Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“The foxes are getting antsy,” Isepo notes as Gaeric lingers at the threshold.

The curtains of the yurt’s entrance rumble and growl under Gaeric's fingertips, despite the morning sunlight. It's windy outside. It's always windy these days. Howling. Almost enough for Gaeric to feel the cold, but only almost.

Gaeric huffs out a sigh. “You ever gonna say goodbye like a normal person?” he snarks. “You always have one more thing the exact moment I'm about to leave.”

“They're getting antsy,” Isepo repeats with too much certainty. “Stamping at the dirt. Digging.”

Gaeric lets out a half-conceding grunt. “They’re still pissy about the turnout last ghost season. Can't blame them. They got cucked out of the feast of their afterlives.”

“You think Ingo could wrangle them to help with our hunting parties?” Isepo wonders.

“Don't even joke,” Gaeric uneasily demands. “The way things are going, we might actually need something like that. Gods knows if we've even got enough to tide us over as is.”

Isepo pokes at the fire. “The clans will live,” he decides. “We always have.” He scoffs. “You and your fucking heretics nonwithstanding.”

“Who are you calling a heretic, heretic?” Gaeric jokingly challenges.

“Bastard.”

“Whoreson.”

“Dog fucker.”

Gaeric snorts, parting the curtain. “Alright, alright, I'll be seeing you.”

Isepo waves his hand flippantly. “And check the rift rods on your way back!” he shouts after Gaeric. “The blasted things might be falling over while the winds are throwing their damn tantrums.”

Gaeric lets out a flat hum as he leaves Isepo's yurt. His Froslass and Glalie are waiting for him outside, and the frigid fog of his breath mixes with theirs in the cold, cold air. “Right, then,” he mutters to himself, rolling his shoulders and hopping in place. He lets out a harsh puff of air and claps his hands together. “Come on! Let's go!”

Gaeric's boots mutedly crunch against the snow smothered underbrush of Heart’s Crag as he jogs through the sparse forest. Wormadams sway in their treeside perches as he passes, nostrils quivering in cloaks of dead leaves, shed furs. His hand thunks dully against the crackling hollow of a dead log when he swings his legs over it, and soil-covered Snorunts cling to themselves as they scuttle out of the underside. A dull-coated Raichu, still fat with the lingering bounty of autumn, startles at his presence, the fleeing kick of its powerful legs digging up the dirt at its feet. The sudden smell of petrichor is sharp in Gaeric's lungs, clinging to his nostrils with the cold.

A whisper forms in the back of his mind, and Gaeric's arm hooks around a tree, skidding his pace to a harsh stop. His eyes dart towards his Froslass. Noko places a delicate white finger to her hooked, jagged beak, hooded blue eyes shrewd as her gaze flicks behind him. Gaeric's body stills, then swivels in place, as he sinks down to a crouch, hand held out at his side in a motion for his Glalie to do the same. Slackjaw’s eyes burrow into his back as he turns his head towards Noko’s cue. A gaggle of Ralts, white as the snow around them save for their green and pink crests, the long tufts on their legs trailing into the ground like a child’s dress. An alpha Gardevoir kneels in the middle, her feathery skirt pooling at her feet as if she were a bride awaiting her husband. Her round head lolls, doll-like, flaming eyes peering languidly towards his hiding spot. 

The alpha’s gaze is heavy, heady, impossible to escape. As she lingers in his direction, a pressure starts building in the back of Gaeric's eyes, and he stamps down the reflexive panic rising in himself and his two ghostly companions. She is only looking. It is not her fault that she has been touched. His mouth flattens as the sweeping weight of her psychic scrutiny washes over him, and he stiffly bows his head in deference. The Gardevoir’s long lashes flutter shut and she turns away.

Gaeric lets out a wheezing breath. He tries not to be seen running away from the scene too quickly, lest she be interested enough to take chase. (Speed but not haste, as Ingo always says.)

As he finds the river, ice moves to meet his footsteps, whistling and crackling as he skates across its surface, his body made weightless by Noko’s hands. The murky shadows of Basculin swim just beneath the surface, and he hears the wingflaps of a Braviary or two in the sky overhead. A good sign, he thinks. He might come back here some other time to fish. He could use the leather. His boys are about old enough to learn about tanning, now that he thinks of it. There's a plan. He'll take them ice fishing, the next time they come to visit, and he'll teach them how to tan leather. It's about time they start learning some proper field skills. They're picking up medical knowledge just fine, but it'd be good for them to have options. It's more practical than way.

Past the river, wind whistles lowly amidst the glacial remains of kami past, the ancient flesh and bone that makes up the landscape of Avalugg's Legacy. A bloom of Drifloons buffet about him as his path cuts through their aimless drifting. Gaeric leaps between the shallow ice peaks of the dune-like landscape, laughing with the force of the impact whenever his rolling landings collide too harshly with the ground below. Swinubs snuffle curiously through the soil, their coarsely furred bodies powdering with white as they dig for roots and seeds. He'll have to trap a new one for Mita soon, so she doesn't have to borrow Seta’s again the next time she needs to go foraging. Though Gaeric did already lend her Futon, to keep the house a little warmer through little Arnon and Amalthea's first winter. The Typhlosion does have some Swinub in him. Knowing her, Mita’s probably already put the lazy little fucker to work. Hah. He deserves it.

The Galaxy Team's outpost is within a reasonable distance of the rift rods Isepo hasn't checked yet, so Gaeric stops by there to rest. Looks like there's some new faces in the Security Corps- new to the Icelands, at least, seeing the way they gawk at his state of dress. The ones who've already been here for a while don't even blink anymore. He uses his dried provisions, and the generous fire available to him, to make a quick stew as Slackjaw helps the soldiers clear out the snow on the surrounding road. Gaeric listens in on the guard’s reports while Noko repairs the ephemeral shroud of the Aurora Veil clinging imperceptibly to him like a trick of the light.

She's fussing, of course. It could have waited until they got back to Icepeak Arena. She's just been a bit antsy ever since what happened to Ingo a few months back. Gaeric wouldn't be surprised if she nearly kidnaps the poor man next time he remembers to visit, stubbornly clinging to him until every last thread of his coat is woven with her protection. Wouldn't that be a sight? Ingo would walk away shining more than he already does and no one would know why. It'd be a little funny, at least, to watch him politely protest Noko’s loving insistence, as if Gaeric's dear partner was no different than Lady Sneasler suddenly deciding her Warden needs to be groomed.

Keaka reveals himself as one of the outpost guards, toasting dough on a stick before the fire in exchange for a share of Gaeric's stew. The man asks after the icy Vulpix he left in Gaeric's care last year, and Gaeric reports that it's grown into a strong Ninetales, a dutiful guard for Lord Avalugg's brood of Bergmites and a fine sibling for Gaeric's children. When Noko is done restitching the Aurora Veil and readjusting it invisibly over Gaeric's body, Slackjaw's smug mouth is full of fresh snow, frost clinging to his chin like a scraggly beard. Gaeric's laughter at the sight is harsh and graveled in his throat. 

They set off once more to look after the rift rods that the outpost could not. As Isepo had guessed, some of them are sliding out of alignment or listing to the side due to the shifting integrity of the soil. Their wooden bases creak as he ties ropes to them, pulling them back up into place. The jarring sound startles some Murkrows out of hiding- one, two, three in a row, taking to the air and followed by a staggered fourth. Winter's too-soon sunset bleeds a red sky under paintbrushed clouds. Red sky at night- the fishermen out working today will like that. Whatever lover’s spat has been tearing across the winds today, it will be gone by morning, and leave gentleness on their sails. Even now, it’s already starting to dissipate. The howl winding down to a gentler, more melodic sound. Almost humming. Hm-mm hm-m-mm… hm mm.

He’s nearly wandered out into the Bonechill Wastes, fitting these eccentric contraptions back into their proper places. If he doesn’t get a move on, it’ll be nightfall before he makes it back to his own bed. With song on the wind and the light of the setting sun at his left, he turns and walks to
With song on the wind and the light of the setting sun at his left, he turns and walks to
 With song on the wind and the light of the setting sun at his left, he turns and walks to
   With song on the wind and the light of the setting sun at his left, he turns and walks to
      With song on the wind and the light of the setting sun at his left, he turns and walks to
With with with with with with               
                                                  the light of        , he 
 turns 
   turns 
     turns 

         turnsturnsturnsturnsturnsturnsturnsturnsturns,

There’s someone screaming. He doesn’t recognize the voice. He- he should do something. Help them. Run to them. The screaming turns to pleading 

turns to begging 

turns to crying 

turns to bargaining 

turns to 

turns to 

turns turns turns

Someone is holding him, and they are cold. Gaeric supposes that makes sense, it would be stranger if they weren’t cold, but this cold, he can feel it, can feel it in his ribs and his mouth and his throat and the noise, oh the noise,

He is laying on the ground, looking up. The sky is beautiful and there are twice as many stars. It should be quiet. Peaceful, he thinks, peaceful like frostbitten corpses under avalanche snow but the avalanche is beating against his ears and it won’t STOP

The screaming is back, now. No, no, this is different, a different voice- Oh, he thinks. That’s me. It’s cold. It’s so cold. I can’t even remember the last time I was this cold. Where’s Futon? Should he- ah, right, he’s with Mita. That’s good. That’s good. He hasn’t stopped screaming, but why would he be screaming? He’s safe, he’s safe, he is loved he is forever he is alive he will not die so long as I will it and

Oh. That’s why. It hurts.

What hurts? Gaeric asks himself. Nothing, he thinks.

EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING, MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP PLEASE IT HURTS IT HURTS I CAN’T THINK PLEASE PLEASE I CAN’T STAND IT MAKE IT STOP PLEASE MAKE IT STOP, he thinks, because there is ICE AND SNOW AND COLD AND PAIN AND nothing, it’s alright, everything’s okay. you’re gonna be okay, my dear, I promise it with all I am and all I ever will be and

pressure like a vice holding him in place and holding him shut so he does not slip like the meat that he is and IT HURTS LIKE WEIGHT THAT BUILDS INSIDE AND DEMANDS TO BE FREED LEST IT BURST THROUGH FLESH AND BONE AND ORGANS AND MEAT AND-

Gaeric kneels in the snow as frigid arms hold him together like twine around 

MEAT, and tries to breathe, but the air is so cold, cold enough that it feels like his tongue is a raw fish left to dry until it’s hardened into jerky unrecognizable as 

MEAT, cold enough that each exhale feels like it’s drilling holes in his lungs, like the little Swinub that dig-and-dig-and-dig until they are satisfied that they have found safety and protection to live another winter as a living thing and not dead 

MEAT for a predator. He chokes on his own saliva as it turns to ice in the frigid air, dripping on the snow and melting through it like acid. His tongue feels too big for his mouth, like it’s swollen, and his teeth are chafing against the 

MEAT of his cheeks until they break through and let the cold air in. Some distant part of him wonders if he should be scared. Another part of him is screaming in agony. Gaeric thinks he might be hungry. Perhaps Mita’s made something nice for him? They can’t be using too much, what with the cold of winter bearing down, but his dear wife has always had such a way of making the most delectable meals out of mere scraps of discarded MEAT 

-the pressure won’t stop, 

 and it’s building, 

  and building, 

   and he thinks it will kill him and he thinks it’s already killed him but if he’s dead then why does it HURT SO MUCH-

Gaeric can’t tell if the crunching and crackling is ice or bone, or if there’s even a difference anymore, as the heat of his breath burns away his own flesh and MEAT. He places a hand on his stomach to feel his own skin stretched and distended from the pressure pressure pressure, until it SNAPS AND BURSTS, AND HE IS FLAYED AND OPENED AND BEAUTIFUL HANDS PULL HIM APART AND for 

a moment, just a moment, the pressure ceases and he can breathe, and each exhale dissolves what little skin remains caked onto ice-cold ribs that flex like joints, but it returns, worse than before, in his eyes, in his gut, in his mouth, in his teeth, and if I rip them out will it stop

if I gouge out my eyes like pechas, will it stop,

 if I claw my manhood to shreds, will it stop,

  if I tear open my gums and tongue, will it stop,

   if I pluck out my teeth one by one, will it stop,

     if I-

No, says the gentlest voice. No. It will be over soon, and you will live.

