There was a strange ruin running along the shared border between the Alabaster Icelands and Coronet Highlands. Nestled perpendicular between its mountain range and reaches that could barely be called the Cobalt Coastlands, the sight was unlike anything Akari had observed in Hisui.

It was like… boxes. Big boxes. Large enough for a human to get inside and walk around, and when she did so, it was clear she wasn’t the first. Whatever this was, people had made it and intended to spend time inside of it. A shelter of some kind? There were seats, and some strange device in the far corner. She didn’t understand why there were doors on all sides; two of them couldn’t even open, jammed in place by the mountain the structure was set against. Why bother?

Her shoes clacked on the dark floor as she walked, and she quickly adjusted her gait to move silently.

Strange. The seats showed signs of wear– not damage, wear– but there weren’t any of the hallmarks that would make this a living space. It was empty, save for the [device] across the room and the bars hanging overhead. Akari reached up as she passed, touching one of the rings dangling from the railings; it swayed gently. She moved on.

The thing in the corner was familiar; when she stood before it, her hands automatically took up a placement on its buttons. Muscle memory led her through a specific series of taps, but nothing happened. The window above it remained dark, reflecting her own face back at her.

She turned away and tried the large door at the room’s end. There was a little resistance as she slid it open, but only the amount that came with disuse, and when she peered in, she found the same room, repeated.

This one, however, wasn’t empty.

It wasn’t lived in per se, but there were traces of human activity: tumblestones broken in the telltale mis-strokes of early pokeball crafting, the husks of several long-dried apricorns. There was a lantern hanging from one rail– not along the bar with the rings, but tied to the support jutting from the wall, positioned so someone could sit and work in the radius of its light.

On the opposite side, a crude basket was shoved off against the wall– barring an already-useless door– and inside Akari found more withered crafting materials. Mostly, the contents were mushrooms: swordcaps and barktongues, but a few stray rawst and aspears lingered, in addition to a bundle of bugwort that looked like it hadn’t been touched since its harvest. She suspected her Pokemon would agree with whoever had left it to collect dust.

Despite being orders more [welcoming?] than the first room, it was still [very empty], so it didn’t take long for her eyes to fall upon the book resting on the lantern’s seat. She opened it to a random page, mildly surprised to find it empty. She flicked back, and back, and back. Finally, about the first third in, something filled a page. [idk what it is rn, but it would need to be last thoughts/preparations. Maybe a list of readied supplies?]

She tucked it away to study in better light.

There had only been four of the large boxes– and even then, just two that were completely intact– so Akari peered into the next, but wasn’t surprised to find it terminated halfway into a sheer rock face. She walked in anyway, stood with her back to the base of the cliff, and looked down the structure like it was a hallway. It didn’t offer any further insights, so she headed out, drawing the doors shut as she went.

The first of the boxes she’d investigated, before entering any of the enclosed ones, was little more than shell– a frame for native plants to climb and drape themselves over. Now that she knew what the other rooms held, she recognized that part of a seat had survived, but most of it had been reclaimed by the wilderness. Briefly, she considered brushing the creeping vines away from it and settling herself to look over her find, but there was a whole host of reasons that was a bad idea, and she dismissed the thought.

Instead, she exited, stepping carefully over the half-buried bits of metal that marked its perimeter, and walked far enough back to give the entire thing another once-over.

Akari still didn’t know what to make of it and, unless she could find whoever had been frequenting the metallic husk, there weren’t any further answers to be found here. Considering the long claw marks marring the outer walls, punctuating the wide, single orange stripe, she suspected they’d long since fled.

She was a little surprised nothing had jumped out at her, actually. She’d taken pains to ensure that the Pokemon that had scored the walls hadn’t still been lurking, but she’d nearly expected something to be waiting in the last room. It made enough sense, she guessed; most Pokemon couldn’t navigate these kinds of doors.

Still, it felt like [leaving] now was admitting defeat, like leaving a job half-done. It itched, and she thumbed the edge of the book, wondering if it might have any clues for her.

