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jayteacups · 2 years

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At Ease

You, the Survey Corps' most prized asset, find solace in the stoic but gentle teashop owner who you've come to know as your friend.

(Or: The Captain!Reader x Civilian!Levi AU absolutely nobody asked for.)

Pairing: Levi Ackerman x GN!Reader

Tags and warnings: Friends to lovers, (mutual) pining, brief mentions of canon-typical violence, brief mentions of sexual assault (alluding to Levi’s backstory), emotional hurt/comfort

Word count: 3.5k

A/N: Hi! This is written for Rei’s @levi-supreme Happy Birthday Levi 2022 Event, for the 5th December! I’m also doing a couple more pieces later in the month for this as well. But in the mean time, please check out the other works listed in the event’s masterpost too! Okay, so, let’s get on with the fic. If the tags and summary wasn't clear, this is a role reversal AU! So Reader's a prominent member of the Scouts and Levi's the civilian they've fallen in love with. I hope you guys enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing this <3

Slender fingers slide the teacup and saucer across the spotless wooden table towards you, the dark liquid rippling slightly. The scraping sound of porcelain against wood pulls you out of your reverie. For a moment you blink, drawing yourself back to the present. With a shaky exhale, you push aside the horrifying memories of the expedition you had been on these past few days, and raise your eyes to meet the piercing yet gentle gaze of the teashop owner.

“One cup of raspberry and lemon tea,” he announces.

“Oh. Thank you, Levi.” You rasp, but make no move to pick the cup up. It’s too hot to drink. As one of his most dedicated customers, you know exactly how long it’ll take for it to cool down enough for you to not burn your tongue on it. For a moment, Levi hovers by your table, examining you closely. You’re well aware of the absolute state you are in. Even after having washed and changed, the emotional toll of the expedition would linger for a while longer.

Thankfully, Levi mentions nothing of your red-rimmed eyes or your trembling hands. His hand comes up to squeeze your shoulder, and you find yourself unconsciously leaning into the warmth of his touch. The lump in your throat feels much larger. Swallowing, breathing without whimpering, becomes a demanding feat.

Stay, please, you silently beg him. With Levi, you never needed to be the domineering Captain of the Survey Corps. With Levi, you could just be.

You wonder if he knows that this shop had become more of a home than the barracks ever would be. That he had become more of a home than the barracks ever would be.

Levi’s voice takes on a soothing, gentle timbre as he assures you, “Furlan’s coming in at the end of this hour to take over at the counter. I can join you then.” He’s usually stoic and steadfast, more so than even you, perhaps, but there is a softness to him nobody can deny.

You don’t have to be alone, is what goes unsaid from him, but you hear him loud and clear. I’m not expecting you to tell me anything, but nobody should have to bear any of this alone. I won’t let you.

You nod in response. It is a herculean effort.

The dark-haired man gives your shoulder another gentle squeeze, before he swivels on his heel and heads back towards the counter.

With a sigh, you lean your head against the wall next to you, watching Levi work. It’s mesmerising the way the sunlight would make his grey eyes shine just a little brighter, the way his lips would quirk up into a small smile as he greeted his regulars. Head facing downwards, measuring out the ingredients for a particular blend, he habitually tucks the longer strands of his hair behind his ears. A few fall back into place despite his efforts. Your fingers twitch with the urge to brush the soft hairs aside for him so that he could see without obstruction.

You’d started visiting his teashop, Kuchel’s Teahouse, just over a year ago. Nothing drastic had happened that day, but you distinctly remembered just wanting a break, from the impossibly high expectations thrust upon you, from the memories of failed expeditions that haunted you in the dead of night, from everything. And there it was, a small teashop tucked away in the corner of town, with its sage-green painted walls and sparkling clean tabletops and that ever-so-soothing scent of black tea. An oasis, a safe haven. Upon seeing it for the first time back then, you had been convinced the entire shop was a mirage until you felt the cold, smooth metal of the door handle.

Stepping inside Kuchel’s Teahouse for the first time had felt like receiving a long, warm hug from somebody you didn’t know you missed until you’d been separated from them—only that you’d never seen this shop before, so it had been all the more overwhelming. That day, Levi had been at the counter. Your tongue had been leaden with words, so many words, both about this place and the world outside of it, that you simply stared at the ‘weekly specials’ menus, not quite seeing or comprehending what was written, not quite processing anything other than just simply feeling too little and too much at once.

Levi had somehow figured out what was up with you within twenty seconds of silence, and had taken it upon himself to pick a blend for you. Even now, you remember feeling the stress of the day ebb away with one sip of the perfectly crafted cup, its warmth spreading deep down into your bones. A kind of warmth that thawed away the icy chill that had settled over your heart and soul, a kind of warmth you never felt back at the barracks. You had returned to the shop in the next two days, and the rest became history. Somehow, you and the teashop owner had struck up a sort of friendship; both of you tired and burdened by life, whether it be the ghosts of the past or the trials of the present.

Several months into your friendship, Levi had admitted to you over half a bottle of whiskey that he hailed from a rundown brothel in the Underground. He and his sickly mother had been rescued by his criminal uncle to live a normal life aboveground, though the traumas of his earliest years had never left him. Behind a tranquil, peaceful appearance he hid the haunting memories of watching his mother suffer through assault after assault, experiencing it himself a few times. He’d confided in you that the name of the shop was hers; she had owned it first, and he had taken over after her tragic passing a few years before.

Your own tongue, loosened by alcohol, revealed you were not just some random soldier like you’d first led him to believe, but one of the strongest, the person who was supposed to free everybody from the iron reign of the titans. How you’d lost squad after squad, feeling yourself slip away from those you’d once considered friends as they took on their own burdens of leadership roles. Back then, you had been a hair’s breadth away from throwing in the towel and leaving the Scouts. But it was Levi’s story, how he’d managed to stay compassionate and kind even after his rough childhood, how he managed to pick himself up and make a life for himself, that lit a fire inside of you.

Though, at times like today, said fire needs a little extra sustenance to stay burning.

(You wonder, absentmindedly, if the metaphor could be taken a little too literally. Levi had his own life and you had come crashing into it. You fear that sooner or later he’ll burn into ashes in the wake of your destructive nature. Wherever you go, bodies fall. It’s why the fleeting euphoria of entertaining the thought of having something more with him is always followed with scathing shame. It’s why you never dare to indulge in anything more than thoughts—of which you shouldn’t be indulging in at all.)

Tightening your cloak around you, you force yourself back into the present, blinking rapidly. The hearth sends pulses of warmth through the shop—not stifling heat, but just enough to thaw the chill of the rapidly approaching winter and keep it at bay. The quiet, aimless chatter and the occasional chink of spoons against porcelain fade into a faint white noise. The scent of your hot cup of tea drifts upwards into the air around you, lulling you into a half-awake state. You don’t remember ever feeling this at ease anywhere else.

It’s tiring, isn’t it? To keep fighting. You think to yourself, as you lose the battle to keep your eyes open.

“Wake up.”

You jolt awake. There’s a hand on your shoulder, and as you blink away the remaining remnants of sleep, Levi slips into the seat opposite to you, free of his apron. His gaze is gentle, as is his touch: his hand seems to hover over yours, but he withdraws, fingers accidentally grazing yours as he does so.

Perhaps if you were more awake, you’d linger on that. Instead you straighten up groggily, lifting your head off the wall that you’d dozed off against. Levi’s coworker, Furlan, now stands at the till, and the shop is far less busy than you remember it being.

“Your tea’s gone cold,” Levi points out.

“I didn’t mean to fall asleep…” Blood pools in your cheeks with embarrassment. You reach for the cup. “Sorry.”

He shakes his head. “You must be exhausted. Anyone would be, after the shit you just went through.”

Closing your eyes to quell the fresh stinging in them, you quickly drain the cold cup of its tea. The two of you head out to leave shortly after Levi checks to see if Furlan’s alright with closing by himself. Outside the door, you pull your thin civilian cloak around yourself, barely warding away the cold. Levi doesn’t need to ask to know that you’re planning on staying over at his place, and leads the way.

His quaint little house is a home away from home. You stay overnight on his couch (though he always argues that you should take his bed) more than you sleep at your quarters in the barracks. It’s become an unspoken facet of your friendship. The memory of exactly when this began is foggy, but you suspect it all began since that night of heavy drinking together, where the two of you had opened up about your lives. You’d been too drunk to walk back to the barracks, and he’d been too drunk to escort you there. His place had not been too far from the bar, so it had seemed like the only solution.

The walk back is blurry. The autumn chill nips at your exposed face and hands, worming its way through the layers of your clothes, burrowing under your skin and chilling you through the bone. The sky sheds tears, the drizzle akin to the gods spitting down on you, and you can’t help but think: how fitting. Levi clicks his tongue, and unlike you, draws his hood up over his head. He doesn’t deserve the gods’ vitriol. Not like you do.

His home is as warm and cozy as the shop is. It’s also cleaner, a fact that you once thought was impossible. Peeling the dampened cloaks off of your bodies, Levi offers to let you use the showers first, but you decline. Earlier in the barracks, you’d spent over an hour in your own private quarters, sat on the floor underneath the scalding hot rush of water, yet feeling not a single flicker of warmth.

All that time spent sat under the shower, and you don’t feel any cleaner. The smell of blood—titan or human, it didn’t matter—wasn’t one you were going to forget anytime soon.

“I already showered back at the barracks,” you end up saying. “You can go ahead.”

His eyes linger carefully over your face. “Make yourself comfortable,” he says, before heading into the bathroom.

After you fetch your set of spare pyjamas from the guest bedroom and get changed, you wander through his humble abode, smiling to yourself at the small knick-knacks that seem insignificant to the naked eye, but speaks volumes about the man that lives here. At Levi’s worktop, a half-finished wooden sculpture lies next to sharp tools; he’d recently taken up wood carving. The walls are decorated with stunning paintings of natural scenery, signed by his mother. The shelves in the corridors are filled with books that Furlan and Isabel continue to buy for him every winter when his birthday comes around. Every room has a healthy-looking houseplant inside (a mere glimpse of the true extent of his gardening abilities, if the flourishing state of the allotment during spring is anything to go by), and on the dining table lies a book on vegetable gardening (almost a decade old and well-used, but under Levi’s care still looks good as new), with a piece of card tucked between the neat pages to act as a bookmark. The winter chill rushes through the house, and you jolt back into action, lighting the hearth in his living room. It is the least you could do for him.

It feels wrong, to intrude on his space like this. The soft cushions of the sofa and the pile of spare blankets on the armchair beckons you, but something in you hesitates. Peace is delicate, fragile. You fear your presence will break it and taint the tranquil atmosphere. What right do you have to step into his life with your war-torn hands and bloodied boots?

Not for the first time today, your eyes burn.

Quiet footsteps echo behind you. “I thought I told you to make yourself comfortable.” Levi says softly.

You sniff. “Right. Sorry.” Trudging over to the armchair to get the blankets, you explain, “I just got lost in thought.”

“It happens. Don’t be sorry.”

Easier said than done.

The two of you settle on the sofa quickly, swaddled underneath the thick blankets. He sits close, but his arm never presses against yours. It’s a small gap that feels infinitely large. Levi’s the first to cross said gap, slinging an arm around your shoulders and guiding your head to rest on his shoulder. His body underneath yours emanates a soothing type of warmth, and it’s all too easy for you to melt. He rubs at your arm comfortingly, and lightly rests his head atop yours.

A sob rips from your throat, raw and unbidden.

You choke back the next one, shaking your head frantically. No. No, not now, you can’t break down in front of him, not like this—

You raise your hand to wipe at your watering eyes, and you note that your fingers tremble. Levi grips your wrist before you can wipe at your face. His hand slides down your palm, before his fingers interlock with yours.

“What are you doing?” You stammer, voice choked.

His throat bobs as he swallows. “Making sure…” He pauses, inhales shakily. Levi looks up at you with resolve. “Making sure you know that… I’ve got you.”

I’ve got you.

Oh, how you wish you could hear that more often.

You shatter. Completely and utterly, you shatter into minuscule pieces with no hope of repair. The weight that presses down on your shoulders day by day, the weight that builds on your chest until you can no longer bear to breathe is fucking agonising, and yet it is only in the safety of Levi’s presence—not your office, not your quarters, but his presence—that you let yourself break.

It seems never-ending, your pain. He draws you close to him in a tight embrace, and you cling to him as if he could slip away from your arms that very moment. Maybe he will, you think to yourself deliriously. You still have him to lose, after all.

You’re not sure how long you lie there, sobs wracking your body, your cries so uncontrollable something in your chest twinges. At some point in the evening, you fall quiet. Your eyes feel sticky and swollen, your nose throbs, and your mouth is drier than sandpaper. Exhaustion weighs down upon you once again, and as your eyes droop shut, shame washes over you.

“Thank you for being here,” you whisper brokenly. Your head pounds.

“Of course. Get some rest, I’ll still be here when you wake.” Levi says. You’re leaning your head against his chest; you can feel his voice reverberate through him. It’s a comforting sensation.

You come to several hours later, nestled between warm, soft sheets that smell like him. The curtains to his bedroom—for that is where you find yourself, instead of on the sofa—are drawn, though a small sliver of golden light escapes. Sleep clings to your eyelids, but you muster enough energy to push aside the blankets and sluggishly stumble to the bathroom.

Levi’s cooking breakfast in his kitchen when you emerge, feeling a little more awake. With his apron tied over rumpled pyjamas, bedhead not yet tamed, the atmosphere feels a little too domestic for your liking.

(That, of course, is a lie. You yearn for such a simple life, for domesticity is something you have not experienced in years.)

You lean against the wall, not wanting to disturb the easy rhythm he’s fallen into, but Levi looks up from his work anyway. He beckons you over with a wave of his spatula. Before you can think it through, your feet carry you forward. He asks you to fetch the plates and cutlery, and you lay them out on the countertop.

“You seem to have slept well,” he observes, flipping over the omelette in the pan.

“Yeah. Well enough for you to carry me into your bedroom without me waking up even once,” you mumble. “Why’d you do that?”

The tips of his ears tint pink. He transfers the first omelette onto the plate and gestures for you to take it to the dining table. “Didn’t think you’d appreciate waking up to a crick in your neck from sleeping on the sofa.”

You don’t bother to push further, because that would lead to a conversation you’re positive you’re not yet ready for. You nod instead. There’s a subtle shift to his shoulders—they were a little tense, but they relax now.

“Never mind,” he says quickly, a little too quickly, as he pours in the rest of the whisked egg mixture into the pan. “Take your plate to the dining table. You can eat first while I finish cooking mine, I know you need to get back to the barracks soon.”

“Perhaps I need to, but I don’t want to.” The words slip from your mouth unbidden. “Perhaps I’d rather stay here in your presence.”

Looking all too vulnerable, Levi seems to be at a loss for words. Dread floods through you as the realisation of what you truly meant slowly encompasses him. Your throat closes, your chest tightens. You idiot, you scold yourself. Whatever happened to staying in control?

“Sorry,” you mumble, ducking your head and leaving the kitchen with your plate. You pick at your breakfast, suddenly feeling queasy.

Walls, you want to scream at yourself, what the fuck is wrong with you?

Levi emerges from the kitchen with his own plate minutes later, settling in the seat opposite to you. The tension is stifling, and for the second time this morning, your cursed tongue moves without thought.

“Please forget what I said.” And everything that went unsaid.

“And what if I don’t want to?”

“You have to.” Or I’ll be standing by your grave, shedding bitter tears. It’s the fate everyone I love is sentenced to. “I don’t understand why you still stay at my side…”

The emotion written clear as day across his eyes could only be described as longing. He seems to steel himself.

“You know why.”

The room falls silent in the aftermath of his confession. You can only hear the blood roaring in your ears.

You’ve read hundreds of romance novels in your spare time. Daydreamed of it every spare moment in your teens, before you were wounded by the world’s cruelty. Lived through thousands of iterations of moment of realisation that the person you’ve longed for, longs for you back, through the marvel of ink on paper.

But you don’t feel sparks, or burning flames, or roaring hot passion. You don’t feel butterflies in your stomach, or the urge to swoon.

No. You feel two things at once.

Fear—that this moment will irreversibly change the trajectory of Levi’s fate. That he will just be one of dozens that will meet an untimely end, that you will once again fail to protect the ones you hold dearest.

Relief—that he reciprocates. That, just once, you’ve been granted a reprieve, one small chance at peace.

“I see.” You whisper hoarsely, still skirting around the very words themselves, just as he does. “And I think that you know, then, why I want to stay.”

Levi stands and comes around the table, and so do you. The two of you come to a standstill merely centimetres from each other.

“Maybe you have to go soon,” he whispers, cupping the back of your head, “but next time, will you…”

You nod. “I will.”

He pulls you in, or you lean in, perhaps both happen at the same time. You’re not sure. What you are sure of, is how safe and content you feel, kissing him like you have all the time in the world, kissing him like maybe, just maybe…

You can stay.

Masterlist

#levi x reader #levi ackerman x reader #levi x you #levi ackerman x you #levi x y/n #levi ackerman x y/n #gender neutral reader #gn!reader #levi x oc #levi ackerman x oc #levi ackerman x mc #aot x reader #snk x reader #attack on titan x reader #shingeki no kyojin x reader #rei’s event: happy birthday levi 2022 #rei's event: happy birthday levi 2022 #(using both the curly and straight apostrophe because both came up and idk which one to use)

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answrs · 6 months

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( an attempt at fluff(?) - i hope things get better or at least easier for you soon. virtual hugs, remember that you've got a lot of people in your corner <3 )

Ingo writes a book when he's in Hisui.

Okay, wait. It's not really a book, and he didn't really write it, he would object. It's more of a very very long pamphlet, and he got a lot of help from Zisu and the Survey Corps. It was written for them, after all: it's a primer on how to befriend, train, and raise Pokémon, for the Security Corps and the rest of the Galaxy Team and really anyone else who wants to learn, because he doesn't have time to teach everyone directly but he so badly wants as many people as possible to have the chance to learn.

So it takes a while to put together—not just all of the information, but presenting it well, with graphs and diagrams so that even people who can't read, or can't read the language it's presented in (which is a fair amount of Jubilife tbh) can still get something out of it. Rei and Akari help him make some copies, even, so more than one person can look at them at once.

And then, when he's just about finished—so before he has the chance to see how it's received—he goes home.

To Unova. And he's happy! His memory is still pretty fuzzy, but he knows for certain that this is where he wants to—where he should be, even. It just feels right. But that doesn't mean it isn't also bittersweet, leaving his home of so many years in Hisui behind.

But when he gets back home—to the one he couldn't remember but missed anyway—he finds a book waiting for him on a table.

It's pretty worn-out, like the owner has read through it quite a few times, and he sort of recognizes it, however vaguely. It's a book about Pokémon training and strategy, so old it's nearly out-of-date by this point (if the topic weren't so universally consistent, anyway) but it's still interesting to read, and the foundation is solid, so it's one of the first books he—they picked up. When they were just starting out as Trainers.

And the foreword, written by a modern-day scholar, confirms what he remembers: this is a very old book, that's survived in modern times mostly by virtue of the fact that it was so widely read and copied and (later) translated and added to. There are definitely better references today even for beginners, and most of its value is historical, records of old training methods and "move styles" and an insight into how people of the past viewed Pokémon and... wait a minute.

This is his book. As in, it's the one he wrote.

It doesn't take long, flipping through it, to confirm. Oh sure, some details have been lost in translation or edited out, and there's newer commentary in a few places, but the structure is so familiar that there's no other explanation. He really hadn't expected it to be anything other than a reference for a few people in Jubilife, maybe something a Ginkgo Guild member took with them once if he was lucky—but now, so, so many years later, it's been passed on and reprinted and rewritten and translated into so many languages—because he was right. People and Pokémon were meant to work together, and that one wish of his resonated with enough people that now it's almost impossible to imagine the world working any other way. And this little book (not even really a book, at first) made it all the way around the world and back to him, without him even realizing.

But it's weird—the note at the front also mentions an afterword, and he doesn't remember writing one of those. And it does say that it does seem to be from a different source than the author of the rest of the book (clearly passionate, but elusive in the text itself, a fact which is apparently deeply frustrating to historians, whoops-) but also doesn't talk about it as if it's a later addition from another copier, either. It might have been written by many different people, it says, and there's even been some conflict over whether it should be included in reprints at all, but most people have apparently come to the conclusion that it should be treated as another part of the original book and kept in.

So he flips to the back, to see... and realizes almost immediately what it is.

Just in case you need telling again, because I’m sure you will—you take care of yourself out there. Then we can all rest easy. Our ‘dex is missing a valuable contributor—and ourselves, a good friend—but I’m certain that your destination, as it were, has been dearly missing you for long enough already! And so long as this testament to our shared work lives on, we are never truly gone from each other. I told you I’d keep an eye out for you, whenever I leave, and I’m still doing that. But just in case we don’t wind up with the same home after all, and this does get to you, I wanted to say thanks again. For guiding me, and listening, and helping even when you didn’t need to. It helped a lot. We figured out how to do that thunder barrier thing you were talking about the day after you left, and I’m really mad that you didn’t see it. So you’d better at least be reading this! Oh yeah, and thanks for all the advice. But mostly, I’m really glad that stupid barrier trick didn’t end up in this copy, because if I can’t show you I should at least get to brag to everyone else, and I can’t do that if everyone knows about it. The highlands are doing just fine. Just in case you thought we needed you! My own capable hands are more than enough!

They're... goodbyes. Not just from the other people who worked on the book, but from... everyone. Who, like him, had no way of knowing where this book would go once it left Jubilife—but took the chance anyway, sending these notes on their way to be read and reread a thousand times by a thousand hands... to find him again. As a physical goodbye—not as ephemeral as words or memories, but something able to persist.

But then, if they'd gotten even his fellow highlands warden to leave his own note, what was this last one that was so much longer than the rest...?

