Chapter Text
It isn’t often you happen across somebody passed out in a ditch.
A young researcher in west Sinnoh does just that, one breezy day in early summer.
It’s an otherwise unassuming day, and Saya Imai is hiking from one collection site to another, many labelled samples of riverbed sediment and even more empty containers in tow. At one point during her hike, just a few minutes short of her next station, she notices something odd in the shallow drainage channel running along her path.
She quickly realizes it is, in fact, a human person.
A still one.
Fortunately for everybody, she does what she has been trained to do, and instantly radios her site supervisor.
“Ah.. Excuse me, Leader, do you.. do you have a moment?”
Gardenia immediately perks up from her own collection work at the blip from her pokétch, and beams when she hears the voice at the other end. Her enthusiasm to respond makes her drop the task at hand, quite literally, and dirt gets all over the charts on her clipboard. Her assistant sighs from where he’s fiddling with indicator strips.
“Always for you, Saya! What’s up?”
“There’s a… well, there’s a person… in a ditch…”
This is not what she expected on a Thursday morning.
“A… person? As in one of our people? Is somebody hurt?”
“I-I don’t know who it is.”
This is not what she expected on a Thursday morning.
“Are they conscious?”
There are a few seconds of no reply, and something about them makes a strange dread begin siphoning itself into Gardenia’s stomach.
Leave it to the girl with the most intense fear of medical procedures Gardenia has ever witnessed to find the unresponsive stranger in the woods.
“I… don't think so? I mean, their chest is moving, but they look really, really pale, and they’re all curled up on their side in a weird position.”
Breathing is good, but it’s not good enough.
“Saya, where are you?”
“I-I’m a few minutes upstream from collection station twelve, along the gravel path, I… I don’t-”
“Saya, I need you to stay calm, stay put, and update me immediately if anything else happens.” Gardenia instructs, unlatching a pokéball from her belt. “I’m two minutes away.”
“I understand,” Saya responds.
Gardenia barely has to summon Musa, her Tropius, for him to be set for takeoff. She climbs onto his back with the urgent version of her usual practiced precision, hollers the gist of the situation at her assistant, and then she’s in the sky.
She holds onto Musa with her thighs and sheer force of will, both hands on her pokétch to contact emergency services. By the time she’s provided all the necessary information and a dispatch has been confirmed, Musa is already descending, dipping back down beneath the treetops into vivid greenery and scattered sunlight.
They land hard on the gravel a short distance from Saya and her Kadabra, Knolls, who is ready for action at her side.
Sure enough, there’s a very still, very silent figure curled up in the drainage channel some feet from her. Gardenia wastes no time in dismounting and running towards them.
“Leader Gardenia, please be careful!” Saya calls, also approaching the figure, albeit with more hesitance. “It might be a hostile pokémon’s trap!”
“Not likely enough to take the caution!” Gardenia responds, already in the ditch and kneeling beside their stranger. A young... man, she decides, baby-faced, with shockingly long, pale hair caught on everything around him there is to catch on. Saya’s right; he is breathing, albeit feebly. Gardenia tilts his head back carefully and presses three fingers to his throat, and he has a pulse, which is also weak, but makes her entire body halfway deflate in relief.
Saya turns her whole body away from the procedures taking place. To her credit, she seems to know exactly what she can handle, and Gardenia would admire that in literally any other set of circumstances.
She takes a deep breath, consciously engaging her diaphragm. “My name is Gardenia Brassica, and I am certified in first aid. Are you okay?”
He doesn’t respond, so she pinches his exposed hand with her nails, once, twice, three times. Nothing.
Luckily, he’s already on his side on relatively even ground, so it is a one person job to arrange his limbs to properly support his spine. She’s almost done, gently bending his hip to the proper angle, when something falls over his thigh, attached to his belt loops by what appears to be a heavily tarnished but sturdy silver chain.
It’s some sort of sectioned cube, gold with elaborate but oddly familiar patterns, much shiner than what tethers it to its owner. The black panels in the centre of the cube’s faces are particularly eye-catching; each has an identical symbol engraved into it, fluid and masterful and ageless. It almost looks like–
Gardenia goes rigid where she kneels.
Time screeches to a deafening halt while she stares at that symbol, its irregularities, its open curves.
It can’t be.
“Oh, no.”
Saya whips around.
“Oh... oh, no. What if- I can’t let–! Fuck! ”
“Leader?!”
Knolls suddenly looks up, eyeing the flock of Noctowl approaching. Several have passengers, and several are working together to transport what appears to be a hefty amount of medical equipment.
No matter what, she cannot let law enforcement find this stranger, at the very, very least until she has contacted others who know much more than herself.
“Saya,” Gardenia begins, voice quivering, “Please make Knolls move this person as far away from us as he can.”
“What? As far as possible? That’s kilometres, why-”
“Do it!”
“Okay-! Knolls, the stranger! As far as you can! Teleport!”
Knolls seems to sense the urgency, making a small but hasty gesture, and there is very suddenly no man before her, a weak and rapidly dissipating pink glow where his figure was moments before.
Gardenia starts trembling all over, hanging her head slowly. For every bit Saya looks afraid, she looks twice as bewildered.
“Leader–”
“No time. He’s not real. Understood?"
Saya stutters, but the flock of Noctowl are soon making their own hasty landings around Musa, two police officers and two paramedics dismounting.
“Leader Gardenia?” The man at the front of the group calls out to her, approaching the scene. “Officer Alex Fischer, accompanied by officer Katsuya Eitarou. You called about an unconscious individual your colleague discovered?”
Gardenia nods slowly, not looking at them.
“Where is the individual?”
“He’s-” Saya begins precariously and far too helpfully.
“I don’t think he was real,” Gardenia cuts her off, voice wracked with omissive terror.
“Not real?” Fischer frowns, and turns towards Saya. “What were you going to say…Imai, if I remember correctly?”
Saya stutters. “I’m- I don’t-”
Gardenia doesn’t move, not really, but glares with such intensity from her crumpled posture in the grass that Saya’s words seem to tangle even tighter in her throat. She swallows, doesn’t make eye contact, takes a deep breath.
“It was so scary, he seemed really hurt, but he just… vanished, before you got here. I think we fell victim to some sort of mind-altering move from a hostile pokémon.” She looks down, dips her head in apology. “I’m really sorry for the trouble.”
Eitarou sighs.
Fischer casts him a glance. “It’s alright, miss. You and Leader Gardenia did the right thing, you know.”
Saya turns a bit green.
“Trick or not, we’d like the full story, and based on the information provided, we may conduct a search of the area. This region is no stranger to odd occurrences and, well… disappearances. We like to keep a thorough, indexed tab on them.”
Saya smiles a little. “I’d be happy to.”
“Excellent.” Fischer turns to the paramedics. “Can we get Leader Gardenia here a fuckin’ shock blanket, please?”