This started as a one-shot but now it's hella long. I wrote this nonstop for two days, and now it's almost twenty-thousand words long. I've divided it into three parts to make it easier to read.
This is extremely canon-divergent and was written in the wake of learning about Fallers in SuMo, and because I have an unhealthy obsession with Gen V, I immediately linked it back to BW. This is just a theory and very much not canon.
You open your eyes and you don't know where you are.
Everything is dark. You can't see. You smell water, thick with the scent of minerals. The air is dank and moist, but stale. You taste stone and sand on your tongue. It takes you a fraction of a second to take these clues and deduce that you are in the cave of some sort.
All around you, there is darkness, and it takes several blinks for your eyes to adjust to the sight of stalagmites and stalactites that jut out like bestial fangs. You pick up the sound of running water and focus on it—a waterfall, it sounds like. Yes, that's it. You can feel the mist spraying finely on your plumage.
You don't know where you are, or how you came here. Your claws scrape stone as you try to right yourself. You feel...whoozy, for lack of a better term. Slightly nauseated. You feel like you went through a whirlpool or a vortex of some kind, the way your vision spins a little and the way your balance is slightly off. You haven't felt this off-kilter since the split.
Something's off, though. You can't quite put your claw on it. Your mind is foggy, sluggish, and you're trying to determine what it is that's needling at you as you take stock of your surroundings. You stand on a patch of rocky earth that leads to a hole in the wall that spills light, so you determine that is the exit (although it is too small for you to hope to fit through, it looks to be the size of a human). All around you, there is water, casting ripples of light onto the ground and eroded walls. You are alone—
Wait.
No.
That's not right.
You shouldn't be alone. You were— You were with someone. A human—
Your Hero.
Where is your Hero?
You look around again and let out a soft, crooning noise. The only response you get is an echo off the walls and the thrumming of the waterfall from behind you.
You taste the air. His scent is absent. He is not here. This does not make sense to you. He was with you. He was riding on your back—
Wait.
How did you get here?
You struggle to remember. The last thing you recall is the sky, the wind in your feathers and the voice of your Hero giving you directions.
The color blue comes to mind, bright and electric, but it's not Zekrom's lightning that you think of. No, there was a... a crack? That is the best description you can think of for the phenomenon you witnessed.
You remember that it made you feel off-balance, and sent a bone-deep, primal sort of fear through you, but you don't remember why.
What was it? Where did it go?
How did you get here? Where is your Hero?
Footsteps echo through the cave and a human scent floods your tongue. You turn, hopeful, but you know immediately that it is not your Hero—the scent is wrong, for one thing. And when you peer at the entrance, you see a female human walking through, not a male. She stops at the sight of you, her eyes widening, admiring your physique with the sort of awe that humans save for legends and demigods like yourself, the way your Hero once looked at you the first time you leaped out of the stone in his hands.
But this is not your Hero, and this angers you.
You spit fire at the intruder. She shrieks, dodges, and your attack leaves black marks on the stone floor. She tries to say something in a soothing tone, but you won't have it. She's not your Hero. You need to find your Hero.
You attack again. Again, she dodges, and the water steams where the attack hit.
After a fraction of a moment of hesitation, she pulls a determined face that is a mocking mimicry of your Hero and only serves to infuriate you further. She grabs a vaguely familiar red-and-white sphere from her belt, and throws it.
.
.
.
Cold. That's the first thing Touya registers. Cold—deep cold. The kind that seeps into your bones and makes your joints stiffen, that makes your nose run and your whole body break out into shivers. His fingers curl. His hands are numb. His face is numb. Everything is numb.
He forces his eyes open. Something had crusted over his eyelids, but it crumbles easily. He winces when frigid air blasts his eyes and he screws them shut again. He's so cold. His body shudders, and he curls his extremities inward, assumes a fetal position, in order to preserve whatever scraps of body heat he still has left.
He opens his eyes again, squinting. White pierces his corneas—a deep, blinding white, vast and unending. He pulls a frown. Weird. The last thing he remembers—
The last thing he remembers—
Oh.
Oh god.
There's—
There's nothing there.
.
.
.
He's found by a ranger who was passing by, as luck would have it. The ranger has a Flareon on her and brings it out immediately. Touya hugs the Fire-Type and gasps at the flood of warmth—he's forgotten what warmth felt like, but ohhhhh, he could get used to this. The ranger helps him shakily to his feet and takes him back to town.
