It wasn't really important how Gilbert got to Canalave City—
(it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that both Snowpoint and Canalave were shipping towns, with boats coming and going from harbor all the time, and no he did not mail himself to Canalave in a crate, what the fuck, that would be dangerous.)
—it was important that Canalave had the largest library in Sinnoh, and Gilbert had some studying to do.
On his arm written in sharpie was a glorious checklist that went something like this:
pokemon training for assholes what to bring when you're completely alone in the wilderness for days at a time running away from home for assholes legends of SinnohThat last one had a lot of books dedicated to it. Most of them saying the same things over and over. Gilbert slept on the library floor with a blanket and not much else, which was okay since apparently growing up in Snowpoint made you hardier when it came to long, cold, dark nights. He'd brought the thermos with him and alternated between drinking tea and drinking soup while checking his cellphone at night, responding to Ludwig's frantic texts with a deep breath and strong compulsion to roll his eyes.
His little brother's worried. His little brother's pokemon journey lasted two days. Gilbert's been gone a week, and is starting to suspect Ludwig didn't come back because he thought pokemon journeys were ridiculous, but because of worry, and that is unacceptable.
(One night when he wakes up with a pounding headache and aching chest, he sends a text saying so, and deletes all of Ludwig's replies until the replies just stop coming.)
The texts from Arthur are less expected, but just as exasperating.
Something about, 'can't believe you would actually do that.'
As if Gilbert hadn't been warning them about it his whole life.
000
Canalave he stayed in for several weeks. The librarians got to know his name and a neighborhood purloin started coming up to him for ear scratches, but he couldn't sleep under the table forever. There were no legends in Canalave as far as he could tell (not that there were any in Snowpoint, either, apparently) but without some income he would soon run out of things to put in his thermos, and there was only so much to be done with a library's break room microwave.
He reread the last three pokemon training manuals before setting out—
(not being allowed to participate in sports his whole life was good for his reading level. Suck it, Kirkland.)
—and completely annihilating the first trainer he spotted outside the Canalave gates.
He and Chatot must have had pent up aggression, because Gilbert didn't even feel bad when the kid ran off crying, cradling his shellos' pokeball to his chest. Gilbert was too busy looking at the prize money in his hand, turning to Chatot with a wide grin on his face, saying, "How many times you think we gotta do this before I can buy a four-wheeler?"
000
He met Ivan in Jubilife.
A cinderblock wall of a man, Ivan sat down across from Gilbert at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant and asked, very politely and very quietly, if Gilbert was a trainer and would like to have a battle.
A little high on having blazed right through route 218 without a hitch and gathering enough money to live on comfortably for a while, Gilbert agreed without a second thought. They went to the park outside the downtown area, set up in a spot pretty devoid of spectators or playing children, and began.
Gilbert was beaten into the ground.
Or, he ended up on the ground somehow, anyway. The last couple of seconds went a little fuzzy.
Even on her last legs, Chatot still managed to do better than him, hobbling over to stand guard at Gilbert's shoulder, snapping at Ivan's legs when the trainer got too close.
Ivan's ursaring took offense and moved in, raising a paw to knock her out of the way, but on Ivan's instruction, merely scooped Chatot up and away as she furiously pecked and scratched, trying to escape the paws the size of her body.
Gilbert would have tackled the ursaring to get his birdy back if his lungs didn't sieze again and a heavy hand landed on his back, rubbing over his shoulder blades in small circles.
Once Gilbert managed upright finally, his first act was to swat the offending hand away and glare the ursaring into releasing his birdy. She popped out of the ursaring's grip, scowling furiously, and bouncing to Gilbert's side.
"Asthma?" Ivan asked
Gilbert shook his head, grins a little, and pretends his chest isn't stupidly sore. Stupid body. Stupid soreness. "You fucking wish."
Chatot twittered her approval.
"I did not realize the loss would take so much out of you," Ivan said. "And I actually thought you had… more pokemon?"
"Why? Most people seem to have only like, one or two?"