Any meeting in this vast world is something to be grateful for, but I am more grateful for one than most. The fullness of our space and time has more potential than I ever dreamed, and I do not know if my eyes would have opened were you not there for those first steps. Dear warden, friend, and guide, on behalf of all of us—I hope you were able to call us your home, at least for a while. And the almighty knows we have asked more than our fair share already, but if we may make one last selfish request of you—

…ah.

—please, for all of us, be happy.

AASDFHJKLCMIASCNNGHHHH SWIFT ;O; IM BLUBBERING IT'S SO GOOD AND SWEET AND GAAH MY HEART. LEAVING THE MESSAGES DESPITE NOT KNOWING WHO IT'S FOR, EVEN WHEN IT WAS FOR, BUT THEIR WORDS SURVIVING THROUGH THE AGES PASSED DOWN FROM TRAINER TO TRAINER AND SPREAD ACROSS THE WORLD IN SO MANY LANGUAGES. AND IT'S NOT A MESSAGE OF MOURNING BUT A MESSAGE OF H O P E, AND I JUST.

MY HEART

#fic #sbms #i cannot overstate how much i adore this and may have gotten more than a lil emotional about it when i read it in my inbox the first tim ;o #(and second and third times too shush)

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peccaberry · 6 months

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I am archiving my April fools day ACD chapter here so when I take it down tomorrow people will still be able to find it! Thanks so much to everyone who read it and told me they got a good laugh, I had a ton of fun making it ❤️ (Also here's a link to ACD in case you want to read the actual fanfic and not just my joke chapter)

Hi my name is Rei Dark'ness Dementia Raven Akabane and I have short slate black hair (that's how I got my name) with spiky tips and steely grey eyes like a knife and a lot of people tell me I look like Champion Lucas (AN: if u don't know who he is get da hell out of here!).

I don't think I'm related to Lucas but I wish I was because he's a major fucking hottie. I'm a Pokemon trainer but my Pokeballs are all made of Red Chain because I'm wayyyy better than the other trainers. I'm also in the Survey Corps and I work for the Galaxy team in Hisui where I'm at rank ten (I'm only 16 tho LOL). I'm a badass (in case you couldn't tell) and I wear mostly bloody ripped up uniforms because I get in so many fights with dangerous Pokemon ( I always win tho!!). I love Anthe's clothing stall and I buy all my clothes from there.

For example today I was wearing a bloody Survey Corps uniform with a matching red hat (because of the blood lol) and black eyeliner to make me look scarier. I was walking down the main street of Jubilife Village. It was snowing and raining so there was no sun, which I was very happy about. A lot of security corp members stared at me. I put up my middle finger at them.

"Hi Rei!" shouted a voice. I looked up. It was…. Volo!

"What's up Volo?" I asked.

"Nothing." he said shyly.

But then, I heard my friend Akari call me and I had to go away.

The next day I woke up in my quarters. It was snowing and raining again. I opened the door of my cabinet and drank some sake from a bottle I had. My cabinet was oak wood and inside it was all the stuff I got from killing all those Pokemon out in the field.

I got out of my futon and took of my Kalos t-shirt which I used for pajamas. Instead, I put on a Fancy Cyndaquil Kimono, a Chatot feather necklace, and red sandals. I scowled into the mirror scarily and made my hair even messier than before.

My friend, Akari woke up then and grinned at me. She flipped her long waist-length Slate black hair and opened her knife grey eyes. She put on her Survey Corps uniform with a matching bandana and shoes. We put on our makeup (lots of black eyeliner and mascara so no one would fuk with us!!!)

"OMFG, I saw you talking to Volo yesterday!" she said excitedly.

"Yeah? So?" I said, blushing.

"Do you like Volo?" she asked as we went out of the Quarters and into Jubilife Village.

"No I so fucking don't!" I shouted.

"Yeah right!" she exclaimed. Just then, Volo walked up to me.

"Hi." he said.

"Hi." I replied flirtily.

"Guess what." he said.

"What?" I asked.

"Well, Irida and some of the others are having a concert at Prelude beach." he told me.

"Oh. My. Fucking. God!" I screamed. I love Irida! She's my favorite musician, besides myself of course.

"Well…. do you want to go with me?" he asked.

I gasped.

On the night of the concert I put on I put on a Fancy Cyndaquil Kimono, a Chatot feather necklace, and red sandals.

I ruffled my hair and made it look all spiky. I felt a little depressed bc I missed my parents, so I cried and made my mascara run down my face. I tried to read a depressing book while I waited for it to dry and I listened to Chatot sing in my voice.

I painted my nails black and put on TONS of black eyeliner. Then I put on some black lipstick. I drank some sake so I was ready to go to the concert.

I went outside. Volo was waiting there in front of the Ginko guild cart. He was wearing a Ginko Guild Uniform (they would be selling stuff at the concert too), huge boots, black nail polish and a little eyeliner (AN: A lot fo kewl boiz wer it ok!).

"Hi Volo!" I said in a depressed voice.

"Hi Rei." he said back.

We hopped into the Ginko Guild cart and Machoke pulled us to the prelude beach. On the way we listened excitedly to Chatot sing while we both smoked pokemon weed and drugs. When we got there, we both hopped out of the cart. We went to the mosh pit at the front of the stage and jumped up and down as we listened to Melli sing along to Irida's flute.

"You come in cold, you're covered in blood

They're all so happy you've arrived

The doctor cuts your cord, hands you to your mom

She sets you free into this life." sang Melli (I don't own da lyrics 2 dat song).

"Melli is so fucking hot." I said to Volo, pointing to him as he sung, filling the beach with his amazing voice.

Suddenly Volo looked sad.

"What's wrong?" I asked as we moshed to the music. Then I caught on.

"Hey, it's ok I don't like him better than YOU!" I said.

"Really?" asked Volo sensitively and he put his arm around me all protective.

"Really." I said. "Besides I don't even really know Melli and he's going out with Adaman. I fucking hate that poser, he's no where near as cool as Irida." I said disgustedly, thinking of his stupid smirking face.

The night went on really well, and I had a great time. So did Volo. After the concert, we drank some sake and asked Irida and Melli for their autographs and photos with them. We got souvenir concert charms. Volo and I crawled back into the Ginko Guild cart, but Volo didn't go back into Jubilife Village, instead he drove the cart into… the temple of sinnoh!

"VOLO!" I shouted. "What the fuck do you think you are doing?"

Volo didn't answer but he stopped the cart and he walked out of it. I walked out of it too, curiously.

"What the fucking hell?" I asked angrily.

"Rei?" he asked.

"What?" I snapped.

Volo leaned in extra-close and I looked into his grey eye which revealed so much depressing sorrow and evilness and then suddenly I didn't feel mad anymore. he suddenly ripped his clothes off and I got excited for a minute but he was wearing some sort of weird gold and white outfit under it. He still looked pretty hot though so I was ok with it.

"Rei this world is stupid. We should just force Arceus make a new one or something."

I gasped and put my perfectly painted black fingernails up to my black lips.

"Oh my god are you serious?!"

Volo shrugged.

"I mean yeah why not. I have a Giratina we can use to do it."

And then all of a sudden someone ran up to us….

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING YOU MOTHERFUKERS!"

It was….KAMADO!

Kamado made Volo and I follow him. He kept shouting at us angrily.

"You ludacris fools!" he shouted.

I started to cry tears of mascara down my battle scarred face. Volo comforted me. When we went back to the Galaxy Team HQ Kamado took us to Captain Cyllene and Ginter who were both looking very angry.

"They were planning to destroy the whole world at the temple of sinnoh!" he yelled in a furious voice.

"Why did you do such a thing, you mediocre dunces?" asked Ginter.

"How dare you?" demanded Cyllene.

And then Volo shrieked. "BECAUSE I HATE THIS UNFAIR WORLD!"

Everyone was quiet. Kamado and Cyllene still looked mad but Ginter said.

"Fine. Very well. You may go to your quarters."

Volo and I went out of the while there Galaxy Team glared at us.

"Are you okay, Rei?" Volo asked me gently.

"Yeah I guess." I lied. I went to my quarters and brushed my teeth and my hair and changed into my favorite Kalos Tshirt and shorts with red sandals. When I came out….

Volo was standing outside my front door, and he had a Giratina with him and the sky was bloody red. He was wearing that weird gold and white outfit again. I was so flattered, even though he wasn't supposed to be there. We hugged and kissed. After that, we hopped onto the back of Giratina and flew off together to go end the stupid fucking world!!

The end.

#i obviously dont own my immortal so credit to whoever that genius is #i know you're out there somewhere and you're my hero #peccaspeaks #pokemon #pokemon legends of arceus #achillies come down fanfiction #rei pokemon #pokemon rei #pokemon volo #pokemon fanfiction #my immortal #april fools #a03 #pokemon legends #pokemon meme #akari pokemon #pla #legends arceus

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thunderin-brainstorm · 3 months

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being an outsider in Jubilife is an isolating, humiliating experience, but RB isn't alone. fellow Survey Corps members Akari and Rei pretty swiftly become good friends, and she protects these sweet and kind teenagers with her life. without them she certainly would've lost herself to wilderness or depression a long time ago

#pokemon #pokemon oc #pokemon trainer oc #legends arceus #legends arceus oc #trainer akari #trainer rei #pikachu #pachirisu #isekai oc #brain's art #she'd do anything for these kids fr #you ever get extremely emotional about something youve just completely made up? bc i am SO moved by these teens and their friendship #but basically all of it DOES NOT EXIST bc they have basically the personality of cardboard in canon!!#i feel pretty stupid about getting teary over a duo of extremely good kids whose amazing traits exist nowhere but my brain...

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imfluentinfangirlandgay · 10 months

Text

A Father's Resolve - Ch 5

Ingo returns after a decade - with two extra cars in tow. Years later, his kids are swallowed up by time in the same way he was. Will he be able to find them? Will they be able to make it out alive?

Word Count: ~1600

They arrived at the location swiftly. It seemed like the fields were pretty close to the village. The twins followed a few security guys in red and Laventon to a small clearing with a trunk, a campfire, and a couple tents. Some people stood around, talking.

"This is the Fieldlands camp," Laventon announced. "If you ever need to heal up or just need a break, think of this as a safe spot." The twins followed him into the camp as he greeted some of the people here.

"Now," he said, "your trial is to catch a Bidoof, a Shinx, and a Starly, yes? You know how to throw pokeballs, but you need to practice the ways of survey work. Some members of the Survey Corp have offered to help show you the basics." Two people in blue waved from the fire and stood.

"Let's get started, shall we?"

–

The Bidoof was a piece of cake. Rei even petted it as he was pressing the ball to its furry head. Two others watched on, not a care in the world.

The hard part with Starly was getting close enough to catch without startling it, but Rei remembered all those times in Chargestone, trying desperately to find the rare Tynamo and manage to hit the teeny tiny thing with a ball. Needless to say, Starly was nothing, especially after the tall grass trick.

Shinx was a tad more difficult. The Survey Corps member showing them watched it with disdain and she described being struck by a Thunder Shock. Pokemon attacked people in this region? Now he understood why Dad was always talking about how dangerous it was.

They battled the Shinx, but it seemed too young to have learned any electric moves. Even Oshawott excelled against it and they each had an electric cat pokemon in no time.

"Congratulations, you two! You've completed the first trial and are well on your way to completing the pokedex! This calls for a commemorative photograph!" Laventon pulled out a box with a lens on the front. Rei assumed it was an old camera.

The flash just about blinded Rei on impact. He had to blink back the spots burned into his retinas as Laventon shook out the photograph. "Excellent. Now, let us not keep Captain Cyllene waiting! Time to head back to Jubilife, eh?" Rei shook off some dirt from his jacket. Akari pulled a leaf out of her silver hair. They followed Laventon again, heading back to Jubilife.

"Do you have a bad feeling about all this?" Rei whispered to his sister in Unovan.

Akari nodded. "But what else can we do? We have nowhere else to go."

Rei couldn't argue with that. They continued to talk to each other for a bit in Unovan, not wanting to be eavesdropped on. "I wonder what year it is… what year did Dad say we were born?"

"I think 1836," Akari said.

"That sounds right." Rei pondered dates. "Because we left in 1841 and he was dropped around 1830."

"Well, that doesn't make any sense," Laventon said in perfect Unovan, not looking at them. The twins both froze. He could speak Unovan? "I'm from Galar," he added, smiling back at them. "I did not mean to intrude, but I could not help but notice the inconsistency. It is currently 1831. There is no way you could have been born five years from now!"

They said nothing for a moment. They looked at each other. Rei shrugged. Akari blinked at him three times. Rei nodded and then gestured to Laventon. Akari sighed and nodded. With that settled, Rei spoke, still making sure to be in Unovan, "We think we were taken through time," Rei admitted. "We uh… immigrated to a different region at a young age, but we were born in Hisui."

"Time, eh?" Laventon looked up to the rift hanging above Mount Coronet. "Then it must be a space-time rift."

"Please don't tell any-"

"Professor?" One of the guards was watching them speak. "What are you talking about?" He could only speak Hisuian, Rei assumed.

"Oh, they believe they must have been brought from Galar. It is their homeland, as well as mine. We were just discussing where from. Galar is a rather large region!" Laventon fibbed. The guardsmen shrugged and continued to walk.

The twins said nothing else, but nodded at Laventon in thanks, as they continued on.

—------

Emmet sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. He knew he could be difficult. He knew Elesa could be difficult. He knew Ingo could be difficult.

But by Arceus, it was hard to get anything done when they were all being difficult in opposite ways.

Ingo had his day bag on his shoulder, haphazardly packed, as he stood paces away from the door, a feral look in his eyes. He hadn't shaved at all, his lengthening beard only adding to the madness. Elesa was standing in front of the door, the only thing between it and Ingo, staring him down, her eyes like daggers. Emmet was trying to wedge between them to make them not fight each other. The very air was charged and electrified, a battle going on without any pokemon involved. Emmet took deep breaths. He had to be the rational one, and as such he had to keep his head level.

"I'm going," Ingo ground out, his voice raspy.

"Not until you take a nap first," Elesa countered, her lips pursed. "Or a shower."

"What if something happens!"

"Then we go a bit further in time and stop it. You're acting like we can only travel to a single spot."

"I'd rather just have nothing happen in the first place!"

"That's what time travel is, idiot!"

Ingo grinned his teeth as he huffed and stamped his foot. "We're wasting time!"

"We can't do that if we're traveling!"

And that was enough to break his resolve. "WOULD BOTH OF YOU SHUT UP!" Emmet finally snapped. He was done being the rational one. They wanted to fight like they were children? Then he'd act like a child. Both of them jumped, surprised by his outburst. He shoved Ingo back, nearly knocking him over. "What's going to happen when we get the kids home and see you've worked yourself so hard you lost years off your life? You already look like a walking corpse! A strong gust will blow you over! What will they think," he growled at his brother, who looked at him with wide eyes. His hands trembled on the strap of the bag. "I've lost you once and I'm not losing you again." And then he rounded on Elesa. "And you! None of us knows how time travel works. None of us knows what's happening or how it's going to happen or how easy it'd be to fix. We want your help and we need your help but for the love of Arceus, both of you need to SHUT UP! None of this is helping anyone right now, least of all the twins!" He stomped off to the table and grabbed a ball, opening it and releasing Chandelure. "You wanna talk about wasting time and then just stand here and scream at each other? Fine! I can waste some time." She swirled in the air silently, taking in the scene in confusion. "Chandelure," Emmet commanded, "take Ingo to his bed and make him sleep. I don't care what you have to do."

She turned and saw the state that her Trainer had left himself in. Ingo protested, shouting incoherently as he was suddenly surrounded by a purple glow and lifted off his feet. "You can't just do that!"

"I can and I did!" Emmet screamed back. Ingo was dragged off to the other room by the ghost, his bag falling off his shoulder and onto the floor even as he yelled. "I don't want to see you come out of that room for at least four hours! And I swear to Arceus, those bags under your eyes had better be gone!" Then he pointed at Elesa. "And you need to take a walk! Have a battle, get some coffee, do something other than just screaming in my living room. I want you back here after you've cooled off, and no sooner! Do I make myself clear?!"

Elesa scoffed at him and threw open the door, slamming it behind her.

Emmet stood in the middle of the room for a moment longer, his fists clenched and shaking. Then he sighed. His shoulders slumped, his knees buckling. His face lost its smile. The exhaustion washed over him in a wave as the rage drained, nearly sending him crashing down.

He sunk to the couch and sighed, propping up an elbow on the arm and holding up his head with his hand. Galvantula crawled to his lap, clicking her mandible in concern. He sighed and petted her soft fur as she got comfortable, looking up at him with her big blue eyes. "What are we going to do? It's hardly been over a week and we're already losing it." He leaned down so that he was more horizontal, laying on the couch, his head on a pillow as Galvantula moved to lay on his chest. The constant hum of static in her abdomen was comforting. "I shouldn't have shouted like that, Butternut. I want them back, too. I miss them. I'm worried about them." He sighed again as he patted her head. He could feel the prick of tears in the back of his eyes. "I don't know what to do." His voice choked up.

He continued to lay there as the sun set outside the back door. Galvantula nuzzled against his chin and tucked her pedipalps under her head as a pillow. Slowly, his eyes drooped shut, and sleep finally overcame him.

[First] - [Previous] - [Next]

#submas #subway boss ingo #subway bosses #pokemon legends arceus #my writing #ingo #pokemon #pokemon rei #pokemon akari #professor laventon #pokemon elesa #gym leader elesa #nimbasa trio #subway boss emmet

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youllallriseintheink · 8 months

Text

One For All, chapter two

In an AU where the protagonist never fell from the sky, the Survey Corps will have to pull together and make use of every resource at their disposal to face the challenges present in Pokemon: Legends Arceus. There will be surveyshipping.

I expect this story to last three or four chapters- nothing super long or complicated this time.

---

When Cyllene returned to camp, not long before sundown, it was safe to say that the mission had been an unmitigated success. More research subjects had been recovered that day than in any prior week of the Survey Corps' existence, and Laventon would be writing new pokédex entries for days.

"It's beginning to look like the Survey Corps will pull through," Cyllene stated as she stepped into the encampment and looked around at the various specimens- everything from mushroom beetles to living rocks- and at the people interacting with them. Laventon was taking footprint sketches of a rodent-like creature. Rei was stroking the muzzle of a flaming pony. "Survey Corps," she called, turning everyone's attention to her. "You have done well. It is time to pack up and return to the village. Tomorrow the real work begins."

So it did. The next morning, the Survey Corps reported to Cyllene's office. Now that the Survey Corps members had calmed down somewhat about the prospect of being disbandment and Cyllene was somewhat more confident that they could avoid it, Cyllene was able to reveal their circumstances.

"Kamado has given us three weeks to prove our worth. We're going to use that time to map out every corner of the Obsidian Fieldlands- resources, useful trails, the Pokémon that inhabit it, and perhaps even Pokémon that would be useful to take as guides. I began mapping out Windswept Run yesterday to give you an idea of what I expect. All of you but Laventon and myself will be assigned an area to map. If we prove to Kamado that we can do it once, then he'll allow us to do it for every area in Hisui."

The corps accepted their orders and filed out in way that reminded Laventon of loyal soldiers.

"And what about us?" Laventon asked.

"Desk work. Study the specimens and work on the pokédex. I want to see its updates on my desk at the end of every day. It will be the most important resource for the field guide."

"Alrighty, then. Let's get to it!"

Cyllene gave him a stiff nod, and Laventon returned to his conjoined office.

A few hours later, Cyllene knocked on the doorframe.

Laventon looked up from entries he was writing.

"Yes?"

"I'm mapping out the horseshoe plains. Do you have any information on the temperament of ponyta? Are they aggressive? Territorial?"

"I'm afraid I wouldn't know. We have a form of them in Galar, but not ones on fire! Their temperament very well could be entirely different from the ones I know."

"Understood. It will be something to ask the other survey corps members to investigate. And soon, we'll have to have a meeting to discuss the knowledge you gathered on your travels and in Galar."

"You know, you can just ask me about my travels! You don't need to feign a reason."

Cyllene looked away. "...Noted. But I am serious about putting your prior knowledge to work."

Days passed. Cyllene often popped in to ask about the abilities and temperaments of various Pokémon. Far from being a disruption, Laventon relished an opportunity to talk about his discoveries. He'd enjoyed the research he'd done throughout the years regardless of who he could share it with or what he thought its impact would be, but he'd never felt the direct impact of his studies so strongly before! And he did notice when Cyllene asked questions out of interest rather than necessity.

The three weeks came to an end, and the Obsidian Fieldlands guide was, if not complete, at least viable.

"I think will prove our worth," Cyllene said as she and Laventon gave the guide one last look over. The next day, it was to be delivered to Kamado's office, and the fate of the Survey Corps would be decided.

"I do hope so," Laventon said. "Do you want me to stay behind? I know that Kamado doesn't exactly, erm..." Laventon let himself trail off. Cyllene would know what he meant. Kamado was suspicious of outsiders. It was just who he was.

Cyllene paused and weighed their options. "No," she decided. "Avoiding him will only mean that nothing will change."

Strange lightening from the rift arced through the sky that night. But by now, Cyllene and Laventon were used to the unstable time-space of Hisui.

The following afternoon, the two made their way to Kamado's office to find clan leaders Adaman and Irida already there, the latter looking quite distressed.

"What's going on?" Cyllene asked.

Adaman gave Irida a scornful look. "Apparently the Pearl Clan doesn't take the time to look after its nobles and now it's causing a mess."

Irida's teeth clenched. "This has nothing to do with us! We might have no idea what happened to it or what to do about it, but neither do you!"

Kamado sighed and faced Cyllene. "The Pearl Clan's noble kleavor is rampaging. It seems to be afflicted with a supernatural frenzy. And neither the Pearl Clan nor the Diamond Clan want to kill the something sacred to them or sacred to a clan they have an unsteady alliance with." He turned back to the clan leaders. "You need an impartial third party to kill the rampaging beast? Very well. We'll send the Security Corps to kill it."

Irida clasped her hands over her mouth. "Kill it? It's not its fault that whatever this is is happening to it! And it's spent its life making the forests safer for us. We don't want it dead."

