face that is not at all indicative of the happiness Emmet can see in the rest of it. 

Emmet is not the Subway Boss of Gear Station, he is a Subway Boss of Gear Station. 

He does not live alone.

He is one of two. A twin. A two-car train, permanently coupled, only separable at the yard. 

Someone had separated them. And he had forgotten.

He still cannot remember the man’s name. (His older brother, his other half, his twin), but other memories flood his mind, no longer hidden behind a blur of unknowing. Memories of the two of them setting off on their Pokémon journey, nervous, excited, but together. Of late nights spent studying together in a dorm in Nimbasa, preparing for a future on the subway lines. Of the three of them (Him, his twin, and Elesa) sitting in cafés, or wandering the amusement park, Casteliacones and cotton candy in their hands. Of his twin’s exuberant joy at the puns Emmet found so disappointing. 

Him and his twin, congratulating Iris at becoming champion.

Waving to his brother as he boarded the Singles line, and Emmet the doubles.

Late nights spent discussing Pokémon, and battle tactics, and trains.

Standing side by side with his brother in the Multi lines; a battle style that flowed together with such fluidity, that it seemed hard to imagine he could ever battle alongside anyone else.

His voice, loud, where Emmet’s is soft. Expressive in a way people frequently tell Emmet he is not.

“We make a good two-car train, I- and Emmet. This time, we worked together toward a victory.”

The strange moments, the sudden feelings uncoupled from the moment at hand, the memories and surety of things that would be gone if he stopped thinking about them for too long, all suddenly make sense.

His twin is the one that runs the Singles lines.

His twin is the one who owns the office across from him.

His twin is the one who should be sleeping in the second bedroom of their apartment.

His twin is the one who is always at his right, who talks for the both of them when Emmet cannot.

His twin.

His twin.

His twin.

Of course Emmet is  lonely without his twin.

“I am Emmet. I won together with In-”

In-

Ing-

“I am Emmet. I lost together with Ingo.”

Ingo.

How could he forget. What cruel fate could have torn them apart and erased him so thoroughly from the minds of those who loved him?

How could Emmet have forgotten him?

Emmet realizes that, if he stops thinking about Ingo, he will forget him again.

He does not realize how much time has passed until Elesa comes by, letting herself in because he does not answer her knocks or calls.

When she comes in, shouting his name, he is only able to respond with the sound of knocking over the pen holder on his desk, but the sound of pens scattering, the worried chirping of his Pokémon as he refuses to respond to them, is enough for her to pinpoint his location.

When she enters the bedroom, she finds Emmet sitting at his desk. He is surrounded by worried Pokémon, pens scattered around him, and his coat has been discarded on the floor. His right arm is stretched across the desk, clutching a cracked photo frame, the sleeve of his shirt rolled back. He is writing desperately on his skin with a pen.

“Emmet?” she calls. He does not answer.

She places a worried hand on his shoulder and looks at what he is doing. It is only three words, but it floors her in the same way a broken photo frame had shattered Emmet.

Don’t forget Ingo.

The figure on the other end of the call frowned. "It's not too late where you are, is it? I should have caught you before you headed back to Alola."

"Sun's still up here. How was it you thought I could help? You understand fashion is far from my area of expertise."

Akemi nodded enthusiastically. "I suppose it is a good thing, then, that fashion isn't what I need help with! I had hoped, instead, that you would be willing to consult on the history instead."

"Oh? Any particular period?"

"My current collection is focused on the late-Sanshyuu, early-Shinpi period, particularly the intersection between the mythology of the clans and the birth of Jubilife during the period."

"I understand now why you're reaching out to me."

Another nod. "Well, you are 'the Researcher of Myths', are you not?"

Cynthia leaned back in her chair and smiled. "Indeed I am. Colour me intrigued at the very least Akemi. Send me some more details and I'll look over it. Even if I can't commit, I might be able to direct you to some descendants of the clan themselves."

Akemi's eyes positively sparkled at this news. "Would you? I actually have heritage from the Diamond clan myself, but I've struggled trying to find an expert for the Pearl clan. It's almost as though they scattered to the winds as Sinnoh developed."

Cynthia made a non-committal noise of acknowledgement and tapped her fingernails against the desk. Akemi's observation wasn't far off from the truth, but if what Cynthia had found over the course of her research was correct, the Pearl clan likely wouldn't have agreed with the implications of the why.

On the other end of the call, Akemi finished typing something and gave a definitive nod. "There, I've sent you the overview package. Let me know when you've had a chance to look over it."

On cue, Cynthia's computer pinged with an incoming email. She leaned forward to click the notification. "If you give me a moment, I can skim over it now."

Akemi nodded their agreement, and Cynthia navigated to open the attachment on the email.

Briefly, as she flicked through the images in the attachment, the ghost of a thought crossed her mind. In particular, an image of a young woman playing a vertical flute twinged at her concentration. Hadn't she had a conversation about something similar recently? Something about Hisuian mythology surrounding the association between the flutes used by the clans (and the Celestica people before them) and some other, far more ancient artifacts? It had been a rather extensive one, she was pretty sure, and yet…

The thought slipped her mind, whatever conclusion it was hinting at refusing to go any further than the tip of her tongue. Shaking the thought away, she continued to flip through Akemi's well-thought out proposal. While she didn't linger on any particular details, it still took her several moments to flick through the entire document. At the end of it, she sat back in the chair at the desk.

Despite her attempts to dismiss it earlier, that ghost thought had refused to stay gone, constantly pulling at her attention, but frustratingly, refusing to ever manifest into something concrete. She privately thanked Arceus that years as the Sinnoh champion had taught her to school her expression, especially to hide frustration that was entirely internally directed. It wasn't fair to challengers, who wouldn't necessarily be able to discern, when faced with the frustration of a powerful and accomplished trainer, that it wasn't them that frustration was aimed at. The skill came in handy now as Akemi's face waited patiently for her verdict.

"This looks quite good, as a base," she finally decided, once again pushing that aggravating, yet persistent thought to the side, "I'll have to check with the Legends about my schedule here, but if you're fine managing the timezone difference, I believe I can offer my assistance with this project."

Akemi's face lit up with delight. "Oh good! Thank you Cynthia!"

"Thank me when we've actually made this official. I'll let you know as soon as I can."

Despite her protest, Akemi rained several more instances of thanks, before their on-screen movements telegraphed that they were about to hang up. "I'll just get out of your hair Cynthia, thanks again."

"Akemi, wait." Cynthia said, her mouth moving faster than her brain. "Out of curiosity, do you have any ideas on models you'll be working with?"

Akemi hesitated and a frown flickered on their face. "Nothing concrete. The usual suspects,  I imagine. My agent wants me to bring in someone with a little more presence in the industry, especially outside of Sinnoh, but I don't really have those kind of contacts yet." They paused. The frown shifted into a hopeful smile. "I did get lucky to swing a meeting with a model from Nimbasa though." They laughed, "It would have been around the time you were in Sinnoh, actually."

"Elesa?" The name was out of her mouth before she could properly think about it, but this time she knew why she had said it. Elesa had been in Sinnoh recently. She had stayed longer than Cynthia had, but they'd had the opportunity to meet with her while they were both in the same region for what had felt like the first time since Cythia had officially succeeded the Championship to Dawn.

She… couldn't quite remember what they'd spoken about. A bit odd, for such a recent event, but she had been very busy on that trip, and their meeting had been more chance than planning. The details must have slipped her mind among the myriad of work meetings she'd had with Palmer and the other Frontier Brains.

On the screen, Akemi looked confused. "Elesa? I… don't think I'm familiar, no."

Hmm… Elesa had been on vacation she supposed, and while she was undoubtedly the most famous, she wasn't the only model who lived in Nimbasa. She would have thought Akemi would have recognized her name at least, though. "Who then, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Oh, sure. Ingo. He hasn't actually committed yet."

Cynthia felt as though her mind had just skipped a beat. "I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"

They were only too happy to oblige. "Ingo? He's a gym leader too, if I remember correctly."

It was now Cynthia’s turn to be confused. “In Nimbasa?”

“Yes? I thought you knew most of the Unovan gym leaders, Cynthia.”

Cynthia’s experience as an ex-Champion (this time, experience in dealing with reporters) saved her once again. “Only about a third of them, actually, although I’ve likely met many of them in passing at conferences, or world tournaments. I just didn’t realize Ingo was also a model." She flashed a smile. "I’m not exactly up-to-date on the world of men’s fashion.”

Akemi nodded in understanding. “Yes, it does tend to draw less attention outside of the industry itself, doesn’t it? This time I’ll really get out of your hair though. Thanks again!” They hung up, and Cynthia deflated into her chair.

Scrubbing at her face, she desperately tried to make sense of the strange turn the (otherwise completely ordinary) conversation had taken at the end.

She hadn't been able to visit Nimbasa on her first trip to the region, and had not spent much time there on subsequent visits, but she knew the Subway Masters by reputation. Everything she had heard about them suggested that them being a pair was part of their whole shtick. Like the Battle Chatelaines, much of their facility marketing (whether on purpose or by serendipity) painted them as a set. It wasn't an uncommon approach for facilities with more than one Frontier Brain at the head (the Battle Tree did something similar, with the Legends), but it seemed more prevalent when those facility heads were related. It was especially egregious in Unova though, where twins were so deeply entwined with local culture and history.

Ingo and Emmet had always seemed to lean into the depiction, so why would one of them…

But Cynthia didn't know them personally, for all that they were friends of a friend. There was always the possibility of there being much she wasn't seeing, and if there was, she never would have heard of it from Elesa.

She tried to think of the last time she had heard any news about the Subway Masters. Even if news of one (or both) of them leaving the Battle Subway hadn't made news outside of the region, it should have at least spread throughout the battle facility community fairly quickly. A facility head change going unannounced, within the community, would be like a league not communicating a change in Champion.

She couldn't remember any such report. Had it only gone out to the facility heads (of which, she was not)? The news had to be public, or Akemi wouldn't have mentioned it, but maybe they were saving the industry announcement for inclusion in an official newsletter?

But… what about Elesa?

Were they sharing the gym?

Had she retired her position?

If the news was public, why hadn't Elesa mentioned it those few weeks ago? Or had she, and Cynthia just couldn't remember?

Why  couldn't  she remember what their conversation had been about?

Why…

Akemi hadn't seemed to have recognized Elesa's name at all.

The pace of her fingers tapping against the desk accelerated as Cynthia drew closer and closer to a conclusion she already knew she was not going to like. Her stomach felt as though it had oriented to a gravity different from the one she lived in, and a feeling hovered menacingly over her shoulders. One that she hadn't felt since a disillusioned man had blown up a lake and tried to conquer two gods.

Something was terribly wrong.

The door to the office creaked, and the firm weight of a dragon was soon pressed down on her shoulders, while feathers surrounded her from the other side. A gentle aroma infused the room, replacing the sour taste filling her mouth.

The fingers stopped tapping and reached up to stroke at the pokémon surrounding her instead.

Several moments, a few deep breaths, and a fortifying glass of ice-water later, Cynthia returned to her desk and leaned over her laptop. Thinking you knew the facts was not the same as actually having those facts. She needed proof, evidence. She was a researcher, and a researcher didn’t stop researching just because they thought they wouldn’t like what the truth was.

She started with the Unovan league and Gear Station staff pages.

Just as Akemi had said, Ingo was listed as the gym leader for the Nimbasa Gym, but the dates reflected that he would have been a gym leader during both incidents with team Plasma. He wasn’t on the Gear Station page at all. There was another figure as the second Subway Master instead, Cilan. She put him aside for the moment, the base information she could see about him remained accurate to her recollections.

She dug a little deeper. Eventually, she found record of Ingo at Gear Station, but only as part of promotional events, and exhibition matches, or in social media posts where he posed as a challenger. The characteristic coat was lacking in most of the images she found.

She couldn’t find Elesa on either site. She wasn’t on the Nimbasa Gym’s direct site either. Her online portfolio didn’t exist, nor did her social media.

It was as though the stars had gone out, and Elesa had ceased to exist.

How long ago had this happened? If Cynthia had let Akemi hang up the first time, how long would it have taken Cynthia to find out? She considered Elesa a good friend, but they were not in constant contact with each other.

Whatever was going on, it would take more than some cursory research to get to the bottom of.

The next step, or one of them, would be to reach out to the other Unovan gym leaders; to figure out just who did and didn't remember things as they should be. She would have to figure out exactly how to ask that question first though, and she did not have the mental fortitude to dive into that at the current moment. Besides, her instincts told her that something like this had a legendary (or mythical) pokémon involved, and if that was the case…

She needed to talk to someone else who had experience and exposure with such beings.

Hopefully she wasn't in a match right now and would be able to take the call.

Cynthia was in luck. The call rang only twice before the stock phone image on the screen was replaced by the view of a camera pointed at a young woman's face. "Cynthia! Hi!" She smiled, "One sec, I'm going to have rotom float."

Sure enough, the view quickly shifted as the phone re-oriented itself, providing a better view of the scene.

Dawn was currently kneeled next to a Luxray, flanked on the other side by a second. Beside the second Luxray, a man with spiky blonde hair was applying a potion to it. "As you can see, Volkner is here. We were just doing some one-on-one work with our Luxrays."

Cynthia eyed the electric-type specialist, giving him a wave. He nodded back. "Good to see you both. Do you have a moment, Dawn? I know it's peak season for league challenges right now."

Dawn shared a glance with Volkner, who had pulled out his own phone in response to the question. He gave her a thumbs up. "Current challenger just lost to Flint." He stood up, taking the unspoken hint, and returning his Luxray to its ball. "I should probably get back to work myself. Dawn, let me know if the League ever changes its mind on letting me remodel."

Dawn laughed, waving him off from her spot on the floor, but waiting until he was gone to speak again. "Everything okay Cynthia? You have that serious look on your face."

"Yes-" Cynthia cut herself off, and pursed her lips. "No, actually, but I don't want to burden you until I'm more sure of exactly what I'm dealing with. You already have a lot on your plate."

"Hey! I'm the champion, I can handle it! I handled Cyrus and Team Galactic, didn't I?" Her tone was jovial, but her expression belied something far more stressed, and almost desperate.