It occurs to him, as he sits in the lobby of what the ranger called a "Pokémon Center" with a mug of too-sweet hot cocoa in his hands and a thermal blanket draped over his shoulders in a vain attempt to make him stop shivering, that this is snow. That's the word for the little white flakes pouring down from the heavens. Snowfall. Blizzard.
Concepts slowly begins to connect in his mind: Pokémon Centers are hospitals for Pokémon and rest stops for their Trainers, snow is cold and wintertime-exclusive so it must be winter right now, and Touya—
He almost died.
For some reason, that thought doesn't alarm him as much as he thinks it should. And he knows it should alarm him a great deal. Instead, though, there's nothing beyond a dull sensation of shock. He wonders why that is. If he's maybe comfortable with death, or if he's grown numb to the thought of dying. Either way, it's concerning.
The nurse comes and tells him that she's rounded up some fresh clothes for him, which aren't wet and half-frozen to his skin like his current ensemble is. He reluctantly accepts, and lets her guide him to a room where she insists he stay for the night, Trainer or no.
As he changes out of his soaking jacket and jeans, Touya notices some things in the pockets. Poké Ball, his mind tells him, is the name for those little red and white balls with the black band in the center. He finds some empty, shrunken-down ones, and he finds what looks to be shards of more. Probably from failed captures, he deduces.
But he can't, for the life of him, find any Balls with anything in them. He doesn't have any Pokémon on him. He finds a half-empty Potion, an expired Repel, and beaten-looking Revive. These are Trainer things. But he has no Pokémon, and you can't be a trainer without Pokémon.
What happened to me?
The nurse comes in after he's done changing and asks him if he wants to call anyone. He doesn't answer immediately, because he doesn't know what to say to that.
Behind her, Touya catches a glimpse of a mirror—a tall one, mounted on the wall. In it are two figures. One is the nurse, and the other is someone he doesn't recognize. A boy, maybe eighteen or younger, with messy brown hair and brown eyes who looks like he hasn't seen the sun in an honest-to-god long time.
He blinks, and the boy blinks with him.
No. No, that's not right.
Touya raises a hand and touches his cheek. The reflection mirrors him. It is absolutely chilling when he realizes it's his face that's staring back at him, and there's not even an iota of recognition. He might as well be looking at a stranger. But he's not because that face is his, it's meant to be his, and he doesn't remember—
A sob is building in his throat. The boy in the mirror is crying.
"Sir?" The nurse is both worried and concerned. "Sir, do you still want me to call someone?"
"I don't know," he mumbles. Even his own voice is a stranger now. "I don't know, I don't remember—I don't r-remember anything—"
Something wary crosses her face, but she tries to hide it as she places a comforting hand on his shoulder. She tells him to calm down, wait here—she knows exactly who to call.
She leaves too quickly, and then Touya is alone in this rented room, the void in his memory threatening to eat him alive.
.
.
.
A psychic "specialist" is brought in to examine Touya. She's an aging woman with hair in a graying bob and lines on her face that indicate she's been frowning all her life, and she has dark eyes that rove Touya with great distrust.
"The last thing I need is a psychic, lady," he protests when the specialist leads him to a room that very much reminds him of an interrogation room in a police station. He takes a minute to wonder how he knows that, and if it should worry him.
"It should," the psychic says stiffly, seating herself on the other side of the table. Fucking mind-readers. "You see—Touya, was it?" She doesn't wait for him to respond. "You were found off the shore of Lake Acuity. Do you know what that means?"
He shakes his head dumbly. He probably didn't have to, but he doesn't want this all to be her reading his mind and invading his privacy.
"Well, here in Snowpoint City—yes, that is what this place is called—there is a legend about a guardian who lives in the lake," she explains. Her face is incredibly serious, borderline bleak. "The guardian is very secretive, but very powerful. In the past, wicked men and women have ventured to the lake in order to capture it and gain its gift of wisdom. In retaliation, the guardian takes their memories."
A chill runs through Touya. He places his hands flat on the plastic surface of the table and looks down at them. The nurse said he was lucky to walk away from his near-death encounter of the hypothermic kind without any frostbite. Apparently, he'd only been there for a few minutes, and he'd only lost heat so quickly because of the fact that his clothes weren't made for that sort of cold.
