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When Kamado said the people of Jubilife didn’t trust her, Akari hadn’t believed him. It was so much easier to blame him for this. To think of him as a single traitor that she’d made the mistake of believing. But as Cyllene led her through the streets, she realized Kamado was right.
People stared at her. People she’d helped before, battled, befriended.
“We should have expected this from someone like you.” Said a passing whisper. Others echoed the sentiment; that they should have known better.
“I warned you she’d do something like this.” An old woman pretended to whisper into the ear of a younger man, but she said it loud enough she clearly intended Akari to hear.
That woman…Akari caught a geodude for her once. Radisa, that was her name. Had her initial kindness all been fake?
When they reached the edge of town, Rei and Laventon said things to her. So did Cyllene. Nicer things than what she’d overheard from the villagers. but their words filtered through her like water through a sieve. She simply nodded and focused all her energy on not crying.
If anyone saw her cry, they might take it as admission of guilt.
As she started down the trail towards the rift, everyone’s voices faded into static behind her, and she stole one last glance back at Jubilife.
It looked so… normal. The shop owners had returned to their posts. Beauregard and his dustox stood in the same spot as always. Someone approached Arezu for a haircut. Within only a couple minutes of her exile, they had returned to relative normalcy. As if they’d just herded out an annoying but harmless bidoof.
Yet something seemed wrong. Something other than the red sky tinting the air with crimson. Everything in its place, everyone where they belonged. Except one.
In that moment, she realized two things.
She wasn’t the only outsider.
Ingo wasn’t at the training grounds.
Her heart plummeted, and she pressed her lips together, but a pained whimper escaped anyway. Adaman and Irida had vouched for Akari, and still, she barely got off with just exile. And that was after she’d helped everyone and calmed several raging beasts. Did Kamado respect Irida enough for her testimony to protect both of them? Maybe Ingo’s warden status would be enough? But Kamado didn’t seem particularly inclined towards rationality.
Plus, none of that explained why Ingo wouldn’t have come to Jubilife today. In the entire time Akari had known him, he’d never been late for anything. Something was wrong. She could feel it in her shaking hands and the tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. She took a deep, unsteady breath. Now was not the time to break down.
She fumbled with the poke balls in her bag’s front pocket, searching for the one with the grey triangle symbol. Where had it gone? Surely she didn’t leave it somewhere? No, she had six of them here, how wasn’t she seeing the correct one? Her breathing quickened. She had to hurry.
A poke ball slipped out of her bag and burst open upon hitting the ground. Staraptor stood before her, eyeing her curiously.
“I guess that works.” She mumbled and heaved herself onto her bird. “We gotta find Ingo, okay? Maybe he’s at the mountain. That makes sense, right?”
Staraptor turned his head to stare at her. He made a trilling sound. He clearly sensed her hesitation, and she knew it made him nervous, too. Staraptor had always been the most in tune with her feelings. She usually appreciated it, but now she didn’t know where to go or what to do and his gaze made her feel so small and helpless.
“I know, alright? Just… please?”
Staraptor took off. Something had begun to tighten in her chest and it grew worse with each passing second. She wrapped her arms around Staraptor’s neck, rested her face in his soft feathers, wishing he could hug her back.
Mount Coronet approached. Her chest hurt now, but she couldn’t let herself cry yet. Staraptor landed on a flat hill near Ingo’s campsite. Usually he would have seen her coming and greeted her there. But usually she would visit him here when she knew he would be home.
Why wasn’t he home?
Right, he wouldn’t be, normally, at this time of day. But he wasn’t in town, either. What if Kamado had already thrown him in a dungeon somewhere? Ingo was never late to anything, he would have shown up to Jubilife on time today and-
Staraptor cawed, resting his chin on her shoulder.
“I’m sorry.” She scratched the feathers beneath his crest. He let out a cry of protest at being returned to his ball, but Akari didn’t have the mental bandwidth to even interact with her Pokemon. If she didn’t focus all her thoughts on the mission at hand, they’d unravel into a million tiny spirals of worry which would all tangle together until she short circuited.
A taller patch of grass tickled her ankles as she skirted around a cliff to Ingo’s campsite. She scanned the surroundings. Small, brown tent nestled underneath a rocky outcropping. Sneasler curled up on the ground next to the tent, sleeping. The two rows of berry plants whose planters she and Ingo had painstakingly built over the course of a week. After that, they concluded neither of them had worked in construction in their previous world. Or agriculture.
Still no Ingo in sight.
Sneasler lazily opened one eye to glare at her. It was only then Akari noticed the white bandages wrapped around sneasler’s shoulder.
The two stared at each other for several uncomfortable minutes while Akari ran through every possible scenario that could result in sneasler being injured and Ingo not being here. Until sneasler pointed a sharp claw further down the length of the cliff.
Akari sprinted in the direction sneasler pointed, nearly tumbling down the small decline into a more wooded area of the mountains. Sticks poked at her body and crunched under her feet. Every snapped twig sent a mild shock through her head. Not a strong one, about Joltik level, but the sound and the feeling and the betrayal, all of it was just too much. With each broken branch a piece of her broke, too.
Something rustled up ahead. She barely registered Ingo’s presence before crashing into his arms.
*
At first Ingo thought he was being attacked. But sitting half-up on the ground, pokeball at the ready, the forest seemed just as calm and threat-free as it had five seconds ago. Akari had pressed herself so closely into his chest that he hadn’t seen her at first.
A flurry of apologies, sobs, and incoherent ranting spilled out of her. None of it made any sense. He quickly hugged her back, but what could have gotten her into this state? He knew he was late into town today, a thought that had been gnawing at the back of his head for the last hour, but her to just make fun of him for it, not completely fall apart. Did somebody die?
“I’m not sure what’s happened,” He said, “But I’ll support you however I can.”
Her breathing gradually slowed, until her words became understandable again.
“Banished,” She said.
“Pardon me?”
“Kamado said the sky was my fault and said I had to fix it and banished me from town. They all hate me, everyone…”
“That’s nonsense. No one hates you.” He thought about that for a moment. “Correction: No one who matters hates you. I’m sure this can be sorted out. I’ll talk to Irida and we can go to Jubilife-”
“No!” She squeezed the breath out of him. “Part of the reason is I’m an outsider. And so are you! They’re not gonna trust you. I saw you weren’t there and I thought they already did something to you.”
“Ah, my apologies for that. I can confirm I am just fine. Though you’re right, we both should avoid Jubilife for the time being.”
“Then why weren’t you there?” Her voice came out small, like she was afraid of the answer.
“In the wake of you calming electrode, the local ground types have gotten more bold. And Sneasler is… temperamental. She picked a fight with a rhydon and they injured each other. Hence the need for this excessive number of sitrus berries.”
Akari glanced at the ground around them, seeming to realize how she’d made him drop an entire basket of them.
“I um, don’t really know who to trust anymore. Volo says he can fix this, but, I don’t know.” She separated from him and wiped her face clean. “Sorry about the berries.”
“Help me clean them up.” Ingo stood, offering her his hand. “Then we will solve this red sky problem.”
“Thank you. And I lied a little bit there. I do trust you.” She took his offer. “So you better not be a ditto in disguise or something.”
“No friend of mine will have to face something like this alone.” Ingo said. “Also, you’d need to prove you’re not a ditto first. You did use tackle and constrict on me a few minutes ago, if you recall.”
“Well you better be careful, because next time I’ll use take down.”
They watched the shifting of the crimson horizon, determined to set things right, and confident in the knowledge that they could do it together.