Summer 2020

Elesa knew she was stressing Volo out more than he already was but she didn't really care. Even after he'd been so good to her and Emmet after their little freak out on the Multi Line.

It wasn't actually bad. It was rather fun, actually. Elesa and Emmet didn't get to battle alongside Emmet all that often. Normally, it was her and Volo against Ingo and Emmet. The last time they'd battled together was probably that Team Plasma incident a couple years back. Their energy worked though. There was a bond there that Elesa and Emmet were able to translate to Multi Battles quite easily.

They hadn't considered they'd spend the whole day in the car where Ingo had disappeared until they were there. Dragons above, it hadn't even occurred to Elesa that it might be a problem until after that last battle when Emmet practically tackled her in fear that she was going to disappear too.

He could probably use some therapy. Or a lot of therapy. All of them could. Elesa didn't know why they hadn't started looking into that. It felt too soon, she supposed. There was still too much unknown to even know what they needed to process. Over a month and they had nothing. Then Volo got a call from Interpol.

Volo. Not Emmet. Not even Elesa. If anyone should hear from Interpol, it should be Emmet but if he couldn't, it should definitely be Elesa. She was the city's gym leader. She was a league affiliate. As much as Elesa liked Volo, it just didn't make sense. Elesa, Ingo, and Emmet were famous enough that the paparazzi often caught Volo in the background of photos and a couple of smaller news outlets have written articles about the Nimbasa Trio's mysterious friend but that was just it. Publicly, they were the Nimbasa Trio. Privately, they were four but the public was not interested in Volo and Volo had no interest in the public. Yet, Interpol did.

There was only one explanation Elesa could think of. "You work for Interpol?!"

Volo barely blinked. "No?"

His reaction was so genuine that Elesa almost believed him. "But you just get casual calls from them?"

"That Nanu guy said they wanted Volo's expertise," Emmet pointed out. Elesa's attention was tugged back to him and she suddenly realized she'd stood up from her seat at her tiny kitchen table. She was far more worked up about this than Emmet. Then again, he'd probably had a rougher day than her. "Volo is pretty recognized in the research community."

"A super niche part of it. He specializes in Pokéballs," Elesa shot back. She knew Volo wouldn't be offended but she didn't really care if he was. "I doubt Interpol thinks Ingo got sucked into a Pokéball."

"I honestly have no idea what they think I could contribute," Volo jumped in and Elesa's heart screamed for her to believe him but part of her just couldn't. "I only agreed because it's the only way we're going to hear anything about this lead."

"You really have no idea why Interpol would be calling you?"

"I have amnesia."

The back of Elesa's brain told her to drop it. Volo rarely mentioned his amnesia, only when he couldn't answer a question and it was relevant. Elesa sensed it was a sensitive subject so she always dropped it. Right now, she was too worked up to drop it. "Do you really? Awfully convenient."

Volo's expression suddenly hardened. If he were a Mightyena, his ears would be pinned back by now. "I do. I told you I did a trial run in Alola, right? Nanu's the Ula'ula kahuna. He's- I don't remember. I was in Alola when I lost my memory. I don't remember who he is to me, or Anabel or Looker. I haven't talked to any of them since I left. Um, except Anabel. She's checked in on me a couple times but I don't really remember her so…"

Okay, now Elesa felt bad. "Sorry, Volo. I shouldn't have- You don't owe me an explanation or anything. I shouldn't have pushed."

"It's fine," Volo responded and his tone said it wasn't. "Spiritomb remembers enough for the both of us. They'll tell me if I need to know anything important."

"W̷͝͞Į̛̀S̸̀Ṕ͟!" Spiritomb bellowed, materializing next to Volo in the kitchen. Both Elesa and Emmet jumped. They'd never gotten used to hearing Spiritomb's voice. Ingo and Emmet said they could understand Spiritomb sometimes but their words always rubbed Elesa's brain the wrong way.

"Wisp. Your favorite word, I know," Volo said softly, rubbing a hand over Spiritomb's purple head. "I don't know what you mean though, buddy."

"G̴RANḐS̛ON̷.̨ ̧SO̕N. D҉AD͟!͝"

"Still don't know what that means."