"I know. You're very capable Dawn." As she spoke, Cynthia studied the Sinnoh champion. She looked stressed, she decided, but no more so than when they had spoken last. "Once I'm sure, I'll tell you. And I promise, if I think you can help, I'll let you know."

Dawn smiled sadly before turning to press her face briefly into her Luxray's fur and muttering something that sounded like "at least  someone  will."

Cynthia decided not to press on that. Yet. "I do think you can help a bit now, actually. That's why I called."

Dawn perked up and turned to look back at the camera again, gesturing for the rotomphone to hover closer. "What can I do for you?"

“How much do you remember of what happened at Spear Pillar?"

"Given I was ten at the time? Probably more than you'd like."

"So you remember the feeling then, just as Giratina showed up?"

A shiver ran through Dawn. "When the world started to shift? How could I forget?"

"You haven't felt something like that recently, have you?"

Dawn gave the question several moments of thought before she slowly shook her head. "No. You don't think Cyrus…?"

Cynthia shook her head. "I'm not sure, but no. I don't think so."

This news seemed to be of no relief to Dawn. "Do I need to be looking for someone else chasing after them?"

"If I find anything that suggests so, I'll tell you, but right now it's only instinct that a Legendary is involved in what I'm researching." Cynthia's fingers tapped at the desk as she tried to decide how much she could share without pulling the Champion into the same rabbit-hole that she found herself in. Dawn looked stressed enough without adding this to it. "It may not even have happened in Sinnoh."

Dawn's expression turned thoughtful in a way that had little to do with the current conversation. "Legendaries acting outside of the region… Do you think they would do that? It's not like Dialga, Palkia or Giratina are bound to Sinnoh exclusively."

The tapping of Cynthia's fingers paused. "Legendaries are called such for a reason. They don't act very often - with some exceptions - and it can be hard to determine which tales were actual events they had direct involvement in, which were just tales, and which fall somewhere in between, but…" The tapping resumed, "I don't see why they couldn't. Other legendaries in the area would likely prevent it, depending on the specific ones involved, but they may also avoid each other to minimize the risk of conflict. Even resting, as many Legendaries have been until recently, I'm sure their presence holds weight to those who can sense it."

Dawn nodded along with her explanation. "But a region without any significant Legendaries…"

This definitely wasn't about the conversation Cynthia had started anymore.

"Dawn, is everything alright there?"

"Yes-" Dawn made a strangled sound that may have been a laugh as she realized she was mirroring Cynthia's earlier response, "I mean no, but I'm managing it."

"Anything I can help with? You didn't mention anything when I was there."

Dawn ran her fingers through Luxray's mane, shaking her head in dismissal of Cynthia's concerns. "It's a million little things that I technically can't tell you about since you're not league anymore." She sighed, long and heavy, and turned away to press her face into Luxray's mane again. Her rotomphone had to drift closer to catch her next words. "Mostly I'm worried about Lucas and his sister."

Ah. "No news then?"

Dawn shook her head. "Not that I've heard. I wish I could help more, but my offer of assistance was already politely declined by the local police." She pulled her face away from her Luxray's side, her eyes going wide. "If a Legendary is involved though…"

"Dawn." Cynthia let the warning tone fade from her voice. Dawn was responsible, and besides, wasn't Cynthia heading down the same route herself? "Be safe, okay? Try to leave the impulsive decision making to Barry."

"Hey!" Dawn protested on behalf of her best friend, "We're not ten anymore Cynthia!"

"Of course not. I should let you go. I'm sure you're busy."

"Okay. Is there anything else I can help with?"

Cynthia weighed her options. Anything she said here would surely lead Dawn to her own searches, but…

Cynthia needed to know.

"Is the name Elesa familiar at all?"

Dawn's expression looked like genuine consideration, with no sign of recollection, and for a moment, Cynthia felt her heart plummet.

Finally, Dawn spoke.

"I… think I heard the name when I was doing the contest circuit? She's a… model? I don't remember where from."

The relief Cynthia felt was an escape rope, pulling her from the pit. "Yes. She's a friend of mine, from Unova. She had been visiting Sinnoh, although I think she would have left by now, and I couldn't remember if you had a chance to meet her."

"I don't think so." Dawn grimaced, "there's something else, but it's sitting just at the tip of my tongue."

"I'm sure it's not important," it was enough for now that she remembered Elesa at all, "but do let me know if you remember. Good luck on any upcoming matches!"

"Okay, thanks Cynthia, bye!"

Cynthia clicked the disconnect, and the video screen went black.

Instantly, she deflated into her chair, her team pressing into her on all sides for support.

Someone else knew who Elesa was, if even only slightly. Cynthia was right, something terrible  had  happened.

Flipping the laptop closed, Cynthia looked out the window, where the sun had fully set.

'Elesa… by Arceus, I swear, I'll get to the bottom of this.'

                                                ⚝──⭒─⭑─⭒──⚝

The closing of the rift above Mount Coronet had swept a sigh of relief across Hisui. The tear in the sky had brought no one comfort, and as such, its mending had filled everyone with a profound measure of relief.

Everyone except one.

Stepping up to the entrance of Galaxy Hall, Volo gave a cheery wave to the guard outside, and slipped through the doors.

He was immediately greeted by the hushed sounds of a terse argument coming from Professor Laventon's office.

Pointing an ear in that direction, he tried to make out what was being said, but the argument had not yet risen to the volume of being easily overheard. Even if he couldn't make out the words, what he could hear sounded like Rei and the Professor, from their voices, but any others that were involved remained quiet in the brief span he listened.

Humming low in his throat he flashed a smile at a Security Corps member milling by the stairs. "Is Captain Cyllene not in?" He gestured to her empty office.

The man followed Volo's gesture with his gaze. "She should be." His eyes flicked, briefly, in the direction of the Professor's office. Volo noted the movement with interest, but did not react. "Are you looking for her in particular?"

"Oh, no," Volo shook his head, "I was simply surprised, I'd gotten used to her always being so diligently at work when I stopped by!" The man gave an understanding nod, so Volo pressed on. "I've actually come to see if my favourite-"

He was cut off by Rei's volume jumping to the point of making any decision on the subject of eavesdropping moot.

"Cripes, Professor, you're not my Dad!"

While that seemed to be the extent of the outburst, the voice that responded was undoubtedly Cyllene, which gave answer to where she was.

“Well,” Volo finished, flashing the guard another grin, “I can tell they’re busy. I should check in with your esteemable Supply Corps while I wait.”

The guard nodded, still frowning in the direction of the arguing Survey Corps, but made no moves to stop Volo as he set off in the direction of the voices, and, ostensibly, the stairs down to the basement. He was careful to walk softly, so that his approach wouldn't be heard by those in the office. He didn't have to try particularly hard, the carpet lining the halls of the building already muffled much of the noise of those passing through the space, likely by design.

The door to Laventon's office was mostly closed, giving Volo only the briefest glance inside as he passed. What he was able to make out in that glance was Rei, drawn up and defensive on the Professor's couch, and said Professor hovering to the side of the kotatsu, as though he was afraid to approach any closer. Akari and Cyllene were completely out of sight, but their presence was assured by their voices filtering through the doorway.

“You really overdid it yesterday Rei, and I know you said you didn't get hit by a psychic attack, but I really think you did."

"You should be resting Rei, don't make me make it an order."

"I told you Akari, I didn't get even close enough to a Stantler for one to attack me. And I did rest Captain! Have been resting! I just-" Rei cut himself off and made a strangled, frustrated sound that definitely wasn't helping whatever case he was trying to make.

Volo paused his steps and cast a glance over his shoulder. With the argument fading once again to reasonable levels, the guard by the stairs had turned his attention away. There was no one else in the hall. Good.

Settling against the wall, Volo pulled his guild logbook out of his pocket, and flipped it open. With a stick of charcoal clutched loosely in the fingers of his other hand, he pretended to work, while zeroing in on the conversation happening in the room behind him.

"Rei, my b-” The Professor cut himself off, stuttering, “Rei, you likely wouldn’t have known, given the apparent effects. It is not as though-”

“Apparent effects?” Rei’s harsh, biting, tone, accompanied by the displeased chirp of a pokémon, indicated that the Professor had chosen the wrong thing to say. "There's nothing apparent because there's no effects. I didn't get hit by anything.  You should know that,  you were there. Almost the entire time."

"I feel like almost is the key word there Rei."

"Really Akari? You what, think a Stantler ran up, attacked me, and then ran off, all in the span of the, what, five minutes I was away from camp on my own? And Ka just let it happen? Or the rest of my team? And then what? I didn't show any symptoms for the rest of the day? Or knew it happened? Is that what you-"

"It was more than five minutes Rei."

"It was more than- Do you hear yourself?"

"Well something happened Rei! You keep talking about someone who doesn't exist" Rei made a strangled noise of protest, which Akari buried by speaking above it, "and you can't remember anything about-"

"Enough."

There was another displeased squawk from a pokémon, and a low, persistent grumble, followed by several murmured apologies from Rei, the only sound in the silence of the Captain’s interjection.

Interesting.

Volo wasn't quite sure what was going on yet, but he was absolutely intrigued.

Intrigued or not, however, whatever was going on was clearly going to pose a problem in getting Rei to collect the remaining plates unless he found a way to do damage control. Push come to shove, he was fairly sure he could convince the boy to sneak out of the village in pursuit of this task, especially given the current conflict evident within the Survey corps, but such a course would also burn some bridges he could not yet afford to, should the origins of the action be traced back to him.

He needed more information.

Thankfully, as the displeased squawking gave way to chirps, Cyllene continued. "Rei has made some poignant points. He is not un-defended, even without a guard nearby. Is that not part of the point to the invention of pokéballs, Professor?"

"Well, yes. Yes, that is true. But if one managed to sneak up on him? Before he could release one of his team?"

"A Stantler though? I fought literal gods. Two  of them, and you think a Stantler got me?"

"You're not invincible, Rei. I know you're capable, but you don't always have the greatest situational awareness when you get focused on something."

"Better than you, I bet, miss got-"

"Rei." The warning was evident, even in the captain's flat tone.

"Sorry. I had Ka out with me, okay? The entire time. He can sense-" Rei paused, stuttering, before seeming to find his stride again. "He would have noticed if I got attacked." An acknowledging bark told Volo that the Typhlosion was currently loose in the room.

Professor Laventon sighed audibly. "Even as a Cyndaquill, he  was very vocal. If Rei had gotten noticeably injured, it is unlikely we would have missed it. I must concede, it is unlikely Rei was attacked by one of the wild pokemon who live between here and the Heights camp."

"Thank you."

Cyllene ignored Rei's muttered outburst. "It is undeniable, however, that Rei has been afflicted in some way. Professor, you're the expert. What else within Hisui might have been responsible?"

Laventon was silent, except for a slight, pondering hum, for several moments. "Well, given Rei's unfortunate pre-existing situation regarding his memory, it could be related to the rift. Perhaps an effect of it closing, or of his being in such close proximity?"

"Only manifesting a week and a half later Professor?" Akari sounded incredulous.

"Ah, yes, well. I was thinking more we hadn't noticed? It does sound rather preposterous, saying it out loud, doesn't it?"

"Any other options?"

"Have you all considered that maybe my memories aren't the issue here?"

After a beat, Laventon continued as though Rei hadn't spoken. "We've made quite significant progress on the Pokédex, but it's certainly far from complete. None of the current pokémon we have listed would be capable, at least not without being noticed doing so, but…" He sighed, "I have been struggling with knowing how far to go in pursuit of some reports. Certain pokémon  have only been mentioned in Hisui’s legends, after all.”

Volo straightened up and quietly closed his book. An opportunity.

Akari’s sigh was far quieter. "With how little we know about Hisui’s history and legends, it seems a tall order…" as she trailed off, Volo checked if anyone was watching (they weren't), strode lightly towards the stairs, turned, and walked back with a heavier gait. "but if there are any other pokémon here like-"

Volo knocked on the door.

There was a beat of silence as the conversation dropped, before the door swung properly open to reveal Laventon. "Oh, Volo!"

Volo took in the rest of the scene quickly. Rei, slightly hunched on the couch, had Rowlet in his arms; Typhlosion lounged at his feet between the couch and the kotatsu. To his left, Akari was seated on the ground in front of a chalkboard filled with Galarian writing, Laventon's no doubt. Captain Cyllene stood with her usual stiff posture across the kotatsu from Rei, although her gaze was currently fixed on Volo at the door into the hall. Her Abra floated next to the tank containing the creature Laventon called an Oshawott, giving all indication of being asleep, even as the Oshawott clung to the side of the tank and watched the scene with interest.

Volo gave the captain a nod, and flashed the entire gathering his brightest smile. "I had heard rumours that my favourite customer was properly back on his feet! So of course, I had to come verify! Couldn't help but overhear though. If it's Hisuian history and legends you want, then I'm your man!" Wagging a finger, he pressed onwards, leaving no break for objections, "Why, I've spent plenty of time studying such things instead of-" no, reorient, too honest, especially for someone with Cyllene’s work ethic, "Ahem. I mean while also tirelessly doing my work for the Ginkgo Guild. And I've visited many of the ruins and whatnot here in the Hisui region already! I imagine I could teach you a thing or two about any pokémon of legend in these parts!"

Laventon was immediately enthusiastic about the idea. "Oho! Music to my ears my good fellow!"

Cyllene was clearly more hesitant as she considered. Akari and Rei appeared to have no comment, although both of them watched the three adults with cautious expressions. "If your knowledge of legends is as extensive as you claim, perhaps you can solve a quandary for me."

"I would be more than willing to offer any assistance I can!"

"Is there any creature, pokémon or otherwise, within Hisui that would be capable of altering one's memories? Without their knowing?"

Well, that was easy, but he made a show of considering it anyways. "There is indeed! And one we know exist without question, even! Rei has met it after all, when he was forging the Red Chain. The stories certainly don't say anything about it changing memories - only erasing them, but it is said to be the guardian of human knowledge, so why limit itself?"

"Uxie…"

Cyllene’s sharp eyes turned to Rei and he cringed. "Why was this not mentioned before?"

