Summer 2020
Elesa imagined Volo's return in a multitude of ways.
She imagined slapping him and scolding him for running off like that. She pictured forgetting all her anger in her relief to see him. She could see him coming back with Ingo in tow and becoming overwhelmed that both of them were back. Fantasizing was the only thing she could do in those days spent without answers.
They looked over Nimbasa again. Elesa sent her Kilowattrel and twin Emolga all over the city. Looker was able to pull Volo's bank records to see if he bought a plane ticket but the search came up empty. It was like he just vanished. Like Ingo had. Dragons above, Elesa hoped he hadn't vanished too. She didn't know if she and Emmet could handle losing Volo too.
Who's apartment would he return to? Elesa's? Ingo and Emmet's? His own? Would they just run into him on the street? Would he call? Text? Ask them to come to him? Would it come from his number? A stranger's? A payphone? Did they even still have those anymore? Why was his location off? What if he ended up wherever Ingo was? What if he didn't come back? Elesa hated these questions but they were all she had.
Looker left to try to pull some Interpol resources. There was still a lot Elesa didn't know about Volo's relationship with the International Police but there was some damage control to do, apparently, and Looker was the best person to handle it. Nanu and Anabel stuck around, crashing on Emmet and Elesa's couches. It was weird, sort of, to be hosting an Interpol and ex-Interpol agent but these two were Volo's… family? Nanu called Volo his dad. Anabel claimed she was just Volo's official link to Interpol but Elesa suspected it was more personal, even if Volo couldn't remember her. Thinking about that was even weirder.
Volo was immortal. Elesa still couldn't fully wrap her mind around it but she started entertaining the thought. Volo would outlive her, Ingo, Emmet, and all their Pokémon. They'd grow old and he wouldn't and then they'd die and he'd just forget them. Was Unova just another pitstop to him? He'd built a life here. Did he care about it? He'd dropped everything and ran mere days ago. Was he coming back? If he did, would he do it again?
A knock sounded at Emmet's door. Hopeful, Elesa answered it.
She was not expecting a towering man to be holding Volo by the back of his shirt like a tired Liepard holding a particularly troublesome kit. Seriously. That man was huge and Volo looked like a half-drowned Purrloin.
"Why are you wet?"
Elesa did not mean for those to be the first words that left her mouth. She wanted to scream and cry and demand to know why he just left them like that when Ingo's disappearance was so fresh in their minds and hearts. Volo was practically soaked though and that was what her mind latched onto.
Volo said something in what Elesa thought was Kalosian. She couldn't understand it but the tall man apparently did. He shook him and Volo gave him a resigned look before answering in Galarian. "I fell off Enamorous on the way here."
"Enamorous?" Elesa echoed and a flash of pink appeared in the corner of her eye. The pair had a Pokémon with them, a big pink creature that looked pretty happy to be there. It looked… therian. "Is that-?"
Elesa cut herself off. She didn't even know how to finish that sentence.
"You have a legendary Pokémon?" Emmet asked, appearing at Elesa's side. Like Elesa, he seemed completely and utterly distracted from Volo's reappearance in the face of literally everything else that was happening at the door right now.
"She's not mine," Volo protested only to be contradicted by the man holding him.
"She is," the man rumbled in a thick Kalosian accent. Elesa's mind kept whirling. She hadn't been optimistic Volo would return with Ingo but she hadn't even thought he'd come back with someone else, let alone someone as strange as the man before her. He lifted Volo up slightly, not even having to lift his arm above his head to keep Volo's feet dangling above the ground. "This is yours then?"
"Yes. Yes!" Elesa's brain finally caught up with what was happening and she held out her arms, not really knowing what she was expecting but the man dumped Volo on her like he wasn't holding a full grown man. Volo caught himself, thankfully, and Elesa wasn't sent to the ground but he still smacked into both her and Emmet pretty hard. Elesa took it as an opportunity to sweep him into a hug. "Where have you been? Do you have any idea how worried we were?"
Volo shifted like he was uncomfortable. "Sorry. I was in Kalos."
"Why?"
Volo went silent again. Elesa heard people walking behind her and it was Nanu who spoke up next. "That's the guy Interpol found you with in Ransei, right?"
"I'm called AZ," the man greeted. He moved a hand and Elesa thought he was going to offer it to shake but he instead gestured up to his shoulder. "This is Floette."
There was a variety of energies among them. AZ and Volo were uncomfortable. Nanu and Anabel were on guard. Elesa and Emmet were just confused. Elesa shot Emmet a look, silently telling him to do something. Emmet reacted in a heartbeat and began tugging on Volo's hand. "Come in. I'll get you a towel. You too, AZ and, um, Enamorous. I think we have a lot to talk about."