"The shining chatot was out, and… how many badges do you have?"
Gilbert debated his answer. He was severely temped to say, 'all of them,' but that kind of lie might get him dragged into a back alley, and that was some bullshit. "Zilch."
"….zilch?"
"I don't have any badges, dude. 'S'what it means."
Ivan furrowed his brow deeply. "You defeated my sneasel before Ursaring bested you. That sneasel has defeated three gyms personally, and she has a type advantage."
"Yeah? But sneasel are just sneasel. They're kinda useless in a flat park like this, since there aren't many trees or buildings for them; and there's only so high up they can jump, and they're only good at ice shit when it's already pretty cold out, otherwise they're just quick brawlers. Chatot could literally just fly around your sneasel's head all day until it's exhausted and can't fight back," Gilbert huffed as his breath came back easier.
"Ursaring is not much different than sneasel in that regard," Ivan said, still watching him closely. It was kind of unnerving. Ivan was kind of an unnerving guy, Gilbert decided. His voice had yet to rise above a gentle whisper.
"Your Ursaring shot a fucking laser out of its mouth. Shut up. I think you gave me palpations, holy shit. Overkill. What the fuck. Chatot did nothing to deserve that."
Finally, a small, embarrassed grin worked its way onto Ivan's face. "I thought you had other pokemon."
"So you fucking said."
"I mean to say, I thought you were more experienced!"
"Hey! I will not be disrespected like that! I think I'm pretty fucking good for having started this bullshit less than a week ago!"
000
Ivan offered to share his room in the pokemon center as an apology.
After Chatot was checked in for an overnight stay.
After a slipup revealing Gilbert didn't have a place to stay yet.
Or anything saved for dinner. Or a license.
(It was pretty illegal to participate in pokemon battles for reward money without a license, but instead of calling the police, Ivan got a weird look on his face when he found out and starting laughing until he was also on the ground beside Gilbert, so that was probably a good sign.)
Which was all pretty weird, considering Ivan was the sort of person who trained a sneasel. There was a specific sort of person who trained sneasels. Most of them were sketchy as fuck, or had lived their whole life stranded on the tundra.
He was not actually a career trainer. He wasn't traveling for gym badges or league recognition, but to write a book. Sinnoh was the third region he'd outside his home region. If not for a few weird turns of phrase, Gilbert would have believed Ivan had only lived a region or so over.
When Ivan learned that Gilbert had a bit of a habit of chronicling memorable events in his pokenav, they started swapping tidbits and stories, and kept going all the way to the pokemon center front desk talking about a wild encounter Ivan'd had in Orre involving a wheeled trash bin full of feces and three days worth of potato peels.
Promise of weird stories, dinner, and a bed was plenty good enough to take a chance on spending the night with a stranger.
The first night in the pokemon center—one of three nights there—Gilbert showered for the first time in a week and settled into the first bed he'd slept in since his own back in Snowpoint. He'd even managed to fill his prescription at the center; a newly filled bottle sat proudly on his bedside table. His phone was beeping every few seconds as a new text message rolled in, having been delayed for the last three days ever since his phone finally died, and was only now being charged once more.
"You're not like, keeping tally of shit, right?" Gilbert said. "I don't wanna end up on some weird mile-long debt list."
Ivan laughed (but neither confirmed nor denied that a list of debts was being made, somewhere) and continued changing into his pajamas out of Gilbert's line of sight. The most Gilbert saw were the jacket and scarf coming off—some vicious looking burns crawled up Ivan's chest and halted abruptly at a white fabric brace-looking thing wrapped tight around his neck, where the scarf usually covered. The pjs were full body, covering anything else of interest. "I am still feeling bad about making you collapse."
"I'm not fucking invalid. That was literally hours ago. Grow up," Gilbert said, trying to be polite and not eyeball the scars; maybe Ivan had a bit of an idea about trying to battle when your body was trying to sabotage you. He waited for Chatot to chime in with a 'motherfucker!' and was momentarily thrown when she wasn't at the foot of his bed to do so. Goddamn bird. Getting ill and hurt, and having to be taken to the hospital, and making him worry.