If she was going to find out one way or the other, she needed to get moving. The Coronet outskirts weren’t the place to catch up on her reading.

—

When she got home, Akari promptly broke the book back out. She started from the beginning, this time, and was immediately confronted with a number:

17XX

[figure out timeline] ago. That wasn’t as long as she might have assumed the boxes had been accumulating plant life, but it wasn’t an unbelievable difference. She thought little of it, compared to the line beneath.

With an unpracticed hand, someone had written ‘Hisui’. Next to it, in a script she’d never seen, it also said ‘Hisui’, and, beside that, ‘Sinnoh?’

Her hopes that the book might explain the metal construct rapidly faded, replaced with pure confusion. The rest of the page– composed mostly of similar words without context, including a string of disconnected ‘Galaxy – Galactic – Plasma?’– was written in the same language.

It wasn’t even that she was inferring the words based on similar characters; while some undeniably resembled Hisuian script, she knew without a trace of doubt what they spelled out. The meaning behind some of the words may have eluded her, but they still made sense. She still knew they meant something.

Near the bottom, there was another doubled line: ‘Diamond Clan, Adaman,’ and, printed next to the non-Hisuian translation, ‘’Almighty Sinnoh’ is Dialga?’

Akari stared blankly at the page for several minutes. A far cry from what she’d expected– a journal, maybe– this felt more like a corkboard on which someone was pinning accumulated evidence and tying string. She didn’t pretend to know what they were getting at, and took a peek at the next page, hoping it wasn’t more of the same.

It wasn’t. Oh, there were still disembodied words floating around, but with more purpose this time. There were three short stacks of names, each labeled ‘Diamond,’ ‘Pearl,’ or ‘Galaxy,’ in Hisuian, and then the foreign language. Laventon’s had been marked with an asterisk, and Calaba’s a question mark. Akari had no idea what to think.

Beneath that, however, there was a rough map sketched out. Not of Hisui, but, in the same way she’d taken to the foreign letters, Akari knew where Hisui was on it. Whoever had drawn it hadn’t bothered with labels, notable landmarks, or even basic notation; the best she could infer from were a series of faint marks, as if someone had been tapping their writing implement against one continent in particular.

Smudged in the margin was a note of some kind; the exact words were lost, but she could make out ‘multi cars,’ ‘old materials,’ ‘concern’ and ‘ecosystem’.

There was another map on the opposite page, recognizably of Hisui’s landscape. Unlike the first, arrows pointed into this one, to Deertrack Heights, the Shrouded Ruins, Moonview Arena and Cloudcap Pass, each attached to a list of Pokemon. A not insubstantial number of the Pokemon’s names had question marks next to them, which wasn’t surprising– what was surprising was which Pokemon the author seemed confused by. Braviary and Lilligant, for instance, were marked as questionable, and ‘Basculin’ was accompanied by not one, but two question marks. The likes of Manaphy, Regigigas and Darkrai, however, seemed to have been accepted without a second thought.

Warping on the page told her something had been drawn on its reverse side, too, and she turned to investigate.

She recognized the content instantly, but it took a second to click that it corresponded to the page before it. Across the next two, the book’s owner had carefully recreated the Pokemon depicted in the murals scattered across Hisui; each was marked with a name– their points of confusion consistent– and labeled with where it had been found. Akari flipped between the two pages several times, verifying that the information was the same on both.

At the bottom righthand corner, however, was a Pokemon Akari wasn’t familiar with. The style wasn’t quite right– a dead giveaway that it was just the writer emulating the art– but it was nice in and of itself. A circle [idk] into spiraling squares and branching lines, each topped with an elongated teardrop shape. Its main body had been traced over several times, leaving the strokes dark and thick. In comparison, its face was an elegant filigree, despite the fact that it was just circles and straight lines. As with the others, it had been labeled. ‘Chandelure – Home’.

Akari sat back against the wall, something tugging at the very edges of her mind.

