Work Text:
It was a stupid mistake.
The air is frigid, so frigid that it burns Rei's lungs. His feet are starting to go numb, and his legs are operating on autopilot as he trudges through the deep, deep snow. The wind is howling, his scarf practically taut as it billows behind him, as if it wants nothing more than to abandon its duty and slip from his face completely.
Rei lets out a warm, wet breath against the inside of the fabric and then shakes his hands to check for feeling—something he's thankfully yet to fully lose. The Survey Corps uniform was designed for this, designed to withstand even the most brutal elements Hisui has to offer, but even it has its limits.
He's well aware that he's stretched himself and his team too thin, that he likely did so hours ago, but he doesn't have a choice. Ever since he first arrived in Jubilife Village, one thing has been made abundantly clear to him—he needs to be useful, and he must prove his value to the Survey Corps and to Jubilife Village as a whole. He's well aware that he's on a knife's edge, that he's constantly at risk of being kicked out into the wilderness, more so than ever, given that Commander Kamado's suspicions are only intensifying day by day, suspicions that Rei somehow must be responsible for the rift in the sky above Mount Coronet.
Maybe he is.
Despite how much he's denied having any conscious involvement at least, a part of Rei can't help but feel that the commander might be right. That this really is somehow all his fault.
It's all the more reason that he has to be the one to make things right.
But even Rei knows that he's taken things too far. The blizzard came down upon him quickly, and his teeth are past the point of chattering now. He can feel how his senses have begun to dull, his heart is hammering in his ears, the sound of it drowning out the howls of the wind, and the only thing keeping him moving at this point is adrenaline as the overwhelming cold seeps deeper and deeper into his bones. Night is falling, and the snowstorm only seems to be intensifying. He's long since lost his bearings, and it's only a matter of time until his desperate, aimless meandering ends with him falling into some icy crevasse that'll end up being his grave, or with him losing his already spotty consciousness and finally succumbing to the relentless, unceasing campaign of hypothermia against his fragile, fragile body.
Or with him being torn apart.
Because he isn't alone out here.
Rei looks back over his shoulder for the briefest of moments. The fog is thick and the snow is hammering down by now, so he isn't able to see a thing, nor can he hear anything over the shrieks of the wind and the rapid drumbeat of his heart, but somehow, he knows it's still out there, following him, stalking him.
He's experienced plenty of Hisui's dangers by now, having narrowly avoided the swipes of Lord Kleavor's jagged blades, having danced in battle against the elegant fury of Lady Lilligant, and having felt the scorch of Lord Arcanine's flames against his bare skin, but none of it compares to the sheer terror he felt when he first saw what is currently hunting him.
Because it wore Akari's face. Spoke with her voice. Puppeteered some mimic of her body—a mimic, because the alternative that's starting to claw its way into his mind is something far too awful for him to entertain.
"Rei!"
Gritting his teeth and stifling a pathetic whimper, Rei presses forward.
What cruelty drives it to still call out to him like this, even after its cover has been blown? When he'd first approached what he thought was Akari, the false visage it had worn had suddenly withered away to reveal the true form of what currently hunts him—a ghostly thing, its white fur speckled with a red reminiscent of blood. A cruel, vindictive spark lay within its yellow eyes, as if it were more than just a predator, that it hated him, and maybe even found some semblance of joy in his terror.
Rei has always been one to keep an open mind. But he finds it difficult to consider this thing to be anything other than a monster.
With the last bit of feeling in his numbing fingers, Rei wraps his gloved hand around Snorlax's pokéball and holds it close against his body. It's his only remaining team member; the rest exhausted, fainted, and blissfully unaware of the danger they're all in.
Strangely enough, it's times like these that make him miss home.
He doesn't remember it. Nothing tangible at least. Just feels the holes in his heart where friends and family once stood, phantom sensations of a warmth and comfort and sense of belonging that he may never feel again.
Silently, Rei wonders if it'd be so bad if he died here.
His instincts have taken over, however. And he's never been the sort to just lie down and die.
"Rei!"
