It was important to note that they hadn’t always been Reshiram and Zekrom.

Certainly, they’d been the ‘Vessels of Truth and Ideals’ their entire lives, but it hadn’t meant anything until Team Plasma reared its head. Emmet got prickly about white lies. Ingo was sensitive to dark thoughts. That was that, and they dealt with it the way generations before them had.

But theirs was the first generation to see the dragons awake– to understand why the title [bequeathed] to the Hero’s [surviving] line was ‘vessel’ rather than ‘emissary’. It had been a steep learning curve, but one of the qualities to look for in a conductor was the ability to keep a level head in times of crisis. All there was to say on the matter was that they’d gotten through it.

Nobody else had to know that Ingo spent several days a year brushing out his twin’s shed fur, or that, technically, Emmet’s clutter of Joltik served a medical purpose now, feeding off of the excess charge that thunderstorms built up beneath his brother’s scales. They’d long since gotten used to it all.

Which was why it took Emmet completely off-guard to wake up with a) his head pillowed on his arms and also b) fur.

That wasn’t right.

What the heck.

He was pretty sure he hadn’t done anything to make that happen… unless Ingo had been telling the truth when he claimed [spoiling a Pokemon] had been Emmet sleepwalking. At the time, it had the subtle bite of a lie made in jest, but in hindsight, Emmet couldn’t help but wonder. He looked around the apartment, just in case, but everything was exactly the way he’d left it before his nap.

Slowly, over the course of the afternoon, he came to the conclusion that it must have been his brother’s fault. Emmet had been asleep, and all of the evidence suggested he’d stayed put the entire time, which meant he had an alibi. The only logical answer was that his twin had royally screwed up somewhere over the course of his errands; impressive as the [end results] were, Ingo was in for it once Emmet furreted out the exact nature of the [incident].

He didn’t spare a thought as to why he’d also been affected, so far away from the inciting incident. It was just common sense. They triggered subtle changes in themselves– and, therefore, one another– at least once a week out of excitement alone. Just Tuesday, he’d had to pat his budding muzzle down in the face of [idk], and looked over to find scandalized eyes peering out at him from behind the edge of a collar.

So, while Emmet couldn’t help but wonder, he had an idea what might have happened.

His money was on [idk].

Emmet’s claws slipped against his Xtransceiver’s casing, and he let it clatter to the table. Navigating its functions had been far more difficult than it had any right to be, and Ingo hadn’t even bothered to answer for his crimes once Emmet got the hang of it. Maybe he had his on silent. It would make sense– while Emmet was here at home, stuck between forms, Ingo would be in a trickier situation out there in public. Hopefully he’d been out of the way when it happened.

He tried smoothing his fur down, hoping that the self-soothing might remedy the situation, but found no such luck– despite himself, the fur along his neck bristled, undoing any [effect] the ministrations might have wrought.

And, as the hours passed, the inability to keep his fur flat turned into an anxious burn at the back of his throat. He all but pounced on his Xtransceiver when it finally rang.

Fumbling in his haste, he managed to pick up on the third ring– after accidentally rejecting some manner of notification–and immediately asked “What did you do?”

There was a long silence on the other end– an oddity for his sibling– and, impatient, he broke it.

“Ingo. What happened.”

A polite cough sounded, and then he was answered by a woman’s voice, “Out of an abundance of caution, can I ask who I’m speaking with?”

“I am Emmet,” He said automatically, before his brain caught up to what he was hearing; once it did, though, he found himself baring his teeth at the interloper. He glanced down at the Xtransceiver properly this time– belatedly realizing he’d actually disabled video calls a moment prior– to confirm the contact. Sure enough, it wasn’t a string of random numbers, but the single triangle he’d programmed in all those years ago. “That is not yours. Who are you?”

And that was how Emmet was introduced to the fact that Ingo was missing– pokeballs and Xtransceiver left scattered in a side street for a random passerby to discover.

The question of what had happened redoubled in his mind, and he couldn’t go out and find answers, not like this. He couldn’t even visit the precinct to recover Chandelure and Garbodor. The thought smoldered, just as [keen] as the tension igniting on his palate.

He was only just recognizing the gaping void at his back, and he knew without further question that his current state hadn’t been a matter of harmless excitement. Something had happened to his brother, and he had slept through it. His twin was gone and he hadn’t noticed.

Furious with himself, but unable to lose any more family, Emmet’s shaking claws selected his next contact.

—

Elesa was worried, and it had only intensified the more she got involved. The first clue had been Emmet’s refusal to turn video calls on when he’d contacted her, forcing her to interpret his [anxiety] through the lens of word choice and sentence structure. It got substantially worse when she reached the eastern precinct and realized that Chandelure and Garbodor were actually secure in their pokeballs.