"What was it, though?" Ivan said. "You said not asthma."
"Isn't that kind of a personal question?" Gilbert said, grumbling enough to finally get up the motivation to kick off his shoes and pausing a moment to cough his throat clear. "Asking someone if they have an incurable lung disease? Seriously?"
Ivan seemed to take a moment to mull that over before nodding. "And where are you headed? Illegally battling pokemon won't get you far in a league challenge."
Gilbert snorted. "I'm not doing a league challenge, I know how well that'd go. I'm looking for crazy strong pokemon."
"With that Chatot?" Ivan said, grinning. "What, are you thinking you'll encounter, a 'crazy strong' wurmple?"
"I will only listen to criticism from someone who doesn't say 'wurmple,' like he's purring," Gilbert said, leaning back in his bed and scowling.
"Rude," Ivan said, not even having the decency to look offended. "But really, what are you expecting to catch with only one pokemon and no legal way to obtain pokeballs?"
"Well," Gilbert crossed his arms over his chest and inspected his finger nails. "I was kinda gonna go with the kinda pokemon that you don't fight or expect to capture with pokeballs in the first place."
Now the guy looked mildly concerned, with his forehead wrinkling and a slight frown on his face. It was far too much like an expression Kirkland would've worn.
"Where, exactly, are you trying to get to?"
There was a brief pause. "Right now? Lake Verity."
He waited for a few seconds, expecting some sort of interjection or shout of shock and disbelief, or even the same wild laughter Kirkland gave him. Instead, when he looked, he found Ivan staring down at the floor from where he sat on the edge of his bed, brows furrowed and biting his lip in deep thought.
He stayed like that a while, worrying at his lip and occasionally letting out a deep hum, but looking the furthest thing from surprised.
Finally, Ivan looked up and met Gilbert's gaze. "How do you plan on catching something like that?"
"Oh, uh," Gilbert said, fumbling a moment and leaning over the side of his bed to pick up the travel bag he'd been using. Out of it, he pulled out pages from vandalized Canalave library books. "There's not really—any concrete way? I've got a couple ideas. I mean—"
He started flipping rapidly through the torn out pages, peeking at his handwritten notes and then tossing pages aside one by one as he searched for the information he'd gathered on Lake Verity. Ivan stared at the notes from his own bed and then moved closer to read them himself. Let no one ever say I didn't do my research, he thought.
"—I mean, they're all different pokemon, so I'd have to approach them all in different ways. It's all trial and error, which is a really shitty thing to have to use when you're dealing with beings of infinitesimal power?"
Ivan nodded at him. "That does sound like a pain in the ass."
"It totally is. So I've got a few backup plans. See, Mesprit, Azelf, and Uxie—first off, I don't even know if they exist because Uxie wasn't in Lake Acuity and… dude, don't give me that look, I scaled a cliff face alone just to be disappointed, okay? Back off. But yeah, I don't know if they exist, but they have these gems in their tails, which function as anchors to the world and…"
"Worst comes to worst, you could probably talk it into submission," Ivan said.
Gilbert paused mid-explanation and turned to stare at him, mouth still hanging open.
"Wow," he said. "Just wow. I am just. I am beyond words right now. Rude."
000
Initially, Ivan said he could get Gilbert as far as Sandgem. Yet, after the night in the Sandgem pokemon center, he got up with Gilbert in the morning and hiking beside him through the woods to Twinleaf. Neither of them mentioned it.
The town of Twinleaf was a huddle of houses without even a pokemon center to its name. It was right on the Verity lakefront, so close that the edge of the shimmering blue waters could be seen through the trees. Just a bundle of whitewashed houses, quietly living closer to a lake than Gilbert had ever been in his first sixteen years of life.