Her hands cover his as he reaches for his face and thick claws (his? hers?) rip through frozen flesh to give way to nubs like infant teeth that break through an icy skull to reveal horns of black obsidian, and he screams and writhes and spasms because IT’S TOO MUCH, IT’S TOO MUCH, IT HURTS, IT HURTS, PLEASE, MAKE IT STOP, IT HURTS, 

YOU WILL LIVE-YOU WILL LIVE-YOU WILL LIVE-YOU WILL LIVE

And then there is something new.

Something different.

There is hunger.

Gaeric is lifted onto wobbling feet (by himself? By them? Who is them? Who is him?) as the constant constant constant PAIN intertwines itself with with with withwithwithwith MEAT but the meat is gone and all that remains is ice and cold and bone and hunger and

Gaeric feels hot tears pour down his face, and they burn like fire, and his jaw hangs open, unhinged and crowded with tusks and fangs, salivating at the mere thought of MEAT, 

bitter malice foaming white like frost. He needs to eat. He needs to eat he needs to EAT he needs to EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT, 

AND THERE IS PAIN BURSTING FROM HIS ARM AS HE TEARS AT IT WITH TEETH THAT DON’T FIT, 

AND WHEN GENTLE HANDS TRY TO PULL HIM AWAY HE FIGHTS, HE LURCHES, HE SLAMS THIS BODY INTO THE GROUND 

AND BITES DOWN EVEN HARDER WHEN THE ARM, HIS ARM, IS PULLED FROM HIS MOUTH AND REPLACED WITH A

neck

It’s okay, she says, a crooning smile creasing her eyes. I love you.

He pulls away, but it’s too late, and there is something like meat hanging from his mouth as her loving hands card through his hair, smoothing each knot and tangle like it’s the most important thing in the world, and something in Gaeric breaks because he is HUNGRY and all he can see is MEAT AND HE IS HUNGRY AND THERE IS MEAT AND HE IS HUNGRY AND

GENTLE, TENDER SHREDS OF GHOSTFIRE, COLD AS ICE, ARE TORN ASUNDER AS OBSIDIAN TUSKS ROOT THROUGH A BODY TORN OPEN IN SEARCH OF 

SOMETHING, 

SOMETHING MORE THAN THE WISPS OF CLOTH HE GORGES HIMSELF ON,

SOMETHING TO SOOTHE THE PRESSURE AND THE HUNGER, AND HE IS BITING AND BITING AND BITING, 

HE IS EATING AND SOMETHING EATS HIM, UNTIL HE DOES NOT KNOW WHERE ONE ENDS AND THE OTHER BEGINS, BUT IT DOES NOT MATTER BECAUSE HE IS SO SO HUNGRY AND HE CANNOT STOP UNTIL THE PRESSURE ABATES AND

and

What is this? wonders what remains of Gaeric, bloodied claws softly cupping a dripping dripping dripping glob of light and meat and 

Take it. Take me. Feast, and feast, and be sated when I fill you, because I love you and I love to live

and the thought is gone before it can ever finish, because the thing is in his mouth already and

It fills his entire throat with oil, like the thickness of honey and the heaviness of broth, salt and sweet and bitter and raw. There is no comfort here, no gentleness, because even the dead will fight to live. Blood and heme pooling like a nosebleed as he chokes on the gore of something that is made of the same thing he is, like a tumor that must be excised with precision because it is made of the same flesh that surrounds it. This, too, must be met with care and caution as it threatens to bind to his lungs and nose until there is nothing left- but even as he struggles and stumbles, it goes down his throat.

It’s the most wonderful thing he’s ever tasted, and Gaeric is laughing. He needs more. Teeth like obsidian and bones like ice give way to newfound strength as the second ghost willfully concedes to his boundless joy, his claws gouging out the soft flesh of its tongue as he fills his stomach with icy meat, as the pressure behind his eyes and teeth and skull fades in the face of a lust for life-

I am alive, he rapturously realizes, and I love to live.

Somewhere, a god wails with grief. Something wearing Warden's clothes gazes, entranced and alone, into a blanket of eternally frost, and starts walking.

Let me show you, he wordlessly sings out, as the second soul slides down his throat like blood and oil and iron and life. As his flaming eyes alight upon a lone Ralts, its white down blending into the powdery snow that coats the ground. Let me show you how happy I am.

Chapter Text

A teenaged boy with bushy eyebrows, glasses, and a Survey Corps cap floats out of the human sea of Diamond Clan uniforms, and a Kalosian accent booms out of him as he points at Rei and Akari. “YOU!”

Akari smiles and waves innocently. “Hi, Bellamis!”

“YOU DID THIS TO ME!” Bellamis accuses.

“No, I don't think I did!” Akari simply refutes. “I think it was mostly your father, actually!”

Bellamis’ shout turns into an undignified creak. “You didn't tell me that all of Adaman's servants were going to be GIRLS!” 

Rei snickers.

“EVERY DAY I WAKE UP!” Bellamis snaps, face red. “EVERY DAY I WAKE UP SURROUNDED BY MYSTERIOUS WOMEN, AND I CAN'T ESCAPE THEM! IT'S MORTIFYING!”

Akari puts a hand on her hip and chidingly wags her finger. “Well, how do you think Adaman feels being surrounded by girls at work all the time? Have some empathy!”

A dark look crosses Bellamis' face. “I think he is perverted.”

Rei clutches his stomach and bursts into laughter.

“Your stoicism wounds me, Rei,” Bellamis flatly says. “Wounds me, I tell you.”

“Yeah, Rei, we're not here to point and laugh at our coworkers-” Akari frowns. “Well, former coworkers. Are we still coworkers when one of us is a diplomatic hostage?”

“I still go to work, Akari,” Bellamis points out. “Thanks to the radio station, I can take the Professor’s jobs for the area and report back with the findings. I just live here instead of with my roommates in Jubilife.” He jokingly glares at Rei. “My roommates in Jubilife who laugh at my suffering.”

It’s been about two months now since the clans, Jubilife, and the people of Lucario converged for Snowcrown. For all the normal everyday folk, it was the biggest winter festival Hisui has seen in years- but for the leaders of those people, it was a long and tense diplomatic discussion, forcibly hammering out how they can collectively prepare for the coming frenzies of the year. Most crucially, it was a discussion of what these different people owed each other. What kinds of old debts they can pull on for this and that favor, what someone can demand in exchange for goodwill and good trade. 

One of the many concessions made in that war room was a hostage exchange. A measure to prevent everyone from threatening each other when the situation inevitably becomes dire. The people from Lucario gave up a swatch of their more experienced aura masters for the ongoing crisis efforts in exchange for being able to install diplomats in the other settlements, able to witness and weigh in on important decisions. As for the clans and village, however, they gave each other a selection of their most important members and children. Kamado's son, Bellamis, who worked in the Survey Corps, was chosen as one such exchange. He's been living in Lord Adaman's chashi complex as a personal guest of the Diamond Clan ever since.

“To be fair, Rei could use a little bit of a laugh,” Akari teases, “considering recent events. Isn't that right, Rei?”

“No,” Rei responds, just a little too quickly. 

Akari's smile is squinting and wide. “You know what Rei’s been up to these past months, Bellamis? He's been running away from a scary woman that wants to turn him into a bird-”

“That's not what happened-”

“-and then he got this super embarrassing tattoo-”

“-and that's also not what happened!”

Bellamis snorts. “Is this what becomes of you when you run out of gods to fight?” he rhetorically asks. “Getting embarrassing tattoos just to feel something?”

“It's not a tattoo!” Rei defends. He pauses. “Okay, it's kind of a tattoo, but it's not like I did it for fun!”

Bellamis leans forward with interest. “Well, now I have to know, mon ami, what sort of tattoo is it?”

Rei hands his hat to Bellamis, stows his glasses in his pack, then undoes the tie keeping his Survey Corps uniform snugly in place, shrugging it off of his shoulders before peeling off his protective black undershirt. Runic lines in wine reds and wyrmwind blues encircle his wrists, elbows, and joints, while swirling whirlpools of triangles slither around his heart. But the biggest centerpiece is on his back. This grey and white creature has been drawn onto him. Its shape is foggy, formless, and yet… almost as if someone had painted their own hand between Rei's shoulders, upside down, and left the thumb to trail off like smoke. Its nails are golden, legs bent at insectoid angles as it rears up like a Rapidash, pinprick green and red eyes peering out of the black void haloing its non-existent maw, the palm of its body backed by the shining arc of Sinnoh.

“It's not for forever,” Rei explains. “We found, um-” His hand fidgets at a growing white streak of hair that's no longer hidden by his hat, nervous grey eyes flickering with an odd green sheen. “Warden Ingo put it there, it's to keep me from- it's not for forever, it's just until I'm older. It's… to keep me safe.”

“From what?” Bellamis wonders.

“God,” Rei simply says.

He puts his layers of uniform back on and fails to elaborate.

“Yeah, it turns out he's a little bit cursed,” Akari says, also failing to elaborate. “So he's getting all sorts of preventative measures before the frenzies start up again. Like turning into a bird!”

“The aura masters are teaching me some stuff,” Rei clarifies. “Me and Ronin can see out of each other now! We can kind of talk to each other without, uh, talking-”

“And you turn into a bird!” Akari helpfully adds.

“I don't turn into a bird,” Rei insistently corrects. “Me and Ronin just kind of look like each other when we do it.”

“And it looks like a bird,” Akari stage whispers to Bellamis.

To that, Rei maturely starts making mocking chirping noises, pecking Akari's face with his hands. 

Akari scrunches her face into her scarf. “Ack! Egads! The fowl creature yet takes possession of him! See how he lays his injurious hand upon my innocent personage!”

“Laventon will be devastated to hear of your passing,” Bellamis snarks.

“MY BEAUTY! MY INNOCENCE!”

Bellamis’ baffled laughter at Rei’s playful assault of Akari's face cuts short as his Talonflame suddenly drops from the sky to land on his arm- eyes wide, feathers ruffled with unease. And then they hear it. The distinctive high clarity of a Celestica flute. Rei and Akari follow close behind as Bellamis pushes his way through the settlement, to the crowd now gathering around the central standing stone.

“Abba!” Despite the Diamond Clan uniform on Edric’s body, there's still a headband of the Pearl Clan's almighty Sinnoh pushing back his powder pale hair, revealing the open excitement on his face as he drags an equally enthusiastic Alric along with him, bumping Bellamis aside along the way. “Abba! Over here!”

The two Highlands Wardens, Ingo and Melli, are engrossed in a murmuring and stony-faced conversation with Lord Adaman as the two children break past the line of onlookers. Alric's short and stocky body barrels into Ingo's legs before Adaman's ladies-in-waiting can stop him, prompting a startled grunting noise to echo mutedly in the older Warden’s throat.