But... that meant he couldn't have gotten to the lake on foot. Right? He would have keeled over dead or lost his hands or something if that had been the case.
"So." He swallows, allows his fingers to curl. How easily he could have lost one. "You think this guardian attacked me... because I was trying to hurt it?"
If this guardian was a Pokémon, it would account for the Ball shards... evidence of failed capture attempts.
"That's what I'm here to determine." The woman steeples her hands and looks down her nose at him without a trace of sympathy. "There are many reasons for amnesia, but in most cases, the memories are still accessible, simply hidden or repressed. The guardian, Uxie, creates a mental barrier to suppress memories that's so strong, even more highly-trained and skillful psychics like myself can't crack it. If Uxie has punished you, I'll hit a barrier right away, and then we'll know."
"But..." He furrows his brows. "Isn't this thing a legend? Like, a myth or a bedtime story? There's way it's—it's real, right?"
She snorts, and he almost thinks she sounds amused. "We can definitely rule you out as being from Sinnoh. Now, close your eyes, relax your mind, and try not to fight me too much. I won't lie—this is not going to be an entirely pleasant experience."
.
.
.
Let's begin now. What's your name?
Touya. Touya... that's it. I can't remember a last name.
Is there anything else you can remember?
Um... No, I don't think—wait. There's... a dragon.
A dragon?
Yeah.
Alright. Focus on that dragon.
Okay...
Describe it to me.
It's...white. Big. Kinda...feminine, I guess? It has blue eyes, and it breathes fire.
Anything else?
...not that I can remember, no.
Interesting. Is there anything else you can remember?
I... I think I was...
Go on.
I think I was... looking for someone?
Who?
I don't... I don't know. I don't remember. But I know I was looking for them.
Any defining features?
...no. No, I can't remember. I just know I was looking for them. I don't know why, or who they were. I just know I really wanted to find them.
I'm sensing some emotional attachment. Whoever this person was, you were clearly close.
I still don't remember.
What about where you're from?
...someplace.
How specific. Think harder.
I don't know! I don't remember, okay? I mean, it wasn't, like, tropical or cold or anything. It was just...
Temperate?
Sure. Let's go with that. But that's all I remember.
Huh... Well, I'm not feeling a barrier, so it's likely you weren't Uxie's victim.
Uh. That's good, right?
Unfortunately, that means we don't know how you ended up like this. I'm going a little deeper. Try not squirm too much.
Ack—! T-That's kinda... Ohhhh, that feels weird...! D-Don't—
This is going to be uncomfortable. Endure it.
Ngh...
Your mind is surprisingly vacant.
I feel like that was an insul— Guh!
Hold on... I'm getting something—
.
.
.
It looks like a coral reef had rough sex with the swamp on Degobah and the baby was sent to grow up in outer space. Spires of coral-like growths enclose the area, and strange, phosphorescent lights flicker randomly in the air with seemingly no source.
The air is cold and heavy, like it's been compacted, and it makes your lungs protest with every breath. Your eyes send signals to your visual cortex that your brain just doesn't have the capacity to comprehend. There isn't enough light to see, yet somehow your eyes adjust. It's dark and gloomy but the gloom is icily clear and defined, as though you were wearing night vision goggles or something. Except you're not, because there's color—subtle, glowing colors, icy and delicate and ethereal.
Something's wrong. This place—feels wrong. You don't know what it is, but you feel like you don't belong here. Every atom of your body protests against this place. Your balance is screwed up, your sense of direction thrown off-kilter, and you want to get out. Everything in you is screaming to get out. It's beautiful, yes, but in a savage, terrifying sort of way that inspires a visceral sort of fear in you. You get the feeling you are a rabbit who has wandered into a den of wolves.
You're not totally sure how you got here. A crack—that sounds weird, but that's how you remember it. Sort of. It's fuzzy, blurry and blotted out by your current predicament and the panic rising inside you.
It's gone now. You look around, but the entrance and possible exit is gone, like it was never there. Your stomach sinks to your toes.
You're trapped.
.
.
.
Touya snaps his eyes open as he feels the psychic pull out—a little hastily, he'd like to add. His skull burns and he feels... violated. Extremely violated. He groans and places a hand on his temple, squeezing his eyes shut. The lights are too bright.
