Chapter Text
At first, the humans from the night before had helped gently load him into a brightly labeled black and white vehicle with the crutches they’d provided.
The vehicle then proceeded to traverse roughly over the barely paved paths from the camp for half an hour before reaching the main road, leaving N nauseous and resorting to closing his eyes and trying to distract himself by numerically estimating the spring constant of the vehicle’s suspension system and the strength of its damping from the irregular oscillations.
When they reached the smoother road, N stared out the window to the blend of manmade asphalt and trees as buildings became more frequent and trees started to be hidden by railings and barriers. Then the buildings grew taller, and the trees became sparse.
Concerningly, there were still no Pokémon in sight. Even Pokémon born in the contexts of human development such as Trubbish, Magnemite, and Klink were nowhere to be found— not surprising after the empty forest, but still saddening.
N took note of the architecture of the structures they passed, which seemed no more modern or novel than the buildings of his time in Unova. There was an increasingly striking disparity in the rate of change of different things in the world he was experiencing. If enough time had passed that humans had developed their own powers and Pokémon had gone extinct, then surely there would be more changes occurring in technology and civilization as well. The familiarity of it all was… confusing.
When they eventually stopped at a police station, helpfully labeled in Galarian underneath the geometric characters of what N recognized as Kantonian, they didn’t help him off the car, but instead waited as he fumbled with the crutches on the seat next to him. They ushered him in the doors and eventually into a small, drab, undecorated room with nothing but a table, a chair, and a blinking security camera in the corner.
Though they hadn’t restrained him with handcuffs or anything of the sort, N felt his breathing slow and his chest ache with the knowledge that he was confined once more to an unfamiliar space surrounded by humans. Now, if he wanted to move about, wanted to leave, there would be more real consequences.
Here, N began to deeply regret tripping the night before, and subsequently trusting the humans who had offered their help. He realized, with dread curling in his gut, that despite the flashy Pokémon-like way the humans last night had been dressed, that too was a human ruse likely meant to disarm.
He had initially believed that they played roles similar to rangers, but now it was clearer that those from last night were more similar to gym leaders, serving as palatable public faces for law enforcement.
Though most of society trusted the Pokémon League to be generally apolitical and primarily dedicated to the cause of testing the strength of traveling Pokémon trainers, many also knew that gym leaders and their Pokémon served also as a first line of defense for a city, and thus, an additional form of law enforcement over the local police. The eight gyms’ locations were always optimized for breadth over the region, to be able to respond quickly to local crises or crimes.
N firmly believed that though the public figures of the League— the gym leaders, Elite 4, and champion— were well-meaning and sometimes even good trainers to their Pokémon, it did not excuse them from serving as the figureheads of the system perpetuating the exploitation of Pokémon. They had roused generations of ill-equipped youths to journey into lands never meant to be stepped on by humans, and would no doubt inspire many more to come.
In any case, he digressed. Though those from the night before hadn’t used any Pokémon— couldn’t, on account of there not being any— the thought of them started to leave a poor taste in his mouth. Why make a point of trying to ‘rescue’ him if they were just going to apprehend him and send him to captivity afterwards? He would frankly rather have just stayed in the forest until his ankle healed on its own at that point. Humans made no sense.
“Our person of interest is a young man in his late teens or twenties who speaks English fluently and doesn’t understand Japanese. He was found in the private grounds of the Wild, Wild Pussycats hero team soon after the appearance of an unidentified large white creature in the forest. He has a sprained ankle from running from the heroes when they tried to approach him, and has signs of having spent an extended time in the forest, including malnourishment.
“Now, the heroes have reasonable cause to believe that his presence in the forest may be related to a major security concern for UA, and want us to detain him for the time being until they can determine that he’s not involved with the League of Villains and then send him back home. Did I get all that right?”
The detective shot a thumbs up at the officer. “Sounds like it! Are you up for it? You’re our only fluent English-speaker here.”
“I guess,” the officer licked his lips. “Are we even allowed to keep him here? It doesn’t seem like he’s done anything wrong.”
“Trespassing on private property,” the detective waved a hand flippantly, “or if that’s not enough, we can spin it with illegal entry into the country without a visa or passport, depending on how he ended up here.”
“Sure,” the officer nodded along.
When he actually entered the room, the temperature seemed to drop several degrees. The young man seated at the table had a chilly expression with a closed-off pose— relaxed, from first appearance, but his hands were clasped together with the palms down in his lap, and his legs were tight together. He might even call it regal, if the man weren’t covered in dirt stains.
“My name is officer Tanaka,” the officer began, clicking the button on the recorder in his hand. “I’m just here to take a statement from you on the events of yesterday. Could you state your name for the record please?”
“N,” the young man answered— a single letter, a single syllable, and nothing else.
The officer paused. The young man— N— did not continue.
“... Do you have a last name?”
N’s cap, with the harsh cool lighting from above, cast a stark shadow over his face, which seemed to grow as N tilted his head down minutely. “... No,” he answered.
It was clearly an alias, wasn’t it? People who had nothing to hide generally didn’t respond like that. He grew suspicious.
“And I don’t suppose you have any forms of identification on you?”
N’s silence continued.
