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“It’s strange.” Emmet remarks.
Elesa places her cup down, the last dregs of tea long since cooled, as they sat in his kitchen, not so much talking, simply treasuring – for it could be taken away easily – each other’s company, for the last hour. A moment hanging, stretched across time, without colour nor sound. Just the two of them, a noticeably empty seat at the table; and a veil of grief – lingering, chilling, though it had thinned with time.
“What is?” She asks.
“My brother’s Pokémon.” Is the reply. “It’s been two years. When Ingo disappeared, all his Pokémon were lost as well. We searched for a long time. His Garbodor and Crustle, Major and Marble, were found within the hour. They were still in Gear Station. His Klinklang, Cogwheel, was found within the week. They found their way to Anville. It took months to find Excadrill and Haxorus. Monty drilled a tunnel under the station and stayed there with Axel.” Emmet pauses. “The others were in our shared account on the PC. They’re all safe with me now. Except one.”
They both know exactly who he’s talking about; how could anyone not, when it was Ingo’s closest partner? The most iconic Pokémon, the one he was most associated with (despite not using her at all in Multis, at that!), the one who appeared in promotional videos, shining, dazzling, confident, beautiful and she knew it, absolutely spoiled rotten by her beloved trainer. And, even after two years, like her trainer, she is still MIA. Presumed departed – Ghost-types can’t exactly die again – but that’s a semantic issue; in effect it’s the same fate as her trainer. Legally dead, presumed gone forever, leaving an entire grieving world behind.
“Do you think Willow’s with him?”
“Hopefully. That would mean, wherever Ingo is, he still has a Pokémon he can battle with. He won’t be alone.”
It’s the most they can wish for right now. Aside from Ingo’s safe return, that is.
***
He already knows, from the onset, that he is Different from the people who found him.
Not just from the culture shock – he only knows the basics of a language just barely close enough to the one spoken here, enough for him to introduce himself with a name that only feels like his own but doesn’t fit perfectly; the notion of a community so distant from Pokémon, revering, fearing and warding against them rather than partnering with them, horrifies him for whatever reason, despite how well the Pearl Clan is functioning; his strange clothing completely unsuited to the frigid climate. That echo of some abject horror at the absence of something it seems these people might not need; something he can’t remember, but was important to him, he knows.
No – there is more beyond his lack of memories and his foreign ways. For he is visibly human, like the rest of them, and yet –
Not many people have glowing eyes, for one. It’s awfully convenient whenever he needs to navigate dark places – headlights, he jokes to himself once as he is traversing the tunnels of the Highlands on his daily patrol route, shortly after becoming a Warden – where did that word come from? He stares into a mirror, and the light reflects back off; his eyes are supposed to be grey, that he knows, but if he squints he can almost see bright, blazing gold, a strangely familiar shade he can’t place. Perhaps a trick of the light.
The same cannot be said for his almost inhuman resistance to cold. The clothes he’d worn when he first arrived are obviously too thin, too permeable to ward against the low temperatures and the biting wind – save for his coat. It was custom-made specifically for the latter, he remembers – just a small scrap of information, bits and bobs that drift to the forefront of his mind on occasion. Custom-made by who? For what purpose? Those elude him still.
(He always removes the labels on his clothing; they bother him to no end, digging into his skin, itching and scratching, tormenting him at his work. Perhaps if he hadn’t, he would have known that the coat, one of five identical ones, the rest stowed in his closet in his office at the station as spares, was commissioned from the clothing supplier Lee V. Anne, which also produced the uniforms of all subway staff. It was made to stand out, as a matching set with his brother’s; after all, as public figures, Unova’s first Facility Heads and the main attraction of Gear Station, they needed to be highly visible. His uniform was such a crucial part of his image – his identity, for this job was everything he had been working towards since he was a child, the culmination of years of effort and dreams – of course he had to be able to wear it in any season, any weather, and that included harsh winters as Unova was sometimes wont to have. Which of course comes in handy right now in Hisui so far north.
Not that he will know any of that. The label was thrown out in the trash the very first day he brought his coats home.)
The coat is useful, yes, but even wearing it all the time doesn’t explain how unbothered he is by the cold, save for a brief moment where he shivered, on his initial arrival at this frigid station – and then again, it could’ve just been the shock of being so abruptly derailed, just as it could have been his sudden lack of memories as he woke up; one would not expect a newborn to be acclimated to intense temperatures upon arrival in this world, as the body would have had no such lived experience. At any rate, once he’d settled in, his resistance to cold had as well, and soon he was walking about the village as if in normal condition, in his thin, light, foreign clothing.
To be fair, this cold resistance only seems strange to him and people outside the Pearl Clan. His fellow Warden Gaeric walks around shirtless in blizzards, and has apparently trained the young leader Irida to be capable of doing the same. Now that is something he can’t imagine doing. Even the brightest fires can be extinguished by a sufficiently fierce snowstorm, resistance be damned.