"UG҉H͠."

"Imagine how I feel," Volo commented as Spiritomb wandered back to the living room where the other Pokémon were. Turning back to Elesa and Emmet, Volo rubbed the back of his neck and gave them an apologetic look. "I promise I don't know any more than you do."

"I am Emmet. We trust you," Emmet said, offering Volo one of the most genuine smiles Elesa had seen from him in awhile. "We'll learn more tomorrow. Because Elesa and I are going with you."

"Oh, of course," Volo agreed easily. "Fuck the police. They suck. They should've told you they had a lead before they even thought about calling Interpol."

Elesa felt kind of bad for pushing Volo the whole night but she was over it by the next morning and proceeded to spend the whole walk to the police station drilling him with theories.

"Maybe they had a case with some legendary Pokémon and you were the only one who could build a Pokéball to catch it."

"I went to Johto to do Pokéball stuff after the whole amnesia thing," Volo replied, not batting an eye after a dozen of these inquiries.

"Maybe you were a super skilled agent and you went on such an intense mission they got a Psychic-type to eat your memories. Like a Musharna."

"Musharna eat dreams."

"We also met Volo before he was a legal adult," Emmet added, "and he spent a couple years in Johto before that. I don't think Volo was running around with Interpol at fifteen."

"Fifteen year olds are doing crazy things these days. Hilda and Hilbert were fifteen when they fought Team Plasma."

"And they should not have been fighting Team Plasma."

"Interpol doesn't think that."

"Maybe we shouldn't be saying bad things about the police while preparing to enter a police precinct," Volo told them and Elesa closed her mouth only because he was right. "Um, technically you guys aren't supposed to be here so really flaunt your League titles, okay?"

"Always do. You tell me to do that constantly."

"For modeling!" Volo spluttered and that was some of the old Volo Elesa knew. "Not in general life. I hate it when you flaunt your gym leader stuff in regular life."

"You love it," Elesa told him even though they all knew he didn't. Dropping the subject, she clapped her hands together and sped up her pace as they neared the police station. "Alright! Let's go talk to some Magi-cops!"

"That was a verrrrrry bad pun," Emmet groaned but followed after her. Volo jogged a bit to get to the head of the group. Spiritomb was out of their ball and seemed to spin in excitement as they opened the building doors.

"Are you in immediate danger?" the Officer Jenny at the front desk asked immediately upon them entering, voice dull. It was probably a protocol question. No one ran into the police station this early with an attacker on their tail.

"Um, no," Volo answered. "I was called in as an, um, consultant. For Interpol."

Officer Jenny raised an eyebrow. "I'll need to see some identification."

Volo cursed under his breath and began rooting around in his pockets. Elesa almost had to look away. The guy always carried as much as humanly possible on his person. When she'd designed his coat for the Battle Subway, she'd added twice as many pockets as anyone else and he still somehow filled all of them. Elesa was shocked he didn't jingle when he walked.

"What kind of ID? I don't have a driver's license because, you know, Nimbasa but I work at the university so I have the card that I use to scan into- oh wait, that doesn't actually have any information on it. Um, I have my insurance card? It doesn't have a photo though. Can I just show you everything I have? I think you can piece it together from all that."

Officer Jenny gave him the stare of a woman who had been doing this for a long time. "Identification that links you to Interpol."

"Oh. Yeah. Right. Hold on, give me a sec." Volo then proceeded to dump the contents of his pockets all over the desk and Elesa had to look away. "I'm pretty sure I have- don't give me that look, Elesa. You never know when you need something. Case in point, right now. We'd be screwed if I didn't have- ah! Here it is. Interpol ID."

Elesa wasn't actually expecting him to have one and the look on Officer Jenny's face told her that she wasn't either. She took the card from him and hit some buttons on her keyboard before handing it back. "This was issued in the year 1940."

Now Volo had a look on his face like he wasn't expecting that. Elesa didn't know how. He'd been carrying the thing around in his pocket for Dragons' know how long. "I've been told I age well."

"You're not eighty years old."