“Look,” he tried, “we’re trying to help the best we can here. If we don’t have a way to identify you, then there’s only so much we can do.”
“If you want to help, then I’d much rather be in the forest again,” N said, his voice so quick that the officer had barely picked it up.
This was when the officer began to think that perhaps this young man might not be entirely sane.
“We can always add obstruction of justice onto trespassing and illegal entry into the country,” the officer tried.
The young man’s eyes narrowed at the threat, but he finally complied. “NaturalHarmoniaGropius,” he said quickly in a barely audible near-whisper. The speed of his voice didn’t help at all with understanding it.
“What?”
“Natural Harmonia Gropius,” the young man replied again, slower and louder this time.
The officer’s head tilted. “Could you, uh… spell that for me please?”
He wrote it down as the young man listed the letters at an excruciatingly slow pace, as if doing so would make the letters far apart enough that they couldn’t be associated together into a meaningful name.
At least, for certain, he had it written now, even if he’d ended up having the young man repeat it so many times.
“Alright, Mr. Gropius—”
“Call me N,” the young man interrupted quickly.
“Mr. N, where are you from?” he bulldozed on.
“Unova,” the man responded curtly.
“And is that like a city, or a town…?”
N blinked. The first trace of readable emotion since the questioning had begun showed on his face— a slight bewilderment. “A region,” the man responded unhelpfully.
“… Right; and what country would that be in?”
“A region is already the largest geographical unit to refer to human civilization, unless you want the name of the continent as well,” N stated as if it were obvious.
The officer opened his mouth, then closed it again. He mulled through the sentence a couple of times. A region? The vaguest geographic descriptor one could give? Why couldn’t the man make it easy, and just say he was American or something as his English speaking accent implied?
“But what about the country, like… Japan, or America?”
“Repeating yourself won’t change the answer,” N sounded neutral, but there was a growing exasperation in his gray eyes.
What would be better here? Pushing the point, or moving on for now? It didn’t seem like N was willing to cooperate on personal information, but maybe if he asked about something else…
“Do you know why you’re here?” He continued.
N remained silent again.
The officer cleared his throat awkwardly. “You were found on the private property of the Wild Wild Pussycats hero team in the Nagano Prefecture.”
“... I wasn’t aware that it was someone’s private property,” N noted, with a new sharpness in his eyes. It became increasingly eerie to the officer how little the young man blinked when staring directly at him.
“How did you end up there?”
N seemed to think for a moment. “... There was a rift in the sky, and when I went to investigate it, low air pressure must have made me faint and lose hold of my friend. I fell into it and ended up several hundred feet above the forest.”
“And how did you survive the fall from that height?”
“My friend came through the rift with me and saved me.”
That implied that someone with a flying quirk had accompanied N— someone still unaccounted for. “And where is your friend now?”
N looked straight into his eyes, still and unblinking. “... Elsewhere,” he answered.
“I’ll be honest with you, N— you were found because the heroes were looking for something large, white, and flying, that they saw in their forest.” The officer set a hand down on the table, eyes serious. “If you weren’t the only person who came through that rift you’re talking about, we need to let the heroes know, so that they can get your friend out of the forest and to safety as well.”
N’s eyes roved around the room. “And this is what you call safety?”
The officer swallowed down the saliva in his mouth when N’s eyes turned back to stare straight into his once more.
“There’s no need to worry about my friend,” N said, voice low. “It is safe and out of the forest.”
The officer flagged for a moment from the unexpected pronoun. “... What is?”
“My friend is safe and out of the forest,” N repeated. Perhaps the officer heard him wrong the first time.
“Alright. Do you know where they currently are? If you do, we can help both of you get back to where you came from.”
“No,” N’s eyes narrowed. The officer got the impression that N seemed rather skeptical.
“And do you know anything about the white creature that was seen in the forest? Did you see it?”
“No to both questions,” N replied again, unhelpfully.
At this point, the officer was ready to pull out his own hair.
N had initially felt relief when the officer that entered the room spoke smooth and only lightly-accented Galarian. It was the only language N was fluent in, and promised at least more effective communication than last night.
Unfortunately, it soon became clear that the officer was there to ask questions, and not to answer them. Then again, N didn’t often ask questions to humans if he could avoid it by obtaining the information himself. Humans tended to be less reliable real-time resources. N much preferred books, which were often curated and edited and thus had a baseline amount of credibility.
About halfway through was when N realized that there might be something drastically different about their perceptions of the world— something that would hint that N had traveled a far greater distance than he had thought in the rift he’d fallen into.
N gathered that what he referred to as regions, the man called countries— both a unit referring to an area of land and its largest governing political entity. Unova, Sinnoh, Hoenn: these were regions. Japan and America: two names completely unfamiliar to N, which had been used as examples of countries.
The complete absence of Pokémon. The bizarrely evolved humans. The mismatch in time passed for human biology and innovation.
When Reshiram had told him not to formulate a truth out of incomplete information, it had been correct, of course.
The mounting evidence pointed towards a new possibility: he and Reshiram hadn’t simply fallen through time and 3-dimensional space as they knew it, but rather through another dimension entirely— to another world, parallel to theirs, one which had never known Pokémon to begin with.
He still didn’t have enough evidence to confirm his theory, but it was beginning to seem more plausible the more his experiences fell out of alignment with his expectations.
