#also Shauntal is just like. yeah I'll participate in your cover up. sounds fun

[ghostypetrainer]

I was just thinking about how often the twins would be asked when and how Ingo was possessed in the non-modern Possession AUs after they return to the future. I'd bet the usual answer is just "that's personal information" and refuse to take further questions. Then I thought: but what if the public speculation started going wild, and some of the rumors were uncomfortably close to the truth (Volo probably has something to do with that, assuming the Nimbasa Zoroark community hasn't already found him and made him the 'guest of honor' at Zoroark BBQ).

So, the twins (and Elesa) hold a press conference along with a few experts they trust (like Shauntal), and proceed to spin the biggest load of BS imaginable to the reporters in attendance. They (or really, Shauntal and the other experts) say that when a ghost pokemon tries to pass on to the afterlife, they often reincarnate back in the world of the living, but sometimes this goes wrong and they still have the soul of the Pokemon they used to be. There is growing evidence that many human psychics and mediums are the result of this flawed reincarnation, but then there are people like Ingo whose soul can completely separate from his human body at will.

All of this is to say, everything's fine. Ingo's not actually possessed. His soul is just like that thanks to a cosmic oopsie. Also, it's completely normal (but rare) for humans to start developing ghost Pokemon traits when they are young. That just means they were a pokemon in a past life, but they're still the same kid they always were. Promise. There totally hasn't been a low-key Invasion of the Body Snatchers thing going on for a long time.

Emmet and Elesa are not happy about having to cover up and enable the Zorua possession thing, but they know that Ingo will have no chance of living a normal life if the public learned that a sizable community of Hisuian Zoroark existed in the current day along with the real reason that they've been able to evade detection, so they come up with a lie that hides it (and hopefully will prevent at least some parents from treating their possessed kids like the twin's parents treated Ingo).

Love this scenario!!! They have mixed feelings about basically covering up the whole body snatching thing that the Hisuian Zorua have going on, since they're in that awkward position where... yeah. They don't mind Ingo did it (or well, technically his Zoroark mother did it), and they're also okay with all of Ingo's various Zoroark friends! They don't want them to get exposed the same way Ingo did, especially when some of them have been through even worse things him growing up.

But they'll do it. For Ingo. Because they love Ingo no matter what, and they want to do whatever they can to protect him. Ingo is floored, because he definitely didn't ask them to do this!! But it's just more proof of how much they care about him, and he loves them for it.