Summer 2020

The video had been kind of difficult for Elesa to watch. Watching Ingo vanish out of thin air was probably one of the better ways this could've gone but it still wasn't easy. She could tell Emmet was struggling to watch it as well. Volo though… Volo was eerily silent.

There was a variety of emotions on Volo's face, emotions Elesa had never seen before. When it came to emotions, Volo was hard to pinpoint. Emmet had been a crier as a kid but mostly grew out of it. He still cried during movies though. Ingo's frown made it hard to tell when he got upset but Elesa figured it out over so many years. He got upset over the littler things, like an unhappy passenger on the subway or a trainer berating their Pokémon for not getting a move right. Both wore their happiness loudly though. That was always easy to spot.

Volo was the opposite. His face wasn't stuck on one expression like Ingo and Emmet but he still wasn't the most expressive. Oh, his face moved a lot but Elesa could always tell when he wasn't being genuine. A lot of his smiles were just charm or part of a bit he did for his own amusement. Real smiles only came when someone got him to laugh and Elesa wouldn't consider laughter emotion. Elesa didn't know if Volo even noticed how fake his reactions were. Masking, numbness, or even just inauthenticity, it didn't really matter and it wasn't the type of thing Elesa would call out.

He wasn't quick to anger either. Elesa was, and so were the twins in their own way. Ingo and Emmet knew how to keep professional and Elesa did too but her image didn't require her to be so level-headed all the time. If she wanted to blow up in public, she could. Volo was a whole different level entirely. Elesa swore he had to be some kind of businessman or diplomat in another life because he could take control of heated situations and redirect them with ease, not even batting an eye.

Elesa could probably count the number of times she'd seen him cry on one hand, most of them within the past few weeks. Maybe he cried when she wasn't around but for some reason, she doubted it. Not everyone expressed themselves that way though. Elesa rarely cried, and when she did she was always a weeping mess. Volo seemed down sometimes, she supposed, but never really sad. There was never feeling to it.

There was a lot of feeling right now though. Volo looked absolutely shattered. Rage, grief, and joy were etched all over his face. Elesa hadn't even known humans were capable of such a thing yet here Volo was with more emotions on his face than Elesa knew he had. She didn't know what could've prompted it. Watching Ingo disappear was something but it didn't warrant a reaction like that. Not unless Volo knew something Elesa didn't. He probably did considering Interpol had called him in. Elesa was still peeved about that but she could set it aside for the moment.

"Volo?"

"I know where Ingo is," Volo said quietly, somehow gasping and exhaling at the same time.

Emmet visibly brightened and Elesa's heart twisted at the sight of it. "You do? Where is he?"

"Hisui," Volo answered faintly, so faintly Elesa almost didn't hear him. He seemed kind of out of it. Straightening suddenly, he uttered, "I… I need to go."

"What?"

"I need to…" Volo trailed off and made a beeline for the door, half jogging out of the tiny room they were all cramped into. By the time Elesa managed to get eyes on him again, he was sprinting down the hall.

"Volo!" she called, taking off after him. She'd been sensible enough not to wear heels today, thankfully, but she still hadn't been prepared to run this morning. "Get back here! Don't run in a police station!"

Elesa could tell Emmet and the Interpol agents were close behind her without looking over her shoulder. Volo had a surprisingly decent headstart on her but Elesa was catching up, only a step behind him when he reached the stairwell.

Or, well, she would be if Volo didn't decide to fling himself down the stairs.

"Volo!" Elesa shrieked, a million thoughts running through her head as she watched her friend fall. Volo hit the ground in a few seconds with an unnatural sound. But, before Elesa could even begin to wonder if it was a good idea to call the paramedics to a police station, Volo got right back up and started running again like nothing had even happened.

"Safety checks!" Emmet said as he passed Elesa and started hurrying down the stairs, hand sliding over the railing. Elesa wasn't entirely sure if he'd seen Volo fall or if he was just being his usual self. Elesa swore she saw Volo jump but they were several stories up and the stairwell had a clean drop to the first floor. Elesa didn't know how far someone had to fall to break a bone off the top of her head but they were definitely high enough that Volo shouldn't have been alright. Nanu, Anabel, and Looker weren't really reacting either though. Maybe her mind was playing tricks on her.

Elesa and the Interpol agents blew past Emmet on the stairwell. Stairs just weren't something Emmet ever really mastered. The same went for Ingo and Volo. Ingo could go down stairs just fine but was insanely slow going up. Volo was the opposite, being able to race up stairs but reducing to a Shuckle's pace when he had to go down them. Verrrrry annoying for Elesa. She was great at going up and downstairs. Absolute insanity that her friends weren't. She didn't think it was that difficult of a skill and yet she ended up with three people who were terrible at it.

Maybe that was why Volo opted to jump. Falling was faster than Volo's weird little hobble. Elesa still couldn't really believe what she'd seen though.