[…]

She flipped past the first few pages, eyes lingering, briefly, on the alleged Chandelure.

There was a marked difference in the content. Instead of diagrams or translations, this page was devoted to Dialga. And not in the way the Diamond Clan would devote writings to it.

‘Dialga – Dragon/Steel’

‘Likely special attacker, steel type– high defenses. Hit hard, hit fast. Ground & fighting.’

There were other notes in the same vein, proposing battle strategies against quadrupeds and, oddly, aerial maneuvers, which quickly turned from theoretical into something more concrete.

‘Does he have Hyper Cutter, Sand Veil or Poison Heal?’

‘Swords Dance, Roost, Earthquake. Facade? Toxic?’ was joined by the later addition of ‘Poison Heal. Facade.’ and then the entire line was struck out, its writer amending that some of the moves ‘didn’t seem to exist yet’.

‘Swords Dance, Mud Bomb – accuracy ploy. Does U-Turn exist yet? Aerial Ace not optimal.’

It was followed by a dark blotch, roughly scratching something out– not hard enough to have made its way through to the previous page, but it seemed like a near thing. Despite the strokes vehemently redacting the thought, she was able to squint hard enough to make out ‘Double battle?’

There was more, but Akari had seen enough. She nibbled lightly on the inside of her cheek, considering this. It was definitely targeted at Dialga– there had been a focus on it since the first page– and, after seeing Volo’s true colors that was concerning. Briefly, she wondered if he’d written this, prior to fixating on Arceus, but he’d implied that he’d been working towards that goal for far longer than [timeframe].

At the same time, though, Dialga was a focus, not the focus. She couldn’t imagine someone like Volo writing notes about the ecosystem in between his research, or taking the time to draw a foreign Pokemon for, seemingly, sentimental reasons.

Moreover, this person wasn’t fluent in Hisuian. Any time they wrote something in the local script, they had to spell it out a second time. If anything was evidence that this book wasn’t Volo’s, it was that.

She frowned, turned the page, and was mildly surprised to find the recipe for Aux Evasion. It was followed by Dire Hit, and then a more conventional list of ingredients for potions and revives. There was also the [process] for processing bugwort into a remedy, but it had a big X through it, and ‘he hated it’.

Without meaning to, Akari felt her suspicion begin to lift just a little bit more, thinking back to the abandoned bundle of flowers she’d seen. The writer listened to their Pokemon, at least, and she could definitely respect that.

The last thing she skimmed over was a basic pokeball recipe and directions. There were a surprising amount of amendments and notes to the author– things like how to handle carving an apricorn and avoid breaking a tumblestone. Clearly they’d learned that much through trial and error.

It was punctuated by something uncharacteristic: pure, simple commentary.

‘If Emmet laughs at it, I’m throwing it right into his stupid smiling face’

—

When Akari picked the book up again, she was greeted by something akin to one of her own Pokedex entries.

‘Sneasler – Fighting/Poison. Poison Touch.’

‘Hisuian Weavile variant? Divergent evolution? Method?’

‘4x psychic weakness. 2x ground & flying. Should be particularly resistant to bug attacks. No known immunities.’

‘Physical attacker. Speedy. Similar niche to Toxicroak, but more specialized. Poison can inflict different status conditions.’ At the end of the line, in much smaller writing, they’d added ‘Though Dialga should be immune…’

‘Enjoys mushrooms, grains and beans (See recipe below)’

‘Close Combat, Dire Claw, Swords Dance, Drain Punch. Where does Rock Climb fit in?’

The next two subjects were very similar, and she didn’t bother looking too closely. The writer was really doubling down on Dialga’s fighting type weakness, it seemed, and hazarding an outline for a defensive status-inflictor. In terms of raw information, it wasn’t quite up to Galaxy Team’s standards, but the battle stratagem was unlike anything she’d ever seen in Hisui– not in the least because there wasn’t any mention of agile or strong attacks. The amount of forethought, the plans made in advance, was interesting compared to the on-the-fly approach of balancing attack speed and power. Then again, she reasoned, the author seemed to know exactly what they were going up against, and were likely at a substantial disadvantage. Going in with as much information as possible was one of the best ways to even the playing field.

