Things went quiet for some time-- not in a literal sense, because Ingo’s calls didn’t decrease in frequency, but in terms of what he spoke about. He talked about the village and how he wanted to visit with Emmet someday, once it was Jubilife City; he chattered excitedly about the people he battled and those ones who were just forming partnerships with Pokemon. At one point, he mentioned an upcoming meeting with Irida, but got distracted by Tangrowth before he could elaborate on what made it so important.

He also complained about being bad at playing the flute. Emmet didn’t understand why he’d suddenly taken an interest in it, but he wouldn’t begrudge the hobby. He’d have to invest in earplugs.

He wondered why he hadn’t already done that. It would have saved him a losing battle against tinnitus.

One evening, he noticed that there were fewer messages in his inbox. It wasn’t immediately obvious, and he didn’t actually process that fact until he was scrolling through for the night, but it stuck with him as he listened to a leisurely walk through the Icelands, the summary of another ominous-yet-upbeat encounter with Sabi, and the very basics of how his meeting with Irida had gone. Emmet only realized what was happening when it was all but spelled out for him: Ingo was saying goodbye to his friends in Hisui. He was going to be leaving soon.

Was that why his inbox was only three quarters full? Because the messages were about to end? It made him nervous to start the final voicemail, and he replayed several that came before it. In hindsight, Sabi covering her eyes up and laughing that she “couldn’t see him anymore” could have been a very good, or very bad omen.

But… he wouldn’t know what was in the recording until he listened, couldn’t know what happened after winning without winning.

He opened the message.

“I tried playing the flute when I arrived here; seems all that practice was for nothing.” Ingo said, which, on its face, was another sign that this was about to go wrong. That wasn’t the point he was trying to make, though, and he continued on. “Something guided me through the song I was meant to perform. It was… a very strange sensation, but I recognized it. It was the same thing I felt when that Pokemon spoke to me years ago. Arceus.”

He made some kind of joke about a staircase, and then lapsed into more serious matters. His voice fluctuated as he spoke, betraying his anticipation and fear just as keenly as the words he chose.

“If I walk up those steps, I’m unable to guarantee where-- or when-- I’ll come back down.”

Became--

“I could just be walking into another blizzard. Even so, it may be a risk, but… what other choice do I have?”

And then--

“If I can be honest with you, I am afraid of what lies ahead.”

Until, finally, he got to--

“I hope you’re well. The recent years must have been difficult in ways I can’t even begin to imagine, and I can’t apologize enough for all the trouble my absence must have caused you.

“Hisui and Unova are two very different beasts, but both are dangerous in their own ways, and I can only trust that you’ve found a way to endure. Whatever may have happened, and wherever you find yourself now, I hope you’ve never doubted how much I love you, Emmet.

“Even if it’s not soon… I will see you again. I promise.”

There was a finality to how the call ended, and Emmet stared down at his Xtransceiver until the screen went dark, mind churning. Was this it? Was this where his brother had departed from Hisui, never to be seen again? If so, where had he ended up? Modern day, or somewhere else entirely? Arceus had already played with his expectations so frequently that it wasn’t unthinkable he’d simply been taken someplace and sometime else.

He supposed he’d hear soon enough.

It wasn’t Emmet’s intention, but uncertainty made his sleep light, and he woke up several times prior to midnight. That meant he was awake when the new day rolled in, and after a minute to let a hypothetical call process, he checked his device.

There were no new messages.

He sat up in bed, disrupting Durant, and picked the Xtransceiver up properly-- fully disconnected from its charger. After another minute passed, he checked again, to a similar result. He pushed his sheets back and pivoted as if to get up.

Holding his breath, he placed a call.

Something rang in the room across from his.

Emmet stood abruptly, glad he’d had the foresight to disentangle himself from his bedding, and threw his door open to cross the hallway. He didn’t know what to expect, and gave the door to his twin’s room a tentative knock. There was no answer, but the device inside continued to sound.

Guiltily, he turned the knob and opened it a crack, listening for any sign that he was actively invading someone’s space. What he heard was an electric chatter, and that was enough for him to step in properly-- if only to investigate what was going on in a place that ought not to be disturbed.

The difference was immediately obvious: there was some kind of bag on Ingo’s bed, precisely where Emmet had once found his six pokeballs. Both the ringing and the high electric hum were coming from somewhere inside of it.

It felt a little bit like rooting through his brother’s things uninvited, but he didn’t know for sure where this had come from or who it belonged to-- he just had a strong suspicion, and he wouldn’t be able to confirm it if he didn’t check. Setting his Xtransceiver down next to it, he undid the leather fastening and peeked inside.

Or that’s what he would have done, if something hadn’t escaped the instant he opened the bag.

It froze in mid-air as it angled toward him, as if confused, and then swooped in, crackling up a storm. By this point, the ringing had stopped and-- as his twin had before him-- Emmet was leaving a long, empty silence as a message. Without losing sight of the hovering whatever, he reached over to end the call.

“You’re the Rotom.” He said, after they had a moment to regard one another.