Anger toward Arceus. A need to find AZ. Grief for losing Ingo and joy he'd see him again. Guilt for staying away from Enamorous. Awkwardness around Nanu and Anabel. Nothing about Emmet and Elesa, surprisingly. Volo hadn't considered how his abrupt departure would affect them. There had been a lot on his mind at the time but that was no excuse.
"I trust Nanu and Anabel told you?" Volo ventured when Emmet tossed a towel at him. He was mostly dry by now but he appreciated it. They hadn't been close to Unova's shore when he slipped off Enamorous's shell and he had plenty of time for the wind to blow the water off him.
"That you're old as hell?" Emmet responded, words light but tone forced. "Yeah."
"Why didn't you tell us?" Elesa asked a bit more gently.
Volo shrugged. "I lost pretty much all of my memory in 2003. Before that, it was just pieces so I wouldn't… I got to start over though. I wanted to. I- I like what we have. I didn't want to change it. I should've told you though. I'm sorry."
Elesa waved him off. "You don't need to apologize. I mean, I wish you'd told us but it's not like you owe it to us."
"What about Ingo?" Emmet spoke up, pulling the conversation back to what mattered. "You recognized that green stuff that took him. It jogged your memory."
Emmet said it like a statement but Volo heard the question and nodded his confirmation. "I did. It did. I…"
Volo trailed off. He suspected he'd be doing a lot of that. His memories were back, sure, but not all of them. It wasn't like he watched a movie of his life or anything. The memories were less buried than before but he still had to dig for them. He didn't know how to say what he was thinking. How could he explain who Ingo was to him? What it meant to find someone from his past again? What Hisui had meant to him?
"Just spit it out," Nanu barked and it was so jarring that Volo did.
"Ingo is in the past. He time traveled," Volo explained bluntly and the words began tumbling out of his mouth like Graveler rolling down a hill. "We met in the year 1720. He- I- We were friends. Good friends. For a few years. I don't know what happened to him though. I went to Ransei with AZ to fight Arceus. He, um- Arceus is the one that made me immortal. There's this legend that whoever conquers all of Ransei gets to meet Arceus so I thought we'd get it to end our curses. It- Arceus was there but it didn't work. I left because I thought AZ would be able to help me summon Arceus but he told me I was being an idiot and made me come back here to talk to you."
"You are an idiot," AZ responded but Volo knew it was affectionate. He turned to the others and continued, "Ingo did not die in Hisui. Spiritomb has proof of it. The question now is whether Ingo returned of his own accord or if someone from the future played a role."
Something struck Emmet and Elesa's faces. Ingo was still gone but they had a plan now.
Elesa had to imagine they were quite a sight to the students of Nimbasa University: two Interpol agents, a gym leader, a Subway Master, an unseen Legendary Pokémon, a nine-foot tall Kalosian, and then the excitable professor and his Spiritomb that they were used to seeing day to day. Oh how Elesa envied them, the students that is. Anyone could tell something was off, sure, but they were blissfully unaware of what truly had changed.
"Hi Dr. Ginkgo!"
"Hey," Volo greeted with a wave to a passing group of students that he definitely didn't know the names of. It always fascinated Elesa to see him at work. She was used to the sides of him that spoiled his Pokémon rotten and navigated Elesa's gigs with more skill than men who'd been in the industry for decades. Even that contrast was a lot. This was even weirder. Elesa would have to get used to that, she supposed. There were a lot of sides she was probably going to be seeing soon.
To AZ, he'd been a warlord. To Nanu, he was a father figure. To Anabel, he was a weird immortal who needed his brain messed with sometimes. To Elesa, he was none of that but this wasn't going away so she had to get used to it.
"My emphasis isn't regional," Volo said as he began dumping books on the table they gathered around. It was loud, too loud for a library, but none of them seemed to care. "Hisui history isn't my specialty."
"Emmet and I have connections through the League," Elesa spoke up as AZ and Emmet began taking books to get started on. "I can try to reach out to Lenora. Maybe she can help. She's an even bigger history nerd than you."
Volo laughed at that and it felt like the old Volo she knew if not for the words that followed. "Lenora may be a history nerd but there's no way she knows more than me. You know I only majored in history because I lived through all of history, right?"
Elesa tried not to falter, instead matching his energy. "And yet here we are reading introduction books to this time period you supposedly lived in."
Volo just laughed again and they got to work. AZ had been right. They had reason to believe Ingo was coming back. Or, they had reason to believe that once Volo explained where Spiritomb's wisps came from, that is. That was a bit unsettling to think about but Elesa pushed it aside for the time being. There was hope. They had a plan. Maybe Ingo would come back on his own. Maybe he wouldn't. Whatever it was, it'd already happened. The answer lay in books. They just had to find the right pages.
Elesa hadn't gone to college and there was a reason for that. Well, the main reason was because she didn't need a college degree in order to pursue her career aspirations. She'd done fine in school before going on her Pokémon journey but she didn't excel at it and, unlike Volo and the twins, she certainly didn't like it. Textbooks were boring. Reading was boring. At least here she could skim, even if she should probably actually know these things. They were just looking for mention of Ingo but Elesa was sure she'd have to know all this other stuff later. It was Ingo's life, afterall.
