#tringo

oh shiiit i dunno how that works but it's a really cool idea

Alright.

Think you can write Tringo's thought process what with him constantly micromanaging his every movement with the separate forms of himself commenting on his every action.

An action which he fears that he might have to call it quits on.

(lmao another win for insomnia)

The mental loop. His feet are planted firmly on the ground—he rocks them, subtly, weight from heel to toe to reassure himself the earth is there. His hands are—the nails of one are digging into skin, like he's trying to shear off layers, pain the natural subconscious fallback for when his awareness starts to slip—he forces them to relax. He redirects to a piece of string instead, twisting it over each finger and looping X patterns over them—subtle pulls of pressure, constant movements, diverting a sliver of his focus to maintaining it without sacrificing so much that he can't keep the conversation going.

"Please, continue. What is it you need?"

The words are their own physical sensation, the movements of his throat, which he pauses to trace. He's facing away from the newcomer, because he's been told over centuries that his constant severe expression and the subtle shifts of movement are... disconcerting. It's an accommodation to make the process simpler.

The sleeves of his coat are custom, weighted (unrecognizable as the coat they used to be—not that that matters, because it doesn't) (it is loss, whispers Ideals, who never knows when to be silent, and he cautions it to remember) because without them his arms become nothing in his awareness and his hands feel oh-so-very far away. The weight drags his shoulders down. But that's its own helpfulness—another sliver of his awareness is directed towards keeping his back straight, his head held high. No wings behind him. None.

(But there were, murmurs Truth in a corner of his mind, you know there were.)

He rolls his shoulders and feels the shifting of sinew, just to reaffirm it.

The human (don't say that as if you're not) says... something. He will not ask them to repeat. He claws memory back from the part of his awareness dedicated to monitoring sound, divorced from the awareness of sight and feeling of the subtle shifts in the air and, of course,

"I cannot do that."

(liar, says Truth, and semantics, Ideals shoots back)

the cycle. His face is drawn down. His jaw is set without being clenched, his eyes are open and taking in the ornately carved wall, sound filters through his ears and the balance shifts when his head does. Loose hairs tickle the skin on his brow and the back of his neck (he has never been able to tolerate that feeling, but at this point, something is better than nothing) (it isn't so bad, whispers the animal shell that craves feeling without reason)

This time when his summoner speaks, his awareness is at his ears and he's able to hear the words as they come. "You must. We've given so much to collect your pieces and now you will shun us–?"

Fire and electricity and ice burn like triplets in his throat until he bites the cold mist back. He wonders if they saw the sudden hitch in his carefully-straight shoulders

(Ideals says, for every loss given they took more)

(Truth says, the simplest route to least suffering demands only one thing of them)

(The shell says, we are in agony)

He closes his eyes and devotes a larger part of himself to stilling them, until the flickering lights in the darkness fade back.

Composure. He will not snap at them. They're only human, after all.

"I will not do that," this phrasing hushes the twins, "and," how does he say this kindly

(the world is not kind, Truth singsongs, and he feels the threatening lightning of Ideals flicker in its direction until it's cautioned back)

"I question your wisdom in trying to bribe me. Favors are not a thing lightly traded, and respect is earned. Bargaining is not the domain of those who claim to serve ideals."

He flexes his toes in their boots, confirming a lack of talons. Shifts his weight from one leg to another, side to side. His hands—ah, the string has gone taut enough to cut, and they're losing pigment for a different reason—he unwinds it and starts again. Lifts them to his face, and then down, feeling the range of motion in his elbows.

"But I-!" They're startled, and he hears the shift from insult to uncertainty in the span of two words. "What- do you want, then?"

They don't know the weight of their own question, the way it makes the three pieces of himself screech in discord like metal against metal, answers like sparks thrown up against walls and threatening to burn

He shuts them out entirely. It's not a good solution, and it makes him very dizzy and weak, but he cannot focus with them all snapping at everything in the way they are.

His shoulders are—he doesn't know. He is a thousand fragmented pieces

He drags in a long breath, feeling air brush along the path from mouth down into his chest, and uses that as an anchor. Human body. Human. He does not need the dragons to keep him whole.

"My only wish is that you and your opponents cease this pointless destruction. It brings nothing but harm. Your goals are not in misalignment. If you could only see that–" emotion threatens, forcing him to stop midsentence, an inelegance he doesn't enjoy but a necessity if he wants to stay nonthreatening.

His words have the opposite intended effect. "Because you're their truth as much as you're our ideals, I forgot. So this entire thing was pointless?"

"Pointless if your goal was to"

(Is this your chosen one? he demands of Ideals, wrenching the doorway back open)

"ravage your opposition like slaughtered wildlife"

(Is this battle your reality? he asks Truth, throwing memories of peace and war at its weak protests)

"because such senseless violence is never the answer, and every gift of strength comes with the obligation to use it wisely,"

(Do you care so little for the world you call home that you would let this madness continue? he asks the shell, pleading to whatever it has left as thought without its siblings to drive it)

"and if you truly cared about the Ideals you preached you would understand that Truth, of all things, is not their enemy!"

He's turned, at some point, wanting to look at who he's speaking to, but this was unwise because his control has slipped and now sharp teeth bite into each other, clawed hands, one white and one black, snap the thread between them like it's nothing, horns instead of hair frame his face and between it all sparks lightning, fire, ice

No. No. No.

He pulls back, down, rocking back and then forwards, feeling the motion in every piece of itself and forcing it to conform to what he believes and knows and feels is Right.

He is human, he is human

His summoner looks afraid, when he regards them again. It's only natural, but it aches, a physical pain in his chest, which is its own sense of grounding back into his body. He does not want anyone to be afraid. What he wants is to help them, teach them better because he knows they can be, do something productive to end this rather than simply insist noninterference, and if he could only concentrate he could

but so much of him is elsewhere. It takes so much focus just to exist.