When she’d been asked to pick them up, she’d half expected them loose, separated from their trainer by a series of unavoidable coincidences, and finding that it wasn’t the case sent a spike of trepidation through her. The feeling solidified into dread as she was informed that, “The Xtransceiver is still considered evidence, so unfortunately I can’t return it to you.”

She’d nodded, lost and numb, as the officer continued on, explaining what Pokemon they were bringing out and the process for psychic tracking in missing persons cases.

It didn’t make sense; she’d seen Ingo just that morning. They’d chatted briefly about [idk] before getting their respective drink orders and splitting off for the day. That was only a few hours ago– there was no way he could have vanished in that amount of time, was there?

Distantly, she recognized that Emmet hadn’t breathed a word about this, that he hadn’t already been there, which meant he didn’t know.If the officer had told him about Chandelure and Garbodor, why had she left the investigation out? Did it mean Elesa had to be the one to break the news?

One trembling hand tightened around Chandelure’s pokeball as she scaled the last set of stairs leading to the twins’ apartment, and she came to the [idk] conclusion that she didn’t know. She didn’t know how to even approach the subject. She didn’t know if she could get the words out.

For all of the fear already swirling in her, a new sour tinge was introduced as she knocked without an immediate answer.

“Emmet?” She called [feebly], trying again, and [idk] at the hesitant response that met her. “I have Chandelure and Garbodor. L-listen, there’s–”

“Something you should know.” Came muffled through the door, and she could’ve cried in relief if it hadn’t been for the anger that twisted into the [idk] of emotion settled in her core. He’d known? And he hadn’t told her?

He said something else, but she missed it, too consumed with the extremes warring for dominance– and when the door clicked open, she didn’t wait. She barged in and rounded on her friend, unsure what exactly she was going to say, but knowing she had to get it out before it exploded in her chest. In the end, neither of those things happened. She ended up staring, lips parted in silent [?], as she tried to parse the sight in front of her.

“Yes. Well.” Said what was either Emmet or Reshiram, looking awkwardly to the side as he pushed the door shut and spent a few seconds longer than strictly necessary locking it.

Elesa released the death grip she had on the two pokeballs and transferred Chandelure’s to her opposite hand, gesturing wordlessly toward the humanoid mass of white fluff.

“This is what I need to speak with you about.”

Caught between such sentiments as ‘what the hell, dude’ and ‘what happened to you’, the only syllable to escape Elesa was a dumbfounded, “What.”

Emmet ignored it entirely in favor of taking Chandelure and Garbodor back; the latter he released without hesitation, but the former he rolled gently between his palms, expression calculating. Eventually, he sighed and stilled his hands, wrapping them gently around the capsule.

Garbodor, Elesa couldn’t help but notice, afforded him a brief, albeit confused, look and warbled [idk]. It was answered by a hushed, “I am fine. It doesn’t hurt.”

The poison type tapped her fingers together as she scanned the room, and crooned again.

“I am… uncertain. Not here.”

Aside from the initial once-over, there hadn’t been any shock or hesitation in Garbodor’s response; more to the point, that had been a direct response to an entirely incomprehensible question.

“Did you understand that?” Elesa asked, momentarily distracted from her [distress] by the sheer absurdity of what was going on before her.

Emmet hummed a mild affirmative and went back to staring at Chandelure’s pokeball, eager to keep his eyes on something that wasn’t staring back, “Yep. That is not new. We have understood them for several years.”

Helpless to formulate another response, Elesa fell back on her earlier [idk] of, “What?”

[…]

“I have been like this all afternoon. I have been Reshiram for a substantially longer time.”

—

Emmet was well aware that some history lived on only through folklore passed down in families. Much of their own [family’s] [lore] was oral tradition, told time and time again until each generation could recite it word for word, neither truth nor ideal warping with the passing of time; somehow, though, it had never occurred to him that he might find his answers in the meticulously curated history of a private practice.

The exact path he took to reach the terminal was a long and convoluted one, but half of pursuing truth was the refusal to back down and, ultimately, his determination landed him at the doorstep of the original Sinnohan settlers.

In this particular matter, his appearance only smoothed the way, and it wasn’t so much longer before he found himself handling the edges of a weathered photograph. Under different circumstances, the ancient Sneasel it depicted would have been an object of great fascination. For now, however, Emmet couldn’t care less. His eyes stayed affixed to the figure beside it, gauging the contrast between crisp black scales and dark, worn fabric.

Even beneath the veneer of Zekrom, Ingo looked incredibly tired.