Despite what she shouted at Volo about not running in a police station, Elesa found herself sprinting for the entrance. Looker veered off rather quickly to speak to the on-duty Officer Jenny, presumably to assure her that everything was fine and they didn't need to send Growlithe after all the people running out of the station. Elesa burst out the station's front doors, momentarily getting blinded by the sun, and looked around, hoping to get some clue of where Volo had gone. Volo wasn't much of a runner and she half-expected to just see him down the street. There was no sign of him though.

"Does Volo have any Flying-types?" Anabel asked, drawing Elesa's attention back to her immediate surroundings. Anabel and Emmet were right behind her. Nanu was further back, lingering by the station doors with his phone in hand. Calling was a good idea. Elesa didn't think Volo would be answering right now though.

It was Emmet who answered. "Spiritomb, Mr. Rime, Leavanny, Obstagoon, Galvantula, and Weavile. No Flying-types. He can ride Obstagoon but usually they can't get very far without Volo falling off."

"Hisui. He said Ingo was in some place called Hisui." Said was a stretch maybe. It was implied at best. It was what Elesa was running with though. "Does that mean anything to either of you?"

Emmet shook his head. "No. And I think I know geography pretty well."

Anabel nodded in agreement. "Knowing the regions and cities of the world is part of the job. I've never heard of a place called that."

That wasn't helpful then. Elesa's mind raced for something to latch onto and ended up turning to Emmet. Emmet, as energetic and ridiculous as he could get, had a cool head under pressure and today was no different. "I am Emmet. We don't know where Volo is going but he's going somewhere and he's not exactly prepared for travel right now. I'm pretty sure he didn't even bring all of his Pokéballs with him this morning. If he's going somewhere, he has to stop either at Elesa's apartment, his apartment, or the Pokémon Center first."

"Three locations. Three of us." Anabel had a determination in her eyes that instantly calmed some of Elesa's nerves. They may not know what was going on with Volo but they had a tangible plan to find him now. "Let's do this!"

They regrouped at Ingo and Emmet's apartment. Elesa was fairly certain Emmet hadn't come back since relocating to Elesa's apartment but Elesa's apartment was far too small to host five people plus any Pokémon that wanted some time out of their Pokéballs.

Elesa slumped against Emmet on the couch, too worn out to keep up any appearances. It felt like she'd run all across Nimbasa. She was used to it by this point. She didn't own a car after all. Not a lot of people in Nimbasa did. The urgency was exhausting though. There was really no need for urgency, she supposed. Volo had just wandered off. Not the most alarming thing. It felt like it though. Maybe it was because Ingo's disappearance was still fresh, maybe because she was still thrown off by the Interpol call. Whatever it was, Elesa knew it drained her.

Not enough to keep her from drilling into the Interpol agents though. "You three have some explaining to do."

Nanu and Anabel exchanged a glance but it was Looker who responded. "We don't have any better idea where Volo is than you."

"Not that," Elesa told him. Of course she wanted to know where Volo was but she got the idea that wasn't the most important thing here. "Since when is Volo an Interpol agent?"

All three looked surprised and Elesa sensed she miscalculated somewhere. "What? Volo's not an Interpol agent."

"Why did you call him then?" Emmet asked, sitting up a bit straighter as he joined the conversation. "It sounded like you'd worked with him before."

"The details of Volo's relationship are classified. We're not at liberty to-"

"I don't work for Interpol," Nanu said, interrupting Looker. He crossed his arms, a sharp look on his face. "I can say whatever the fuck I want."

"But maybe," Anabel told him diplomatically, "Volo doesn't want you telling his friends 'whatever the fuck you want' about him."

"He's my dad. He said all sorts of things to my friends as a kid. I can say shit to his friends."

Elesa's brain froze.

"I know for a fact you had no friends as a kid," Anabel snorted as if Nanu hadn't just said something absolutely ludicrous. "You just hung out with a bunch of Meowth."

"I had friends as a teenager."

"Sorry," Elesa interrupted, finally getting her thoughts together, "did you just call Volo your dad?"

Nanu barely reacted. "If you want to get technical, he's just some guy who lived in my house for the first twenty-eight years of my life but I think it's appropriate to call him by dad."

"Twenty-eight?" Emmet echoed, puzzling the pieces together before Elesa could even try. "Volo is twenty-eight years old now."

Now, Nanu, Anabel, and Looker were staring at Emmet as if he'd sprouted a second head like a Girafarig. "What? No he's not."

"Yes he is," Emmet insisted, the corners of his smile growing tight. "He was eighteen when Ingo and I met him. Just before our first year of college. It's been ten years since then."

Nanu, Anabel, and Looker were still staring at him but their expressions had radically shifted.

"Shit," Nanu hissed under his breath.

"I don't really know what to say here right now," Looker said, glancing between Nanu and Anabel.

"I really thought he'd told them," Anabel told her companions quietly. "I would've handled this differently if I'd known."