"I don't think they give newborns IDs so he'd probably be closer to a hundred," Emmet piped up and that wasn't helpful. Or maybe it was. Elesa's brain was too frozen to make heads or tails of the situation.

"Um, don't sic your Herdier on him?" Elesa said, words leaving her mouth before she knew what she was doing. "I'm the Nimbasa Gym Leader and Emmet runs the Gear Station. We can vouch for him."

"No need," a new voice interjected. Elesa's head snapped around to search for its source and she saw three figures she'd never seen before but definitely screamed Interpol. The first one was a middle aged man in a police jacket. The second was a slightly younger but still middle aged man in a trenchcoat. The third was a young woman in a suit. Elesa swore she'd seen everything they were wearing in a costume shop. It was practically a stereotype of what a cop should dress like.

"N͞A͠N͏̵U҉͘!̡͢ ĹOOK҉҉E͏Ŕ̴!́͠ ͝A̡N͘͜Ą͞B̵͡EL̶͢!̢͡"

Spiritomb seemed overjoyed at the sight of the newcomers. They made a beeline for the man who'd spoken and gave him a big lick upside the head. The man winced a bit at it but didn't pull away, patting Spiritomb's keystone like one would pat an old farm Stoutland. "Missed you too, gramps. You looking after your trainer?"

"V҉OLO SAD̷," Spiritomb reported, words hurting Elesa's brain and ears to hear. "LO̕ST͞ I̡N͘GO͢.͘ A̵GA͡IN͞! MA͝D!"

Elesa recognized Volo and Ingo's names and that was about it. Luckily, Volo seemed to understand them just fine. "They were pretty upset when Ingo disappeared. Still are. They keep saying we lost him again. I don't know what that- Does that have something to do with why you called us in?"

"You in," Nanu corrected, gaze shifting over to Elesa and Emmet for the first time since their arrival. "I wasn't expecting you to bring… them."

"They're my friends," Volo told him, putting his hands on his hips. Spiritomb abandoned his spot beside Nanu to drift back to his trainer. "They were with me when you called me. But I would've brought them anyway even if they weren't. They should've been told Interpol was getting involved!"

"The plan was to inform them after this meeting," the man who Elesa assumed was Looker said. Elesa wasn't sure if the name Looker was fitting or not. He was attractive, she supposed, but not enough to get a nickname out of it. Unless Looker was some sort of detective codename. That would make more sense. "The initial theory that led the Nimbasa police to call us was a deadend. You're our confirmation on the validity of the second one. Didn't want to give Mister Emmet here any false hope."

Elesa supposed she could understand that. She didn't want Emmet to get his hopes crushed either. "Well, we're here now. Can we stick around?"

Nanu shrugged. "Why not? If you're friends with Volo, you probably know all there is to know."

"Actually, we didn't know Volo had any connection to Interpol until last night," Emmet piped up and the three Interpol agents just sort of looked over at Volo. Elesa didn't even bother to elbow Emmet for making Volo squirm. She didn't know if he deserved it or not but she'd known the guy for nearly ten years now. She'd shared so much of her life with him. It felt a bit like a punch to the gut that he hadn't shared something like this with her.

"I… don't really know what to say to that," Nanu said and turned around, walking down the hall. Looker and Anabel followed and so did Spiritomb so Elesa, Emmet, and Volo did too. He led them to an elevator and then up to the higher levels of the precinct. The important stuff was kept away from where just anyone could wander in and see it, Elesa assumed. Smart. Probably.

"As I'm sure you know, the Battle Subway cars have high-quality cameras for recording battles. They also make pretty good security cameras," Anabel explained as Looker unlocked an inconspicuous office room. When they stepped inside, Elesa saw all sorts of camera equipment and screens. Security footage review, it seemed. "I don't think Mister Emmet would've been able to see it from where he was standing but on camera there's a very visible… effect."

"Effect?" Emmet echoed.

Looker nodded. "That's the best way to describe it. When reality is warped, the human mind can't necessarily understand what it's seeing so it just tries the best it can to make sense of what's there. Initially, the police who saw the footage thought it might be an Ultra Wormhole."

"I know you said it's not… that," Elesa started, "but I'd still like to know what it is."