The police here had no hope of being able to return him to where he came from then, in multiple senses. It became a little funnier to N whenever they offered it as a promise of help in exchange for N’s complacence. What use was there in cooperation if they didn’t even know that the help they offered in return was beyond their capabilities?
When eventually, the line of questioning turned to Reshiram, N could have laughed.
Just by referring to Reshiram as his friend, it seemed that the immediate assumption was that Reshiram, too, was a human.
Not just a human, but a human in need of rescuing from the forest, from itself. Wasn’t it laughable?
To his consternation, the humor in this irony was undercut by the question of what they intended to do if they ever found Reshiram. If Reshiram was considered immediately on sight to be a danger to any humans in the vast forest, N had no doubt that they would not be kind to it— he knew that humans tended to punish that which they feared. If they didn’t, Pokémon would have had a much easier time.
And so, in all technicality, N hadn’t lied when he’d responded that his friend was safe— Reshiram was safe and out of the forest. Safe from humans, with him, tucked into his pocket inside a Pokeball, thankfully. Reshiram was also safe to the humans— would not attack unless provoked— though this second meaning was surely lost on the human officer.
When the officer pushed it, N tried his best to appear truthful as he lied.
He’d read once that there were many subconscious human behaviors that could act as tells of deceit: eye movements, blinks, nervous tics such as tapping the fingers among them. As such, he remained completely still and stared directly into his opponent’s eyes when he lied.
In the end, he wasn’t sure he nor the officer had gained much from the questioning.
This was why he didn’t like humans.
“If he won’t tell us anything, I guess we’ll have to figure it out with some old-fashioned investigating,” the detective steepled his hands together under his chin. “You know what that means?”
The officer’s enthusiasm drained completely out of him. “Calling the American Embassy…?”
“And whatever other countries you think he might be from!” The detective beamed, while patting the officer on the back.
“Citizenship is going to be so hard to find with just a name,” the officer lamented, his posture drooping.
“Granted, it is a rather unusual name,” the detective mused with a hand on his chin. “I’m sure you won’t have any problems with finding the wrong person.”
The officer looked down at the paper he’d scribbled the long name on. Natural Harmonia Gropius, preferring to be called N. “So unusual one might think it’s an alias as well.”
The officer turned back to the detective.
“So does falling from a hole in the sky still count as illegal entry into the country, or…?”
The holding room they transferred N to was cramped, dimly lit, and had only the bare essentials: an uncomfortable cot that was sized more like a large chair against the wall, with barely enough space to lie down, and a small toilet that barely qualified as a water fountain with an attached sink.
It all disgusted him.
A space completely lacking in any sort of livelihood or dignity— humans would invent such spaces to punish each other, wouldn’t they?
Confinement was nothing new to N. He hadn’t seen the sky for entire years— close to a decade— after Ghetsis had taken him to the castle hiding beneath the Unova Pokémon League. It was precisely because N had tasted the freedom of the sky and the sea and the lands once more, however, that it felt all the more insufferable now.
There was a perpetual itch underneath his skin that wouldn’t go away no matter how his nails dug into his sleeves, and an expanding balloon haunting his lungs that made him feel like his whole chest would collapse in on itself when it popped.
He decided that if an opportune moment arose, he would get out at the first moment he could, and no later, consequences be damned. At least if they were going to detain him as a criminal, he should get to be a proper criminal.
For the moment, he settled onto the uncomfortable cot and fiddled with the puzzle cube on his belt. The pressure in his chest receded just that little bit more so that he could breathe again.
In his pocket, Reshiram’s Pokeball shook once.
“Yeah, no, this guy’s not ours,” the American embassy said over the phone.
“Are you sure? Could you possibly check again?” the officer balked.
“We already even expanded the search parameters to all years of the database that exist. Do you know how much time it took to run that query?” the agent on the phone complained. “Nobody with those three names is or ever has been a citizen of the United States.”
As the dial tone rang for the hung up phone, the officer sagged into his seat. Maybe it wasn’t too late to go check if the man named N spoke any languages other than fluent English in an American accent, the officer mused— like French, or something.
Thus far, he had checked with America, Canada, Australia, and even the United Kingdom for good measure, even though his accent didn’t place him anywhere near there. It was like the man had popped up out of thin air somehow.
Maybe the man hadn’t even existed before falling from the sky. Wasn’t that a thought? That this bizarre man, sparing with his odd words, was maybe just a figment of someone’s quirk. Who knew? Maybe it was possible. Cloning quirks existed, so who was to say if spontaneous birth of full-grown adults was someone’s quirk out there?
Would anyone ever know if he just said that the young man was American and called it a day? Then America could take over and figure out where to deport him to next if they didn’t want him. The officer was tired.
It had been approximately a day and a half. N’s ankle hurt.
There wasn’t a clock in the room, and N’s wristwatch had lost its function long ago, and he didn’t have an X-transceiver to check the time with. The only indicator that time had passed was the sliver of natural light through a small glass window that had gone and come and went again, showing that it was now his second night here.
He heard the start of a cavalcade of police car sirens outside. Something must have happened, if they were mobilizing at least three vehicles.