"Very well. I suppose we could have the Survey Corps scout out an alternative." Kamado looked to Cyllene. "You have your orders. I'll look over your guide as well, but if you are able to find an alternate solution to the frenzied noble, you will have proven the Survey Corps' worth beyond doubt."

"Understood," Cyllene said. The Survey Corps was gathered and marched to Pearl Clan territory within the hour.

Within the Grandtree Arena, Lord Kleavor raged. Bathed in gold light and filled with pain and energy, it dashed about, running into trees and rocks and thrashing its heavy axes- axes that were still wet from its last victim's blood.

"Release the spores," Cyllene commanded from the edge of the Grandtree Arena. Her staravia, along with the bird Pokémon of the two survey corps members at her side, each took a paras in their talons and flew over the rampaging lord, dusting it with sleep powders and stun spores in hopes of rendering it immobile. It barely seemed to slow the creature down.

"Plan B," Cyllene yelled. She and the other members returned their Pokémon. Cyllene then threw out her kadabra, which set up reflect- a shield that would hopefully allow them to get close enough to the kleavor to stop it.

The three members slid down the rockface and began throwing balms at kleavor. It took immediate notice and rammed itself towards them only to bounce off of the reflect shield. It rammed again and the shield began to crack.

"Backup!" Cyllene called out, still throwing balms along with her allies. Another three Survey Corps members slid down the opposing side of the rock face. There wasn't much they could do aside from throw balms as well.

With a third smash, the reflect broke. The survey crops members scattered. The six regrouped and Cyllene's kadabra put up another reflect. This time, the kleavor smacked into it head-first and fell backwards, dazed. Rei took out his dartrix to distract it with a battle as the other members threw balms. Finally, the golden glow lifted off the kleavor, leaving a normally-coloured and much calmer creature.

"That was close," Rei said.

"Yes," Cyllene conceded. "We'll have to strategize a bit more should there be another situation like this."

The Pokémon approached the six and handed them a strange green-coloured plate. Rei took it. He hardly had time to contemplate it, however, as Irida, Lian, and Laventon approached. he tucked it into his bag and turned his attention to the approaching people.

"What was that?" Irida asked. "It seems like Lord Kleavor lost its aggression when the light left it. So the lightening from the rift really is the cause of all this... At any rate, thank you. Without you, our only options would have been to let our lord and protector continue to be a danger or to-" Irida looked over to her lord and shook her head. "Thank you."

"No need," replied Cyllene, "It is to everyone's benefit that we keep Hisui a safe place for everyone, and that we avoid conflicts between you and the Diamond clan. There is a way that you can repay us, however."

"And what is that?" Irida said.

"The Pearl Clan has lived here for generations. You have knowledge of the Pokémon here that we don't. Share it with us. It may even help us in any further incidents such as this."

"Oh! Sure. Gladly."

"See me in my office tomorrow morning. We have much to discuss."

With that, the Survey Corps started back for camp and then Jubilife.

"Excellent work today," Laventon said, hurrying to the front of the line to catch up with Cyllene. "I took as many photos as I could of your conflict. If this doesn't show Jubilife Village that we're doing Hisui a service, well, nothing will!"

"Yes," Cyllene stated. "There will be much to discuss with Kamado tonight on a possible alliance with the Pearl Clan. Such a discussion would be incomplete without the leaders of essentially every Corps- agriculture, gathering, security, and potentially medical since a full overlap of our medical knowledge is unlikely. But our worth is proven. I'll be sure to let Kamado know that you were the one to come up with the balms."

"Wonderful! That will warm him right up to me! At least, I do hope it does."

"Indeed."

Basculegion motored towards the shore of Ginko Landing, stopped sharply, and launched the riding Laventon onto shore, leaving him to wipe out face-first in the sand.

"Oof..." Iscan said, approaching Laventon and helping him up. "I hope that handling the frenzied noble went a bit smoother than that."

Laventon got up and dusted himself off as basculegion headed back to Firespit Island to retrieve his fellow Survey Corps members. "It certainly did!" he assured Iscan. "My commander even approved that I lead this mission, since our usual captain was out sick. I wasn't the one doing the fighting or the planning, but I did have a few Pokemon and some guidance to contribute."

"It sounds like you're on your way up, then... Is there anything we can do to repay you?"

"Well..." Laventon said, his face beginning to flush as he thought of the Security Corps couple he'd met the previous day. "There is a reason that I asked to be brought back first. There's this friend of mine that I think fancies me. But she's kept me at such a distance that until recently, I thought there was some unspoken rule against dating someone from your corps. Do you think I should say something? What with you and Palina, I thought you'd be the one to ask."

"Hm... Absolutely. I mean, Palina and I made it work even though we're forbidden from seeing each other. If she hadn't spoken up... well, we'd both still be pining and putting up walls. Even if the answer is 'no,' or 'yes, but let's not pursue it,' it's better to know, I think."

Laventon thought that over. By now he knew that there were a few people- namely Kamado and Zisu- that Cyllene wasn't entirely aloof with. And both he and Cyllene seemed to want him on that list. Maybe once they'd talked about it, he could be. And if not, he'd at least know to give up trying. "Yes, I think you're right!" he said.

The next day, Laventon asked Cyllene to finally have that talk with him about his travels. While waiting for her at their planned meeting place at the Wallflower, Laventon took a moment to appreciate the changes that had come upon Jubilife since his arrival. The occasional harmless Pokémon roamed the streets now, as they had in other lands he visited. And where there were once only the sounds of people training in the training grounds, there were now animalistic cries as well, now that the Security Corps and the Survey Corps had embraced Pokémon as a means of defence. Given the direction she was coming from, that may have been where Cyllene was coming from.

"I brought a surprise," Laventon said as Cyllene sat down.

"Oh?"

"Close your eyes," Laventon said.

Cyllene obeyed. Laventon took a wurmple out of a ball and onto his hand.

"Alright, open up."

Cyllene opened her eyes and immediately tensed. "Is there a reason for this?" she demanded, eyes focused on the bug. Laventon hesitated, and Cyllene took a careful scooch back, trying to balance between keeping the appearance of composure and keeping away from that thing.

"Well, it's... ready to evolve, and you said just recently that you'd never seen an evolution before your kadabra. I thought you might want to watch another. It's certainly a different experience than just reading about it in reports! Is there something wrong with that?"

Cyllene's nervous eyes were still on the bug. "We had those in Hoenn. They feed on our crops and on the intestines of anyone unlucky enough to contract one. All research on them should be done in the field. Not here."

"What...? With respect, captain, that's nonsense. Wurmple are insectitarians. They eat the eggs and larva of other species. That's probably why you see them around plants other bugs like to eat, and in unsanitary places that cause disease. Wurmple are harmless as they come."

Cyllene relaxed. Not entirely, but somewhat. "I... see."

"Shall we watch it evolve, then?" Laventon asked as the worm crawled up onto his neck like a scarf.

"...Let's take this to my quarters."

And so, they did. Laventon had never been in Cyllene’s quarters before. He didn’t know what he expected, but a room overflowing with indoor plants wasn’t it. There were more herbs, flowers, berries, and vegetables in there than there was paperwork in her office, and that was saying something. Cyllene moved a couple planters out of the way and led Laventon to a table. She cast a sour look at the worm and hesitantly gave it a pet. When the two were seated, Cyllene gave Laventon a stiff nod.

Laventon took the worm off his neck and passed on the nod. A sparkling flash of transformation later, the worm had turned into a cacoon- a white one, thankfully- Laventon couldn't have a toxic moth around so many well-tended plants and still have Cyllene as a friend afterward. Another flash, and the cacoon had turned into a beautiful beautifly.

"Hm. That was indeed more of an experience than reading about evolution in reports," Cyllene admitted, twitching as the beautifly began to inspect her face with its trunk. "Laventon," she said, her voice betraying a little fear. "Put it away."

Laventon chuckled and returned the creature. "You gave it your best effort."

Cyllene flushed.

"You would have hated Alola. It's just crawling with bug types! There were quite a few areas where we had to wear nets to gather specimens. Not that it wasn't worth it! It's a warm and beautiful place, some of my favourite memories come from there!"

“That’s where rowlet came from, correct? Mind if I ask about the others?”

“Not at all, so long as I can ask a few questions myself."

"Very well. We'll take turns."

"Alrighty then! So, what was your life like before Hisui?"

"I'd rather not say."

That made Laventon feel pretty stupid. She was a swordswoman from Hoenn. Chances were she'd been in the war. "Ah. Okay. Well, then, how did you manage to track an abra? They certainly aren't an easy species to track, even injured ones."

"I didn't find it by tracking. But I do think you'll be interested in its story. It was shortly after the first time-space distortion opened. We didn't know what they were at the time and had closed our walls in fear of it. A visitor from another region had locked himself outside, chasing after an injured Pokémon. And thank goodness for that visitor."

At this point, kadabra floated over and, despite nearly being Cyllene's size and barely fitting, curled up on her lap.

"I led the Security Corps to investigate the distortion and search for the visitor. He joined up with us for a while, but ran off again. After Pokémon. It was frustrating. But then a Pokémon he knew in childhood saved his life. I understood then that understanding Pokémon would help make Hisui hospitable, so I ordered that we take back a few that had been injured by the distortion. It cost us almost nothing, pleased our visitor, and gave me a small opportunity to know Pokémon better than I had. It’s from that event that I decided to create the Survey Corps. The injured Pokémon included Abra. It simply never left me after that."

“Well, then thank goodness for that visitor,” Laventon said, stroking the kadabra.

“Where did you get Cyndiquill?”

Laventon’s heart rate picked up. Somehow it seemed a bad idea to let her know he’d worked for Jhoto during wartime. Not for anything military-related, but still! “Well, I, er- I hardly remember! I take on a lot of research subjects, after all!”

Cyllene gave him a blank look that told him that he seemed a lot more suspicious than he would have liked. "Fair enough. Your turn."

"Well, if it's not too personal... is there a Mr. Cyllene?"

"No. I will focus on that once the nobles are quelled and the Survey Corps takes less of my time. Perhaps I'll be with someone from the Security Corps, or division that has little to do with ours, such as agriculture."

"Ah, I see. No time to seek someone out. Well, um, captain..." Laventon stroked the kadabra again and let his hand find Cyllene's. "What if there was no need to do any seeking?"

Cyllene took her hand away. "No, Laventon. That isn't a good idea."

"Oh. Okay. Friends, then. Right?"

Cyllene hesitated. It occurred to Laventon that she might find even that too familiar for a close co-worker. "...Friends," she conceded.

Months passed. Lands were explored, one more noble was quelled, and an alliance was formed with the Diamond Clan. Meanwhile, time-space became increasingly unstable, and the rift in the sky grew ever-wider.

#pokemon #pokemon legends arceus #captain cyllene #professor laventon #cyllene x laventon #surveyshipping #AUs #my fanfiction

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waywardstation · 2 years

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Ghost Stories

Akari, Rei, Ingo, and Zisu are tasked with taking young potential recruits up to the mirelands campgrounds, to show them what it's like to be a security corps member. However, Ingo is only filling in for Cyllene, who refused to go after an incident that happened the year before. She won't share what happened, leading the recruits to blame the apparent apparition that haunts the Solaceon Ruins near the campsite. Akari is quick to dismiss this, but as strange things start happening, she doesn't know what to think.

I wrote this after receiving a prompt for a halloween fic, about telling scary stories. I had meant to get this out on Halloween, but life had other plans haha.

Contains brief blood and injury, recounted from past events.

OR read it here on AO3!

Enjoy!

————

“You made sure everyone’s packed sufficiently for the trip?”

“Yes, I double-checked!” Smaller feet shuffled to accommodate for the scuffed shoes that moved about the dojo’s interior.

“And everyone’s ready to depart? Including you?”

“Yes, Ingo; everyone’s ready!”

“Excellent!” Ingo’s ever-present frown did nothing to dampen the high spirits evident in his voice, shouldering the bag he had just finished double-checking. “Seems we’re ready to leave the station ahead of schedule, but an early departure is not a bad thing.”

Ingo moved to slide back the door of the dojo, which had previously been cracked open. Early morning light filtered into the room as the warden stepped out after Akari, to address the circle of Jubilife Village children gathered around the training grounds; large packs accompanied them as well, whether strapped to their backs or slumped at their feet.

“Now!” Ingo spoke up, catching the attention of any kids who didn’t initially turn their heads to see him stepping out. “Welcome aboard passengers, I understand everyone is ready for departure, and I trust everyone has prepared adequately for today’s trip!”

The group of five village kids, tired as they were so early in the morning, seemed to wake up slightly with Ingo’s enthusiasm.

“However, before we leave the station, I’d like to go over our set rules one last time; safety is of utmost importance! Now first, should you ever find yourself separated from…”

As Ingo bored the village tweens going through the set of rules and regulations that they’d surely heard twenty times over by this point, Akari made her way over to Rei and Zisu. The two of them were standing by the training grounds’ fence, with packed bags of their own on their backs. Pikachu was perched atop Rei’s shoulder, greedily eyeing an oran berry that he was absentmindedly munching on.

“I bet they’ll be able to recite all of Ingo’s rules word-for-word soon,” Akari whispered to Rei as she came up beside him, nudging his arm with her elbow.

“Not even Cyllene repeated them this many times,” He laughed over a mouthful of oran berry. “Though he’s not being nearly as stern as she was, I remember it scared one of the potential recruits off before we even left for the site!”

Akari had heard bits and pieces of Rei mentioning last year’s trip. It was known that the entirety of Jubilife Village worked under the Galaxy Team, with the population working amongst the different corps. Many children often started work around the age of ten or so, picking a division to follow in order to serve the village. They usually stuck with their chosen paths too, enjoying them well and providing good work for their corps as they grew into more age-appropriate jobs.

…All of them that was, except for the survey corps.

A pattern was becoming apparent where tweens would initially be excited to join the survey corps, the only unit of work that consistently allowed them outside the confining village walls they were becoming tired of. However, a few days of such exploration and training often resulted in the fresh members quickly begging for a new position within another corps unit behind the walls of the village, unable to deal with the wild Pokémon that roamed about.

Reassignment was often difficult, and it sometimes even came down to Kamado having to swap out reluctant adults to even the work out, which everyone involved hated. So last fall, the commander had decided to start up a trip for young kids at the village who showed even the smallest amount of interest in joining the Galaxy Team’s survey corps units.

As captain of the survey corps, Cyllene had led the first group of recruits down to the mirelands to set up camp; they’d get to spend a day and a night in the wilderness, learn about the wild Pokémon that roam and how to deal with them, and general techniques about thriving in the field - things expected and required of a good survey corps member, and all under the care of an experienced adult. It was meant to show them what kind of work the unit would ask of them, before they made an official decision that they might end up regretting.

The first trip out had apparently been a bad experience though; none of the kids who participated ended up enlisting for the survey corps unit, and not even Cyllene agreed to do it again this year…which was why Ingo was instead going in her place. The captain had requested the warden to be her substitute this year with Zisu, apparently stating her work at the Galaxy Hall was too important to leave at this time, and his skill level with Pokémon made him a valuable addition to the trip.

Akari was happy Ingo was going with them, as she was ordered to go on the trip as well along with Rei (Kamado had requested their inclusion, stating their close age with the potential recruits might be “inspiring”, and that they really needed the trip to leave a good impression this year) but it did make her wonder…why did Cyllene insist on such high security this time around?

“Yeah, about that…” Akari kept her eyes on Ingo as he went on with his rules, oblivious to one of the village kids beginning to nod off. “You both went on the last trip, right? What happened last time? Why won’t Cyllene go back? Was it really bad?”

“I, well…I don’t really know.” Rei shrugged, inadvertently nudging Pikachu back as he attempted to sneakily reach for Rei’s oran berry. “She won’t talk about it. I just remember everyone waking up to her shouting in the middle of the night, far from our campsite. When we got to her, her abra had been knocked out, and she was, well…”

“She was fine, but she honestly looked like she had seen a ghost,” Zisu recalled, picking up where Rei had trailed off. “Everyone thought she had been dragged off, what with all of the marks covering the ground, but she wouldn’t confirm anything. Whatever happened, seeing the captain out of sorts like that terrified everyone else enough to scare them away from the survey corps. They all ended up turning to the supply corps, or the agriculture corps... everyone that was, except for Rei here! He was the only one of his age who ended up joining last year!”

Zisu clapped Rei on the back as she praised him, the bag he was shouldering doing nothing to lessen the blow.

“Yeah, well-“ Akari’s colleague almost dropped the half-eaten oran berry in his hand as he was knocked forward. “I’m glad I’m where I am now, but back then, what happened kinda scared me into wanting to reconsider work in one of the other corps. But Professor Laventon had really needed a research partner at the time, and I knew he had sort of been hoping I could work under him; I couldn’t imagine letting him down-“

Rei took on a sheepish look of sorts as he recalled helping out the professor, and Pikachu took the chance to snatch the oran berry out of the boy’s hand. Grabbing the fruit, Pikachu quickly stuffed the rest of it into its mouth.

“Hey!” Rei interrupted himself to grab for the rest of his breakfast back, but Pikachu reared its head away just before he could get it. “Pikachu!”

“Pi!” The yellow Pokémon squeaked triumphantly around the berry in its teeth. It moved away from Rei’s hands each time he grabbed for them, jumping from shoulder to shoulder, before leaping off and running under the training grounds’ wooden platform. Not having nearly as good of a time as Pikachu was, Rei hurried after him.

…Which left a concerned Akari, still mulling over the unsettling anecdote that had just been shared, next to a very observational Zisu. If it was bad enough that she requested Ingo go in her place…

“You know, I doubt what happened last year will happen again.” The security corps captain told Akari in an effort to comfort her. “Because this time, we’ve got you and Rei with us, the two best survey corps members the Galaxy Team has! And Ingo’s coming too - I’ve yet to see anything, Pokémon or otherwise, get the best of him.”

“Thanks, Zisu.” Akari readjusted the backpack on her shoulders; it was already starting to become a little heavy, containing a lot more than her simple satchel. She gave the woman the best reassuring smile she could.

Sure, Akari could easily have seen something like that happening to one of the kids looking to be a potential recruit, out beyond the walls of the village and experiencing the Pokémon-infested wilderness for the first time…

…But Cyllene? The captain of the security corps, who she had never ever seen show an ounce of fear? The woman was always so level-headed and commanding, so calm and collected… what could freak her out that badly? The planned site was out in the mirelands, and while she hadn’t really lingered in the particular place they were going to, she had stayed in the marshy area many times before, and nothing like that had happened to her…

Akari’s gaze moved back to Ingo, still talking but appearing to be reaching the end of his exhaustive list.

Hopefully Zisu was right, and that whatever happened last year would not repeat itself this time.

“…And that concludes our rules!” Ingo clapped his hands together, snapping everyone back to attention once again. “If there are no more questions then I assume, we are ready to depart the station; onwards to the Crimson Mirelands!”

————

The morning sun had long since risen higher in the sky as Ingo and Zisu continued to trek along the outskirts of the fieldlands. The group trailed behind them, staying close to the base of Mount Coronet as they passed through fields and over hills. They had already been walking for a few hours, but Ingo and Zisu made sure to keep a comfortable pace, mostly for the kids.

Several stops had already been issued to give them frequent breaks and let them experience some of the scenery outside Jubilife’s gates. Akari and Rei had taken up the back of the group, and conversation had led them both to agreeing that the pace was much slower than they were used to; it was past noon, and considering the time they left at, they would have reached the Mirelands by now. But they had to remember that these were young kids who mostly spent their days confined to the village walls, and were not used to traversing the wilderness with heavy packs on their backs.

And besides, the stops were nice; with the fall season, the crisp air rustled the warm-tinted leaves of the trees, providing very nice scenery to take in and appreciate. The top of Mount Coronet wasn’t even visible amongst the thick clouds, which provided a nice overcast sky that kept the temperature bearable as they trekked.

Wild Pokémon had been spotted many times in the distance as well, and while they were mostly of the docile type, it still greatly excited the kids. The sight of a fleeting flock of starly, or a family of bidoof and bibarel fortifying their dams earned lots of pointing and shouting, to make sure everyone noticed. A few times, a Pokémon even stopped long enough for Ingo to give a brief lesson about it.

“Alright, let’s take a brief stop here,” Ingo turned to address the group as they made their way into a shady clearing of trees. “There’s a brief uphill climb tracking over the hills up ahead. But once we pass those, we’ll have entered the Mirelands, and nearly reached our destination.”

Despite it being a break, the tweens all dropped their heavy backpacks and piled them against the trunks of the nearby trees, excited to run around and explore the wild area.

“We’re gonna go find a Pokémon and catch it!” One of the older kids in the group at eleven years old, Olli, called out as he pulled a handful of pokeballs he had stashed away in his backpack. “I told my sister I’d come back to Jubilife with at least one Pokémon!”

“Don’t go too far, stay where we can see you!” Zisu called out to them, but it seemed to fall on deaf ears as the kids ran over a small hillside, out of view. Rei, who had just made himself comfortable leaning up against a tree, moved to go after them.

“I’ll help you keep an eye on them; come on Pikachu!” He promised the woman as he followed over the grassy hill with her, disagreeable yellow Pokémon trailing behind them reluctantly.

With that situation covered, Ingo dropped his own pack besides the others and stretched a horrible crack out of his back; the weight of the pack had been irritating his back for the last hour, but he didn’t want to mention anything. He retrieved a container of water from his pack and moved to sit down on a felled log, while Akari finally dropped her own pack with the rest of the pile, the last one to do so.

Nothing much to do now, except wait for everyone to return.

“Hey, um, Ingo,” Akari sat down next to the warden as he took a drink of water in the shade. He turned his head, acknowledging her with a hum as he wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. “When Cyllene asked you to take her place for this trip, did she mention why she didn’t want to go this year?”

“Ah, she simply said it was a matter of work that could not be left unfinished at her office.” Ingo repeated the same thing Akari had heard over and over. “An understandable predicament. I was happy to be available to offer my assistance and take her place.”

