Somebody had submitted Irma’s name to the annual Nimbasa [?] poll. She tried to tell herself she wasn’t upset about it– it was just a silly popularity contest– but if they were being realistic, it was all about appearances. Under different circumstances, Irma wasn’t the sort to wring her hands over how attractive others did or didn’t find her, but…

But throughout her entire adult life, over and over, she’d been told how much prettier she’d be if she smiled like Emma.

Irma tried. She really, truly did. If people paid enough attention, they could see the way her eyes narrowed when she was happy, and she did her best to make her voice dynamic and expressive to show others how she felt. It just… wasn’t enough. People always took her at face value, and one thing Irma physically could not do was smile like her sister.

It wasn’t the idea of people finding her unattractive that bothered her; it was the fact that she’d have irrefutable proof that people simply didn’t understand her, and didn’t care to try.

She tried to put it from her mind and focus on work but, inevitably, someone would make a comment about her expression and she’d be forced to confront the problem again. Emma had started taking it personally. It would have been a nice gesture, but it always ended in Irma having to swoop in and intervene before she could say something that would get her fired. She loved her sister, but the extra responsibility of dragging her away by the collar every time she heard the word ‘smile’ was the last thing she needed right now.

It made sense; Emma had felt responsible for the facial paralysis ever since diagnosis, no matter how emphatically Irma told her it wasn’t her fault. The guilt of it had lessened for awhile– once Irma made enough progress with physical therapy to emote from the nose up, and Emma relearned to read her twin’s face– but when they’d gone on to find employment with the United Unovan Railway, people started making pointed comments. Ironically, Emma never had possessed much of a poker face, and it was plain to see that it struck her every time she happened to hear.

Some days, Irma wished she could just be a man instead. No one would lament her “resting bitch face” then– or, if they did, then maybe the “bitch” part wouldn’t sting so much. It was a fleeting– if frequent– thought that she passed off without any deeper consideration.

In the end, the voting period wasn’t actually so bad. She’d tried to tell herself that, even if she came in at dead last, it was still a lot to have been nominated at all… regardless of the fact that it did feel like a cruel prank, when she was being honest; she’d never know if it had been a legitimate submission or a mean spirited joke. Surprisingly, she landed just under the median. It was still a good two dozen spots behind her sister and entire light years from someone like Elesa, but she could live with that.

What hurt the most was the discussion in the aftermath. Irma didn’t go out seeking commentary on the poll, but having been an unwilling part of it, it found her– people lamenting that she’d somehow placed ahead of them or saying that anyone who voted for her over their preference didn’t have any taste. There were some whose talk wasn’t even negative, just incredulous. Somehow, it didn’t feel any better to be told that someone had been surprised to see her rank so highly, but congratulations!

She took to wearing a face mask during work hours, sick to death, but only of the subject matter. If people couldn’t see her lips, they might mistake her for Emma and spare her the unsolicited interjections. Emma hated that she had to resort to such measures, but couldn’t offer any other solution– save for ripping into anyone she caught making noise.

When Elesa had caught wind of the situation, she’d taken a different track. The reassurances that it was a stupid poll to begin with, and a mid-tier placement wasn’t bad at all weren’t anything Irma hadn’t already told herself, and as much as she’d tried to be grateful for the fact that her friend cared enough to encourage her, Irma only found it exhausting. It was over now, and she just wished they could move past it. She understood that they wanted to make her feel better, but why did they have to keep revisiting the topic?

Irma had forgotten that, while the general public had proven they couldn’t read her, Elesa certainly could, and she recognized that her input was only making things worse. Instead, she took to sending Irma messages throughout the week, showing her those comments that highlighted her enthusiasm and geniality– and even several that framed her not as distant and aloof due to her frown, but intelligent and alluring.

It was kind of her, and her efforts did actually help. Irma didn’t really know what to make of being called “alluring”, but could… appreciate the compliment? She guessed?

The years after that weren’t so bad– it was just the first time she’d been on the board that people had seen fit to approach her about it. Frankly, the only time thereafter that it had been of any interest at all was the year a particularly nasty strain of the flu ran rampant through the city; it became commonplace for people to wear face masks in public and, with only the upper half of her face to judge by, commuters were able to recognize when Irma smiled at them in her own way. Strangely, it even reflected in that year’s poll: instead of twenty places apart, Irma found that she landed just under Emma.

It still didn’t mean anything in the long run, but it was… nice to feel like people could begin to see her for what she was, rather than what she wasn’t.

The year after that, he’d come out to his sibling and they’d drawn up rough schematics for a train car that could withstand the wear and tear of battle. Both of them had been somewhat absent from the public eye as they brought the idea to both the head of the UUR and the Pokemon League, then subsequently been made to prove the concept. Surely polling happened that year, but both of the twins were too caught up in their project to pay it even the slightest bit of attention. It meant even less than usual that time, when they’d only be put in the wrong category.

Which brought them to this year.

The battle cars were perfectly functional and the system was promising. They’d debuted the mini-battle facility using different names from what people knew, and hosted only multi battles– it set the subway apart from the gym challenge, and it also let them focus on their specialty, honing it to perfection. The somewhat dramatic coming out hadn’t had any bearing on that; it had just been convenient timing.

So far, the Battle Subway was a hit. They’d had coworkers express an interest in joining up, and had successfully proven the concept to the League; while it wasn’t guaranteed at this point, there was even talk of broadening the system to include more common battle styles.

With the prospect of expanding the services on the table, Ingo had been focused on how to make it work. There was a fair amount of interest in battling for a living, but so far, no other trainers who could serve as the final milestone for a line dedicated to single or double battles. While he and Emmet were certainly capable of filling those gaps, he needed to figure out how to make the timing work; using a win streak kept them from being swamped so far, so maybe it was just a matter of tweaking the existing system? How many wins could they reasonably expect a trainer to achieve? It was difficult to say. Not everyone was as… enthusiastic as he and his twin were, but if they’d boarded looking for a battle, then it wasn’t unfair to provide a certain amount of challenge…

He heard the lock turn, snapping him back to reality, and belatedly pulled a [blob] of accumulated fur from the comb he’d been moving on autopilot. It was the interruption of the pattern that caused Excadrill to look up, disturbed out of the doze it had fallen into.

On the other side of the front door, two muffled voices chattered back and forth, but went strangely quiet when they finally crossed into the apartment. Ingo sighed internally and braced himself for whatever trick would eventually be leveled at him.