Chapter One – Probability Theory
In the dawn, the air breathed light and cool, but by noon, stagnant heat weighed down on the people and Pokémon of Unova. Most enjoyed the relatively temperate climate of their region and would not stray from the world they knew so well, but every so often, one might break free. There was a rumor in Unova that once someone escaped from their homeland, they never returned.
This was not always the case, not the least for Natural Harmonia Gropius. In truth, N once made the decision to leave and not return, but returning had been the only option if he wanted to protect the Pokémon he called his friends.
The same was not true for his human friends, few though they were—in particularly, Hilda, the hero who taught him not so long ago that it was possible and necessary to accept different ideas. She awoke his heart, though maybe not in those words to him, but by the time he returned to Unova, she was already gone.
What N did not realize, and what the second hero Rosa tried to tell him, was that she left to search for him. If he stayed, if he didn't flee again, then Hilda might very well come back for him.
But months passed, and those months added up into a year and longer still.
Hilda sent no word to any of her friends—not to Cheren or Bianca or Alder or any of the gym leaders who had become her friends as she traveled across Unova the first time. Yet it was not until Cheren came to N that anyone suspected something might be wrong.
N, though he had grown up as king of a substantial group of people, didn't particularly enjoy the company of others, especially since his father—if he could call the man that—had used him for evil deeds. Still, he sat in a small café with Hilda's childhood friend, fidgeting a little uncomfortably in a chair across the table from the dark-haired boy. N wasn't particularly intuitive, but even he could tell that Cheren didn't exactly harbor amiable feelings towards him.
"Let's make this quick, shall we?" Cheren suggested, and N nodded. N had perhaps a couple of years on Cheren, but his innocence from his upbringing gave the appearance of the opposite. The boy with the green-tinged hair stared at Cheren through his eyelashes like a child. "Has Hilda made any attempt to contact you?"
"Unfortunately not." N had no way of coming in contact with her, anyway. "Should we make the assumption at this point that she has no intention of returning? I was hoping to speak with her…"
Cheren frowned, dropping his voice down to a whisper as he said, "She's not the type of person to just run off without letting anyone know where she's going. She told us—Bianca and I—that she was going to look for you and that she would keep us posted. And she did for awhile, but… then communication stopped altogether." He rubbed his chin, his eyebrows furrowed—something didn't add up. "She's been gone for three years…"
"Logically," N began, "there are two possible reasons: she does not plan on returning and chose to sever ties through a halt in communication or… something is amiss."
Cheren's gaze darkened, something that would have once been hidden behind the glare of his glasses. "You don't need to put it so blatantly," he hissed, but his gaze softened as he leaned his face against his hand. "I'm concerned. I was hoping that since you're the one she's been looking for she might have tried to contact you, but…"
"I don't have anything she could contact me with," N admitted. Though he was fond of the developing technologies, he found no point in acquiring a phone or Xtransceiver. Save for Hilda, there was no one to contact, and since she was missing…
It was unlike Hilda to just vanish, but Cheren and N left it at the fact that she just wanted to be left alone. Their meeting ended without a feeling of success, which was evident in the way Cheren stood up hastily and deliberately stomped out of the café without a final word to N.
N wasn't out of tune with the emotions of humans completely, though he had been kept from them growing up and had built an extreme connection with Pokémon. Even he could see that Cheren felt something for Hilda, though it was a question of what, and N felt some guilt. Hilda wouldn't have left if it hadn't been for him.
There was no other choice. He had to look for her; she saved him once—those three years ago when he needed to be awoken to the ideals and truths of this world. It was his job now to save her, wherever she was. On the one hand, Hilda was not the type of girl to need saving; on the other, if she did need it, he wouldn't leave her alone to face the world.
His search began small, located in Unova itself. He strayed from his comfort zone, talking to a myriad of people and asking for Hilda's whereabouts. The search proved fruitless, however, as the days passed. Everyone knew Hilda—that much was certain—but no one had seen her since before N last had.
Without much of a choice, he increased the radius of his search. He didn't own anything of Hilda's, so his Reshiram—his best friend—couldn't help locate her. The psychic-Pokémon he called his companions weren't much more help, though it was not something for which he blamed them. But as the search spread beyond the boundaries of Unova, he wished for some sort of clue.
And clue he received.
Luck and chance could often be confused with coincidence. What were the odds, after all, of stumbling upon an artifact that could very well belong to Hilda, just outside Unova—an object so small that only the careful eyes of his friends could spot it? Was it all up to chance that this could happen—was it mathematical probability, which could be proved with the theorems and calculations N loved so much, or was it purely coincidence?
His Reshiram dove, landing without so much grace near the object, and N slid off its back with a lingering hand on its scales. Just there, it told the human, and N nodded and found the small object hidden in the blades of tall grass.
It was Hilda's, all right, though faded and worn. Her name and picture—a close-up headshot of her smiling face, with her blue eyes light and happy—and all of the information vital to any traveling trainer. It was her trainer card, which all trainers were required to carry on them at all times. But here it was, thrown down in the grass, where it had suffered weathering over time.
He flipped the card over to the side that wasn't so faded and hadn't suffered the effects of rain and wind. But it was not to say this side was unaffected. No, something red covered it, matted dry and matted thick.
He could only hope that it wasn't her blood, but when he held the card up to Reshiram, the answer was not the one he wanted.
N returned to Aspertia, the southern-most town in Unova closest to the foot of the mountains where he discovered Hilda's missing training card. Hilda was not from this town, though Cheren made his new home in it—had Hilda made a pit-stop here before leaving the region?