“Besides that, did she say anything about what happened last year?” The teen tried to press further. “Like, an incident or anything?”

Ingo looked down at his water for a moment, trying to recall.

“...She did remind me to heed caution of our surroundings, but that is standard procedure when it comes to safety. However, there was no mention of anything that occurred on the last trip. Did something happen last year?”

In other words, Cyllene hadn’t told Ingo anything. He wasn’t even made aware that something had happened to her. Was the incident so traumatizing, that she wouldn’t even talk about it in terms of warning to peers?

“Well, I heard that something happened last time, and it sort of resulted in Cyllene being…dragged off by something? I think? No one knows for sure what happened, and she won’t talk about it, but…yeah.” Akari threaded her fingers together as Ingo screwed the cap back on to his water container. “I guess it scared everyone on the trip bad enough into joining different corps.”

“I see.” Ingo’s frown deepened some. “Well, I was not made aware of this. But, regardless of what happened, I will make sure these events do not repeat themselves. These potential recruits seem excited to follow your path as a survey corps member, but are at a rather impressionable age; I would not want a bad experience to be the cause of a track change.”

Ingo’s words comforted Akari some.

“Hey! Mr. Ingo, Akari! Look!”

Both the teenager and the warden looked up to see Olli running back over the hill towards them, pokeball held high above his head. The other children followed behind excitedly, with Rei and Zisu taking up the back.

“Rei helped me catch them!” Olli reached them, jumping up and down as he took his pokeball and popped it open to show them what he had caught. The capsule released a stream of energy, and the emerging form quickly revealed itself to be a tiny combee, buzzing energetically on transparent wings.

“Bravo, young man!” Ingo congratulated the boy as he smiled wide, pokeball still in hand as his new companion buzzed around him. “What a fine partner you’ve secured yourself.”

“My sister’s gonna be so jealous when it evolves!” Olli beamed.

Akari didn’t have the heart to tell him the combee he had caught was a male, and what that specifically meant for its evolutionary options. For now, just let him have his moment.

————

Dry autumn leaves crinkled under pairs of footfalls as Ingo and Zisu rounded a rocky corner, pushing through swaying tallgrass to meet a river. A wooden bridge was stretched across it, leading to the other side where a gaping entrance to decaying man-made caverns sat - the Solaceon Ruins.

“A notable landmark,” Ingo mused, noticing a few of the kids staring. “Our destination should be just up ahead, if we just follow the stream. If you excuse us, Miss Zisu and I would like to go on ahead and check that the site is vacant, and safe for set-up. Please wait here with Miss Akari and Rei while we go on ahead; we will return shortly.”

Ingo and Zisu pulled ahead, onwards towards the campsite - Zisu had told Ingo how several members of the survey corps had reported seeing the Miss Fortune Sisters using the site from time to time, and how they treated it as a base to hide out and steal from travelers. If the bandits were there now, it would be best to ensure their removal before bringing the recruits over.

With the adults’ absence, it didn’t take long for the children to turn their attention to the ruins across the river, the massive entrance jutting out of the cliff face like the open mouth of a hippowdon.

“Those are the ruins my sister told me about!” Ollie pointed at the looming structure, turning to look up at Rei. “That’s where the ghost dragged Ms. Cyllene to, right?”

This piqued Akari’s interest just as much as the rest of the kids, whos’ murmurings quickly grew quiet in order to encourage the boy into continuing his startling story.

“Um, what?” Rei was clearly caught off guard. “Is that…what your sister said happened?”

“Yeah! She went on the trip last year like you did, and she said that Ms. Cyllene was found across the river by the ruins, because a ghost had dragged her over there!”

The surrounding kids made a collection of different sounds between excitement and nervousness. A ghost?

“Now, I don’t know about that-” Rei attempted to stifle the topic, unsure on how to comment on it, but Olli kept going.

“She said that a ghost comes out of the ruins at night looking for people to drag away, and if she didn’t find Ms. Cyllene when she did, it would have dragged her all the way into the ruins and eaten her, or taken her shadow, or hidden her away somewhere!”

Another round of shouting from the children started up, equal parts nervous and excited. They began shuffling away from the river, towards the direction Ingo and Zisu had gone off to.

“Now, that’s not true-!” Rei made another effort to calm them down. “There are no ghosts out by the ruins, and one definitely didn’t drag Cyllene away. Akari’s been in there plenty of times before, and she’s never seen any ghosts inside…right Akari?”

“Uh, right!” Akari chimed in awkwardly, not expecting to be brought into the conversation like that. “I’ve never seen anything strange in there before!”

Well, unown liked to fester in the damp darkness of the ruins and cling to the crumbling walls, and while they were certainly strange beings, they were quite harmless. That was it; strange, but harmless.

“At night, too?” Olli asked; it felt like a challenge of judgment, despite the question coming from a genuine place of curiosity.

Akari was quiet for a moment, reaching behind to rub at her neck with a hand. She shouldn’t lie to them, should she? “...Well, no, I’ve never really been around the place at night. But I’ve never seen anything to suggest there are ghosts in there, either.”

Olli and the rest of the kids seemed entirely unmoved at this point, still convinced something sinister lurked in the ruins.

“Olli, maybe Mara was just trying to freak you out,” Rei tried to reason with the boy… though Akari could sense a hint of doubt beginning to creep into his own demeanor as well. “Because I was there right with her last year, and nothing suggested it had anything to do with ghosts. She might just be trying to scare you, knowing you were going on the trip this year.”

“I’m not scared,” Olli argued, as if that was an offensive suggestion. “I want to see it!” Mara didn’t see it last time, I want to be the first one to see it!”

Apparently, Olli’s competitive nature with his sister didn’t just extend to catching Pokémon.

The snap of a branch off to the side was heard, dissolving any chances of continuing the conversation. Everyone turned their heads in the direction of the sound a little too quickly, but were relieved to see that it was simply Ingo and Zisu returning to the group.

The two seemed to realize everyone was on edge and slowed their walk, assuming they had startled the group. Zisu cleared her throat and gestured behind them, back towards the campsite.

“Campground’s clear! Let's go and get our site set up, so we can get a campfire going, and start on dinner!”

“And be mindful to avoid stepping through any leaf piles,” Ingo added. “The paras stationed around here often use them for cover, regarding themselves and their nests. Leave them alone, and they’ll leave you alone.”

The sun was beginning to set; they still had several hours before dark, but it would take time to set up the campsite and get dinner started, so it would be best to hurry and start now. The tweens rushed after Ingo and Zisu, eager to finish the work, but also wishing to get away from the Solaceon Ruins. Rei and Akari trailed behind as they left the wooden bridge behind them, though Akari couldn’t help but throw another backward glance at the dim maw of the ruins, gaping from across the river.

That’s where Cyllene had been found?

“It was really a Pokémon that did that, right?” Akari whispered to her colleague as they continued to carefully step amongst fallen leaves, losing their crunchy texture to dampness as they traversed through muddier patches. She held back, not wanting the children to overhear their conversation, and Rei caught on, slowing down with her. “I mean, with what happened with Cyllene; I’m sure Olli’s sister was just trying to scare him with a story.”

“Well,” Rei appeared to be wrestling with his thoughts. “I remember Mara was the one to find Cyllene first, and she did look pretty freaked out when we got there. I don’t know if she saw something, but I remember she was adamant that after what happened, she’d never join the survey corps, because she didn’t want to have to deal with something like that alone. And she stuck with her statement; she’s with the agriculture corps now. If anyone would have seen anything, it would have been her. But she’d never said anything about a ghost before…”

That didn’t reassure Akari at all. If anything, it only solidified why Cyllene refused to talk about what happened, and why all of the potential recruits chose different corps. Pokémon were one thing, and even ghost Pokémon were unsettling in their own way, but ghosts…

There was something disturbing about the notion of shadows of people, innominate entities wandering about the wilderness as shreds of something left behind. And the thought of encountering one that wishes to interact with you in such a way-

“Did you ever think it was a ghost?”

“A ghost Pokémon, maybe,” Rei reasoned. “But I’ve never known Cyllene to get like that over any ghost Pokémon…she’s the captain of the survey corps for a reason.”

Akari realized that Rei was right. Gastly were pretty, well, ghastly, and haunter were exceptionally haunting…but surely they weren’t anything that Cyllene hadn’t dealt with before.

“But then again, I know Mara likes to tease Olli about things. Maybe she really was just…exaggerating some things to scare him.” Rei played devil’s advocate against himself, absentmindedly watching his shoes crush the thin leaves beneath him as he walked.

“Maybe.” Akari denied herself another glance back at the ruins looming behind them.

————

“Alright, now here’s where you add the good stuff,” Akari held up one of the freshly-gathered sootfoot roots for the tweens to see, standing around the boiling pot situated over the campfire. The sun was now resting comfortably on top of Hisui’s mountain line, leaving waning sunlight to gradually be snuffed out by the darkness creeping across the sky. The cold, autumn weather was starting to set in with sundown, leaving the trees around them to rustle with the breeze, and the kids to huddle closer to the bright campfire for warmth and light. Ember sat close by, having had the honor of lighting the campfire, but since retired to the sidelines to watch Akari cook.

“For things like springy mushrooms, you can pull them apart and drop them in as needed, if you’re short on time. But for sootfoot roots, you should still cut them so they cook faster.” Akari explained as she chopped up the root into rough cubes. “And you should still cut the medicinal leeks at the stalk; out here, you can find the best ones in places that get a lot of sun…”

The children were entirely enthralled in Akari’s quick lesson of making a simple soup; she might have just been teaching them how to live off of the land like a survey corps member would do during extended expeditions, but the kids enjoyed it all the same.

“Now if the broth is done, we can bring it over here to the pot, and add just a little crunchy salt if we have any…and be careful not to overcook it! I’ve been working on that myself; it’s a little different cooking over a campfire like this-”

Akari’s voice carried over the dim campground as she continued to show the tweens how to prepare a quick but nourishing meal, and Ingo could hear it behind him as he set up his tent on the outskirts of camp.

Normally, setting up tents would not be a usual part of the process of expeditions, as there were base camps stationed throughout the region that survey corps members were expected to return to, where tents were already set up - Zisu had made that very clear when they stopped by one of the fieldlands’ base camps earlier to talk about them. However, their group of nine clearly couldn’t fit into the two tents each base camp had. So it became an opportunity to show the kids the alternative of setting up their own sites for overnight stay, should they ever be unable to reach a base camp.

So Ingo and Zisu had been showing the kids how to set their tents up over the last hour, directing them through the process until they had correctly finished the task (it took them a few tries to get the hang of it, but they all did quite well in the end), and decided dinner should get started on while there was still some light left in the sky. Zisu and Rei had gone off to go find more dry firewood to keep a fire going through the night - it was a tedious task, seeing as much of the surrounding branches were afflicted by the damp atmosphere. Ingo had insisted he stay behind; he would get their tents up by the time they had returned, so that everyone could just focus on enjoying dinner. Now, the only tent left to set up was his own.

With the firelight and the sunset at his back, the warden hummed quietly to himself - a set of notes that was just as unfamiliar yet nagging to him as the rest of his memories - as he went about setting the pegs. He was so focused on his task, that he almost didn’t notice the set of curious eyes watching him from the foliage that crowded around the campsite.

Almost.

————

The sun had finally drifted behind Hisui’s mountains enough to smolder what light was left in the sky. The overcast weather left a thick cover of clouds to block much of the moon’s natural lighting, blanketing the area in darkness. The illumination of the campfire bathed the surrounding area in a strong warmth as Akari stirred the last of the ingredients into the pot situated above it.

She topped the bubbling pot with a lid, pulling back slightly as heated steam began to curl around the edges. “Ok, now all that’s left is to wait for it to simmer for a few minutes, then-”

“-Miss Akari? Has Miss Zisu returned yet with Rei?”

“Not yet…” Akari immediately noted the slight uncertainty in Ingo’s voice; her gaze shifted from the pot over to the warden as he approached the campfire, partially obscured behind the group of kids crowded around it. At his inclusion, the tweens turned to look at Ingo as well, though they all fell quiet at something Akari couldn’t quite see - surely he wasn’t, but Akari’s first concern was that he was hurt somehow.

“...Why? Is everything ok?”

“Apologies for the interruption, everything’s alright. I, well…I am uncertain of how she arrived here all by herself, but I believe we have an extra passenger with us, and feel I should inform Miss Zisu about it post-haste.”

Thoroughly perplexed, Akari moved to stand up from her kneeled position over the cooking pot. Now able to look over the crowd of kids, Akari could clearly see a little girl, much younger than anyone from their group. She was standing by Ingo’s side and holding onto his hand - though it seemed more so from allowing Ingo to guide her over to them, rather than wanting to hold onto him.

The child met Akari’s gaze with her gentle brown eyes; her tied-back dark hair and red-toned clothing both made her instantly recognizable to Akari, despite only properly talking with her one time prior.

“Vessa?”

The girl smiled at the mention of her name and nodded to confirm, seemingly happy to be remembered by Akari. “Yup!”

“She is familiar to you?” Ingo couldn’t hide the slight look of surprise in his features, though there seemed to be some relief as well, knowing she was familiar to at least one person here.

“Yeah, I’ve seen her in Jubilife a few times before.” Akari recalled.

When they had left the Village gates that morning, a few of the younger children had attempted to try and go with them, either because their older siblings were going, or because they wanted to go see the world outside of the gates as well. Ingo and Zisu had to ensure the children would stay at Jubilife and not follow them out, but perhaps, did they somehow overlook this girl..?

But Rei and herself had taken up the back of the group the whole trek out here, and had not once noticed her following behind. Was she just that sneaky?

“Vessa, did you follow us out here?” Akari asked the girl as she kept still, holding onto Ingo’s hand. The surrounding kids had started to move back, giving Akari more room to see her without peering over them.

“I heard where you were going and wanted to come with you!” The small girl replied; she didn’t seem at all worried or stressed, like Akari would expect a child of her age to be after having wandered through the dangerous wilderness on their own. Though, the look she reserved specifically for Akari seemed to hint that she had more, unspoken reasons for following them.

“Just as I suspected,” Ingo shook his head. “Alright. Well, it’s already dark, and she has nothing with her - there’s really nothing we can do about this now, except give her some dinner, and ensure she has a good place with us to sleep tonight. And tomorrow, when she returns with us, I’ll, well… personally and profusely apologize to her parents for allowing this to happen in the first place. I’m sure they’re worried sick.”

A sharp, hot steaming sound bubbled up right behind Akari, and with responsive noises from a few kids, the teen realized that the soup had boiled over the pot, dripping into the campfire’s flames beneath it - surely, it was done by now, if not a little overdone.

“Oh!” Akari killed what little flame there was left, and used a cloth to lift the lid off. Messy, and a little crisped around the edges of the pot - Akari had let it overcook despite trying hard not to, but the soup still seemed good for the most part. “See, um, that’s what you don’t let happen when you’re cooking.”

————

Akari handed the last prepared bowl of hot soup, half-filled, to Vessa as she made her way to the campfire, having been the last in line to wait for dinner. “Careful, it’s hot. Blow on it a few times before you start drinking.”

“Thank you!” Vessa smiled sweetly as she took the steaming soup in her hands, and moved to go find a place to sit and drink it in peace.

With the kids fed, now it was time to prepare some for herself and Rei, and Ingo and Zisu. Akari grabbed another carved bowl, this time filling it more generously than half-way.

“Here you go, Rei.” Akari held the steaming soup out to her colleague as she left the pot to walk over to him; he was busy showing a few of the kids how to carve pokeballs from some of the apricorn shells that had been found around the campsite, allowing them to watch as they slurped from their bowls. Pikachu was curled up next to him, chewing on the flesh that Rei had cut out of the apricorn shell, and Ember was situated between two kids, enjoying occasional pets from them.

“Oh, thanks Akari!” Rei gratefully took the bowl and readjusted his position, setting his half-finished pokeball aside to do so.

“Of course,” She gave him a smile, before returning to the pot to fill another bowl. “Hopefully it’s not too burned.”

“I’m sure it’s great,” Rei reassured her, blowing on the contents to cool it down. “Everyone else seems to like it!”

Looking around the campsite, Akari could see more or less, most of the kids were happily slurping the soup up. A few picked up on the conversation, and gave Akari an agreeable nod with their heads or an affirmative thumbs up to convince her that yes, it was good!

Emphasis on most, though.

Off to the side, Vessa sat a secluded distance away from the others, where the firelight only weakly illuminated her. She held the hot soup in her hands, but she wasn’t drinking it, she was simply staring down at it, as if inspecting the contents.

Strange…

Akari would check on her after making sure she got dinner to Ingo and Zisu. She filled up two more bowls generously, picking them up carefully before heading for the outskirts of the camp. After Zisu had returned with Rei, Ingo had taken her aside to talk. Akari knew it was to discuss Vessa, from how he took the conversation away from the children.

“Make sure to tell Ingo and Zisu to come back!” Rei told Akari. “A few of the kids said they want Ingo to share the story about Draugr now.”

“Yeah! Yeah!” Several voices spoke up in immediate confirmation at this, almost spilling their soup in the process. “He said he’d share it with us! And Janie says she hasn’t heard it before!”

“Oh, and have him share a ghost story too if he has one of those!” Olli piped up.

“Alright, I’ll do my best,” Akari humored them with a small laugh as she continued on her way. Though, she doubted she’d vouch for Ollie’s request - it seemed like the last thing he needed was a ghost story.

There, in the darkness and by the edge of the river, hidden behind the large mossy rock that sat in front of the campsite, was Ingo and Zisu locked in conversation. The warden was making occasional gestures with his hands, the brim of his cap gripped tight in one of them - he was stressed. Zisu’s arms were crossed, listening intently for the most part, but periodically shifting her position to weigh in with a brief thought of her own - she was being supportive.

“…just don’t know.” Ingo’s words became more audible as Akari approached, though his voice was still hard to hear, being kept low. “I had not once seen her anywhere behind us on our trip to this station, and I made a point to constantly familiarize myself with our surroundings to ensure safety, just as Captain Cyllene instructed. I did not know she was out there. If she didn’t find us…”

“Well, we’re lucky she did find us, however she did it.” Zisu consoled him in her own hushed voice as the man ran a hand through his hair. “Her parents might be worried, but we’ll be able to get her back to them tomorrow perfectly safe, and that’s what matters.”

“Um,” Akari cleared her throat as she approached, feeling a little awkward to interrupt such a serious discussion. “Dinner’s ready?”

Akari held the two bowls out to the both of them, steam rising off the hot broth into the cold night air.

“Oh, thank you Miss Akari,” Ingo situated his weathered hat snuggly back on his head, and received one of the bowls as Zisu passed it to him, before taking her own. “It looks wonderful.”

“Absolutely!” Zisu agreed. “Smells just as good, too!”

“Thanks! And uh, you guys think you could come back to the campfire after you’re done talking? The kids said they want to hear your Draugr story now, Ingo.” Akari gave Ingo a half-amused, half-sympathetic look.

She knew this was only about the fiftieth time one of them had pestered him to share about it; Akari had heard about how a few times, he had given in and recounted a version of it during slow days at the training grounds, when the children would hang around with nothing better to do - but they never got tired of it, it seemed.

There was often fascination to be found in stories like that, when the very real danger had long since faded, and all that it left behind was a riveting narrative.

“They’re that eager? I’m certain they know that story better than I do, by now.” Ingo chuffed into his soup, barely heard above the laughter that Zisu let out.

“Oh come on, you can’t disappoint them Ingo, you told them you’d share it on this trip last week!” The woman pressed a hand against his shoulder as she went to move them both back towards the campsite. “Stories are at their best when they’re told around campfires; let’s not keep them waiting!”

“Ollie said he wanted a ghost story too,” Akari added hesitantly. “But I think…it would be best if we avoid those tonight altogether.”

Both adults gave Akari a look of confusion, having missed Olli’s earlier account of the Solaceon Ruins.

“Uh, the kids are a little freaked out about what’s in the woods after dark.” She half-explained.

“Right then, no ghost stories.” Zisu affirmed.

As Akari trailed behind Ingo and Zisu, back to where the fire was warm and bright, she cast one more glance back across the deep river. Back at the cold, gaping darkness of the Solaceon Ruins.

It certainly looked a lot more ominous at night.

As Ingo and Zisu made their way back to the campfire’s light, the kids, who had previously been entirely engrossed in Rei’s method of carving pokeballs, immediately perked up and cheered, turning to face him with hope in their eyes.

“Tell the story! Tell it!” They demanded immediately, not bothering to move as Ingo and Zisu stepped around them in order to get to an open spot and sit down, so they could enjoy their dinner.

“One moment, please!” The warden insisted, holding his bowl close so it wouldn’t spill on any children’s heads. “Permit us to refuel first, then…” Ingo sighed, though there wasn’t any annoyance to be found in his tone. “…I will share the story.”

As cheers erupted from the group of kids, Akari went to finally go get her own bowl of soup, and finish it off. Kneeling down and tipping the pot to get the last drops out, she felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned to see Perla, one of the younger, more soft-spoken kids of the group, standing at her side.

“She hasn’t been eating.” She simply said, and pointed over Akari’s shoulder at someone. Akari didn’t have to look back to know that she was pointing at Vessa. “Is she ok?”

Akari glanced over her shoulder inconspicuously back at the girl in question; Vessa had sat her half-full bowl of soup down at her side, entirely untouched, and was instead threading wildgrass together into a chain of sorts. On the contrary to her isolation in the darkness, she seemed perfectly content with where she was.

“I’m sure she’s fine, maybe she just doesn’t like the soup.” Akari set down the pot, convinced it was now empty after a few more shakes. “But I’ll go check on her.”

“Olli said she might be a ghost.” Perla added with an even softer voice; it took Akari a startling moment to realize that she was afraid. “That’s why she won’t eat, and why she came from the same direction as the ruins. And that she is waiting until night time to grab someone.”