It's closer now. Relishing his fear, maybe. It surely must be adept at navigating the harsh tundra of the Icelands, more adept than himself, at least, and so should have caught him long before now. Its frame seemed strong, if a bit ragged and thin, if any of that even matters when talking about something with such a ghostly-looking form.
Even now, he's observing, taking mental notes as if he's watching a Shinx frolicking around from the tall grass in the Fieldlands. His hand had trembled as he wrote into the pokédex back then, fearing a nasty shock if he so much as made a sound.
It all seems so stupid in hindsight.
Rei wonders if that boy would have continued on this path, whether he would have continued to march blindly forward as he did, if he knew what his future had in store for him.
A sound—a purr, a snarl, or a chuckle, Rei isn't quite sure—oozes from the darkness behind him. Rei's breath hitches as he spins himself around, Snorlax's ball clasped tightly in his hand. He doesn't like to use his pokémon in such a way, but it's an objective fact that Snorlax can take far more of a beating than he can. Steeling himself, Rei throws out the ball to allow Snorlax to take the hit and—
As he said before, it was a stupid mistake.
The creature lunges through the suffocating fog, its ghostly claws fazing through Snorlax's body, and raking harshly against Rei's chest.
An almost pleasant warmth blooms beneath Rei's uniform, quickly mixed with the sear of ice-cold air, and he falls limply back into the snow.
This is what he wanted, isn't it? What he's silently begging for this entire time?
For it all to just be over?
Rei supposes he's just getting what he asked for, and what he deserves.
The last thing he feels before his vision blurs into nothingness, is the sensation of melting snow against his back, and the tickle of static electricity against his cheeks.
The afterlife hurts, Rei thinks.
Which is fair, maybe. Arceus sent him to Hisui to seek out all pokémon after all, and while he did make a solid dent, there were still plenty more for him to find. Like the one that killed him! There isn't much chance of him doing that now, though. Because he's dead.
"Rei...?"
Rei takes in a sharp intake of air when he hears her voice, hands scrambling to his belt to grab whatever pokéball his fingers manage to get a grip on before coming up empty, making him panic even more because that thing must still be here and he doesn't have his pokémon and—
"Stop!" Akari says, her voice sharp, almost panicked as she tries to hold him down. "Rei, you need to stop moving," she practically pleads, and while the words themselves do little to assuage Rei's panic, she is at least doing him the favour of not turning into a monster in front of his very eyes this time.
Rei's body goes limp, too tired to keep on as the fight drains from his body. He clamps his eyes shut, panic still thrumming idly in his veins. He can hear what must be the real Akari taking loud deep breaths, and so he instinctively follows along, his chest rising up and then down as he breathes in, and then out.
As Rei's head lolls over to the side, he feels the pleasant coolness of a pillow against his cheek. His eyes slowly begin to crack open as he starts to relax, and he tries to gather his bearings.
He's in a house, the walls made out of some white, insulating material and reinforced with timber. In the centre is a lit metal fireplace, a pot sitting atop that's gently bubbling away. The lingering sensation of nearly freezing to death compels Rei closer, but he chooses to stay put. There's an overwhelming smell in the air, quite bitter and unpleasant, but it makes his stomach rumble all the same. Some sort of soup, Rei would guess.
His bag lies against the wall near the door, his belt of pokéballs on the floor next to it, as if it had torn from his body been thrown haphazardly. Between the slightest opening of his bag, Rei can just barely make out the corner of his pokédex poking through the gap. It's only natural that he check for it. It's his new life's work after all, something unsalvageable, irreplaceable. If he were to die, the most important thing would be to salvage it.
Rei swallows hard at the thought, his eyes drifting away from the bag to take in more of the room. Strangely, there are some plants dotted around the room, despite there not being any windows, and he wonders how they could possibly—
"Rei."
Tensing up, Rei averts his gaze from Akari even more than he already had been, eager to distract himself with anything if it means not facing her.
He doesn't like being seen like this, as anything less than perfect. Perfection is what is demanded from him after all, and if the Commander finds out that he's wasting time in bed like this instead of quelling the frenzied Lord Avalugg, he'll...