It was so small, Gilbert worried for a long moment that they would have to camp outdoors if they didn't wrap up in time to hike back to Sandgem before dark—not that hiking back sounded all that fun, either. He could do two hikes in one day again, and he could sleep on the ground in the woods again, but he had gotten pretty attached to lounging in pokemon centers in the short week he'd been traveling with Ivan.
Fortunately, he was wrong. There were three bed-and-breakfasts in town, one of which had a small sign hanging in its window declaring they had pokemon-specific medical supplies on hand for free.
A little crossroads town.
(The whole thing kind of set Gilbert's teeth on edge, though he couldn't have put his finger on why.)
Before heading to the lake, they rested a while and ate lunch at a small restaurant so familial, Gilbert wasn't sure if they and some twenty other strangers were in fact eating in someone's living room. Framed pictures of a few local pro trainers hung on the wall, alongside a few sports starts and racecars posters above the couches. All the tables were surrounded by padded chairs and covered in patterned table clothes and woven napkins. No piece of silverware matched its neighbor and brightly colored rugs covered the floor. Strings of popcorn and bottle caps hung from the rafters.
Ivan seemed to find the place charming, smiling more than usual and loosening his scarf as they ate. Unzipping his jacket. If Gilbert didn't grab him by the arm and drag him to the lake soon, they might ended up staying in a bed-and-breakfast without even getting the chance to look around.
Twinleaf seemed like a nice place. But not that nice.
"Hey, hey. We're here for the lake, remember? Let's try to," fuck hiking, "wrap this up in one day and head back to Sandgem for the night. Besides, the Sandgem nurse was cute and I wanna ask their phone number."
"Are you sure?" Ivan said, fidgeting with the edges of his scarf and taking another bite of his sandwhich. "It wouldn't be trouble to stay here the night. And you can get their number tomorrow just as easily."
"We can do that if we have to," Gilbert said. He jabbed the brightly colored table cloth with a finger. "But let's plan on heading back before tonight, okay? We can come back to Twinleaf later."
They would not be coming back to Twinleaf. It was way too snuggly. On his shoulder, Chatot crowed out a "Fuck yeah! Fuck yeah!"
Gilbert was starting to regret teaching her curse words, but he gave her a piece of bread anyway and hoped the people turning to stare at their table would back off soon.
Ivan snorted and smiled at him. "Fine, fine. So what is this plan you have for meeting the legend?"
"I'll figure that out if it even exists and is there," he said, forcing out a laugh and giving Ivan a hard pat on the back. "The last time I tried I couldn't even get close."
"Have you ever actually seen a legendary?"
Gilbert shook his head. "Have you?"
Ivan also shook his head. "Though I haven't gone looking for them, before."
"Yeah, well, count yourself lucky. You'll get to see the awesome me making up plans on the go."
"Mmh," he nodded again. "And what's phase one of the plan?"
"Gather information—which I am gonna finish up in just a minute. Sit tight and don't strip naked, okay?"
"Okay, I—what?"
Gilbert got up and left their table, looking around for wait-staff to talk to. As much as the town suddenly felt like a strange foreign entity, he wasn't about to go to the doorstep of a legend without getting a little bit of local folklore.
He asked the waiter and a person at the table next to them. Once they'd paid and evacuated the stiflingly familial restaurant, he asked a passerby on the street and the desk clerk of the B&B supplying pokemon-specific medical supplies.
No one really had much to say.
It was apparently a pretty good picnic spot. Brought in tourists, mostly in the summer—he and Ivan were about two months too early for the season boom—and yeah, there was a legend about some pokemon that danced on the waves every now and then, but most people tacked it up to an interesting optical illusion caused by sunlight on the water.
"You know how it is," the clerk said, summing up anything Gilbert had learned. "When you live in a place, you never actually go to the touristy places in it. I know a guy who lived in Eruteak in Johto, and he literally never went to their Tower unless it happened he had errands in the area. Even then, he didn't actually go in. Or to any ceremonies or see the dancers perform. It's all for the tourists, you know? No one local really buys into that stuff when you live in a place."
Gilbert nodded, and kept the memory of Lake Acuity to himself.
