A very, very long time ago, Emmet and Ingo picked their names. Emmet picked something he liked to say: something simple and pleasant to the ear in contrast to what he was leaving behind. His brother wouldn’t be rushed—not that Emmet would ever push him in such an important matter– and only came back with a decision after several days and false starts.

Warden Ingo, Emmet had been informed, was credited with running the first competitive battle facility in ancient Sinnoh centuries prior. He was a fierce battler, whose hard won mark of approval became highly sought after, and combined with his dedication to the six-Pokemon format, was thought to have paved the way for the modern Pokemon League.

Emmet hadn’t needed his brother to sell him on the name. If he’d finally found the right one, perfect! He didn’t give Ingo’s namesake much thought after that moment.

And it couldn’t have been the furthest thing from his mind when his brother disappeared.

–

He began with the general history of competitive battling– it was likely how Ingo, at 12 years old, had been introduced to the man. Sure enough, he found the exact same trivia his brother had recited half a lifetime ago: competitive battler, marks for defeating him, rigid team structure. Apparently the man personally ‘conducted’ another battle format, wherein the challenger would select a single Pokemon and he would meet it with one of his own; most villagers, still new to their partnerships with Pokemon, couldn’t hold up in a 6v6 match, but the limited scope made it more accessible to them.

It was called the Path of Solitude, and Emmet felt the beginnings of laughter well up in his chest.

The majority of information he found online was strictly about Warden Ingo’s impact on modern battling; there was a token allusion to something called the Pearl Clan and a Noble Pokemon, but none of the articles he looked into went further in depth. Fine. He had a departure point, and that was all he needed.

The Pearl Clan, he found in relatively short order, was one of Hisui’s founding tribes; the Nobles were Pokemon thought to have been blessed by ‘Almighty Sinnoh’, and were honored as such under the care of a Warden.

And the more he looked, the more he found– on paper, if not in a digital format. Most, if not all, information on the man referred to at-the-time-current events; the Warden, originally an outsider, had been rescued by the Pearl Clan with nothing more than the clothes on his back and a name. He had little past to speak of. It was his nearly unheard of handle on Pokemon that earned him the Lady Sneasler’s favor and his title, in spite of the Clan’s misgivings.

But that mistrust only lasted so long. Records of letters with pockmarks and talon holes represented an incomplete correspondence between the Warden and a younger clan member in the Fieldlands, who trusted the newcomer enough to vent his concerns and frustrations. There were tightly-bound scrolls, recovered from a campsite on Mount Coronet, detailing how to craft poison remedies and smelling salts, signed with the smudged footprint of a Bibarel. Scraps of paper, weathered from exposure to the elements, depicted one half of a passive aggressive argument between The Warden Melli and, supposedly, his counterpart in the Coronet Highlands; the contents were near illegible, and it was only the importance granted to the original writer’s title that preserved it for so long. Some people believed they saw the word ‘torch’ crop up within the smudged text.

That much seemed to hold water. It was an established fact that the Pearl Clan’s representative took traversal of the mountain’s caves very seriously. While he could navigate them in the dark, ‘a passengers’ safety came first’.

It was at that point that Emmet allowed the first hysterical wheeze to escape him.

And when he traveled to the Canalave Archives, he completely lost his shit.

He snickered to himself on the building’s steps, having been politely asked to leave the premises until he got a hold of his volume. Historically, that wasn’t Emmet’s struggle, but he would pick up the slack for the time being.

Through his gleeful shaking, he tapped a Xtransceiver message to those back in Unova, followed by the picture he’d hastily snapped before being kicked out.

He’d come all this way on the word of a student deep in the throes of a research paper, who’d dealt extensively with the writings of Clan Leader Irida. They’d helpfully noted down the journal pages he might find relevant, but Emmet hadn’t afforded most of them a single look.

A gift from the Almighty Palkia and Dialga, said the entry he’d bothered with, Relinquished with the same grace he was granted to us. We were blessed to welcome him into our space, and to walk with him to his own.

The entry had, at one point, been accompanied by an old-style photograph. It had since been removed, so as to preserve both records, and stored in a more suitable part of the archive. Nobody had begrudged Emmet’s access request, but the [hasty] photo he took– though lacking a flash– had been frowned upon.

Its quality was poor; the original was already low-resolution and stained with age, so he was working with a challenge to begin with. The lighting and his [haste] didn’t do him any favors, either, but the important part was visible.

[It’s a celebratory/commemorative photo at the studio before they leave. I think Akari’s already absent. It’s mostly Pearl Clan, with a couple of Diamond in there (Arezu due to proximity, maybe Adaman, of course Melli) and a few Galaxy folk. Mostly thinking Zisu. Also Sneasler, obviously. Ingo’s attention isn’t on the cameraman. It’s on something off-camera, where the tiniest flash of white is visible.]

Emmet thought he’d contained the worst of his [amusement], but another bubble of laughter escaped him, and he didn’t fight it.

Why would he? Things were going to be just fine.

—

(A long, long time after the photograph was taken, but not so long after they settled comfortably home, Emmet did find a way to inflict his amusement on his brother.

“I have good news pertaining to your namesake.” He said, and waited patiently as Ingo considered it.

“…was something discovered in the time I was gone? All surviving records indicated that he lived hundreds of years– oh.” And at the abrupt silence, Emmet knew he had him, “Oh no.”

Though the severe angle of his mouth didn’t betray him, there was laughter in Ingo’s voice, barely contained. When Emmet braced himself against his twin, making no effort to hide his delight, Ingo cracked.

Despite his mirth, Emmet had no choice but to thank the old Warden. Twice, now, he’d brought his brother home.)