Among the kids crowded around Ingo and Zisu, Akari could see a few of them taking occasional glances back at herself and Perla; were they afraid too? Was Olli telling everyone that Vessa was a ghost? Come to think of it, Olli was starting to seemingly keep his distance from the girl…perhaps his fear had finally overtaken his determination to see the ghost, now that the possibility could have been standing nearby, breathing the same air as him.

“Perla, no,” Akari set her bowl down as she turned her head back to the girl. “She’s not a ghost, Ollie shouldn’t be saying stuff like that about her. She came from Jubilife, remember?”

“…Yeah,” The girl agreed half-heartedly, though her body language gave away that she still needed some convincing, with her hands tucked behind her back, and her head tilted downwards.

“I’ll go check on her, but I’m sure everything’s fine.” Akari took her bowl back into her hands and stood up, leaving Perla to watch her approach Vessa.

But as Akari walked closer to the firelight’s edge where Vessa lingered, she couldn’t help but wonder… Why wasn’t she eating?

It certainly wasn’t a question that dominated her mind because ghosts didn’t eat… because Vessa was not a ghost, she was a girl from Jubilife. Akari was just concerned that she wasn’t eating anything after such a long hike through the wilderness alone; surely a kid would be hungry after that.

How did such a young girl make it through the wild all by herself anyways, completely unscathed? Akari would often find at least one new scrape or scratch on her even on good days… and why did Vessa wait until dark to show up? Why hadn’t Ingo seen her at least once during the many times he observed the area around them? Why didn’t Rei and herself notice her either, from the back of the group?

Akari shook her head, overcome with a sudden spike of embarrassment. Shame on her for thinking the things she admonished Perla for thinking.

Well, Akari knew one thing for sure, and it was that Vessa was absolutely not a ghost.

“Hey Vessa,” Akari finally reached the girl, situated against a rocky wall and still absorbed in her tangle of wildgrass. “I noticed you haven’t had your dinner yet. Are you feeling alright?”

“I am! Thank you.” The girl continued on with her chain, though she extended the courtesy of turning her head to give her attention to Akari as she sat beside her.

Well that answered the question without giving her any information at all.

“…Do you not like the soup?” Akari tried again.

“No, I just can’t eat it.”

Again with the terribly vague answers, though this time Akari couldn’t help but wonder…she hated that her mind immediately jumped to it, but that was a strikingly identifiable feature of-

“Why not?” Hesitance slightly drew out Akari’s words, unable to help feeling a little nervous for the next answer. Vessa’s way of responding to questions was unfortunately effective at putting one on the edge of their seat.

“It’s got springy mushrooms in it, doesn’t it? Momma always said I’m allergic to springy mushrooms, and that I can’t have anything with them in it.”

Akari never recalled feeling so simultaneously guilty and relieved to hear a child had a food allergy in her life.

“Oh, Vessa, you should have said something,” Akari’s tight chest immediately relaxed, releasing a breath she didn’t know she had been holding in. “Here, I think I have something else…you can have honey cakes, right?”

Vessa nodded her head excitedly as Akari reached into her satchel. She pulled out a handful of honey cakes that she had made the day before, and placed the stack of treats into the girl’s open hands - she had dropped her wildgrass tangle in a hurry to eat. Akari felt bad for letting her go hungry like that.

“Thank you!” Vessa smiled, before taking a big bite out of one of the soft cakes. She fell into a sort of quiet as she chewed, and Akari took the opportunity to finally slurp from her own bowl of soup - it had grown lukewarm, but it wasn’t anything Akari wasn’t used to, after preparing many meals out in the wild.

Akari tipped the bowl up as she slurped the broth and mushrooms. As she finished the contents, she saw that Vessa had since eaten all of her honey cakes, wiping some leftover rice base from her mouth.

See? She ate the food, and ghosts can’t eat-

“I followed after you when I learned where you all were going, because I wanted to help you find one of them.” The girl broke the comfortable silence, disconnecting Akari from her train of thought.

The statement was as unsettling as it was confusing. “Find..?”

“You’ll see them across the river.” Vessa pointed through the trees that surrounded the campsite, out at the dark edges and black waters of the river on the other side. “They’re not here yet, but I’ll help you find them when they come.”

The hairs on the back of Akari’s neck stood on end as her gaze followed Vessa’s pointed finger into the darkness hovering over the black waters of the river.

“Um…Vessa,” Akari swallowed. “You haven’t been listening to what Olli’s been talking about in camp, right? We didn’t come out here to look for ghosts.”

“They’re not called ghosts.” Vessa wiped her sticky hands in the grass. “And they’re not like Olli says. When you meet them, you’ll see. They’ll be here soon!”

Akari suddenly felt very cold at the edge of the firelight, and very very aware of the dark expanse of wilderness around her, obscuring things that could be stalking them, and might not be Pokémon.

“Come on, let's go back to the campfire; Ingo’s going to tell a story soon.” Standing up and brushing the grass and leaves off of herself, Akari moved to pick up the soup bowl beside Vessa - she’d wash it in the river later - and stack it on top of her empty one. Vessa copied her, and Akari led her back to the others, back into the light. Her walk was a bit more flighty than she would have liked to admit.

Reconvening with the group circled around the campfire, Akari could see Ingo and Zisu had since finished their dinner. Ingo was off to the side, presumably putting the empty bowls away (and the cooking pot, as it no longer sat above the fire pit), and Zisu had taken up a seat on one of the tree stumps surrounding the campfire.

“Akari, over here!” Rei waved over to her, and she saw her colleague had saved her a spot in a patch of softer grass in the back, behind the group of kids. Pikachu and Ember were waiting as well.

“There’s a spot over there between Perla and Bren, you think you can sit there?” Akari pointed to an open area for Vessa. She nodded, and wordlessly moved to go sit with the other children. Finally, Akari made her way over to Rei and their Pokémon, and sat down.

“I didn’t think they’d be done so fast,” Akari offhandedly commented as she made herself comfortable on the grass, Ember coming up to lie on her lap.

“Everyone was really rushing them to finish,” Rei snickered, watching Ingo finally return to the fire pit. “They’re really impatient to hear the story… and they wanted Olli to stop bringing up ghosts.”

Akari sighed; she hoped that he wasn’t still referring to Vessa as one. “Does he think about anything else other than ghosts?”

“Alright!” Ingo sat himself down on one of the tree stumps, facing everyone who had been sitting around the campfire. The light illuminated his features, contrasting his black coat that seemed to merge with the darkness behind him. “Final call, are you sure you want to hear this story? It’s been recounted before, and I do have others.”

“Yes!” Was the resounding answer from several of the kids, leaning forward for emphasis.

Ingo was giving lots of outs; Akari wondered how much of it was him making sure he was giving the audience what they wanted, and if any part of it was hesitance from him not wanting to recount the events.

“Very well then,” Ingo relented as he tipped his cap forward. The man cleared his throat as he leaned towards the fire, searching it as he gathered his words.

“…Now, as I recall, I had found myself in the icelands with no memories, and I was being tracked by-”

“-No no no, Ingo!” Zisu stopped the warden in his tracks before he had even begun to pick up any steam, lightly smacking him against the shoulder with the back of her hand. “Don’t tell it like that, not when we’re sitting around a campfire! We’re not here to listen to you simply recall a memory, we��re here to let you share a thrilling, adventurous narrative!”

“I’ve always told it this way.” Ingo’s frown deepened, before leaning closer to talk in a lower voice to the woman. “I believe an abridged version is a more, ah, appropriate track for this audience.”

Zisu couldn’t disagree with that; Ingo always left out the more gruesome details of the events when recounting them for the children, as it was quite a horrific story, and after all, they were trying to help the village grow more comfortable with Pokémon…but telling an abridged version did not have to mean it should be flat or repetitive.

“Well you can still spice it up a little!” Zisu encouraged him. “Include the scary parts, omit the…unnecessary parts. Give them a version they haven't heard yet!”

“Yeah! Come on!” The circle of kids gave a round of agreement, hoping for Ingo to give them some new details.

“Alright, alright,” Ingo finally relented, which immediately turned the childrens’ hopeful encouragement into praise. “Permit me a moment to reroute…”

Brief silence settled as Ingo’s gaze flitted to the crackling fire, then the ground at his feet, where they lingered. Even from the back of the circle, Akari could see the warden considering things thoroughly. She knew he was doing his best to pull everything out from his memories of the event, even details he himself had tucked away from his conscious thoughts.

Something new…

The story was very real to him, but to be a good story, it had to be made real to others. It had to make others feel like they experienced something they had never even witnessed from a distance.

“Ahem, I…” A pause, perhaps out of hesitation. “…I recall the first thing that came to mind when I opened my eyes, staring up into the sky from on my back, was ‘the forecast didn’t call for snow tonight’.”

Ingo still didn’t entirely know why that had been his first thought, but he had come to understand that he probably never would. The meaning had left him along with all his other memories long before he thought to grab onto it.

“I had forced myself to get up and start walking through the snowstorm that I found myself in the middle of. There was nothing around me for the short distance I could see, save for a stretch of snow in every direction. I couldn’t remember anything at all, but I knew I couldn’t stay there, or I would succumb to the elements quickly. Though, as I walked, I wasn’t even aware I had made my way into claimed territory. Something was tracking me through the icelands, and had locked onto my movements the moment I had risen from the snow. I was just as unaware of its presence as it was hyper-aware of mine, and I was unfortunately even more uninformed of its impending arrival.”

The kids leaned in closer, the most collectively quiet that they had been all night. Akari and Rei listened just as intently as Ingo began to recount his memories of the event, the campfire’s light contrasting the shadow that the brim of his hat cast upon his face.

“While the snowstorm rendered my sight inoperable, I was able to rely on my other senses well enough - I had to.” Ingo continued; his voice usually grew a bit more monotonous when he retold past events, his focus being put into recalling the narrative, but the words he chose were often strong enough to carry it well. “I couldn’t see that something plowing through the snow right towards me-”

Like a train speeding down its tracks, dead set on its path.

“-but I could feel pounding in the ground vibrating rhythmically, just like-”

Wheels under the car and against the rails, steel against steel.

“-my heart, racing from beneath my ribcage. I could hear great heaving underneath the flurry, like-”

The heart of the great machine, the engine powering the parts in a mechanical imitation of life.

“-rumbling thunder erupting low and loud, overhead in the middle of a storm.”

“I’ve never heard him tell it like this before,” Rei whispered to Akari as he leaned closer to her, keeping his eyes on Ingo all the while.

“Me neither.” Akari whispered back.

As Ingo had said earlier, he had never given this much detail.

“The flurry, dense as it was, suddenly parted to my right. A spear of ice tore through it, sharp and thin like an ice pick at its end, but as thick as a pillar at its base. A challenge sounded, a bellow from its lungs that reverberated through me.” Ingo kept going, lacing his fingers together as he leaned forward. His eyes no longer evaluated his audience's attention, instead glued to something in the fire. “I found myself face to face with-“

A ghost. The scythes of dark ice silhouetted against the snowstorm as it lugged itself forward. Frozen grime tangled its fur and hung off its features in sharp clumps, pulled backwards with the unrelenting wind. Spatters of white clung to its limbs in heaps, where snow was kicked up. It was a living mountain. It was…

“-Draugr, the icelands apparition preserved in rime. It has found me, and it had challenged me. I was unfamiliar with the phenomenon at the time, but it was unmistakably an alpha, and I had made the unfortunate mistake of encroaching on its herd’s territory. I remember the look in its eyes-”

Oh how he remembered the eyes.

A sturdy patch of vibrant blue mantled around sunken black. Darkness clung heavy around two small eyes only made smaller, but pulled wide in rage. White replaced by webs of bloodshot red, tight black pupils boring into his. He remembered how they couldn’t stop moving as they took in the sight of him. Or how they seemed to gain height as it backed up…

“-before it reared back, towering over me with its massive body and frozen tusks, before bringing them back down where I stood-”

Ingo had never seen something so massive in his life. It seemed like it had almost outgrown its own skeleton, the way the muscled flesh undulated under the thick skin and fur, frozen over in clumps of frost. The sheer strength with which it heaved its own weight around was so startling, that…

“-It almost crushed me under the weight of itself, but I managed to move out of the way in time. However, I was unable to predict its next move. It dragged its tusks where they landed, and-”

Maybe if Ingo hadn’t been so distracted, trying to grab for something at his belt that was not there, or trying to figure out why he was in a blizzard, how this Pokémon got so big, or who he could call out to for help if he could just remember a name, he would have been able to fall away from the tusks sweeping through the snow. The jagged ice had instead slammed into his legs, and…

“-knocked me right off my feet. Before I could even right myself, it reared again, aiming to trample me. Front legs raised high, it brought them down, and-”

Ingo had shut his eyes, and when force slammed over him, it had been enough to stop his heart for a few moments. The weight on top of him was heavy and suffocating, but it was also malleable, and cold. It took Ingo a moment to realize that it had…

“-missed! Its foot came down right by my shoulder with all of its crushing weight right behind it, displacing a mountain of snow to bury me. Not taking even a moment to make sure I was not injured, I uncovered myself. I doubted I would be fortunate enough to have Draugr miss twice. Looking around me for anything that could help give me leverage, I saw an outline of trees off in the distance. Deciding it was my best chance of escape, I attempted to make it to the treeline-”

Too far. It was too far away, and a mamoswine could cover ground far faster than he could. He wouldn’t have made it even if his legs hadn’t been slammed numb by the force of the sweeping tusks. And what could trees have done anyways? Only provide a fragile canopy cover, and perhaps slow the beast down. But in this foreign white wasteland, it was all Ingo had. He only made a few steps of progress…

“-but Draugr quickly recovered from its blunder and swung around, once again colliding into me with its tusks.”

It knocked the wind right out of him, and he ended up learning later on that it had bruised several ribs - Calaba had been amazed they weren’t broken.

“I was subsequently thrown down a hill and rolled through the snow-”

Snowbank. Snowfurry. Snowbank. Snowflurry. Tumbling down the hill had meshed the ground and sky together in his vision. Soft snow gave way to a hard rock concealed beneath it at some point. Pain shot through his back as he rolled over, switching from a tumble to a slide. A gnarled branch beneath the white blanket connected with his side, and forced him back into a tumble. Another rock twisted him by his shoulder into a skid. Again and again…

“-until I hit the bottom. I barely had time to blink the stars from my vision, before I saw Draugr thundering down the hill right for me, sending snow to the sides like-”

A massive steam engine moving down the tracks, utilizing its cowcatcher like a snowplow through heavy snowbanks.

“-a ship crashing through storm waves.”

Great billows of steamed breath, heavy and violent, heaved out in clouds. It’s head dipped, its frozen spears aimed right at him. Those same wide eyes locked onto him as it drew close enough for him to see the bloodshot webs once again. The ground thundered as each monstrous leg came down with force, before pushing off and propelling it forwards.

It was at this moment that Ingo had explicitly and undeniably realized that it was now going out of its way to kill him.

“I had nowhere to go. Covering yards within seconds, it was right on top of me before I could even get up. I attempted to make a track change to the left, but before I could-”

Blunt force knocked him off of his feet again. There was a sharp pinching that gave way to hot ripping, as if a handful of his skin had been grabbed and yanked on. He was now moving with the monstrous mamoswine, and the left tusk seemed a little too sturdy against him - jostling through his side synched in time with it as Draugr pressed on. There was a splatter of red against the ice, the fabric of his clothes frayed around it.

“-I was struck right through the side by one of Draugr’s largest, sharpest tusks!”

The bubble of tension that had been building finally burst as Ingo’s voice reached a certain intensity, sitting up straight and holding the flap of his coat open to emphasize the hole in the fabric. Several of the children, who had been straining through silence up to that point, made a variety of gasps. The ones who had already heard a version of the story before simply made a face of unease.

“As Draugr speared me through and ran me into the snow, I thought that was the end of it-“

The energized look that had entered Draugr’s eyes upon realizing it had its target struck through on one of its tusks, still wide and red from their dark crevasses beneath the blue mantle, was haunting. Draugr hurled its head forwards, bashing its tusks downwards into the snow. The movements deliberately hurt. The frigid, grimy ice tusk had already fused with the warmth of the open wound. Each movement seemingly yanked on his insides. Hands grasped onto the tusk in order to try and lessen the painful jerking, and save him from the thundering limbs that would trample him if he disconnected. Sleet suffocated him as Draugr drove him through the snow. Who-knows-what hidden beneath the layers of white raked across his already-damaged back…

“-until the snow beneath me suddenly gave way-”

The support of the ground against his back was gone. The stinging ice, fused to his open wound, excruciatingly ripped away as the weight of his own body pulled him down. Snow cascaded through the air as Draugr reared back with a bellow. Ingo was falling.

“-And my back hit ice, barely cushioned by the snow still spilling over the edges of the pit above me. Draugr had dragged me right over one of the openings to the icelands’ frozen underground tunnels.”

It was all a mess, congealed together. The snowstorm rushed overhead, canceled out by ringing ears. The living mountain stared down from above, standing still over the edge of the sinkhole. Streams of white trickled down over the edge of the cavern’s opening, and gathered at the bottom. Red seeped out of the black coat, and into the surrounding snow. Bellows of frustration reverberated through the cavern, from a beast that could not reach him, and perhaps could no longer even locate him. Eyes closed tight as pain flared from his side and his back. Shallow breaths. Pained breaths. Snow gently drifted down into the sinkhole and collected on him, having separated from the hasty current above the tundra.

“I laid there on my back, where Draugr could not reach me. I watched them pace in their frustration, until I departed into an unconscious state. And after that… I was no longer in the cold mountainous wastes, at the bottom of a frozen network of tunnels, being pursued by the icelands revenant. Instead, I was in a warm tent, under the covers of a bed and staring back at someone who was repairing my wounds.”

Locking eyes with Calaba like that, in the middle of cleaning a gash on his shoulder, had startled him more than her.

“I consider myself lucky that Warden Sabi had noticed Draugr’s trail of destruction he had left behind while on a morning flight, and investigated it further. She had found me at the bottom of the sinkhole, and promptly alerted the Pearl Clan, who were able to save me in time. I am here today because of them.” Ingo slumped back from the fire, relaxing a little as he put the worst of the events behind him.

The icy winds and frozen hills faded away as he returned to the warmth of the campfire, safe within the mirelands and surrounded by good company.

“Now of course, Draugr left its mark on me in other, lasting ways; the tracks to recovery were long and difficult, and I almost faltered at one point… though, that is a line we can board another time. I consider myself extremely lucky to come away from it with merely a sore back and lasting scar-”

“Show the battlescar!” A few from the crowd requested, turning it into a demand as the rest joined in - even the few who had heard the story before were not aware of this detail. “Show it! Show it!”

Ingo scoffed a little at their label. He hardly considered it a battlescar, as the brutal attack had been so one-sided that he couldn’t really even call it a battle… more appropriately, it was just a beat down.

“Alright,” With a sigh, Ingo relented; at one time, he would have flat-out refused to show it or even talk about it. But with time and some physical healing, it had gotten a bit easier.

Pulling his coat back, Ingo loosened his belt and lifted his upper layers to turn and expose the extensive gash that raked over his side, reaching across to his lower back. The firelight helped illuminate where sharp, gnarled ice had cleaved through skin and muscle.

The sight earned a mixture of exaggerated gross-out sounds from the kids, though it was clear they were thoroughly enjoying the spectacle. Akari however, grimaced slightly; she never liked looking at it.

All things considered, it honestly wasn’t that grizzly; it was now simply a scar. But she didn’t like visualizing the events that caused it…something that was much easier to do now, with the new, detailed version of the narrative that Ingo had just shared.

“There,” Ingo smoothed his layers back down and situated his belt back in place over them, once again concealing the external damage under thick fabric. It couldn’t be seen by anyone like that, and easily forgotten about. Akari preferred it that way. “Well, that is about all I can share; I appreciated your undivided attention. I had not been prepared to express it this way tonight, I do hope this version was satisfactory?”

“Yeah!” The group of children clapped, having thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and thanked him - it brought an upward quirk to Ingo’s frown, knowing they enjoyed it even in its more detailed state.

“Do you have any more stories like that?” One of them asked before the group could even finish their round of appreciation.

“Ah, well,” Ingo did, but none of them could probably top the one he just told. And plus, he wanted to share the spotlight, in case someone else had any stories of their own to tell. “I’m afraid not; however, Miss Zisu might have a story or two she’d be willing to share? She’s had some rather remarkable experiences herself.”

Every head in the group immediately turned to Zisu, who had been sitting silent on the tree stump next to Ingo, deeply invested in his narrative up to that point.

“A story from me?” The woman smiled, sitting up straighter. “Well let’s see, I’ve got quite a few of those… you want to hear about the time I took on an ursaring with my bare hands after they wiped out all my Pokémon? Or, the time I handled the steelix that had been attacking our construction corps, back when Jubilife Village was being built? Oh I’ve got quite a scar from that one, makes Ingo’s look like a paper cut!”

The friendly jabbing made Ingo huff a laugh. Most of the kids immediately divided amongst themselves on what story they wanted to hear, while one or two called out for both. However, they quickly fell into silence, heads turning at the sound of something snapping in the distance, past the outskirts of camp where the light could reach.

The soft crackling of the fire became much more noticeable as everyone sat still, waiting with bated breath to see if the sound would repeat.

Another snap of a branch, still distant in the surrounding darkness, but seemingly closer this time.

A tense murmur rose up between the children, who sprung from their stillness to move closer to the campfire, closer to Ingo and Zisu.

“Is that..?” Olli didn’t even have to finish his sentence for the murmurs to grow into concerned questioning - everyone was thinking the same thing. His excitement was gone, now replaced with a wariness, just as Akari had earlier expected.

“Hold on,” Ingo moved to stand up with a sense of purpose, the first to move away from the campfire rather than towards it. “I presume it is simply a wild Pokémon, but there is also the possibility that the Miss Fortune Sisters are returning to the area. In which case…”

The warden halted at the edge of the campfire’s light, looking back over his shoulder.

“I will return shortly. And, ah, Miss Akari..?”