Smiling at the googly-eyed scribble the writer had added in a bit of blank space, she rested the book against her knees. It wasn’t particularly thick, and the filled pages had been in the minority, so Akari couldn’t help but wonder just how many more she had to go. She’d long since given up on any mention of the ruin she’d found the book in. Maybe it was like her house was to her– too mundane to bother recording, even though most villagers wouldn’t know the first thing about the appliances therein.

Really, there were only two ways this could end: either the pages went unfilled because the book’s owner had given up on their endeavor and moved on from where they had, in a number of senses, been dwelling, or they’d set out to act upon their plans and never returned. Akari didn’t know them, but she hoped it was the former. It hit too close to home to think that the person who’d struggled to keep a tumblestone smooth and included a Pokemon’s favorite recipe as they studied it might have died on an expedition.

Through the door, she heard Rei’s voice.

It would have to be a mystery solved another day.

—

The writer had figured the Temple of Sinnoh out, and Akari’s heart sank.

Not the entire story behind it, by any means– she didn’t think anyone knew that much. If even a Highlands Warden could only speculate as to the nature of the temple’s construction, she doubted there was much hope for anyone else– excepting, perhaps, Volo.

No, the book’s owner had figured out how to summon Dialga to the temple. She didn’t know where they’d found that particular set of ingredients, but she’d have to give it a try sometime– to see if they’d actually been onto something with the mushrooms, sootfoot root and crunchy salt. Despite herself, she had to laugh as they tried to work out how, exactly, to fold a caster fern into the satchet for a balm. None of their diagrams looked quite right, but she’d give them points for keeping at it.

Across from that, they’d created a checklist of supplies– everything they’d painstakingly translated the recipes for, from healing items to auxiliary boosts. They had known what they were doing, she had to give them that much– she just had her doubts that they knew everything they were getting themselves into. At the bottom of the list, there was a series of tally marks next to ‘Pokeballs’; the different distances between the marks and angles they were set at suggested the writer had been at that one for some time before their quota was met.

With a feeling milder than, but not dissimilar to, walking into Grandtree Arena to face a frenzied Kleavor, Akari turned the page.

The spread was divided into four segments, and at a glance, it seemed like it was mostly dedicated to restating the information from earlier– finalizing moves and strategies, planning when to use the auxiliary boosts.

Then she noticed the species.

Gligar, Machoke, Tangela, Sneasler.

No. No way. Absolutely not.

Unbidden, her eyes roamed over the last [] lines.

‘I believe my safety checks have concluded, and I am as prepared as is currently possible. Though she’ll never read this, I must again offer thanks to Sneasler for acting as my partner on this multi-rail.’

She bolted upright, one hand frozen in a death grip on the book, letting its other half flop wildly around as she tore out of her house and down Floaro Main Street.

—

Emmet was certain of two things.

First, nothing had emerged from the strange, dark field they’d been guarding. Not even for a moment. He’d taken his eyes off of it once, and by then, it was a moot point.

Second, something within the field had taken his brother. He didn’t know how, but he was sure of that much; though it had stayed perfectly [contained], there had been a sense of something reaching out, and when he’d turned to follow the sensation, Ingo had taken a step backwards, as if struck from the front.

After that, things happened too quickly to say [for certain], even months after the fact. He knew that, all of the sudden, his brother was so much closer to the [w/e], even though he’d never moved; he was relatively sure he’d reached out, trying to pull him away, and that Ingo had reached back. Though he didn’t want to admit it to himself, let alone anyone else, he knew that he’d seen true, unfettered terror in his twin’s eyes before he was torn away.

He thought that, maybe, just maybe, Ingo had let go before vanishing, trying to protect him one more time.

