Month Unknown, Year Unknown
Finally. Finally, he stands at the precipice, the start of tracks he thought he'd never reach. His hands are balled into tight fists, his fingers twitching as he fidgets with the grass-stained cuffs of his gloves. His eyes never once leave the pitch-black conductor hat and scrap of orange fabric tied deliberately to his pokéball belt.
Proof. My only pieces of proof. That they ever existed. That he ever existed. A manic smile pulled at his lips. If a human could have fangs, he'd be bearing them. Everything is finally running on schedule. Emmet took a step forward. All of my waiting has finally paid off. Another step forward. I will find Ingo and bring him home.
He tapped the toes of his mud-stained boots against the gnarled roots twisting around the edge of the portal, sweating incessantly as he waited for the storm to break. He knows it's close and by Arceus, does he shiver at the prospect of crossing. His initial gut-theory had been correct; Ingo was not missing. Missing meant that he had vanished into thin air and people don't just vanish. No, Ingo was just… somewhere else. Like a cruel joke, Ingo was somewhere in the wide, wide world that they lived in but it was somewhere Emmet couldn't reach him. Shouldn't be able to reach him.
Emmet chuckled darkly to himself as he palmed the pokéball belonging to his Galvantula. His partner's ball bumped once against his hip. Ready to go. He thought he had come to a dead end after exhausting all of his resources combing Unova and the surrounding regions for his twin brother. He'd scoured Orre. He had burned through each and every last region in the world that he could think of. He had solicited gym leaders, battle facility heads, championship visitors both local and foreign. There was not a single thing he hadn't tried. He'd ran through every last contact his brother could have had on his Xtrans before Ingo had vanished- was taken- before his eyes all that time ago.
It wasn't hard. They were twins. They shared everything. Everything. In Emmet's mind, there wasn't a thing Ingo could keep from him without him finding out about it. Running off without him was out of the question.
Emmet had been "persuaded" to go back to being a Subway Boss. Without his brother. Without the other half to his soul. Without Ingo. Now, things were just tasteless. Boring. A complete and utter waste of time.
So many things he could have been doing instead of obliterating every last trainer that got in his way on his lines. He liked to think of them as the press or the obnoxious worrying of his friends and families that begged for him to just let it go. To let Ingo rest in peace, wherever he was. He had scoffed at the notion. Ingo wasn't dead. His brother wasn't dead. It may have been an unhealthy coping mechanism but it got him through his days.
Emmet wasn't an idiot. He wasn't drowning in grief like some of the tabloids wrote him out to be. He wasn't falling apart at the seams like his depot agents thought him to be. He wasn't neglecting himself like… Emmet broke his trademark grin, scowling as he crossed his hands behind his back… like Elesa said he was. And Elesa doesn't know anything.
Ingo wasn't dead, despite the looming headstone on the land that Uncle Drayden had bought near their childhood home in Anville Town and the undisturbed grass and dirt before it. Despite the constant gifts of anonymous flowers to the aforementioned grave and the small shrine that existed in the lines Ingo used to run (Emmet made a habit of destroying it whenever he could). Despite the untouched articles of clothes in Ingo's untouched room with the to-do list that hadn't seen the light of day in more than a year. Despite the hundreds of thousands of missed calls and unread messages that Emmet had rung up in his absence. Because that was all it was: an absence. Ingo would return eventually.
And to his delight, his prayers had been answered, albeit in the form of some almighty power metaphorically spitting directly in his face. His prayers for his brother's whereabouts- for anything that could link him to his missing twin- had been given to him in the form of a washed-up, concussed, dim-witted Pokémon Ranger emerging from Reversal Mountain with Ingo's hat and numerous other items of questionable origins.
Months prior, the Pokémon Ranger HQ in Unova had grouped up with a foreign exchange unit and they had divided up the missing person's cases between them. Ingo's case had fallen in with them, having been declared unsolvable by an Alolan investigation department that, to Emmet's knowledge, was still working on the case. Why, he had no idea. Something to do with wormholes and beasts of some caliber.
This foreign ranger from a nowhere-region not even in unovan maps had taken Ingo's case on a lone-wolf mission. They then proceeded to go missing only three days into the search. They popped up a week later halfway across Unova in a walled-off cave system deep underground that would make even Clay take a second-guess before entering.
Somehow, someway, the Pokémon Ranger had discovered a subway tunnel not even he knew about, followed it to the Giant Chasm to the north and then from there, fell completely off the radar only to show up miles underground in some horrific cave-in that had been started on accident from a stray Onix burrowing there. The only reason the ranger had survived was that their pokémon had dug a hole to get them out. It was confusing for Emmet just to picture it.
And Emmet knew those caves. He knew all the cave systems in Unova; he and Ingo used to go caving back when they were still depot agents training up to be Subway Masters. From Chargestone Cave to Twist Mountain and from his time checking the tunnels as a Subway Master, that tunnel- the one that the ranger had discovered under the A-Line- shouldn't exist. He had even checked it himself. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. He checked the camera feeds and what he saw on them made his blood run cold.
