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randomwriteronline · 11 months

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In another life, Volo smiles in a way that gives his eyes a strange shape and says: “Don’t worry about tomorrow.”

Ingo looks up at him, piercing him with his blank gaze: “I’m afraid that mentioning something I should not worry about whilst not specifying what exactly that will be is bound to have the opposite effect on my peace of mind.”

Volo laughs softly, face turning genuine: “Something frightening will happen.”

“Ah. It is simply another part of the plan, I assume?”

“Very much so.”

“Thank you for warning me in advance.”

The merchant shakes a hand back and forth as if to say it’s nothing, index and middle finger raised. It looks like he’s giving him a holy blessing of sorts.

“If all goes well, you’ll even be home early!”

When the sky turns green and red, Ingo breathes evenly, and waits.

In another life, Ingo’s breath hitches in the night.

His hands are red and cold and he keeps repeating to himself, like a mantra, the instructions for covering one’s tracks in the snow while hunting or retreating as he follows them to the letter, just like the clan taught him, and thinking of the kind people makes his guilt jut a spike right through his chest, and he bites his lip and tries to ignore it.

The Lord sleeps with a quiet rumble that turns into a howling whistle as he exhales, the ice in his breath freezing Ingo all the way down to the marrow in his trembling bones. At least, it means he won’t wake up anytime soon.

He searches the enormous body feverishly, its every crack and nook. He peers into the dark maws as they open slightly: nothing. Until...

Overcome by such relief that he almost cries, he reaches out, at once careful and deliriously frantic, until his almost frostbitten grasp clenches around the stone. Maybe it’s his diminished sense of touch, but something about it feels completely alien in a manner he can’t understand, at once both above and below nature itself.

The Lord does not stir; Ingo rushes away, plate tight against his chest, masking his passage to pretend nothing happened tonight, absolutely nothing, while shame shrieks in his head unheard in the cold air about the assassination of trust he’s just tainted his hands with.

The Pearl Clan already has a home, whether a piece of the Original One is held in their possession or not.

He just wants to have a home again, too.

Ingo hopes they’ll understand.

In another life, the Survey Corps kid returns to Jubilife confused.

Pompous words echo in their mind: “If you’re talking about that pesky thing, it’s been dealt with. And it didn’t even leave a feather for all the trouble it caused!”

“Excuse me,” a voice that is outside their head snaps them back to reality.

Ingo, who barely talks to them outside of battles, greets them with a polite nod and his usual frown that reminds them in a way of Captain Cyllene’s.

“I hadn’t heard you had planned a detour to Mount Coronet tonight,” he starts off. “I suppose you too had been told of the commotion around Moonview Arena - I left for the Highlands just this morning to deal with it myself. I would have gladly spared you the trip.”

He produces a dark slab from one of his pockets and simply hands it to them.

They stare at it.

Neither makes a move for the next few seconds.

“I imagine this might be something of interest for you,” he says halfway between a question, an affirmation, and an encouragement.

The kid snaps out of their momentary stupor; they take it from his kind grip without much fanfare, mumbling their thanks as a quiet blush dusts their cheeks. They didn’t mean to just stand around like that - they feel terribly silly. He doesn’t seem to mind, thankfully.

Just as he turns to make his way back to the dojo with a quick tilt of his cap to bid his goodbyes, their voice rises again to catch his attention: “Did Sneasler give you one, too? A plate, I mean? Like this one?”

He follows their finger as it points to the object.

“The other Nobles gave me one,” they clarify sheepishly, ashamed of their forwardness: “Except Electrode and Avalugg. So I thought, maybe...”

The man hums as he considers their reasoning: “I wasn’t aware of such a thing before I was told. Perhaps she does still have it, unless she has shared it with someone else. I can inquire for Electrode as well once I return to the Highlands, though Avalugg is out of my jurisdiction, so - I’m afraid I cannot help with that. Gaeric always striked me as a helpful fellow, though; perhaps he’ll be able to lend you a hand.”

They smile brightly at him: “Thank you.”

They bow slightly before setting off for the next plate, and miss the unspoken lies the warden carefully tiptoes around telling them.

In another life, Volo’s eyes glimmer as they settle on the teen.

“You’ve been called here,” he proceeds, bout of loquaciousness still not extinguished, “You’ve been chosen, that’s plain to see. A grateful, merciful god doesn’t abandon its chosens - is it wrong to assume you’ll be granted a return from whence you came once your duty is done?”

His head tilts slightly to the side.

The kid can almost see his other eye behind golden hair.

“It must be an act of plain cruelty,” he says: “To be left in a time and place you don’t belong to, with no certainty you’ll go back.”

He smiles a little wider.

“Wouldn’t you agree?”

In another life, Volo finds the way that lost fool believes so blindly in his every word so pathetically amusing that he has to hold himself back from laughing in his face each time he crosses that look of wholehearted trust.

In another life, Volo slots a hopeless man’s only hope onto his back, together with the end of Cogita’s heartbroken grieving and his tremendous desire to do good, pure good, and his knees tremble a bit more under the expectations.