At his request for her to join him, the teenager immediately rose from her place beside Rei, and took up the space by his side. Ember followed behind quickly, and Ingo continued into the darkness with Akari and her companion there to help light the way.

“Be careful!” Zisu called after them.

The sounds of the group’s startled murmuring amongst the crackling fire faded away as Ingo and Akari pushed further into the dark mirelands, the night sounds of the area replacing them. Crisp autumn wind whistled gently through the leaves of trees and bushes, and rustled the copious amounts of damp leaves piled up on the ground. Somewhere in the distance, the chirping of a kricketune was heard, and the gurgling of crogunk occasionally repeated. Muffled chittering from lethargic paras nests under the ground was faint in the area.

Ingo kept quiet as his hand went to his waist, holding near the pokeballs he kept in the lining of his coat. Akari periodically focused on Ember’s flames that dimly lit the area, a little concerned that she would possibly see something peering back through the darkness, and it wouldn’t be a Pokémon.

Ingo expressed quite the opposite, squinting to try and see if he could make any explicit forms or movements out in the distance, without the help of the moon’s light.

They waited in prolonged silence as they stopped a short ways away from the campsite, listening for another ominous snap to ring out amongst the mirelands’ night ambience. But as one minute strained into two, then to three…

“...Maybe whatever was out here left,” Akari suggested, her hushed voice cutting through the darkness. It was becoming clear that there were no Pokémon nearby, and in all honesty, she was eager to get back to the light; against her best efforts, her dread was beginning to grow.

Akari heard Ingo hum in acknowledgement, his back turned to her as he continued to search between the trees quite boldly. “Whatever was out here might have since departed, but I would like to make absolutely sure that is the case before returning to our station, to ensure the safety of our passengers.”

A breeze weaved between the trees, picking up a few damp leaves from off the ground, and sticking them against Akari’s legs. She shook them off as she moved closer to Ingo’s side, Ember’s glow following behind.

“You think it’s either a person or a Pokémon, right?” Akari risked the question through another whisper, though she lost her steam halfway through, becoming rather self-conscious. “Because the kids think, well…”

She was unsure how to finish that sentence in a way that didn’t sound silly.

“After listening to young Olli’s fascinations all through dinner, I believe I now see why you advised against sharing ghost stories.” Heavy black shoes took several more steps into the darkness.

“…Do you believe in ghosts, Ingo?”

Silence stretched amongst them for a moment, save for the mirelands’ ambience. Even if she couldn’t see him well, Akari could tell Ingo was fiddling with his cap by the brim. He always did that when he stopped to consider something.

“I…have yet to experience an encounter with one. Or observe anything that undoubtedly cements their existence. But I have not decided to disregard it as a possibility, just yet.” The man summarized his thoughts. “Though, I strongly suspect that is not one of the possible presences out here with us right now.”

Another silence fell between them, though this time it only helped the two notice disembodied whispering off in the darkness, off to the left and out of reach of Ember’s illumination.

Ice filled Akari’s veins as she reflexively moved her head to lock eyes with Ingo. He turned back at her to do the same, bringing a finger up to signify silence.

The indecipherable whispering quickly grew more incensed, until it was cut off with an inaudible word hissed through clenched teeth. The following silence became morbid and dreadful, with the expectation that something was about to happen.

“What-” do we do? The rest of the whisper didn’t get the chance to leave Akari’s mouth before she saw pale hands, pairs of them, break the edge of the darkness. They wrapped around any part of Ingo that they could grasp; he made a sound of surprise, but was cut off as the hands wrenched him backwards. A heavy sound as he presumably heaved onto the ground, before being hauled out of sight and into the choking murk.

Within one shocking moment, Akari and Ember were left alone in the circle of dim light.

“...Ingo!” Akari’s heart leapt into her throat as she finally got her vocal cords working again. She realized she had locked up. Seconds felt like minutes…how long had she been standing there?

Ember yowled as she rushed forward and lept into the surrounding bushes after the warden, and whatever grabbed him. Akari hurried after her companion to stay in the light.

Pulling back the foliage, Akari came across clumps of wet leaves, stamped down into the damp dirt. Various tracks littered the area, where something (someone) had been pulled through the mud, clearly against their will - Ingo had indeed been dragged off, but he had put up a fight. The edge of the area gave way to the black waters of the river nearby, and Akari could see the drag tracks (so many trails…why were there so many trails through the mud going the same direction?) leading closer and closer to the edge…

…where they ended at the wooden bridge leading to the other side of the river, largely obscured in darkness.

“Ingo!” Akari called out to the other side. “Ingo!”

There was no answer above the rushing of the waters, just the kricketune in the hills, and the crogunk off in the distant bog.

What was strong enough to drag a grown man off like that so quickly?

“Ingo!” Akari dared to take a few steps across the wooden logs.

Hopelessness quickly began to settle in her chest, heavy and suffocating as her head grew staticky. What if Ingo wasn’t even across the bridge? What if he was further down the hill? Or, did he fall into the river? No, she would have heard a splash…but what if she just didn’t hear it-?

Akari’s mind raced with hypotheticals of Ingo getting mauled by a wild Pokémon, or succumbing to the depths of the river, but deep down, she knew none of them really held water - If his campfire story recounting his experience with Dragur was anything to go by, Ingo was a very strong, hardy person. He could handle anything.

No, the hypotheticals were really just a subconscious coverup to try and distract her from her real fear - that the Solaceon Ruins really did house an apparition, and it had just dragged Ingo back to the structure, exactly as it had done with Cyllene the year before.

Ember barked from behind Akari, still at the scene of the initial struggle. The teenager turned to her companion as she nudged a pokeball out from under the mess, dirtied with mud as it lay amongst the leaves.

It appeared Ingo had grabbed for it but accidentally dropped it during the scuffle, having failed to release his companion in time.

Akari picked it up and quickly freed the contained creature; out emerged Gliscor, Ingo’s ace. Leather flapped and branches creaked as appendages latched onto a nearby tree. It chittered cautiously as bright yellow eyes accustomed to the darkness searched the area, immediately wondering where its partner was.

“Gliscor!” Akari called up to the Pokémon as she tucked its pokeball away. “Something took Ingo, and I can’t see where he was taken, or…what even took him! Please, help me find him!”

Gliscor’s wide eyes gained an understanding quality as it screeched, and launched itself off its branch. A few quiet flaps, and it was gliding above the trees, scanning the area with fervor.

“Come on, Ember!” Footfalls squelched against muddy patches as Akari turned on her heels, running back for the firelight. With Gliscor out actively looking for Ingo, Akari needed to go back and get help.

————

“What if the ghost lured them out there on purpose, to grab one of them up?”

“Olli, that’s not what happened,” Rei felt like he was recycling through different versions of the same reassurance over and over, in order to keep the rest of the group calm. But, that was hard to do once Akari’s panicked shouts calling out for Ingo made its way back to the campsite. The children had quickly started hypothesizing what happened, and what had been lurking out there…and thanks to Olli, they were all leaning heavily on the phantasmic side.

“It could be trying to finish whatever was interrupted with Ms. Cyllene last time!”

Rei sighed as Pikachu moved from one shoulder to the other. “I’m sure it’ll all under control-”

“-Zisu!” Akari’s voice rang out from the darkness again, this time much closer to the campsite. “Zisu! Ingo, he…something grabbed him, and I couldn’t- I sent Gliscor, but…across the river-!”

Akari’s words were as unorganized and breathless as herself, emerging from the darkness with Ember to reconvene with the group.The teen moved to lean against a tree, but it was obvious she was not planning to sit down.

“-Something dragged him away, and I can’t find him!”

“Hang on, Akari-” Miss Zisu attempted to calm the teen down, but her efforts were interrupted.

“I knew it!” Olli exclaimed - that was enough for the rest of the group to start shouting. “The ghost got him!

“It wasn’t a ghost! It-” Akari realized she really had no idea what it was, having been so heavily obscured by darkness. But from what little she had seen, it certainly didn’t seem like any Pokémon she was familiar with, and she was familiar with just about every Pokémon in the region. “-just had a lot of…of hands, and, and…oh, come on, we need to-!”

A scream was heard far off, disrupting the mirelands’ nature ambience. It was certainly human enough, nothing like the calls of a Pokémon, not even ones that tried to imitate humans. Though-

“That was not Ingo,” Akari tried not to pay attention to the new round of anxious hypothesizing from the kids, exclaiming it was the wail of the ghost. They were already wasting important time, and now she definitely knew Ingo was not alone out there. Having caught enough of her breath, Akari moved to venture back out into the darkness. “We have to go back out there and find him! Come on!”

“Akari! Breathe, it’ll be alright; you’ll find him. Rei, go with her,” Zisu urged the teens. “Someone has to stay with the group; you go on ahead with Akari, I’ll stay here.”

Rei nodded in affirmation, and the two moved to rush back into the treeline. Both teens and their partner Pokémon disappeared into the darkness, taking off in the direction of the Solaceon Ruins.

“Be careful, and watch where you’re going! Can’t get Ingo back here if you end up hurting yourselves!” Zisu called after them. It was a rather forward statement, but a genuine one.

Perla tapped on Zisu’s arm as the group of kids shuffled closer to her, in a long stretch of tense silence. “What do we do?”

“Well,” The woman crossed her arms. “All we can do is stay here, and…wait.”

Zisu had urgently wanted to go with Akari and Rei, and help them find Ingo. Waiting around was the last thing she wanted to do, but she knew she couldn’t go off with the two and leave the rest of the group here. Not after something managed to snatch up Ingo of all people. And it would be reckless to drag a group of-

Wait.

There were supposed to be six kids here. So why were there-

Zisu immediately began a headcount, mentally separating the children clustered close together.

Olli, Perla, Janie, Lon, Bren…

Zisu frowned as she restarted the headcount, once, then twice. The children noticed her counting them, and began to glance amongst themselves, slowly realizing why she was recounting.

“Where’s Vessa?”

————

“It happened right over here!”

Dim light once again drove away the darkness that enveloped the site of the struggle, leaves still stamped in the ground. Akari and Rei pushed through the foliage.

“I found Gliscor’s pokeball here, so I sent them off to find Ingo, but I don’t know if-” Deep breath. “-if they found him yet.”

“This is just like what happened with Cyllene,” Rei leaned against a tree to wipe some accumulating sweat off his brow - he was certainly spry, but Akari was hard to keep up with even for him. “Same…same tracks and everything.”

His words did not ease Akari’s conscience at all.

“Well then come on! They lead to the bridge!” Akari took off running, following the tracks leading to the river’s edge. Ember rushed after to keep the way illuminated, and Rei hurried behind, Pikachu on his shoulder.

Pushing through the foliage, Akari could no longer contain the thoughts that terrorized her. What if she had made the wrong choice to go back to camp and get help? What if Gliscor hadn’t found Ingo, and he had been dragged away? What if the same thing that had attacked Cyllene had now gone after Ingo…and this time, it finished the job?

What if the kids were right, and it was a wilderness apparition that the ruins housed?

Pushing past the last tree standing in the way, Akari finally reached the wooden bridge. And again there was the strange multitude of drag tracks, leading right to it but simultaneously trailing off into all different directions.

A moment of doubt mixed with Akari’s terror - was this even the right way?

No, she knew exactly where Ingo was. The murky silhouette of the Solaceon Ruins’ entrance jutted out against the dark night sky, a deep black cliffside against a dim, deep haze. She knew Ingo was there, even though every part of her wished he was somewhere else.

“Across the bridge, Rei!” Dread grabbed at her ankles in an attempt to weigh her down, but Akari shook it off and ran across the bridge with Ember at her feet, Rei somewhere behind her.

The thin tallgrass whipped against her legs as she continued to run towards the cavernous entrance into the ruins, the drag tracks still leading beneath her shoes just as she dreaded. Ember started to fall behind, and Rei was no longer with them. As awful as it would have been to hear, there were no sounds of a scuffle anywhere, and no instances of Ingo’s voice. There was lots of distant, collective chittering though - almost like a rumbling.

Had Ingo already been dragged into the ruins? Was it too late? Had the ghost already stolen his shadow? Or locked him away in some darkness so deep, that no one would be able to find him? Or-

“Ingo!” Akari’s eyes slightly adjusted to the dimness of the overcast night as she forced herself to keep running towards the looming ruins. “Are you out here?”

Deep down, Akari was hoping for an answer, but her shallower feelings discouraged her from expecting one, and her surface-level instincts scolded her for drawing the attention of any nearby wild Pokémon to herself. But she didn’t know what else to do-

“Ingo!” She called out into the murk again.

“Miss Akari?” The murk answered back, distant. “I’m over here!”

The familiar voice pulled Akari’s emergency brakes, and she almost slipped with the sudden stop through the slick grass. Willing herself to regain her balance as Ember stumbled beside her, the teen searched around intently for the source of the voice…

…And there was Ingo, on the hill leading up to the gaping chasm of the Solaceon Ruins. She almost missed him, with the pitch-black entrance to the ruins behind him. It was clear he was winded from his posture, though he thankfully seemed unhurt, for the most part. A spark of emotion jumped in Akari’s chest, seeing that he was still here, alive and well.

“Ingo!” Akari cried out as she rushed up the hill, reaching his side and grabbing onto him tightly; Ember yipped excitedly as she ran behind. Akari’s relief over the sight of him momentarily overrode her driving fears of the ethereal, or else she might have been cautious that he was the apparition in disguise. Though, he felt much too solid and comforting for that to even be an afterthought. “You’re ok!”

“A little shaken, but I am quite alright;” I apologize for that unscheduled departure earlier!” Ingo’s hands were shaking a little, though it seemed more like an unwanted after-effect of adrenaline rather than fear. They shuddered against her shoulder as he attempted to still her, especially when she started trying to pull him with her, away from the deep darkness of the Solaceon Ruins’ entrance.

“The ghost didn’t drag you into the ruins? Where is it-? Oh, nevermind! Come on, we’ve got to go before it comes back!” Akari’s words were going a mile a minute.

“Miss Akari-!” Ingo resisted her pull. “There is no hurry! This was not the doing of an apparition at all; rather, I was correct with my prior suspicions!”

Akari stopped tugging, though her grip on his coat held tight, a look of bewilderment settling on her features. The chill under her fingertips finally penetrated her attention, and Akari belatedly realized that Ingo’s coat sleeve was covered in patches of frost, as were the rest of his clothes.

He was shaking from the cold.

“What..?” Akari watched the clinging frost melt from her fingertips, before moving the brush the rest of it off of his coat. “What do you mean? What is this from?”

“It is surprisingly cold being trapped within the arms of an abomasnow, I must admit.” Ingo’s disposition seemed almost rueful as he wiped the last of the frost from off his shoulders. Ember pressed up against one of his legs in an effort to warm him.

Akari struggled to process what Ingo had just said. “Wait…an abomasnow? Out here?”

The only people Akari knew who had an abomasnow were-

“The Miss Fortune Sisters were responsible for my abduction.” Ingo confirmed Akari’s quickly-growing suspicions. “As I suspected, they were returning to the campsite in hopes of staying there, but when they saw it was already occupied, they changed plans to thievery. You and I happened to be in an opportune place for ambush, and… I was the closest within reach. They were quick to remove my Pokémon from off of me, and it was impossible to fend them off three against one at that point, especially once their abomasnow detained me within the ruins.”

“Well where are they?” Akari began to fret again, looking around for any sign of the bandits. “Do they still have your Pokémon?”

Ember growled as cinders wafted from her coat, ready to defend.

“Ah, not at the moment.” Ingo shook his head. “In fact, they don’t even have their own; I’m afraid their Pokémon were knocked out of commission in their haste to fight off my inadvertent rescuers, who arrived moments before Gliscor, and yourself.”

Rescuers..?

Down the hill and closer to a cluster of trees and tallgrass, another shout rang out, remarkably similar to what Akari heard at the camp earlier. The teen started when she spotted what looked like a remarkable amount of paras gathered around a tree. Gliscor’s silhouette fluttered around it, occasionally gliding down low to swipe at the horde, while dodging wayward spurts of static spores.

So that’s where the chittering had come from.

“Call your gliscor off!” One of the bandits' voices yelled out from the branches, now recognizable as Clover.

“If he withdraws, then there will be nothing to stop the paras from overtaking the tree, and you three with it!” Ingo called back to them.

Even after what they had done, Ingo was keeping them safe. There were no further calls to withdraw Gliscor.

“They did not account for all of the paras nests they disrupted and trampled in their haste to drag me back. Lots of persistent enemies were made quickly.” Ingo shook his head, grimacing at the recollection. “One of them, rather large.”

The unmistakable deep rumbling of an alpha’s bellow was heard. Down the hill, Akari could make out the enormous mass of an overgrown paras rearing up and separating itself from the horde. A variety of different mushrooms festered on its backside, leeching nutrients from its hulking body as gnarled, armored claws grasped at the air. It heaved itself up against the tree, enough to shake it at its base. The jostling caused another round of shouts from one of the bandits.

Akari immediately recognized that alpha paras as the same one she had encountered several times before within this section of the mirelands. Its spore attacks were as nasty as its disposition, and more than once, it had tried to grab her when she wandered too close to its nest. It had even pursued her a few times, to her horror. Akari considered herself lucky that she was a fast sprinter; unfortunate was the person who would succumb to that alpha’s gnarled rows of thin, sharp teeth, or those long, spindly legs, or-

Several things clicked together at once in Akari’s head.

“…Ingo, I think I know what attacked Cyllene last year, now.”

Ingo made a sound of surprise at the proposal, before heavy footfalls were heard behind them; Rei had finally caught up to them, Pikachu holding tight onto his shoulder.

“Mr. Ingo, you’re ok-!” The boy called out with strained breaths as he hurried up the hill towards them. “I was so worried that…that you’d ended up like Cyllene, or…worse! Good thing Akari already-“

The teen barely made it to the top of the hill, clearly winded, before he observed the waves of paras around the tree, and their furious fungal-infested alpha trying to swipe Gliscor away.

“-woah, that is a giant paras..!”

————

“So they were using the ruins as a temporary hideout?”

“Correct,” Ingo affirmed. “They planned to move their base back to the campgrounds, but were unable to do so with us there. So, they decided to try and pick us off one at a time, and take what they could.”

Ingo walked with Rei and Akari by his side, recounting the finer details of everything that had happened (and catching Rei up on everything he had missed) as they made their way back to the log bridge, leaving the Solaceon Ruins behind them.

The two had helped Ingo locate the rest of his pokeballs amongst the piles of other poor victims’ stolen goods within the dark ruins, once they had driven back the paras. Unfortunately, the Miss Fortune Sisters had decided it was more important to get away rather than to try and take back their stolen items: as soon as the trio had landed back on solid ground, smoke bombs were used, and they were gone.

“Though they were rather disappointed when they found I didn’t have any belongings of value on me, once they separated me from my Pokémon.” Ingo’s frown didn’t hide the slight amusement in his voice.

He recalled how the three bandits had started shouting amongst each other that they had ‘grabbed the wrong one’, and should have made an effort to take Akari instead - she always had tons of valuable things on her. They only became more frustrated when they attempted to intimidate Ingo with empty threats; all it did was make him confess that he was satisfied they had grabbed him up instead of her.

“It started quite an argument… loud enough that the paras whose nests they destroyed were able to easily find them. They overwhelmed the Sisters and their Pokémon quite easily, then pursued them up that tree. I would have been a target as well, had Gliscor not arrived when he did, and warded them off… I am thankful you recovered his pokeball and sent him for me when you did, Miss Akari.”

“I’m just glad he found you in time.” The teen admitted, relieved she had made the right choices.

“What are we going to do about all the stolen stuff in the ruins?” Rei wondered, eyeing the river as they came up beside it.

“We should make an effort to return the stolen items to their owners.” Ingo placed a hand on his chin as he walked, contemplating the right thing to do. “I did not intend for this trip to turn into a supply run, but I suppose we’ll make a stop by the ruins tomorrow morning to take what we can back with us, and request the Ginkgo Guild to come out and pick up the rest - I suspect the Miss Fortune Sisters must have been stationed out here for a long time, stealing from the guild just as much as lone travelers, in order to amass a collection of that size.”

“You don’t think they’ll come back to take what’s left before then, right?”

“I trust the paras will not let them return to the station for a good while.”

“Man, wait till everyone hears about all this back at the campsite,” Rei laughed. “Olli’s gonna be disappointed there was no ghost, though!”

“No ghost, but an alpha paras is just as terrifying, I think!” Akari shuddered. “If that’s what dragged Cyllene away, no wonder she won’t talk about it…”

A sudden thought occurred to Akari.

“Um, you think we should leave that part out when we talk about this with the others?”

“To preserve dignity, ah, perhaps it would be best.” Ingo steadily agreed, folding his arms behind him. Children could be ruthless with information like that. Even if they weren’t all aware of the captain’s intense phobia of bug-types, he was sure Cyllene would not appreciate the village children coming back and laughing at her for being attacked by a paras… even if it was an alpha. “It’s enough of a thrilling experience without it anyways, though perhaps a kind that should not be repeated. I’ll look into suggesting setting up a site elsewhere for next year, if we cannot secure unauthorized groups from using it.”

Both good ideas, Akari thought. She hoped what had happened here tonight wouldn’t lead to a repeat of what happened last year, and send all the potential recruits running for different corps. A lot happened, but at least they could all come away from this experience knowing that this certainly was not the doing of a ghost.

The Solaceon Ruins? Just creepy.

The wailing of a ghost? Just the Miss Fortune Sisters.

The ghost itself, dragging off people in the night? Again, the Miss Fortune Sisters, and an irritable alpha paras.

…And in the end, most likely a story Mara had made up just to try and scare Olli, as well as justify her own fright of the alpha paras.

Nothing about this trip had proven that ghosts existed.

Finally, the darkness revealed the sturdy log bridge leading back to the other side; they were almost at the campgrounds. Ingo led the way across, and Rei followed, but before Akari could set a foot on the structure, she felt a tap on her back.

With a sudden fright, Akari whirled around to see who, or what, was behind her. It wasn’t a ghost, or even a ghost Pokémon, but the sight didn’t bewilder Akari any less.