"What in the good name of Arceus was that?" demands the psychic, her voice a little too loud.
Touya lets out another groan and massages his temples. The blackness behind his eyelids pulses. "You don't know? I thought you were supposed to be, like, an expert into the human subconscious or whatever."
"I've never seen anything like that," she retorts. He can't see her face through his eyelids, but he pictures her sneering. "I don't even know if that was a memory, a dreamscape, or some manifestation of a twisted psyche."
"Wow. Thanks."
"You need help," she says bluntly. He hears her chair slide back as she stands.
I could've told you that, he thinks bitterly. His head throbs. This is the last time he lets a psychic into his head.
"I mean it, kid. Your memories—they're not suppressed, they're gone. As in, not there." She pauses, then, softer, breathier, "I don't even know how that's possible. Even the strongest psychics like Uxie can only create powerful mental barriers to suppress. But to literally rip the memories out of someone's subconscious... I've never..."
He opens his eyes again just in time to see her leave, slamming the door behind her.
.
.
.
You honestly missed Hoenn.
Not that Kalos isn't great or anything—it is fucking drop-dead gorgeous, from the food to the people to the cities, it's like region was raised on beauty—but Hoenn is your birthplace. You've been raised on the muggy, seaside heat and the feel of sand between your toes and waves lapping at your shins. The taste of seafood rests pleasantly on your tongue, you can't eat anything without a liberal application of salt, and you are all too accustomed to loose clothing that shows a little skin. You'd think you'd like Alola for those reasons, and you would love to visit the archipelago sometime, because you here it is just as idyllic as Kalos.
"Focus, Serena," says Calem. He looks very out of place (though not bad) in faded polo and shorts, and fans himself with a brochure he picked up at the harbor. Pretty boy raised on fancy silks and cashmere, you think with a wicked grin. You'll have to take the lead on this one. "We can't afford to get distracted."
"Aw, we can't even visit the Space Center?" you tease. Calem is generous and gracious, the perfect gentlemen, but with that comes an unflattering seriousness. There are times when you think, frankly, he could do to lose the stick up his ass.
He gives you a withering look.
You play coy. "What's wrong with the Space Center?"
When his expression does not change, you pout in that incredibly cute way only you can pull off and grab his arm. "It's airconditioned," you singsong enticingly. You know he's suffocating in this heat. He must be. Kalos is significantly cooler than Hoenn, on account of the northern geography.
He slips out of your grasp. "We're not here for fun, y'know."
You do. Professor Sycamore has heard stuff in the scientific community about strange phenomena he thinks are connected with Kalos's legends. See, according to Malva (most reliable source ever, really), Flare captured the other legends first—i.e. Zygarde, Hoopa, Volcanion—and had them shipped out of the region so they wouldn't interfere in the whole capturing-Yveltal-and-nuking-the-world thing. Which actually shows some forethought on Lysandre's part, really. Malva claims that she was one of the leads on that project, and the reason you never faced all Team Flare's scientists (Mable, Aliana, you kinda forget the rest) all at once until their endgame is because they were overseas or dealing with those legends. Hell, some excavating of their underground lab in Geosenge revealed that they'd cryogenically frozen Xerneas so it wouldn't interfere, and then probably wake it up later to immortalize everyone. Wowzers.
The point is, now there are legends out running amok in other regions, and they're really pissed—at humans in particular. Sina and Dexio left for Alola to hunt down Zygarde and its "cells" or whatever (and traversing the archipelago in the process, lucky bastards), while Shauna, Tierno, and Trevor are somewhere near Lavaridge Town checking out rumors of Volcanion. You and Calem are on Hoopa duty, investigating all the sightings of "mysterious rings" that're popping up everywhere and spitting out random legends. You're in Mossdeep now because you've got a lead.
"Right, right," you say with an eyeroll. "C'mon then—I wanna meet my heroes!"
Like any girl from Hoenn, you grew up admiring May Senri, Champion of Hoenn, and wanting to be like her. Hell, how could you not? This was the girl who brought the world back from the cusp, who calmed a sun that burned so fiercely that the earth cracked and bled magma and the seas boiled, shrinking, leaving a salty crust on the shores as towns nearly burnt to a crisp. The girl who made friends with the guardian of the skies and stopped an errant meteor from bringing about armageddon. You once thought it was the coolest thing in the world, taming gods. Now you just shrug, like, whatevz man.