"I- wh- I did!" Rei sputtered, "I told Akari and the Professor all about meeting the lake spirits! All it did was ask me about eyes anyways! It didn't-" He sucked in a breath, straightening up in a defiant posture. "My memories aren't the problem! Something is wrong, and I'm the only one who can see it, apparently! Ingo is real. He is. He's supposed to be okay! You all- you- you told me he was okay, and I believed you and-" Rei's voice, which had been steadily increasing in volume as his tirade progressed, suddenly fell silent, and even from the door, Volo was hard-pressed to make out what he was mumbling. "He- he was like me. He was the only one like me, and he-" his breath caught, hitching, but Rei pushed on, "-he understood. I had time to think about it, all last night, and- And maybe she would too, but it’s like you’re keeping me from so much as talking to her."

From the look exchanged between the rest of the Survey team (minus Cyllene, whose expression remained unchanged), this was exactly the case.

Cyllene turned back to Volo. "And where exactly do the stories say this 'Uxie' lives?"

"Why Lake Acuity, of course. Right by Snowpoint Temple."

The captain shook her head. "I cannot condone sending Rei on a survey to the Icelands yet."

Rei's head twitched up at this. "I have the star rank!"

Cyllene ignored the outburst "Nor am I comfortable sending someone else if this pokémon may be responsible for his condition."

"It's not a condition!" A displeased chirp accompanied this statement, as Rei put Rowlet aside to rise to his feet. From the floor, Ka voiced his support with a loud call, although the Typhlosion's fires remained un-kindled. Crossing his arms firmly, the skyfaller glowered at Cyllene. "And, okay, fine, I don't actually want to go to the Icelands right now. Moving across the ice on my ankle sounds terrible actually, but there's still survey work I can do in the fieldlands, since apparently I'm banned from the training grounds now!"

"Rest is important, Rei." Akari didn't rise from her spot on the floor, but she did lean forward to try and catch Rei's eyes with a pleading gaze. He twitched, and turned away. "I got pulled from the field too after I got electrocuted. Remember? I couldn't go help the Professor with his pokémon because I was just coming off of bed rest."

Rei continued to avoid her gaze. "You were fine the next day. During my trial."

Akari flicked her eyes between Cyllene and Laventon. "That's not the point." Her intonation was flat, but Volo could read the hidden plea of 'later, not here'  being passed to the other teenager.

Rei seemed to read between the lines just as well as Volo did. He deflated, flopping back down on the couch and finally twisting to look at Akari, Rowlet hopping back onto his lap as he did so. "You could at least let me battle… what was her name? Elsa?"

"Elesa." Akari corrected, "Warden Elesa"

Rei wrinkled his nose, muttering something too low for Volo to catch, although he noted Laventon twitch in response. "Okay, yeah. Elesa. I was fine enough to be in the field yesterday, and yes, fine, I overdid it, but I've rested! I can at least manage a pokémon battle!" He paused and huffed an annoyed sigh, his fingers smoothing over Rowlet's feathers. "I'll stay at the league approved safety distance and everything! I won't even-"

Ka sat up silently, partially crawling onto the couch to place a paw on Rei's knee, and bury his head into Rei's side.

Rei suddenly took on what Volo thought was a rather haunted look, and his eyes flicked between the four other people in the room, and the two doors.

Oh.

Volo blinked, carefully schooling his expression so that none of his immense curiosity at what had just happened bled through.

Rei was looking for an escape route.

Subtly, Volo shifted to the side, widening the gap between himself and the now-open doorway.

When Rei's eyes met his, Volo smiled, and after a moment, Rei returned it.

Laventon seemed the first to recover from the moment. "Rei, my boy, are you able to expand on that thought?"

Rei shook his head. "No," he said, voice strained, "it's gone." Dropping his head in his hands, he muttered something that sounded to Volo like a foreign language. It was a little like the Galarian he sometimes heard Laventon speak, but with something different to the pronunciation that Volo was not knowledgeable enough to distinguish. Beside him, Laventon drew back, clear surprise on his face.

Taking note of the Professor's response, Volo stepped further into the room, pushing the door fully open on its hinges and clearing the doorway entirely. As much as he wanted to press, on either Rei’s strange statement about a ‘League’, or Laventon’s response to his speaking of a foreign language, Volo gathered his patience, and waited. He had learned, in his acquaintance with Rei, and particularly while they had travelled together with a red sky overhead, that despite his apparent lack of memories otherwise, the skyfaller would sometimes seem to act or say things instinctively. No amount of pressing in these moments - despite Volo’s certainty that they proved some remembrance of the world beyond (and within) the rift remained in the boy’s mind - would draw forth any explanation or continuation.

How cruel, of Arceus, to leave its chosen hero with only a fractured recollection. To dangle fragments in front of him without ever revealing the full picture.

Even if he could not save Rei from it, it was another thing Volo would ensure never happened, in his new world.

Ka pressed his head once again, firmly, into Rei's side. It was an action Volo had seen from the pokémon before, when he was looking for affection, but it seemed far more insistent in this moment, not pulling away or properly leaning into Rei's touch as Rei lowered his hands to scratch behind the pokémon ears.

Volo saw the moment, in Rei's face, when he raised his head and registered that, with Laventon having drawn back, and Volo moved out of the way, there was a clear path (once he rounded the corner of the kotatsu) to the door.

Rei stood with such speed that Rowlet was dumped off his lap, the small pokémon squawking in protest before fluttering up to roost on his shoulder. "I need some fresh air." He announced, stepping past his Typhlosion and beelining for the door to the hall. Ka followed in his wake, small purple sparks collecting at his neck as if to threaten anyone trying to stop them.

No one did.

As they passed Oshawott's tank, the small pokémon scrambled up the side, and took a flying leap, landing on Ka's neck, and immediately digging in claws to stop from sliding off. The Typhlosion flattened his ears, but didn't shake the water type off as the group of four escaped into the hall.

The sound of Rei’s steps, muffled against carpet, faded; silence descended on the room, and was just about settled before Cyllene turned her eyes to Akari. The teenager scrambled to her feet.

“Right, I’m gonna- I-,” she stuttered, “I’m going to go make sure he’s alright, Captain!” She managed something that resembled a salute before she, also, took off into the hallway, her steps hurried.

With both teenagers gone, Cyllene let out an almost-imperceptible sigh, before collecting herself and turning to face Volo.

“As you can see, we’re dealing with a situation here.”

“Indeed! I knew Rei had gotten injured while quelling the Pearl Clan’s almighty Sinnoh, but I had thought they’d only been physical!”

Laventon sighed, shaking his head. “Right you are, my good fellow. We’re quite unsure what to make of it all. Rei is convinced there is no problem,” he paused, his mouth twisting, "or, well, as you've seen, he sees there is a problem, but does not believe it is with him."

Cyllene nodded sharply. "Under normal circumstances, I would not hesitate to ask Rei to work with you for the sake of the pokédex, but these are hardly normal circumstances."

"How long, do you think, until he recovers?"

"That is a question better posed to our medical corps." It was also, Volo knew, a question they would not answer.

It was interesting, however, how the two adults were obviously so reluctant to divulge more of what was happening than Volo had already seen. In fact, if he knew captain Cyllene at all - had it been entirely up to her - Volo would have been kept entirely in the dark, her question to him a mere hypothetical.

He didn't worry about it. Rei clearly didn't feel the same.

"Well, I would be more than happy, as a friend, to impart my wisdom to my favourite customer, but it really is a topic that requires a visual. It would be much better if he could accompany me to some of the ruins. I'm afraid I'm a terrible artist." He kept his tone casual, himself a third party in whatever argument was going on. The convenience of his presence would be called into question if Cyllene even caught a whiff of his ulterior motives.

Laventon shook his head. "Oh, well I don't know."

"He won't be alone, certainly, if that display by his Typhlosion was any indication. If his pokémon partners could handle Dialga and Palkia, I'm sure they can take on anything else Hisui might have to offer."

The Professor turned from defensive to considering. "My little Cyndaquill has grown to become quite protective of the lad once he took over his care…"

Volo nodded a swift agreement. "Precisely! And I myself am not defenseless! I can't possibly hold a candle to Rei's prowess, but my two partners can hold their own."

"The strength of his partners may mean little if he gets surrounded." Cyllene cut into the conversation, and Volo watched as her words patched Laventon’s crumbling resolve. "Having a partner pokémon does not guarantee safety out there. Rei may be skilled enough to manage a large number of pokémon, but I have never seen him actively command all of them at once."

Volo was tempted to point out that this hadn't seemed to be a concern when she had allowed the Commander to exile Rei, but doing so would earn him no favours, even if pointing out the hypocrisy would be immensely satisfying.

"Between the two of us, I'm certain that wouldn't be a problem! Besides," Volo smiled, directing the force of his argument on Cyllene, "Rei has the approval of the Clans' blessed pokémon! One of them would be more than willing to help, I'm sure. In all our previous travels together, I never once saw them deny him aid."

Laventon jolted in a way that said he hadn't considered Rei's connection with pokémon that usually only worked with the clans. "Volo does make a point, Captain," he said after a moment, "We should have thought about it yesterday, really."

"I'm not sure about letting him roam outside the walls without someone close by."

Captain Cyllene didn't quite look convinced, even if Laventon was all but ready to argue Volo's point for him. His next argument was, perhaps a bit of a low blow, but, more importantly, Volo expected it to produce results.

"Are you sure being outside of Jubilife isn't exactly what he needs, Captain? I don't mean to be untactful, but other than yesterday, from the sounds of it, he hasn't left since the rift closed! And after the relatively free-range to come and go he had before that? It must be terribly frustrating for a boy with so much energy. Stifling. Imprisoning, almost." Volo shook his head, and let out a sigh that was only partially preformative on his end. "And then to have the people he's closest to in Jubilife all but tell him they don't trust him. I'm a little surprised he hasn't tried to climb the walls yet."

Laventon looked struck, and Cyllene's already stern expression immediately darkened. His words hung in the air, balancing their outcome precariously on a razor's edge. For a beat, it seemed one of them would ask him to leave, but then the moment fell in his favour, and Cyllene raised a palm to press at one of her temples. She didn't quite lose her firm stance, but her shoulders did seem to droop slightly.

"I'm going to speak with Pesselle. Professor, tell Volo what he needs to know, if he will be travelling with Rei."

Lowering the hand, she regained her stance and spun a tight circle to march out the door to her office.

The moment she was gone, Laventon deflated, espousing something morosely in Galarian. When Volo turned to him with an inquisitive smile, he switched back to the Kantoan used among the Galaxy Team and Ginkgo Guild. "It's all gone to pot, hasn't it?"

Volo deciphered Laventon’s turn-of-phrase based on context, and shook his head. "Come now Professor, surely it can't be that bad!"

Laventon shook his head. "Let me put together the list of things you need to know and you may very well change your mind, my good fellow."

He shuffled over to his desk, picking through the array of papers on it. "Now where is it, I know I wrote it down…"

Volo followed the Professor over as he trailed off, watching him until he let out an exclamation of "aha! Here it is!" and brandished a page.

Setting the page back down, Laventon pulled an ink-well and quill over, and fetched a blank page from one of the desk drawers. He spoke as he began to write, entirely forthcoming now that Cyllene had given the okay.

"He seems to be moving fine this morning, but he should be keeping weight off that ankle of his. If the Captain says you're clear to head far afield, or you have to traverse any difficult terrain, do your best to have him wait for one of the ride pokémon to assist?" Laventon shook his head, "I can't believe I didn't think of that yesterday."

"No need to be so harsh on yourself Professor, they are rather prideful creatures when it comes to those outside of the clans."

"I suppose so. The bigger concern is what came up yesterday. The poor lad seems convinced that Sneasler’s warden is, in actuality, a man named Ingo. He has extensive memory of the man, but not a single recollection of Warden Elesa. Described him as wearing a strange, rather frayed striped coat and hat. It is not a name or description that any of us have any familiarity with…" he trailed off, his tone taking on a hopeful edge.

"Ah, entirely unfamiliar to myself as well, I'm afraid."

"Of course, of course. Thus far, this confusion with the Warden seems to be the extent of it, but if he exhibits any confusion or uncertainty about something he should be familiar with, you are to remove him from the cause immediately."

Laventon finished his note, and after applying the ponce to dry it, handed the sheet to Volo. He skimmed over it, and tucked it away in a side pocket. He would read it more thoroughly later, but it did not appear to contain anything substantially different from what he had just been told.

It was not lost on Volo that the subject of whatever was afflicting Rei happened to be the other person who had been, Volo was certain, drawn into Hisui by his and Giratina's machinations. Even if that one did not bear any indication of Arceus's favour.

Instructions completed, Laventon sat heavily on his couch. Volo remained standing.

"I'm mucking it all up with the dear boy, aren't I?" The Professor lamented, "I thought we were protecting him this time, but you're right, my good fellow, he probably thinks we don't trust him."

"I'm sure you'll make it up to him, Professor. He already thinks highly of you, or well, he did. He was very concerned for you and Akari when we were traveling together."

Laventon looked up from his dead-eyed gaze at the table. "He was? Oh. I hardly think we deserved it."

"Deserved or not, that's just the kind of person Rei is, isn't it? Besides, I'm sure you tried your best. You must be close, if he's picking up on your Galarian." Volo smiled down at the man. "That was Galarian earlier, was it not Professor?"

"It.. it was. I didn't know you spoke it " Laventon's hesitance to answer told Volo there was definitely something the professor was leaving out.

"I don't, unfortunately. It doesn't come up much in these parts. But I've heard it a few enough times, and I figured there weren't many other places Rei could have learned another language. After all, other than the Celestica the Clan Leaders have been teaching him, he only speaks Kantoan, I thought?"

"You've been cleared to head out into the field." Cyllene's voice from the doorway cut off any response Laventon may have had. "Be sure you inform the Security Corps when you head out of Jubilife, as well as when you depart one of the base camps."

Volo turned, keeping his smile even to hide the disappointment at the interrupted conversation. "Wonderful! We'll keep to the fieldlands today, to ease your esteemable medical corps concerns."