“We're so sorry, Warden-” One of Adaman's servants bows her head profusely, one hand gripped harshly on Edric's arm as she pulls him back. “We couldn't catch them in time, we didn't realize they would just-”

And then Ingo’s eyes blow wide with joy as he laughs, arms outstretched- one hand clapping repetitively at Alric's back, the other pulling Edric close before the boy can be dragged off. He presses the two of them into his body, rocking against them with shameless fondness and adoration, like he hasn't seen them in years. Then again, that's how it's always been with Ingo whenever he meets up with someone again. Either he never knew they were gone, or he hasn't seen them since as long as he can remember. In his wake, though, alongside the pokemon he keeps for Lady Sneasler's entourage, is a party of clan hunters, Diamond and Pearl both, dragging sleds upon sleds of corpses- pokemon ones, the three Survey Corps members silently realize with no small measure of relief. At first, the haul that reveals itself seems normal enough for a hunting expedition- Paras, Psyduck, Stantler, the odd Rapidash or two, various sundry fish like Magikarp and Barboach. But then there's Ursarings. Zubats. Gliscors. Drapions. Things hunters either wouldn't dare hunt or wouldn't even look for in the first place if there were other options. And these bodies are… pristine. Weirdly unblemished. There's not a single death wound in sight on any of these pokemon.

With Ingo thoroughly distracted by his children, Lord Adaman approaches Warden Calaba, who is being carefully observed by her Lord Ursaluna while she dissects a Crobat. The bones in its pristine, unblemished body are broken. Every bone that could have been subjected to movement has been twisted by its own muscles until it cracked. The wings. The spines. The neck. Its muscles are bruised, where bone shards dig into meat. 

“Electrocution,” Calaba clinically mutters under her breath. “We did not lay a hand on a single one of these poor creatures. We came to retrieve them before they rotted where they stood, and left before the wrath that slayed them could find us again.”

Adaman’s brow twists with fear. “No,” he tremulously insists. “No, no. This can’t be happening.” His calm, hospitable voice shakes. “Not now. Not so soon. We were supposed to have until winter’s end, we knew we had until winter’s end! How can this be happening? It’s barely spring!”

“No, my Lord Adaman,” Calaba gravely, sadly corrects. “It is already spring.”

“Send for Lady Irida,” Adaman demands of someone beside him, face turning pale. His voice grows stronger, louder. “Someone who can teleport, send for Lady Irida, send for the Wardens, all of them! I need them here now!”

“My Lord,” a lady-in-waiting nervously frets, “to pull the Wardens away from their posts like this- we must think of their other duties, what would Warden Mai-”

Adaman suddenly slams his fist against the standing stone. “ALMIGHTY SINNOH SAVE ME FROM MY SISTER’S SIMPERING SERVANTS!” he frustratedly shouts, a discordant roar boiling in the back of his throat. “LORD ELECTRODE HAS STRUCK HALF A MOUNTAIN DEAD WHERE IT STANDS! WE ARE FAR BEYOND DUTY, AND I AM YET YOUR LORD! DO I BRAY AND BARK SO UNREASONABLY THROUGH MY CHAINS THAT EVEN NOW YOU DENY ME?” He steps forward, hand swept wildly with anger, and the lady flinches. “YOU INSOLENT-”

The air snaps as the white tassels of a black sleeve rattle into existence at Adaman’s side, and a gloved hand, tense with ghostfire, bites down unyieldingly on his wrist before anyone can find out where it was meant to land. Ingo’s glass bright eyes are as still as stone and his face is empty.

“Instigation of physical violence between passengers, and any threats thereof, are expressly forbidden on all branches of the Unovan Rail and all corresponding railway stations,” Ingo blankly, politely says. “As per Unovan law, and the agreements set between the Unovan Rail and its respective worker’s union, any and all railway staff in a managerial position are expressly forbidden from the use of intimidation as worker punishment or incentive to compliance.” His hand tightens. “You will either remove yourself from these tracks posthaste, sir, or report truthfully on which of these violations I remove you from this car.”

“I-” Adaman's face reddens as his voice floods with shame. “I wasn't- I wouldn't-”

“Yes. You will not.” Ingo's voice quiets as his hand eases its grip. “You will not.”

“I- I'm sorry,” Adaman stammers out. His eyes flick towards the lady-in-waiting. “It is not my right to lay any hand on you. I would never lay any hand on you. You have tried your best to weather a man you were never intended to serve. Forgive me that I speak out of anger.” He does not even try to meet Ingo’s eyes. “I'm sorry you have to see me fall so far, Fox. It shames you to know me.”

Ingo gives no answer to that particular assertion one way or another, simply letting out a terse hum as his hands fall to clasp Adaman's. “Aza,” he calls out instead, “attend to our distressed passenger’s request, and ferry anyone else the still-absent Wardens may require.” As Aza crackles away, Ingo turns to the lady-in-waiting. “You. What is your name?”

“I-” The shaking of the lady's shoulders subsides. “Atuy, Warden.”

Ingo's voice is gentle. “Atuy, passenger. That was very frightening, what just happened to you. Are you alright? Do not lie for anyone else's sake.”

“Y-yes,” Atuy stammers. “Yes, Warden, I am alright. Thank you.”

“Do you know how to operate the radio in the chashi complex?” Ingo asks her.

“Yes, Warden,” Atuy repeats.

“Listen closely, Atuy,” Ingo measuredly says, “it is very important. You will radio the Highlands Camp, Mountain Camp, and Summit Camp, and you will tell them that the Wardens are ordering them to stay where they are. This is an evacuation order. It is not safe for them to attempt departure on their own. They will keep watch, they will not leave their outposts, and they will wait for someone to retrieve them. Do you understand? Repeat it back to me.”

“The Highlands Camp, the Mountain Camp, the- the Summit Camp,” Atuy haltingly echoes. “The Wardens are giving an evacuation order. The camps will keep watch, not leave their outposts, and will wait for someone to retrieve them. It is not safe for them to try and leave on their own. They must stay where- where they are.”

“Bravo, passenger,” Ingo easily praises, voice soft. “You are doing very well. Report back to us when you have finished your task.” He does not quite turn towards Adaman again, but his hands have not left the Diamond Clan leader, and his voice turns firm once again. “Warden.”

Adaman takes a wheezing, trembling breath. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I-”

“Warden,” Ingo repeats, kindly but firmly nonetheless. “This is not a time to contemplate your competence. You have received our report of the situation, you have dictated our next steps, and they are being carried out. Those you have summoned will arrive here soon, and it is you who must face them.” The side of his curled hand moves up against Adaman’s chin, forcing the younger man’s chastened gaze upward. “Lift your head. Turn your eyes towards our shared tracks, speak with certainty, and steel your heart. This is no place for your Ideals to die.”

Adaman stands up a little straighter and queasily nods his head. Ingo’s stony expression eases.

“Giver take me,” Bellamis baffledly whispers to Rei, “this is the man who’s been so taken with you? The one who’s been teaching you?”

Akari laughs drily. “I see the Ingo enjoyment has finally kicked in.”

“I didn’t realize,” Bellamis murmurs into his mouth. “I knew he had knowledge, of course, and of course that is respectable in and of itself, but I didn’t realize he was so… striking, I suppose.”

Rei frowns. “I don’t get it. He’s literally nice. What’s so weird about that?”

“Rei,” Bellamis slowly says, “I just watched a man- who I know for a fact did not fully know when or where he is, or what the clans have to do with each other- pinpoint and defuse a clan leader’s anger the moment he saw it emerge, and do it in such a way that no one has walked away the least bit slighted for it.”

“I keep telling you he’s my favorite guy and you never believe me,” Akari reminds him.

“You don’t understand,” Bellamis stresses. “Even if Lord Adaman never intended to hurt that woman, there was no way for him to rescind his anger in front of everyone else without appearing emotionally unstable or overly controlled by his own staff. And if he was caught abusing his own entourage, the entourage that was meant for his far more popular sister, it would not matter the circumstances. It would not matter even if he was goaded into it. Warden Ingo just identified and prevented a treaty dissolving coup in seconds.” He laughs uneasily. “Ben voyons! Why is this man a Warden?”

Rei shrugs. “He’s literally nice.”

=#[o]#=

“Warden!” Gaeric cheerfully calls out.

Ingo’s eyes brighten. “Ah! Warden, hello-” He catches sight of the pokemon at Gaeric’s side and his tone instantly floods with discontent. “Warden.”

“I told you he hates that fucking thing, Gaeric,” Mita teases. “Him and half the damn island along with him!”

Gaeric just laughs, hands on his hips as his face wrinkles with mirth. “Well, that’s just unfair, isn’t it, old Fox? What did Yamanobori ever do to you?”

“You and I both know full well that your impulse-bought Vulpix is the least of my ires, meyn shneyele,” Ingo growls.

Gaeric’s eyebrows raise with challenge. “Is that so? Not even after I taught her to open doors, the clever girl?”

“Alas, Warden, our-” Ingo pauses for a few moments too many as his line of sight slides away from Gaeric’s eyes and down the man’s throat. “-warrior’s bond,” he belatedly continues, “prevents me from feeling any vitriol towards the hapless creature that I could not simply carry for you instead.”

Mita snickers under her breath. “Warriors bond- oh, is that what we’re calling it these days?”

“However,” Ingo continues, voice gaining renewed vitriol as he points at the metallic, Delibird-shaped, toyetic abomination zooming around Gaeric’s feet, “my feelings towards this dubiously legitimate lifeform are nothing short of contempt.”

The Iron Bundle rams into Gaeric’s legs. Gaeric simply laughs again, utterly unmoved, then picks its vibrating body up off the ground with one hand. “What, Kissaki?”

“Wyrfaln take me, you’ve named it,” Ingo wearily groans.

“He’s just a silly thing!” Gaeric insists, bouncing it in his arms like a child. “He’s like a little boy!”

[WHEN I GROW UP, I WANNA BE AN ASTRONAUT!] Kissaki chirps.

“I do not respect the infernal mechanism,” Ingo insists. “I additionally do not respect that you’ve given it traditional Hisuian tattoos. I strongly feel it is an insult to life itself.”

“You said that the first time I showed a Rhyperior to you,” Gaeric points out.

Ingo scoffs. “My opinion on Rhyperiors also still stands.”

Gaeric mockingly waggles Kissaki’s arm-like wings at Ingo. “My opinion on Rhyperiors also still stands- ah, fuck off!”

Ingo’s frown melts with a rising, rumbling chuckle.

“You left me with this thing, hardass!” Gaeric ribs, opening his arms to let Kissaki fall back to the ground and continue terrorizing Noko, Slackjaw, and the entire Diamond Clan settlement. “It’s not my fault I can’t be psychologically tortured without my consent despite your best efforts. You conniving bony fuck.”

“Your wife is present, Warden,” Ingo warns, “have some tact.”

Mita’s smile is absolutely and inappropriately pleased with herself. “Don’t you dare stop on my account. It’s so exciting when you piss each other off.”

Ingo lets out a harsh click from his fangs and forcefully pulls down his hat, mouth twitching.

“Now you’ve gone and done it,” Gaeric drily says to Mita. “You’ve made him shy.”

“I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT AND I’VE NEVER MET YOU PEOPLE BEFORE IN MY LIFE, GOOD SIR!” Ingo suddenly booms. “HELLO, MR. WARDEN GAERIC, SIR! HOW’S THE WIFE? HOW’S THE FAMILY?”