Akari's gaze is persistent on him, burning into him like it has so many times before, and it's clear that she isn't going to accept being ignored for much longer.
Rei turns his head, looking at Akari properly for the first time since he awoke in what presumably isn't actually the afterlife. She's sitting in a chair that must have been dragged over to the bed, shifting in place as if unable to keep herself still.
"What..." Rei coughs, his throat feeling as if a Graveler has shot a Sand Attack directly into his mouth—a sensation he sadly has experience with. "What... happened?" he barely manages to get out before Akari presses a canteen roughly to his lips, which he accepts eagerly.
As Rei drinks, he notices Akari is the one averting her gaze now. Maybe she's giving him the space to finish his unflattering display of gulping down every drop of water he can, or maybe she's just taking the opportunity to get her thoughts together.
"You didn't come back to camp," Akari eventually says, and while Rei can tell she's doing her best not to make it sound like an accusation, he knows what it is he's hearing. It's not often that they make strict plans, Hisui's wilds are too unpredictable for that, but the frozen wastes are not to be trifled with, and so this morning he'd explicitly promised her and the professor that he'd be back at the Icelands Camp before sundown—a deadline he likely wouldn't have made even if he hadn't gotten, well... mauled a little.
It must be late by now, Rei thinks. Far too late for Akari to be staying up for his sake.
"You didn't come back, so I knew something must have gone wrong," Akari continues, and Rei isn't sure when he managed to gain a reputation of being so reliable as to surprise her like this. He's just winging everything after all. She sniffs, wiping her nose with her sleeve. "Found you on your back in the snow about to get your throat ripped out by whatever that thing was." She gives a questioning tilt of her head, clearly looking for an answer Rei doesn't have.
Yet.
He's still alive after all, and that means he'll be straight back to work once he's back on his feet.
Eyes turning back to the fireplace, only now does Rei fully notice Akari's Pikachu curled up on the floor near it, snoring gently beneath the flickering, warm, amber light.
"You gave us both a pretty bad scare," Akari says, following his gaze. "He's tuckered out after scaring that thing off."
Rei supposes that mostly explains how he got here. Akari and Pikachu defended him, and presumably dragged his bleeding, unconscious body through the snowfields to what must be the Pearl Settlement.
He shudders at the thought, eyes drifting down through a gap in his blankets to the bandages wrapped tightly around his chest. If this is how he looks now, he can't imagine what sort of state he was in when Akari found him.
"I'm sorry," he says weakly, because what else can he say?
"Sorry isn't good enough," Akari says quickly, her eyes finally burning with the fire Rei has come to expect from her, and he shrinks away. He knows it isn't acceptable for him to be getting himself hurt like this, that the Survey Corps need him to explore the places the others won't go, they need him to quell the frenzy of Hisui's nobles, or else he won't deserve the house he was given, won't deserve the potato mochi that keep his stomach nice and full, that he won't deserve the company and late-night conversation Akari has provided him on otherwise lonely nights out in the wilderness.
Rei's expression darkens. Sorry isn't good enough, is it? He needs to do better, push himself even harder without making stupid mistakes like—
"I thought..." Akari's voice cracks, her composure faltering as she takes in a stuttering breath, and Rei's eyes widen into saucers as he takes in the sight of the tears that threaten to fall from her eyes. He's never seen her cry before. The closest he's ever seen her was when he was doing his best to patch up her wounds after a particularly nasty battle with an alpha Staravia, but even then she had her head held up high while his inexperienced hands had tried their best to soothe her injuries. "I saw all that blood and I thought I was too late. But then I saw you were barely breathing so I carried you all the way here and patched you up, and now..." She trails off, her shoulders slumping. Her hand tentatively moves onto Rei's own, touching him as if she expects him to disappear at any moment.
Rei's cheeks start to heat up over the contact, the colour surely only deepening as Akari's words echo around in his mind. A part of him knows that those aren't the words of someone who thinks he's being a liability right now, even if that's exactly what he feels like. She's... worried? About him. Sounds utterly distraught over the idea of losing him.