But what exactly happened when the field dissipated, rending the car in half and taking his brother with it, Emmet couldn’t say.

After arriving in Jubilife Village, there was one more fact to add to Emmet’s list of certainties:

Whatever had taken his brother had not just done so physically.

[examples]

Mostly, however, it was the rare smile he was favored with. The shallow [smile] after a challenger made it through the Path of Solitude, Emmet could permit; the people here almost certainly wouldn’t take kindly to Ingo’s minimalistic [expressions], so it was understandable that he might have found a way to adapt. It was, however, the exact same when turned upon Emmet, which was simply unacceptable.

It likely came from a place of genuine [happiness], but that didn’t make much of a difference. The smile didn’t reach his eyes.

Nothing did, actually.

There was a light that had gone out– that had been stolen– so even now, Emmet still had work to do.

—

The book was enlightening in some ways, puzzling in others. Emmet didn’t have any frame of reference for what, exactly, the map and corresponding Pokemon icons stood for, nor was he familiar with the ingredients listed in the translated recipes, but he was very sure of one thing:

His brother had been putting together a plan of attack, and the fact that Dialga had been his target stated his intentions quite clearly. There was no post-battle synopsis on paper, of course, but the memory of his own interaction with Dialga– the way the Dragon of Time looked him up and down, considered the full team at his belt and backed off– told him what he wanted to hear: Ingo had gotten the better of it with three unevolved Pokemon and a wild partner.

Even without any of the specifics, Emmet was very proud.

The doubles planning could use some work, but, for now, he would graciously chalk it up to regional-and-or-temporal restrictions. It was a problem that didn’t need to be fixed, anyway, as combination [planning] was already in Emmet’s wheelhouse, and they would not be separated again.

—

Akari had something clutched in her hands. She looked down at it, and then back at them– to Ingo, specifically.

“When the Pearl Clan found you, were you near their encampment? In the Icelands?”

He gave a shallow nod, “That I was.”

“Like, to the south? Around Avalugg’s Legacy or Heart’s Crag?”

There was a negative hum, “To the west, halfway up the cliffs by the falls.”

Her eyes dropped to the paper in her hands again, scanning it intently, “…by Lake Acuity.”

“Near enough, I suppose; it was a stop between the settlement and the Glacier Terrace.”

“Okay,” Akari breathed, “Okay. That’s bad, but… in a good way? I think I know what happened to you.”

She peeked out from behind the weathered sheet and flinched under Emmet’s stare; by comparison, Ingo’s expression was much less intense, but there was a clear interest that shone through. Akari turned it over to them and, in unison, each of them held one edge and leaned in to read it together.

‘O, lake in alabaster lands of ice, lake brimming o’er with rich acuity…

How many seek the Pokemon that shows itself there, out to answer its words true and earn its boon through ingenuity?

But should they fail to understand its words and let its questions meet with reply, their minds will be wiped clean of memory…

O, lake in the alabaster lands of ice, depths where rich acuity goes to sink.’

Emmet was first to look up from the page. He glanced immediately to his twin– who, it seemed, was starting again, from the top– and then to Akari. “What Pokemon lives in Lake Acuity?”

There was an absentminded, “Gyarados, mostly,” from his left, which he felt was reasonable to ignore. It had been an automatic response, and he was familiar enough with Gyarados to know that their only avenue of altering memories was blunt force trauma.

“It’s called Uxie,” Akari said, reaching into her satchel and turning an ultra ball over in her hands, “I… caught it awhile ago, actually– do you remember it?”

Ingo’s attention flicked up from the paper, “Yes; it’s a psychic type with high defenses. Reliant on non-physical attacks and sleep, both as an offensive and defensive measure. I believe I matched it against Zoroark?”

“You got me,” She sighed, “What I wanna know is how you countered it your first try.”

She seemed [unsurprised] by the [helpless] shrug that followed, which was likely why Emmet’s blunt, “He cold read you.” took her by surprise.