May and her (coughcoughboyfriendcoughcough) companion, Brendan Birch (son of the esteemed but rumored quirky Professor Ivan Birch), are the ones who contacted you. May has apparently been conducting some investigations of her own. Hell, the reason Hoenn isn't currently overrun with disgruntled and panicking legends having been dropped on foreign soil is because the Champion herself rounded them all up. Wicked cool, you think. Those legends are currently in the care of the aforementioned Brendan Birch, here at a private facility he owns.
Which Calem knocks on the door of. You squeal internally. They say don't meet your heroes, but, c'mon. It's May fucking Senri. You are a huge fan. You should not be judged.
The door opens and there stands a woman whose likeness you have seen on TV since you were a little girl. She doesn't look as wild or as badass as she did in the commercials—brown hair combed back neatly, donning a loose blouse and a flowy skirt—but it's definitely May Senri. You're almost disappointed that she's not wearing her usual Champion ensemble, and that she smiles and politely invites you in once you introduce yourselves instead of saying something inspiring, but you remind yourself that looks are deceiving. You look like a Barbie doll yourself, but you can out-cuss a sailor.
May leads you down a chilly hallway (Calem revels in the airconditioning, you notice) while explaining how she was flying on her Latios (Latios! you suppress a fangirl shriek) when she noticed something glittering on an island or whatever, so she went to investigate and ended up finding a golden hoop, just, floating at the back of this cave. Weird as hell, y'know? So she gets closer, and then this pinkish thing tumbles out—"Mesprit," May explains, "according to my PokéDex."—which is all the way from Sinnoh. Azelf and Uxie, Mesprit's legendary companions, tumbled out a little while later. Sinnoh's Champion, Dawn Everette, already picked them up and took them home.
"But there are others, too," May says as she leads the two of you into an area that reminds you of Sycamore's lab back in Lumiose. There's a big glass window, and a brown-haired man stands, hands in the pockets of his lab coat, observing. "I've contacted the Unova Champion, but I'm still waiting for a response. Brendan—we have company."
Brendan jumps and turns, them immediately smiles sheepishly, scratching the side of his head. "Whoops. Eheh, sorry 'bout that, folks. I was just..." He trails off.
"I know." May sighs and turns to the glass. "I'm worried about it, too."
Beyond the glass is a giant room, at least two thousand square feet and twenty feet tall. And "it" is a big honking white dragon with feathers and wispy, smoke-looking horns that's curled up in the middle, looking rather despondent. Something in the expression of its lurid blue eyes makes your heart ache a little.
"Whoa," Calem says. You both approach the glass, and he peers at the beast with unmitigated awe, while you place a hand on the glass. "What is that?"
"Reshiram," you say before May can respond.
Brendan turns to you in alarm. "You know it?"
"Kinda," you admit, flashing back to the fireworks with Shauna at Parfum Palace, and chasing a rowdy Furfrou before then. "There were these big statues of Reshiram and its counterpart, Zekrom, in the garden of Parfum Palace. They were fucking huge, man. I mean, practically life-sized, judging by..." You gesture awkwardly to Reshiram. "Anyway, Reshiram is like, the Dragon of Truth, and Zekrom is the Dragon of Ideals or some shit like that. I did some research on them later."
Calem arches a brow at you.
"I was curious, okay? Fuck off pretty boy."
He turns away and says nothing. Pompous bishie.
"Counterpart..." Brendan's mouth presses into a thin line. "Are they counterparts in that they want to kill each other like Kyogre and Groudon, or counterparts in that they're inseparable like Latias and Latios?"
"Uh..." You are not an expert. You just read a book in a library. "Kinda both, maybe? I read they were, like, the same thing before and then humans split 'em up."
Yeah. You remember that part. Wars, beliefs, the great guardian of the land splitting into two beings because it thought neither was particularly right or wrong. And they stopped just in time, only for their kids to destroy the region. Bunch of idiots in your opinion. It sounded like the only thing those Dragons knew was loyalty to their human masters, so they obeyed regardless of what they wanted. Kinda sad, really.
A thought strikes you and you turn to May. "Wait—did you find it alone?"
She nods. "Yeah. In Fabled Cave. Why?"