Surely this would meant that security was at its lowest. N didn’t doubt that they still had someone present for surveillance, but he probably wouldn’t get a better chance.
As the sirens grew distant, N waited.
Then, he gingerly took Reshiram’s ball out of his pocket and, holding it to his forehead with a whisper of apology for the trouble they were about to get into, pressed the button.
White feathers unfurled to fill the room and obstruct the cameras, and a roar too loud to be contained shook the room from ceiling to floor. In all its glory, Reshiram appeared, head ducked and wings boxed in by the small space.
Perhaps it was a bit overkill to use Reshiram’s Fusion Flare on the wall, what with the burst of white-hot flames extending far past the crumbling and burnt wall before dissipating into fizzling heat-distorted air. N didn’t shield his face from the heat, instead letting it wash over him with his eyes closed like it was the warmth of a hot summer sun after years of overcast days.
Reshiram came out of the hole in the wall first, wings extending to their full span and beating buffeting winds into the ground and the building to keep itself aloft.
N stepped to the boundary, charred black and partially glowing with residual heat and energy. It was not a long fall to the ground— three stories at most— but as always, as he stepped off the side fearlessly, Reshiram caught him on its back with a smooth swoop through the air.
“Hold on tight,” Reshiram instructed with a low bellow in its throat. “We’re going up.”
N inhaled deeply, letting the slightly cool wind of the summer night fill his lungs, then sputtered a clumsy cough, as the sudden intake of air became a scratchy irritant in his throat.
The air smelled of pollutants— some fume or miasma that N had neither the ability nor desire to identify. As they rose into the sky, N watched the lights of buildings become smaller and smaller… and then stretch far beyond his imagination in all directions.
N felt his stomach drop. For the second time in three days, his blood turned chilly and his fingers grasping onto Reshiram’s feathers became clammy with sweat.
How much larger was this city than Castelia?
How much of the forests had it torn down and devoured to grow to this size? Just how many humans resided here?
He patted a rushed request into the fold of muscle between Reshiram’s wing and back, to bring him to the highest vantage point in the city, a tall building.
When Reshiram landed, and N jumped off its lowered back onto the glass-and-metal tower’s flat surface, he simply stood there, taking in the panorama of sky, mountain, and city for much longer than a moment.
Not a single star was visible in the sky— it was as though the people had plucked them out of the sky and used them to power their own homes, a patchwork grid of artificial stars made of windows and streetlamps and blinking lights over towers.
N never knew that a miasma to blot out the stars could be made with light, and not smoke and shadows. The city lights, no doubt diffused from microscopic particles floating in the air, created an eerily bright haze over the sea of buildings.
A profound sense of loss washed over him. He slowly but shakily took a seat at the edge of the building, where Reshiram was already curled up and resting.
From where N was seated, he couldn’t see the forest that he had been found in, nor the blue to orange glow of flames engulfing it. The black smoke of charred trees rose into a black night, becoming invisible. N had no way of seeing the attack on the camp of hero students where he’d been found.
His opportunity to escape had been in the aftermath of an unprecedented devastating assault on the students of the foremost hero school in the nation. The police had been mobilized from the station to arrest the captive villains after the main team’s retreat, only to return to the station and find a panicking guard and a hole blasted into the wall.
The timing had been too convenient.
And thus, with a swiftly issued warrant for his arrest, N’s status was elevated from person of interest to prime suspect.
One student under his care was kidnapped. Twenty-seven were injured. One hero remained unaccounted for.
To put it lightly, Nedzu was furious.
The League of Villains sought to undermine everything Nedzu had dedicated his life to, and now in the aftermath, there were protestors outside their doors and knocking on their walls, vultures from news companies here to prey on their failures and sow distrust upon his institution.
The initial response had been a dizzying sequence of press conferences and carefully worded public announcements and apologies. Despite the capture of three villains, nothing could outweigh the public outcry regarding a student’s kidnapping. Nedzu was certain that targeting the winner of the UA Sports Festival, young Bakugou Katsuki, with his animated temperament, was nothing short of a calculated move.
At the moment, Bakugou served as the face of all of UA’s shortcomings: too hotheaded to be charismatic or cooperative, yet too strong to become anything other than a hero. And yet he was young, too young to know right from wrong, young enough to need guidance from good role models, young enough to be protected. That UA had failed in that crucial protection seemed to be the straw that broke the camel’s back on public opinion.
Unfortunately, the one who would receive the brunt of the public’s ill will was not the institution, but the one who headed it, Nezu himself— already under greater scrutiny than any other human principal of UA’s longstanding tenure would be, just by virtue of what he was: an animal, elevated to a human.
Already, they were calling for his removal.
Had Nedzu not proven himself already? With twice the mettle and brilliance to overcome twice the scrutiny and skepticism? Who did they think more suitable than him to take up the mantle of overseeing the institution?
Before the morning broke and the gauntlet of daytime press and staff briefings continued, Nedzu needed a break— something enriching to do, that would keep his mind temporarily away from frustrating matters of public relations. He needed something to make him feel like he was doing his job as a hero, and not just as an administrative leader.
In gathering a full picture of the events, one curiosity stuck out like a sore thumb:
The green haired man, and the large white creature, both sighted in the training grounds on the first day of the students’ training camp.