"To put it simply… Well, there is no putting it simply. Have you heard of the theory that there are other versions of our world in alternate dimensions?" Looker asked and Elesa nodded. That was the plot of basically every superhero movie as of late, some Pokémon traveling to another dimension to get help from a chosen trainer from this world to save its home. Good story but got tired quickly. "Well, it's true. One way to contact these other worlds is by making a tear in reality and traveling through the space between dimensions. We call that space Ultra Space and the portals to it Ultra Wormholes."

"You don't really expect us to believe that," Emmet said, voicing Elesa's own thoughts. "How would you even prove such a thing?"

"There's an organization in Alola devoted to researching it but I won't bore you with that," Nanu said, crossing his arms and flicking his fingers in Anabel's direction. "The proof is right in front of you."

"What?"

"Sometimes people fall through Ultra Space. We lose our memories when we do but there's indisputable proof we're from other versions of this world," Anabel said and Elesa couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Ever hear of the Hoenn Battle Frontier? Go on Goodrle and look up the Frontier Brain for the Battle Tower."

Volo was immediately on his xtrans, never one to pass up a good Goodrling session, but Elesa pulled it up on her own as well. A few taps in and she found a photo. "That's you."

"But it's not," Anabel corrected, a knowing smirk on her face. "Look at the news articles. Not now. That would take awhile. But you can tell I'm her but she's in Hoenn but I'm here. I'm another version of her."

That was pretty sad. Elesa couldn't imagine losing her whole home and then finding another version where everything was the same yet it wasn't at the same time. Then again, it wasn't like Anabel could remember. Wait. "You said you have amnesia? Like Volo?"

Elesa and Emmet's eyes crept onto Volo. He held up his hands in mock surrender. "I'm not from another dimension."

"You did actually fall into an Ultra Wormhole once," Nanu spoke up, getting a surprised look from Volo. "Not for very long but it did a number on you."

"Is that how you lost your memories?"

"No. Well, kind of. It's mostly from Psychic Pokémon," Nanu continued, "but the Ultra Wormhole cleared out anything they hadn't. Did you really never tell them?"

Volo was squirming again. "After awhile it felt like too late."

"Tell us what?" Elesa demanded but Volo waved her off.

"I'm guessing it has something to do with the security footage?" Volo asked, glancing between the three Interpol agents then at the monitor in the room. "Let me see whatever it is. It'll probably be easier to explain everything at once."

"You know, if you don't want them to know anything, we can kick them out," Anabel offered and Elesa would be annoyed if she wasn't grateful for the concern for Volo. She wasn't sure how she felt about all these secrets he apparently had but he was still her friend and she had to remember that. "Technically, they're not supposed to be here anyway…"

"It's fine." Volo shook himself. "They should know. And they should know what happened to Ingo."

The agents accepted the answer and Looker stepped forward to take the seat by the screen and began tapping away. After a moment, the screen flickered to life to a video of the Multi Line car, the car Elesa had been in just yesterday. That felt like forever ago.

"There's audio but it isn't really important," Looker explained as the video began to play. It was as Ingo and Emmet described. They had pulled the Multi Line car into the overnight parking spot and then gone to the healing machines to heal their Pokémon. Emmet had first and when he returned them to their spots on his belt, Ingo had just vanished. "Let me rewind. I almost didn't see it on my first look either."

Looker rewinded the video and played it again. Elesa didn't see anything this time either. Looker slowed it down and began clicking through the frames. This time, Elesa saw- well, Looker and Anabel had been right. The only way she could describe it was an effect. A sort of green color took over the whole car but there was a ripple to it centered around Ingo. It looked almost like the colors that appeared on the surface of a bubble when it got caught in the sunlight. And then, just as quickly as it appeared, the effect disappeared and took Ingo with it.

"We've never seen anything like it. It's no Ultra Wormhole," Looker explained, pausing the video and turning around. "It looks like something described in one of the files on portals. A file Volo is referenced in. Volo?"

Elesa looked at her friend and found recognition etched all over his face. "Volo?"

"Almighty Sinnoh," Volo whispered, eyes wide as they remained fixed on the screen, "I know where Ingo is."