Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

From the moment they saw it, the scenery that appeared before their own eyes was not the Mesagoza that they were familiar with:

The streets were devoid of any traces of living beings, and everything was wrecked and charred as if a huge war had taken place there. Every nook and cranny of Mesagoza, or to be exact what was once this beautiful city, was filled with a mysterious black miasma of pure evil. Anyone who has been exposed to this elusive miasma even in a split second will be twisted into the very embodiment of pure wickedness itself, so wicked that no one can tell that it was the same nice person that they knew.

“Arven! Penny! Can you hear me? It is me, your best friend!”

It was the voice of Inori Yamabuki, the Champion of the Paldea League. To be exact, she dethroned the previous Champion, Geeta, exactly three months ago after a tough battle which almost ended in the failure of Buki, as she was called by her friends. 

“Nemona was looking for you everywhere and she was worried about you guys! Can you please come back to our sleepover party?”

Of course, any good friend of Inori would have taken her pleas. But Arven and Penny did not listen to such kind words from her. 

Their souls have been tainted by that same miasma. 

Penny brought out her twin daggers and threw them at poor Buki, with Buki herself escaping being hit by them in the nick of time. But that didn’t stop either: Arven then charged at her, clutching his frying pan in both of his hands. With a mighty blow, he struck Inori on the head, knocking her out. Before she went unconscious, the last thing she heard was the maniacal laughter of both the traitors.

A while later, after she has regained her consciousness, the first thing she saw was a young boy, no older than her but his build is a bit pint-sized compared to a person of his age. His hair was black as the night sky, but the inner sides of it was of a regal purple, like the robes of a Classical Emperor.

“It is futile for you to struggle to continue living in this sinful world with little to no hope. I shall be the salvation and tomorrow of despairing people like you - for that my existence and role has been prophesied throughout time and space.” - the mysterious youth told Inori.

Just before Inori can ask for the youth’s name and his origins, she heard a voice:

“INORI!! YOU ARE LATE FOR SCHOOL!”

It was Marina Otomo, her classmate in Class 9-A of Uva Academy. Marina was a blue-blooded girl who, like Inori, was not originally from Paldea. She was the descendant of Sohrin Otomo, a Church layman from a faraway region collective called the Federation of Sollux who lived long before both she and Inori were born. Ever since Inori started attending Uva Academy, she has been the best of friends of Marina, or Mari as she calls her.

“Uuugh, Mari… I have just got a terrible nightmare… It scared the living daylights out of me and it felt so… real….”

“Buki, what you have just said is nonsense! If something bad happened inside a dream, it doesn’t mean that it will happen to you IN REAL LIFE! Stop taking dreams so seriously, as us Church laity are told to be cautious of them!”

“But Mari…”

Then Inori’s phone began to ring. Who on Earth can call her THAT early? 

It was Rika, the Ground-type specialist of the Paldean Elite Four, and is also Buki’s Paldean language tutor.

“Come quick, Buki! There’s something important I would like to share with you as well as your partner…”, spoke Rika in a trembling but urgent voice.

“What was it?”

“I cannot tell you now as my phone battery is dying… But please come over to the League building as soon as possible, as this matter is an urgent emergency…”

“But school…”

‘Relax, Buki. I have asked Clavell for permission for both you and Mari to not go to school today.”

After that, the call stopped. Perhaps Rika ended the call herself or her phone finally ran out of battery.

“W-What was going on?”, said Marina, in a voice as trembling as Rika during the phone call.

“We have no time to lose. What Rika said as urgent would be urgent to both of us. An incident must be happening somewhere and we have to solve it.”

“B-But Buki… We are just normal schoolgirls, aren’t w-we?”

“Shush, shush. With God by our side, nothing is impossible for us. Remember that, Mari.”

After a while, they are finally at the League building. It hasn’t changed much ever since Inori started climbing her ranks in the League, which, according to her, is “the very dwelling place of tedium itself”, and almost made her pass out from boredom from looking at the plain interiors of Larry’s chamber during her battle against him. 