He doesn't understand it, the concept failing to fully come together in his mind.
Rei knows—no matter how much he's tried to stop it—that the two of them gotten closer since the day they first met, when Akari would keep him at a distance despite the curiosity he could see flickering in her eyes, but...
He's crying as well, Rei suddenly realises.
It's a weary, quiet cry, one so different from the only other time he's allowed himself such weakness, on his first night in Hisui. The second the door to the house so generously provided to him had closed behind him, he'd bawled and bawled and bawled through the entire night, mourning a life that he couldn't even really remember. His lips tremble as he tries to wipe the tears away, but everything he swipes away is only replaced by more.
"Rei." Akari's voice is hoarse as she tugs at his hand, and Rei doesn't dare to turn his face to look at her. "Talk to me," she practically begs, her voice laden with a frustration that Rei has felt growing between them for weeks. "What were you even doing out there?"
Rei just hiccups weakly, his heart starting to race just thinking about it. He'd been walking through the tundra, intent on going back to camp soon enough, if a bit later than he'd originally promised, when he'd heard her voice, Akari's voice coming from one of the crevasses down into the caves beneath the icy wastes. He had the sense to know that going down there with his team so weak would practically be suicide, but...
Ever since the first day he landed in Hisui, Rei has been intent on keeping everyone he can at arm's length. To dare to open himself up to the people of this strange, familiar yet unfamiliar land means allowing himself to get attached, and getting attached in such a dangerous place as Hisui is terrifying, utterly terrifying when there's such a high chance of someone meeting their end at any moment.
And... he hopes to return home someday, doesn't he? Craves it more than anything. If he were to allow Hisui into his heart, would that mean abandoning what's most important to him...?
Most people are fine with the distance, pleased even. He's an outsider after all, just some interloper who fell from the sky. Many in Jubilife are from far-off regions, yes, but they have cultures that can be shared, memories to reminisce over, traditions to bond over. It can be surprisingly easy to forge a connection even with someone so different from yourself. It's not so easy when you have none of those things—no memories, no culture, nothing to forge a connection with.
No, Rei doesn't have anything at all. He's just a husk of a human, lost in space and time. No amount of work to help Jubilife or the clans will change that. He's noticed the Professor's sympathetic eyes burning into the back of his head, and he's dodged countless of Akari's questions by now on the nights when they share a campfire. Even Cyllene seems like she just might be starting to warm up to him, but it doesn't matter. He's an alien in this land, and he's content to keep things that way, to continue to maintain that comfortable distance until he can go home.
So why? Why did the thought of Akari meeting her end alone in some treacherous tunnel beneath the ice send him into such a panicked frenzy, charging into the darkness? When did the idea of losing her become something too painful for him to bear? Why does the thought of himself waking up one morning with the knowledge that he'll never see her again threaten to shatter him completely?
He knows why. He just doesn't want to face it.
Something hardens inside Rei's chest. It was a mistake showing the weakness that festers inside him like this, but it's still something he can recover from. He can still salvage this, as long as he just wipes his stupid tears from his stupid face and gets himself together before it's too—
"Can you cut that out?"
Akari's words start out forceful, but her voice is barely a whisper by the end. Her lips are curled downward, her eyes fixed sharply towards him. "You keep doing that. Every time I think you're finally going to open up, you just... shut down."
Rei swallows hard; the sound of it in the otherwise quiet house surely doing little to sell his performance. He hadn't realised that she was paying that much attention. The truth is that he can feel himself being torn apart at the seams every single day, but Hisui needs him. If he falters, so will everyone else.
"I'm fine—"
"You're not!" Akari interrupts, seemingly startling even herself with the ferocity of it before barrelling forward anyway. "You've been working yourself half to death, and look at where that's gotten you!" She gestures vaguely to his bedbound state. "I didn't just use all the bandages I own trying to keep you from dying for you to act like you weren't sobbing just a minute ago!"
