Chapter Text
The constant drumming of rain was softened by the tall grass, but still it hammered down upon the river that flowed through the route. Hoenn’s weather could be so temperamental, especially compared to Sinnoh – the region that had used to be Hisui. And Unova, for that matter.
Which was exactly why nobody would suspect a legendary dragon to be a partial cause of the route’s torrential rains.
The route, which followed a river that eventually fed into the waters near Mauville Town, would eventually be named Route 119 under the guidance of Hoenn’s newly-established League. But that was still a decade off. For now, it was deserted, grass as tall as a man and mud as far as the eye could see serving as an effective deterrent.
Thunder rolled above. Zekrom could almost taste it, the storm intimately connected to his presence in the region, concentrated directly overhead.
A contented growl rumbled in his chest. For all that he’d grown used to carrying out Arceus’ tasks, his work was never ending, and time away from Johto – his current stomping grounds – was a welcome break.
The rain rolled down his body and streamed off his wings, a pleasantly warm deluge that cut a striking difference from the icy rains he tended to summon when in the mountains. He took a breath, a deep inhale and exhale, the latter sending sparks crackling through the puddles around him. They fizzled out almost immediately, the electricity dissipating through the earth, leaving his latest partner – a Banette he’d found outside a pharmacy in Cianwood – untouched by the current.
Then, Banette gave a soft cry.
Life force nearby - and not another Pokemon.
A human.
In a flash, Zekrom had been replaced by Ingo. The grass remained flattened where Zekrom had once occupied space, but it would spring back soon enough.
He reached out to pat Banette’s head gently, a silent thank you.
After he had parted ways with his team in Hisui, shortly after it had be renamed ‘Sinnoh’, Ingo had cycled through a few teams. There was too much risk associated with making humans aware of his true nature, but Pokemon seemed to be more sensitive to the power he constantly masked. They had been his companions through these long years, and would remain so for the half-century he had left.
Banette had been a curious one.
It was rare to see Ghost-types in settlements, especially those filled with people – nascent as Cianwood’s settlement was. Even rarer was finding one of her species, so far from their native Hoenn. That was part of why they were here. Banette had no memories of her source or anything beyond her arrival in Johto, and so Ingo’s break had lead them to Hoenn.
The tall grass rustled, coming from the direction of the river.
The life force that Banette had sensed, no doubt. It slowly got louder and louder, until he could hear the unmistakable squelching of shoes through mud alongside the sounds of shaking grass.
Finally, the tall grass parted, revealing a figure.
She startled, holding a fishing rod in one hand and a soaked backpack in the other. Almost entirely wrapped in a violently yellow coat that covered most of her features, the only visible identifying feature that Ingo could make out were strands of long blonde hair that spilled out from between gaps in the coat’s front buttons.
“Woah– hello there!” She called. “Didn’t expect to see someone else out in this weather.”
Ingo waved. “Hello there, miss.”
His voice was gravelly from disuse, but the still-falling rain did well at masking it. As Ingo, that was one of the few advantages of the deluge, because his clothes were rapidly soaking up the water the longer he stayed in human form.
Having flown directly from Ecruteak City, and not anticipating having to transform back, the woolen cloth made for colder, drier weather was quickly becoming waterlogged.
“Are you… quite alright?” The woman asked him.
Ingo didn’t want to think of what he looked like. He imagined it wasn’t much better than how he felt, water soaking his hair and clothes both, blanketing him in soggy cloth. Grimacing, he shook his head. “I’ll live.”
“What brings you out here without enough waterproofs? Why, you might even say that you’re a bit too Tenta -cool, even with Hoenn’s warmer rain.” She laughed a little at her own pun.
His expression didn’t change.
“Ah…” Turning self-conscious, she set down her fishing rod and dug through her bag with the now-free hand. “Sorry, that’s probably not what you want to hear right now. Here, when I was last in Unova, I obtained a spare waterproof covering – they call it a ‘poncho’. Usually I’d try to sell it to you, but you look so sad right now that I’d feel bad charging you when it only cost me a few hundred PokéDollars.”
The rain had already done its damage, but Ingo reached out for it gratefully nonetheless. “It’s much appreciated.”
He was familiar with the item, though the last time he had received a new one had been well over a hundred years ago. Shrugging it over his clothes, dark jumper over equally dark shirt, he ran into a problem when he tried pulling it over his hat. The hood, unlike that of his last poncho, was only just large enough to cover his head.
The hat that he wore no longer bore the Battle Subway logo, Ingo being acutely aware of the timeline of Gear Station’s development a couple of regions over, but it wasn’t dissimilar in style. Resigned, he reached up and removed it.