"Well—I mean, I read they, Reshiram and Zekrom, were put into a three-thousand-year sleep or whatever." Around the same timeline as the Kalos War, which is why that particular detail stuck with you. "And they'd only wake up if they found a hero worthy of championing their beliefs."
May's brows furrow. "Like... a Trainer?"
"Kinda?" Your mind keeps turning, remembering the text. "And... apparently they're super fucking protective of their hero. Like, mother-and-child protective."
"That could account for the aggression it displayed when you found it, May," Brendan says. "And now the despondence—it's missing its Trainer."
Calem nods sagely. "I've seen Kangaskhan get like this after their babies have grown up. They grow rather depressed."
You file that away in two sections of your memory: one) useful things that pertain to this, and two) things to wonder about later because how the hell do Kangaskhan even reproduce in the first place? "So it misses its Trainer that it loves like a kid. Great. Now all we gotta do is find the Trainer, yeah?"
"I'll see if I can get in contact with Unova again," May announces, turning around to go and do just that.
You keep watching Reshiram through the glass—it hardly moves.
.
.
.
Touya's been here for about a week (he feels like he's imposing, the nurse insists otherwise) when he's brought back to the room where the psychic interviewed him. This time, a pale man with dark hair, a blue suit, and stylized blue fedora joins him. He has a pleasant smile, but icy blue eyes that glint with something uneasy.
"Hello," says the man pleasantly, but something is off. Something has made him nervous or wary. And Touya hasn't done anything other than sit down. Maybe the man, like quite of the few townsfolk, still believe Touya's a victim of this Uxie figure, despite the fact that the psychic proved otherwise. "My name is Riley. You're Touya, yes?"
"Yeah."
Riley arches a brow. "Say that again?"
"What—'yeah'?"
"Huh." Riley regards Touya curiously. "When I heard your name, I thought you might be Kantonian. But your pronunciation... sounds more like Unovan."
"I'm pretty sure I'm from Unova," Touya admits.
Riley looks pleasantly surprised. "Oh? How do you figure that?"
"Uh... the accent?" Everyone he meets—the nurse, the ranger who helped him, the people who turned him into a charity case and gave him gift baskets—tells him he has a Unovan accent. It does fit the description of a temperate climate, too. And the psychic later told him that he possesses a "Unovan disrespect for old legends" or something like that. "And apparently I'm 'blasphemous'."
To Touya's surprise, Riley chuckles. "Well, here in Sinnoh, we do tend to take our religion a little more seriously than they do in the west, so I can get that."
Touya eyes Riley skeptically. "...are you a psychic?"
"No—I mean, I read auras, but I think that's more a me thing than a psychic thing." Riley pauses, tilting his head to the side thoughtfully. "I'm not sure, honestly, if that's classified as a psychic ability. I never really did any research."
Touya is starting to get uncomfortable. "Um, sir?"
Riley chuckles. "Please, don't call me 'sir'. I'm not that old."
"Okay." Touya plucks at the borrowed jeans he's wearing. They're a little loose on him, and they're old and worn, but his own clothing is sticky with something black and yucky-looking that the nurse thinks might be poisonous, even though he's fine—total anterograde amnesia aside. Maybe a chemical destroyed his memory? The point is, he's wearing borrowed clothes. "Mr. Riley? Uh, why're you here, if you're not a psychic?"
"Well, I actually work with International Police from time to time," Riley explains. He steeples his hands, and Touya catches a glimpse of elaborate golden patterns on his black gloves. "They asked me to talk to you."
Touya briefly searches his memory, or what little memory he has, for the keywords "International Police". No, he doesn't remember getting into any trouble with the IP. Hell, he doesn't even remember if he got into trouble with the regular police. Well, granted, he really doesn't remember anything, so. Will they hold that against him if he's convicted of something? Wait, does he have a criminal record? Gods, he hopes not. He really, really hopes not.
"Why?" he asks finally. "Did I do something?"
"What—oh, kid, no no no no. Nothing like that." Riley plasters a reassuring smile that doesn't match the tension in his shoulders. "It's more like—my...bosses think you might be able to...assist us in an ongoing investigation. If you're interested, that is."
Something makes Touya's muscles tense—something about the way Riley says "if you're interested". "Is it, like, optional?"
"It's completely voluntary, of course."