“It’s an important skill in professional battling. That is not why we’re having this conversation. Uxie is the Pokemon that can steal memories?”

“Yeah. It’s– it’s a little weird, honestly? It can… not talk for real, but talk inside your head. If I’d known,” She gestured vaguely to the paper, “that, I might’ve been a little more worried about it, but I guess we’re kinda past that.”

Ingo hummed sympathetically and handed the poem back over, “So long as safety measures are put into place for the future.”

Akari was suspiciously silent as she tucked it away.

[…]

Akari flicked her wrist, putting the force into upward momentum rather than distance, and the ultra ball released its contents.

Without meaning to, Emmet found himself grabbing his twin’s hand.

Ingo said nothing, intent on the Pokemon before them, but gave it an answering squeeze.

Uxie was small, two-tailed, and mostly grey with a yellow crest on its head. Emmet vaguely recognized it as something that wasn’t allowed on the railways– not that they’d had anyone try with this one, to his knowledge. Though it didn’t open its eyes, it seemed to survey the both of them.

“Has this one filled his task?” It asked, after a moment passed and it wasn’t met with an opponent.

There was a tense, collective silence as they processed the question’s implications– but before it could stretch into something suspicious, Akari said, “Yes.”

“It will be pleased.”

—

The silence drew on. Concerned, he turned to make sure nothing had gone awry.

As he did, Ingo reached out and rested a hand along the side of his face, favoring him with that too-empty-all-wrong smile, “It’s wonderful to see you again, Emmet. I hadn’t even realized how much I’d missed you.”

It was patently incorrect. He still didn’t know, really– not with such an understated reaction– but Emmet couldn’t turn it down when his brother’s arm wrapped around his back and drew him nearer.

[…]

Emmet wouldn’t begrudge his twin the detached intrigue each new [???] incited. Ingo wasn’t at fault here– he was the biggest victim in this– and Emmet’s goal, first and foremost, was to bring him back to his station. This was fantastic progress in that sense.

It didn’t stop Emmet from wanting to track Akari down and demand a battle against Uxie. Ingo had said it was a psychic type; that was perfect. He could sick Chandelure on it and let her vent her frustrations, too.

Ultimately, his hand was stilled by the fact that he was needed here, for a much more important reason.

[…]

Somehow, it was harder to watch him now. His belief that this was what he’d been, unaware that there was still a large swath of his being missing– it hurt. He was so much more than a series of lived experiences, but because he’d been without any sense of his former self, the enormity of this one [factor] must have been overwhelming.

—

He nodded along, brows furrowed as he considered Emmet’s version of events.

“It felt like– a Gravity attack, centered on the distortion instead of the ground. You caught my hand, but were unable to [idk] under the force of the [pull] and started to lose ground, yourself. I couldn’t pull you down with me, so I let go.”

Emmet took a deep breath and held it for several seconds. He’d imagined as much, but [???]

[…]

“There was a Pokemon. Its name still escapes me, but I feel I was aware of it, though unfamiliar with its [properties] in any significant sense. I can tell you with some certainty that it was quadrupedal, and quite tall, with white fur and gold [???]. Saying it asked me to assist it would be too [kind]; it was rather demanding.”

[what did it want/seek out pokemon]

Akari’s breath caught in her throat. Emmet spared her a sideways look.

“I… got the same [message]. You’re right, it wasn’t really a request. At all.”

“It may have become more [demanding], and if so, that could very well be my fault. I told it in no uncertain terms that wouldn’t be happening; I wasn’t going to abandon my family and duty to the city.” / “It wasn’t pleased. I awoke next in the shell of one of the multi-cars, far from any tracks they could have derailed from. With some time, I learned where and when Hisui was, and of Dialga’s theoretical presence; that was when I set my course.”

“Right,” Akari said, eyes dropping to the book. Wordlessly, [who?] handed it over and she flipped to the excerpt on Dialga’s statistics. “But Dialga was just a myth until recently. It was ‘Almighty Sinnoh’. How could you know all of this?”