Rei winces, squirming in place. One of the many downsides of him being injured is that it means that, for once, he can't escape this conversation, can't just take a walk when he feels things being steered somewhere too personal like he usually does. So instead, he clears his throat, unsure what he's supposed to say to all of that other than—
"Uh. I'll pay you back for the bandages?"
Akari glowers at him in a way that makes him feel like he might need even more bandages in just a few seconds. "Rei," she practically barks. "I don't care about the bandages, because I thought you'd gotten yourself killed overworking yourself when you're the only real friend I've had in..." She looks away, her brows pulled tightly together, then she sniffles, wiping her sleeve over her eyes once again. "I thought... I thought I'd lost you."
Rei bites his lip, silent for a long moment as his heart hammers in his chest because that word is ringing so sharply in his ears.
Friend.
The only real friend she has.
He can't fathom it, can't even begin to understand it. He knows that she's at least somewhat of a loner in the village, that she's closer to the professor than anyone her own age, but...
Despite all of his internal protests, something breaks.
"I heard you," Rei blurts out quickly as he sits up, his chest heaving. "I-in the caves, I heard you screaming for help and I thought—" He takes in a desperate inhale, ignoring the rising worry on Akari's face and continuing before she can stop him. "It looked like you, it spoke like you and then it—" He sobs, rubbing his wet, exhausted eyes hopelessly because he'd thought that he'd lost her too. He thought she was already gone, and he still can't believe that Akari is here, that she's alive, and that her frozen corpse isn't lying alone in some cave, the expression of fear on her face to be preserved forever.
Another heavy sob tears through Rei's body, and he only distantly acknowledges the stabilising hands he can feel on his shoulders, his face buried into Akari's shoulder. "I thought—!" He coughs, the sound muffled by fabric. "I thought you were dead too so I panicked and—and I don't know what I'd do if you were gone, even though I didn't realise..." He trails off, sniffling weakly all the while.
He didn't realise she thought of him as a friend. Didn't realise he thought of her as one too.
Akari just rubs soothing motions with her thumb into Rei's back, holding him. A faraway part of Rei's mind is yelling that he's pathetic for this, a complete weakling and not at all the person that Hisui's people need him to be, but the main part is too focused on holding Akari like she'll fall apart if he dares to let go.
Slowly but surely, Rei starts to come down from it all, his breathless sobs making way to weak aftershocks. Akari pulls back, looking Rei in the eyes. He tries to take a deep breath, but it gets interrupted by a hiccup.
Then another.
And another.
Akari covers her mouth, clearly trying to stifle a laugh over his plight. Rei scowls in response, but the sight of him still hiccupping with such a sour face apparently shatters her composure, and she breaks into a fit of giggles. Before he knows it, Rei is laughing too, even more so when Akari starts to imitate the sounds he keeps making.
"You're—hic—cruel," Rei whines, doing his best to cover his face.
"And you sound like an agitated Spheal," Akari counters smugly, and Rei waves her off, flopping back onto bed with another weak hiccup. It's embarrassing being seen like this, but... it is pretty funny, and he can't help but feel a little lighter now.
Suddenly, Akari flicks his ear, and Rei yelps. "What was that for?!" he says. Making fun of him is one thing, but now she's being downright abusive.
"From Irida," Akari says firmly, and uh oh, it looks like fun time must be over. "The guard near the entrance wouldn't let us in until I kicked up enough of a fuss for Irida to come out. As soon as she saw us, she cleared out a whole house for us to stay in."
Rei's cheeks burn crimson. He hadn't meant to cause such a hassle. "She didn't need to kick anyone out," he says with a pout, and Akari rolls her eyes.
"They'll be fine. Every house has spare hammocks for this sort of thing," she says, and then pinches Rei's nose, eliciting a squawk. "That one is for scaring the professor. He was beside himself with worry when you didn't return to camp," she says, and Rei winces. Professor Laventon is skittish on a good day, so he can't imagine just how much pacing he was doing around the camp. Likely still is doing, if he hasn't gotten the message that both he and Akari are fine.
Rei looks down to his bandages. Well, mostly fine.
"And, uhh..." Rei clears his throat. He can see where this is going. "And from you?" he says, and Akari stares at him for a long, long moment.
