Saylee Pokémon: 20 Deaths: 7

Key Pokémon: 29 Deaths: 2

"Key? KEY!"

"Who's that?" Saylee asked, staring as Key shrieked and started demanding that Shikoba fly down to the white-clad figure that had surfaced below them so she could glomp him. The man was shouting and waving to Key while clinging to one of the most beautiful and colourful Pokémon that Saylee had ever seen, with a long body like an Arbok but patterned like a stained-glass window in yellow, pink and lavender.

"Wallace!" Key cried, actually jumping off of Shikoba's back as she hugged Wallace around the neck. The significantly taller man caught her and hugged her back easily. "Wallace, what are you doing here? Oh, wait, dumb question…"

"Yes, officially I am here to find out what the hell is going on," Wallace sighed. He was wearing a flowing white cloak over a white jumpsuit that could only be described as skimpy and had curly teal hair spilling out from under his white cap.

"We've been swimming through the underwater tunnels for ages," his beautiful Pokémon huffed. "It seems as if we've missed most of it…"

"Don't worry, darlin', you're here in time for the best part; meeting me," Shikoba said, fluffing his display feathers. Key patted them down as she climbed back onto his back.

"Where's Juan?" Wallace asked, looking around.

"Chasing after Marc and Archie… the Magma and Aqua leaders," Key explained, pointing into the water. "They went under a while ago."

"Into the labyrinth? We'll never catch up to them!" Wallace's Pokémon complained.

"No…" Wallace looked up at Saylee and smiled. "Key, won't you introduce me to your charming friends?"

"Ooops, sorry," Key giggled. "This is Shikoba, and carrying Wally is Sar Saylee of Kanto and Skye, and that's Tobias, Thomas and Oberon, and that's Eric, Charlotte and… oh, Sei! SEI! She's kinda in shock because she just saw Kyogre…"

"Huh? Oh…" Sei seemed to shake herself back to reality, then shrieked. "WALLACE? When did you get here?" She immediately dove in to hug him.

"Good to see you too," Wallace laughed.

"Everyone, this is Sir Wallace, Champion of Hoenn and his Milotic, Mael," Key explained for everyone else's benefit. "He used to live at dad's until he was adopted by Juan. He still visits a bit."

"Ah, so that's how you know each other," Saylee said. "Pleasure to meet you, Sir."

"Likewise, Sar," Wallace replied, bowing in synch with Mael as Sei climbed back onto her Altaria's back, wibbling quietly about Kyogre. "Is Wally alright? I can imagine that realizing Rayquaza's full power has taken a lot out of him…"

"Wha—how'd you know?" Key asked in surprise.

"We heard his voice even underwater," Wallace said with a smile and a wink, "but also… reasons."

Saylee squinted suspiciously at Wallace, then slowly tipped down her glasses and squinted suspiciously over them.

"Huh," she said. "Who are you?"

Wallace's smile just widened. "It looks like the gym's stormproofing was well worth the exorbitant amount of money Juan paid," he said, gesturing to an archipelago hosting a squat stone building that was surfacing as the water level dropped, having avoided being utterly crushed somehow during the battle. "Shall we take Wally there to rest and swap secrets?"

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"This used to be my room," Wallace whispered, tucking the pale blue wave-patterned bedsheet around a soundly sleeping Wally. Saylee glanced around the room. It was a mess, the contents thrown around by the earthquake, but it was still easy to tell that teal and various other blues and greens were a popular theme. Several broken and merely chipped ornaments made of seashells and glassy fragments lay strewn across the floor. From the look of the chunks of glue exposed by the broken parts, they were all handmade. An extremely careworn stuffed Blastoise lay among the shattered pieces of a mercifully empty glass tank. Still stuck fast to the wall were various photos and giffies of Wallace as a child, sometimes with a much younger-looking Juan, a couple with kids that looked like school friends, and a dozen featuring a pretty girl with long lavender hair.

"Juan adopted Wallace, and Wallace took over this gym for a while before being Champion," Key explained quietly, helping to pick some things up. Key, Saylee and Wallace straightened up the room, removing the glass and broken pieces from the floor, before stepping back out into the hall.

"Tea?" Wallace offered. "The rescue teams have everything in hand for now, we need to talk, and Juan keeps some very fine blends well-stocked."

"Sounds good," Saylee said, clutching her side as she waited for Wallace to straighten up a collapsed hall table and sweep the fragments of a broken vase out of the way. The house was richly decorated, but almost everything had been thrown to the ground and broken. "The adrenaline's wearing off ,and I need something to take more painkillers with anyway…" She looked around as Wallace led them down the hall to a small living room. Almost all of the furniture was lying on its back or side, but one of the sofas was still upright, and Saylee gingerly sat on that. "Where'd Sei go?"