Impatient, Emmet waved the question off. “Such Pokemon are disallowed on the Battle Subway. We do not expect passengers to attempt to enter the bracket with them. We do screen entries and know what to look for.” He eyed the page without moving, already well aware of the information it displayed, and added, “I have a very similar analysis back home.”

“We’ll have to compare notes, then.” Ingo said, focusing on some unknown point in the distance.

“I have a very similar analysis back home.” Emmet repeated. “Dialga is still a Pokemon of legend. There is not that much information available. Please continue.”

“Ah. Lady Sneasler noticed the disturbance in her territory, of course, and saw fit to accompany me for a time, though she steered clear of the settlements where I procured information or supplies. The Gligar I befriended agreed to assist, and I actively sought out Machop to maximize on Dialga’s weak spots– Tangela was a surprise, however. We spent several weeks training, and when they rested, I would attempt to create items that might solidify our odds. It seemed unlikely that a clumsily made Pokeball would be able to catch Dialga, but if it was the only way to make it cooperate, it was best to be prepared.”

“So… your Pokemon were still wild then, the way the Clans partner with them.” / “They’re the same Pokemon you have now, right? Why’d you change your mind on Pokeballs?”

“I didn’t want to tear them away from their homes. If I was just a displaced passenger, I had no right to ask them to board a one-way track with me.” One of the capsules on the braided coil of his belt [shifted], and with a fondly exasperated not-smile, he moved to release its occupant. He rested a hand on Gliscor’s head as it appeared, ruffling the bristly fur there, “Yes, I was talking about you. Were those ever-so-sensitive ears of yours burning?”

Gliscor rumbled [fondly] and clambered into his lap, laying its head on his shoulder.

“They were all fantastic learners, very eager to participate– and after Machoke evolved, Lady Sneasler seemed to take an interest, too. It took some coaxing, but she did eventually agree to battle him; while she’d never been as closed off as I’ve since heard people claim, she did become much more personable after that. She visited the crash site much more frequently, and liked to wake me by raking her claws against the sides of the cars.” / “I was incredibly grateful when, in the days leading up to [?], she indicated that she would assist me.”

[…]

“It was a very difficult battle, I won’t rob Dialga of that. We led with Tangela’s Stun Spore to try to mitigate whatever attacks we could and reduce its agility, then, when she was too tired to continue, fell back upon Machoke’s Bulk Up and Mach Punch. In hindsight, access to agile and strong style attacks would have been a boon, but I hadn’t done enough socializing with the locals to be made aware of them, and to have remedied that fact would have cut into time spent training.” Gliscor made a disgruntled noise. Ingo absently patted it between the wings. “Patience, please. Between Machoke and Lady Sneasler’s efforts, we did begin to wear Dialga down. The final phase of our strategy was to send Gligar out under the effects of an Aux Evasion, and simply out-maneuver Dialga with repeated use of Mud Bomb until its energy was spent.”

“And… did it work?”

“It did.” Emmet said in his brother’s stead; he was aware of the [idk] edge his grin adopted, and didn’t see any reason to hold it back, “Dialga recognized me when I approached it. It didn’t immediately concede. But it wavered.” But obviously winning hadn’t meant anything when Ingo had still remained in Hisui. Curious. “It refused to cooperate?”

There was an answering hum– not agreement, but consideration of how to proceed.

“It agreed to try. It warned me in advance that its creator likely wouldn’t allow its interference.” / “And it was entirely correct. The Pokemon that transported me to Hisui was incredibly displeased with the both of us. I’m unsure what Dialga was met with, but I was told, again, to obey the Pokemon’s orders. When it recognized that I had no intention of doing so, it dropped me in the Alabaster Icelands to be met with what I now know as Uxie and its compatriots.”

Akari’s eyes darted to where the pastures lay, beyond the wooden walls, “Mesprit and Azelf. If Uxie could undo what it did to your memory, they should be able to help, too.”