Of course, there are more ways in which he isn’t quite like the people of the Pearl Clan – his own people, his kinsmen, as he eventually grows to call them, despite his differences from everyone else, and they call him part of them in kind. A fire burns beneath his skin, heat coursing through his veins; he can almost feel the licks of flame tingling under the surface, threatening to rise and burst. The first Pokémon he befriends here, a hungry, cheerful little Gligar he names Emerson – an almost-familiar name that doesn’t sound quite right, but close enough; something about his perpetual smile pulls at his memories, heart-achingly – spends much time literally attached to him for the heat he finds himself emitting, which must be quite the balm for a Pokémon so weak to ice and cold. The second one he meets, a Tangela he names Notte, does something similar, perpetually staying close to him, again because of her weakness to ice. He has become a walking space heater… whatever that is, the term floating about in his foggy sea of memories.
(“Dragons fucking damn it, Ingo, the next time we move house, don’t forget the fucking space heater! I’m freezing!”
“Emmet, with all due respect, you also forgot the space heater while we were transporting our things to the apartment. I am well aware of how cold it is; in fact, I am currently working to try to find a solution to this issue, and your complaining isn’t helping! Blame me for us not having a functional heater one more time and I’m moving out. You can handle the rent and the rest of the house yourself, if you’re so capable, I’m sure.”)
He does not exclusively befriend Pokémon in dire need of a heat source, of course; the Machop he meets later on (dubbed Endura) is simply in need of a training partner, the Nosepass (dubbed Mallard, though he can’t remember his exact namesake) is in need of a protector, the Magnemite (Levity, he names them) is a kindred spirit from another time and place like him, and the Abra (now named Prescience) is simply curious. And of course, Lady Sneasler, whose kits he had saved during an avalanche, who picked him as her Warden after years of isolation without one. He befriends them all with ease that startles his fellow clansmen, most of whom find it hard to train one Pokémon, let alone six, plus multiple Sneasel kits.
Being able to converse with them certainly helps a good deal; he has the feeling this isn’t something other humans can usually do either. It makes the days far less lonely, at least; where others might simply hear unintelligible chirps and cries, for him, many riveting, fiery conversations fill the air, his Pokémon not dissimilar from the young folk in the village. After all, they are all living beings, with emotion, with conflict, with ideals of their own.
He watches Emerson and Endura fight over an Oran Berry, flinging various creative insults at each other, including, but not limited to their respective type weaknesses, their preferred altitudes and how well they take being poisoned by Sneasel kits. (Endura calls Emerson a pussy for not taking damage or getting stronger, at which point he has to step in to reprimand both of them for their foul language.) Perhaps something he should have stopped sooner, but it’s nostalgic in a way, seeing those two bicker like siblings, growing up and becoming stronger together. (It brings just as much heartache for a time he can’t remember, no matter how hard he tries.)
Lady Sneasler – or, at times, a few of her kits – are fond of regaling him with gossip, as soon as they know he can understand them. There are certainly many tales to be had on the mountain – more than one could imagine, though it hardly surprises him; the Highlands are a highly diverse ecosystem, with Pokémon of all different kinds. There’s certainly bound to be all kinds of drama. Not to mention, the various stories through the grapevine about the other areas, their Wardens, their Nobles. Though, hearing the way they talk about the foolish humans that share their lands – he can’t help but worry for his own reputation; after all, there is a lot that Sneasler – equal parts pride, sass and venom – can say about him and his oddities.
(He hadn’t needed to worry at all; his Lady is in fact rather proud of him, often boasting to her fellow Nobles that her Warden is the best of them all – can their Wardens understand their speech? Can they survive an avalanche head-on? Can they glow in the dark? Hers can! Obviously he’s an outstanding one, a cut above the rest of these amateurs –)
Even after days which wear into weeks, then months and years, it still almost feels unnatural to lay his head down and rest at night, even knowing he should; all living things need rest, after all, and he should not be the exception. Even if the night is familiar and comfortable to him, perhaps more so than daylight; he has no reason to fear the darkness, especially not when he can see in the dark with such ease. His Pokémon snuggle into him, seeking warmth in the bitter cold, sleepily grabbing at his coat, giving him more rips and tears to worry about when morning comes. And yet he lies awake, staring at the ceiling for hours before sleep finally claims him, as if the concept of rest were ever so foreign to his weary body.
(Death and Sleep are twins. The dead are as if in perpetual sleep; therefore, one who is already dead cannot be put to sleep again. In that same vein, rest is unnecessary for most Ghosts. After all, what is a returned spirit but the restless dead?)
When he finally closes his eyes, lilac flames burn beneath his eyelids. He sees slips of shadow and dancing torchlight. The tolling of an ancient bell, from the top of a tower. Or, sometimes, well-lit metal boxes lined with seats, and the whistling of wind. The memories slip away when he wakes, and he mourns, if just briefly –
Because whatever it was that he sees every night, it doesn’t matter anymore. Not when everything he needs, his home, the one he actually knows, is here, with the Pokémon he befriended and the humans who accepted him into their community with open arms. A place where he isn’t alone.
(He’s never been alone. Not since his arrival. He’s never been too far from home.
An extra passenger, a stowaway, simply hitches a ride. As is her right, after all; she’s been with this conductor, this train, for the entire journey before this point, why must she be barred from continuing onward with the same?
There's no chasing a stowaway out if you don't know of their existence. And so, the loyal passenger remains.
Bodies are just vehicles for the soul, after all.)