Chapter Text
Rei isn’t too sure how to feel about this. He hasn’t gone back to Jubilife. Miss Elesa and Akari already set out, and probably returned. They could use a break after… all that. And honestly Rei could use a break too, but somehow going back didn’t seem like the way to get one. So he’s… around. Officially he’s gathering important information regarding the recent Frenzy and how it’s affected the land and pokemon of the Highlands. More realistically, well, Warden Melli told him to leave after everyone else has already gone their own ways and he’s pretty sure there’s some Unown out here anyway.
Mostly he just wants some time, alone, to think. Things are getting a lot more complicated than he ever thought his life would be. Sure his entire perception of himself and the world changed over the past few… has it only been weeks? Working with Akari, being friends with Akari, has been a valuable experience. He’s grown. Being out, away from the village, alone, is proof enough of how much he’s changed. And yet, he never thought he’d live in such… important times. If he’s understanding the Fallens tale correctly.
If he’s understanding correctly, the Unown could be much more important than he thought. Back before all this happened, before he knew he’d be dealing with Gods face to face, Akari had talked about an omen. About a Zoroarks message. How she had three paths she could take. And the Fallen only spoke of two.
Rei knows he might be reading too much into this. But what other choice does he have really? Sit down, give up, and let some divine war decide for him? Take a side, throw himself in with one of two, both of whom have clearly shown they would gladly see him buried? He’s seen what these gods have already done. An uncontrolled Frenzied Noble pokemon could flatten a village easily. An uncontrolled Frenzied God? Warden Ingo would have killed everyone in Hisui and then moved to the next place, if Mister Emmet hadn’t been there to help. Clan Leader Irida had quietly said that they had already accepted that the Frenzies were being caused by Sinnoh. And if the Fallers tale is accurate, Rei has never seen the creature in the mountains before. But he’s heard descriptions. If that one is actually this, counter to Sinnoh, this all powerful being, someone just as invested in this conflict. Then it’s been here longer than the Clans. Can anyone really say it’s been idle in this conflict for so long? Is it the reason for the Clans long and bloody history?
He can’t choose a side, he can’t let either win. Not when both would see him dead. So what else can he do? Akari said she doesn’t know what the Unown can do, she said her people had legends about them. What’s there left for him to do, but hope, and die trying?
Emmet has much to consider. At the forefront of this list, is what to do with the little liar. He has no need of him anymore. He has found his Other. And yet, something must be done of him. He clearly has idiotic designs of divinity and delusions of importance and he’s very willing to make those two things everyone else’s problems. That would be irritating. He still has to figure out how exactly hes going to restore Ingo to his Other, and his role in this divine conflict he’s found himself in, and how to get everyone back home. And all of that would be made much more cumbersome with this irritant around to makes things worse. So, what to do about Volo? And furthermore, what to do about Cynthia? She’s clearly learned a lot since her time as an idiot, but she’s very clearly not where she’s supposed to be. Touch of that one aside, she has admitted to living this life before, and that it went differently. Once in her long distant past, she had enough desire strength and will to challenge the Allmighty and live to tell the tale. What will she do with her second chance?
“Well that was a waste of time.” Blurts the annoyance that is for some reason following him. The sheer incredulity that washes over Emmet makes him stop walking. The annoyance stops behind him. “If you’re going to make up a story you might as well make it a convincing one. I mean really, the Almighty Sinnoh, being the fearful? What could He possibly have to fear from something like that.”
Emmet turns to face him, and takes a deep breath. “You successfully plotted a plan to gain the attention of your God. You’ve caught and trained several moderately powerful pokemon. You’ve managed to survive a nomadic lifestyle in a foreign land without attracting the suspicions of the native population. You have successfully bound the blight of reality to yourself. Factual evidence insists you are not an idiot. So how can you be this stupid?” The originator of said stupidity opens his mouth, likely to be indignant, but Emmet continues. “Someone comes along, who looks exactly like you-”
“She hardly-”
“Exactly like you, drenched in the power you pretend to cloak yourself in-”
“Pretend?!”
“And then this person speaks an explanation, a prophecy by some standards-”
“Prophecy concerns the future-”
“And you just, ignore it? Entirely? Because you don’t like what she said? Or is it just that you don’t understand her message and you’re finally starting to realize that you have no idea-”
“The power I wield is mine by right of conquest. There is nothing to understand because until I choose otherwise it will bend to my will.” He finishes with a sneer on his face, and the sense of invincibility only the truly arrogant can achieve.
“Do you know how I got here?” Emmet asks.
Volo scoffs, “Of course I do. I called upon my power to bring me a servant and you answered.”