One minute, the idiot ranger was scanning along the tunnels and the next? They walked right through the subway wall. Just- right through it. As if it had always existed. As if nothing was wrong with the picture. Sure. Of course. Because Pokémon Rangers can just exploit space like it's no big deal. Emmet had snorted at the notion, too mentally strained to control his temper. Of course, Emmet hadn't given a single thought about what had happened to the ranger. He could care less about a foreign agent getting themself hurt. No. What he really cared about was the fact that the dimwit ranger had come back out of quite literally nowhere carrying Ingo's hat.
And it wasn't just a duplicate, no. Their uniform hats were one-of-a-kind; nearly impossible to replicate due to trademark and the sheer cost of getting them made. No. It was the exact one. Beaten to high hell and horribly sun-bleached, the damn thing had been tied to the ranger's belt with some kind of stained cloth. Emmet had checked the hat too when the item finished being inspected. Same measurement as Ingo's. Same measurement as his own. It even had Ingo's initials on the weathered cloth tag on the inside. There was no possible way it could have been a duplicate.
Did he question the ranger as soon as it had happened? Unfortunately not as he wasn't allowed to due to the fact that the ranger was in a coma for a week after nearly being crushed to death by rocks and extremely close to bleeding to death from some unknown force. Probably the Onix or a wild pokémon. But Emmet wouldn't settle for what the doctors and nurses told him about the situation, nor the investigators. Instead, he had settled to… kill two birds with one stone. The ranger was in no shape to get back to their regular work and more of those strange distortions were happening in Gear Station. None of his depot agents could encounter them. What better way to keep an ear out for information than "recruiting" the ranger to do his work for him?
They could deal with the distortions while technically doing their job and Emmet could keep a close eye out in case they decided to spill some information. Plus, it meant that Emmet could use them as a pokémon jockey on his battle rounds. When he'd gotten the chance to do some questioning behind closed doors? Nothing. Nothing at all. No tidbits of sighting his brother. No hints of where he could be. The ranger had no memory of how they had even come to possess Ingo's hat in the first place. But Emmet had managed to get a clue based on what the ranger was wearing when they were hospitalized at first.
Most of the ranger's clothes were completely shredded and stained with their own blood, but after being sent in for analysis (and with a quick but awkward bout of help from Lenora, Nacrene City's Gym Leader), Emmet struck gold.
The strange robes that the ranger had been wearing had a torn but legible embroidered symbol belonging to an ancient Sinnoan Clan known as the Diamond Clan. That in itself gave Emmet two very important clues toward finding his brother. One was that it was a Sinnoan Clan which meant that Ingo was somewhere in Sinnoh. Two being that if it was an ancient clan, that meant that Ingo had to have accidentally traveled back in time. So did the ranger. Time travel wasn't even all that uncommon given that children often stumbled upon legendary pokémon and… well… who even knew what to make of that business?
Next came figuring out how to reach that time and place which meant looking for a certain pokémon famous for being able to jump through time.
Before him, hidden deep in Eterna Forest, the unearthly sounds of the passage of time covered by the wind in the trees and the wooden chimes, Emmet quaked as he once had when was a boy still afraid of the dark. He quaked when the tear opened wider, shining with a terrifying god-like ethereal glow. He quaked when he felt a pressure like two pairs of invisible hands grasp his shoulders as if to hold him steady.
Caboose, the shiny Celebi that Emmet had (albeit a bit viciously) coerced into helping him, flittered nervously before the glowing archway. Its shiny glittering wings buzzed like static, a noise that Emmet clung to as he drew closer. He reached out a shaking hand. Caboose, ever attention-seeking, rubbed its cheek against his hand before settling down in the comfortable folds of his jacket.
Everything was ready. With a deep breath, Emmet steeled his nerves and took his last step forward. He felt the cool dampness of Eterna Forest rush away from him in a cacophony of shrill screeches, a terrifying frost lancing across his limbs as he was pulled forward. He shut his eyes tight. Nothing made sense around him. He was too afraid to look. A tiny part of his mind screamed at him to keep his eyes shut as he could sense something before him that no mortal should ever behold.
And almost as soon as he could think, his foot met something soft and slightly squishy. The noise of the portal vanished. Emmet cracked open an eye.
He was met by the visage of the forest. Eterna Forest. It was still night but where the sky was once clear, it swam with swirling clouds, faint thunder rolling through the sky. Even the topography of the woods were different than the modern forest he had spent an entire week studying and referencing. Where the forest was once thin and clear of debris had become jagged trees. The forest was littered with small cliffs and moss-covered boulders.
Emmet grinned. I am in Hisui. He took a step forward. Then another. In no time, he was marching full speed through the woods, making his way down the snowy slopes as Caboose tailed after him. He didn't care for the noise that he made. He didn't care for the feeling that something was watching him.
Ingo was there, somewhere, and Emmet wouldn't dare slow down his engine until he found him. And after all, Emmet liked winning more than anything. Anything.