Laventon rose, and began gathering supplies. "Well, if you're headed out there, I'll at least come to the base camp with you. Could I trouble you to find Rei and let him know, Volo?"

Hi, you’ve reached Elesa! I can’t pick up right now, so leave a message!

*Beep*

Hi bestie! It’s Skyla! I got your text that your flight made it safely! You’re probably still sleeping off the jetlag, but I hope you enjoy your time in Sinnoh! It’s been so long since you took a proper vacation like this. I want you to focus on having fun, so don’t worry too much about calling me lots, but text me! And I want to see tons of pictures when you get back! Ok, bye! Have fun!

I…. really Elesa. You deserve a proper break after everything. Take care of yourself, okay?

                                                         ⭒─⭑─⭒

Hi, Elesa? This is Roark. The Oreburgh gym leader? Sorry I missed your call earlier, the signal in the Underground isn’t great. ha. I- uh. You said in your message you were interested in the kind of stuff people dig up down there? I have to say, it’s not a conversation I was expecting to have with someone of your reputation, but if you’re able to stop by the gym while you’re in town, I’d be more than happy to have it! Most of my interest lies in the fossils, but, uh, hey, I’ll send you my grandfather’s address in Eterna City. If you really want to dig down on it, he knows anything you could want to know about those tunnels!

Anyways, let me know!

                                                        ⭒─⭑─⭒

Hello, this is Lenora calling. Apologies if it's late where you are. I got your email about the potential artefacts you found in Sinnoh’s underground? I’ll follow up in writing, but I have particular interest in those plates. Similar artefacts have been found in Kalos and Alola, as well as here, in the Abyssal Ruins. May I forward your pictures to Cynthia? You didn’t include her originally; I know she has been very busy, but we have discussed potential theories on these plates before, as well as their connection in some stories to the Celestica Flutes of the original clans. She will be interested, I think, in this discovery. She is a leading expert in the history of Sinnoh after all. I hope your trip has been wonderful so far.

                                                       ⭒─⭑─⭒

Hi Miss Elesa. My name is Lucas. I work with Professor Rowan. You don’t know me but…. I. I overheard your conversation with Cynthia, and… I think- no, I know what you’re looking for.  I want to help. Cynthia, my friends, the Professor, they… they wouldn’t get it, OK, but I do. I know- I.

I know exactly what it’s like to lose someone without closure, and to feel like you’d do anything to find them, or even just for answers. I- I’ve- I want to help.

Cynthia may be the mythology expert, but I have family history here, and I promise. I know more than you’d think. Please, call me back.

                                                       ⭒─⭑─⭒

Elesa? Elesa pick up, please. I thought you were on vacation, not- I am worried about you. Verrrry worried. Please. I did not understand your last message. It sounded like- Elesa. You are not doing something foolish? Do not do anything foolish.  Please. Answer my calls Elesa. I didn’t- If I- Elesa, I don’t want to lose you. I cannot lose you too. Elesa, talk to me.

I am Emmet, and I am verrrry sorry. Please call.

*Click*

                                             ⚝──⭒─⭑─⭒──⚝

Thank you for calling the Nimbasa Gym. The person at this extension is not available. Please leave a short message after the tone. To leave a callback number, please press 1 now.

*Beep*

Hey boss, it's Ampère. You uh, are really never going to update from the default voicemail message huh? You’ve only been the gym leader for how long now? Anyways, I was just calling to update, since I know you’re checking your work phone, even if you’re supposed to be on vacay: my ratio of gym losses is only slightly worse than yours. If you don’t hurry up and come back, I’m going to surpass you!

I’m joking of course. Enjoy your vacation Ingo. Do not call me back before it’s over.

"Now Chandelure. Shadow Ball."

"Shit!" The trainer across the car, still dressed in her waitress uniform, swore, flinging a hand out "Lime! Switch with Mousse!"

Gardevoir shifted, part speed, part teleportation, and the arrangement of pokémon on the opposing side of the field flipped. Gardevoir took the Shadow Ball meant for her partner and went down, a red flash accompanying her disappearance back into a pokéball. 

Emmet grinned at the slip in the names. "You are getting serious." His voice could not nearly match the loudness of his brother's, but Emmet knew how to project, and his even tones cut across the field of play anyways.

"Always Mr. Emmet." Roe's fingers slipped Gardevoir's ball back onto her belt and grabbed the one next to it. Her last pokemon. Emmet had the advantage, but it wouldn't take much to even the field.

Muk joined Dusknoir on the field, and the next few moments happened in a flurry of movement and quick instructions. 

"Will-o-wisp."

"Dodge it! Acid armor!"

"Thunderbolt."

"Trick Room!"

Something imperceptible to the human eye shifted in the battlefield, Roe's slow Dusknoir, weighed down even more by its iron ball, now the fastest thing on the field. 

"Shadow sneak!"

"Protect. Full coverage!"

"Flamethrower! Get around that shield!"

"Don't let them through Chandelure. Eelektross, discharge."

Electricity crackled across the field, rippling over Chandelure's shield harmlessly, but flashing through the opposing team. They both held on, Dusknoir looking worse for wear, much like Chandelure. 

Roe, in response, splayed her fingers and called out only a single order. "Shadow Sneak!"

Dusknoir seized, still crackling with electricity, Muk did not. Emmet called once again for Chandelure to throw up a shield, but the effort of protecting both herself and Eelecktross caused her to falter, the attack striking true. Chandelure fell, replaced by Haxorus. 

The rhythmic sway, and persistent clacking of wheels, undercut the fierce battle unfolding inside the car. For new challengers, the movement was often distracting, a novelty for which there was no place to acclimatize to except for on the subway itself. The battle subway, to Emmet's knowledge, was unique to Unova (that fact was a little sad, but also something Emmet was proud of; emotions were rarely simple after all). 

By the time most trainers made the qualification to challenge one of the super lines, the constant movement - the back-and-forth sway, acceleration, deceleration, the centrifugal pull that accompanied turns - became just another facet of the field of play; no different from a pokémon kicking up a sandstorm, or calling for rain. The best trainers, the ones that often provided the most serious battles, learned to incorporate the peculiarities of a moving battlefield into their tactics.

Roe's eyes flicked to the windows of the train, watching the way the lights of the tunnels flashed by, something by the way of anticipation in them. Emmet had only a moment to realize what she was doing before it happened. Knowing the movement of the subway over the various lines almost by instinct, he shifted his stance to accommodate the pull just before the turn properly started. Roe reached with one hand to grab the ring above her head for balance, pointing with the other across the field, following the momentum to where Haxorus had just stepped up to the plate.

"Now, Mousse, Fling!"

Emmet felt a surge of pride, even as the iron ball that weighed the ghost down rocketed across the field, momentum pulled further by centrifugal force. Haxorus didn't have a chance to react, the strike nearly knocking her flat with the force of it. She caught herself, sliding back nearly to where Emmet was standing.

The projectile dropped to the floor of the car with a clang and Emmet felt like his grin would split his face. Across the car, Roe let out a delighted shriek as the subway pulled out of the turn and back onto a straight track.

The moment of elation between the two trainers passed in less than a moment, the ongoing match calling to their attention. With that heavy hit, the sides were almost even. Eelektross had already taken a few hits, still looking better than Dusknoir. Muk, the second most recent addition to the field, was worn down by the burn of Chandelure's last offensive action.

Roe didn't need much to secure victory, but neither did Emmet, and he had the ability to target the entire field at once.

"Eelecktross, Gastro Acid on Haxorus."

"Oh no you don't, Mr. Emmet! Pudding, poison jab; take Haxorus down!"

Emmet called for Haxorus to dodge, but to no avail. The dragon type staggered against two heavy hits. For a moment, Emmet was sure she would fall, but with a sideways glance, she caught herself, pushing steady, ready for his next instruction. 

"Good job Haxorus." She looked more than pleased at his clipped praise, "Now, Earthquake."

Both trainers hooked fingers around the rings above them for stability as the car (and only the car) shook, the energy contained by the safety system.

Two flashes of red signalled the end of the match. Roe's exuberant smile matched Emmet's as he thanked his team for the effort and launched into his script.

"You're still too strong for me." Roe shook her head as soon as he was finished, settling into a seat across from him. "I really thought I had it this time."

"It was a close match. I was not expecting that move with the turn. It was verrry smart. I got lucky."

"You noticed! It wasn't enough. I bet I could out-cook you any day of the week though."

"I am Emmet. You work in a Café. There is no contest."

"I'm in culinary school now too!" Roe laughed, accepting Emmet's nod for the friendly response it represented, "Eventually, I'll have that Café I want, and then you'll have to bring your pokémon by!" Emmet nodded again. Roe, making no further attempt at small talk, settled down for the ride to Gear Station. 

The opening of train doors heralded the flood of trainers off the last super double of the evening. Pokémon trainers, victorious and defeated alike streamed onto the platform and out into Gear Station proper, to swipe trainer cards against the automatic terminals, or speak to the depot agents directly about streaks and battle points. Battling was done for the day, but the business of the subway carried on.

Emmet walked the length of the train, his call of "Last stop, Gear Station. Please gather your belongings and depart. Last stop Gear Station." echoing down the cars even as Cameron's voice crackled over the PA system with the same message. Emmet checked his Xtransciever before every car, ensuring the flag for an active battle was not set. The announcement notifying their approach to Gear Station had gone out well in advance of their arrival, and while it occurred far less often on the Supers, there would still occasionally be a battle or two still in progress upon arrival. The space past the line designated for trainers to stand at was safe, of course, but protocol still dictated not entering an active battle car without the proper notification to the occupants within.

Sure enough, two of the cars still held active flags. With a swipe of his fingers, Emmet routed the car numbers to Cameron and diverted around them via the station platform to clear the other cars. He finished his initial pass, depositing a few discarded items to the bin behind the employee door for transfer to lost-and-found later, and doubled back. One of the battle flags had cleared already, and as he swept through that car (empty of items, trainers and pokemon), he watched as the second one also toggled off. His already considerably long stride lengthened, and within moments, the doors of the last occupied car were before him.

Emmet shepherded the remaining two patrons off the train with a wave and smile. He stepped out of the doors of the last car, and with a click of his radio, a spoken “all clear,” and a projected “stand clear of the yellow line,” the train was pulling from the station, on its way to the depot.

A mixed wave of relief and melancholy flooded his system as the lights of the train disappeared around the bend. The departure signified the end of a long work day, mostly battles, interspersed with paperwork and emails (or was it the other way around?), and he was relieved to not have to be stepping onto yet another departing circuit in a few minutes time.

"Attention passengers. The Super Doubles are now closed."

Emmet loved his job, he really did. Not everybody got to confidently say they were working their dream job after all, and even fewer got to develop said job nearly from the ground up. Pokemon battles and trains! Was there anything better? Not even his brother's gym had that (the city had denied that particular proposed redesign; something about the city's image and preferred theming). But it was still a relief when it was said and done for the day; everyone had their limits after all.

"Please see an agent to update your BP and streak. Automated terminals are also available before you leave the platform."

At the same time, there was always a part of Emmet that wanted to call up another train and announce extended hours. Could he ever truly be tired of pokémon battles? Emmet didn't think so.

"Thank you for riding the Battle Subway."

Clasping his hands behind his back, Emmet rocked forward, heels lifting off the tiles, as he made the requisite announcements. The complicated end-of-day emotions bled out through the balls of his feet into the ground, chased away by familiar words and routines.

His Xtransciever, muted except for the inter-office lines during the workday, buzzed. Emmet looked down, finding the notification to be one of several messages from his counterpart.

Cilan: (18:00) Singles line arrived at station. Performing final checks now.

Cilan: (18:05) Line is clear. Clocking out until inspections.

Cilan: (18:05) How is your end?

Cilan: (18:07) Cameron says you have some overflows?

Cilan: (18:08) Should I tell them you're running late?

Cilan: (18:08) I'm telling them you're running late.

The most recent one read:

Cilan: (18:10) Emmet I think your brother is about to squeeze himself into a black hole unless you answer your messages.

Emmet sucked in a breath through his teeth. While they tried to be punctual, delays still happened (likely more than Emmet cared to admit when it came to pokemon battles). Usually, his brother had the utmost understanding for the unpredictability that could come with public service; Arceus knew that the gym service schedule could be wildly flexible at times. Emmet had certainly been late on a line due to delays by far more than 10 minutes before. The anxiety Cilan's message spoke to his brother exhibiting was out of the ordinary.

He pulled up the Xtransciever settings, clearing airplane mode from his personal line. Although he refused to let his smile slip where he stood in view of the remaining trainers waiting for terminal access, his eyebrows furrowed as he stared at the screen. Public network coverage could be spotty sometimes in the tunnels, even with the network extenders Emmet had installed a year or so back (and hadn't that been an expensive project), but it was usually good on the platforms. Sure enough, after a beat as the watch's second receiver flicked on and found the network, Emmet's notifications lit up with messages.

He ignored almost all of them. They could be addressed later. Instead, he pulled up his messages from his brother. Like with Cilan over the work line, he had missed a few.

🚃🚃 Up-train 🚃🚃

(16:15) We will be departing Mistralton for a 17:55 arrival at Gear Station via the Brown line. We will meet you in the main hall at our regular locale.

(17:59) We have arrived. Let me know when you are officially off shift and have received these.

(18:00) See you soon Emmet :}

The one at 18:00 was the most recent message. Nothing about them, nor the ones from their brief conversation at lunch (the one where Ingo had admitted to only waking up less than an hour before, and Emmet had teased him about being an old man, sleeping in the middle of the day), seemed anything out of the ordinary.

Bowing his head away from the crowd, Emmet focused on typing out replies to both Cilan and Ingo. From the corner of his attention, he caught the approaching green of a depot agent.

"We got this boss if you want to head out. You're supposed to be on break now anyways, right?"

Emmet flashed the agent a quick smile and nod. "Yup! It is inspection Wednesday."

The agent quirked a return grin. "Then get out of here boss. Get something to eat. We'll see you in two hours."