Rika’s office still remain more or less the same than what it was months ago: A desk with a computer monitor in front of her chair, and what was on the workspace - her documents and her collection of cheesy Akemi Saiki ¹ novels - was arranged as if a mini-tornado has touched down upon it. 

One by one, Inori and Marina sat down face-to-face with Rika, a woman who looks barely 30 and is often mistaken for a guy because of how she dresses and speaks. Normally she is nonchalant with anyone, but whenever she is having an interview with a League participant or is greeting her guests, she becomes a much more serious person, with a pair of smart-looking glasses on her face to boot.

“Recently in Paldea,” - said Rika in a serious voice - “Many of the region’s denizens have suffered from mysterious nightmares where they witnessed bad things happen to them. What exactly happened in the nightmares vary, but some said their loved ones turned against them, others said they were chased or ambushed by wild Pokémon that were more aggressive than what they were in the real world. Regardless of what happened to them, later on they were rescued by a dark-haired youth who said cryptic words that I haven’t got the true meaning of. But before they could know who this youth was or even what was the purpose of such nightmares, the unpleasant things ended abruptly.”

“That’s WHAT happened to me last night!” - exclaimed Inori. “I dreamt of Arven and Penny fighting against me, and that mysterious youth came and rescued me just before the dream abruptly ended!”

“I also had one of such nightmares too, Buki.” - said Rika. “Not just me, you, Geeta, or even the younger Gym Leaders and Elite Four members, but apparently older people such as your Art teacher Hassel and that infamous rapper Ryme also had those nightmares ² . It seems like the nightmares target ANYONE OF ANY AGE GROUP.”

“W-What can we do about it?”, said Marina, her voice just as nervous as she was before she arrived at the League building.

“As of now, we might never know, but from what many witnesses said, the youth from those nightmares, if he actually exists, seems to be our only hope in ending this thing. From what I can piece together from witnesses’ description of his appearances, apparently he is a real person living in the Kitakami region far away. I then decided to initiate the mission to fetch the youth and ask him about the nightmares, which I am fairly sure that he knows the truth about them and might even the way to end this ordeal. But then I realized that my schedules have been totally booked over the next few weeks, so you will be the ones who will do this task for me…”

“But Rika, we don’t even get enough money to buy plane tickets to Kitakami, let alone renting a hotel or even a motel to stay there for a couple of days! Going to a land that is thousands of miles away from us would cost us a fortune!”

“Woah, hey, just relax. Some of my big-shot friends paid these for you guys out of their own money. So there’s no need to do dirty deeds such as robbing the Academy’s money.”

A day later, Buki and Mari caught a plane to Kitakami. Once they arrived there, even when they kept complaining of their sore bottoms due to the long-haul flight, they stopped their complaints for a while after being greeted with waves of cheers by people in yukata. After weaving their way out of the massive cheering mob, a girl with black and red hair who looks slightly taller and older than both the girls stands before them.

“Welcome to Kitakami, visitors from Paldea!” - said the girl. “I’m Carmine, descendant of a famous local mask craftsman, and hope you enjoy your stay here! Here, allow me to take you to my home!”

And so Carmine led the girls to a taxi, and after an hour’s drive, they all finally arrived at Carmine’s home. 

“Gramps! We have visitors at our house! Prepare them a guest’s bedroom to stay, gramps!” - Carmine shouted.

“Yes, but you have to make sure that Kiki is home before dinner and that he is not planning to blow this house up because what some visitor did to break his heart during the summer. I know that he can become ballistic easily, and once he is like that, it is futile to stop him in his tracks to get what he wants…” - Her grandfather replied, albeit his answer is sometimes interrupted by coughs - perhaps because of his poor health due to old age.

“You have a little brother, Carmine?” - asked Marina.