"I'm saving it," she says, her expression darkening. "I don't want to make a habit of beating you up when you can't fight back." She nods to Pikachu near the fire, who stretches out with a yawn. "I think you owe us another battle. Once you and your team have recovered."
Rei huffs. He knows what she's trying to say with all of this. That there are people who care about him. That there are people who don't want to see him hurt for reasons beyond his value as a member of the Survey Corps. That there are people who are, for some reason, worried sick about him.
A soft hum escapes Rei's lips. An agreement, he thinks, but his brain is preoccupied now, too much of it being dedicated to repeating the word friend, friend, friend, over and over again.
His heart starts to thump, fingers nervously starting to fidget with one of the blankets that's currently draped over him. "And... maybe we could have a crafting day soon?" he attempts, unable to stop just how hopeful he sounds. "Help me make some smoke bombs and stealth spray?"
Akari's eyes light up, just like Rei hoped they would. It's an honest request on his part, since if he were more prepared, his injury could have maybe been avoided. But he also knows that some of the most fun times they've had have been while she's been teaching him about her passions.
"Yeah!" she says with a grin, but then she coughs, patting down her clothes. "I mean, yeah, sure. I'm not surprised you want to see a master crafter at work again," she puffs herself up proudly, and Rei snickers in response—something she thankfully doesn't call him out on. He's learned a lot since landing in Hisui, but her crafting ability is still undeniably something she still has over him. He's gotten to the point where he hurts himself more often at the crafting table than out in the wilds, excepting today.
Rei hisses lightly, the thought only making the itching and stinging beneath his bandages all the more potent.
Akari purses her lips. "The soup should be done," she says, even though all Rei wants to do now is sleep. He lets out a weak noise to imply as much, but she just rolls her eyes. "Eat this, and then you can knock yourself out."
She looks tired enough herself that Rei believes her promise, so he nods. "Don't you drink soup?" he says, and Akari rolls her eyes, not deigning him with a reply.
Akari starts to hum to herself as she lifts the lid of the pot, beginning to stir its contents. She hovers a spoon over the soup for a moment, to taste it surely, before apparently deciding against it.
For obvious reasons, based on the smell.
Rei scrunches up his entire face. "There's bugwort in there," he states plainly. Now that the lid is off, he knows that bitter stench from a mile away.
"Among other things," Akari says idly, not even looking at him as she starts to ladle the soup into a bowl.
"Even Snorlax won't eat bugwort," Rei says, slightly more urgently, "and he eats literally everything."
"Okay, well, you should also know that it has strong medicinal properties by now. I'm the one who taught you after all."
"Akari."
"Rei."
A whine escapes Rei's lips, the sound sulky and petulant as he buries himself in his blankets for a moment, but he begrudgingly scoots himself back up as Akari approaches, steeling himself.
Akari scoops up a spoonful of the soup. "Say aah."
Rei frowns. He's not a baby. "I'm not saying—" The spoon approaches, and Rei says aah as he instinctively opens his mouth anyway. The soup passes his lips, and it takes everything within him not to spit it back out, it's just that awful. Instead, he takes a shuddering swallow. Because he's brave like that.
"Well?" Akari asks as Rei does his best not to vomit, and he isn't sure if it's a trick question or not.
"Yummy," he says with a thumbs up and a surely unconvincing-looking grimace.
Akari rolls her eyes. "It's not supposed to taste good, you ass," she says, even though Rei is of the opinion that if food doesn't taste good, then it isn't food at all—stupid medicinal properties or not.
"Mean to me," Rei grumbles. He'd once thought that Akari was nice, that she had kindness in her heart, but he knows better now.
Spoonful by spoonful, Rei slowly empties the bowl until he can't handle anymore, and slumps back onto his pillow, his eyelids feeling heavy.
"Alright, alright, get some sleep," Akari concedes, finally retreating with the bowl. A low, sleepy hum falls from Rei's lips as he watches her start to clean up. The sight of it is relaxing, for some reason.
"Akari...?"