The camp’s location had been kept confidential, only informed to the UA staff. Of course, a man coincidentally appearing there from seemingly out of nowhere, right before the most devastating attack on UA students in the history of the school, was highly suspect. That he would then escape from his holding cell with a terrifying show of overwhelming force on the night of the attack was even more suspicious.
However, rolling back the camera footage, listening to the audio recording, reading the transcript of his questioning… Nedzu could identify no signs of illicit collaboration with the League of Villains. He was certainly hiding something, of course, and Nedzu could tell immediately that when he lied, he looked straight into the eyes of his target, as though unsettling them with his gaze would draw attention away from his deceit.
The mismatch in the timing of things was key: if the young man’s appearance in the forest was related to the League of Villains, then Nedzu could see no reason why he had waited until after the attack had already ended to make his escape. One would expect him to come to their aid during the attack. There was no need for him after, when they already had a secure getaway through the villain of black mist.
If he was truly unrelated, then it should have been a waste of time for Nedzu to begin this line of inquiry in the first place. However, the stacked oddities of this young man refused to be ignored, and Nedzu felt like he deserved a fun pet project for the hell of a press tour he was about to go through.
And so, Nedzu again combed through the transcripts and videos, the questioning and the escape, and found himself entranced in the mystery of Natural Harmonia Gropius, N.
A man who couldn’t name the country he was from, but readily named a nonexistent region as though it were a nation. A man who had referenced a friend as easily and readily as a human child speaking of their playground companions, which had in hindsight turned out to be the exact large white creature that had led the heroes to him in the first place.
He scoured through recordings from various angles of the man flying away on the back of what could only be described as a majestic white dragon.
He rewatched the dragon’s sudden appearance in the holding cell, scrubbed through the footage by frame back and forth: a small sphere of red and white from the young man’s pocket, pressed reverently against his forehead, before a red light encompassed the whole room, and white feathers overtook the screen.
He examined photos of the destruction the dragon had wrought, the flame which had melted through solid steel rebar and concrete and left a crumbling hole in the side of a secure holding facility.
Transformation quirks that could turn humans into creatures were not unheard of. One needed only look at Dragoon Hero: Ryukyu, their current No. 9 hero, as an example: her quirk’s dragon form was even somewhat similar in shape to the white dragon that had carried the young man into the night.
However, transformation quirks that came with additional powers— such as the control over flames that the dragon in the footage had displayed— was far rarer. Even Ryukyu’s dragon form, despite its resemblance to the mythical creature, only gave her enhanced strength and durability. To be able to breathe white-hot fire in addition to that was so farfetched, it would have to be the result of some incredible quirk breeding or experimentation.
Nedzu might even take a gamble and say it was something from out of this world.
Not to mention the ball— quirk or technology, or both? According to some testimonies from students, there had been a villain in the League of Villains with a very similar ability to compress entire living beings into marbles, but those marbles held no resemblance to the red and white sphere the man had pulled out of his pocket.
Everything about the man named N laid in the uncanny valley when considered in the context of this world and the things they took for granted— quirks, geography, language— and Nedzu had a sneaking suspicion as to why, but not enough evidence to confirm it.
A fascinating find, which would carry great implications for theoretical physics if he could prove it— Nedzu couldn’t resist chasing this tail to the heart of it.
And so, he privately chartered a vehicle with his own funds, to the Nagano Prefecture, where the young man was last seen.
If his predictions based on the dragon’s direction and velocity and his read on N’s character were correct, then they would still be at the top of that building.
Hours had passed.
N hadn’t fallen asleep, but it was a near thing— his eyelids were starting to become heavy.
Then the door opened, and he quickly propelled himself back to alertness, head turning around to see who had just come to the rooftop.
It wasn’t human, that much was clear. The white furred rodent resembled no mouse Pokémon that N had ever seen, but it was perhaps the closest creature to a Pokémon N had yet to encounter in this strange world. Perhaps it was because of this— a deeper resemblance to Pokémon than just accessories— that N didn’t feel the urgency to leave, the way he had when the humans had approached him before.
The white furred creature, outfitted smartly in a suit and tie— decidedly too human to be a Pokémon, though N knew that there were trainers who dressed up their Pokémon in suffocating vests and little accessories as well— walked to N at a leisurely pace, completely lacking in threat.
In a similar show of non-aggression, N turned his head back towards the scenery, letting it approach his back unwatched before it came to stand near the edge of the building beside him.
Reshiram, who had also stirred when the door opened, made a soft chittering noise. “Do you want me to stay?”
N patted a soft affirmation, “yes, please,” into Reshiram’s neck.
“A penny for your thoughts?” The creature next to him finally spoke, blessedly in Galarian.
N looked at it, and then back to the scenery that surrounded him— the sea of lights, stretching out into the base of the mountains. He let out a long exhale.
“I wonder if it was worth it.” N sighed. How could he convey the grief he felt for something that never existed here? “So much loss of nature on such a grand scale… did they only ever consider it a means to an end, or did none of it matter? When growth for the sake of growth becomes destructive, it’s just cancer.”