“Hey, hey, you can’t pull that bit with me!” Gaeric barks. “I’m older than that bit!”

“I’M BEING ACCOSTED!” Ingo says as he turns on his feet and walks the other way. “I’M BEING ACCOSTED IN THE STREET BY STRANGERS AND I DO NOT KNOW THEM!”

“Oh, I see how it is,” Mita rakishly smiles as she follows in his footsteps, voice dropping to a private murmur as she draws close, “when I just want to talk, it’s strangers accosting you in the street, but when you’re begging me hat in hand to wind you out of your mind it’s-”

Ingo cuts Mita’s sentence off with a wavering and comically tremulous giggle.

Gaeric’s eyebrows raise as his smile widens with ill intent. “What was that, Warden?”

“Y-y-you- youuuu,” Ingo disjointedly stammers out as his hand shakes in Mita’s direction, “are- are- are chief among the ill ranks of the women I have- have ever known and you drive your husband to evil. Begone from my sight, doctors! We’re nearly at the time for Lord Adaman’s war table, do you have nothing better to do?”

“Already ended,” Gaeric reminds him. “You were there for that.”

“Ah!” Ingo squeaks out. “So I was!” With that, he whistles sharply for his train, and motions for Lady Sneasler to rise from her sunbathing and come towards him. “Well, as horrifying as our reunion has been-”

“It would be less horrifying if you just accepted Kissaki into your heart,” Gaeric sing-songs.

“-I have a strong hunch that if I follow anywhere your tracks intend to lead me, my schedule will be derailed beyond even the least timely of my intents. Alas!” Ingo opens the door of Single Train 001 to let Lady Sneasler inside. “It is time for me to return to my station. Our tracks will meet again, I hope.”

Mita’s smile shutters. “Wait, what do you mean, return to your station? Ingo, you were the one who reported the Highlands were electrified!”

Ingo frowns. “Be that as it may, the situation requires monitoring, and the outpost workers must be evacuated.”

“That evacuation is well under way,” Gaeric reminds him. “It’s already been planned by your hand down to the second. You don’t need to monitor it personally.”

“Warden Melli will be returning as well,” Ingo reveals. “From what I can surmise, he intends to stay with Lord Electrode, frenzied or not. I do not wish to leave him alone.”

“That is Melli’s choice, and a piss-poor one at that!” Gaeric asserts. “And I’d bet my left arm Adaman’s trying to talk him down from that choice right now! You’ve done your due duty to inform everyone else about what happened, and your Lady Sneasler is safe at your side! Why are you going back there? The expedition is over!”

“This expedition is over,” Ingo corrects. “For as long as the incident remains ongoing, however, there will be more. Until such time we can ensure a successful confrontation of Lord Electrode himself, damage control must take priority before things evolve past the point of repair. I cannot in good conscience coordinate these efforts from a distance while others risk their lives at my command.”

“Those other people are still going back home safe,” Mita points out.

“A luxury they are afforded through my efforts!” Ingo snaps. “I cannot freely leave behind those in need of my service-”

Mita grabs his arm. “And you cannot freely leave behind me!”

Ingo’s limb spasms uncomfortably in her grasp. “It is not done freely.”

“Why do it, then?” Gaeric questions. “Why does it have to be you?”

“I understand,” Ingo haltingly intones, “Gaeric, that your sense of duty is very different from mine-”

“That is not what this is about,” Gaeric grits out. “Don’t turn this back on me, that is not the conversation we are having here. The conversation we are having is that you are walking back, by no one’s will but your own, into a situation you know is so dangerous that you have warned everyone else away out of the rightful concern they could die! Ingo, be honest, is that what you want?”

“I- I- I- I- I don’t want to, but I-” Ingo pulls away from Mita and steps back towards the train. “It is not- it is not a matter of my wants! Please understand! I only- I do not wish to prioritize my life over the greater many who have placed their trust in me to return them home to their families!”

“And what about yours?” Mita pleads. “What about me and Gaeric? What about the Captain? What about your friends? Your father? Your children- and I am not just talking about our children!” Her eyes well with despair. “Good gods, I know I’m practically asking the impossible here, but would you be selfish for once in your life? You might very well be a price you are willing to pay, but we are not!” 

“You better not have it in your head that you’re ready to die so everyone else goes home free,” Gaeric warns him. “I don’t care how immortal you are, you’ll die once, same as any other man. And then what? What happens to everyone you can’t save when you’re not here anymore?”

“No.” Mita shakes her head. “No, the both of you fuck off with making this make any sense! Warden Highlands, you listen to me right now!” Gaeric’s mouth flattens with unease, and he puts a hand on Mita’s shoulder, but her voice only turns more desperate. “I’m not asking you to retire,” she frantically concedes. “Do your work, lead the expeditions, fine, but don't stay stationed there. Just come home. Please. Move in with your father, move back in with us, put your train outside the settlement, anything, gods, please. My twins spend half their nights in someone else’s bed like medical experiments, they gave my boys to Lord Adaman, who even knows where they’re going to ship off Gaeric when winter comes, I can’t-” Her voice shatters with a sudden sob. “You stupid, broken, beautiful old Fox, don’t come back to me on my table! Not like this! My heart can’t take it!”

At the sound of Mita’s grief, some unidentifiable light in Ingo's eyes breaks. The doll-like straightness of his posture huddles in on itself, a stilted noise repeatedly killing itself inside his wobbling mouth as he shuffles his tasseled shawl out from under his coat and stressfully pulls it over his head, rocking in place. There is a shaking breath, and then another, as he slowly, slowly sinks into Mita, arms trembling as he wraps them around her.

“Forgive me,” he sadly pleads into Mita’s greying hair, “forgive me, forgive me.” He lets out a shuddering sound, eyes wide and dizzied. “Forgive me, my Lady,” he prays, voice high and halting as his grip tightens with desperation. “Forgive me that I have lost devotion.”

Mita’s eyes well with tears, and her arms tightly return his embrace, holding him painfully close in a vice grip. Gaeric shifts, pulling away from his place behind Mita to move closer to Ingo, still close at her side. His hand rests on Ingo's back and his face floods with worry. “Oh gods,” he whispers under his breath, “you're shaking something fierce.” His voice softens. “Hey. Hey.”

Lady Sneasler pokes her head out of the train door, softly crooning as her massive bladed paw pats Ingo's head. The shaking only gets worse in response, and the moment Gaeric braces Ingo with his arm, Ingo collapses into him, right leg giving way.

“Kleavor's blade, we're stacked like fire logs,” Mita tearfully jokes into Ingo's tunic. “Fit to fall to bits the moment someone pulls us apart. What a fine sight we make, don't we?”

“Hear that?” Gaeric snarks, pulling the two into his arms. “Everything is firewood and no one has to die.”

“No one has to… die,” Ingo echoes. “I… don't have to- I don't have to d- I don't have t-t-t-” His voice breaks. “Oh, dragons, I don't- I- I-”

As if this is the first time anyone’s ever said it to him. As if this is the first time in his entire fucking life he's ever realized it- oh, gods, it is. This poor man. This poor man, what happened to him before he fell to Hisui, that this is the first time he's ever even heard of it, listened to it, believed it?

I don't have to die. Ingo is such a joyful man, even in his sadness, so blindingly bright and alive, alive, alive. He would not be half as unspeakably undying as he is, if he did not want to live so badly. And yet here he is, fearfully leaning against the both of them, burying a kiss into Mita's hair as if he has been handed something holy, more precious than scripture. Gaeric and Mita cannot even begin to understand the scope of what was taken from him by the Hisuian snow. (They hope, more and more, that they will never understand.)

“Okay,” Ingo whispers into Mita. “Not on your table. Never on your table.” He closes his eyes. “Take me home.”

(And she did.)

Chapter Text

Shinobu's Lucario gingerly takes a step forward, stiffens, and barks. 

“Good, Luca.” Shinobu waves her arm upward. “Come back.”

Luca leaps away in time for a Pearl Clan hunter to fire a bow where it once stood. The arrow fletching trails with a long ribbon, bright and swaying in the early spring breeze.

“That should be all of them,” Rye confirms. “How does the perimeter sweep look?” His own Lucario, Raya, flicks its ears and sneezes. “I suppose that's as ready as we'll ever be.” He lifts his hand above himself, giving a thumbs up. “PREP THE FIELD!”

Ingo's Alakazam descends delicately over the field of arrows splitting Sonorous Path, spoons vibrating in its hands as its barbels twitch with exertion. It floats back and forth, pausing to inspect the ground beneath each and every arrow, before squinting to itself and blinking out of existence, reappearing at Ingo's side. With that, Ingo whistles sharply and claps his hands together, motioning for Warden Calaba and the other Ursaluna riders to approach the area and start digging.

Lord Electrode has frenzied. The amount of innocent pokemon dropping dead, pulled apart by their own muscles, makes that clear enough. But past frenzies have proven that half of the danger isn't just the kami themselves, but their children. And Lord Electrode is old- old and strong, strong, strong- and his children are many, lying buried in the earth as they wait for last winter’s snow to water the soil. If they frenzy where they stand, the Coronet Highlands will turn into a living minefield. It will take human work to defuse them in the precious time between their father’s bouts of inconsolable wrath.

It is not his intention to harm the land he was born to protect. It was not the intention of any kami to do so. It is the nature of the frenzied madness to find its way inside the minds of everything holy, one way or another. In times like these, who would not go mad with worry for their children?

“Why can't Artax help?” Rei asks. “He's super resistant to, like, everything. Electric attacks can't be super effective against him no matter what.”

“Be that as it may, his iron shell is super conductive,” Ingo reminds Rei. “He would be hazardous to everyone working with the Ursalunas on the field.”

“I could have rode an Ursaluna,” Rei grumbles. “I've done it tons of times already. You can't keep babying me just because. I'm thirteen.”

Ingo stops, then stills, then turns to stare down at Rei. “Truly? Since when?”

“Since, uh, January?” Rei uncertainly says. “I think. I mean, that's what it said on all my papers.” He laughs uncertainly. “And I think I actually forgot to tell you any of that. Sorry. It's not really something that's mattered to me before.”

The confusion in Ingo's voice clears, then shifts with fondness. “Let us endeavor to make it matter in the future then, nu? You have so many more friends these days who would wish you well, if you allowed it. It might do you good.”

Rei snorts. “What would we even wish for? I can't exactly ask for the new Super Marill Brothers for my birthday anymore.”

Ingo hums conspiratorially. “If I ever lay my eyes on an intact copy of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon waiting in the rifts, you'll be the first to know,” he teases. “In the meantime, I'm sure ATO has Ekans lying around in its code somewhere.”

“Do you think ATO could run Doom?” Rei jokes.

“It's a professionally bred and IV trained Porygon for the Unovan Rail,” Ingo flatly says. “Of course it can run Doom. What do you take me for?” 

Ingo's gaze trails off after that statement, offering no other punchline. Many times this doesn't signal much more than his limited memory starting to reach the end of its capacity, but Rei’s come to find that it's good practice to check where Ingo’s looking anyway. He's staring back at the field of arrows slowly being trampled down by Ursalunas. The pokemon rumble and bray at their riders as their dull, broad claws find the first batch of Voltorbs, still sleeping under the weight of Alakazam spells. Now that their locations and depths in the soil have been pinpointed, human workers come in with shovels and insulated cloth, fully unearthing the unmoving Voltorbs and setting them down in carts.