In another life, Ingo spends days in a cell torturing the wrist now forcibly freed of the warden bracelet to give himself some peace of mind, pacing back and forth, thinking furiously, to ignore the slight chill seeping into his undershirt from beneath his coat.

For an hour, he despairs about his predicament, about being betrayed, left like that; for another he berates himself for having believed so readily, for having given up community in exchange for myths and fairytales and empty promises; for another, he hates himself as much as the clan despises him, for the same reasons as them; for another, he hates the man in whose hands he so stupidly agreed to put his life.

After some time he stops thinking and only cries, cries, cries.

In another life, the kid gawks dumbly at the five missing plates as Volo carefully hides them back with a slight of hand that makes them disappear in mid-air, not expecting to have been beaten to them, not knowing two were stolen, two were given, and one was caught.

He smiles at them with an indecipherable expression. His free fingers extend, demandingly.

“Hand them over,” he orders, his voice like an airy laugh and his teeth as white as marble, as bleached and polished bone: “There’s a score I have been waiting far too long to settle with Arceus.”

“No!” they manage to blurt out amidst their state of shock, and though they gasp for breath no other words come out of their lips.

Volo smiles a little wider, looking past them.

“Please,” a voice that really does sound like it’s begging them rises from behind their back; Ingo stands, slouched but tense, and looks at them in the eyes. “I would advise complying with Volo’s request.”

The sentence stumbles out of their mouth: “What are you doing here?”

“I must catch a coincidence,” the man replies, unblinking, still as a statue: “My train departs from here, as soon as you kindly provide us with the plates.”

Confusion makes their brain swim as though they’d gotten a concussion.

They look back at the merchant. No explanation: his eyes have gotten narrower, more sinister as the setting sun dies into a halo behind blonde hair and casts a long, terrible shadow on the familiar face, turning it dark, grey, supernatural.

They look back at the warden. No explanation: his throat constricts as he gulps down a dry breath, his frame sways ever so slightly in an antsy worried uncertainty, his teeth catch a portion of his lip to bite and easy his anxiety.

Their gaze divided between the two, vocal chords fail them. Their head shakes, movement growing harsher as their footing turns steadier.

Ingo fetches a Pokéball out of his coat.

He waits for them to get one of their own to defend themselves with after fumbling a little for the surprise and fear, and swallows another breath.

His tone cracks under the terrible burden of plain, candid honesty: “I apologize,” he says, and his chest recoils into his shoulders like it really, really does hurt to force their hand like this, “It’s the only way I can go home.”

The apricorn ball leaves his hand: the Alpha Probopass once blessed to guard the Stone Plate roars above Spear Pillar.

In another life, Ingo listens carefully to the professor as he recounts the fight just a stairwell away from the sky (where he was supposed to be, had Kamado not requested he remain in the Village the whole day) as the kid beloved by Arceus told it.

“Ah,” he says once the other man finishes, pale beyond belief, looking almost sick: “Thank goodness he was stopped.”

He spends half of the night biting into his arm to muffle his cries of despair. He leaves the village during the other half, uncaring of any Pokémon or people who might encounter him, heading to the Cobalt Coastlands: his hands bleed and the soles of his shoes crack as he scales the seaside cliffs until he’s finally reached the top of the tower of rock overgrown with moss, shivering as his muscles scream, and he enters the cave the uncatious scientist revealed to him as the hiding place of the terrible creature who might be his last chance at returning from where he came.

In another life, Volo breathes slowly as the dark coat falls further and further down the side of the mountain, following the itinerary of a smaller body.

His palms sweat. He dries them on the marble.

Casualties weren’t planned.

Grabbing the Sky Flute for himself, mind numbed by the sight of two people careening down the mountain at his hands, some part of him soothes him.

He’ll fix that too, along with everything else, in just a moment.

In another life, the man looks at him like he’s out of his mind.

Volo laughs gently: “I don’t blame your disbelief.”

“It’s not-” the other tries to excuse himself, “I just - you - how can you be so certain that it was-?”

“-The work of Arceus?” he finishes. “I doubt it could be anybody else’s. Few beings could harness a power to cause your situation, and it’s not like Its children of Space and Time to cause such misfortunes in Its stead - no, they’ve had an example of what punishment could be for them far too long ago, with their sibling’s banishment.”

“Their sibling’s?”

Volo’s finger wags in the air as his tone turns paradoxically excited in the span of a second, clashing with the tense atmosphere: “Yes, a third god of reality directly descended from the Original One! Most information about it has been lost to time, but it was a truly sad creature, doomed from its birth. Could you believe it, that it was purposefully made to oppose its Parent, and as soon as it followed the very nature instilled into it the Creator banished it into a world opposite ours? Would you consider such behaviour befitting of a kind God?”

The man shakes his head, dismayed.

“Is it hard to believe it would allow such a terrible thing to happen to you, then?”

“How - how did you know, about... That god?”

Ah. A fair question, all things considered - though it is awfully rude to ignore the one asked first.