Standing behind her was the group’s extra passenger, positioned stiff in the dark with her finger still held out. Though, the friendly expression on her face managed to disarm Akari’s sudden terror, somewhat.

“Vessa!” The teen felt the tight bundle of cords in her chest start to loosen. “Why are you…how did you get out here-?”

“I was waiting for you!” The small girl replied, acting more like a party host welcoming a late guest, rather than a girl who was waiting in the dark wilderness. “They’re here now, and I told you I’d help you find them when they came!”

She pointed behind her, into the darkness that enveloped a diverging path traveling upstream.

The loosened cords in Akari’s chest somewhat tightened again. “Vessa, we need to get you back to camp, I’m sure Zisu’s-“

In the darkness, a faint purple glow pulsed. It was gentle and soft, and stopped Akari in her tracks.

Strangely enough, it did not frighten her. Instead, it instilled an odd sense of longing, and melancholy.

“Miss Akari?” Ingo called from at the end of the bridge. “Are you following? Is everything alright?”

“Um,” Akari fumbled to give a quick response. “Yes! Everything’s fine! I just…”

“Just you!” Vessa whispered to her, so quietly that she barely heard it. “They can’t come. But it will be quick.”

Akari didn’t like the sound of that at all.

But… something about that glow. It held a sad sort of comfort. And Vessa… something tugged on the teen’s heart, telling her she could be trusted.

“…I think I dropped something in the grass over here,” Akari finished her sentence, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. “Can you…and Rei wait there for a moment? I’ll be right there!”

“If you’re…certain it’s safe,” Ingo’s voice sounded uneasy, but she knew he trusted her judgment enough.

“Just make sure you don’t upset another paras nest!” Rei called back, taking the situation much more lightly.

“Alright,” Akari took a deep breath, and moved to follow Vessa off the path, towards the soft purple light. “It really needs to be quick though.”

As Vessa led the way, the river narrowed the trail against a cliffside. Looking across the dark river, Akari could see the light of the campfire on the other bank; this spot is exactly we’re Vessa had pointed to earlier.

They finally reached a clearing where the trail cut off at a dead end, and right at the center of the area was the source of purple light - a radiant ball of…fire? Akari didn’t know what to call it, exactly; strands of light slowly floated off of its glowing center, which hung suspended in the air. The melancholy atmosphere weighed heavier, but there was also a sense of tired relief. A sense of being found.

Akari had seen this before, back at the village once. When Vessa had shown her…

“A wisp?” Akari questioned aloud. She admitted she had forgotten about Vessa’s request until this moment; the girl had asked her to seek out wisps like this one in the wilderness, but this was the first one Akari had actually come across outside of Jubilife; she had admittedly begun to disregard Vessa’s request as a playful trick of sorts.

“She only comes out at night, but she was hoping you’d come get her.” Vessa explained, stepping aside. “I wanted to help.”

The wisp’s glow flickered.

As horrifying as the concept was of someone leading her to an apparition in the wilderness, Akari didn’t feel terror. She wondered if in part, it had to do with Vessa’s gentle disposition, or the wisp’s strangely comforting presence. Or maybe even the familiarity of having done this before at Jubilife.

There was no danger here.

Akari reached out for the wisp, just as Vessa had shown her to do before. The soft purple flames were warm to the touch, though not uncomfortably so - it reminded Akari of holding Ember close to her.

Akari slowly closed her hands around the glow, and the warmth initially doubled before frosting her fingers with a cold tingling sensation. The light fizzled, and sparks dissipated into the air from between her fingertips.

When she opened her hands, the flame was gone, and so was the melancholy.

“Thank you,” There was audible appreciation in Vessa’s voice as she smiled. “Others are still waiting out there, but she was just getting a little impatient, after being passed by so many times.”

“I’m…sorry,” the words stumbled loosely out of Akari’s mouth as she rubbed the warmth back into her hands. She thought about the handful of times she had been in this area before, and how she’d never once seen the glow in the sunlight.

“Here,” Vessa reached for Akari’s hand. The clearing was left behind as the young girl began to lead her back down the path, towards the bridge. “I’ll lead you back to the bridge.”

The hair on the back of Akari’s neck stood up as she felt Vessa’s terribly cold, frail fingers grasp her own. A certain, hesitant understanding came upon her, but she was unsure if she could believe it.

Again, she was not as fearful as she thought she would be.

“Thank you for letting me stay with you all tonight. It was nice to feel like part of a group again, and for you to go out of your way to make sure I was comfortable.”

Something told Akari she would not feel the small hand in her grasp once they reached the bridge.

“Vessa,” Akari swallowed as the kind, young soul led her through the darkness. “Could you…return with us? Back to camp, and to Jubilife?”

Vessa’s eyes, flickering in the dimness, connected with Akari’s. There was no sound as she stepped over the damp leaves on the ground. The weight of the small, cold hand in hers was light as air.

“You know, I’m sure Zisu is probably panicking right now about where you are, and Ingo would be out searching for you all night. And…”

The bridge became visible as they stepped around a cluster of foliage.

“…I’d like you to stay a little longer, and enjoy your time with us, if you’d like?”

The small fingers in Akari’s hand held on firmly, still there. Her bright eyes were warm as she smiled back at the teen. The wet leaves squelched under her feet, and the logs creaked quietly as she stepped onto it ahead of the teen.

“I’d like that.” Her voice was quiet, but Akari could sense the gratitude. “Thank you.”

At the other end of the bridge, Akari could make out Ingo and Rei’s silhouettes; they had waited for her, just as she asked. But landing beside them, she could make out the bulky silhouette of a new arrival; Zisu’s Honchkrow.

“Miss Akari! Ingo’s voice called out with slight urgency. “Did you find what you were searching for? We should return back to camp quickly; it appears one of the children is missing, as Miss Zisu’s sent her Pokémon out in search of them. We need to join the search post-haste!”

“Yes! And um, about that…there’s no need, I think I already found her!”

#submas #ingo #warden ingo #Akari #Pokemon akari #rei #pokemon rei #Zisu #pokemon zisu #cyllene #vessa #pokemon legends #Pokémon legends #pokemon legends arceus #Pokémon legends arceus #pokemon #pokemon fanfic #pokemon fanfiction #waywardstationfanfic

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writing-time-bitches · 4 months

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Let Us Depart// PLA au

Hi hi, most if not all of these will be written via Ingo’s pov EXCEPT for a smidge of this one bc we all know the player’s feelings about the entire game. I also need practice with him and limited 3rd person so

Masterlist// CHAPTER ONE

Akari was having a bad day. Or well more like several bad days.

She was essentially evicted from her home dimension just four days ago and was now forced into what was basically child labor. Her inner Unovan rattles violently against its cage at the thought. Not like she wasn’t used to doing things for high risk and little to no reward, she saved Sinnoh from the clashing of realms when she was only twelve! Twelve!! All just for some fancy title and a little too much money no child should have.

And now, at the oh so tender age of fifteen, she was risking her life once more.

“Stupid fucking all knowing god..” she muttered to herself, feeling incredibly free knowing she could curse somewhat aloud without risk of being hounded by a slipper.

“Come on bud, we have to go.”

“Shaaaaaa…”

“Oshawott.” Akari frowned. Her newest starter was definitely more difficult than her lovely torterra. The fat fucker was clearly overfed and had way too much mass for something so small. Akari didn’t know if it was because he was treated lavishly by Laventon or other or he was simply a glutton who got way too many treats.

When the overweight water-type didn’t budge from his napping position she sighed and simply picked him up into her arms. She silently thanked the clefable and torterra from her original team for preparing her muscles for such heavy pokemon. She was definitely going to fix this oshawott’s diet if its the last thing she does.

Oshawott growled agitatedly when he was lifted, tail lifting to lightly tap her arm and cracked open his bleary eyes. She ignored her friend’s protests and reached for her phone. Her fingers flinched at the strangely fleshy feeling of her Arc Phone. Akari took a moment to stare at her phone screen.

It was the same model as other roto-phones issued by the League of the future to gym challengers. It was the same screen protector. It was the same… everything. She looked at her reflection, looking at her new and unbearably itchy clothes, the thick scarf wrapped around her neck and handkerchief on her head. An uncomfortable feeling of isolation overcame her and the terrible, god awful dread came with it. She doesn’t belong here..

She was quick to pull herself away from the bunnelby hole of dark thoughts and shoved her phone into her inner breast pocket of the Survey Corps uniform. One thing she liked about this uniform was its multitude of pockets.

“Shwo?” Oshawott questioned, now fully awake and sitting comfortably on the crook of her elbow, gripping the thick fabric with his small claws. Akari smiled and ran her hands through Oshawott’s thick white fur on his head,”I’m fine. We can save existential crises for later. Preferably when we’re not being called by Kamado.” Oshawott nodded sagely.

“Akari! Come on, Kamado can’t wait all day!” Rei called from outside her quarters. Akari let out a long suffering sigh as she placed her pudgy oshawott on her shoulder,”We’re coming! Jeez!”

She stepped outside, blinking away the sunlight. She gave a little wave to the older Galaxy member. Wow that was weird to think when Team Galactic exists in the future.

“Finally! I’ve been waiting here since sunrise!” Rei frowned, eyes flicking from the pokemon on her shoulders with quickly hidden surprise before returning to her face. Akari rolled her eyes,”No one in there right mind would be up at sunrise except maybe the guardsmen. Especially not you since you adore your sleep don’t you?” She smirked triumphantly when Rei narrowed his eyes at her, god he was bad at this,”You don’t know that.”

“Yes, actually I do. Laventon always talks fondly about how he has to wake you up like some father with his kid. It’s actually really cute how he gets so smiley about it.” Rei sputtered flusteredly and huffed, pulling his shredded scarf to cover his red cheeks,”… shut up.”

Akari snickered and elbowed her peer’s ribs gently,”Didn’t you say we were late to a meeting?” Rei groaned, sucking in a breath to regain his composure and shoved playfully at Akari’s shoulder,”You are the one who’s late and I—“

“Look who’s being punctual! Finally realized you’re waisting almighty Sinnoh’s precious time by bowing to a sham?”

“There you go again, insisting on your false image of almighty Sinnoh as a ruler of time! My people follow the true almighty Sinnoh—the font of all creation and ruler of space!”

Akari and Oshawott tilted their heads. Are… they fighting over which “Sinnoh” is real? Oh is that how future Sinnoh got its name? Like how Unova was renamed from Alleos? Rei groaned as he recognized the voices, Akari gave him a look.

“Hah! You could have the space there is and still not know what to do with it.” The man in a long blue kimono sneered, leaning down the glare at the shorter blonde in way-too-big shoes. The woman bristled, not backing down and returning the other’ glare with just as much ferocity as a feraligatr,”Excuse me? Are you really suggesting that make better use of you time than we make of vast Hisui’s space?!” The man scoffed, crossing his arms,”Better than some! It’s a miracle you showed up on, oh mighty leader of the Pearl Clan. I worried you’d get lost in the pointlessly vast space you’re so fond of and never show up.” He teased, merciless.

The woman laughed mirthlessly and waved him away dismissively,”Me, get lost? In almighty Sinnoh’s great gift to the Pear Clan—in our world’s very basis?” She then snapped her eyes to him, leveling him with a stare icy enough to freeze water,”You wish!” The man flinched under the glare before putting his palm to his head with a suffering sigh,”I wish that hadn’t let myself get dragged into arguing with you. Almighty Sinnoh forgive me—what a waste of time! I’m off to Commander Kamado’s office!”

The woman clad in pink huffed, turning to the office in almost perfect tandem with the man,”I believe it was you who started this!” They shared a long look of animosity before walking to the large double doors of the Galaxy Team building.

Rei sighed with a shake of his head,”Just another day with those two, I see. The man’s name is Adaman. The the leader of the Diamond Clan, they put a lot of importance on time, as you could probably tell. And the girl is Irida, leader of the Pearl Clan. They’re all about space—you heard what she called it right? ‘Our world’s very basis.’ Whenever they run into each other, those same arguments flare up.” He mindlessly scratched at his arm with a quite frankly exhausted look,”Seems like they’ve inherited some bad blood from their predecessors’ strife.”

“But then shouldn’t we help them sort it out?” Akari questioned, her water-type companion nodded in agreement. Rei shrugged,”Yeah well, as much as it would lessen tensions between the village and the clans it’s not really our problem. But you’ll have problems if you don’t get yourself to the commander’s office, Akari! I have to go to the Mirelands for an investigation. Anyway, good luck you two!” He said as he headed for the gates that lead to the Fieldlands.

At the mention of mirelands, Akari imagined he meant the marsh around Pastoria City and shivered at the memory of her several near-heatstrokes in the humid and sweaty marsh. She called her goodbyes after him and skipped to the building next door. Beauregard and her exchanged familiar nods as she entered.

As she ascended the steps she heard the raised voices of Kamado’s guests. Are they still screaming at each other? Oshawott grumbled, deigning to crawl into Akari’s arms and buried his face into her armpit holding his ears down. She chuckled, stroking Oshawott’s fur.

“What do you intend to do about that Kleavor, Commander Kamado?!” Adaman hissed, leaning on his hands against Kamado’ desk basically all up in the Galaxy Team’s unflappable leader’s face,”He may be descended from a warrior of almighty Sinnoh’s, but look at the mess he causing. We can’t sit back and let him rage on!” Kamado let out a long sigh,”You do get right to the point, Adaman…” he grumbled from behind his desk. Adaman frowned and stood back up straight and crossed his arms,”Time wasted is lost.”

“Well, tell me—what would you have us do? Kleavor is a precious lord of the Pearl Clan, is he not?” Kamado said, leisurely cleaning his desk of papers and other documents to put into proper piles. Adaman growled with quickly declining patience,”That’s the point. My clan can’t intervene directly where a lord of the Pearl Clan’s concerned. If my people were to do something, our two clans might end up back at each other’s throats—just like we used to be.”

Adaman shook his head, genuine concern dancing in his eyes,”But even folk of the Galaxy Team have been wounded, haven’t they? Seems someone’s got to something here…” he pressed, glancing discreetly at his opposite clan leader. The glance was not as discreet as he thought it as Irida shot an affronted look to Adaman,”Who, then? Would the Diamond Clan have the Pearl Clan bring down one of its own honored nobles?” She asked with an air of offense, clenching her fists as if ready to fist fight the taller man. He scoffed and turned to face his opposite, as if daring her to raise a hand,”I don’t believe I said it. Thought it, maybe.”

“You might as well have said it, you fool!” She hissed, taking a threatening step forward. Akari finally took notice of the short girl’s musculature, limbs tensing like torracat readying to pounce on an unsuspecting pidgey. Adaman flinched slightly,”Look—we don’t even know what drove Lord Kleavor into such a violent frenzy.” She said, relaxing upon seeing Adaman take a step back. Kamado, the ever quiet man, simply stood by watching like a braviary.

“I’d like to know that myself. This is a first as far as my clan knows, too. Do your folk know anything of this phenomenon, Commander?” Kamado shook his head with a disappointed grunt. Oshawott sneezed loudly, breaking the brief lapse of silence and causing all eyes to dart to Akari. Kamado quietly let out a sigh of relief,”Hrrm. I see you’ve arrived.”

Akari tensed under the scrutinizing gazes of all three leaders. Even Cynthia had never looked at her so harshly and judgemental. Cynthia’s eyes were kind and soft, like a nurturing mother. Her pokemon yawned as Kamado spoke,”This is Akari, the newest member of our Survey Corps.”

At the mention of her name, Adaman brightened and flashed her a charismatic and warm smile,”Aha! I hear from Mai you earned Wyrdeer’s favor. Good to finally meet you, stranger from the rift! I’m ‘Adaman, leader of the Diamond Clan,’ if you want to be formal! But that’s a mouthful. Just call me Adaman.” He said and stuck out his hand for a shake. Akari didn’t return the favor and simply bowed slightly at the hip,”A pleasure, Mr. Adaman.” Adaman hummed lightly and bowed to her as well with smile.

Irida spoke up, a tone of distrust in her words,”If you came from beyond the space-time rift… could you be from the space where almighty Sinnoh is said to reside?” She shook her head and leveled Akari with a cautious look,”I’m Irida of the Pearl Clan! Caution and foresight are my watchwords. Which is why I have trouble believing in such tale. Could you really have passed through that rift?”

Akari couldn’t help but notice a glint of familiarity in Irida’s blue eyes. It was oddly reminiscent of something like deja vu. What for? For some reason, Akari couldn’t stop her mouth from moving,”Mrs. Irida, do you… have someone from the rift as well? You look like you’re having déjà vu…” Irida paused, blinking. Adaman looked at the new Galaxy girl with interest and Kamado furrowed his brows, he hurried to alleviate tension,”Akari, that is inappropriate—”

“We do. He is currently a warden up in Mt. Coronet.” Irida responded over him. The men in the room shared a surprised look. Akari nodded, a spark of hope for some semblance of familiarity in her heart,”Can I ask his name?” Irida nodded slowly, as if trying to figure out why she was telling the youth this at all,”His name is Ingo. He is an peculiar man, speaking in odd terms; his charge, Lady Sneasler, is quite fond of him. Unfortunately, he suffers from amnesia and cannot remember much outside of his name. Is he important to you?” Irida questioned softly, allowing herself to feel a little bit hopeful for her amnesiac warden, perhaps this child could assist in finding his scattered memories.

Akari, however, felt a waterfall of horror befall her. She tried to keep her voice even as she spoke,”Does… does he wear a long black coat..?” Irida sucked in a breath and excitedly exclaimed,”Yes! Do you know him?” Akari took in a deep, deep breath and nodded,”Yeah, I know him…” ‘How could I not know Ingo Whitlock?! He’s a famous battle facility head from Unova with his brother!’ Akari shrieked inside her head. Irida, now suddenly on cloud nine and hopelessly overjoyed, clapped her hands together,”After we quell our Woodland Lord’s frenzy, I will happily introduce him to you.” Akari smiled crookedly, cold sweat running down the back of her neck,”Me too..!”

The Diamond head laughed and Kamado grumbled and cleared his throat,”I have a proposition.” He stated with a purpose,”Why not send this one to study Kleavor before deciding what must be done?” Both leaders’ smiles faltered,”You’d send this child, who recently fell from the rift, to study Kleavor? A greenhorn with no experience? That’s—”

The Diamond scoffed at Irida’s irony,”Says the leader with almost no experience.” The earlier air of frustration radiated off of the Pearl again,”Being a good leader isn’t a matter of time—it’s a matter of embracing Hisui’s vastness without fear!” Adaman smirked before slinging a slim bandaged arm around Akari’s shoulders, turning to Kamado,”Well then, there you have it. If how new you are doesn’t matter, then let’s give the girl her chance. I’m sold, Commander. Let’s try this your way!”

Irida frowned worriedly,”Now hold on—“

“Hey, shouldn’t I get a say in this?” Akari piped up, gently clutching Oshawott in her arms,”Afterall, it’s me you’re sending. I think I should—“

“Child. Do not speak out of turn.” The Galaxy commander growled coldly, his eyes like a barren prairie in Orre. His hard stare sent a shiver of fear down Akari’s back and Oshawott’s bristled, lips drawn back protective of his trainer. Both clan leaders tensed at the sudden change of atmosphere before Adaman attempted to alleviate it,”This should be fun. I’ll get to see how good you Galaxy folk really are, with all your weird ways—putting pokémon in those strange balls and what have you.”

Irida jumped on the bandwagon with a genuine spark of annoyance,”That whole practice bothers me! Almoghty Sinnoh made Hisui vast so pokémon could live freely throughout. We’re meant to stand alongside pokémon, not count ourselves above them!”

Kamado let out a long sigh as he explained to the Pearl leader,”We do not use poké-balls from a desire to control our pokémon. Only so that we can live together,” he took a single step forward, hand placed across his chest sincerely,”Allow us to show you what we can do!”

She looked between the rift-summoned girl with a pokémon in her arms, her fellow clan head and the commander, weighing her options and possible consequences. After a beat, her stiff shoulders lowered a little and she nodded hesitantly,”… Alright. We will assist Akari in her investigations.”

The tall foreigner nodded his thanks and turned to the greenhorn Survey Corp member,”This is your mission, Akari. I order you to study Kleavor and help us find the truth of this situation.” He boomed, Galarian accent rolling off his tongue and command no doubt heard through the building. Akari bit her inner lip and nodded with defeat. It not like she could deny it, she was ordered to do this,”.. Okay. I’ll do it.” Adaman snuck an empathetic glance at the young girl who was basically being shoved into danger without any real preparation. It was almost as if Commander Kamado wanted to rid his unsteady village of an unseen danger.

“Remember that you are a stranger who appeared one day put the very sky above us. People are naturally suspicious of your presence here. If you wish to be fully accepted and trusted, you must work hard. Work yourself to the very bone.” Kamado’s speech was supposed to cheer her up but Akari couldn’t help but feel like he meant something else. She sighed, she’ll think on it more later, when she isn’t dealing with a pokemon gone mad.

“Well, that’s settled. And there’s not time like the present!” Adaman grinned encouragingly at the young Galaxy member. Irida spoke up, informing Akari of the subject of her new mission,”The Lord of the Woods—Kleavor—is descended from a pokemon that was blessed with almighty Sinnoh’s own power. No other pokemon you’ve yet encountered can compare to his strength. Be warned.” She cautioned. She placed a hand on Akari’s shoulder,”Do take care of yourself. I’m sure Ingo would love to speak with you.”

Both leaders nodded to her and Kammado before leaving. Which left Akari and commander Kamado alone in the latter’s office. She sucked in a deep breath, not liking the stiff air between them both,”Welp! I guess I better go get read—”

“Listen to me.” He commanded with a hard tone,”The Galaxy Expedition Team has come to the Hisui region as a group of outsiders. Some might even call us interlopers. We mustn’t do anything to threaten our relations with the Diamond and Pearl Clans. Understand?” Another dreadful shiver raked up Akari’s spine and she meekly nodded, Oshawott was quietly growling in her arms, paw on the pale scalchop shell on his stomach.

