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It was common knowledge across all of Hisui that Warden Ingo was weird. He wasn’t from their world, of course he was weird, but his strange mannerisms were many and… out there. Irida and the rest of the Pearl Clan wanted to be polite about Ingo’s culture, wherever he came from, but when the man seemed just as confused about what he was doing, that was sometimes hard.
It started when Irida was traveling through Wayward Cave with Ingo, far before he became a Warden, when he was touring the Pearl Clan territory with her. She was staring into the darkness, about to open her mouth and explain the species to avoid here, when a solid smacking noise startled her.
The clean leader whipped around in time to see the skyfaller staring at his own hand planted on the wall of the cave just inside the opening. He looked just as confused as Irida felt.
“... Ingo, what’s wrong? What are you doing?” she asked cautiously.
He looked up at her, embarrassment and confusion held in his glowing silver eyes. “Lights,” he said helplessly, as if that explained anything.
“... Alright,” Irida said after a moment, and the duo proceeded to navigate the cave together safely.
Through the subsequent months, it was noticed by most of the clan that Ingo did this whenever he entered a dark space. “Maybe it’s for good luck, as he travels into the dark,” Gaeric mused, scratching his chin idly.
“Why would he need luck, he can SEE in the dark,” Lian argued. “He told me himself!”
It was after a brief meeting for the wardens to report how their respective nobles and territories were doing. Ingo had headed back out right away, since Lady Sneasler had just hatched a new litter of sneaslets to care for.
“He doesn’t seem to know why he does it. I can only imagine it’s a ritual from his homeland,” Gaeric continued. “... Poor man, not knowing anything about himself.”
“Yeah he seems unsettled by it, almost. I hope he remembers soon.”
That had been the start to the clan noticing their new warden’s peculiarities. He’d always had his pointing thing he did, and strange phrases, but everyone had chalked that up to something related to his job in his previous world. These things… These were far harder to pin down.
The clan tried, oh how it tried, but none of the explanations seemed to fit exactly. When the people found their fabricated explanations didn’t hold up when they thought about them for more than two seconds… They decided to join in. There weren’t a great many caves in Hisui, but when Pearl Clan members found themselves about to embark on journeys throughout the dark, they took a moment to pat the rocky edge of the cavern. Often this was accompanied by a whispered prayer to Almighty Sinnoh.
Adopting Ingo’s superstitions couldn’t hurt. But still, many were curious about the origins of the skyfaller’s actions.
It was Calaba who noticed that the man would sometimes glance at his wrist in a way that looked too deliberate to be solely an impulse.
“Son, what are you doing?” she sighed eventually after seeing Ingo check his bare wrist for the fourth time since he’d arrived bearing supplies for the clan on an autumn afternoon.
“I’m not sure,” he admitted right away, sheepishly. “It has been driving me a bit crazy, if I’m honest. I don’t know why I do this. I don’t know why I travel these tracks to no avail.”
“Another one of your instincts from home,” the elder said with a nod.
“Yes, I would hazard a guess that you’re right. Something about… Staying on schedule. Doing things in a timely manner. That… Feels right, though I cannot connect the rails to the gesture at this time. I can’t cross over between my actions and the ghosts of thoughts in my mind…”
Calaba hummed in a way that suggested she was thinking. “Perhaps it was a gesture that indicated to anyone you were interacting with that it was time for you to leave.”
“That… Could be it. I get no sense to the contrary. I don’t feel any recognition with your words, but I don’t get the idea you’re wrong either.”
And then Warden Calaba had begun doing a similar thing when she was in a hurry and some younger clan member decided to pester her with statements about how very old she was. Of course, she didn’t do so as frequently as Ingo, since she actively chose to, but it still slowly began to catch on in the clan.
It never became particularly widespread. Perhaps if it had been the Diamond Clan that had adopted Ingo it would have, with how much they valued their time.
Although, perhaps not, after the last round of clan negotiations. Adaman had been talking to Calaba about something; he’d wanted her advice as an elder, but after he kept asking question after question, the older warden was starting to get annoyed.
“Oh would you look at that,” she finally said, cutting into Adaman’s latest question, staring intently at her own wrist.
“... The Ingo thing?” Adaman raised a skeptical eyebrow.
“Yes. The one that means I’ll be going now.”
And she’d walked off as fast as her short legs could carry her.
Quite possibly the funniest thing Ingo did, according to Rei at least, was what he referred to as the Kricketune Shimmy. Sometimes the man would hear a pokemon cry, particularly that of a kricketune, and immediately his hand would go to his backside.
No one, no one at all, knew why the man would pat his own ass whenever he heard a tune.