With a nod of thanks, Emmet alighted from his position and turned for the stairs. The crowd on the platform had all but cleared, leaving no need for his long stride to cut through it, but that truth fell away the moment he stepped off the top of the stairs and into the main concourse. Even with the battle circuits closed for the day, the dinner hour crowds mingled with rush hour commuters to fill the station with people. Emmet navigated all of it with expertise, intermittently cutting straight through crowds with his determined stride, and weaving around people like a basculin navigating the current. Soon, the crowd thinned out and gave way to a semi-secluded side hall.

Stepping around the corner of the hall and out of the crowd, Emmet was immediately greeted with the distinct clicking of dress shoes against linoleum that was the sound of his brother very much not running in the station.  He spun to meet him, his brother's purposeful walk closing the gap even as Emmet planted his feet firmly.

Ingo crashed into him at speed, a Grapploct emerging onto a Galarian beach; his arms wrapping tightly around his chest and squeezing the air out of him. "Emmet," the voice at his shoulder had a tight waver to it, "I missed you."

"I am Emmet," he quipped, tapping Ingo's shoulder blades in a plea for him to loosen up, "I missed you too, Ingo. You are hugging me verrrry tight."

His brother froze, and then, as though suddenly aware of exactly how tense his muscles were, he eased back, pulling away to meet Emmet's eyes. "Ah, my apologies."

"It is alright." Emmet patted his brother on the shoulder, grinning. "It is nice to be missed. I just like to be able to breathe while being so."

Beyond Ingo, further into the corridor, Skyla and Cilan appeared to be deeply engaged in a conversation. Cilan had already shed his coat, it hung over one arm, revealing the vest and dress shirt beneath. Skyla glanced over briefly, and upon meeting Emmet's gaze, flashed him a bright smile, before flicking her eyes to Ingo's back with a veneer of worry.

The moment was over as quick as it had arrived, and Emmet redirected his attention to his brother. "Is everything alright?"

His brother gave a small shrug, frown made even deeper by thought. "Seeing you in person hit me quite harder than I expected. I apologize if I hurt you in any way."

"Of course not. You could never. I was just surprised. It has only been a month, and it is not as though we did not call."

For a moment, Ingo looked… sad? Sad and confused. "A month? I- yes, sorry Emmet. I am not entirely certain what came over me. For a moment, it felt far more like years since our cars had been connected to each other." He paused, letting out a breath before smiling in that way only Ingo did, the one that was more in his eyes than on the rest of his face. "I had a very odd dream this morning, and it appears it has been derailing me more than I first thought."

Emmet nodded along, his worry melting away at Ingo's explanation. "Jetlag," he accused, reaching to the pokeballs on his belt. "You do not need to apologize to me, Ingo. Speaking of being missed," he pulled out Chandelure and Haxorus in one hand, Exadrill in the other. "They will be verrry excited to see you." He tapped Chandelure's ball, which shook slightly as Ingo took it, "Lunar, in particular, missed you. She was jealous that Rack got to go with you."

"I did not cross tracks with as many trainers as she would have liked," his brother chuckled, "I am sure she had a far more enjoyable time working with you on the subway." He depressed the button on the center of the red and white ball, and Chandelure burst free with a ringing cry. She spun to face her trainer, and the moment they locked eyes, he seemed to lose himself again. "Chandelure…" he breathed, voice quiet and reverent; a man dying of thirst catching their first sip of water. Lunar gave another, louder cry in response and the moment was gone.

Emmet turned away while his brother greeted his pokémon, first to gauge how much attention they were drawing from the crowd in the concourse (not as much as he had expected), then to see if Cilan and Skyla had finished their conversation. They had. Emmet only had to signal them with a nod for them to join the twins, Skyla stooping to grab Ingo's carry-on bag, which had sat abandoned on the ground where Ingo must have been waiting up until then. Swinging it lightly as she walked, she bumped it casually into Ingo's side before joining him in greeting the ghost type. He slipped a hand back to take it from her without looking, sliding the strap up over his head and onto the opposite shoulder.

Emmet looked on in dismay. "Ingo. What happened to the carry-on from the luggage set I got you on our birthday last year? The one with the wheels?"

Ingo looked over at him and adjusted the lay of the strap. "It is at my apartment. The rest of the luggage set is in use, but I only have two hands with which to pull them. Besides, this particular bag was a gift from the Kalosian designer who does all of Fantina's dresses. They're very popular in Sinnoh."

Emmet eyed the sleek, black and violet bag. He was by no means an expert, but he knew more about fashion, and interregional fashion icons, than one might expect. "It is not sparkly enough to be from Fantina's designer." He had also met Sinnoh’s Kalosian-born, ghost type gym leader at a conference once. Her choice of ensemble had nearly blinded him.

The look that Skyla and Ingo exchanged could only be described as impish.

“That’s because you’re not looking in the right spot, Emmet!”  Skyla unclipped the front flap of the bag, flipping it up to reveal the underside of glittery, light purple, fabric, “Behold!”

Emmet was not prepared to win against his brother and his brother's best friend when it came to fashion. He accepted his defeat and wisely decided to move on to the reason he had focused on the topic of Ingo’s bag in the first place. “Crossbody bags are bad for your posture. Against safety protocol. You will injure your back using one too much.”

“Ok, but counterpoint! He looks really good with it. Paparazzi would have a field day if they caught him with a roller-”

Cilan, who had not said a word since the two pairs had merged into a singular group, chose that moment to speak up.

"Um, crowd's clearing a bit. Emmet and I need to be back here in," he paused, illuminating the screen on his Xtransciever, "Just shy of two hours. Were we going to grab dinner? Skyla and I were thinking that artisanal pizza place on 7th."

"Yup! Ingo is going to drop his bag at our apartment first though. So he is not carrying  it all evening." Emmet pivoted to the new topic, fixing his brother with a look that said he was not done with worrying about his health (someone had to, after all).

Ingo did not protest, pointing instead across the concourse. "Very well. Let us direct our tracks in that direction."

"Let's cut across to the offices first, if that's OK. Emmet and I should, um, leave our coats and hats here."

"Oh, yeah! Good idea Cilan." Skyla strode forward, one arm looped around each of her fellow (even if one was a former) gym leaders, "Two gym leaders, and the subway bosses? We're probably going to draw attention even without you two being in uniform."

"Indeed. Those coats are also far too heavy for the weather. It would not do for either of you to overheat."

Emmet, at the point of their v-shaped line, gave a sharp nod of agreement, already redirecting in the direction of the offices, resolutely refusing to shed his coat until behind the 'employees only' door, and out of view of the public. "You are not one to talk though, Ingo, you are wearing all black."

"Ah, one might assume, but I think you'll find, if you look closely, that the shirt is actually purple."

"Still."

Two detours, and a short walk later, the group of four was settled down at a table mostly obscured by a half-wall covered in fake foliage.

Chandelure had refused to leave Ingo's side, since being released at the station. As much as she did nearly all of her battling with Emmet these days, he could not deny that she was still Ingo's pokémon. The restaurant, thankfully, was friendly to un-balled pokémon, so she was left to gleefully hover around his head as the group discussed the menu.

"I can't believe we're not getting real Nimbasa pizza." Emmet grumbled cheerfully, staring down at the familiar menu as though he had never seen it before. "I don't think this place knows how to spell 'Alolan'."

"I didn't know you needed a slice of grease for it to be real pizza."

"I don't think this one even has cheese on it, Skyla."

Beside him, Cilan frowned and reached down to scratch between the ears of Mash, his Stoutland. "Sorry Emmet, I, um, thought you'd like this place. I know it's not the street place we usually go to, but with the group of us, I…" he trailed off.

"Nonsense Cilan. There is no need to apologize. This is a common station for us. If Emmet is truly looking to be obtuse, he can direct his ire towards me. I decided I could not handle much grease today."

"I am Emmet, I am not being obtuse."

Skyla leaned across the table to swat Emmet's arm. "Yeah, he's just being a brat instead. Honestly Emmet, thirty is too old to be bullying your co-worker!"

"Cilan is a friend, not just a coworker. I am not bullying anyone. I just think a place that spells Alolan like that can't claim to serve Nimbasa-style Pizza."

"Would it kill you to order your Alolan monstrosity in peace?"

Emmet flashed Skyla a teasing grin. "It would, actually, yup!"

"Dragons, you're insufferable!" Skyla stuck her tongue out at him from across the table. "Ingo, tell your brother he's being insufferable!"

Ingo, who had crossed around the table to stand next to Cilan, and had drawn him into a loud conversation about singles battle tactics, looked over at the mention of his name. He was saved, however, from having to respond by a waitress coming by to take their drink order.

Emmet, determined to have the last word instead, fixes his brother with eyes dancing with mirth. "You are asking the lightning to put out a fire it started, Skyla. If I am insufferable, it is because I learned it from the best."

Ingo, back in his seat, shared a look across the table with Cilan. They both wisely decided to let the statement stand, and pulled their menus closer.

Two minutes later, the waitress had departed, and the group (minus Emmet, who would, in fact, be ordering his "Alolan monstrosity" as Skyla accused), were considering the options in earnest, determined to be ready upon their server's return. Skyla pointed out the calzones to Ingo, even as he and Cilan discussed the merits of splitting a pizza that is one letter off from sharing its name with a cocktail.

Sipping at his juice, Emmet smiled and reached back to ruffle the feathers of Rut, his Archeops. They should do this more often, he decided, sipping at his berry juice, maybe it should be tradition for them to go out for pizza anytime one of them comes back from a trip! Considering then, the number of trips Skyla and Ingo make between them for their non-league jobs alone, Emmet added the proviso of ‘personal trips only.’ Not that they take many of those, between the four of them. It’s not like they can’t have pizza at other times.

“Are we ready to order?” Cilan cast a glance over the group, Emmet giving him a nod that is mirrored by Skyla.

Ingo hesitated, before also nodding, tapping at the menu before him as he placed it solidly on the table. “If you are agreeable to splitting Cilan, I believe I will have their summer salad.”

Emmet blinked, flipping open his own menu to check it. Didn’t Ingo have a problem with the summer salad here? He could have sworn…. He found the entry in the menu, and glanced up, sharing a look across the table with Skyla even as Cilan asked, “Really?”

Ingo gave a firm nod.

“Uh, Ingo?”

“That salad has pickled radish in it.”

Ingo looked between the three others at the table, confused. “Yes? Is there an issue with the pickled radish here? I do not recall as such.”

“Because you never eat it. Ingo, you do not like pickled radish.”

Ingo looked up at the three of them slowly, his mouth opening and closing a few times before he settled, drawing back and crossing his arms. “Right,” he uncrossed his arms to scrub at his face before once again folding them defensively, “I’m sorry, Emmet, you are correct.” He didn’t sound like he believed it.

For just a moment, a feeling settled in the pit of Emmet’s stomach, something that manifested as nausea, but felt more like untethered dread. But then the uncertainty coiled around his brother eased, and the feeling with it. Ingo straightened up. “The Garden then,” he said, his volume once again normal, as though the moment preceding had not been in the least bit out of the ordinary.

The remainder of their dinner was pleasant, and uneventful. Soon enough, Cilan and Emmet needed to depart en route back to the station. Skyla joined them for her own trip back home, and as Ingo split off from them with a wave to return to the apartment, Emmet was once again sure that everything was as it should be.

                                                  ⚝──⭒─⭑─⭒──⚝

The August sky over Jubilife was clear and cloudless, the previous day’s humidity cut by the storm that had blown through overnight. A light breeze swept in off the waters of prelude beach, cut only slightly by the hills and walls surrounding Jubilife before roaming through the streets. The breeze, and the brief respite from summer's humidity, was welcome. Even though the temperature hadn’t hit the peak of the summer heat, it was still quite warm, especially for someone who had spent the better part of three and a half weeks in the northern most stretches of the region, where ice formations persisted year-round.

Gripping the edges of her jacket, Elesa flapped it a couple times, trying to catch the breeze as it crested the hill where the training grounds sat. The movement directed cool air across her face, sending her braids tumbling, but pulling a smile to her face at the sensation.

"You're making me hot just looking at you, Warden." The voice of Jubilife's security captain came from just to her left. "I can't imagine how bad it'll be in a week or so when the temperature really ramps up. Would it really kill ya to take that jacket off?"

Elesa smiled brightly at the red-haired trainer. "Something like that." She didn't elaborate. It wasn't that she didn't like Zisu - she did - but she hadn't actually known the woman long. Despite meeting a couple of times in passing, they had only begun talking in earnest after Lord Electrode's quelling. The forced closeness of working together could only do so much, especially after recent events. Zisu hadn't said anything about it yet, but Elesa wasn't about to press the issue by over-sharing, especially not on her first day back in the village.

"I'll manage," She said instead, "Besides, Calaba says the signs call for a mild summer."

Zisu laughed. "Is mild how we're going to put it?"

"I thought we were talking about the weather."

Zisu gave her a long look. "Of course! I was just thinking that the storms have been pretty fierce lately." The subtle nod she gave towards the roof-top balcony of Galaxy Hall gave truth that their conversation was, at this point, only on the surface about the weather. "As long as we don't have a repeat of that sudden, ah, pirrie, we should be fine."

Elesa's ability to follow the conversation stuttered at the use of a world that was unfamiliar to her as it seemed to be for Zisu. "Pirrie?"

Zisu shrugged, giving Elesa a strange look. "A squall?" She corrected, pausing for Elesa to nod her understanding. "One of the Professor's words. I thought you spoke Galarian, Warden."

"Not like that, apparently!" Elesa laughed.

Zisu laughed as well. "Well at least that's one clue for ya! 'Not from the same place the Professor picked up that word from!"

"A negative is better than nothing, I guess." Elesa paused, giving her own subtle nod to the balcony. "About the weather though, do you think we're in for another squall like the last one?"

The look on the other woman's face was more of a soldier assessing a security threat than anything to do with the consideration of weather.

"I think that storm front has blown over, or is at least lying low." She finally responded, "It shouldn't be blowing anytime soon, if he's smart. The last time ruffled a lot of feathers."

Elesa nodded her understanding. "Afraid the flock will leave for safer skies?"

Zisu mumbled something like "Fear is what caused the problem in the first place." She turned to face Elesa directly, a heavy frown on her face. "Why are we talking circles around each other… Elesa? I can still call you Elesa, yes?"

