In a complete turnabout, the first words out of Emmet’s mouth when they got home were, “What the fuck.”

Still struck silent, Ingo rolled his eyes and bopped the bill of Emmet’s cap down, only to whisk the entire hat away and hang it up after a second had passed.

He didn’t catch the first part of whatever his twin signed, but the end was enough; between the glimpse of ‘dinner tonight?’ and the fact that he immediately turned on his heel toward the kitchen, the point got across.

Chandelure trailed stubbornly behind him, had refused to be returned to her pokeball even during matches she wasn’t a part of, loathe to leave her trainer after watching him shut down so thoroughly. The others released themselves at their leisure, used to the evening rhythm; the bugs and Garbodor also found their way to the kitchen, anticipating their own food and the treats they would get for a day’s hard work.

Most of them stuck to their usual routines: Archeops and Excadrill took their nightly run around the apartment, Archeops flapping above the mole as she tried to snag his tail feathers, Haxorus diligently scraped her axes across the standing whetstone she and Excadrill shared and the Klinklang hovered aimlessly near the ceiling, well above Archeops’s path, gossiping between one another in metallic groans and screeches.

The only outlier was Eelektross, who’d taken one look at his trainer’s face and wound his body halfway around him. If Ingo wanted to pretend nothing had happened for another hour… well it wasn’t fine, but it was his choice; knowing that Eelektross recognized that something was wrong was comforting, though, when nobody else was acknowledging it.

Wordlessly, Emmet stepped up to help dole out meals and make sure nobody thought to sneak from another Pokemon’s bowl, but that was about as far as his patience would extend.

“I’m going to start a basic vegetable soup, is that alright?”

“No. You’re acting as if nothing has happened. This is not the time to be discussing soup.”

It earned him a thoroughly unimpressed look, broken only when Ingo shooed Chandelure back to her own dinner, “You weren’t listening, were you? I’m not trying to ignore the matter, but I do need just a few minutes longer. It only makes sense to do something productive in the meantime, when we might not have the mental energy for dinner preparations after the fact.”

“...ah.” Apparently the answer was no, he hadn’t been listening; that must have been what preceded the bit of sign he’d caught, coming in the door. As much as he wanted to address the Copperajah in the room, he wouldn’t press so insistently if it was a matter of working up the nerve. “Sorry.”

His brother waved it off without any heat and, between the two of them, getting dinner started was an exceedingly quick task-- in no small part due to the fact that the ingredient list was slightly truncated. Emmet had thought to ask after the alteration, but as soon as it crossed his mind, he’d answered his own question: it was because Ingo thought those ingredients might make him sick to his stomach again.

Actually, no, if there was any weight to this theory, it wasn’t just that-- it was that the ingredients would trigger morning sickness again.

He may very well have been right. It might not have been that he was ill, but that there was something wrong with his body.

It took several long seconds for Emmet to realize that their task was complete, and that all his twin was doing was staring blankly into a pot that had yet to boil. It took an extra second to realize that he’d been doing essentially the same thing, and to steer the both of them to the kitchen table.

Ingo gave a shallow, distracted nod of thanks as he sat down; he immediately set his head in his hand while Emmet dragged a second chair to the same side. “We can eliminate intercourse and any deliberate method of conception. I do not know what options that would leave us with. Unfortunately.”

Briefly, his thoughts wandered to decades-old schoolyard wisdom, which stated one should steer clear of rivers where Ludicolo liked to congregate; the implication, while nondescript, had followed a similar path back then. Never mind the fact that Ludicolo’s specific egg groups were a unique overlap, and neither fell into the realm of ‘human-like’, it seemed likely that, however unrealistic, the same rumor was probably circulating amongst school kids to this day.

His wayward thought was reined back in as, without raising his head, Ingo tossed his spare hand up in a gesture that Emmet was choosing to interpret at ‘fuck if I know’.

Above them, Chandelure gave a calm, two-tone chime which sounded exactly like their mother’s doorbell. Her reasons for doing so were unclear, but it seemed likely she was trying to help; it succeeded in getting Ingo to look up, so in a way, it saw success. He briefly reached up to wrap his fingers around her nearest arm and then sat properly in the chair-- straight-backed instead of hunched over the table-- hands already in motion.

“That’s a question to keep in mind, but I believe you were correct earlier: it’s still worth retesting. The chances of a blood test concluding falsely are quite low, but not zero.”

Privately, Emmet was… beginning to doubt that the conclusion had been incorrect. His knowledge of human reproduction consisted entirely of health classes growing up, bits and pieces of pop culture and a handful of first aid courses anyone working in public transport was required to take, but the knowledge that yesterday’s nausea could very well have been a symptom put other recent happenings under a different light.

He distinctly remembered Ingo commenting on the pungency of the Klinklangs’ steel-type polish several days prior, or the passing hypothesis that Galvantula had gotten into his clean laundry again, neatly explaining why a binder that he’d had for months was suddenly causing skin irritation.

None of those were helpful observations right now, though, so he kept them to himself.

“And in the event that it isn’t an error, however that might be possible,” Ingo added, looking none too happy with the prospect, “It’s still early enough for termination to--”

Something changed in the atmosphere around them, the air going dangerously still and settling heavily in his lungs, ambient noise dampened down to nothing. The unnatural stillness only highlighted the… force that rang out in turn, a vibration that could be felt through the chest, stirring up the dead weighted air. It wasn’t a voice-- nothing that humans would recognize as a voice, at least-- but there was a clear message behind it. It was scolding. A firm no. A threat that, he knew implicitly, could be backed up.

It held fast for a moment longer before vanishing entirely, the world around rushing back into place, filling the void it left.

Temporarily without words for what had just happened-- for the dots that had just connected-- Emmet looked to Ingo, who’d gone worryingly pale.

“That was the Pokemon from the station.”