“I’m inclined to agree with you, young man,” the creature responded in turn. “There were no doubt countless animals displaced by the urban developments, however… I regret to inform you that the Nagano Prefecture that you see does not even come close in scale to the Tokyo Prefecture, where the capital city of Japan resides. This tower, the tallest building in the prefecture, is only 75 meters tall— 250 meters shorter than Tokyo’s tallest building.”
A building 1,068 feet tall, N’s mind automatically made the conversion from metric, a whole fifth of a mile. Not a single building in Unova compared, including Team Plasma’s Castle, which had been designed to tower above the Pokémon League.
“... I see,” N lowered his head, letting the visor of his cap cover the starless sky above. “How tragic. I suppose that’s one thing going for us,” he mused aloud freely; “legislation protects the routes between towns and cities as Pokémon sanctuaries. Only it doesn’t particularly serve as a sanctuary if any human can freely harm and capture any Pokémon they encounter in these routes, does it? But I suppose it’s better than not having a place for the Pokémon at all— not that Pokémon even exist here to consider, though.”
“And when you say us,” the creature hummed, “I take it you refer to the world you come from, parallel to our own?”
N nodded. “Displacement across another dimension entirely, outside of the space-time 4-dimensional paradigm that serves as the fundamental basis of physics,” he confirmed. “Given the incredibly low probability that evolutionary events of different worlds would line up to produce humans, much less humans who have the same technology, languages, and numerical units of measurement…”
“It’s not exactly plausible for you to have traveled through space from another planet, huh!” the creature completed N’s thought with excitement coloring its voice. “It’s instead far more likely that two realities in parallel managed to link up somehow, and you were the lucky first person to discover it!”
“Lucky might not be the word I’d use to describe it,” N smiled a little ruefully. “Statistically low in probability, yes, but luck would imply a positive outcome.”
“Ah, but whyever not?” The creature turned to face N with guileless eyes, and N thought of speaking to Pokémon again, with nothing but truth in the sum of their body language and sounds. “It’s a discovery! A new piece of ground truth that only you get to be privy to for now, to add to the collective knowledge of the world!”
At the word truth, Reshiram’s ears perked up. “I like this one,” it gestured with a shift of its tail and hum from its chest. N gave Reshiram a pat on its lifted head, a sign to settle back down into its restful curl.
“Personally,” the creature continued, “I’m delighted at the idea of a parallel universe, and a yet-undefined fifth dimension. I came to talk to you to confirm it— I’m glad you came to the same conclusion.”
“I suppose I’d feel more excited if there were Pokémon in this world,” N drew his knees close to his chest. “I’ve always felt closer to Pokémon than to humans,” he confided.
“You’ve mentioned them several times,” the creature noted. “Tell me more about them!”
“Where do I begin?” N smiled. “Reshiram, my friend—” the dragon’s head lifted, opened striking blue eyes that the creature stared at in wonder— “is a Pokémon, but not representative of the larger population of them. It is one of the legendary dragons of the Unova, credited in the region’s creation myth as the one who chooses and follows the hero of Truth.”
The creature nodded along. N continued. “They’re intelligent beings— all of them have some understanding of human speech, even if they don’t have the structured vocal boxes and mouths to be able to reproduce the spoken language. They have sophisticated communication, even if it’s not human language.
“It’s unfair to them that humans will never understand them as well as they understand humans,” N declared. “They’ve existed long before humans, living in harmony with the world as it was, and if I had my way… they would exist long after humans.”
“You’re very passionate about them,” the creature observed.
N took a deep breath. “They deserve to be free,” he leaned his head into the crook of his arms resting on his knees. “They were the ones who saved me and taught me how to survive when I was too young to even remember the faces of the humans who abandoned me. They were the ones who showed me that independent of humanity, a simple life with universal freedoms is possible.”
When he’d left Team Plasma’s castle— his castle— N’s heart had stung with the betrayal of the man he’d called his father. In the end, he would always be closer to Pokémon than human: taken out of the wilderness he’d called home by someone who claimed to be saving him, given luxuries of toys and food and clothing, docile and obedient and never biting the hand of the giver.
Everything would have been simpler if N had never left the forest in the first place.
“You have quite a kind heart,” the creature said softly, its perpetual smile slightly wider than before.
How ironic, N thought. “My own adopted father accused me of being a freak without a human heart,” N leaned his head to the side to look into the creature’s eyes.
“Well, that isn’t so bad, is it?” the creature continued in full stride. “I don’t have a human heart, and yet the humans will answer to me anyways. They know they can’t afford not to.”
N’s eyes widened. “That’s surprising,” he admitted.
“Do you want to see why?” the creature’s eyes sparkled. “Let’s play a little game, shall we?”
Curiosity took hold of N, and he adjusted the cap on his head with a smile. “Sure.”
The creature walked a little closer to the building’s edge and pointed at the highway exit ramp in the distance. “How many cars have passed on that road since we began talking?”
“63,” N replied, recalling it in his periphery, “15 of them changed lanes on that ramp, and 22 of them remained in the right lane.”
“Very impressive!” The creature clapped its hands together. “Let’s escalate it. Now, if I had a wrecking ball on a crane, and wanted to obstruct that ramp without moving from this location, how would I do that?”
“How heavy is the wrecking ball? Is it attached as a pendulum to a crane?” N asked.