Elesa met the other woman's eyes. She paused, just a little too long. The recent actions of the Galaxy team had hurt the trust the two had formed, but…

Getting hurt didn't mean you stopped trying. Elesa couldn't claim to truly know much about herself, but something about that rang true.

"Of course you can, as long as I can still call you Zisu, Captain."

Zisu barked a laugh. "Alright, point taken! It's good to have you around again. I was worried you only showed up to the festival to be polite."

"I showed up to the festival for the fashion."

"Should I start worrying you're going to leave us to work for Anthe?"

Elesa laughed, "And here I was worried I'd have to beg her for a job… That you wouldn't want me here anymore."

"Now why on earth would you think-" Zisu cut herself off with a grimace, "Sorry, of course you would think something like that, what with all that mess with Rei."

Elesa's smile dropped at the mention of the skyfaller. "Is he alright?" She asked, "Irida said your medical team wouldn't even let her see him before the festival… It seemed like every time I turned around to try and find him there, he had disappeared."

Zisu shrugged. "Pesselle wouldn’t let anyone outside the medical team see him, other than the survey team of course. From what I heard, the poor boy pretty much collapsed and slept for a week after getting back.”

Elesa pursed her lips, trying her best to shake the rising guilt that she should have been there to help. "Was he that injured?"

"Not that I heard. Some bruising, wrenched his ankle bad enough that he's still limping a bit."

"I thought I saw him walking strangely at the festival…"

"Pesselle cleared him for that at least, but he's supposed to be taking it easy. I'm no medical expert, but I suspect the exhaustion just caught up with him. Ya see it sometimes, with soldiers - not that I'm saying Rei is one - sometimes they push themselves so hard that the moment they're in someplace comfortable, and mildly safe, they just… crash." Zisu let out a shaking sigh, and ran a hand down her face. "I hope he felt safe at least. We… I did wrong by him, with all that happened. Could have done more. Should have done more, really. I know you two have become close, I should apologize, for not doing-"

"I'm not the one you should apologize to." Elesa cut her off, staring out of the empty training ground gates, and down Main Street. "I don't know that I even have room to judge; it's not like I was any help to him at all, when it came to it."

"I know, I know. Cyllene was pretty strict about not overwhelming him at the festival, and trying to find the right time after that…"

The two women were silent for several moments, the only sound in the training ground that of the wind playing with the branches of nearby trees. Elesa broke it first. "Where is he, anyways?"

Zisu looked surprised. "The survey team went out to the fieldlands this morning. I would have thought you'd have run into 'em on your way in!"

"Oh! I took the long way around. I was-" avoiding as many Galaxy camps as possible, she couldn't finish the sentence. "We must have just missed each other."

Zisu didn't call her out on it. "The long way, huh? No wonder it took you so long to get here then."

"Are you calling me late?"

Zisu shot her a tentative smile. "You said it, not me."

The tension broken, their conversation shifted into far less serious topics. As the afternoon stretched on, several members of the security corps showed up to train with their pokemon, and Elesa fell back into a rhythm that felt natural in a way she could not explain. Not for the first time, she wondered who she had been, before Hisui’s vast expanse had found her, but those thoughts fell away as one of the guardswomen approached to ask her about type matchups. Nobody mentioned the red sky, except in passing to each other, and nobody asked her about her own connection to the now absent rift. She wondered if, like Cyllene with Rei, Zisu had ordered them to avoid the subject.

As the afternoon wore down, Zisu called for a pause in the activity at the training grounds to grab something to eat, or for people to head out to their own duties. As the Security Corps members filed out, Zisu pulled Elesa under the shadow of the dojo’s eaves. “Wait here, I’ll grab us some grub, and we can eat away from the crowd.”

Elesa nodded in agreement, and Zisu departed with a wave.

Before long, she had returned, and the two of them settled against the wall of the dojo to eat. The initial flurry of replenishment soon died down, however, and Zisu struck up a conversation. “I heard from Wenton that the survey team came back not too long ago. If you want to go see Rei, I can handle things here."

Elesa looked up at the taller woman, and then continued her gaze upwards, towards where the sun still sat in the sky. "There's still daylight to work with," she started.

Zisu was having none of it. "Don't you worry about that Warden. I can more than handle things here for the hour or so until sunset. With all likelihood, the place will be empty anyways, with the shift change and all."

Elesa frowned. "If you're sure… I don't want to-"

"If people want to complain, they can complain to me! I'll order you to take a break if I have to, Warden."

Swallowing one last bite of her meal, Elesa nodded. She stood, brushing the dust off the back of her shorts, and adjusting the fall of her coat. "I'll see you later then!"

Zisu waved her off, and she left the otherwise empty training grounds, making her way down the main street towards Galaxy Hall. In front of the turn off to its main doors, she paused. It was hard to determine where Rei might be at this hour. He didn't spend a lot of time in his lodgings, to her knowledge, preferring to hang out in Professor Laventon’s office, at the pastures, or out at Prelude beach, when he wasn't at the training grounds.

He certainly hadn't been to the training grounds today, and prelude beach seemed a little far to walk if he was still healing from an ankle injury. His lodgings, situated almost right next to the imposing building that loomed over the town, seemed quiet from where she stood. She was about to head for the pastures when a voice from her left caught her attention.

"Warden! Looking for someone?"

Turning, she spotted a man in the Security Corps uniform, a Dustox at his side, waving to her.

“Oh! Yes…” She kept a firm smile on her face as she fought to remember the man’s name. She was almost certain they had met before but… She was forced to give up, lest she let the silence stretch far too long. “Sorry, I can’t quite recall your name.”

The man laughed, but whether it was to ease the tension, or because he’d taken her statement as a joke, she wasn’t sure. “It’s Beauregard, Warden-” a Kalosian name, her mind provided, without any sort of context for why she would know that. “-and you’re… Elesa, right?” She nodded. “Who are you looking for, Warden Elesa?”

She took another quick glance in the direction of the pastures before fixing her entire attention on Beauregard. “Rei. I’m looking for Rei. He’s… I heard he was back in the village.”

Beauregard nodded and thumbed a hand over his shoulder. “Oh, sure. He headed into the Hall with Akari earlier. Haven’t seen him come out yet, so he should still be there.”

The smile Elesa returned was far more genuine. "Thank you Beauregard!"

The guard returned a salute. “You’re very welcome Warden, feel free to head right in. Miki won’t give you any trouble.” He nodded towards the guard who had just taken over his duties for the next shift. Elesa gave a nod as well. She was familiar with the woman, and her Staravia. The training grounds saw a lot of them both.

Giving the man and his Dustox a wave, Elesa did just that. The first thing that caught her eye was that Captain Cyllene’s desk was empty. It was, of course, turning into evening at this point, and Elesa’s personal interactions with the Captain of the Survey corps had been minimal, but the understanding she had gained from Zisu was that the swordswoman was prone to working late into the night. The doors to the office, too, were still open, where Elesa would have expected them to be shut tight if no-one was inside.

Stepping just inside the office, she rapped her knuckles against the door-frame. Two things happened simultaneously: Cyllene’s call of “Just a moment.” sounded from the doorway of the left-side door, and hurried foot-steps from the right-side door resolved into the form of Akari, who let out a startled “eep!” upon seeing her, and firmly shut the door to the medical ward.

Elesa was left still staring in confusion at the closed door when Cyllene’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “Ah. Warden. You’ve come at a poor time, I’m afraid.”

Elesa gave the closed door one last look - as though it alone could answer all her questions - and turned to face the survey captain. “Is everything all right?”

Captain Cyllene stepped fully into her office from Laventon’s next door. The professor himself hovered in the doorway behind her, watching Elesa with wide eyes. In a less concerning situation, the dichotomy between Cyllene’s unflappable poker-face and the professor’s complete and total lack of one would have made her laugh. As it was, it simply made her nervous, especially when Cyllene’s response to her question was. “A situation has arisen that we are dealing with. Nothing that we can share at this time.”

Elesa debated the merits of pressing the issue, particularly with the way the professor was watching her. If it had just been the professor, she may have done it, but with Cyllene heading the conversation…

“Well… You’ll let me know if I can help?”

Cyllene gave a stiff nod.

“I’ll just get out of your hair then. I came looking for-” she was cut off but the muffled sound of raised voices coming from the right-hand door. The interruption lasted only a few sentences before the voices became quiet and non-disruptive again.

“Looking for Rei?” Cyllene’s voice once again interrupted Elesa’s thoughts about what might be going on in the medical ward.

Elesa nodded.

“He is, at the moment, unavailable, but I will let him know you were looking for him.”

Elesa, while focused mostly on Cyllene, watched the professor out of the corner of her eye. The man, not nearly as schooled in concealing his emotions, cringed at the Captain’s words.

Elesa got the distinct impression that Cyllene would not, in actuality, be telling Rei she had stopped by.

“I see…”

Irida had been concerned, when neither she, nor Adaman, had been allowed to see Rei during the week prior to the festival, that the Galaxy Team had been isolating him; that Kamado, despite having offered an apology to Rei at the top of Mount Coronet, was still planning something. Eventually those concerns must have eased, even if they were not fully gone, given that the region was once again in a state of peace. The idea that Cyllene was acting to keep Elesa away from Rei tugged at those same concerns. For a brief moment, Elesa wondered if Irida hadn’t been correct, but…

Her conversation with Zisu earlier had suggested that Rei’s seclusion had a reasonable explanation - that it had been with his health in mind, and to the best intentions. During that time, the Survey Corps had been an exception to an otherwise blanket exclusion. Rei was also still recovering from whatever had happened at the Temple of Sinnoh - a series of events that Elesa was still unclear on, despite the overwhelming personal significance they seemed to hold whenever she thought about it. It was far more likely that Cyllene was trying to protect her corps member, in his recovery (even if she couldn’t understand how keeping her away could do that).

These thoughts passing by her in the brief moments her gaze locked with Cyllene’s own, Elesa gave the captain a slow nod. “I’ll get out of your hair then. Good to see you. Captain, Professor.”

There was one other possibility, if Pesselle’s management of her medical bay was anything like that of the Pearl Clan’s healers in their tent. In her own experience with them, visitation was kept to the discretion of the patient where possible, unless it was important, or could not be avoided.

It was very possible that Rei did not want to see her.

“I’ll be in town for the next while. He knows where to find me.”

“Indeed.”

Elesa retreated out into the hallway. Two steps away from the front doors to the hall, the sound of a door opening came from behind her, down the hall to her left. A female voice hissed, “Rei!”

Elesa turned. Standing, braced against the door frame to the medical ward, right ankle elevated and wrapped in bandages, was Rei.

The skyfaller stared at her with wide, searching eyes. There was something uncertain and heavy in the way he clutched at the door frame, before he drew inwards, and became hard, entirely unreadable and closed off in a way that was entirely unfamiliar to Elesa.

To her memory, Rei had always been open with her. Despite their relatively short period of association, there was something about Rei that spoke more to the parts of her that were missing than anything else in Hisui. He had told her once, over a plate of potato mochi, that he felt the same about her. Something about that connection had given her insight, made him readable to her, even when it seemed no one else could.

Now? He was closed off, withdrawn. Unreadable in all but the very fact he didn’t want to be read.

“You’re her?” his voice was rough, the words almost spat in her direction.

“Rei?” Elesa’s concern echoed with that of Akari’s as she drew up beside him, hand hovering just above settling on her teammate’s shoulder.

“You’re-” he cut himself off, flicking his eyes up to meet hers. He held her confused gaze for only the briefest of moments before one hand pulled off of the wood it was clutching and pointed directly at her.

“Fight me.”

“I- What?”

The light filtering in through the single window was too bright for early morning on Coron- the mountain, and yet left the room in far more shadow than the canvas of his tent would allow, muffled by thick curtains. It was almost reminiscent of the room he sometimes took in Jubilife, but the walls, as he could make them out, were not the sturdy wood found in the buildings there. They were smooth, and the colour was unbroken by either pattern or wood inlay. A thin beam of sunlight that had managed to break firmly between the curtains instead of suffusing around them revealed that colour to be a blue so pale it was as if the sky above the mountains had been washed out, in the same way the sun did to fabric over years spent under its rays.

The ceiling, too, was that same flat smooth texture, a uniformity that seemed to surround him on all sides except from the floor (a plush carpet it seemed, from the brief glances he had afforded it). Under the streak of light that bisected the room, the ceiling was a clear white colour; a glass dome affixed in the center of the room, like some strange decoration. Light Fixture, his mind supplied, although he was not sure how he knew that. It looked like no brazier Ingo had ever seen. Even the electric lights the Galaxy team had proudly installed in their headquarters hung from the ceiling, instead of being affixed directly to it. He was not in Jubilife, it seemed, a realization that calmed some of his anxieties, even as new ones arose from it in turn. 

The furniture in the room was sparse: the comfortable, almost too-soft bed he had awoken in, a wooden dresser backed with a mirror, a desk and chair, and a narrow bookcase populated more with air than print. A lumpy, white and blue shape on the chair had Ingo freeze, recognizing the shape, at least, of a pokémon that was familiar, but without a name to put to it, before relaxing at the realisation that it was a doll of some sort, although made from a material that looked, even at a distance, much plusher than anything found within Hi- the region. 

Slowly, Ingo sank back down into the sheets, lying his head back on the thick pillow. Sleep dragged at him still, inviting him back to the welcome embrace of a dream that had not fully faded, although he was not sure he could quite remember what it was. Beyond one of the two closed doors in the room, the faint sound of cheerful humming could be heard, accompanied by the chirps and whistles of bird pokemon. Ingo was not sure where he was, but he did not feel unsafe. 

Letting out a small sigh, Ingo's eyes fluttered closed. It seemed sleep would win this battle. He was safe here; he could ascertain the specifics later. 'Lady Ir- I-' the name refused to arise from the muddled depths of his brain, and Ingo resolutely moved on. 'The clan leader must have brought me here,' It was the only explanation his sleep-addled mind could decide on, even if his waking one would have deemed it unsatisfactory, 'She had said Ka- the commander was coming, and for my safety, I was to stay out of his way.' He had wanted to help of course, but she had made him promise, as she led him hurriedly out of Jubilife, not to get involved, lest the commander remember that he too, was from as unknown origins as the child who had fallen from the sky.