Ingo's life was in history books. That was bizarre to think about. Then again, Volo's life was in multiple history books. Nanu had mentioned Ransei and Elesa knew a lot of students preferred Ransein history classes over others. Elesa was very tempted to go look through one of those books. She was pretty sure AZ could tell. He slipped an introductory Ransein history book alongside her stack of Hisuian ones. Elesa put it under her seat to resist the temptation. She could learn about Volo later. They were focused on Ingo right now.
Eventually, his name started showing up.
"'Wardens during the hero of Hisui's return include Lian, Calaba, Arezu, Iscan, Palina, Ingo, Melli, Gaeric, and Sabi,'" Anabel read aloud, finger skimming over the text on the page. "I was skipping the parts about Hisuian legends but it looks like this one is more than just a story. Focus on the clans in the 1720s."
That was incredibly helpful yet not at all. Having a time range and a broad theme meant they could start looking at the table of contents instead of just flipping through the whole thing. Most of the sections on the clans were sparse on wardens though. Wardens tended to live pretty far from clan settlements. The legend about the return of the hero of Hisui more reliably mentioned the wardens but there wasn't a lot of detail about them. Most of the focus was on the feats of this hero.
Elesa stopped skimming when she hit those parts in fear of missing something but she still had a hard time following the story. References to Sinnoh were contradictory but the books also drew comparisons to other stories and legends that Elesa not only didn't recognize but she also couldn't tell if they were just clan stories or if they were real like the story Ingo was part of. The story of the hero of Hisui was pretty different from the return. Both tamed the Nobles but that was about where the similarities ended. The first hero made the Nobles his companions. By the time the second one came around, the Nobles already had companions.
The first hero was described like he was larger than life. He was kind, and clever, and he had a natural gift with Pokémon. The second one felt so much more real. She was young but she worked hard and always got up when she was put down. She sounded young, Elesa realized, in a way the first hero was not. That made the tale feel more like history than a story. A kid shouldn't be the one calming frenzied Pokémon but reality didn't care about shoulds and should nots.
Eventually, after days and days of skimming books and documents for mention of the second hero, they found photos.
"She looks a lot like Sinnoh's new champion. Dawn, I think her name is," Anabel told them as she slid the open book across the table. A quick glance told Elesa there was a good number of pages dedicated to pictures. Emmet snatched the book up in a heartbeat. Elesa and Volo hovered on either side of him to get a good look at the photos. "The description says her name is Akari."
That was new. None of the texts so far had mentioned the second hero of Hisui by name. These pictures were gold though. Not only did they capture what was really there at the time, their descriptions were hand-written. This was a primary source.
"'Hero Akari and her team,'" Emmet read aloud, leaning back a bit so Elesa and Volo could get a good look. Anabel had been right. Akari did look eerily similar to Champion Dawn. "'Samurott, Honchkrow, Luxray, Rapidash, Carnivine, and Zoroark.'"
"That is not a Samurott," Elesa responded, leaning over a bit more, "and that is definitely not a Zoroark."
"I remember the Zoroark," Volo piped up. His voice was clear, not as quiet as it'd been lately. Elesa took it as a sign he was getting more comfortable about this whole looking at his past in a textbook thing. "Hisuian Zoroark were Normal/Ghost-types. They were Dark-types originally but then- then…"
"Tomb! Spiritomb!" Spiritomb offered helpfully. Elesa couldn't understand a word they said but Volo brightened, excitement flashing in his eyes, and he nodded along. He didn't repeat was Spiritomb had said though. Elesa wanted to ask what happened to the Zoroark but Emmet was flipping the pages.
"'Hero Akari with her fellow surveyors Professor Laveton and Surveyor Rei,'" Emmet continued, flipping the page. "'Akari at Galaxy Hall with Commander Kamado and clan leaders Lord Adaman and Lady Irida.' 'Akari at Jubilife's dojo with Captain Zisu and Warden In-'"
Emmet's voice broke but they didn't need to hear him reading the description to know who they were looking at. Elesa wrapped her arms around her friend, which he accepted happily. "Ingo really is in the past."
AZ slid the book over to get a better look at something before spinning it around again. "Take a look at the next one. 'Hero Akari and her Samurott at the pastures with her closest friends and their Pokémon: Surveyor Rei and his Pikachu, Ginkgo Guild member Volo and his Spiritomb, and Warden Ingo and his Gliscor.'"
Volo too choked up at that and Elesa untangled one arm from Emmet to put around him. His mouth moved like he wanted to say something but Elesa squeezed his shoulder, silently telling them he didn't have to. They knew. He didn't need to speak for them to know what this photo meant to him.