“Let’s say… approximately 1,000 kilograms. The crane is free-standing and can reach 70 meters tall, but you must account for balance to make sure the crane doesn’t tip over.”
N pointed to a window on the nearby building. “You would want to break the support pillar on this corner of the building, such that the building’s structural failure makes it fall into the next building’s support structures,” he pointed at the buildings in turn, expounding on the directions of their hypothetical domino chain of collapses.
“… Until finally, the tip of this building has the momentum to travel just far enough to obstruct the ramp. With the limited space, you’d have to make the steel chain about 40 meters long, and then turn the crane around—” he gestured with his hands— “to get the angular momentum of the pendulum high enough to impact the pillar with enough velocity for it to fail.”
The creature clapped again, practically vibrating with excitement. “Well done! Those were my thoughts exactly! Now if you wanted the plane in the sky overhead to fall…”
“— and you’d be able to achieve that by inducing engine failure if you send it up from there at…”
And on they continued with the hypothetical scenarios, until eventually a whole half hour passed.
Reshiram lazily lifted its head and opened a sharp blue eye.
“Should I be concerned that my chosen is proposing hypothetical methods of mass destruction upon his own kind?” it snorted, unimpressed.
“Don’t worry, my friend,” N broke from his conversation with the white-furred creature, “they’re all only hypotheticals.”
“What did it say?” the creature leaned over N’s side to look at the dragon.
“It’s just a little concerned about the destructive potential of our little game,” N smiled, patting down one of Reshiram’s loose feathers.
“Ah, I see!” the creature exclaimed. “You can speak to them!”
“Oh right,” N hummed absentmindedly. “I did forget to mention that.”
“You can speak to all Pokémon?” the creature leaned forward, interested.
“Well, yes,” N leaned back, a little surprised by the creature’s enthusiasm. “I’ve been able to do so since I was a child. I thought it might be a verbal language at first, but I later realized that Pokémon communication can be derived formulaically as well— different nonlinear combinations of behaviors map consistently to multiple meanings and even syntax, the way that speech and writing do for humans.”
“Fascinating!” the creature smiled. “I see why you would consider yourself quite close to them, then!”
“Right,” N nodded.
He didn’t know how to verbally express the way his chest burst with warmth at the positive reception of his abilities. It felt different than when he told people in Unova— the creature’s reaction wasn’t the overwhelming reverence and worship of Team Plasma, but it also wasn’t the bare-faced bewilderment of the people he had told during his travels, like the Hero of Ideals or their friends, Cheren and Bianca.
He wondered if that was only possible because he had entered a context where Pokémon were absent— where it wasn’t a default belief that humans would never be able to communicate with Pokémon at the same fidelity as they spoke with each other.
“Ah!” the creature leaned back with a shout, “but I was having so much fun, I completely forgot the point of our little game! You truly are a fascinating young man, Mr. Natural Harmonia Gropius!”
N reeled back. “How did you—”
“I forgot to introduce myself,” the creature bowed like a showman, bulldozing past N’s shock. “My name is Nedzu. Am I a bear, a dog, or a mouse? My actual identity is… I’m a pro hero! And more importantly, the principal of a pro hero school! But where were we?” He looked at N expectantly.
N paused, trying to let his heart rate settle back to rest after the unexpected use of his full name. It must have learned it from the police, he noted. “... Humans respect you. You said you wanted to play a game to prove that.”
“Precisely!” Nedzu rubbed his paws together. “How much have you seen of this world, so far, young N? Are you familiar yet with the heroes?”
“I’ve heard some people referred to as such,” N nodded. “The people who found me in the forest were heroes,” he tested the word on his tongue in the unfamiliar context, “... correct? I assume that’s not just a term vaguely referencing a character of honor or courage here.”
“You assume correctly!” Nedzu raised a paw to the sky. “Being a hero is a profession in this world. At a point of divergence, when humans suddenly developed quirks en masse through genetic mutation, the word hero stopped referring to fictional characters or legends of old, and began cropping up as a word for the public figures who used their quirks to uphold justice, much like old comic book characters!”
“So I was right,” N mumbled with a hand on his chin. “They are like gym leaders.”
Nedzu grinned. “You can expect me to ask more about these gym leaders of yours later! But for now, allow me to explain a bit about myself.” He rested his hands behind his back, the picture of a dignified teacher. “Nedzu is a name I chose for myself, as the first animal in the world to develop a quirk and obtain a legal Hero License. My quirk, High Specs, grants me a high level of intelligence that surpasses many humans.
“I had intended to prove my intelligence to you with our little game,” Nedzu clapped his hands together in delight, “but imagine my delight, to instead find a human who can match wits with me! I’m impressed, truly!”
“So you’re a professional hero as well,” N noted; “a public figure that commands the respect of humans. A vehicle of law enforcement?”
“Yes!” Nedzu beamed, though his eyes took on a sinister glint as he added, “and I derive great sadistic joy in knowing that the very humans who kept me in captivity were the ones who gave me the power to free myself and rise in standing until they answered to me.”
The look on Nedzu’s face would have made any human cower, or at least feel a little chill. But to N, he could only feel a sense of kinship with this animal turned human— parallel yet opposite to himself.
“And you don’t regret it?” N grasped at his sleeves again. “You don’t miss the simplicity of the wilderness at all?”
