Chapter Text
It’s around 10pm at Gear Station. The last subways are arriving, the main station their last stops for the night. People and their pokemon partners spill sleepily off of the subway cars, exhausted from long days. Most of the daytime shift agents have departed as well, and a gentle quiet seeps over the station as the night shift agents arrive.
All is quiet in the offices, lights turned off and doors locked, desks empty and the breakroom vacant. The offices of the station’s Battle Subway division are empty, as the battle lines don’t run at night, and all their employees have gone home.
Well.
That’s how it’s supposed to be.
Lavender Whitethorne sits at his desk, papers spread out before him in a complex web of connections. His computer is open to several news articles, and his brow is furrowed as he scratches out notes in a small black moleskin journal. It’s late, and he is clearly tired– dark circles sit under his eyes, almost matching his hair with their purple hue.
He needs to sleep more.
But how can he?
His name is Lavender Whitethorne. He is a dedicated employee, and has worked at Gear Station helping to manage the Battle Subway’s offices for almost twenty years. And, as an employee of the Battle Subway, he is duty-bound to care about his Subway Bosses. Ingo and Emmet, the twin brothers in black and white.
That’s how it’s supposed to be.
It’s just Emmet now. It’s been Emmet and Emmet alone for the past six months. Six months of fruitless searching, of trails turning up cold, of countless return calls from members of the International Police informing them that “no, we haven’t found him.”
Six months of watching Boss Emmet crumble under the stress.
Six months of suffering.
This cannot stand. This is unacceptable.
…It may be hubris, but Lavender can’t help but think that if he were part of the International Police, he would have found Ingo already.
They just aren’t searching hard enough.
Despite not being part of the organization, after three months of this, Lavender had decided that enough was enough and that if the police couldn’t help, then he’d start his own investigation. Quietly, of course, without letting anyone know. He didn’t want anyone to interfere.
And so, for the past three months, he has searched. He has learned about other missing cases, cases where people disappear without a trace. All of them, curiously, within the past eight months. Sometimes they are found, often far, far away from home. Even more often, with no memory of who they are. He has studied the possible causes of this. A few fringe theories have suggested that it’s a terrorist organization trying to use powerful trainers for their own good.
A tempting idea, given that Ingo was– IS –one of the most powerful trainers in Unova. The theory would seem sound, if not for the fact that one of the missing cases was a seven-year-old boy. He had no pokemon.
…He still hasn’t been found either.
Lavender tears his eyes away from the chubby, smiling face staring back at him from the missing poster. There’s no consistency between the few dozen cases he’s found, besides the fact that it was sudden and mysterious . Nobody saw them vanish. There one minute, gone the next. He heaves out a sigh and closes the tab with the missing child’s information, files the paperwork for that into one of his folders. He rests his chin in his gloved hand. With his other he taps out a soft rhythm with his ballpoint pen, as if trying to help pace his thoughts.
Eight months.
Eight months?
He sits back upright, brow furrowing. Perhaps there’s some significance to how long it’s been. Lavender opens a new tab, fingers soft on the clacking keyboard. Eight months, eight months… What happened eight months ago?
It had been December, he recalls, so he was busy buying gifts and planning events and preparing to host a Christmas party. Everyone was so focused on the holidays that some news tended to slide by notice. If something of significance had happened, then surely, surely it’d be posted somewhere.
He skims through the search results, looking for anything that seemed reputable. He stops, then, mouse hovering over a link to a website for the Professor’s Collectivist Organization. The PCO is a group founded by Professor Oak , he read, aiming to keep our world of people and pokemon safe and informed with the latest in scientific knowledge. Seems as good of a start as any.
He clicks through the menus for a bit, scanning for any mention of disappearances. A few pages in, and he’s found it. A report from Professor Burnet, specializing in… Ultra Wormholes??? What??
He clicks on the report and begins to read. Wormholes, dimensional travel, Fallers . He can barely breathe. Burnet’s dissertation explains that wormholes to a place called “ultra space” sometimes appear, usually in the Alola region. People can enter these wormholes.
…People can go missing.
She explains that her research is based on the work of her predecessor, Professor Mohn, who had been sucked into one of the wormholes he was studying. He was found years later living on an island, with no memories of his previous life. There’s a small paragraph about how long people can be trapped in wormholes, briefly referencing a “faller” who had emitted extraordinary amounts of ultra energy. A large amount of energy equals a long time in ultra space.
Lavender sits back in his chair, starting to click his pen again. People go missing in wormholes. They’re trapped in them. And then they return, with no memories. His clicking slows. If Boss Ingo had been sucked into one of these wormholes, could he have…?
He refuses to entertain that thought. Ingo is a Subway Boss. He is part of a two car train, and he is a brother, and he is a friend. He’d never forget that. He couldn’t possibly forget Boss Emmet. That is simply unacceptable. Improbable. Impossible. Lavender frowns at the very thought of that, of the twins not being twins anymore. They’re his bosses. There has to be a different explanation, and he’ll just have to keep searching.
He picks up his notebook. Flips to a fresh page. Clicks his pen once with finality, and starts taking notes, even as his eyes begin to droop and the pen feels heavy in his hand. Just a few hours more. He’ll stop once he finds something worth considering. Just… a few….more.