It did look a bit like a Rotom phone-- albeit one molded into a flashy and, frankly, inconvenient shape. There were points to snag on fabrics and loose ties, open patches where it could get tangled up, and the design itself seemed inconvenient to hold. If it had once been his twin’s Xtransceiver, it seemed like a clear downgrade.

The screen lit up to display 👋, which he took for confirmation.

“I am Emmet.” And at that, it responded with ▽. Good. They were on the same page, so far. “You worked with my brother. Do you know where he is?”

🤨, Rotom typed, which contributed about as much as any emoji possibly could.

“...do you know what happened to him? After his last message?”

‼

Without any further convincing, Rotom zoomed over and forced its vessel into his hand. The screen ticked to life and he watched, fascinated, as the ghost navigated the device’s menus to find the app it was looking for, and then the specific video.

And there on the screen was his brother, to the device’s left side, precisely the way Emmet was used to seeing him. He looked somewhat worse for wear, and his coat was completely different than it had been, but Emmet had already known about both changes.

People liked to say that Ingo was unreadable, but they just weren’t trying hard enough. Even in profile, it was easy to read exhaustion in the way he held himself. Wherever he was, he was looking at something far below and, after a moment, closed his eyes against it, heaving a deep breath in and out.

Just seeing him like that was a blow and a balm all in one; hearing his voice had done a world of good, and it was always interesting to dissect a new picture, but to watch the micro-expressions play over his face in real time was so familiar that it settled in the creases of Emmet’s eyes and wouldn’t stop stinging. As of this recording, he’d been alive and mostly-well.

Ingo performed a full about face before opening his own eyes back up, and, as he moved across the area-- an expanse of ruined white stone and jagged pillars-- Rotom pivoted to follow. Sure enough, when he stopped at its opposite side, there was a staircase leading from the structure’s edge clear into the sky: a set of gently glowing, floating steps. Ingo walked right up to the edge, looking down at the very first one, but didn’t set foot on it.

“Your destination is right in front of you, now’s the time to run toward it.” He told himself, voice quieter than Emmet could ever recall him using, but in spite of that-- in spite of the fear he’d confessed in the message-- there was a steel beneath the words which betrayed his resolve, “You can’t know what happens after winning without first winning.”

Emmet couldn’t force down his laughter; it wasn’t that he was laughing at his brother’s anxiety, but it was funny that Ingo got himself past it with the exact same script Emmet had used prior… or… after? He didn’t have much time to think about that, because on the screen, Ingo forced his posture straight, and even after all this time, his hands automatically fell into his side of their point and call.

His voice echoed across the ruined temple.

“All aboard!”

And, with that, he began ascending the floating staircase.

In theory, Rotom could have flown to its end, but it hung back at Ingo’s shoulder as he took it step by step, out ever-farther into the open air. It must have been terrifying-- he didn’t let himself look down the entire time, Emmet noticed.

The climb was a very long one. While he had timestamps, Emmet didn’t choose to pin down the specifics just yet, somehow enthralled with what would otherwise be an incredibly mundane task-- and then something changed in the distance.

It started with a purple aurora lining the steps like a sorely-needed safety rail, and then it developed into… a second horizon line, almost. A divide between the sky and-- and what else, then if not the sky? It couldn’t possibly be more distinct, separating the vibrant sunset from a deep, inky blackness studded with stars.

There was a visible sigh of relief as Ingo stepped up onto the dividing platform and, with a cursory look around the space, immediately began to cross it, mindful not to step on the lines of the intricate pattern weaving all around him.

As he neared its center, a shape began to take form, setting in like a mirage.

“This whole time it really was you, then; you're Arceus.”

With a halo of light ringing it, all that was visible-- through Rotom’s recording, at least-- were a quadrupedal silhouette which absolutely towered over his brother and a pair of hard green-and-red eyes. It stepped forward. Where its leg terminated, there was the suggestion of a hoof and a hint of gold, but more importantly, it manifested something between them.

Without taking his eyes off of the being before him, Ingo knelt to pick the indistinct glowing object up. He tested its weight in his hand, and then finally looked down.

“A balm?” He asked, expression pinched subtly in thought. “You… want to battle?”

As if in confirmation, the glow around it shifted and motes of light twinkled into existence as it readied an attack. With a sharp hiss, Ingo abruptly lunged to the side as it ruthlessly charged past, where he’d been standing a moment prior.

Seizing his opponent’s distraction, Ingo tossed the light in his hand at it as if he were holding a common pokeball. He didn’t seem surprised when another reappeared in its place, and squeezed in a second throw before taking off to avoid the beams of light honing in from Arceus’s miniature star.

It was… appallingly dangerous, even before the Pokemon moved on to rolling shockwaves and throwing the motes themselves out, where they exploded upon impact with what could loosely be called the ground.

What kind of battle was this supposed to be? On one level, Emmet understood-- he’d listened with a resonant anxiety as his brother prepared to face the frenzied Noble Pokemon, and gotten a terrifying description of the corrupted Dialga well after the fact-- but even those were just Pokemon. No Lilligant, Electrode or Arcanine could ever be capable of anything like this.