The novice Survey Corp turned with a sigh and was greeted by Cyllene’s unwavering stare,”Join me downstairs, Akari. We’ll cover the details of this new mission.”

She grumbled, shifting Oshawott’s weight in her arms and followed after her new boss. Its been almost a week since she fell here and she was already being told to help the people once again.

Ingo could not sleep. His schedule had been thrown off since that odd dream he had a week prior. Lady Sneasler has no doubt noticed his lack of proper maintenance and has forcibly laid him to rest many times. His overtime is slowly catching up to him.

Why was he avoiding sleep? He didn’t really know himself and was too afraid to look at why. Maybe it was the sheer oddity of that dream that has thrown off track, or perhaps the man in white. Upon looking back, Ingo couldn’t even describe the man’s face anymore and his voice was becoming distorted. A feeling of foreboding crawling into the back of his mind, feeling like someone or something was tampering with his memories now.

But the words spoken were seemingly seared into his mind, unable to leave like a permanent scar; “Accompany the child and ensure their safety.”

He hissed, jerking away when his knife cut into his skin. He dropped his newest woodcarving. He wasn’t very skilled and had only recently just picked it up, so he was far from dexterous with a carving blade. He looked at his thumb, blood trickling slowly down the pad of his finger. He groaned, setting down the crude pine wood imitation of a nosepass and picked up the smooth black handkerchief on his thigh. Ingo pressed his thumb into it, he’ll clean it properly later.

His frown deepened as he stared at the wooden figurine laying abandoned on the floor, compared to the ones Melli had shown him, it looked disfigured and uneven, splintered and immaturely cut as if by a toddler. It hurt his pride in all honesty but he was a stubborn man.

“Skarrrr!” Ingo looked beside him in time to see a purple dart crash into his chest with a purr. He coughed at the impact but felt his lips quiver upward,”Ah. Gligar, where is your companion?” At the question, Ingo heard the familiar buzz above his head and he raised his uninjured hand to lower the mangeton to eye level,”Hello to you too, Magenton.” They twirled one of their magnets as their way of waving while giving a low metallic hum. All three eyes creased upward happily and returned to floating around Ingo’s head.

He smiled, a small almost shy expression and picked up his shoddy attempt at carving. Gligar had taken it upon herself to bury her little body between Ingo’s tall coat collar and his neck, chirping happily with Magneton hovering leisurely beside them. He put his carving knife inside one of his inner coat pockets along with the figurine.

The skin around his right eye started to itch again. He twitched and ignored the urge to scratch at it. That too has been frequent since the dream. He had been ignoring the feeling and only scratching when it became unbearable, it was annoying to deal with and seemingly had no cure.

Whatever the case he began his trek back to his mountain cabin. He picked up local herbs and checked the traps he had set around as he did, Gligar coming out of her favorite hiding place to assist in carrying his week’s food. The sky was a scenic twilight, the rising sun blanketing the cold mountainside in a fiery orange like a charmander’s scales. The long shadows from the pines seemed to almost be reaching for Coronet’s peak, like greedy adventurers in search of gold-plated treasure.

Reaching his home, Gligar and Magneton let themselves in. The glider leapt off Ingo’s shoulder and soared into the kitchenette, holding a couple of dead magikarp by the tailfins the little beast managed to catch on the way by the stinger and landing gracefully on the counter edge. Magneton trilled happily as they hovered around the little old copper statuette of Lady Sneasler, little electric shocks bouncing off of metal. Ingo, after setting down the buneary from a nearby trap next to the magikarp, bent down to the abra who had immediately clung to his leg upon his entry,”Hello, Houdini. You been alright? I hope my temporary departure wasn’t too sudden.” He apologized.

The abra chittered reassuringly, tail wagging happily. Ingo chuckled and lifted the psychic-type to rest atop his hat, Houdini’s preferred spot. Gligar, who saw such action, clicked possessively, crawling up Ingo’s arm to try to shove Houdini off of Ingo. The warden was quick to pull Gligar off and cradle her in his arms,”No pushing others over the yellow line.” He reprimanded with a scowl.

Gligar pouted and stuck her tongue out in an attempt to placate her human friend. Ingo was unfazed however,”I mean it, Gligar. You cannot allow your jealousy to push you off track.” Gligar deflated and belatedly curled up in Ingo’s arms, settling for that if she can’t have his hat. He sighed and went to sit on the single chair of his abode’s small table. A table that should be bigger, his heart tells him, bigger to accommodate at least two other people. He taps the old worn wood with his finger, feeling Gligar shift sleepily into the crook of his elbow and Houdini lay all his weight on Ingo’s hat that squealed quietly like a wheeze.

Eventually he, too, found himself drifting off in the chair despite knowing this was the improper station for such. He didn’t bother to move though, conscious of Gligar’s pincers that would undoubtedly nip painfully at his sides for disturbing her rest. Perhaps today he won’t have dreams.

#ophi writes #ingo #pokemon ingo #submas ingo #subway boss ingo #subway master ingo #pokemon #subway bosses #pla rei #pla akari #legends arceus au #pokemon legends arceus #warden ingo #OMG FINALLY I HAVE THE FIRST CHAPTER DONE UGH 😭#now onto the next one 😈(save me)

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mynamesaplant · 1 year

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Love is a Cold Bowl of Soup (Part One)

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I've been working on this one for a bit. I hope you enjoy!! Thanks to Monsoon-of-Art for the beta! Don't want to read it on Tumblr? I have it on AO3!

Summary: Akari's been tasked to find some ingredients for soup and learns to ask for help from the people in her life.

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-Sootfoot root -Medicinal leeks -Vegetable broth -Moomoo milk -Wild garlic -Crunchy Salt -Pep-Up plant

Akari didn’t know exactly that the professor had in mind when he asked her and Rei to go find these things, but it seemed to be some sort of recipe. She followed in the wake of the man clad in Security Corp red, dividing her attention between the list and the path they trekked.

A grimace came to her face as she recalled the last time the professor had tried to be adventurous with foreign recipes and native ingredients. The poor captain had been sick for almost two days. Akari hadn’t fared too well herself, but she powered through like always.

Now the professor was on this new kick, and he was gleefully cryptic about it - needless to say, it worried everyone. They all knew Laventon meant well, but nobody wanted to be decommissioned by some toxic concoction.

Akari herself was already constructing her excuses. She was nervous about battling Ingo on the Path of Solitude (battling Ingo usually scared the daylights out of her- he was so tough!) and couldn’t stomach anything or Wanda had mysteriously disappeared again (Akari knew she would perform a vanishing act the second the noxious smell of whatever the professor was cooking wafted down the hall). It couldn’t be directly Pokémon related, because then the professor would be inclined to accompany the Survey Corps’ top member.

Akari’s breath began to pick up with a sharp incline that preceded that pass to the highlands basecamp. She was caked in mud from trudging through the marshes in search of some halfway decent Sootfoot. The professor said he needed about thirty or so.

“About this big.”

He had said, holding out his fist so she could get a sense of what he needed. The leeks had been easy. The fieldlands were teaming with them. Akari had also gathered the vegetables that Beni needed to make the professor’s broth. She had sent those back with some of the Security Corp as they were headed back to town, that way Beni could get started right away. With all his hemming and hawing, Akari was surprised he agreed at all, she had definitely heard him mumble something about how a new spate of food poisoning would affect business at the Wall Flower.

She couldn’t blame the old man, the influx of customers who were too terrified of any of the food served in Galaxy Hall usually meant they were streaming into his restaurant, which was good for business but bad for his back.

Akari’s eyes quickly flicked to the peak of Mount Coronet when they reached basecamp. She couldn’t help it. It was so strange to see the sky above it so empty. Not that she wasn’t glad that all she saw was blue sky, but it still made her chest tighten to think of all that happened up there.

Dialga and Palkia, Volo and Giratina - suddenly she was very conscious of the Arc phone resting heavily on her hip and its sudden weight made her shiver. Her invitation from the being who put her here was still fresh in her mind. Ever since she completed Cogita’s request to catch Enamorus, she had felt a draw toward the peak as her curiosity ate at her.

Why?

Why was she here? Why her? These questions still took up a corner of her mind, solid and unbearable to contemplate. Akari would lie very still at night and just stare above her without seeing. Not so much in Jubilife with a roof over her head. When she found herself under a blanket of stars, bathed in moonlight with a cool breeze rustling her unbound hair, she asked herself why and she could feel tears sting her eyes.

She asked an uncaring cosmos why she was here, and she was met with silence. A silent, dark phone. A dreamless, restless sleep. The silence spoke volumes, so Akari learned to stop asking… But not completely.

Her hands curled into fists as she refitted her pack and exchanged her Pokémon for ones that would be more suited to battles in the highlands. Akari’s selection included Samurott, Yanmega, Roserade, Froslass, Alakazam, and Arcanine. Samurott looked over her shoulder while Akari rummaged through the trunk containing her possessions, grabbing some extra balls and potions.

She was still trying to find some Cherrim to jump out at her from the trees and she might as well try to find as many shaking trees as possible while she was here. Last time she had come to the highland, she had spent over a month there trying to get Nosepass to jump out from ore deposits and had almost given up on multiple occasions.

Her Pokémon nudged her side carefully, doing his best not to gore her and his diligence earned him an affectionate scratch on the cheek. He grumbled his approval, offering her a playful nip which made her sour expression disappear. She thanked the Security Corp, returned her Samurott to the confines of his ball, and withdrew her flute from her belt.

The instrument had undergone a drastic change not too long ago. Although her fellow Galaxy Team members didn’t seem to notice anything strange in her flute, Akari brought it hesitantly to her lips and just as quickly lowered it.

Adaman had taught her how to use the Celestica flute, the wardens had guided her through the familiar melodies that all the Nobles seemed to respond to, but nobody taught her about this instrument. It still sounded like the original, the music still possessed its haunting and echoey tone, but this blue flute held no resemblance to the one she had been gifted.

Akari hadn’t shown a soul this new flute. She was afraid how any of them would react. She exhaled and brought the flute to her lips, playing Lord Wyrdeer’s song. Despite her hand placement feeling weird and the notes quivering with uncertainty, the lord of the field still answered her call. She could see him trotting up the pass, appearing out of the mist with a small bob of his great head, acknowledging Akari as she clambered up onto his back and patting his neck in reply. Without prompting, the noble took off in the direction of Wayward Cave.

The lady of the cliffs snickered, exchanging a few unintelligible words with Lord Wyrdeer right before he took his leave. Lady Sneasler tousled the girl’s hair and then summarily dumped Akari into her basket so she could haul the surveyor up and down the cliffs to collect salt. Akari really only needed a few chunks of salt, but she found the rocking motion soothing as Sneasler scrambled around the rock face with ease. She gave no direction after collecting all she needed and Sneasler chirped with delight when Akari gave her free reign to go where she wanted.

What was the professor going to make? It seemed to be some kind of soup, but no kind of soup she had ever heard of. Maybe it was Galarian or something? They had some very strange ideas about food and flavors sometimes… At the bottom of Clamberclaw Cliffs, she saw herself out of the basket and turned to thank the Pokémon, but the noble was already taking her leave. She did at least turn to acknowledge Akari’s announcement of thanks, dangling by one paw and snorted before hauling herself over the lip of the cliff.

On her own once again and suddenly not really in the mood to head back to any of the basecamps, Akari started wandering.

She wanted to keep her mind clear, forcing her eyes in front of her rather than on the looming peak above her. Looming was the right word, wasn’t it? It felt overbearing, like unseen eyes were burning into her and invisible hands were grabbing at her.

Come find me. Face me.

No.

Not yet.

She wasn’t ready.

Her work wasn’t done. The Pokédex was unfinished. So many people still needed her help. She folded her arms and half hunched, trudging along. She had fallen from the sky almost two years ago. She had almost resigned herself to the fact that Hisui was her home now.

Ingo had been here for seven years and still held a glimmer of hope that he might someday at least remember home. He held no delusions about returning. He had built his life, he cemented himself in his community, but he never quite gave up on the life he couldn’t quite recall.

Akari had done likewise.

She grew roots. People liked her. People relied on her. She couldn’t let them down… She sniffled, feeling her legs wobble because the weight of the world hadn’t been quite removed from her shoulders. It was a terrible burden.

“Why did you do this to me?”

She asked, voice trembling as badly as her shoulders with how hard she tried to hold in her sobs.

Akari tried so hard not to cry in front of others. Only a few people had caught her - she did her best to hide herself away when she got weepy - and they had tried to offer her comfort, tried to be supportive, but nobody really understood. Not the full extent of it. Akari couldn’t explain. She barely understood herself. An enigmatic force took her from her room in her pajamas and told her to complete a task. She was trying while more and more got piled on to her shoulders. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right!

Laventon had clucked sympathetically when she had burst into tears after learning she was tasked with dealing with Lord Kleavor. He wrapped an arm around her, offering her a clean handkerchief from his pocket that Akari took with shaking hands.

His presence at her side felt warm and comforting, like when she had a tough day and her mother wrapped up in her arms, kissing the top of her head while she murmured that it was okay. He still didn’t know this teenager well enough to provide her the comfort she really needed, but he tried. He was one of the few she actually sought out when things really started to weigh on her, but not recently.

Not with this.

Rei had nervously shifted on his feet when he found Akari crying in her bed, still in her sleepwear and hair a tangled mess. She had been up half the night tossing and turning, suffocating under the weight of her responsibility. He didn’t know what to say, but quickly obeyed when she barked out at him to get out, especially with her then team at the time (Dewott, Lopunny, Stunky, Staravia, Drifblim, and Tangela) bullying him out the door.

He waited outside and awkwardly slapped her on the shoulder, his encouraging smile more of a grimace than anything else. She had resolved at the time not to cry in front of anyone else, no matter how much it hurt. Not too long after that resolution, the sky began to bleed.

Mai had seen her cry when she had been banished and she tucked a strand of hair behind Akari’s ear while she tried to stave her own tears. She held the gasping girl tight and apologized over and over again.

The warden’s heart went out to this poor girl, but there was nothing she could do with her. Not directly. Mai was the first person to tell Akari she was sorry. Not a soul in Hisui had said it as earnestly as Mai had, and it only served to make her sob harder.

She just wanted someone to treat her like the kid she was for one damn second. Not a savior. Not an outsider. Just a teenager.

Akari had buried her face in Mai’s shoulder and just stayed with the warden until not a drop remained. There was nothing the clans could do for her. Akari took her leave. Volo found her not a few hours later.

Cogita knew the most about Akari’s situation, even without her telling the woman much. Akari got the impression that Cogita knew a lot more than she let on, just like Volo, and she was as transparent as she could be with the mysterious woman.

She had spoken to her gently, calling her ‘lost one’ but not unkindly. She offered Akari a cup of tea, just like the professor did on bad days, which only made her tears grow hotter in her anguish. The life she was trying to build for herself as she tried to make the best of her situation was so abruptly and harshly torn from her that she didn’t know what to do but cry in front of this perfect stranger.

Cogita had been sensible enough to give her some space but nudged the warm cup closer to her hands in a silent encouragement to drink.

When she had been granted permission to return to Jubilife and she was able to convince herself that she could come back in relative safety, Akari started battling at the dojo more often. She didn’t want to be caught off guard again and she reasoned that by having a strong body like Captain Zisu’s and strong Pokémon like Warden Ingo’s then she wouldn’t fear being banished again.

Not without a fight at least.

She found herself battling Ingo as often as she trained with Zisu. Akari wasn’t always victorious, but the warden was always aiming her towards victory.

After one particularly grueling battle, one that had seen the change from an orange dusk to a blue-black evening, Ingo had ended up as the victor.

Gliscor had made a beeline for his trainer, screeching happily with the outcome and Ingo chuckled, scrubbing the Pokémon’s cheeks before turning to Akari. Her face had been cast down, her Abomasnow lay a few feet away, but she made no move to return her or aid her Pokémon in any fashion. It was very unlike Akari.

Ingo had already launched into a rousing speech, but his words faltered as the number of inconsistencies started to add up in his mind. The girl’s hands were curled into shaking fists at her sides. Her shoulders were quivering. She bowed her head lower, trying in vain to scramble for a ball that her trembling fingers couldn’t manage to grip, only just managing to flip the lock on the ball to have her Pokémon return to her.

“Miss Akari?”

She cringed, jerking away like she was burned. Was she crying? Because she lost? She had never cried before, but this seemed different somehow.

Ingo did not consider himself a warm and fuzzy kind of guy, but something stirred in his mind when he saw young Akari crying and trying to hide that fact from him. She rubbed at her obscured eyes with her sleeve, trying to sniffle quietly - the sight felt oddly familiar.

He was frozen for a moment, a not so clear memory coming to him because he had done this. He had comforted someone else -someone very close to him- many times before his arrival to Hisui. He returned his Pokémon and reached Akari in two strides, he started to reach for her but hesitated.

“Come this way, Akari.”

Ingo coaxed her gently, hand extended. He didn’t want to grab her, despite the ghost of an impulse to hug her tightly seizing him, he knew not to infringe on other’s space like that. Not without permission. Akari looked up at him through tear flecked lashes, her mouth drawn into a tight grimace as she attempted not to burst into tears. She took his hand easily.

Zisu was on her break with the other dojo regulars at the Wallflower, so he ushered her inside the empty building and sat her on a bench. He resisted the urge to interrogate her, she would only rebuff him until she stormed away to seek the safety and privacy of her quarters.

She hid her face in her hands, body heaving with silent sobs with her shoulders tensed up by her ears. He asked her if it was okay to hold her and she jerked her head, making a small noise of assent. Tears dribbled from the cracks between Akari’s fingers - she didn’t even know what had brought on the sudden waterworks.

She felt a sudden weight being draped over her shoulders, it startled Akari enough to look up as the warden took a seat beside her.

His coat was sun bleached and torn, but still retained heat and deflected all sorts of precipitation well and she was grateful for it on this cool autumn evening. She drew the lapels in tighter and remained huddled there for a moment, keeping her eyes firmly on the ground. Ingo didn’t ask why.

He just let her cry and occasionally rubbed her back between shoulder blades in an encouraging sort of way, like he was silently telling her it was okay to cry.

It was okay to feel sad or overwhelmed or scared or whatever she was feeling. She was safe and he was there if she wanted to talk about it. Although, that thought hadn’t quite clicked for Akari yet as she hiccuped an apology.

“I’m sorry. I… I don’t know why I’m crying.”

“We don’t always have to know exactly why we feel a certain way. Just that we feel it and that we be allowed to express ourselves. You don’t have to apologize for it.”

The words had a soothing effect, she leaned against his side and Ingo didn’t budge. There was an old ache in his heart because he knew he shared a similar sentiment before.

The warden only left her side to light a few lanterns in the dark interior of the dojo and to brew some tea, otherwise Ingo remained steadfast at her side. The sound of brook running through Jubilife and the distant chirps of Kricketots harmonizing soothed the girl, eventually her breathing evened out and tear tracks down her cheeks had dried.

She thanked him.

She didn’t explain, but she thanked him for just being there for her.

There were no prying eyes this time, no one to bear witness to these tears. Nobody to console the girl that fell from the sky. They were kind, but it had taken so long to get there.

It had taken so long to feel safe when she was thrown into this situation. She had performed every painstaking task - she had the scars to prove each and every one. She endured and she had been thanked, but it didn’t feel like enough.

Did that make her selfish?

Did that make her petty?

Why should a seventeen-year-old have to consider such things?

A long snout nudged into her cheek. Her Samourott insisted for her attention, rumbling out his concern as he nosed her again. She felt something cool snuggling into one side and something thorny jabbing her other side, Froslass and Roserade offering their comfort.

Arcanine’s warm muzzle nudged her other cheek, whimpering and gently nipping at her hands to lick at her face.

Yanmega’s bristly, twig-like legs rested on her shoulders, his thorax running the length of her back, with every buzz of his wings making her vision blur.

Alakazam sat in front of her, the Pokémon’s hands extended Akari could see between her fingers, holding out for her to take hold of them. Samarott also started trying to nip at her hands, trying to pry her hands away, and finally Akari relented.

Her Pokémon surrounded her, and she felt a knot in her chest loosen. Air suddenly found its way into her lungs. The tightness in her throat eased. She was loved. Even so far away from her home, her true home, Akari was loved.

Her Pokémon loved her. They stuck by her through and through on this whole journey. They had their own scars to prove it. She was loved.

Irida and Adaman loved her. They risked everything to help her. They were like the older siblings she never had.

The captain loved her… In her own special way. When she got banished, the captain gave her the tools and encouragement necessary to save them all because she believed in Akari. She told the girl that she expected her back in one piece, which was probably the closest Akari would ever get to hearing motherly concern from her captain.

Professor Laventon loved her. He watched every moment of her progress with beaming pride.

Yes, it had hurt. It hurt that nobody seemed to trust her. It hurt that nobody seemed to have any sympathy for the teenager. It hurt that Arceus didn’t answer when she asked why.

It hurt to think that she would never see her mom again. Her best friend who she had made plans to go to lunch with next week. Her dad was going to visit from overseas next month. Her little Glameow she named Glitter.

Akari was allowed to mourn and cry and be upset about the injustice of it all, but she shouldn’t have to hide that pain.

When she resolved not to cry, to keep her pain to herself, she isolated herself from those around her.

How could they possibly understand?

Well, how could they understand unless she opened up and explained it to them? She had only ever done that with Cogita and the woman hadn’t overstepped her boundaries but she was wholly sympathetic to Akari’s case. How could she expect these people to understand if she didn’t give them the whole story?

Akari thanked all her Pokémon and returned them to their balls. She pushed the heels over her hands into her burning eyes and stood very still for a moment.

She had been wrong.

Trust is a two-way street, and she didn’t trust the Galaxy Team or the clans to understand her plight. She had never given them a chance.

“Still…”

Like all people who were trying to be emotionally vulnerable, Akari was hesitant to do so. She knew who to talk to first and she just so happened to have to make a delivery to him.

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