Warden Melli calls for Rei to come closer, to check the Voltorbs for frenzy. Ingo's hand clamps down on Rei's shoulder, suddenly, the pale glass of his eyes staring through Rei, haunted, haunted, haunted- and then his eyes fog, his face relaxes, and his grasp forgets, holding nothing in midair as Rei walks away to deal with Melli's demand. Rei watches out of the corner of his eye as Ingo's hand forgets even that, arm dropping back to the Warden’s side. Ingo blinks to himself oddly for a moment, then marches off in some arbitrary direction.

Oh. Ingo didn't say anything, but Rei understands. This isn't the first time they've been here.

That's probably why they happened to catch the frenzy early. Why they have time to prepare like this. All the other times, they didn't have time to do anything more than what could be cobbled together by everyone and everything that was available in the moment. This time, they're doing preemptive environmental cleanup, getting rid of secondary hazards like the Voltorbs, and prepping large sections of the Highlands for combat before they even begin to breach Moonview Arena. It's… different from what Rei did. Different by a lot. 

There's a reason that Rei pretty much only ever restarted events when he or someone he needed got too hurt. If he kept going back any farther than he absolutely had to- the few hours at most before he ended up in trouble- how would he be able to keep track of what was real, what had and hadn't happened, what amount of time was really passing? Then again, those kinds of things never stay for long in Ingo's mind in the first place. Maybe that's why Celebi gave it to him, of all people, when she decided to take it from Rei. Still. The level of setup Ingo made happen here, from materials to environment to making sure the right people were in place… how far back did he have to go? Days? Weeks? Months?

While Rei checks the sleeping Voltorbs for any spark of frenzy, Laventon fusses over a dusty machine, pointedly ignoring the way Akari keeps hopping in place around him. “Minor space program!” she chants. “Minior space program! Minior! Space! Program!”

Rei frowns. “Oh, are we using the Minior launcher again?”

“No,” Laventon tiredly says. “Worse.”

“We finally get to use the minor launcher,” Akari joyfully crows. “To launch minors, even!”

“Among other things, dear,” Laventon stresses, “among other things!” He squints at her. “And you’d best not be dancing about all over the battlefield unless you wear protective gear like everyone else. I don't see any shoes on your feet, young lady!”

Akari gleefully kicks her legs upward. “I have shoes! I have shoes every day!”

Laventon drily raises his eyebrows. “Real shoes. On your real, actual feet.”

Akari freezes in place. “No. No, you can't make me!”

“The ground will be heavily electrified, Akari!” Laventon argues. “With your meager body mass, you need insulating equipment!”

“Never!” Akari stubbornly cries.

Laventon impassively turns back to his launcher. “Leftenant, please show my favorite assistant her due hospitality.”

The Indeedee lifts a squirming Akari into the air with one little arm, and then a tiny insulated coat with matching little boots in the other, violently phasing the two together before dropping Akari unceremoniously on the ground. She falls on her back, hands and feet sticking unceremoniously in the air as she lets out gross gurgling noises of discontent.

“Is she alright?” a passing Pearl Clan hunter asks as his party walks by.

“Oh, you know.” Laventon hums sharply. “It's just that time of month. You know how it is with young women, the cycles can be a bit unpredictable.”

The women among the hunting party cringe sympathetically. “We were just making some hot tea with syrup and ringeg,” one of them offers. “Would that help?”

Akari- who is not a human woman or menstruating in the slightest- nods, eyes wide and teary.

The day drags on. Slowly, surely, they run out of mine fields to dig, and a new contingency of Ursalunas arrives to start digging trenches. People from the Construction Corps are starting to build movable walls on the edges. The launcher gets fitted onto a long line of simple tracks. A small crowd of Diamond Clan seamsters are weaving cloth and leather Voltorbs, the thread being provided by Warden Melli as he cuts down his long, silky, beautiful hair shorter and shorter, waist long locks being chipped away until he barely has a shoulder length bob. Rei sees tears welling in his eyes, and yet Warden Melli refuses to cry, refuses to let out a single sound of grief for the only nice thing that truly belongs to him. He just steels his wobbling mouth and keeps cutting.

=#[o]#=

Melli's yurt has been moved to the center of the war camp in Wayward Wood. Really, it sprung into existence around him, and everything since then has been an adjustment on everyone’s part to accommodate for this inevitability. It’s just more convenient that way. He has been needed for so many things this past week, after all. Surveys, evacuations, map-making, bomb weaving, consultations, mine field clearing, approving constructions. For one more night, he is the most invaluable, irreplaceable man in all of vast Hisui.

Tomorrow, he betrays everything that matters. Forgive him that he he isn’t too enthused on sleeping tonight. 

His Skuntank partner, Camelia, weaves anxiously between his long legs as his Skorupi clicks nervously from its perch on his shoulder. The torches have all been put out for the night, so as not to agitate Lord Electrode from afar- the only guides remaining to him in this foolish bout of evening wandering is what little pale moonlight peeks through the clouds, and the Zubat companion he has kept to orient him through darkness for all these years. 

He meanders thoughtlessly towards the entrance of Wayward Cave and stops, cursing under his breath. Of course. He hadn’t considered what else might be lighting up the Highlands at this hour. Warden Ingo’s bright, luminous, empty pupiled eyes are peering back at him, colorless face jutting out of a black coat and scattering the stone around his form with vibrant nacred colors. It’s his ghost giving him so much light, purple haze swaying in the springtime breeze like dancer’s ribbons. He’s sitting on the ground, just a little off to the side of the Cave itself. Beside him, there’s a pot dangling off hangers, sitting over smoldering spiritual ash. That Galaxy Team boy is dead to the world in a sleeping bag, slightly to his left. His clothes look dull and formless, with the crystal tint of his meager exposed skin now revealed- as if he were a bodiless phantom, merely manifested enough to glare at Melli through the darkness. Good gods. Even his pipe looks duller than him.

“You haven’t eaten,” Ingo says. He doesn’t say it like it’s a question. He never does.

Not now, you Sinnoh-damned fool, Melli wordlessly pleads. Don’t you dare start this now. “Get off my dick,” he irritably growls instead.

There’s a smile in Ingo’s voice. “Our brave passenger neglected to inform me it was his birthday in a timely manner. I made soup for him a month late, if you can believe it-”

Melli snorts. “I can believe many things, where you’re concerned.”

“-and now I find myself with a surplus,” Ingo finishes. “I would advise you to partake in it while it is still warm. He had one of his meat avoidant days again, so much of the tender Basculin is still in the broth. You could use the nutrients.”

Melli sighs heavily and sits down next to Ingo, opposite of the sleeping boy. “Thank you for politely telling me how horrible I look. You always know how to make a man feel beautiful, you horrid old Fox.”

Ingo’s eyes squint with amusement, and his mouth quirks coyly at the edge of his pipe, lips pressed against the murky blue pearl that stoppers the edge of the bit. “Hm.”

He’s even setting out bowls for Melli’s pokemon. Soft kacha gourd slices for Camelia, Basculin pieces for the Skorupi, broth for the Zubat. Which, naturally, would make it all the more strange and ungrateful and just plain rude if Melli didn’t have any himself. He portions everything out with the smoothness of a… what were they called, those strange Kantonian clockwork dolls? Karakuri, that’s what it was. Almost more than a fox, Ingo’s always reminded Melli- in the paleness of his face and repetitive grace of his movements- of a karakuri doll. He places the bowl in Melli’s left hand, and a spoon in the right hand, one after the other, head tilted blankly as he waits for Melli to pull away from his grasp. The same exact way he’s always done, every time he’s ever trapped Melli with hospitality, for over ten years.

(Melli lingers far too long, but he eventually accepts the meal for what it is, and the naturally tense set of Ingo’s eyes eases with the private softness that once convinced a younger, stupider Melli the Warden of the Cliffs could have ever loved him.)

The soup is sweet and spicy- much of Ingo’s cooking was haunted by those flavors, one way or another- but there’s an unexpectedly creamy richness to it. Nothing of its make or mouthfeel is particularly luxurious or celebratory, the way Ingo’s presented context had implied. But… it tastes warm. Warm like the fire that made it, warmth seeping into Melli’s blood and bones in a way that wars between exhausting and invigorating, leaving him lying contentedly on the ground. And isn’t this familiar, in a twisted sort of way? This is not the first time Ingo has loomed over much more exhausted and vulnerable versions of Melli with unrelenting watchfulness and fresh food at the ready. But it is the first time Ingo’s reached down and curled his fingers through Melli’s hair like this, the touch suddenly colored with wistful sadness.

“This is a funerary cut,” Ingo softly says.

“We are killing a god,” Melli reminds him. “It seemed only fitting.”

“Lord Electrode will not die,” Ingo gently points out. “You know this.”

“Yes,” Melli concedes. “I do. But one day he will die, and because of our actions, thousands of years of unbroken tradition will die with him.”

“Everything dies, Warden. Even traditions. The ones you hold now are not unchanged from what they were when they were first made. It has moved and shifted, its face weathered by the passage of time. What we slay tomorrow will only die its final death if we choose to forget it.” Ingo lets out a fond huff. “And you are hardly the type to forget.”

“As opposed to you,” Melli snarks. “Destined to die every death of ego and be entirely eternal in every other regard.”

Ingo almost laughs- but only almost. He lies down languidly next to Melli, propping his head up at his side, eyes tracing the cutoff of Melli’s ringlets of hair. His pipe smells like Wyrdeer and energyroot, leppas and dragons. It sparks idly as he breathes, casts odd shadows on the tinseled curls framing his thin face. “Death. Yes.” The stridency of his voice suddenly has an airy, breathless quality to it. “Melli, I think I might die.”

Melli barks out a laugh. “Do make sure to get around to it before I die, will you? If I’m not there to remind you how stunningly great I am, no one will ever do me justice. You’ll surely forget all about me.”

“Never,” Ingo half-growls out. His eyes are focused somewhere far, far from here, eyes furrowed with an intensity that almost looks like… pain. “Never.”

Melli can’t stand to look at Ingo’s face. He turns his head. “I should go. If I fall asleep out here, I’ll probably be rained on.”

“You will not,” Ingo says. “It does not rain tonight.”

“It might get cold,” Melli protests.

“Lady Sneasler is not cold,” Ingo offers.

“It will-” Melli’s voice creaks with shame. “-it will be lonely.”

The gentleness of Ingo's voice is unrelenting. “I will not leave you.”

Melli buries his face in his hands. “Don't do this,” he pleads. “Don't indulge my- my delusion of you. It is cruel to us both.”

“There is no delusion,” Ingo softly asserts. “You are my friend. You are very dear to me.”

He rises from his prone position- just enough to pull Melli towards himself, just enough to let Lady Sneasler draw close and serve as their pillow. Ingo is a much smaller man than Melli is. Melli's long limbs tangle and entrap his body, and Melli's head rests in some limbo between Ingo's chest and lap, hair strewn haphazardly over Ingo's tunic. Ingo leans back into Lady Sneasler, ghostfire flitting about his head like sparks of errant thought as his eyes turn to the moon, one hand thoughtlessly petting Melli's hair and perpetually stuttering for a moment where it used to be longer. Camelia has nestled itself under Lady Sneasler’s chin.

“I will need to forget again soon,” Ingo breathes into the night air. “My mind will move much faster for our purposes tomorrow, if I do.”

“You always were at your cleverest when you didn't know what was going on,” Melli concedes.