Pausing her movements, Akari turns her head to face Rei. "Yeah...?"
"Thank you..." Rei mumbles, and then closes his eyes, finally allowing himself to succumb to the clutches of sleep, his consciousness only lasting just long enough to hear Akari's you're always welcome, dork, before he fades away completely.
Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Rei opens the front door to the house he and Akari have been commandeering, and he shivers lightly as his eyes adjust to the bright light of sun against snow. It's cold, cold enough for him to see his breath, but the sun is high up in the clear sky, nary a blizzard to be seen.
So, a lovely day by Hisui standards, actually.
Rei's gaze drifts up, up, up to the rift high above, like a storm raging angrily atop the peak of Mount Coronet. Whatever it is, he knows that it won't wait for him forever, that everything will come to a head eventually, and while a big part of him is screaming that there's no time for him to take a break...
It can wait just a little bit longer, he thinks.
The door clicks shut as Rei steps out and stretches his arms above his head, wincing halfway when he feels the strain of his bandages. He's not out of the woods just yet, and he's very much been told to stay put under all circumstances, but he's never been much of one for being cooped up inside.
He ambles up the hill, parking himself on a rock that offers him a good view of the Pearl Settlement and the tundra ahead. There's smoke drifting up in the distance, the Icepeak Camp, surely. As much as he prefers being on his feet to being in bed, he's not eager to go all the way out there just yet.
Doing his best not to shrink beneath the gazes of some Pearl Clan members, reminding himself that they're just curious more than anything, Rei puts a hand into his bag and pulls out his pokédex. He's thought a lot about what he saw that night, what he heard, what he felt. Countless theories as to how that strange pokémon's ability works have crossed his mind, but he thinks he has a solid idea now, and so he begins to put pen to paper.
Pokedex Entry 220 - Zorark - Baneful Fox Pokémon
Type - Normal/Ghost
Rei shakes his head at that one. It's a hypothesis he'll need to test, but he's confident about the ghost part, at least. In either case, throwing a normal-type against it wasn't one of his best moves, but he was admittedly under a lot of stress at the time. He's allowed to make some mistakes every now and then.
A soft exhale escapes his nose as he thinks those words. Just a few days ago, they would have seemed unfathomable to him, but now they feel like a weight off his shoulders that he hadn't realised he'd been carrying.
With its dishevelled white fur, it looks like an embodiment of death. Heedless of its own safety, Zoroark attacks its nemeses with a bitter energy so intense, it lacerates Zoroark's own body.
He'd seen its first attack when it had shed Akari's skin from its frame, having only narrowly avoided it. He'd barely thought about it at the time, but it had practically torn its body apart to do so.
Rei purses his lips at the thought. It doesn't sound like it lives a very happy existence. Now that he's out of the thick of it, he wonders what could have caused such bitter feelings to arise, whether such things are intrinsic to their very being, or something they've learned. He'll have to ask around the Pearl Settlement sometime. The people here are sure to have some stories.
He wonders if maybe, one day, he and it could even become friends. He's tamed some real scary stuff in his time in Hisui already, and has found redeeming qualities in them all.
Rei continues to fill out the more menial entries, humming softly to himself as he does so. It's grounding in a way, writing its entry like this. It's like it makes it more real, and merely another pokémon instead of some monster borne from his worst nightmares.
Pen stilling for a moment, Rei's eyes drift towards the entrance to the Pearl Settlement at the bottom of the hill, and he spots Akari wandering in from her excursion, Pikachu by her side. Soon enough, she'll realise that he isn't where he should be, and will spot him up here before promptly dragging him back down the hill and putting him back to bed.
A mischievous smile breaks across Rei's lips, and he lifts the pokédex up to cover more of his face even though he's sure his lack of a Pearl Clan uniform ensures that he isn't fooling anyone. He fidgets with his pen for a brief moment, his smile softening to something more wistful as he gets back to work.
Capable of a form of mimicry through the creation of vivid, life-like illusions. Possibly lures in human prey by mimicking the voice and image...
Rei hesitates only for a moment.
...of a loved one.