#ANYWAY I HOPE SOME OF THIS RAMBLING IS INTERESTING HSKJSHSJHS ty for the question!! that means a lot

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

This is a little out of the blue, but I'm curious if you have any headcanons about Ingo and Emmet's general state of health when he returns to Unova. I've started reading pla fics again and reunions tend to vary wildly, including if Ingo and/or Emmet have any health issues or not. Being kind of a fandom hermit, you tend to stray from the norm (in a good way! I find it very refreshing and insightful), so I thought it'd be interesting to see if you've ever given it some thought.

ACTUALLY IT REALLY DEPENDS ON THE SPECIFIC SCENARIO hskhssh but yes i have. given it Thought

i think in general ingo's sort of let his standard of self care slip in hisui bc he just... doesn't. care i mean. he's not really consistent about things like sleeping and eating, out of a combination of like... brain static and indifference. like half the time the feeling of "wow i am exhausted and my arms hurt from climbing" doesn't even make it to consciousness, and then half the remaining time he doesn't care enough to act on it. i think there's also a sort of disconnect/reluctance around meals specifically which i've like. vaguely nodded at in one or two things i think? but he has a hard time like, Sitting Down For A Meal, bc he always feels like he should be waiting for something. someone? whatever it is, it's like a kind of exec dysfunction-adjacent fuzz that makes it hard for him to like, commit to eating, so half the time the food will be cold and unappetizing by the time he manages to will himself through whateverthehell that block is anyway.

also if you like, having a human body, and radically switch up the level and type of your physical activity without any real lead-in or instruction, that's uh, not safe generally. so i feel like there are probably some stress injuries hanging around that he's just been ignoring bc sadly hisui doesn't really. do physical therapists. so i guess the tl;dr is his state is generally Bad but in sort of a lowkey way. this is not mentioning the brain stuff bc that's Definitely there but it's not really related to like, physical health

meanwhile if we are talking abt an emmet who has been in unova aware that his brother is just Gone the entire time (as opposed to one who was like, also caught in the distortion, or anything) i think he's physically fine but he's just been like. a robot. he takes fine care of himself and doesn't overwork himself to a point that anyone can call him out on, bc those things would make other people complain and be a pain in the ass and he's trying Not to make any more work for himself, but it's all like, entirely mechanical. there is zero life behind his eyes. there might be some like stress based health issues but i think he's been trying to actively counter them, under the assumption of like, he's continuing to believe that Eventually ingo will come back. and if when he does come back emmet's a wreck and gear station's in total disarray well that'll just be a whole thing on top of whatever circumstances surround his return. can't have that. gotta keep everything neat and orderly. including himself.

though semi relatedly but on the topic of like, injuries, i think if he got into a situation that was actually life threatening or whatever he would not. give a shit. he's already maxed out on things to worry about just by like existing day to day, go ahead and shoot him, that's fine, c'est la vie or whatever they say in kalos. it's actually a similar problem to ingo's general indifference but caused by almost the opposite underlying thing (Too Much going on internally instead of too little). not that i think he's routinely getting into life-threatening scenarios but like, it IS pokemon, evil teams grow like weeds over there, so who knows really. that could be a fun postcanon to explore actually, if ingo gets back memories included but in the meantime emmet's gone and decided to fight [insert bad guy here] bc they were Being A Problem so he decided to fix it and did not have the bandwidth to be impressed by any threats they threw at him. gce but in reverse kinda

this is getting long i hope any of this makes sense it's. late. i guess the last thing i would leave off on, which is kind of another tangent, is i think the one thing both of them DO have going, in terms of self maintenance, is that they both have teams! very well trained and closely bonded ones! who simply Will Not Let Them get that bad. they all Care obviously but i think chandelure and kadabra/alakazam specifically are like, trained emotional support pokemon, if maybe not like, technically service ones. but they've got like, psychic as a pressure source and to pick things up, hypnosis as a bandaid for insomnia, etc etc and also they're among the smartest of the teams in terms of human intelligence. chandelure has a very close bond with both of them and they've worked out a system over decades so it's perfectly suited to emmet. meanwhile kadabra has simply self adopted the role kind of begrudgingly after ingo gave it a vague half-remembered instruction in the concept cause otherwise its trainer will like, starve or something, which would be Annoying, cause it likes this setup. it gets soup. it will do whatever is necessary to ensure regular soup opportunities in its future.