“Yes, but he caused a lot of commotion a while ago because some visitor from your land hurt his feelings. Even now those hullabaloos have been quelled, another problem crops up: Sometimes he just stares at his wall, screaming out words in a language I don’t even know ³ , and in a very creepy hoarse voice! At first, I thought some evil spirit was possessing him, but after a shrine maiden confirmed otherwise, I stopped thinking that he was possessed. After my schoolmate told me it was a language from a region far up North famous for that genre of heavy metal with harsh vocals, it all made sense - Bringing him to that music festival is the worst mistake of my life!”

“Heavy metal? Last week, Rika told me about the genre and she said that’s the worst genre of music she has ever heard.” - replied Inori.

“That’s the point.” - Carmine answered. “But anyway, let’s just wait for him to come home, and in case he brings in a C4 to reduce this house into crumbs, throw this sakura mochi at him, girls.” - Carmine said while she was pulling out a sakura mochi the size of her fist and handing them to Inori, as somehow she knew Buki might be quicker to react to a sticky situation than her partner.

That night, he didn’t return, due to reasons only known to him - or to be exact, only known to the Almighty. But he did leave behind something - either for the visitors who have stayed in his “master guest bedroom” or to his sister.

The next day, at only 5 in the morning, Buki and Mari were woken by a blood-curdling scream downstairs. That scream was of Carmine.

As the girls are rushing downstairs, Carmine began to stammer, in a horrified tone:

“HE… HE WAS HERE LAST NIGHT! HE WASN’T THE PAST HIM ANYMORE! I WAS WRONG ABOUT HIM BEING NOT POSSESSED!!”

Carmine then points at the tatami on the floor, now with some letters written in an alphabet unknown to anyone present at the scene on it ⁴ .

The letters were of a dreadful shade of black, dark as the darkest of moonless nights.

“Calm down, Carmine, calm down.” - said Mari. “He might have done this as a joke. Every chap of our age is still a mischievous lad. I know because the boys back in our school in Paldea acted like Neanderthals almost anytime, anywhere.”

A while later, they went out to a convenience store to buy some food for breakfast. While waiting for the queue at the cashier to be cleared, Marina suddenly turned to Inori:

“ Buki! This might be our vital clue!”

“Vital to what?”

“The thing Rika told us a while ago! The youth who appeared in the nightmares of the people of Paldea…”

“So what now, Mari?”

“Remember that Carmine said she has a younger brother? There’s a chance that this little brother would be the youth we are looking for!”

“But so far we have had no luck in finding him. If he was at home last evening, our work could be done much more easily… He seems to seclude himself from anything, or, wanting to hide where he is nowhere to be found or even seen…”

“Don’t give up just now - We will ask for his whereabouts from the locals right away, because from what Carmine told me the night before, many locals know him pretty well, mostly from festivals that he and Carmine attended before.”

For the whole morning, Buki and Mari went around Mossui Town, asking the people of the town about the whereabouts of Carmine’s brother. No matter how many times and how many people they asked, no results came from this. After the sun had gone fairly low in the sky, the girls wanted to call it quits.

“It’s like a wild goose chase, Mari!”, whined Buki. “We didn’t get a photo of him while we were asking them, Mari. If we had one, we would know what he exactly looked like and describing them to locals would have been much easier. Who knows if there’s ANOTHER PERSON with the near-identical appearance as what Rika described!?”

“Shush, shush. I haven’t told you this: Rika just texted me, saying that some people that had those nightmares said they were not greeted by the youth’s appearance alone, but apparently they were also greeted by what appears to be an otherworldly singing voice, coming from him. You will know what it sounds like: A sound so beautiful that it sounds like the most ethereal of church choirs”.

Just after those words came out of Mari’s lips, a distant sound that apparently sounds like a countertenor voice singing. 

“There! I told you! He’s very near!”

The singing started out indistinct and sounds more like humming, but once they came closer, they finally found out that the voice was singing these words that they know so well:

Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah!

Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah!

For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth!

Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah!

The kingdom of this world is become

The kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ!

And he shall reign for ever and ever!

King of kings and Lord of lords!

King of kings and Lord of lords!

And He shall reign forever and ever!