Touya feels like he shouldn't believe him, which is weird. Riley seems nice, but... "An amnesiac, helping with an investigation?"
Riley's smile softens a little. "Yeah. Guess it does sound a little unusual, huh?"
"A little," Touya agrees.
Riley sighs lightly. "Well, I've been told to offer you some assistance in regard to your... condition, if you choose to agree."
"'Assistance'?" Sounds fishy. And Touya in no way likes the way Riley's Sinnohan accent curls around the word "condition", like it's some sort of unfortunately tragedy. Which it is, probably, but Touya still doesn't like it.
"The nurse tells me you had some Trainer supplies in your possession, yes? Well, when you apply for a license, they take your fingerprints." To identify bodies, Riley doesn't say. And doesn't need to. For some reason, Touya is chillingly aware of the dangers Trainers face on a daily basis. Maybe that's why he's so numb to death. "We could take your prints and run them through the Unova League database."
Touya's heart pounds. "R-Really?"
Riley nods solemnly.
"That's—yes. I'll help. Just—" Touya's mind is racing with a dizzying hope. "If you find out who I—who I was—"
Riley smiles like crushed glass. "We'll certainly try."
.
.
.
Riley tells Touya that an agent and one of his superiors will be here soon. Riley can't specify, because the IP is either notoriously slow to respond or frighteningly quick. He is sincerely worried it will end up being the latter.
"How did it go?" asks the voice on the other end of the line, a mild Kalosian accent that Riley has come to identify with this particular agent. Guy has been in the IP for years, but he never lost that accent. That would be unthinkable for most IP agents—you're meant to be an enigma, no homeland, no loyalties, only justice and truth and all that BS. But this guy, he's an exception. There are quite a few exceptions, Riley thinks.
Like this kid, for example. Barely eighteen.
Riley feels sick.
"Terrible." Riley pinches the bridge of his nose, and not because this alley reeks of week-old garbage. "It was overwhelming, Looker. The moment I stepped into the room, I could feel it."
Faded violet, mustard yellow, and dull bronze, undulating in a sickeningly familiar pattern. Riley's seen it twice before, and twice before, it's been damning.
A heavy sigh crackles from the other line, world-weary. "So he is a Faller, then?"
"...yeah. I took his prints, but I doubt we'll find anything." If this kid really had gone through a Wormhole, then there was a high chance he didn't exist on any database. Like Riley said—he's seen it twice before.
"Alright." Riley hears something shift. "I am coming."
Riley arches a brow. "Oh? You don't think they're gonna send Anabel?"
"I will volunteer," Looker says stiffly.
"They'll probably send Anabel," Riley continues, pretending not to have heard him. Just a moment of levity, just one. "She's nicer and prettier and doesn't have wrinkles."
Looker huffs in a very old man sort of way. "Even after all these years, you are still a brat, huh?"
Riley smirks. He and Looker go way back—back to when Riley was a gawky orphan on the Iron Islands whose only family was the Riolu pack in the mountains who took him in after his folks were wiped out during the plague. Back when he'd survived by stealing and conning and putting his ability to good use, until one day he picked the wrong mark. Guy with silver hair and lurid red eyes, and his pretty lady partner, who ended up reporting Riley's abilities and dragged him back to HQ on the orders of their superiors. Where he was treated as either a common criminal or an asset until one day he met a man with a trench coat and aura pattern unlike anything he'd ever seen before, who smiled and treated him as a kid, a miniature human being instead of a statistic to help the bottom line.
Needless to say, Looker's probably the only guy in the whole fucking bureaucracy that Riley can actually trust. And it's also why Riley's a hired freelancer forced into a contract rather than an actual agent, but hey, it means he's not associated with them all the damn time.
Must be a nightmare for old Looker.
"And you're still a creaky old man," Riley teases back.
Looker just grunts. "I am not old."
"Keep telling yourself that." And then Riley hangs up and sighs.
What a world they live in.
Author's Notes:
I headcannon Riley as being in the IP, or at least being sort of employed by them from time to time. I mean, if there's a guy who can read auras and act as a human lie detector, you'd probably want to employ him. Also, he can detect Fallers, so...
I've also always been intrigued by the fact that Reshiram/Zekrom shows up in Fabled Cave in ORAS, depending on which version you own. And that was one of the contributing factors that created this.
Anyway, enjoy!
Luna