He bought a disposable camera, just in case all he got was a glimpse and a few long minutes staring at an island—just in case. Lake Acuity, however eerie it had been, was still just a quiet lake at the top of the world. Lake Verity was probably a still lake in a basin.
There was no cliff face to scale this time, for which Gilbert was grateful. Just a steady, grassy decline into the valley of the lake.
The trees rose up around them like towers, but here, the pokemon in the woods were still sounding their cries, and a steady warm breeze rattled the foliage. It made sense, now, that Twinleaf Town was built so close to the lake—the place felt real, not like a caricature of a lake, or a place that could be trespassed into. The grassy path was open and clear of tangles, and when they came upon it, the waters of the lake were clear and blue.
Lake Verity was huge.
It stretched from shore to shore, wide enough that though Gilbert could see the island in the middle, he couldn't see the far shore aside from the wall of trees that seemed to make it up. Perhaps Ivan had better luck, if his eyes were any better than Gilbert's.
He tried to take a deep breath and started hacking on pollen while Ivan laughed and stretched his arms back, cracking them, before unbuttoning his coat.
"Why don't we wait here a while?" Ivan said, rolling his shoulders back once they were free and folding his coat carefully on the ground. The midday sun was bright overheard and a pleasant breeze blew through the area. Hesitantly, Gilbert followed him, shedding his outer layer. It was far too hot to be wearing a coat or hoodie. It was almost too hot for a shirt, but taking that off wasn't an option.
Chatot left Gilbert's shoulders and fluttered to the ground, preening for a moment before digging into the grass with her talons and flapping her wings hard enough to whip up a small whirlwind. She cheered and twittered, 'awesome! Awesome!'
"We can hang out here once we check out the cave. It is a really nice day." Gilbert said crouching down nearby her and fishing through his travel bag for a bottle of sunscreen. The idea of laying down on the grass and not moving for a few hours did sound like a pretty awesome idea, pollen or no pollen. But that didn't mean he was going to get a sunburn for it. "You said you've got a surfing pokemon, right?"
Ivan nodded and while Gilbert put on a new layer of sunscreen—his second of the day. He offered Ivan a coating of it as well, which was accepted—and pulled out a little blue pokeball that every few minutes let out a wild twitch.
Sneasel was also pretty ready to get into the nice weather, apparently. Weird little ice monster. It took a little coaxing to get her into the water and willing to ferry them one at a time to the island, but she took too it quickly after the first dip in the lake.
Ivan went first, since it was his pokemon and he would be the one to best direct her where to go. It took about fifteen minutes for Sneasel to cross the lake with a human, five minutes to return, so for a full twenty minutes Gilbert waited at the bank, dreading his eventual fifteen minute dip.
It wasn't as bad as he'd imagined. The water was lukewarm and not unpleasant in the heat of the day, and as long as he didn't wiggle too much, Sneasel was very good about not splashing him too much.
After fifteen minutes of clinging to the small pokemon, they made it ashore. Gilbert stumbled a little at first, trying to shake the water out of his clothes. Above head, Chatot cackled and laughed at his vain attempts to dry off. She landed on the top of the mound and stayed there, preening and cooing.
It wasn't a big deal to be wet, he supposed. He was just going to get back in the lake soon, anyway. Still, he would have liked to have gone into the cave a little dryer.
Resigned to his soggy fate, Gilbert straightened up and looked around the island they'd landed on. There was only a thin line of land surrounding the mound at the center, just enough room for a person or two to walk comfortably side by side on. Sneasel contended herself by the edge of the water, Chatot was still perched at the top of the mound, oblivious to anything but the strong sunshine, and Ivan was nowhere to be seen.
There was, not far from the entrance to the mound, a single large damp spot where he may have sat down, and then nothing else. Any soggy footprints had died during however much time had elapsed between the big lug getting up and Gilbert's arrival.