“W… Warden Ingo. It's. Still there. Your ass didn't fall off. Promise,” Irida once told him, completely thrown, her normally professional demeanor gone. Rei and Lian, who had been chatting about bug types nearby, had absolutely lost it, laughing themselves into tears. Ingo’s face had been startlingly red, and he’d hidden in his hat.
Over the next several days, every time Ingo reached behind him, some clan member would shout at him “Don’t worry Ingo it’s still there!” and someone else would laugh. Eventually, he stopped getting quite so embarrassed. Sometimes he’d even huff a laugh and shake his head.
“Thank you,” he’d say, face still slightly red.
Then some of the children had begun doing the same thing, laughing and shrieking and holding onto their behinds whenever a clan member would sing any sort of song or they’d hear a sound even vaguely musical in nature.
Ingo knew this wasn’t going to be forgotten soon.
It wasn’t just the kids either.
One thing Rei had noticed, with all the time he spent around the warden, was that Gliscor particularly seemed attuned to Ingo’s actions. He was a clever pokemon in battle, but he also seemed to follow instincts and jump into things without thinking.
Which was why whenever Ingo entered the cave and tapped the wall, Gliscor scrabbled at the spot with claws and tail, grabbing at the stone as if he expected to find tiny prey there. He looked like a glameow chasing the reflections of iron ore, and Rei always found it funny.
Rei found it so funny, in fact, that he shared it with other Pearl Clan members, mimicking the insectoid scorpion in the goofiest way he could. Gaeric had laughed the loudest, especially at the wide smile Rei was trying to contort his face into.
Which is why, when Ingo did his usual ritual of randomly smacking his own rear as if to check if it was still attached, Gaeric saw and waited to see how Gliscor would react. The pokemon saw his trainer go through the motions, cocked his head…
And solidly thumped Ingo in the backside with his tail, causing the man to shout and flop face down on the grass.
In all respects, Ingo was lucky Gliscor hadn’t used his stinger. He was also lucky it hadn’t been Machoke to smack him; even a ‘gentle’ whack from that pokemon would’ve sent him into the next region.
Over time (and egged on by Rei), a peculiar Pearl Clan idiom developed; ‘slap their ass to a kricketune shanty’ meant someone did something regularly, but for no discernable reason.
Ingo would sometimes hear some people talking from a distance, saying “oh, she’s just slapping her ass to a kricketune shanty. No clue why she feels the need to go on walks in the dead of winter but she has her routine.” At that point, he would pull his hat over his face and hurry in the opposite direction.
It was… Pretty funny if he thought about it though.
Actually, it was really funny.
Stupid teasing like this felt natural, especially when delivered with a smile, so he didn’t actually mind that much. Embarrassing? Sure, but that wasn’t the end of the world. Self-spanking with no explanation was utterly ridiculous, it was no wonder everyone laughed!
It felt good to laugh about something silly. Both to Ingo, and to the people of Hisui at large.
However, even as people found amusement in the warden’s actions, there was always a twinge of something else. Seeing someone as skilled and smart and kind as Ingo consistently confused by himself was somewhat saddening. The people of Hisui could never forget that he had lost his memory.
What would it be like to forget your home, your loved ones, the very fabric of your soul?
Everyone hoped they never had an answer to that question.
For now, though, they’d simply continue to be curious about their equally curious warden, learning his strange ways and adopting new customs and rituals. After all, he had adopted pieces of them. Who was to say that they couldn’t do the same in reverse?
Not everything he did made it into Pearl Clan lexicon, or became common in the region. Waiting at crossroads for mysterious ‘green lights’ or ‘signals’ did not, in fact, have any benefit, and tended to just make you late. Doors did not open if you waved politely at them and just made you look rather foolish. (Ingo got a pass on this. Maybe doors did somehow work like that where he was from, after all.) The funny terms he used were impossible to use correctly, and when someone had tried to mimic Ingo’s pointing pose while standing next to him, the man looked like he’d seen a ghost.
But the handful of actions they had picked up seemed to be going nowhere any time soon.
One night, Ingo was lying on his back in a field, hands behind his head as he watched the stars. Rei was chasing drifloon around, avoiding attacks and yelling at the little tricksters to ‘get back here!’ and ‘stop trying to carry me off into the air!’ He chuckled under his breath and closed his eyes.
After a while, Rei gave it up and plopped down next to the warden. “I’m too tired for this,” he groaned, flopping backwards in the grass.
“There’s always tomorrow night,” Ingo agreed.
The two of them were silent for a moment, until Ingo’s glowing eyes suddenly opened.
“I could really go for some pizza right about now.”
“WHAT IS A PIZZA.”