"Told us what?" Elesa demanded. She stood up, ignoring her aching feet, and tried her hardest to glare the answers out of them. "Seriously. Volo is our friend. What aren't you telling us about him?"

Looker and Anabel glanced at each other before turning to Nanu. Nanu sighed, looking far more tired than Elesa felt, and told them, "Volo's immortal."

…Elesa had no idea how to respond to that.

"There were way more subtle ways to tell them that," Anabel said, pinching her brow with one hand.

"Sometimes blunt is best."

"Not for something like this!"

"Volo's immortal? Really?" Emmet rose as well, a healthy amount of disbelief on his voice. "That's what you're going with?"

"Emmet…" Elesa started, not quite ready to blow off the agents' words, but Nanu beat him to it.

"I can prove it. I meant what I said when Volo's my dad," Nanu said and began rummaging through his pockets. "I've got a photo in my- wait, actually. I took it out last week. Hold on, I've probably got a copy on my phone. Give me a second."

Elesa didn't want to wait a second. "Emmet, did you see Volo going down the stairs at the police station?"

Emmet looked back at her. "I don't think now's the time for the stair thing"

"Not that. Well, kind of that. You know how Volo is super slow at going down the stairs?"

"It's a normal pace, Elesa."

"I'm not trying to pick a fight, Emmet," Elesa told him, voice hardening to show him she meant it. "He's slow as a Slowpoke. That's not my point. Even if he went down stairs at a normal pace, you saw him. He was right in front of me. There was no way he could've made it down the stairs that fast."

"That doesn't mean he's immortal, Elesa."

Elesa ignored him. "I saw him jump, Emmet."

Emmet stiffened. "What?"

"He just jumped down the stairs! I watched him fall like six stories."

"He just does that sometimes," Nanu commented, not looking up from his phone, as if that were helpful.

"You saw him jump? How didn't he break his legs?"

"I don't know! He just walked away like he was fine."

"I'm pretty sure the super healing is unrelated to the immortality thing," Anabel interjected. "That's just a… Volo thing."

"Super healing," Emmet echoed, turning to face her. "Explain."

Anabel shrugged. "I honestly don't know. I'm his most recent case worker. I don't really know the details of his life before… Um, you know Volo has amnesia, right? He at least told you that, didn't he?"

Elesa and Emmet nodded and Anabel looked relieved. They never talked about it but Elesa knew about it.

"Being immortal gives him some… mental health problems. The kind that could make him a danger to himself and others."

This time, Elesa caught up before Emmet. "So you wipe his memories?"

"Actually, Volo wiped his own memories by accident and my grandfather told him to stop doing it." Nanu waved his hand in a loose gesture that told Elesa there was more to the story than that. "He's kind of a bummer when he remembers shit though. He worked something out with Interpol and now he has someone wipe his memories every few years."

"Wipe is kind of an exaggeration," Looker spoke up. "It's more like maintenance. Like how your brain sorts out the information it doesn't need when you go to sleep. Psychic-types help old memories fade like they would naturally. The only actual wipe he ever got was from when he fell into an Ultra Wormhole."

Elesa wanted to question what Looker meant by that yet she didn't at the same time.

"I'm sure this is a lot," Anabel told them empathetically and Elesa almost believed she was being genuine. "I know you mean a lot to Volo. I really thought he told you."

"Here," Nanu said suddenly, holding up his phone. It was a Rotom-phone, Elesa realized now that it was up close. He passed it over to Emmet who angled the screen so Elesa could see it too. "My grandfather took that photo the day I started my trial run."

It definitely was Volo in the photo. The color of his hair always stood out in pictures, even more so in this one thanks to all the dark Meowth in the background. He was sitting on the porch of a run-down house, one hand on the shoulder of a young boy and the other on the back of a big Slowking. The boy had a Meowth in his arms, both of them looking fairly excited. Despite the expression, Elesa could tell it was Nanu.

"Dragonite, Persian, Vaporeon, and Slowking are all Volo's Pokémon," Nanu explained, drawing Elesa's attention to the other Pokémon in the photo. Spiritomb was behind Volo looking just about as jolly as they ever did. There was a rough-looking Dragonite next to the Slowking, the Persian perched neatly on his shoulder. The Dragonite looked fairly old but it looked utterly youthful next to the Vaporeon draped over Volo's knees. "Dragonite and Slowpoke are still around. I brought them with me, actually. Vaporeon passed about ten years after that photo was taken. Persian died not long after Volo went to Johto."

Nanu wasn't the most expressive but Elesa could tell by his voice there was something important about that last bit. It wasn't her place to press and that wasn't what was important here. Nanu had been right. This was proof Volo wasn't as young as Elesa and Emmet thought he was. In the photo, there was a child, a child that was now a grown man. Meanwhile, Volo looked the same in that photo as he did when Elesa saw him earlier that day.

"That jerk," Elesa grumbled, unable to keep the affection from bleeding into her anger. "When we find him, he's got some real explaining to do."