"She buggered aff a whiles back," Mary said, pushing the other sofa upright. "When they were callin' fae volunteers fae rescue jobs." Most of Saylee and Key's Pokémon were helping to clear rubble and rescue trapped or injured people and Pokémon, but Mary, Perun and Oberon—by virtue of not being able to fly, swim, lift whole boulders or smell out trapped people—were in the gym with them, keeping guard in case Team Aqua or Magma resurfaced. Saylee didn't expect them to, but she also hadn't expected Wallace, Champion of Hoenn, to be an avatar.

Knowing what to look for, it was easy to spot. The man was very much like Wally, in some indefinable way, and had a faint blue aura when Saylee looked at him out of the corner of her eye or through her usual fuzzed eyesight. It hadn't been a surprise, more of an "oh, of course". Saylee was starting to wonder how much she knew that she didn't know that she knew, and if there was any way to make a bulletin appear on her pokégear or something. It would probably save a lot of trouble.

"So what are you?" she asked bluntly, picking up a Clamperl-shaped pillow from the ground and leaning back on it while Wallace helped Mary shove the third royal-blue sofa back into place. "Which god? I can't tell which, but I'm sure you are one."

"Yes… you're a guardian, aren't you?" Wallace said with a smile. "Key, darling, you certainly make interesting friends."

"Apparently," Key said, sitting down on one of the couches and staring at Wallace. "So? What are you? How long have you been one? Why didn't you tell me? That's so cool!"

"Hmm… since I was twelve," Wallace said, stepping up to a beautiful wooden sideboard with a carving of a Milotic on it. The carving was inset with gemstones in the pattern of the Milotic's tail, although they were blue and pink, unlike Mael. Wallace crouched to scoop up shattered fragments of a few teacups, setting them on the sideboard and returning the rest of the tea things and a few ornaments to an upright position. "Just after Juan adopted me. I'd been playing in the sea with the Pokémon in question since I was a very small child. It was Juan who recognized that we were meant to be one, one day." He picked up a tray of tea things and walking through an archway to a small kitchenette. It was an utter mess, but Wallace managed to tiptoe around most of it to fill the kettle and locate tea leaves. Oberon followed him, sweeping up some of the mess on the floor with his leaf skirt.

"Aye, but whit wan is it?" Mary said impatiently. "Dinnae beat aroon the bush, you can tell us. Lee's brer's an avatar too, ye ken?"

"Half-brother," Perun corrected her mildly.

"And I feel like we should be much more careful with that information," Saylee muttered.

"Is that so?" Wallace laughed, looking over his shoulder at Saylee. "You're very like Juan. Very well. I am Manaphy. Not as impressive as Kyogre, I know. I can't control the waves, but all ocean life will respond to my call. They told me where Kyogre was. I had intended to keep a closer eye on her, but the regular duties of being a Champion are time-consuming… here we go." He brought back the tray, now with a small bowl of sugar and a pot of milk next to three teacups and the kettle, which was now producing a good deal of fragrant steam. "Are any of your Pokémon partial to a cup?"

"Naw, thanks," Mary said. Perun shook his head.

"Kinna cannibalistic for my tastes, y'know what I'm sayin'?" Oberon said, twirling back towards them.

"Fair enough," Saylee said, holding her own cup still for Wallace to pour tea into and then reaching for the milk jug. "Thank you. So, Juan's like me? Able to sense…" she gestured to Wallace with the milk jug before pouring herself some.

"His younger brother is an avatar too, which is likely why he's a guardian," Wallace explained, cape swishing as he sat down on the couch opposite Saylee, Key and the Orbs. "And by that I don't mean me, although Juan had indeed always been more of an older brother to me than an adoptive father. His flesh-and-blood brother is Kyogre."

"Archie?!" Key said in surprise. Her teacup slipped out of her hand and clattered onto the table, spilling tea everywhere. "Agh! Sorry!"

"Hey, watch it!" Oberon yelped, ducking away from the boiling spillage and hopping up onto Saylee's lap.

"Don't worry about it," Wallace said, reaching under the coffee table and producing a tea-stained towel that had clearly been placed there against this very eventually. "You know, I think Juan put this here when I first became an avatar… I was very clumsy on land for a long time. I only felt happy or had any co-ordination under water. I still feel happier in water, or Manaphy does, at any rate."

"Isn't Archie one of those nutters that were trying to punch each other out while the big guys were fighting?" Perun asked. Saylee, who had already taken two painkillers out of her medbag and was about to put it away, paused and then withdrew a third with a sigh.

"His brother's a gym leader?" Key said in surprise. "What happened to him?"

"It's all to do with his… their father, isn't it?" Saylee said quietly before swallowing the first pill with a mouthful of tea. "Archie and Shelly say Marc killed him… but Marc said there was more than that to it. Do you know what really happened? What happened at all?"