It was both a relief and a[n ?] to finally have confirmation that his brother had been affected just as he had. [Relief] in that he wasn’t alone in this, that he wouldn’t be the sole reason they couldn’t match– but [?] for how Ingo might have been received because of it. He’d been lucky enough to remain in Unova, where people already recognized and trusted him– or at least his skill, and the [idk] that Reshiram represented. It was difficult to imagine starting anew without so much as a human face.

[…]

The Gliscor, however, was a surprise. Excadrill, Haxorus, Crustle and Archeops had been their friends since childhood– well before the both of them inherited the dragons’ type vulnerabilities– and had long since earned their trust. Gigalith had been a somewhat more recent acquisition, but knowing the circumstances meant that they could impress upon it how imperative it was to [idk]. As much as the Pokemon played into their little game of Collateral Damage Earthquake, they took great pains to ensure nobody was actually hurt.

Undoubtedly, the Gliscor would also be trained to his brother’s exacting standards, but paranoia pinged at Emmet regardless. The Clan’s stories implied that Ingo’s memory was woefully incomplete. How much did he understand about himself? Did he know the threat an untrained Mud-Bomb posed to him? It was common sense that you wanted to avoid being hit with a move, if at all possible, but knowing the stakes was an important part of [???]. Despite the perks of this in-between state, they lacked the null typing of other humans and the resilience of natural-born Pokemon, which made super effective moves a threat worth paying attention to.

—

At this altitude, the Coronet Highlands weren’t blanketed in snow, but it was a very near thing. The mountain, not so far off, was draped in a mantle of white, and the chill resounded, even through Emmet’s fur. Occasionally a few flakes would fall from the cloud cover above, melting as soon as they landed on his person, but even when the icy water managed to seep down through his undercoat, it barely warranted a twitch of the nose. Cold only went skin deep when one was a fire type.

He huffed in irritation, exhaling a [cloud] of steam as [idk], and tried not to focus on the matter of type advantages; it had been bad enough slogging through the [idk] of the Alabaster Icelands, imagining what the trip might have been like without an internal pilot light to burn away the worst of it. Though lacking any true resistance, he’d been able to endure. He didn’t need to dwell on how it might have felt with a full-blown vulnerability.

The Highlands were better, at least. Still cold. Still overcast. Honestly, now that Emmet was here to judge the circumstance himself, he surprised to hear how active his twin had been according to the folklore. Between the cold and the lack of sunlight, any self-respecting, non-fire-type dragon would be three paces away from hibernation. There had been Nimbasan winters where Emmet had been on constant [idk] duty just to chase off the threat of torpor, and those days were mild in comparison.

Silently, he resolved to [reclaim] the [duty? Responsibility?] once he tracked Ingo down. He didn’t care how ridiculous it looked, he was going to drape himself over his brother either until the scales radiated his own warmth back at him, or something physically pried him off. It was entirely possible that both conditions would need to be met before considered it.

[…]

Despite being a single vocalization, there were layers to the word, leaving him uncertain what he really heard.

“…Emmet?”

“…Reshiram?”

When it came down to it, it didn’t matter which one was uttered to the world at large. The underlying message was there, and it was… so much more than Emmet could have hoped for. Ingo had never seen him like this, and had no memory of him from before, but something still shone through. Truth, perhaps, stoked by its avatar’s presence? Or maybe Ideals, finally cracking the ice?

“I am both! Yep!”

[…]

While there was a beat of confusion, it was very much not hesitation, and he automatically moved to accommodate. It was one thing to have his other half again, to finally see that aching void stitched shut. It was something else entirely to hold his brother for the first time in years. There was no doubt which took precedence– because yes, he was Reshiram now, but he’d been Emmet first.

[…]

“You’re so warm.” He said with a strange intensity, like the concept had never occurred to him before.

[…]

He would grant the Pearl Clan this much: they had certainly tried to combat the cold on Ingo’s behalf. The tunic was thicker than he’d given it credit for– better at retaining heat– and someone had gone to the trouble of tailoring it to accommodate wings without leaving it open to the elements. Between that effort, the much-abused greatcoat, and what he could spot of the long sleeved undershirt, it was a decent layer of protection. Not nearly enough, but likely the best they could have done under the circumstances.

—

“Ah,” He said in a voice so small Emmet almost didn’t recognize it as being Ingo’s, “Then our current state is my fault. I’m… very sorry to have caused the [trouble/inconvenience].”

Emmet stared at him for several seconds, and then grabbed him by the face, just to drive home how seriously he was taking this. “Do not apologize. It happened because you refused to be taken without a fight. Even if it was unable to prevent [idk] in that moment, it was a worthy ideal.”