“You understand.”

“Perhaps you shouldn't trust your emptied self around me when we're in this sort of position,” Melli points out. “I may well do something untoward.”

“No,” Ingo simply refutes. “You don't. You never do.”

What a horrifying sentiment. Horrifying, because when Ingo says things like this, does things like this, sometimes Melli thinks Ingo might really, truly, earnestly love him. Horrifying, because Melli knows the feeling that coils around his heart in Ingo's presence is not love. Maybe when he was younger he convinced himself it was, maybe if Ingo hadn't already been twice his age when they met, it could have been, but it is not love. But Ingo may very well love him. As much as Ingo can love anyone. In the way Ingo loves Itachi, loves anyone his mind allows him to remember as a friend, loves the generations of children that grow up huddling under his coat and calling him Fox. 

Ingo loves Melli. And that is why Melli knows he does not love Ingo.

…Melli was not the only heart broken by the ill-fated kiss he planted all those years ago, was he? How did Ingo feel, back then, finding out that a constant and steadfast companion he watched grow up felt so differently of him? Did he lie awake at night for days afterwards, just the same as Melli, wracking his brain over and over for how he must have failed some hidden test beyond repair or recognition, to have solicited such a total antithesis of what he’d wanted? Did he wonder, with no small amount of fear, if Melli had ever been his friend at all?

“We’re the last,” Melli whispers. “There will be no more Wardens after us, not as we are. One day, when all of this is over, we will be nothing but men forever more. You will return to your battles, I will return to my embroideries, and you will suffer the likes of the great Melli no longer.”

Ingo hums. “I would suffer you always, until such time that you have no need of it.” He shrugs, and his free hand curls in place like talons. “Or when you invite me to your wedding. I make no presumptions as to which will happen first.”

Melli smiles up at him sadly. “Now why on earth would you do that?”

Ingo's face is still pointed towards the sky. “Because you are a wonderful young man, Warden. You carry the pride of the bravest warriors, and beauty to shame the rarest of flowers.” There is no hint of desire in his voice as he says it, but it rings with sincerity nonetheless. “I find you enjoyable companionship to share my tracks with, even during the worst of my days.”

“True enough,” Melli dares to concede. “But we both know I'm an acquired taste. I doubt anyone will weather my toxicities long enough for me to have any sort of wedding at all.”

“Love the world, Melli,” Ingo encourages nonetheless. “As sure as the setting sun, as a train must always find its station, someone ought to love you in return. There is no other Truth.”

Melli turns his head to bury itself in Ingo's tunic, muffling the tears threatening to well up in his eyes. “We’re preparing to destroy everything we worked to protect lest the very world crumble under our feet, and here you are holding me like I'm an anxious daughter at her wedding night. You really are a silly man.”

Ingo's laughter rings between Melli’s ears, rumbling like the waterfall that echoes just on the other side of Wayward Cave. “YES, I AM!” he joyfully roars. He laughs and laughs until the breath in his lungs grows short, and a hacking wheeze overtakes him. Exhaustion softens him, quiets him. “Yes, I am.”

Melli is only half-asleep, by the time Ingo forgets.

A gloved hand still remembers where Melli's hair used to fall, catching on phantom strands as Melli finally closes his eyes. 

Chapter Text

Lord Electrode is the chiefest specimen of his kind.

He is not a mortal one.

He was blessed from birth by almighty Sinnoh to carry a piece of its power, bred for prowess and resilience, hand-raised from Voltorbhood by generations upon generations of loving Wardens as he slowly grew, and grew, and grew. But in the wild, few Hisuian Voltorbs live to evolve into Electrodes. Fewer Electrodes live to survive the year of their first mating season. Theirs, like so many Grass-types, is the strategy of abundance, not resilience. Were he more mundane, he would not have been fostered to the point of developing a tree-thick shell capable of weathering every season.

(Flowers were never meant to survive the winter. They only leave behind their children.)

But Lord Electrode is old. Older than his Warden, older than the tree that thrives so greenly in his arena. They cannot plan to confront him as an Electrode, built to burn out strong and fast, and neither does he have the bearing of a hunter, who fights steady and unrelenting. The sacrilegious act of challenging him cannot be built on what he is. There has never been anyone like him and there never will again. This fight must be built for him.

How does anyone fight a being whose mere existence is a contradiction to most of his kind?

Pinball, mostly. 

Like, a really huge pinball table. 

A pinball table larger than Moonview Arena, even.

=#[o]#=

“You are insane,” Emmet bluntly says. “I am Emmet, and you are insane.” He brazenly pushes his hand against Ingo’s hair, revealing the jagged scar peeking through the left edge of the hairline, no longer hidden by the curls that fall over Ingo’s face. “You sound like Lady Sneasler took a bit more than a sliver of your skull that day. We are sending you to the doctor when you get back here.”

“Ay, ay, ay!” Ingo loudly barks, pushing his own hand into Emmet’s face and brandishing the matching scar carving its way through the right side of Emmet’s own head. “Don’t say that! My head injury is your head injury!”

“Exactly,” Emmet flatly smiles. “It is our head wound. And I am not the one playing pinball with a minor god. Ergo, unless you have acquired some other major head injury without me that excuses your eccentricity, you are verifiably insane.”

“It’s entirely sensible in its proper context!” Ingo defends.

“This is the third reset now that you’ve explained it to me,” Emmet reminds him. “I think I am losing context the more you talk about it.”

=#[o]#=

Because a fight at this scale must take every measure to avoid being a fight at all. Lord Electrode cannot be reasoned with just yet, but humans are persistence predators, and he is not. Greater men would dare to bravely do battle, but Ingo is not a great man, and he will not endanger a single life entrusted to his care any more than the circumstances force his hand. Not the Wardens, not the Galaxy Team, not the children, not anyone. He will not arrange this battlefield with strength in mind.

And so the path Ingo advises is crafty, conniving, craven. The Lord Highlands will not be bested with honor this day. Trap him. Baffle him. Enrage him. Waste his strength until he has no other recourse but to face the light of Judgement.

=#[o]#=

Ingo throws his hands up in the air. “Well, I lose context when you tell me you did battle to the entire Joltik population of Anville Town and Victini loaned you its ability-”

“It’s fine,” Emmet insists. “It is fine. It’s not a fairy, so this is fine-”

“-and if you want to send me to the doctor’s so badly,” Ingo continues, “we will be establishing boundaries about your willy-nilly pell-mell interactions with the god of victory. You worry me every time I see you, Emmet. It’s not sustainable.”

=#[o]#=

The clans are ruined by war. It colors their acts, their habits, their traditions. But Warden Ingo does not remember war. He knows only what is in front of him, and Moonview Arena was not a theatre of war. It was a sacred plaza of games and dances. In a distant future, he thinks, it may yet be one once again. But for that to happen, the war of the clans must die, and that will not come to pass until the guillotine of gods is removed from their heads. 

Hello, little Victory, Ingo silently prays. I would like to play a game.

=#[o]#=

Emmet points primly at Ingo. “I fought a god once. Once. You are fighting multiple gods ten times in a row. More than ten times, at the rate you’re going. This is one god, and the fifth time you’ve fought him. Your worry is my worry.”

Ingo snorts, then stands up and starts walking away. “It will be the last time fighting him, at least, and you shall be blessed never to hear me fail to re-establish its context to you ever again. Goodbye, Emmet.”

A sudden anxiety twists Emmet’s heart. “I will see you again, won’t I?”

Ingo’s voice is fond. “Come now, it will hardly be more than a moment for you.”

“It doesn’t feel like it,” Emmet sadly bites out.

Ingo reaches back down and squeezes Emmet’s hand. “It doesn’t,” he admits as reality comes crashing down around them. “I love you still.”

=#[o]#=

“SHIELD!” Captain Zisu shouts.

Ress, village guard of the Security Corps, throws his hands up towards the entrance of Moonview Arena alongside his Mr. Mime. A layered invisible wall of Light Screen and Reflect slams against Lord Electrode’s furiously sparking body as he rams himself repeatedly against nothing. Ress and his partner step back and away from each other, folding the shield towards themselves, then warping it around Lord Electrode, forming a box.

“It’s not going to hold!” Ress nervously relays. “We need more hands on deck!”

“It doesn’t have to hold forever,” Zisu fearfully insists, “it just has to hold!” She thumbs her Lopunny’s pokeball. “On my cue, open the top, then bust it wide open! Everybody else, walls up!”

The shivering wall covering the Sacred Plaza, manned by Security Corps soldiers and pokemon alike, stiffens and stills.

“Launcher, are we ready?” Zisu checks.

Ingo pats his Machamp’s shoulder. Laventon clutches half of a Doublade in his shaking hand and takes a bracing breath. “Ready as we’ll ever be, Captain!” the Professor finally responds. 

“Akari,” Zisu continues, “is everything ready?”

Akari sticks her hand out of the gunhole of one of the walls to wave cheerily, secure and safe with her Kirlia, Rei’s Wyrdeer, and Zisu’s Zoroark. 

Zisu’s smile is tight as her head turns towards Rei and Warden Melli. “How are we holding up?” Rei silently pushes up his glasses, brick-like textures crawling up his limbs and face, tightening the harnesses securing himself and Warden Melli to the basket of a tall and shining Sneasler. Zisu nods. “Alright, Warden, it’s your call!”

Melli nervously flaps his hands and shakes his head. “Oh, gods.” He brings his arms up behind Rei’s back, reaching for the handholds of the Sneasler’s basket. “Fox, I swear if this kills us, I will haunt you!”

“GOOD!” Ingo booms.

Melli takes a deep breath, then another. He looks into his frenzied lord’s eyes for the briefest and final moment. He was only ever a herdsman, a seamster, but he remembers enough of both hunting and war that death, no matter how fleeting, is sacred. For even though Lord Electrode will live, the god he is will die. What will its ghost say to almighty Sinnoh when it returns to the kamuy mosir? Will it remember its long life was loved, treated with kindness? Will it remember its Warden fondly? Or will its last moments be nothing but fear, pain, and darkness, its tragedy left unsung by mortal men?

There is a spark, there, in Lord Electrode’s insensate grimace. Anger, confusion, and then- and then he looks at Melli. Eyes wide and frantic, turning to his Warden in his final moments of godhood.

Help me. Please. Who will save my children?

…So, this is it then. 

The twilight of the gods, whether by someone else’s hands, or their own. 

If this really is the end, Melli must try to make it a good one.

“NOW!” Melli screams.

The invisible barrier opens just enough for Captain Zisu to throw her pokeball inside, and her Lopunny leaps into Lord Electrode’s space with her Mirror Coat shining around her body. The hinges of the barrier creak, and the Lopunny rams herself into Lord Electrode’s wrath, forcing him forward by the weight of his own momentum- out of Moonview Arena, out of the Sacred Plaza, out into the frenzied, thunderstricken Highlands.

And thus challenged was Electrode, Lord of the Hollow.

It is Melli’s mind alone that allows his and Rei’s Sneasler companion to escape holy wrath, dodging every step of swiftness heavensent. But it was not only Melli’s years of service, so attentively attuned to his ancient lord’s thoughts and stratagems, that allowed it. There was something else. Something that the Diamond Clan did not notice, did not select for, did not value, when he was chosen to be second best. Melli of no name, who could embroider beautiful patterns without drafting them, fully sprung with his mind, already knowing how they would look before he picked up his needle. Melli of no skills, the lanking and girlish child who deftly danced around Mareep herds long before he ever had electrical resistance to show for it, and was never once shocked or paralyzed all the while. Melli the friendless, who did not even notice the days and weeks he spent alone with his work, because his mind’s eye showed him festivals of beautiful cities from places far away. Melli the spoiled pauper, who gagged at food a day before it went stale or bad like he could already taste it. Melli the princeling, who spent mere weeks with the young Lord Adaman before he started complaining left and right about medicines that had yet to run out, tools that had yet to be broken.