Wallace frowned, not looking up from mopping up the tea. "Juan and Archie's family history is fraught with tragedy, and large parts of it are known only to themselves," he murmured. "What I do know is that it's all tied up in their father, Adrian, and his relationship with Marc, and their work in Kanto before they fled the war and came here."

"Mother's death was a large part of it too, as it happens."

"Welcome home, Juan," Wallace said, lighting up as he spotted his adoptive father/brother walking into the room. Saylee and Key turned around to see the Sootopolis leader towelling off his hair, although his elegant blue-and-purple clothes seemed to be waterproof. He had greying streaks in his hair and a small, neat moustache, but to look at him up close he did resemble Archie in the line of his jaw and the colour of his eyes.

"Did you find them?" Key asked.

Juan shook his head. "The submarine went deeper than even Kendrick could safely dive, alas," he said morosely. "They have escaped for now… Given that we seem to be laying it all on the table here, I don't mind saying that I can always hold out hope that one or the other of them will take it into their heads to hide here."

"I'm sorry, Juan, but they're very involved," Wallace said, adopting an expression somewhat akin to a child caught with their hand in the cookie jar. "And Sar Saylee here is a guardian such as yourself. Her brother is an avatar too."

"Half-brother," Perun corrected again.

"Would ye stop bein' a bawbag aboot that?" Mary hissed at him.

"Red was her brother," Perun said stubbornly. "He mattered too, even if he wasn't some fancy-pants god."

"Red meant the world to me," Saylee reassured Perun, nudging Oberon off of her lap so she could give Perun a hug. "But Silver is important to me as well. But right now, we're not here to talk about my brothers." She looked up at Juan. "Although if you don't want to talk about your family history, trust me, I completely understand."

"No, not at all," Juan said, going to the sideboard to locate an unbroken cup for himself and picking out some tea leaves.

"Juan makes the best tea," Wallace said proudly, elegant demeanour turned to that of a happy child in Juan's presence. "He prepares the tea leaves according to old Kanto tradition, or so he says."

"I couldn't comment. Tradition in my neck of the woods was to boil everything and only drink what turned the water brown," Saylee said with a shrug. "I've never met anyone who lived in Kanto before it all blew up and got out before. But your dad did, right?"

"Oh, plenty of people fled, although most were going to Johto," Juan explained, going to the kitchen to boil himself some water. "Good grief, I am going to have to buy a lot of new dishware… I suppose those who went to Johto no longer recall where they were from. By the time we got out, Johto had stopped accepting refugees. I think ours was the last boat out. We struck out for Hoenn instead. When we arrived, we heard Pokémon speak for the first time, and for a while I thought that was just what Hoenn was like until we talked to some people and found out it was new to them too…" he chuckled as he returned from the kitchen with a steaming cup of tea. "It was a good distraction, at least, from thinking about what we'd left behind. I'm sure Father and some of the other adult refugees must have been interviewed, because the events of the civil war are in fact on public record, and a powerful argument for almost every reform in the rights of Pokémon made in the past twenty years."

"That's… good to know," Saylee said quietly. "So, you and Archie were kids when you left?"

"I was thirteen, Archie was six," Juan said, staring into his tea. "Father had been packing us all up to leave, but Mother's death put the tin lid on it. Perhaps if we'd left sooner… but what's past is past."

"How did…?" Key began. Saylee bit her lip, having been able to clearly imagine a thousand and one horrible ways that Juan and Archie's mother could have died and not wishing to dwell on any of them. She swallowed her other two painkillers in one.

"Wildfire," Juan said shortly. "Archie was still young enough that we'd been able to keep him innocent to the worst of what was going on around us, but as a result, Mother's death was one of the first times he'd had to really face death. He was terrified, and became very desperately attached to Father and myself, perhaps fearing that we, too, would die and leave him…"

"And you?" Saylee asked. "Weren't you frightened?"

"I grew up in Kanto during the civil war, I was always terrified," Juan said with a very affected lightness, smiling at Saylee and Key. Wallace sighed sadly. "I'd already had to deal with the deaths of some school friends… it was something that I was aware could happen, not that that made it hurt any less. But I was also old enough to see how much her death devastated Father. He grew grey hairs overnight. He was determined to not show his upset and be strong for our sake, but that just made me feel all the more as if I should be strong myself, to help him look after Archie and ease the burden while he kept working at… 'the war effort' was what he called his job, at the time."

"Big brothers are like that," Saylee said softly, hugging Perun again. "And it's always appreciated."

Juan smiled, a little more genuinely this time. "And that, in turn, coloured how we handled Father's death… but in between that, of course, Team Aqua happened."

"Was it always a criminal organization?" Saylee asked.