And Ingo was just going along with it. It was a good thing, because it meant he hadn’t been struck down by what could only be described as a small comet, but the way he hadn’t even tried to reach for a pokeball-- his first instinct should not have been ‘let me throw this light at it like I’m playing one of those Kantonian Safari Games’!

Even so, it seemed to be working. He wove through the minefield of attacks and scattered the so-called balms until the haloed beast was forced to pause; only then did he throw a Pokemon out into battle.

He didn’t stop moving, even as a very strange Samurott materialized and immediately tanked an Extrasensory. The entire time he called orders, he continued to take aim at Arceus, and it seemed to expect no less, choosing between its two targets without any care for the unspoken rule that Pokemon focused on their fellow Pokemon, first.

At one point, Rotom decided not to follow its human into the fold, unwilling to get caught up in the flurry of attacks nearer Arceus’s body, and in that moment, it caught a glimpse of Ingo’s face for the first time since the battle began. He was focused, of course-- intent on not dying-- but also pressing in for victory. As Samurott fell to a dazzling Hyper Beam, Emmet was able to recognize the way his eyes angled, even as far away as he was.

Was… was he enjoying this?

What in the world had Hisui done to his brother?

They moved in phases. Once Samurott was down, it was back to being the single target on the battlefield and wearing his opponent out-- and little by little, the silhouetted behemoth did wind down. Strange Pokemon after strange Pokemon fought ferociously under Ingo’s orders, facilitating his movements as he assisted them in turn. None of them were Pokemon Emmet would have envisioned, but from months of research, he knew what they were-- a Samurott, Decidueye, Typhlosion, Basculegion and Wyrdeer. All of them fought with a vicious edge that Emmet hadn’t ever seen in a Pokemon before, but there was no overlooking how well they listened to direction.

When Wydeer was down and Arceus was finally on the ropes, Ingo reached for his last pokeball-- and this was a species Emmet recognized, no questions asked. The Gliscor was bigger than any he’d ever seen; from where it flanked Ingo on one side, its wing stretched well beyond his opposite shoulder.

Funny. Nobody else would recognize it, but they were both grinning the same way-- like they had the win in their sights and were going in for the KO.

The difference between the rest of the team and the Pokemon who had worked most closely with his twin was obvious. Samurott and Wyrdeer rivaled it in terms of cooperation, and Basculegion nearly matched the bat’s mercilessness, but no matter how hard a trainer tried to balance their attention, they would always grow closest with one Pokemon over the others. This made it clear that Gliscor was that Pokemon. It scarcely needed orders before it acted, and it was so determined to see this through that it fought like its very life was on the line.

To have built up that kind of understanding within only a few years was incredible, and, in recognizing that it existed, Emmet felt his heart settle well before the battle drew to its close.

Arceus would fall.

And it did.

When it wobbled and landed on its four knees, the halo surrounding it began to dim-- and as that veil winked out, it was like it stole every scrap of light around it. The video went dark, and Rotom sprung back to its previous energy level.

“That’s the last thing you saw?” He asked, and it wobbled an affirmative.

That… changed the specific circumstances, Emmet supposed, but at its core, the situation was the same as ever. His brother had risen to each one of Arceus’s challenges and surpassed them, but he still wasn’t home.

Rotom zipped off and worked itself under the flap of the leather bag-- searching for something rather than putting itself away. Emmet trailed after, wondering whether or not it would be inappropriate to look. The fact that it was here now-- in their home and on his twin’s bed, just after he’d gotten the last of the messages-- meant something was happening. He just needed to figure out what.

He opened the bag, and Rotom immediately went spilling out, along with a number of old fashioned pokeballs. That wasn’t inherently a problem-- even if they had occupants, Emmet knew that his brother had worked with a lot of Pokemon in Hisui. The problem was that, when he opened it to look inside, there were more. Four had rolled out onto the dark bedspread, and the jostling shook another three out. Given their make and size, Emmet was only able to hold two per hand, and he removed four before the numbers added up. The last pokeball he retrieved was the one with a lucky knot and tassel decorating it-- Gliscor’s.

Wherever Ingo was now, his Pokemon weren’t with him.

He hadn’t been sent home, he didn’t have a reliable way to get in contact, and without either of his teams, he wouldn’t be able to fight his way back. Whatever had happened, he was still trying, but… but maybe that was the whole point. Maybe it wasn’t on Ingo to cross the rest of the distance; Emmet had stayed his hand this long, and this was his cue to finally act.

He called Rotom back over and replayed the beginning of the video, eyes roving over the ruined temple in its background.

Ingo had been on Mount Coronet. Emmet could get there easily enough. He could--

He paused and peeked back into the bag. It was packed meticulously, but near its top-- just under what had once been a layer of pokeballs-- was a strange blue object. Perfect. That was exactly what Ingo had described finding after his second confrontation with Giratina. That was the instrument that had caused the impossible staircase to appear.

It was all the confirmation Emmet needed: he was going to Mount Coronet.

If his brother had come all this way by himself, then the least he could do was meet him at the finish line.