What reason did anyone have to pay the likes of Melli any mind? Spoiled and pompous and anxious to a fault, there was never meant to be any further substance to him. It is only eccentricity, in the end, that Warden Ingo calls Melli the best of all of them. And yet it is Warden Melli, here and now, acting as the sole protector of the boy who calms the madness of gods. It is Warden Melli who so deftly steers the Sneasler under his hands with such precision he dodges Lord Electrode’s lightning before it even hits the ground.

(When the yukars sing of what thunder brings, they will remember Melli, Heavensent.)

Lord Electrode repeatedly bashes himself against the mortal shield wall, fervored shockwaves rattling the bones of the people and pokemon refusing to yield to him. A panel behind him opens, and a Voltorb knocks into him from the other side of the improvised arena with a hollow and wooden clack, destroying his momentum. When he tries to retaliate, Akari's pack spills over with pokeballs as she deploys Pichus in the outer walls, all innocently absorbing the bulk of his attacks like lightning rods. An illusory prodding from Rei's Wyrdeer sends him whirling blindly in another direction, and yet another Voltorb impacts him in the face, while a third trips his round body from below. He rolls dizzily towards the center of the arena. This time, when a panel opens to let the launcher open fire, a wool and leather Voltorb stitched with purple thread careens towards him and explodes, scattering salt and sticking to his body, dampening his electric currents.

“Mustard, Swift-style Hyper Beam!” Rei commands the Sneasler. “Follow it with a Strong-style Dire Claw!”

“What?” Melli spits. “But Hyper Beam-”

“It's fine!” Rei insists. “Do it!”

The Sneasler skitters to the side, the heavy boots on its back paws crunching unimpeded on the electrified ground as it opens its glimmering mouth, barking out a bullet-quick beam of light that ricochets Lord Electrode into the shield wall, and while he staggers, the Sneasler charges towards him, claws outstretched, mouth still full of sparks. Its long claws do not scratch deep into Lord Electrode's wooden hide- but it scratches. Just enough for poison to enter his system, turning his movements disoriented and sluggish.

“We're not finished yet!” Zisu warns. “Hold the line!”

Lord Electrode's frantic charges become aimless, drunken. The loss of his swiftness makes him impatient, and every successive bomb launched into his body makes him angrier, even as they slowly wittle him down. When a panel opens once again to make way for the launcher, Lord Electrode whirls in place, leaps into the air, and bashes himself into the ground. Leaves and roots and vines unfurl themselves from the soil in waves, and the shield wall staggers as the people behind it get tangled in sudden overgrowth. Melli sees Ingo frantically brandish his blade before the panel closes to remove him from sight once again.

Ingo has just been coaxed away from the launcher and Professor Laventon can't aim for shit. Can he and Lady Sneasler work swiftly enough to clear the growth away before Lord Electrode attacks again?

No, they won't, Melli realizes. Lord Electrode is slowing down, but not fast enough. A pressure builds behind Melli's eyes- tears? No, not quite. They're running out of time and his body is realizing it, forcing itself into a panic like that can possibly help, like that will lead to anything but him turning useless afterwards as he-

Melli grabs the back of Rei’s clothes with one hand, untying his harness to the Sneasler with the other. “You. Galaxy grunt. Whatever happens now, you're on your own. Do not save me.”

An uncharacteristic fear crosses the recklessly bold boy’s face. “Warden, wait-”

Melli pushes Rei down into the basket and leaps out, legs poised to run before he even hits the bare ground. He dashes forward, arms outstretched as he impacts the side of Lord Electrode's body, and an Explosion rings out through the Coronet Highlands.

Chapter Text

The first thing that breaks through is the sound of an axe splintering wood. “There’s someone in there!” A man’s voice, graveled and husky, drifts distant and muffled through the layers of Volo’s dark cocoon. “HEY! Can you hear me?”

Volo’s hand twitches weakly through the layers of coiled muscle entrapping his body.

“Mita!” the man shouts, sounding much more urgent than he was mere moments before. “There’s another live one in the overgrowth! I’m cutting him out!”

The axe rattles against the tangled mass, and the turpentine reek of sap languidly bleeds into Volo’s nose. He starts to cough.

“You’re alright!” the man says. “You’re almost out! Just need a few more goes at it!” There is a sound of creaking ice and cracking wood. A light stabs painfully into Volo’s eye before a shadow comes into view. The voice, now echoing directly into the claustrophobic space, turns low and somber. “Oh, no-” The voice quickly shifts to something gentle, soft. “Hey, there. You still with us?”

Volo lets out a murmured, wordless noise.

“I can’t cut you out anymore. The rest of this- the rest of this isn’t the overgrowth. Reach out your hand, can you do that for me? Let’s pull you out.”

Volo laboriously reaches out his hand and a strong, wide grasp clasps at his wrist, using his body as an anchor to inch itself forward, teasing a wider opening into existence until it can hook itself under his shoulders. His ribs rattle as the pressure around him eases as he’s slid out of the dark enclosure, a deep and too-sharp breath echoing hollowly in his lungs. Someone’s boots dig into the coiled shape entrapping his lower body, and he hears the man’s voice again, a loud sigh of relief in his ears and words rumbling against his back. His eyes lethargically droop shut, and a hand repeatedly pats his face.

“None of that just yet,” the voice insists. “I’ve gotta check your head before we try to heal you. We don’t want to close a head wound shut without treating it, you’ll get brain bleed. Can you talk? What’s your name?”

A weak whisper, a dizzied head. “V-Vo…lo.”

“Good man, Volo.” A hand reaches across his chest as he’s dragged backwards. “How old are you? Who’s your partner?”

Volo’s brow scrunches as a grimace pulls at his face. “Um, I… t-twenty, I think, um… there’s… A…ri… w-where’ssss Ari?”

“Cracked ribs and internal bleeding, yeah,” the voice nonsensically says, “and I reckon that ankle’s been twisted on the way out, but it looks like he didn’t get any of the electric shock, he’s just a bit crushed on the outside-” The voice turns back towards him. Volo makes out grey eyes, flecked with icy blue. “Ari’s alright. He’s a little stiff on his legs, but a good potion will fix that right up. Did you have any other pokemon with you?”

“Th’re’s m’re in my bag,” Volo weakly murmurs.

“Seta, get the bag!” the voice orders. “There’s pokemon inside!” Another voice shouts something back, and the man’s words gain an impatient, almost angry note. “Yes, I fucking know about the body, leave it alone! Have some tact!”

A frown starts to furrow Volo’s brow. “What? What’s going on, what do you mean-”

“No, no, none of that now,” the man dismisses. “We need to get you sorted out first before we worry about anyone else.” Volo feels himself sink into the ground, into someone else’s body. There’s a sound of a satchel being rummaged through, and Volo just barely makes out the man biting down on some grassy, floral smelling berry. “Let’s get you breathing properly again. We’re gonna put your ribs back together, but it’s not gonna be fixed all the way, so don’t start running off. Okay?” An earthy, bitter herb gets placed between Volo’s teeth. “Bite down.”

Volo takes a harsh and painfully expanding breath as his ribs crunch back into place, the motion forcing herby saliva down his throat. He groans with distaste.

The man laughs drily. “Yeah, it’s an acquired taste, isn’t it?” A hand pats Volo’s cheek. “You’re alright, son, just try and keep a hold on it.” His tunic gets pulled up, he feels a pressure experimentally push down on his hip, and the man sucks in a breath. “Oh, boy- alright, then. I’m gonna have to shove that leg back into place. Noko can keep that from hurting, but you’re still gonna feel it. Ready?” Volo unsteadily nods. “Three, two, one-”

Volo is pushed to lie on his side, and cold, tiny fingers press down on his back for the briefest moment before an elbow holds down his hip, an arm hooks around his right leg, and something pops. As his boot gets forced off his foot and replaced with a tight bandage, a shuddering ache starts to seep into his bones- but without the crushing pain he hadn’t even fully realized was there, his mind feels clearer than it did a few moments ago. 

“Gaeric, what are you doing all the way out here?” Volo asks. “Warden Calaba’s already here. We don’t need more doctors.”

“Too many people who can’t come back down from the mountain on their own,” Gaeric explains. “It’s all numbness and paralysis and randomly broken bones for miles. That’s what you get for wrestling a thunder god.”

“I think I saw Warden Melli die,” Volo randomly recalls.

Gaeric barks out another laugh. “He’s fine. Ingo walked up to Melli after Rei keeled Lord Electrode over and shoved the poor bastard one of those fucked up Ursaluna-grade Max Revives we keep having to take from his pockets.”

Volo squints wearily. “Oh, gods. Is Ingo still doing that? He said he wouldn’t!”

Gaeric’s amusement trails off with a tense frown. “Yeah, the frenzies coming back is not helping his weird medical habits at all. He’s shoving his coat full of konpeito trying to keep himself from eating revives over nothing.”

Volo holds his head in his hands. “Oh, no.”

Gaeric sighs, braces a hand on Volo’s back, and helps Volo sit up straight. “Well, it is what it is. It’s not like he wants the habit, but it’ll be hard to kick in times like this. We do what we can, is all.” He claps Volo’s shoulder, then braces his knees to stand. “I’ve got to go check if there’s anyone else trapped like you were. Don’t walk on that leg. Someone will come around and make sure you get some food and water in you.”

Volo readjusts himself on the improvised sick bed he’s been laid on. It’s more of a clean mat, really, put together en masse alongside dozens of others in an attempt to get people and pokemon treated as quickly as possible. He sees Mita and Gaeric flitting back and forth in the crowd, pausing only briefly to take more supplies from Calaba before continuing on their way. The married pair are both strong and sturdy bodied, deftly maneuvering each prospective patient to examine for injuries before moving to heal them. Some are healed by a horde of trained Chanseys or given potions and bandages, while others have sprained and strained limbs set back to their rightful places. The two of them seem to have different forms of healing magic- Gaeric holds his patients closely and tenderly, occupying the same space as them, while the wounds of Mita’s patients absorb into her body until her overflowing aura heals herself.

As Volo observes the workings of this medical operation, he finds himself surrounded by all sorts of grumbling and complaining. A choir of annoyances, but lively ones, recovered enough from their various ailments that they can snap at each other with friendly fondness over their aches and pains. He can almost make out Warden Melli’s familiar dulcet tones, shrilly screeching out orders left and right, and he thinks he might spot Laventon chasing after a prone Akari who’s being dragged away by hyperactive Pichus. Ari leans heavily on the Chansey toddling towards Volo with a tray of bread and broth. Volo lets out a sigh of relief as the Lucario flops onto the mat by his side with a loud chuffing noise, exhaustedly gnawing on a piece of jerky. 

The broth isn't exactly to Volo's taste. It reminds him too much of what Ingo used to feed him when he had growing pains. Though considering who's in charge of feeding and caring for everyone here, it's entirely likely Ingo learned that from Calaba or Gaeric. The bread is alright, though. It's hot from the fire, and there's a nice slight char to it that helps chase away the bitterness of the herb Gaeric stuffed in his mouth. Volo dips the torn bread into the broth as he eats. By the time he's run out of bread, sipping the broth directly from its bowl, one of the Pearl Clan hunters waves for his attention, approaching with his extremely battered but otherwise intact bag from the guild.

