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1495-gauge · 16 days

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There's a dead man wandering the wastes. He wears nothing of the clans, his own symbols unusual and foreign.

He's lost, and the zoroark thus have claim.

They watch.

Lost, roaming, hungry. They've seen it all before, know every sign. He barely shivers anymore. He doesn't see them, settled into the fog as they are.

They watch as he stumbles into other pokemon, getting chased off, too slow and clumsy. Stupid.

They watch as he walks with no clear goal. Through land that is not his.

The thing about ghosts, about staying past death, is there are rules.

They shepherd him until the flickering light of the clan's lanterns are visible on the horizon. There must always be an option. They set their trap.

A kit, illusioned to look frail and hurt, buried half in the snow. No human could resist scooping it up and wringing its neck. They know. They've seen.

And the man stops. Croons. Leans down, takes the kit in his arms, gentle. They watch as he tucks the kit into his coat. They watch as every touch he lays upon it is soft. They watch as he turns to the lights, and starts taking the kit towards it.

Inviting a massacre.

So very stupid.

Sharing his precious body heat to bring a trophy, how foul.

It is night, which means there is no one outside when he reaches the camp. This is changed by his howls.

The zoroark don't understand words.

They understand intent.

The man does not cry for victory.

They watch.

Clan members stumble out of their tents. Woken, with spears.

They see the stupid man, and they point their weapons at him.

His booming voice falters. The clan speaks a tune the zoroark have always heard: back, back, beast, monster, wrong, dangerous, evil.

Back, back.

Get out.

The man cries again, help, help, hurt child. A child has been hurt. It needs help.

And like a zoroark, he is exiled from the camp in seconds.

Unlike a zoroark, he does not try to burn it down.

He tucks the kit more firmly into his coat, and resumes his aimless travel.

They watch.

He finds some too-small winter berries. He feeds two to the kit, pockets the rest. He does not bother for himself.

They are... curious.

A kit or two slips out of the mist. Play the eager foolish mutt, like the garish things begging at clan heels. He kneels, and gives the rest of his meager food away but one. One, which goes not to him, but the kit again.

The zorua pretend that they don't know the fog rolling in is full of claws. They yap and pull at his clothing, urging him into the woods. He follows. Stupid.

The zorua lead him to the den.

The first kit slips out of his arms, illusion falling away. It slips into the mist, convenes with them. A burgeoning mass of confused hatred.

He does not run.

Stupid. If they knew the word, it would be kind.

The Mother wakes.

Iridia shivers. Not from the cold, not even in the pitch of a new moon.

Unintelligible almost-words ring in her ears. A human sort of emotion choking behind the animal tongue.

It has been a long time since the zoroark have gotten so bold as to encroach upon the camp.

In a strange form, too. Too tall, too long. Dressed in no clothes she'd ever seen. Its illusion falling apart at the seams — reflective eyes, even the glimmer of a third. White hands. Blood dripping from the everpresent spiritual wounds.

Its own mane bursting from its chest.

Something was very, very wrong with it.

Iridia isn't a fool. She had seen the fogbank surrounding the camp. If they were to send their elders here to die, she would have no part in it. She knows better than to invite that malice.

It would be a trap, either way.

Still, she mourns. The hatred, its festering. She thinks of the senile zoroark, and she does not sleep.

#submas #ingo #warden ingo #pokemon iridia #pokemon ingo #what are tags...#my writing #submas microwave au #setting this up to be so serious. its not #it should be clear that the clan is totally valid for this fyi #like. theyre not evil. just inherited their ancestors sins and tensions and are doing their best

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1495-gauge · 1 month

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You're a medicinal apprentice of the Pearl clan, and today, your clan found a ghost-touched elder out in the snow.

It's your job to help him, even if this too tall man, covered in strange clothing, is babbling in tongues. His hair is a dull grey, his eyes shine vacant, and his extremities are in desperate need for treatment of frostbite.

He's got a head wound. The other healers, you hear them discuss how that must be making it all worse. He looks deceptively young — but he can't be, eyes glowing like a man with a claim on his soul.

None of you know where he could have come from. You're surprised the patrol didn't think he was a zoroark. They probably did. But as you pump his fingers, encouraging sluggish blood back into them, you can feel he is very, very real.