Perhaps twenty minutes in the direct sunlight proved too much and he retreated into the cave? Gilbert hadn't been paying much attention to the goings-on on the shore during his trip, so it he may have only just missed Ivan's retreat. Or maybe the tunnel on the other side of the entrance was simply particularly deep, and Ivan went in intending to explore, and hadn't yet realized Gilbert had arrived. Or he may have been waiting on the inside for Gilbert to join him. If he thought he was going to pop out of the shadows and startle anyone, he had another thing coming. Specifically, a broken nose.
Huffing a bit and trying to not grin, Gilbert made to follow him.
On such a bright day, the looking at the entrance to the mound was like peering into a void.
Something inside it peered back.
000
It had big, yellow eyes.
"Uh," Gilbert said. "Ivan?"
There was no reply.
Ivan didn't have any pokemon whose eyes glowed like that.
Gilbert stayed at the cave entrance, one hand on the hot rock of the outside of the mound. The sun was right at his back, he realized. And by all means it should have been blasting its rays directly into the cave, lighting it up at least enough for him to see past the front entrance.
The eyes continued watching him. Gilbert didn't dare look away. Even as much as he wanted to turn his head and stare out at the sunlight and beautiful day that had surrounded them the whole hike, he wasn't about to look away from those eyes.
He took a slow, shaking step into the cave.
The warmth of the day drained away. He could feel where it had once been, like grime on an old bathtub left after the water ran dry. Remnant sunlight and warmth smeared and went cold on his arms. The hairs on the back of his neck rose up.
"Ivan?" he said again. The yellow eyes blinked at him.
Gilbert took a deep breath, smiled at the big yellow eyes, and prayed. "Hey! Uh. Hey. Sorry to barge into your whole cave like this. Are you Mesprit? I almost didn't recognize you, wow, your eyes are… really pretty. Uh. They're totally wild."
The eyes blinked again, but Gilbert wasn't dead yet, so that was probably a good sign.
"Yeah, yeah, it's totally the eyes, you must be using a new eyeshadow or something… or uh. You been redecorating? The place looks great. Say, I don't want to hold you up, I'm actually just looking for my friend? Really tall guy," Gilbert lifted up his hand high above his head, about where he felt Ivan stood. "Relatively quiet, really likes books and stuff. Have you seen him around here? I just wanna grab him and then I'll probably get out of your hair."
The eyes blinked again, and the thing—it must have been Mesprit, what else could it have been?—the thing cocked its head to the side. Gilbert could hardly see the outline of the small body in the dark, but his eyes were adjusting quickly, bad as his sight may have been, and he sure hoped the faint outline he saw was indeed Mesprit's body. It struck him a moment later that the books hadn't ever mentioned how large the lake guardians were supposed to be. He wasn't sure if a giant or a squirt would be more threatening, at this point. The eyes themselves were bad enough.
Swallowing a bit, Gilbert shuffled his feet. He slid backwards, holding out his hands and backing away until his fingers brushed the inside of the damp cave wall.
"So I'm going off the theory that you can understand what I'm saying? I mean, other pokemon can kinda tell what we're saying, but since you're like, ancient, no one's totally sure if you can or not? So I'm assuming you know what I'm saying and that I… don't mean any harm?"
The yellow eyes narrowed. A low, deep coo rose up from the cave floor.
Gilbert swallowed again. Keeping one hand on the wall of the cave, he edged his way further inside, despite how much he was totally down for turning the fuck around and getting out of here as fast as he could. Ivan hadn't been anywhere on the island, so he must have entered the cave and run into the thing—maybe he was knocked out. Please let him just be knocked out.
"So I heard you were a really nice guy. Girl. Ethereal being? Do you have a pronoun I don't know about? Look, I just heard you were supposed to be pretty nice compared to a lot of other folks around, so uh, I was thinking we could all sit down and have a little parlay or something likeeeeeaaaaaaaaaiiighhhht—?"
For a moment, he thought his legs were shaking. Then he realized the whole cave had started to tremble, starting with the stones on the floor and running its way up through the dirt walls of the cave.