It had been three years, and the first hint came from close to home. It disturbed him. That card, matted with her blood, might have been sitting there for those three years. Where was Hilda now, and was she safe? Was this a coincidence, too, and maybe she only dropped the card upon splitting her finger or something of the like?
N sat in the Pokémon Center—which he didn't particularly like, but he needed somewhere to sort out his thoughts—and turned a die in his hands. If the random event of rolling a die were to be repeated over and over, patterns would develop that could be studied and, eventually, mathematical predictions could be made…
"Probability theory," N whispered to the die, still turning it over. He let it drop on the table, and it turned over its edges until it landed. "Four. The probability of rolling a ten on two rolls is 8.3 percent. I would need to roll a six to get to ten… The probability of rolling a six is 16.6 percent, so—"
"Excuse me."
N scooped the die up and looked at the speaker, the dark-haired nurse with a wide smile. Most people, men and women alike, would look at the nurse and deem her beautiful. And though N could appreciate the gentle smile she gave him, the only girl who he ever considered beautiful was Hilda, and she was the only one he truly saw.
"Sorry to bother you. I wanted to ask if you'd like any tea. You've been sitting here for quite some time, and sometimes the air conditioning makes it a little chilly in here." The nurse smiled even wider, her eyes thin.
"Oh." N pocketed the die and sat up a little straighter. "I'm all right. However…" He hesitated, and the nurse's smile flickered a little. "Do you mind if I ask you a question?"
"Shoot."
N's eyebrows furrowed at the peculiar response, but he took it as a yes. "Did Hilda—ah…" He paused when he realized he didn't know her surname. "Champion Hilda, the one who succeeded Alder, did she come through this area approximately three years ago?"
"Three years—" The nurse's face contorted, but despite this, her beauty remained. She brushed a tendril of brown hair that had moved forward back behind her ear. "That's an awfully long time ago. I see hundreds of trainers every week, and to think back—"
"One hundred fifty-six, give or take a week," N offered helpfully.
The nurse nodded, not thinking that nearly as helpful as N did. "Yes, that many weeks. I'm not sure that I can…" Realization seemed to settle with her expression, which grew soft and emphasized the thickness and softness of her lightly-tanned skin. "You know, I remember something—a girl who dropped off her Pokémon here and never came back for them. She had an extremely powerful and well-trained team. I had to send them to a shelter because she never returned, and we only wait for a period of two weeks. Pokémon get abandoned all the time, so we never suspected anything."
"Did she have an Emboar?"
The nurse nodded. "Yes, I believe so. But this was so long ago, I'm not sure who I'm talking about. It could be the Champion, it could be some random girl."
Random events eventually gave way to mathematical probability—a string of random events, all occurring from the same subset, would lead to a solution. There was, N decided, no such thing as coincidence. There was only chance.
"Thank you," N said, shooting up and hurrying out of the Pokémon Center despite the calls from the nurse to wait.
His long hair, pulled back into a single ponytail, bounced against his back as he made haste to the Aspertia Gym. When he pushed the doors open to the schoolhouse, students at their desks turned and looked back at him. He avoided their gazes as he made his way to the front of the room to the teacher and leader.
"Cheren, I have news," N began without so much of an introduction, and he smacked the die down on the desk at which Cheren sat. The dark-haired boy stared at it and then looked up at N with raised eyebrows. "The probability of malicious incidence is high."
Cheren sighed, pushing the die across the table towards N. "I don't have time for a math lesson. I have a class to teach."
"No, wait." N reached into his pocket again, this time surfacing with Hilda's trainer ID. He passed it to Cheren, who finally showed interest. "Reshiram confirmed that the blood on the back is Hilda's. I went to the Pokémon Center here in Aspertia, and the nurse said that Hilda dropped off her Pokémon three years ago and never came back for them."
Several students had started to stare at the pair, which Cheren realized almost too late. Cheren stood up and grabbed N's sleeve, tugging him into the back room where, though snug, they had a bit more privacy. Cheren flipped on a light and sat on the desk shoved against the wall, and he crossed his arms.
"Are you saying someone took her? Ghetsis?" Cheren demanded, though his voice was hushed.
"No, Father is no longer capable of performing any malicious acts," N assured Cheren, though the latter scoffed at that idea. "I'm not sure what the case is, but I want to find her."
Silence made the room stifling, and Cheren leaned his head back against the wall, completely exasperated after the short conversation. What was he supposed to expect? On the one hand, he never trusted N completely. On the other hand, he knew that N's feelings towards Hilda were legitimate, though he couldn't say he approved of that, either.
But he also knew that N was incredibly intuitive and intelligent in spite of his upbringing, though perhaps not when it came to conversational cues, and even Cheren didn't have the instincts that N did.
"I want to come," Cheren decided, a little unsure of leaving N alone to find Hilda. "And we should ask Bianca."
N didn't know Bianca that well, but he did know another girl who might prove helpful—one who reminded him of Hilda. He would have preferred going at this alone, but if Cheren wasn't going to let him, he might as well have a team.
"Rosa, too." N took the trainer card back from Cheren and stared at it. Rosa and Hilda looked an awful lot alike. "I want to ask Rosa, too."
Author's Note: Readers who are familiar with my style are aware that I prefer writing in first-person. I wanted to try something written in third-person for a change.
I find N to be a difficult character to capture, and this is purely game-verse. I don't know anything about his personality in the anime or manga or whatever. But if you think anything about his character is off, just let me know.
Incidentally, I studied mathematics in college as my second major and my minor, but I hate probability and statistics. It's my least favorite branch of math.
Finally, this is my first FanFiction exclusive. I'm not posting this on any other sites, so this is your only place to read this story. Enjoy!