The sky.

The thought pulled Ingo back from the brink of surrender to sleep as he remembered the horrid red that had bled across the sky, painting everything sickly and dark. Pulling against blankets firmly tucked in on two (and a half) sides, Ingo twisted to look again at the light breaking through heavy curtains, twisting almost halfway off the mattress to try and find an angle that would allow a glimpse through the window. The light that broke in was the clear, familiar light of unclouded sun, with none of the sickly red that had plagued the region since- He could not remember the inciting event, only the resulting dread and visual proof of its occurrence.

He still could not see through the window to the sky. Rolling once more, Ingo balanced himself against the very edge of the elevated bed, hanging halfway out, the friction of sheets against the weight of the mattress the only thing holding him up. Half-aware, he reached a scarred hand out to the dresser that sat beside the bed for support. His fingers brushed at the corner of wood as he finally registered a pivotal detail about himself in this situation. 

He was not wearing his coat. 

Panic replaced any assurance that this was a safe station. Lady Irida understood what his coat and hat meant to him. She would only have removed them if absolutely necessary, and would have ensured they were left in a place to be easily visible when he awoke. The hand that had been reaching for the dresser flew up to his head, as though he would find his hat there, the movement overbalancing his already precarious position. The mattress finally lost its tenuous hold on the sheets, and Ingo fell.

Reality reasserted itself with the force of gravity’s introduction of his body to the ground. 

In the hallway, the sound of Skyla’s humming was replaced with rapid footsteps in his direction. Ingo rolled over with a groan, dragging the rest of the bedding onto the floor, and draped an arm across his eyes as he landed directly in the strand of light coming from the window. He lay there only for a couple moments before the footsteps resolved into a knock at the door. “Ingo?” Skyla’s voice floated through the door, light, but worried, “You okay? That sounded like it hurt.”

Ingo squinted from underneath his arm, meeting the gaze of the Altaria plush (purchased for Iris while on layover in Hoenn) that had been discarded on the guest room chair when he had stumbled in the night before. How had he mistaken it for a real pokémon? Even life-sized, the soft, stuffed creature was unmistakable for the real thing. The Altaria plush looked at him with reproach and offered no answers. 

“I experienced a slight derailment, but I am in operating condition.” He called out, stifling a yawn with his palm, “Give me a few moments to spool up my engines and I will be prepared to depart.”

Skyla’s infectious, bubbly laugh sounded on the other side of the door. “Okay Ingo. I’m going to put on some coffee and lunch! You sound like you need it!”

Ingo blinked. Lunch? Was it not still early morning, as his schedule dictated? Pulling the arm away from his face, Ingo yawned again and looked up at where he could now see the sky through the split in the curtains. The blue he could see was much too vibrant to be any time before 10 am. He sat up, saving his eyes from the harsh ministrations of the sun, and slowly detangled himself from the blankets until he was able to stand. Using the dresser behind him for support, Ingo levered himself upright, trying to rub the sleep out of his eyes once he was sufficiently upright. With his other hand (unmarred, of course, why had he thought otherwise?) he reached for the xtransciever plugged into the dock he had left at Skyla’s house ages ago. Skyla must have plugged it in for him after he passed out the night before, as he barely remembered prying it off his wrist so he would not pass out with it on and wake up with a cramp in his wrist. He had not even managed to unpack and change into sleepwear it seemed, still dressed in the slacks and sweater he had been wearing for- 

He flicked one of the side buttons on the xtransciever, illuminating the screen to see the clock. 11:30 am. That… couldn't be right, could it? Had he really slept almost 12 hours? Then again, it had been close to midnight, he recalled, when he had finally made it out of the airport with Skyla and into the waiting taxi. Even with the relatively short drive to the house she kept on the outskirts of Mistralton, the day would have rolled over by the time they got inside. Between that, the morning flight out of Jubilife Airport; the two, multi-hour layovers in both Hoenn and Ryme city, totalling almost an entire day in transit; and his cursed inability to sleep on planes (to say little of airports), his body's demand for a brief, 12 hour coma was certainly warranted. 

Even now, despite being fully awake, there was an exhaustion stubbornly clinging to his bones, a fault in the line that would require further maintenance. No doubt, without a strict schedule to realign his tracks to the local timetable, once he made it back to one of his own apartments in Nimbasa, he would crash again, his sleep cycle dictated by jet lag. The temptation to go back to sleep already sent a siren call that Ingo resolutely refused. 

Setting the xtransciever back on the dresser, Ingo picked at the hem of his sweater. He wasn't going to be falling asleep in this again, that was for sure. He had been wearing this outfit now for over 36 hours, and he felt disgusting.

One sorely-needed shower, and a change of clothes later, found Ingo sitting at the breakfast nook in Skyla’s kitchen as she slid a ready-prepared mug of coffee into his hands. Behind her, the sizzle from the stove indicated that lunch (or brunch, in his case) was almost ready.

"There you go, just as you like it!" Skyla chirped, reaching beside him to pat the Joltik, Bug, that had situated itself on his shoulder when he stepped into the hall and had thus refused to budge. "I thought you told Emmet that if any of his Joltiks made it to Sinnoh with you, none of them were going to be coming back."

"Because I would ensure they found eager young trainers to hitch their cabs to, yes, I recall." Ingo lifted the cup to his lips, pausing to appreciate the aroma before taking a sip. There'd been coffee in Sinnoh, of course, but no one, in Ingo's opinion, made coffee quite like Skyla did. "You shall have to divulge to me your secret," he hummed, indulging another sip.

"I have!" Skyla teased, picking up her own mug, "You just keep forgetting! You were telling me about the Joltik?" She prompted.

Ingo hummed again and reached a hand up to scratch at Bug's fur. "Bug was always an exception to that threat, he's a proud member of the Nimbasa City gym. It would be rude for me to just realign his tracks like that!" The toaster on the counter popped, and Skyla eased herself up from her lean to check the food. "It was always an idle threat anyways. Emmet would have been far too proud for some of his Joltiks to end up in a region on the other side of the world. It would have been all I would have heard about from him for months: if I thought one of his babies would end up on tv in the Sinnoh championships." An exaggeration, "He would love that. He would also use it as an excuse to try and sneak more into my gym." Not an exaggeration. As he spoke, Skyla crossed the kitchen to pull the pan off the stove, and divvy their lunch onto plates, humming occasionally to indicate she was still listening. In short order, a plate of toast, topped with fried eggplant landed in front of him.

"Mistralton specialty!" Skyla grinned, pulling her own plate over. With the stove secured, she joined Ingo on the other side of the island, hooking a foot around a leg of the stool to claim the spot next to him. "You deserve a proper Unovan welcome, but-"

"The pizza's better in Nimbasa." Ingo finished alongside her, before taking a bite of his breakfast.

"I'm pretty sure your agent would kill me if he found out I was encouraging you to eat that much grease anyways!"

Ingo didn't answer her aside from an acknowledging hum. With food now available to him, Ingo became aware of just how hungry he was. He felt like he hadn't eaten in days, instead of hours. Skyla left him to it, turning her focus on her own meal, albeit with far less enthusiasm, although she did watch him with a look of fond worry. Finally though, he slowed down, his stomach no longer protesting a lack of sustenance.

"Oh good," Skyla smiled over the lip of her mug, "I was worried you were going to choke."

Their long-standing friendship told Ingo that it wasn't all she was worried about, but that same friendship meant he knew she wasn't going to ask until he was properly awake with fuel in the tank, so to speak. "What my agent is unaware of should cause her no distress," he said instead.

"What?"

"About the pizza," Ingo paused to drain the last of his coffee, "If my agent is unaware, it will not bother her. She acts sometimes as if I have not been following these tracks for over a decade now. I am perfectly capable of scheduling my own maintenance and sticking to the planned route otherwise."

"Cheat days are maintenance?" Skyla chuckled.

Ingo smiled at her with the corners of his mouth, "of a sort." He paused mid-bite, a thought occurring to him. "It is noon."

"Yeah?"

"It is a weekday. Should you not be at the airport, or your gym? I hope you have not deviated your schedule significantly on my account! I would not have asked such a commitment from you!"

Skyla waved a hand in dismissal, an 'oh that' gesture. "I didn't deviate, I rearranged! And you didn't ask for anything, you big dork. I chose to take the day off to hang out with my bestie! Besides, technically I am still on call at the gym. Gramps is updating me. I'll have to fly over if any of the challengers get close enough to come face me, but apparently it's been a slow morning." She paused, considering, "Did you want a lift to Nimbasa? Swanna won't be able to take all your luggage, but you were planning to leave some of it here anyways, yeah?"

Ingo finished off the last bite of toast and pushed the plate away, shaking his head. "I'll take the train. The brown line runs regularly, and if I time it right, I'll be able to catch Emmet and Cilan when they get off the supers." His Klinklang, Rack Rail (or more commonly, simply Rack), having noticed that their trainer had finished refuelling, floated over to demand attention alongside Bug. The third pokémon that had accompanied Ingo to Sinnoh, his Zebstrika, Arcflash, was content to gossip with Skyla’s team in the family room behind them.

"Going out to dinner?" Skyla asked, finishing off her own coffee and gathering their plates as Ingo turned his excess attention to his pokémon.

"That is what the programme dictates. Will you be joining us?"

"And listen to you three goobers talk about trains for the entire night?" She grinned brightly at him, her smile just as infectious as her laugh, "I wouldn't miss it."

They relocated to the couch, and Skyla gave him a few moments to properly greet her pokémon before she breached the question she had clearly been sitting on since Ingo had woken up that morning. "Are you sure you're alright Ingo? I wasn't joking when I said that thump sounded like it hurt! What did you do, fall out of bed and hit the dresser on the way down?"

Ingo looked up from where he was ruffling Swoobat’s mane. "Ah, one out of two correct is not a bad score at all Skyla."

Skyla grimaced at him, "What, you slammed into the dresser?"

"Fell out of bed actually."

"Ingo!"

"I assure you, I am quite alright Skyla! It was more of a shock than anything." He paused, his standard frown deepening as he tried to pull the fragments of his disorienting dream into something resembling a narrative. It wasn't easy, even in the moments before he had fully come to consciousness, certain details of the dream had already begun to slip away. Now, nearly a full hour later, what remained in his mind was nothing more than scraps through a paper shredder. "I awoke from a… rather bewildering dream, no doubt brought upon by sleep deprivation. It had me quite out of sorts."

"Nightmare?" Skyla stretched out across the couch, draping her legs over Ingo's lap as he leaned back.

He shook his head. "I would not quite call it such. Up until just before derailing, I do not recall feeling scared or out of sorts at all."

"Ooh. What do you remember? Was it interesting? Knowing you, there were trains involved!" She flicked at his shoulder, teasing.

"I do not think it involved trains at all." He deadpanned, refusing to rise to his friend's bait, "Unfortunately, the car containing the details has long departed the station. If I ever have it again, I shall endeavour to record it though."

Ingo closed his eyes. What did he remember of the dream? It had been so vibrant in the moment, strong enough to convince himself that the world of the dream had been the real one. Something to do with the sky, and a mountain? Jubilife, but not at all like the modern day city he had spent so much time in on his vacation. Opening his eyes, Ingo stared down at his hands. In his dream, his hands had been covered in a patchwork of scars. He had, of course, only one scar, on his left hand from a slip of a knife while camping during his gym challenge. It was so faded at this point that if one did not know to look for it, it was next to invisible. "I think," he started slowly, the words a clear question even as his expression remained passive, "I dreamt I lived on Mount Coronet, near Spear Pillar? Although in the dream, there was a full temple there. Ancient, yet far more intact than what is found there today."

"I saw your pictures from the trail! Mount Coronet has some gorgeous vistas, it looked like!"

Ingo laughed. "Indeed, but it is not a hike I would like to make again. Absolutely gruelling, and I like to think I keep in shape!"

Letting out a trill, Jumpluff flopped onto the couch, situating herself on their laps. "Okay, okay!" Skyla chuckled, pulling the pokémon close to her chest and looking over the puff on its head at Ingo. "So you dreamt you were some kind of ancient mountain man?"

Ingo laughed. "When you put it like that it does sound quite odd, doesn't it?" Something else occurred to him, another scrap of the dream drifting close enough to clutch in his fingers. An attachment to the accentuating parts of an outfit he had not worn in months, and that he certainly had not brought on vacation with him.

"That wasn't even the oddest part." He twisted his fingers, gesticulating his confusion. "In the dream, I was quite overly attached to my Battle Subway coat and hat. The ones I had made years ago to match Emmet's uniform."

Skyla made a humming sound, considering. "Don't you only wear that for exhibition matches and promotional events? Weird outfit for your mind to focus on!"

"Indeed! But that fixation was so strong as to derail me!"

"You missed Emmet!" Skyla said it with such finality as to garner no opportunity for argument. "You guys normally book your vacations at the same time after all!"

Her words struck a chord that he could not quite enunciate. "Bravo Skyla! That must be it exactly!"

"Leave it to your Bestie to have all the insights!" She giggled, extracting herself from his lap to sit more comfortably beside him. "Now come on, pics! You said you met with a designer in Jubilife? I want to see some of their other work!"

"Very well! I have made no commitments yet on their newest idea, but they had the most interesting collection based on mid-century Sinnohan styles…"

                                                   ⚝──⭒─⭑─⭒──⚝

Rei's feet pounded excitedly as he hurried up the dirt road to Jubilife, pulling ahead of the security corps convoy now that the wood walls of the settlement were firmly in sight. The corpsman leading the pack gave him a look, but shook her head and allowed him to continue. At this point, Rei had more than proven that he could handle himself. After all, if he could climb a mountain to fight two gods and come out only requiring a week of bed-rest, he could more than handle a flat dirt road.

Professor Laventon, of course, predisposed to worry as he was, saw fit to call out after him. "Careful my boy! Your ankle is still mending. Surely there is no such need to rush when you are meant to be taking it easy!"