"There's really no need for that!" he said, edging further still into the dark. His already-soaked shoe sank suddenly into a puddle. He sank in with a squealch and sucking noise, louder than anything else in the cave.
He jerked his foot upright, but the mud was thick and heavy, almost taking his shoe off. He fell down instead, tumbling onto his knees and catching himself on his hands. His palms seared and began to bleed a moment later when he regained himself.
He pushed himself back upright as soon as he could, his back smacking against the cave wall. He ignored his bleeding palms and aching knees, looking left and right as fast as he could. In the few moments between falling to the ground and getting back up, the yellow eyes had vanished. The shaking stopped.
His muddy shoe began sinking in again.
Voice cracking, he called out for Ivan once more. No echo called back to him. No reply.
He swallowed down his apprehension once more and edged further along the wall, both feet meeting the mud and water. He kept going, sliding his hands along the wall.
He realized for the first time how loudly he was breathing. It wasn't because of lack of air for once, or physical exertion—his chest heaved and he was gasping loudly through his mouth. He could breathe fine , which was ridiculous, because this place was certainly filled with fungus and mold spores, but his breath was still the loudest thing; filling his ears, filling the room.
The trills and warbles of wild pokemon weren't reaching the inside of the cave; neither was the gentle breeze or rustling leaves from the forest. All of it stopped as surely as the sunlight at the cave entrance—he was almost directly across from the entrance, now. The only sounds were his breathing, the squealching of his shoes in the mud, and water.
Drip
The cave was a dome.
He reached the back, stepping in another long row of water as he did.
Drip
Finally, he hit something else.
As he shuffled along at the back of the dome, his foot connected solidly with something that was neither rock nor water; it had give to it. Dropping down to his knees again, Gilbert reached out and felt over what he had hit.
A shoe. A leg.
"Ivan," he said, hardly able to hear himself over the sound of his own lungs.
Drip
A small, cold finger brushed against his elbow.
"MOTHERFUCKER, MOTHERFUCKER!"
Gilbert jerked away, cradling his numbing elbow to his chest, just as Mesprit was body slammed into the mound wall by an enraged, swearing bird.
The coo from before echoed through the room again—this time pained and sharp, but the earth didn't tremble under his feet and the cry was drowned out almost entirely by Chatot's screeching.
For a moment, the cave seemed to lighten. As Gilbert scrambled to find all of Ivan's limbs, he swore for a moment he could see Chatot wrangling with the legend in the cave.
He had just found Ivan's head and felt the faint breath on his arm when Chatot let out a howl of pain and collided with Gilbert's back. He fell forward, scraping his chin against the dirt floor and coming up with a face full of mud.
He twisted onto his side, one hand holding Ivan's wrist and one foot kicking out wide. The kick landed; a small, light body took the blow and somersaulted away. It wasn't a hard hit and the legend wasn't thrown very far, but it was long enough for Chatot to hop back up and take to the air again.
"Go for the gems!" Gilbert shouted, scrambling back onto his knees and hoisting Ivan's arm over his shoulder. "The gems in its tail! Scratch them out!"
Chatot crowed. With a flurry of wind, she dove back into the fight. Gilbert wrapped an arm around Ivan and tried once again to get him over his shoulder—how long had the guy been knocked out? Hopefully Mesprit had only hypnotized him into a sleep and not give him a head wound—and dragged the larger trainer as fast as he could towards the light of the entrance. He almost didn't notice Mesprit's screech of agony.
He felt, for a moment, something collide with Ivan and make him stumble under the sudden weight.
"Chatot? Are you okay?" he called, readjusting his grip on Ivan's arm when the collision made it slip, and
Gilbert was no longer holding an arm. His fingers closed around air.
"Ivan?"
There was no longer a body on his back. Nor the screech of a violent pokemon battle behind him.
"Chatot, come here!" he said, reaching his arms out in any direction he could, feeling around for his bird. His knees went weak when the feathered nitwit landed on his shoulder, her talons digging in hard and leaning her little bird head against his ear.