The merchant tilts his head in a playfully conspiratorial manner: “I’m a bit of a scholar, though I may not look it,” he reveals: “Old myths, ancient buildings, half-buried artifacts, nearly lost religions - with how much I travel the region I was bound to get curious about its history, no? And snooping around enough, I’ve collected quite a bit of knowledge. That’s why I made my proposal to you.”

He pulls back away from the poor lost fellow: “You didn’t believe me to be a charlatan, I hope!” he exclaims suddenly, visible eye theatrically wide.

The sheepish look he gets back is expected, and tears a chuckle out of him.

“I did not mean to offend,” the man apologizes.

“Be not afraid! You’ve done no harm. I’m used to being considered peculiar among my peers, not sure if you’re familiar.”

“Ah - yes, I would be.”

A slightly more relaxed feeling oozes through the air between them. His pitch continues, flowing smoother out of his lips: “You needn’t worry either way,” he grins kindly, “I wouldn’t make an offer like that without being able to properly back up my claim.”

He explains it all, or at least as much as is necessary to convince him, skirting around finer details that might scare him into thinking Volo utterly insane and send him running back with his tail between his legs to the clan he barely knows but already seems ready to latch onto with the ferocity of a Shinx ambushing a Wurmple and refusing to let its bite go even while the Bug wriggles disgustingly in its mouth. He speaks of his studies, his ambition, of how despite being so unfathomable a God can still be battled and rendered submissive - how that is the only way to get anything out of one; he speaks of how he hates the helplessness of humanity against the terrible things that are simply allowed to befall the world, and how he wants to stop that.

He can see a particular light in the white eyes, a glimmer of interest and hope nudging the lost soul closer to Volo; but the dark clad arms are still held tight to his chest, and there’s uncertainty in the clouds his breaths make.

“Is it truly the only way?” he asks.

Ah - a pacifist. Didn’t strike him as one, used to battling as he is, but he has seen things change enough with the centuries for this to make sense.

“Believe it or not, it’s the least tedious one,” Volo answers. His finger rests in the air, only a few inches away from the pale straight nose, as if chiding his naivety: “Otherwise you’d need his children, the gods of Space and Time; but you’ll be hard pressed to find a member of each clan even simply keen on recognizing the other’s Sinnoh as equal to their own.”

He can see how he understands immediately. It’s common knowledge, after all.

Volo smiles; his grey eye squints a little.

His voice is sweet as honey as he speaks: “Besides, I’ve done most of the work already. All that’s left to do is collecting the plates.”

Before he can be questioned about them he produces a dusty purplish slab seemingly from nowhere. Its mere presence is enough to make the air itself feel different, caught in invisible wisps of ghastly tendrils, tasting on the tongue like dried blood, gaining the unreal scent of an abandoned abode being unsealed for the first time after ages of disuse.

He can feel it though his fingertips, the droning, dormant power held within. He can feel Giratina’s long body wrap around his arm to nibble at the piece of its Parent, seeiking revenge, seeking redemption, seeking affection.

The gaze staring confusedly at it is nonetheless equally mesmerized.

“Pieces of the Original One,” he mutters, “Carved by Its legendary hero, no less. One for each type, scattered across the entirety of Hisui. Once all are gathered, one may reach Its realm and challenge It.”

The man eyes it quietly for a little, before asking: “Where have you found this?”

“In a place of worship long forgotten,” he replies with a smile. “Though I’m certain the old hero hid some in easier places to find, maybe even with his trusted Pokémon, who passed them down through the generations. Those should be much less of a hassle to get, don’t you think?”

The other hums thoughtfully.

He fiddles with his hands, trying to decide. What is there to mull over, Volo wonders? He’s made himself plenty clear: he understands how awful the situation must be for him; he sympathizes with his desire to return where he belongs; he wants to help him achieve just that; he has the knowledge and means to do so.

He’s his best chance.

His only chance.

A breath shivers into dead pale lips.

“Are you certain?” the man insists: “That I would not be a bother to you?”

Volo’s laugh is airy, kind: “You’re a victim of cosmic injustice,” he replies: “I cannot stand to see your suffering. It would be my honor to lend you a hand.”

A bout of silence; then the clear eyes turn bright, the slouched stance straightens slightly, the tone of his words becomes emphatic: “Allow me to repay you by helping, then - since you’ve done so much already. I don’t know how effective I will be, but if I can shorten the time for your plan to come into fruition even by a minute I’ll be gladly to assist you any way I can. As a token of my gratitude, for your kindness.”

Another chuckle breaks the cold air between them into fine shards. Blonde hair sways in the cold: “Who am I to deny such a passionate request?”

They shake hands, their pact sealed.

#pokémon #pokemon legends arceus #pokemon volo #submas ingo #random writing #au where ingo is in cahoots with volo :)#feat a bunch of different ways this can go #its a fun au bc depending on how you want to characterize volo and ingo it can go in all sorts of directions #does volo honestly want to help or does he want someone he can use more directly to achieve his goal?#is ingo holding onto some sense of morality or so despearate that he discards it all?#the possibilities are endless! and if u wanna write em go ahead #but also if u do pls tell me bc im curious of how it goes in yalls version #anyways HAVE AT THEE (hurls this at your face)

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