“There wasn't much of anything in there that could get crushed,” the hunter relays as he hands it over to Volo. “The pokeballs didn't look damaged, but we gave everyone inside them a check up anyways. Clean bill of health.” And then the hunter’s face turns… hesitant. “I- listen. I'm real sorry, but two of the balls were empty, and I'm guessing the Lucario is one of them, but- you didn't have a Milotic, did you?”

“I… do,” Volo haltingly, confusedly answers. “What does this have to do with-” He frowns. “Wait, she was outside her ball? Do you know where she went?”

“She was on you,” the hunter explains. “We practically had to dig you out of her more than the overgrowth- to be honest, I'd bet that's the reason you even survived being a sitting Psyduck like that when Lord Electrode started spitting lightning through the roots. It's-” The hunter sighs, eyes welling with something Volo can't quite place. “It’s difficult to cut her out, but we're working on moving the body right now. Just thought you should know.”

…Moving the- no, no, nonononono-

“No, no-” Volo’s hands fearfully clutch his bag as he stiltedly stands upright and lurches forward. “No, wait, where is she-”

The hunter’s hands raise uneasily, gently attempting to push Volo back down. “Hey, hey, don’t walk on that fucking leg-”

“I’ll walk on whatever I damn well want!” Volo snaps. “Where is she?”

“We can bring you to her later,” the hunter tries to compromise, “but we can’t bring a body where all the wounded are, someone might get sick-”

Volo barrels past the hunter as he shoves himself forward, clipping painfully into the man’s shoulder. This can’t be happening. They’ve gotten it all wrong, they have to have gotten it all wrong, everyone’s fine, she can’t-

His aching leg gives way and he crumples into the ground, palms colliding painfully into the soil. He pushes himself up by his elbows, and Ari props itself against his side like a crutch. He holds his bag to his chest with one arm and hooks around Ari with the other. He keeps walking.

Where is she? What happened to her? The last thing Volo remembers before being dug out was something bursting out of the ground, and then a sudden flash of light as strong ropey muscles wrapped around him before whatever came towards him could do it first. And then calm. An odd sense of calm, steadying his heart, his breath, long enough that he would be saved before shock or suffocation could kill him. What had happened in that moment?

She wasn’t in her ball, the hunter had said. Milotics don’t have dragon typing, but they still have a dragon’s bearing, powerful and sacred. Milotics and their shimmering, marvelous scales that shift to entrance their onlookers, leaping out of deep water during wartime to bring battlefields to reverent standstills. She wasn’t in her ball. He’d felt so calm while trapped in that dark overgrowth.

And that calm is gone. It’s already been gone for hours.

Volo’s hand frantically roots through the soil, hidden fangs crowding in his stubbornly closed mouth as he searches, searches, searches. It’s the fucking Coronet Highlands, it’s the oldest and holiest of Hisui’s mountains! Of all the times for the dragon’s blood to run dry for him- no, not here, not now! And then, he feels it. A fleeting wyrmwind spark, dim as a dying fire. He clambers towards it, uncaring of who might or might not be in his path. There’s a small crowd around her large, limbless, serpentine body as it is tenderly cut free of Lord Electrode’s overgrowth, the faces of those daring to lay hands on her all painted with sadness, shock, and awe. Most people would never see a Milotic in their lifetime unless they were fishermen by trade, and even fishermen would maybe get to see them a few times per decade. Only the likes of Warden Palina could call such a rare sight a friend. And so they gawk at her. Her paper pale body, her strong horn, her delicate and ribboned brow, the marbled piebald of iridescent scales that crawl up her form from the base of her fan-like tail. 

She is beautiful, even in death. 

Her large, wine-dark eyes do not brighten as he collapses in front of her. She does not lean into his touch, does not whistle low and deep as he cups her face, as he runs her hands on her long and graceful neck. The weightless barbels on her head lie limply against the ground, The ribbons of her brow are tattered on their edges by rocks and thorns. There is no pain or panic in her final expression. There is no expression at all. Her mouth lolls impassively and she stares into nothing. 

“Mirai,” Volo uselessly croaks out. “Mirai. Why, why?” Her large head fails to fit in his lap as he rocks her back and forth, the way he once did when she was barely a dull and tiny Feebas. “I told you not to come out, I told you that you couldn’t win, so why?”

She does not answer him. She will never answer him again. Burning tears pool and flood and swell in his broken eye, pushing painfully against the hollow spaces of his skull, but they do not fall. He can’t- he can’t cry. He can’t. Not over this. Not like this. Volo can feel everyone’s gazes on him, desperately trying not to stare, the voyeuristic weight of their observance hanging, hanging, hanging him. He cannot be seen crying over this. He cannot- he cannot-

His panicked breathing stutters in place as a hand presses down against his head and a black coat floods his vision. A glove embroidered with black triangles reverently soothes at Mira’s horn. 

“Abba,” Volo just barely manages.

“I am here,” Ingo softly assures.

Volo’s voice creaks. “She’s gone.” 

“I know,” Ingo simply says. “I’m sorry.”

Volo’s face starts to redden and his gaze drifts towards the ground. “I don’t want them to look at her,” he shamefully admits. 

“Okay.” Ingo’s hand stays heavy on Volo’s head. “We will take her somewhere far away from here.”

At some unspoken cue that Volo isn’t paying nearly enough attention to, Ingo’s Tangrowth comes towards them with a massive cloth, gingerly coiling Mirai’s body into it and wrapping the cloth shut before carrying everything in its tendrils. Ingo’s Machoke picks up Volo and and Ari in its arms, and they walk. By the time they make it to Fabled Spring, Rei, Lian, and Akari are waiting for them with… paint. Paint, and the largest, longest slab of wood Volo’s ever seen in his life. Rei apologetically wiggles his Arcphone, and Ingo waves his Poryphone back.

“I’ve already done this a few times before, for some of the older dragons Fox used to work with,” Lian slowly explains, “but from what I’m hearing, you’re not quite ready for the usual way, so we’ll change some things around.” He holds his hat in his hands. “Paper would be better for this, but it won’t last as long. Lord Kleavor couldn’t find a big enough tree that was okay to cut down, so we wood joined a bunch of smaller pieces together. I think that’ll make it easier for whenever you want to move it or keep it somewhere else.”

“Keep what?” Volo weakly asks.

“I thought we might paint her together,” Ingo gently suggests. “Paint her body, and print her on something. It would be something you could keep without having to worry about her body.”

Volo’s voice wobbles. “Okay.”

She is unrolled from the cloth she was carried in. They slowly clean the dirt and grass stains from her scales with spring water, pluck the rocks and burrs from her flesh. It is Lian who mixes the paints together- long years of seeing the way seamstresses and calligraphers make use of the rocks he brings them- and the rest of them, save for Ingo, work together to slowly, slowly paint Mirai as she was in life. As for Ingo himself, he starts painting something else in preparation for future steps of the burial, but his Machamp dutifully assists with laying out an initial coat of color, occasionally going over everything with a brush of water so it doesn’t dry. Rei takes pictures so they can more easily match the colors properly, and Akari helps Volo fill in the littler details when his hands shake. Eventually, Ingo joins in properly, changing and brightening the colors, boldening the black seams of her scales, and when Volo nearly stops him, he clasps his hand over Volo’s, silently asking to be trusted. (Volo does.)

It takes many hours for the work to be complete, but when it does, Lady An’ tenderly lifts Mirai’s body and poses her against the wood, with Akari directing the way Mirai should coil and bend, how her ribbons and barbels should flare. Mirai is pressed tenderly into the wood, then lifted away, before Ingo takes a heavy brush of foaming blue and white and thrashes his arm at the painting, creating the afterthought of breaking waves. The Milotic now drying on these wood panels is more bright and vibrant than the body beside them now. It is not true to her death, and maybe it is not even quite true to her life. But it is true to her memory, and seeing is how memory is all that remains of her, perhaps that is enough. They lean the wooden panel under a tree where it can finish drying in peace, vibrant and flowing and beautiful. They clean her body one last time, and lay it to rest in the flower fields by the shore.

“Normally this would be done with a garden,” Ingo explains, “but I do not believe you would be comfortable with Sanqua being involved in these proceedings.” He holds Volo’s hand. “We are going to ask the earth to take her, and the dragons within the blood will answer. There are those who prefer to watch this process, and those who do not. There is no shame in either. Do you want to cover her?”

Volo nods his head. They take the blanket she was brought with and drape it over her long body, weighing down the edges with stones so it can’t be blown away. 

Ingo kneels down and places his hand where the blanket hides her head. “As your eshim leaves this life,” he reverently murmurs, “may you leave the truth of what you once were behind to nourish those who cherished you, and move on to a new existence without burden or regret. As your kurom finds oblivion, may you take with you all the ideals that once watered your spirit, that this world will love as you do, and you may water the spirit of all life in turn. And as your remu remains, may this body feed the earth and all things in it, that you will live on in those who come after.” His words quiet to a whisper. “And so the eshim passes from the kurom, and the kurom passes from the remu.” He forcefully slams his palm into the ground. Green shapes shiver out of the grass and slither under the blanket. “Return now on dragon’s wings into the fullness of the dao.”

Volo watches the shape under the blanket shrink, then shrivel. He does not need to be told that Mirai is gone. Everyone goes back to Single Train 001 afterwards. Ingo cooks them dinner. It feels like it’s been forever since Volo sat down and ate Ingo’s cooking. He can’t taste a single crumb of it. Rei, Akari, and Lian slowly go back to their posts. Volo doesn’t leave at all. Ingo does not ask him to. 

He thinks he might have stayed with Ingo for almost a week, after that. 

He watches Ingo go back to work in the Highlands, returning at night and always leaving before noon. Whenever Ingo is home, he feeds Volo’s pokemon, or takes them along for his duties, and he makes sure there’s something for Volo to eat before leaving Volo alone. They sleep in the same bed, and Lady An’ fusses over Volo’s hair. At some point, Ingo comes back from one of his work days with a carefully wrapped bundle of beautiful bones and pristine Milotic scales, and starts carving. Bone is rendered down into sewing needles, into chopsticks, into buttons and beads and scrimshaw, while the scales are boiled and salted and pressed into shape, slowly being formed into the inlays of a wooden box to keep his fineries. Other things begin to weave into being. Hairpins. Pendants shaped like fish. A torc, beautiful and iridescent and Milotic blue.

Even when Volo is too sad to come out of bed. Even when Ingo practically has to feed him his own food by hand. Even when Ingo’s hands shake and his mind starts to stray. He doesn’t stop carving until there is nothing left of Mirai to bring to life again.

“What were you painting?” Volo asks. It’s the first thing he’s said in days. “When we sent her away?”

“A mask of a Feebas,” Ingo reveals. “So that there would be a child’s joy on her face in the final moments of her body.”

“She would have liked that,” Volo decides. “She liked being a Feebas. I don’t think she ever understood she wasn’t small anymore.”

He turns the torc back and forth in his hands. Ingo’s many years of idle hands haven’t turned him into a genius artist, and his touch lends a rough, shaking quality to everything he makes, but it’s a beautiful piece, nonetheless. It’s even shaped like a Milotic. There’s something coy and cute about it. Volo lets out a small laugh.

And he finally, finally cries.