"Oh, goodness, no," Wallace said, shaking his head. "Team Aqua's facade over the past ten years was what the previous Team Aqua's original goal had been—studying water samples, preserving river and ocean-life, launching campaigns to encourage the populace to keep the waters clean... though supposedly a lot of people viewed the first leader's actions and beliefs as somewhat 'extreme' and took a slightly bigger liking to Archie instead. Not that anyone could blame Adrian for his extremism, really, given what had happened in Kanto… but Archie, while determined to follow in his father's footsteps, was better at putting on a less evangelical public face, possibly as a natural extension of having to hide his true intentions anyway."

"His criminal intentions," Saylee said. "How much did you know about Team Aqua?"

"Beyond a few details that happened nearly ten years ago, only as much as they were willing to share with the public, I'm afraid," Juan replied morosely. "Despite regularly seeking political aid from the other gym leaders or the elites, Archie always found the means to keep Wallace and I at a careful distance. I've exchanged a few rare phone calls with him in order to keep myself informed about his well-being, but aside from those I've had very little contact with him. I was never given the chance to offer him my counselling... or my apologies."

"What do you mean?" Key asked.

Juan opened his mouth to reply, but he paused, hesitating slightly. Wallace took over instead. "I believe I've said this, but Adrian and Marc were once very close friends," he explained, "and in fact, Magma was created at the same time as Aqua for similar reasons. Aqua and Magma used to work as a pair, back then. One cared for the sea, the other for the land, and together they could protect everything that allowed humans and Pokémon alike to live. You've probably heard how close Adrian and Marc were, so planning things together and helping each other out was easy for them."

"Until Adrian died..." Saylee finished for him.

"Death is never easy, but Father's loss was especially hard on Archie," Juan said quietly, staring morosely into his tea. "Father meant the world to Archie, but all of that vanished when..." Juan shook his head. "I don't know if there's any word to describe how crushed Archie was. He... came to me for comfort and support, but I turned him away instead."

"Juan, that's not how it went and you know it," Wallace said firmly, before turning to Saylee again. "When Adrian died, I was also extremely sick at the time. I had just ascended, and…"

"Yeah, I've seen how rough that is on kids and adults alike," Saylee said with a wince.

"I could barely speak or move from my bed, had major breathing issues, and spent a lot of time being overall unconscious or in pain," Wallace continued. "Juan thought I was going to die."

"How come I never heard about that?" Key asked, a little crestfallen. "Dad always likes to know how the kids he's looked after are getting on. There's no way he wouldn't take us all to come visit you if you were ill…"

"I personally requested for Norman not to tell anyone at the orphanage," Wallace admitted with a guilty smile. "You especially, since I imagined that you were still dealing with Raphael and didn't want to drop more worry on you..."

"Oh, yeah…" Key said, clenching her teacup when Raphael was mentioned. "I'm glad you pulled through."

"Did Archie know anything?" Saylee asked.

"He knew that Wallace's health was in a very delicate situation at the time," Juan replied, casting hesitant glances toward Saylee and Key, "although by the end of the first month I admittedly tried to make his illness sound less dangerous than it still had been, which led him to being unaware of certain aspects that were still a rather large cause for worry… basically, I had not told him of exactly what had happened to Wallace, and in the furore over Father's death I ended up never doing so. But as a result, to him, my reasoning may have seemed more baseless than what it really was."

"Juan's first main argument was that 'inheriting' Team Aqua was too big of a responsibility to simply take on without thinking it over first and taking his other responsibilities into account," Wallace continued. "Trying to pile Aqua on top of his gym leader duties and the fact that my health was still relatively unstable was—"

"Wait wait wait, back up," Saylee interrupted. "You were asked to become the leader of Aqua first?"

Juan nodded. "To him, picking up Aqua where our father had left it was the only method of confrontation we had in regards to Marc. I believe that... offering the position to me was Archie's way of requesting my support and assuring himself that I would stand by him in times when he needed it most." Juan gave a dejected sigh. "The result is that I failed as an elder brother and that Archie's teenage stubbornness made him drop out of school and take Aqua upon himself instead, assuming that I had let him down in favour of a boy that I was not blood related to."

"Archie was really determined to get revenge on Marc, wasn't he...?" Key muttered sadly.

"But doesn't he know that Marc would never kill Adrian?" Wally said faintly.

"Wean! You're up!" Mary said, hurrying over to support Wally as he staggered into the room. "Whit was that?"

"What do you mean, Marc would never kill Adrian?" Wallace asked. "You never knew them, how did—"

"Rayquaza knew them," Wally said weakly as Mary helped him over to the couch. "And that wasn't why they were chosen. They were chosen because they would never hurt each other, let alone kill each other. They were chosen to end the fighting. Adrian's death shouldn't have… it made it all go wrong…"

"No kidding," Wallace muttered into his teacup.

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Aaaand that was the huge backstory infodump XD Also yes, I put Wallace in his ORAS outfit… no power on this earth could make me not do that.