“How would I even know to miss it?” Nedzu shrugged. “It was by their hand that I never got to know it in the first place— I was raised in walls of glass and metal and plaster since before I could remember anything else.”
N hunched into himself. Nedzu had been able to reclaim his fate and identity from humanity, and yet here N sat, wanting nothing more than to return to the forest, retreat as far from humans as he could.
“And from speaking with you, N,” Nedzu continued, “I get the sense that you would miss humanity more than you think, even if you don’t feel like you’re a part of it.”
N’s head snapped up. “How could you—”
“Math. Physics. Mechanics.” Nedzu interrupted, holding a finger out on his paw for every point listed. “You think deeply about these— I would even gather that you practically live, breathe, and sleep with these constantly on your mind. But think for a moment on where your desire to know them comes from, and where you learned of it from.”
N’s face heated up with something akin to shame. Of course they were human-made concepts. Of course they had come from the slow accumulation of human knowledge over centuries upon centuries of exchange. It was always foolish and hypocritical of him to believe that he was unique in his love for it.
But the dissonance, now pointed out and planted into N’s mind, burned in his throat. How could humans, the same ones to create something as pure as mathematics, still be the source of so much suffering in the world?
“You’re human too, N,” Nedzu declared slowly, truthfully.
Something in N shattered silently.
A single tear rolled down his cheek, and he hurriedly wiped it away with his palm.
“And I think you’ll find,” Nedzu continued softly, “that humans have the capacity for much more than just harm, if you open yourself to the possibility.”
The sun began to rise over a new day, a sliver of light illuminating Nedzu from behind in the backdrop of a completely blue-washed sky.
He had spent his whole life told that he was the only one who could lead both humans and Pokémon, that he alone would be the bridge, the hero. To even touch the idea that it had all been a delusion of grandeur, one that N had willingly embodied and carried out, made N want to recoil with disgust and never see the light of day again.
But that was what he had seen wasn’t it? It had been the crux of his battle with the Hero of Ideals, permeating the fair and just defeat he had suffered at their team and Zekrom. Still he turned away from the Truth, like a man in a cave painfully blinded by the light of dawn.
“I have a proposition for you. I’ll make you an offer you cannot refuse.” Nedzu turned to face N directly, hands at his side.
“N, you come to us at a tumultuous time,” Nedzu’s eyes turned serious. “Were you aware when you escaped from the police station that the camp you were found at had just suffered an attack of unprecedented scale from the League of Villains?”
N’s eyes widened as he shook his head. “I only heard the sirens and presumed the security would be lower.”
“I thought so,” Nedzu hummed. “N, after your escape, you’re currently a prime suspect for collaboration with the League of Villains. Your unfortunate timing places you very close to the assault, and with the kidnapping of a student, if the media makes the same connection that the police have about your relevance to the case, you’ll know no peace for the duration of your stay in this world.”
Ah, N thought. He’d made another legal mess for himself to get out of.
“Fortunately,” Nedzu held up a hand, “UA, the hero school that I serve as the principal of, has historically been in good standing with many law enforcement agencies in the nation, and even internationally. Our alumni are everywhere, as pro heroes, policemen, reporters, engineers, and all kinds of fields. You can imagine the leverage we have, yes?”
N nodded slowly, unsure where Nedzu was bringing the point.
“And so, to absolve you of your relation to the League of Villains, in exchange for pardoning your destruction of property and us paying for the damages, I’d like to offer you a position.”
Nedzu extended a hand to N, like a handshake, and finally the sun rose in its entirety above the horizon behind him.
“... Become an assistant teacher of math at my school.”
N’s mouth hung open.
“Of course, we’ll provide room and board, and a salary for you to enjoy this world. You’ll have benefits too,” Nedzu beamed. “Health insurance, dental, vision— we’ll get you all the official documents of identification you need, and arrange a legal residency status for your employment.”
All the unfamiliar words made N’s head spin. “I— I don’t understand,” he stuttered.
“Well, what is there not to understand?” Nedzu’s head tilted owlishly.
“What do you stand to gain from this arrangement?” N’s voice came out even faster than usual. “It’s so unilaterally in my favor that I can’t even…”
“My goal is to make an offer you can’t say no to,” Nedzu smiled, “and I seem to have succeeded. But in all seriousness,” his smile started to fade, “we can’t afford to be chasing down loose and irrelevant leads while the League of Villains is making its first big moves. I fear a war is brewing, and we’ll need all our cards stacked in our favor.”
N closed his open mouth.
“It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement,” Nedzu elaborated, “which also ensures that we have your brilliance on our side, while giving you the best resources available to research a way back home. It is an additional bonus,” Nedzu’s eyes softened, “that you may get to experience the joy of educating a generation, and having a very real influence on the human society that you desire to change. Though if you need additional justification… call it a pet project of mine.
“So how about it, N?”
N looked at Nedzu’s beady eyes, then down at the paw extended to him.
The man he had called Father had once extended a hand to him, and said that he would make N the king of a new world.
This creature now extended a paw to him, and said that he would allow N new experiences to better understand humans, in a context N would never even remotely be allowed in Unova.
N reached a hand out, and shook Nedzu’s paw.