“Wrong.” What to do about Volo? “You see, I sought out one of Giratinas faces. I made a deal with it. Giratina is many, many, uncharitable things. But it always gives what was paid for.” The simplest answers are usually the correct ones. “What I paid for, was a way to find my brother. And I was dropped in front of you. I have found my brother. You have outlived your usefulness.” Emmet reaches up and wraps his hand around Volos neck, nails turned to claws and smile gone distinctly sharp. “Did you really think a mere shadow could protect you from me?”
It always felt so good to be done with a problem.
Elesa sat in her room. She had dismissed Akari hours earlier and she had gone off to do, oh, something. She’d been helping the villagers with various things lately. Something about helping them integrate with pokemon so they’d be less terrified in general. It’s a good goal to have. She’s a good kid. But Elesa has other things to be worried about at the moment. Things like the bright yellow block she’s turning over in her hands. She can feel it. Faintly, apparently there’s some bloodlines that are more attuned to this kind of thing and she’s not part of any of them. But you don’t hang around gods as long as she has without picking up on a few things. Like the feeling of divine happenings. Like Victini Blessing someone, or one of her boys Testing someone, like the Dragon Stones which she found out about on a truly frightening day. The stone between her hands, given to her by Lord Electrode after everyone started dispersing, is a divine item. One of many, it seems. She’s gotten one from every Noble pokemon she’s encountered so far. And now Lord Electrode. And Lady Sneasler is still missing. She has a feeling Lord Braviary’s will be turning up soon, and then she’ll fight Lord Avalugg. She’s seen Lord Avalugg before. He’s been asleep for longer than she’s been alive but she’s seen how big he is. That won't be fun. Or, she’ll end up fighting the giant raptor that can see the future instead.
She turns the plate over again. Her two emolga, the only pokemon she allowed herself to bring, the only connection she has left to her home, sleeping away on her bed. She runs her hand over the smooth surface, letting the feeling of power run just beneath her fingers. Cynthia said this was a fight, the fight, between Arceus and Giratina. Both of them pulling the strings this way and that for who knows how long. She thinks of Akari, and how she could feel some kind of divine interference on her too. She thinks of Anita, and the creature known to this place, and Cynthia’s story of an Avatar with grey hair and broken eyes, and how they smiled right up until she asked to be sent back with her boys. She thinks about two gods brought in as side pieces in this battle. She thinks about how long Arceus has been in charge, and how long Giratina must have been planning this. She puts the yellow plate with the nearly humming pile of others, and wonders if she was ever supposed to make it out of this alive.
Elesa sighs, stretches, and starts counting her supplies. Potions and revives and she’s going to have to make more balms and…. There’s only one Noble left. One more fight, one way or another. Things will be coming to a head soon. She has her knife and her chains and a hatchet she made and… She never claimed to understand the gods and their will, but most things seem to be coming together. Except, how does Celebi fit into this?
Okay, in her defense, Akari didn’t think this was going to happen. And it is the middle of the night. And she is not in Jubilife. And Elesa is in Jubililfe. And she doesn’t know Akari is out here.
“Thank you.” Says what she had seemingly incorrectly assumed to be a little girl. “I’m sorry I lied to you.”
“Oh!” Akari says, flapping her hands around to brush off the apology “No its fine! I mean, people out here can be really weird about that sort of thing, so no hard feelings or anything. I get it!”
Vessa giggles “You’re a strange one. Is that why you’re marked?”
“That… how’d you make that sound? Marked. You made it” Akari makes several aborted gestures “Sound. You made it sound. How? Also what mark?”
Vessa smiles, “You’ll figure it out soon enough. The Changing One is who marked you. And, um, if I may ask one more thing of you?”
“Hit me.” Akari says, then pauses, “I mean! Go ahead and ask, it’s fine!”
“Could you bring us with you?” She asks
“With me? Like,” Akari takes out a pokeball and waves it around questioningly.
Vessa nods. “We want- We were- Once we were separate and we were made not. We want to… Thank? We want to meet the one responsible again. If you’d be willing.”
“Akari nods, slowly, “The… Changing One, put all of the wisps, which were people, together. As a pokemon.” She says
“Yes.” Vessa smiles, “Would you grant this last request?”
“Of course!” Akari says.
Vessa smiles, she stars glowing purple, kinda like Cynthia had been kind of glowing a little bit. The wisps Akari had been storing… somewhere? In her soul? Come out and start bouncing around, like a dance! Akari holds her hand out to the little girl whose features are starting to blur. Vessa takes it and together they join the dance. It’s nothing fancy, nothing coordinated, and it probably looks stupid. But it’s bouncy and fun and… And people think Dawn is stupid. That she has a short attention span and doesn’t notice things other people do and so obviously she doesn’t know anything about anything ever. Dawn knows what this is. And she’ll be damned if she doesn’t make one last happy memory for this girl. For these people. So together they bounce and they twirl and spin in meaningless patterns and Dawn does not cry. She doesn’t cry as they dance right up to the big rock with a huge crack in it. She doesn’t cry when the sun-blindness-imprint of light that was- is Vessa lets go of her and puts a hand on the rock. She doesn’t cry when all the wisps- people vanish between one blink and the next. And when the stone starts to glow like there’s a raging purple fire inside of it? When that fire rages out and up and gathers into a swirling miasma of purple and green and a face comes out to smile at her? She smiles back and sends out Ash Sparksman for one last game. Akari catches the spiritomb. She names it Vessa.