Rei let out a huff, slowing down to brisk walk instead. He paused briefly to make a full body turn, walking backwards a couple steps to respond to the question. "I want to see Ingo! It's been over three weeks, Professor, he should be back by now!" Spinning back around, he picked up the pace again, completely missing the confused look exchanged between Professor Laventon and Akari beside him.

Honestly, the Professor worried too much! He was wearing sturdy boots like those the clans used, and his ankle was firmly wrapped inside it. He hadn't even injured it that bad, some of his other injuries had been worse! He still had bruises on his hip and shoulder from a bad roll away from one of Palkia's attacks, not to mention the phantom pains from the times Dialga had intervened to help. Rei… hadn't told anyone about those.

He knew that he had caused a lot of worry for people he had come to care about, he wasn't about to make it worse. Besides, it wasn't like he was a child. He didn't need them to baby him! He was perfectly capable of handling himself; had been doing so just fine for months since falling from the sky. He was mildly certain anyways that Cyllene had been slightly off in her estimation of his age, and that, where he had come from, he had been mostly independent there too.

Maybe not frequent, life-endangering situations, with little-to-no training independent, but he was trying not to hold that against anyone too strongly. Most of that had been Kamado's idea anyway. Not their fault. He wasn't mad about that at all! Besides, it had been fun, in a way. Exhilarating at times even! Not scary at all, not even that time he had slipped off the cliff in the coastlands, lost half his bag and had to send a newly-caught murkrow for help because its pokéball had been the only thing he could reach without feeling like he was going to lose his tenuous grip on the rocks. Nope! Not scary at all! He was pretty sure he'd managed to convince everyone else of that, so if he just kept repeating it in his mind, it would be true for him too.

Ingo was the only person in all of Hisui that Rei had spoken to about it. After that scare in the coastlands, the older warden had instructed him in some climbing techniques: to be able to catch himself better, to locate good hand-and foot holds to ease himself to a safer location, how to hold his weight in moving to best preserve his strength. He had also been pretty insistent on teaching Rei the proper safety checks to avoid needing any of that knowledge in the first place, which Rei hadn't asked for, but he appreciated the gesture. He wasn't about to attempt free-climbing without Sneasler's help, but at least he felt much more confident in being able to find a sturdy enough grip to be able to reach for his flute and call for her help directly if he fell again.

Sometimes, despite all of his accomplishments in Hisui - or maybe because of them - Rei felt like he didn't have the right to complain. Like complaining would make everyone think he wasn't as strong or competent as he had so very clearly proven himself to be. Or he didn't have two gods resting in pokéballs at his hip!

It was different with Ingo though. Warden Ingo was like him. Maybe he hadn't fallen from the sky (at least that anyone knew), but he had shown up in these lands under mysterious circumstances, with almost nothing to his name but his clothes, and, well, his name. Just like Rei. They had bonded over that. Or over their love of pokémon, and pokémon battles. Or both. It was hard to tell, hard to be sure, when both of their memories were fragmented at best, and absent elsewise, but Rei thought they might be, if not from the same place and time, at least somewhere very similar.

That similarity had put him in danger though, when the sky turned red. Being a member of the Pearl Clan, and an important one at that, had given him a measure of protection, but after Rei had been banished, nobody had been certain how long that protection would last.

Both Irida and Adaman had pulled their respective wardens out of Jubilife and back to their regular posts. Nobody had thought that Arezu was in any particular danger from the Galaxy Team, but the combined withdrawal had been a united front on behalf of the clan leaders; an unspoken disapproval of Kamado’s actions. Irida had told him, when they met at the secret retreat, that, with the rift where it was, she had ordered Ingo back even further, to the Pearl Clan settlement, and made him promise to stay there until she was certain that it was safe.

Rei had missed him, of course, had missed his support, especially during the events that had occurred at the peak, but he also knew how stubborn Irida could be sometimes. Ingo wouldn’t break a promise to her, and Irida was doing her best to keep her people safe, even if it sometimes meant making choices nobody would like. It wouldn’t be fair of him to blame either of them for that (He tried to ignore the parallels with the thought process that had no doubt led to Kamado banishing him, it was different, that was different).

After the red sky was over, and the rift had closed, Rei had stumbled back to Jubilife, more under Akari’s power than his own, and Pesselle had taken one look at him and ordered him to bed. Ingo hadn’t visited at all while he was ensconced in the medical ward, but the clans were still hashing things out with Galaxy Team leadership (or at least according to Akari, who had heard from Professor Laventon), so it probably hadn’t been quite safe for him to return. Besides, Dialga and Palkia had kiiiind of made a mess of Mount Coronet, so Ingo would have a lot of Warden work to keep him busy. He hadn’t seen him at the festival either, but it had also seemed like everyone in Hisui had been there, so it was more likely that he had just missed him, or maybe he hadn’t attended at all. Warden Ingo didn’t seem like the type to really like big parties anyways.

For a moment, he wondered if that had always been what Ingo was like, or if that was an effect of the loss of his memory. The man always seemed to have a weight about him; sometimes Rei wondered if the sloop he stood with was caused more by a metaphorical weight than any physical one.

The festival had been a definite sign that the outright tensions between the three groups had eased. It was now safe for Ingo to be in Jubilife again. With the festival now three days behind them, Ingo had had plenty of time to make the journey, even if at least to let Captain Zisu know when he intended to return to his regular schedule. Rei had wanted to stop by the training grounds first thing, but he had already promised to head out on some field work, and to get to know better the two gods he had befriended. Pesselle had insisted that they only go as far as the Heights camp, and that they return to the village before nightfall, so the survey corps field team, all three of them (and their security escort), had departed at first light to make the most of it.

But now they were done with their work for the day, and Rei could find Ingo, and drag him off for food, and finally tell him all about what had happened over those two weeks the sky had been red. Ingo too, he was sure, would have his own stories, even if he had been constrained to the Icelands the entire time.

If Zisu would let him sit on the edge of the observation platform instead of standing, they would even be able to have a proper pokemon battle! Standing was usually required as a safety measure for anyone within possible striking distance of a Pokemon’s moves. One had to be able to get out of the way quickly if one of the combatants over-shot their aim and a move spilled out of the designated battle-field. Rei had personally never seen it, all the pokemon he brought out onto the pitch were ones he had already worked with in the field, at least a little bit, to refine their moves, and the people he regularly faced off against were at least somewhat experienced with battling. It sometimes felt like the concern was just another overstatement of how terrifying Pokémon were, but there was also a part of Rei that recognized the need for a marked safe distance during matches. It was a part he regularly ignored, many of the confident battlers in Hisui did: weaving their position in the field as needed to better view the match at hand. Of course, when it came to the Galaxy Team, Rei could probably count the number of confident battlers on two hands with fingers left over.

He wondered if the numbers were similar in the clans, but if they were as predisposed to battling as Rei and Ingo were (an impossibility, nobody in Hisui approached battling in the way they did it seemed), they didn’t seem to be willing to come to Jubilife to engage in it.

Despite his dismissal of Professor Laventon’s concern, and the pace he was setting, Rei was starting to feel an ache in his ankle. Fighting to keep a grimace off his face, he slowed back down to a walk, still firmly far enough in front of the other two survey corps members that they would have to hurry their own pace if they wanted to catch up. They had been careful to keep him off his feet as much as possible during the day, refusing to let him venture far from the camp, worried he would somehow get cornered by a wild pokémon and injured more. He knew that the restrictions to his work had been on Pesselle’s orders, and it was hard to fault them for their concern, especially with Akari’s own experiences with the dangers of Survey work. Rei was, in equal parts, both pleased and touched by their concern, and deeply, deeply annoyed that they wouldn’t just let him get on with it, and stop hovering like a mother Staraptor. It was that latter half of him that was determined, then, to not give any inkling of pain. If they knew he was hurting, they would just hover more. As he approached the gates of Jubilife however, offering a cheerful wave to the guard on duty, he was able to admit to himself that he had over-done it; that he should have rested more during the day instead of insisting he was fine.

He just hoped Ingo would be too polite to comment if he had a Bergmite from the pastures brought over for him to rest his leg against.

Stepping into Jubilife proper, Rei did his best not to hobble or limp as he braced himself against one of the posts on the gates and waited for the rest of the convoy to catch up. Closing his eyes, he rolled an empty pokeball in his hand until Akari’s hurried footsteps echoed in the gate. In short order, her voice calling his name prompted him to put the ball away and open his eyes.

Meeting her worried eyes as she stopped in front of him, Rei could already see that any ruse he could rustle up would not be enough to fool her. He gave her the brightest smile he could manage anyways. “Took you long enough to catch up!”

Akari frowned at him, crossing her arms. “You overdid it.” she accused, “You should have ridden back in the cart the entire way Rei.”

“I’m fine.” His protests fell on deaf ears as she held a hand out pointedly. He protested anyway. “I was waiting for you ‘cause we’re friends. I don’t need your help.”

She didn’t retract her hand, only glancing to the side before meeting his gaze again with that deep frown. “Oh yeah? Prove it.”

“Done, name it.”

“Walk all the way to your quarters without limping.” He could do that. He just had to take it nice and slow- “And keeping pace with me the entire way.” Akari didn’t give him time to answer, spinning on a heel and marching off at speed.

Shit. He glanced over his shoulder out through the gate. The Professor was still in the middle of the returning group, but they would be through the gates in short order.

“Akari wait!”

She stopped, turning back to look at him as he took a few stumbling steps after her. The superior turn on her lips almost made him stubbornly falter, but he offered a grimace instead. “You win, okay? A little help?”

Immediately, she was at his side, offering her shoulder as he threw his arm over it. Like him, she too glanced out the gate, gauging how far away the Professor was. “We can get you to Pesselle before he gets close enough to fuss, but you’re not going to escape his notice forever.”

“I know, I know.” They set off again down the main road, this time at a much more manageable pace. “I just wish he wouldn’t fuss so much. He wasn’t like this with all the nobles.”

If incredulity was a knife, the amount of it in Akari’s expression would be sharp enough to cut his throbbing ankle off.

“What?”

“Rei, he’s always like that. You just usually take off on your next survey too fast to notice.”

“Huh.” He wasn’t sure what to say to that, lapsing into silence instead.

Akari seemed content to leave the conversation where it was, focusing instead on supporting his weight anytime his ankle would buckle, and silence followed them all the way to Galaxy hall.

As they turned off the street to approach the building that dominated the north side of the village, Rei cast a glance further up the street, to where the training grounds sat at the top of the hill. Logically, he knew they were too far away for him to properly see anything, and if he was looking for anyone other than Ingo, he would have no hope of identifying them, but Ingo was distinctive. No-one in Hisui wore anything like the ratty coat and hat he refused to be parted from.

Akari didn’t give him enough time to search beyond a glance, firmly tugging at his arm to get him to change direction, and to his dismay, the view provided by the open gate to the training grounds contained only a bright spot of yellow, instead of the warden’s distinctive silhouette.

“Pesselle’s probably going to insist you sit down for the rest of the day.” Akari’s voice broke through his mind before any thought could properly form.

Rei snapped his head back to look at her. “I can sit at the training grounds,” he insisted. “Zisu might not let me battle, but I can still sit there and talk to Ingo.”

“The training grounds are for training Rei. Zisu isn’t going to just let you hang out there with your friend.”

“What? Akari, she lets me do it all the time. Ingo’s too serious about his responsibilities to drag away from his post, so I hang out with him there instead.”

Given their proximity, it was impossible to miss the look of confusion screwing up Akari’s features. “Right,” she started, biting back the rest of her sentence.

“What.”

She shook her head, seemingly unwilling to share her thoughts. Akari was like that sometimes, unsure of herself in a way Rei thought was unfair to her skill level. Rei usually just had to press her to get her to open up and speak her mind. He did so, poking at her shoulder with his free hand. “C’mon, what.”

She batted his hand away, shaking her head. “It’s nothing. Leave it Rei.”

He shook his head in return and dogged her hand to resume the poking. “Nope! Tell me.”

The back and forth continued up the steps and into the carpeted hallways of Galaxy Hall. Upon their entrance, Captain Cyllene lifted her focus from her paperwork, shaking her head at their antics, but refraining from comment.

Finally, just outside the door to the medical ward, Akari cracked. “Fine! Rei. I…” She stopped looking at him with heavy worry. “I know I’m not at the training grounds as often as you are, but nobody named Ingo works there.”

Rei blinked at her, before twisting his mouth into a smile. “Right. Haha, very funny Akari. I know he and Arezu are still wardens first and all, but he very much does still work there.”

“Wardens?” She tugged at his side, prompting him to cross the threshold into the medical ward. “Your friend is a warden?”

“Yeah-” Rei rolled his eyes, letting her pull him along, “-to Sneasler. He’s also the battle coordinator. Don’t act like you’ve never met, Akari!”

Akari’s eyes swam with shock and worry as she looked sharply between him and Pesselle, who stood up from her desk on their entrance. “Pesselle!” she called, “Something’s wrong with Rei!”

Now it was Rei’s turn to stare in confusion as Peselle and Akari led him to one of the beds, guiding him to sit down. “Did you get hit by a psychic attack?” Akari asked, her fingers clenched around his arm in worry. “There are a lot of Stantler by the Heights Camp.”

“What? No. Between you and the professor, I couldn’t even get close to any of the wild pokémon.” he pulled his arm roughly out of Akari’s grip, glaring at her. “If this is supposed to be a tease for overdoing it today, it’s not funny Akari.”

The look she returned was (almost) the saddest he had ever seen her. She pulled her hands back, wringing them together. “Rei…” she trailed off, gulping a few breaths for fortitude. Rei pointedly looked away, instead watching Pesselle and the medical team gather supplies.

Her strength gathered, Akari continued, the worry in her tone far too genuine for this to still be some kind of ill-thought prank. “Rei, there’s no warden by the name of Ingo. Sneasler’s warden is Elesa. You’re friends with her, remember?”

Rei felt his blood run cold. He opened and closed his mouth several times, like a gasping magikarp, unable to formulate a response.

Akari wasn’t lying. She wouldn’t joke about something like this, so what she had said had to be the truth, but…

If they were friends, as Akari claimed, then why didn’t he remember her? If Elesa was Sneasler’s warden, then…