(You must try, says Ideals, its lightning an abrasive against his exhausted thoughts)

(And you will fail, adds Truth, fire chasing in its path)

(the ice that could silence them both cares not for the discussion.)

"You may leave. Or you may take a seat, and we will talk. It is your decision." His voice is measured now, directed at the summoner as he gestures without looking

(send me the first sentence of a fic and i’ll write the next 5)

Taller than him—though, that might not be true if he let his form slip into the dragons’, it was difficult to tell—wrapped in dark robes with edging of glittering gold that bring to mind a cocoon, face entirely obscured by fabric and shadow. Darkness seemed to cling to him, fuzzing the edges, making him indistinct.

Its fault, Zekrom hissed, rage suffusing its energy, it did this, it made us, it should pay. But it coiled back in the corner of his mind, shying away from the Emissary like a wary cat, betraying its bold words. Reshiram pulled against its sibling, more intently, with an equally intent Fighting is impossible, is asking for death, we should retreat, turn away, pick another battle.

Predictably, Kyurem disagreed with its siblings, pushing strength into his limbs and urging him to lash out. Something strong enough to make us, to unmake us, a worthy opponent–

He shook his head, ever-so-slightly, pushing it back with the others, and tried to quiet their noise so he could think.

“You look exhausted,” the Emissary comments, interrupting his thoughts before he can say anything.

It surprises him, more than it should. Most people don’t look that closely—is it really so obvious?

And yet—he considers him again. Beyond the unnatural echo and layer of his voice, beyond what Reshiram and Zekrom are telling him, he does get a very particular sense from the Emissary.

Three In my head it sounds like how the ride Pokemon aren't the noble Pokemon. the distinction doesn't really make sense/ unnecessary. they basically came from the same 'ancestor' if there's a distinction it's arbitrary

Four it gets distracting if you don't call Kyurem a God in a story standpoint because you got to repeat why it's not.

Five: To be fair here Kyurem definitely has more personality in tringo and Kyurem the Dragon more than being empty and it's just as strong as the other two.

Six: It literally has the legendary status? Why is this in question it's on the box it absorbed another one of them and used it against its will what. You're the one who said that only God's can trump other gods. Doesn't Kyurem also embody a concept???

Sorry this has been confusing me for for a while now and I didn't really know how to talk about it. Please, I want to talk to this jury so I can understand what the opposition is talking about.

I love this ice dragon.

ok lemme elaborate on why i say kyurem might not necessarily "count" as its own separate legendary, and also why i tend to say "duo" instead of "trio" when i talk about the unova/tao legends.

so kyurem is the discarded shell of the original dragon's body. the weird thing is that... the other two dragons are also the split pieces of the original dragon, and they are much more of it, if that makes sense. one could make the argument that kyurem is, in effect, a piece of the two of them.

it also doesn't embody a concept, really. its whole deal is that it's the absence of the other two. like, i agree that it's a legendary, but would it be worshipped as a god? that's what i'm on the fence about.

You don't even have any Pokemon to snuggle with.

Nothing.

Nobody.

( add it to the list of" ouch for tringo")

Except for one day when two little tiny things -that looks like (one was) who you used to be- decide to lock you in their embrace finally grounding you in a way you could never imagine.

"Emmet, they're crying and shaking uncontrollably"

"It means it's working! Hug them more!"

(When asked why they did it tiny ingo sites that his brother hugs are inescapable. Thus preventing the dragon from splitting. What better way to to keep yourself together then somebody hugging you?)

yes... YES! YES!!

it's like. tringo's spent so so fucking long being treated as an object rather than a person. more than that, as a dangerous object. they're the collected consciousness of two gods—three, if you count kyurem, which, jury's still out on that. and there's honor that goes with that, but it's. empty. and the worst part is, he can't even disagree with them, y'know, you get told something for so long you just sort of start to believe it. and it feels true, considering how much of a constant uphill fight it is to keep himself together (...not acknowledging that, y'know, the only reason it's so hard is he's so alone and unsupported and constantly worn down.)

so by the time he meets baby ingo and emmet it's like... impossible for him to accept being treated just as a person. but it's not like he's ever had to think too much about hiding his emotions, because nobody ever cared enough to look before. so when they go into it with no preconceptions it's immediately obvious, even to them as inexperienced children. like, the first time they brought their dragons together with the Shell, the first thing he did was sink to his knees and put his head in his hands. just so, so utterly exhausted by the realization that he had to exist, again.

and, again, they don't know enough to contextualize a lot of this now, but like, it took him about five seconds to break down sobbing once they were actually holding him. and then he tried to apologize to them for losing composure. and it's just, the realization that in hundreds, if not thousands of years, nobody else has ever cared enough to notice how broken he is.

but they refuse to do the same. they're gonna keep holding on until he feels secure in his own skin.

Tringo intersecting the drop-off of their TAKEN as the Three Dragons.

oooh like the living history squad? man thats so fun. like, the twins and subsequent "heroes" have manipulated the dragons away from many of ingo's original beliefs, but they never thought to touch the things that had to do with hisui, so in this case ingo's Truth and Ideal remain the same: something took every leader in hisui. that is bad. that needs to be fixed. and kyurem doesn't particularly care abt it but it's still got that deep-coded WANT for the people ingo knew, used to be friends with-

----

In the beginning of his relationship with the twin. He knew that he cared about them but had no idea how to label it

He started thinking they where his .... which is not very nice of him. They are not objects. They are.....? His...champions? They are great champions....

...but then again, champion is a lot of pressure to put on ones so young... and every champion the divided dragons have chosen has been a miserable failure... but what else is he meant to use...?