Banette let out a shrill cry.
Ingo looked down. “Do you want it?”
An eager nod. With a soft not-smile, he reached down and placed it on her head.
Banette shook her arms at him, zipper mouth growing wider. The hat fit her well, propped easily on the spike at the centre of her head that trailed into a zigzagging ribbon. Contentment wafted off her, almost palpable as she spun once in place.
“We should get you one of your own.” Ingo mused, before remembering himself. Turning back to the woman before him, he met her eyes once more. “Oh yes, thank you for the poncho. I will use it well.”
The woman looked like she’d seen a ghost.
“What–” She murmured, under her breath, and if Ingo had truly been human he wouldn’t have heard her next mutters. “No, Beni’s children ended up here too, it’s not unreasonable to think that Warden Ingo moved here when he disappeared…”
The rain continued to fall.
“Miss?” He asked. The familiarity with which she said Beni’s name was jarring, as if she had known him.
“Ah– yes? Sorry, I was lost in thought for a moment.” She shook her head, then swung her backpack up and around, grasping the straps and fastening it to her back. In her motion, the hood of her own poncho got caught, pulling it off her head for a moment before her other hand reached up and pulled it back over.
But that one glimpse was enough.
“...Volo?”
Now she– he? froze, in the midst of picking their fishing rod back up. Half-crouched on the ground, they swiftly returned to a standing position, eyes hidden once more – though Ingo could feel their gaze burning into him.
“What was that?” They asked.
Ingo cursed inwardly. Volo would be centuries dead by this point, no matter that he had vanished months before Akari had finished the pokedex. But the features he’d seen in that split-second – blonde hair swooping over one eye and sharp, steely eyes – reminded him so much of the merchant that he’d let it slip.
He still remembered what Akari had told him, that evening, after she had reportedly battled him in the ruins of the Temple of Sinnoh. Without him noticing, the air had grown heavy with static.
“It’s nothing.” Ingo shook his head. “It’s– a slip of the tongue. Pardon the derailment.”
The gaze upon him seemed to grow sharper. “No, hold on. That name… I made sure that it was wiped from history. You, you’re not just similar to the Warden, are you? You’re too identical, not just similar in the way that children are to their parents.”
They reached out and pulled their hood down again, deliberately this time.
With a better look, Ingo was able to take in their features. This time, he scanned them with more intensity than he’d been able to before, examining their face, their hair, their manner of clothing, and though undoubtedly he’d changed, it was Volo standing before him.
Volo met his eyes, a weary look to match his own passing between them.
“It’s good to see you again, Warden Ingo.”
“Stand down, stand down.” They waved a hand, as Ingo’s right reflexively went to the pokeballs at his side, the left stretching out as if to either protect or send Banette forth. “I’m here to fish. I’m not picking a fight with you. Akari told you, I take it?”
“What she was able to, yes. I would say it’s nice that our tracks have rejoined, but…” Ingo trailed off.
Volo had already gathered his identity from Ingo’s own mistakes and his own deductions, there was no point hiding it now. The man had always been too intelligent for his own good.
“Yes, well, I’ve changed. Took several decades, but being alone with your thoughts for a century has a way of changing your mindset.”
Ingo’s eyes flashed bright blue for a moment. Looking closer, he realised Volo bore two marks, plain as day, now that Zekrom knew how and where to look. Giratina’s was there, faded, but the one that blazed the brightest when he inspected them was Arceus’s.
“You met the Creator.”
“How astute of you.”
“And what did They have to say about what you did?”
Rather than sneering, Volo’s expression collapsed and shuttered. “I…” His facade of nonchalance drained away. The fire they’d appeared to be harbouring rapidly cooled, weariness settling in like embers being smothered.
Ingo watched, ever cautious.
Whatever Volo had encountered when they’d met Arceus, like they’d claimed, had truly changed them. Looking at him now, it was like looking at a derailed train trying desperately to put itself back onto tracks – any tracks – no matter if they were its original ones or not. The person who stood before him was lost, purposeless, and trying desperately to recover any semblance of meaning.
“...What did you come here to do?” He asked, giving them an out.
“Huh? Oh, I– I heard rumours that Feebas lived in the river nearby. They’re said to evolve into the most graceful Pokemon you’ve ever heard of and I would have liked to add one to my team. But the rain came on too heavily, so I was seeking shelter when I came across you.”
Ingo nodded.
Making a decision, he turned in the direction of an old base he’d made on this same route. “Let us depart. I know this route, there’s a stop we can make before you need to return to your home station, wherever that is now. Let’s talk.”