She warbled weakly.
He scooped her off his shoulder, not caring about the two long gashes that earned him. He cradled her against his chest and sprinting for the entrance, skidding and slipping in mud and water. Twice they almost fell to the ground. The dome seemed much smaller now that he wasn't creeping around the edge of it like a frightened child, but any time between starting to run and reaching the opening was too long.
He burst through the cave entrance, Chatot clutched to his chest, and was blinded.
The roar of the wind and shrieking of the pokemon were deafening. The sun hit right in his eyes as he ran.
A moment later, he hit the lake.
000
He thrust Chatot above water, first. A long moment later, his face broke the surface He came up coughing and gasping, and blind.
Twice, waves rolled up over his head, water forcing into his mouth, before his flailing finally brought them back to the shallows around the island again, and was able to stumble onto solid footing.
When he opened his eyes again, the world was coated in a thin film of blue. Chatot bounded away from him, ruffled and blabbering.
Blinking water out of his eyes and snorting hard; he pinched his nose and tried to remember how to breathe.
He stumbled three feet back onto the shore and collapsed back down to his knees. His elbow burned. So did his face, and his palms, and his knees, where his scrapes were still open and bleeding, but his elbow was growing numb so quickly it hurt.
Without a thought, Gilbert swung his elbow against the ground, and gasped again out of reflex when it hit. A few rocks and grains of dirt stuck in his skin as he lifted the trembling limb again, but the pain didn't come. Just a dull, painful and unsettling numb where he could feel the changes in the skin, but not—not the—
He blinked his eyes again and rubbed at them with his other hand, trying hard to control his voice. Blood from his palm smeared his face.
"Chatot?" he said. Held his numbing elbow to his chest. Looked around.
She shuffled up beside him, curling against his leg. Her feathers were all out of place and sopping wet. Her little taloned feet were covered with red dust.
"Sneasel?"
He looked around again. The little ice monster was nowhere to be seen.
Gilbert looked back at the entrance to the cave, as dark and bottomless as it had been when he'd first set foot on the island. Silent. Peaceful.
The sun was still high in the sky. The breeze blew slowly and he could hear the gentle rolling of the waves on the lake and the murmur of pokemon in the woods. He looked up and saw a few stray winged pokemon silhouetted against the sky.
One shape soared alone, separate from any flock. A small, many-limbed thing with two long, thin tails that glinted red in the sunlight.
Something caught in Gilbert's throat as he saw it.
Chatot hopped into his lap and cooed at him.
He tore his eyes away from the sky to look at her.
"Sorry," he said, his throat sore from water and coughing and—everything was sore but his elbow, really. Still, he lifted his uninjured arm and brushed his fingertips around Chatot's comb. "You did really awesome in there. I fucked it up a bit, but you pulled through."
"Awesome," Chatot cooed, "Awesome!"
"Yeah," he said, smiling faintly. "You sure are."
000
It wasn't important how he got back across the lake. It wasn't important how long the trek back to Sandgem was. He wasn't going back to Twinleaf, and he wasn't going back to the island. It was late when he reached the pokemon center. It was late when he collapsed.
He checked Chatot into the pokemon center and quietly, systematically, pulled a row of chairs away from the wall, folded his jacket into a pillow, and lay behind the row of chairs, letting them act as a wall between him and the rest of the waiting room.
He lay there for three days. Three days until he regained feeling in his elbow.
Regained feeling in his legs.
Feeling his lungs.
And his heart.
On the third day, a chansey pulled him free by his wrists.
000
Mesprit and the rest of the lake guardians are neither categorized as malevolent or benevolent. Mesprit has a tendency to not be harmful towards humans, but it is very mischievous, wielding the power of teleportation and control over emotions. The red gems in its tail act as an anchor to the world and, when combined with the other four gems from Uxie and Azelf, can be forged into a red chain with the power to bind any pokemon, including other legendary pokemon.
It is said that if one touches Mesprit, three days later, their emotions will disappear. When Mesprit flies, emotions are born.