Forever and ever!

Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah 

Hallelujah!

It was that classic called the “Hallelujah Chorus” which Inori used to have to sing at her church choir every Christmas as part of her youth club’s talent show. 

Looking over the wall where the voice seemed to come from, Mari almost froze: Behind it was a boy whose appearance matches the description that Rika gave to the girls earlier: Hair as black as the night sky with inner sides of the color of regal robes, styled in a way that is both hilarious and adorable at the same time: three ahoge that altogether shaped like a fan’s blades. Other than that, he wears a black jacket with crosses running down the sleeves over a white shirt with an upside down cross on it, and matching black trousers with an X shape on the left leg. On his neck there’s a choker with a skull-shaped charm at the center.

Once the singing stopped, Marina went up to try talking to the boy:

“H-Hello. I come in no harm.”

The boy then looked back at her, replying in a soft voice that expresses his shyness:

“Wowzers…! Who are you?”

The gaze of the boy looks timid, but there’s something unsettling about it that Buki knew: The eyes. It was of the shade that was as brilliant as the purest of gold known to any man in history, but the gaze coming out from it was colder than the coldest of Hells - the Cocytus, or the Hell of Great Lotus as what the pagans of this foreign land called. It pierces her heart like a million swords. 

Mari stepped back and let out a scream like what Carmine did that morning, then passed out in Buki’s arms.

“Be not afraid. I don’t mean to do any harm to you.”, replied the boy. “I might have seen you somewhere…”

“It is him, Buki. Finally we have met him face-to-face” - thought Marina.

“Who are you?”, asked the girls.

“I-I’m Kieran, the younger sister of Carmine and the descendant of that mask craftsman that every Art student might have known in their lessons, even though it is possible that WE might have descended from a famous poet⁵. 14 years old, 9th grader attending Blueberry Academy, in Unova, used to be a bad apple who was the center of sort-of-an-incident a while ago, but now I have changed to become a better person…”, replied the boy in a nervous voice.

“So you are the younger brother that Carmine and her grandfather mentioned after we began our stay in your home…” - said Buki. “But did you REALLY want to blow up the house like what your sis claimed?”

“No. I’m too scared to do that. Either the explosives or me will perish within the blink of an eye. I want to live. I have a reason why I exist in the first place, but it would be best not to tell you now.”

“Understood.”

Walking a few steps away from Kieran, Mari then whispered to Buki:

“What he has just said at the very end of his sentence is very sus. I am sure that he is the person we were looking for.”

“But he’s too puny to do anything great. Pint-sized and with a funny-looking hairstyle, I hardly bet anyone is gonna take him seriously.”

“Anyway,” - said Mari, looking up at the sky, now a moonlit night sky - “the search took away from us a lot of time, and we haven’t got anything for dinner yet. And plus, we have to bring this little guy back home, because leaving a little one all alone in the night like that is dangerous, not to mention that his sister’s stomach might be churning with anxiety”.

“And give him that chungus sakura mochi she gave me last night” - chimed Inori.

Returning home after the long search, the gang is then greeted by Carmine, who started grilling as soon as she saw Kieran:

“Where have you been? I have been waiting for you both last night and this morning! Tell me, have you gone with that lead singer with horrid face paint we saw at the concert some time ago? But anyway, the sakura mochi that I reserved for you was given to our new guests - in case I got that kind of craving for sweets during the dead of night and accidentally ate the thing. Now, take it from her hands. It’s definitely yours.”

Kieran then took the mochi from Buki’s hand as soon as she took it out of her coat pocket. Noticing how his hand is wee compared to hers, she immediately knew that what Mari said was true: He’s puny and might not even account to anything in his life, let alone an incident. But she knows that even the puniest of small fries can achieve earth-shattering achievements. 

Inori smiled.

“He’s definitely a nice little guy. As fun-sized as those soda bottles we have got at the convenience store, but deep inside him, his will might be as big as a warrior who gives their lives so boldly…” - she thought to herself.