And then she cries.
Rye wakes up. That was a significant aura shift. He looks around for his partner in his long journey, Lucario, to find him equally awake in the middle of the night but not agitated. So, significant, but not inherently bad. Sometimes you can feel inherently bad things in aura. Inherently good is harder to spot. Rye also isn’t exactly great at sensing the details of aura yet. The most he’s gotten is, well, whatever is going on with the Fallers. He’s met the Warden and the one thought to be a zoroark in the past. And they were, not human? He’s pretty sure they were human, but there was definitely some not human aura in there. Crackly. He settles to try and go back to sleep. The latest Faller was weird, felt like she was being fought over. But she also has significant aura of her own. Lucario has told him that it’s a thing that happens sometimes. That with skill and dedication even humans can move aura like pokemon. Or, well, be able to use pokemon moves, as others would put it.
Rye sighs. Lurcario huffs back at him, a very clear go to sleep ringing through his head. He rolls over. The Not Faller is interesting. And pretty. But mostly there was this kind of feeling that was attached to the other Fallers that he doesn’t feel on her. The auras latched onto her are a lot subtler. The most prominent are her two, um, rodent pokemon? Like how Lucarios aura is connected to his. That’s what makes them partners. Beneath that is her own aura, strong but not as overwhelming as the last Fallers. And somewhere in there is a… feeling. Something he can’t really put a name to. Something like nostalgia and anxiety and wonder. Lucario just rolls his eyes whenever Rye tries to ask about it. Pokemon don’t usually roll their eyes, Lucario picked that up specifically to use on Rye and that makes it worse. Woven through all those different auras are two, or one? One that’s, uh, crackly.
Rye looks out to the sky. The moons long since set. He has met the Fallen. Once. And wow. Just. Damn. He’s not exactly great at sensing the details of auras or the fainter ones. He may have panicked a bit and asked Lucario just what the fuck that was. Because the Fallen only has echos of human in her aura. And the rest of it is… Lucario described it as mirrors in the dark and picked clean bones lodged in a riverbed. Rye has no idea what the means. Lucario just huffed and said that this land was that one’s just as much as His. Rye also has no idea what that means, but at least it’s not a malevolent aura? Probably? If it holds claim to an entire land and people are still here. Unlike, well, the people of Jubilife are here for a good reason. The Fallen doesn’t seem like a bad person, but he also doesn’t think he should be around her again.
Rye rolls over. Speaking of… that, there’s also that ginko merchant. He doesn’t seem to be a Faller, and the guild says he’s been here for quite a while, that he was probably an Opal before he joined them. But Rye’s traded with this merchant more than a few times. And yeah he’s not great at sensing the subtleties of aura, but he can. The merchant is definitely human. But there’s something attached to him that, isn’t. Something that reminds him of bodies in the mire and bloodied ice. Aura can tell you of someone means ill. Whatever the merchant has chain himself too is not going to help us.
Rye rolls over the other way. And then there’s the surveyor. Rei, he thinks his name is. He’s been just as wrapped up in all this as the rest of them. Rye is better with ambient aura than individual aura, and the ambient aura of everywhere has been interesting lately. And then the Nobles started getting Frenzied. And Rei is right there with the Fallers, trying to deal with whatever is going on, and whatever these new people are. He’s been bringing strange pokemon back to his house, he’s been going out and facing impossible odds. And, the thing is, Rei feels like Rye. His aura feels like the kind that could be, with dedication and will. He’s talked to Lucario about it, Lucario’s talked to Rei’s partner Pikachu about it. Rye has no idea what that conversation consisted of but Lucario came back saying he can, but that it’s Rei’s decision to make. Just like it was Rye’s.
In his mind's eye, his aura sense, there’s a far distant CRACK that sends ambient aura rippling out in a wave that displaces the aura of all of Hisui and Rye jolts like someone just dumped snow on him. The wave rolls over him, feels like it should take him with it because he still can’t really separate aura sense from physical feeling, and leaves a void in his mind's eye. One that should be filled with feelings of pokemon and plants and water and wind but there’s just nothing there no matter how far he looks. And then he feels… blood, in earth long made stone, and grasping shadows. And then the wave comes back, rolling back over him with all it’s jumbled feelings, settling back over the land in a confused mess of what belongs where. Rye jumps out of bed. Another Noble has been Frenzied. Lucario runs after him, to find Surveyor Elesa in the predawn light.
He gets the feeling that he needs to be involved this time.