It's a duty, to serve those older than you, even when they're marked like this. The ghost-touched end up like children, tantrums and illogical and lost. Until the ghost that caused it finds the light of the fire it left behind their eyes again, until it can steal them away forever.

You are spending a lot of medicinal resources on a man who will certainly not last the winter.

You believe it's compassion. The clan takes him in, and when he finally remembers a few real words, they welcome in Ingo, to make his stay, however short, kind.

But it's not as short as you expect — as anyone expects.

Each passing day, his twisted words resolve slowly into real language once more. Strange utterances still pepper his speech, but he's becoming knowable. He communicates, his memories have been robbed from him. And everyone believes him, because what else could leave a man so old unable to fend for himself?

You're worried for him. He doesn't remember to be cautious. You patch up his cuts and scrapes he develops from exploring the outskirts of camp, it's spring and he's still here. It would be something to rejoice if his eyes didn't still glow. If his fate wasn't still so very clear.

It's cruel, to draw it out. None of you want him to leave, this kind old man who has forgotten everything, volume control especially, but who plays with the children and does his best to relearn tasks and is that sort of gentle that can only be a product of experience, however lost. None of you want him gone, but it's cruel that the ghost coming for him is taking its time. Letting him regrow a life for himself. Letting others become attached.

You can see how everyone is thinking it, when they look at him more with pity, when they keep a bit of distance. You have no choice, his designated healer now, and he certainly comes to your tent regularly. Not just for healing, but with berries as gifts, little wood carvings that look like they were made by a child as apology for all the work he makes you do. You cannot reject any of it, and the ties anchoring you to this lost soul grow stronger.

You'd feel resentful, but you can't.

Time passes, and come summer, his penchant for being unafraid of the wildlife becomes a problem. He ends up bringing home a gligar, getting poisoned so often he becomes the sole user and contributor to your pecha stores. They may as well be housed with him, but he seems to enjoy checking in on you while halfway to his deathbed due to his companion's stinger. Over time, he comes in less, less due to his companion gaining better control, more due to his own developing immunity.

The day Lady Sneasler chooses him as her warden, many wonder if there was a claim on his soul at all.

But you can't forget how he came here, eyes flashing in the light, bereft of language and life and skills. Even now, he is often nonsensical, well meaning but lost. Meant for the next world.

He takes to it well, and survives to the next winter, and the next, growing his impossible team of companions. You've never seen anyone guide pokemon in the way he does, and you wonder how much of it is that insane lack of fear that could only be caused by having his soul unmoored and his former life stripped away.

When the sky breaks open, the nobles frenzy. You have little time to worry about your favorite patient, because instead you're treating wounds from pokemon that should have never hurt anyone.

He starts to guide people, showing up in the morning, taking them where they need to go — especially through the highlands. From what you've heard, the rift has made the pokemon there untameable. You worry for him, but all you get are reports of how he must be remembering his past as a fierce warrior, because how else could he so confidently command pokemon and people alike? How else could he face off and win against alpha pokemon that attack his caravans, make them his companions as well?

He uses the capture devices that the foreigners in the fieldlands do, and one night, he shows you how the pokemon can escape them on their own — they're more for ease, he says. It's much easier to carry his team like this. You imagine the towering pokemon he's showed you being led through camp, and you agree the balls are a good idea.

The sky turns red, and you don't hear from him.

The sky turns blue, and you don't hear from him.

But he returns, and says he's remembering, now. He'll be staying down with Jubilife, for a while. Battling, helping the foreigner who fell from the sky and calmed Almighty Sinnoh. He says, he may be able to go home.

You don't let him see how those words could bring you to tears. His clock has always been near running out, you knew this. But he had never seemed to.

Eventually, he does his rounds. Says his goodbyes. He's standing up straighter, seeming younger, a last burst of energy, you think. He thanks you, for everything you've done.

He goes to the mountain, and he doesn't come back.

You erect a little memorial in your home, for the man with eyes that glowed far longer than anyone's ever had before. For the man who loved the world, pokemon, battling. You hope, wherever he is beyond this world, he is happy, and safe. That the man he was and the man he became can reconcile. You thank his spirit, for the time it spent in your life, and the next time one of the clan's elders loses their mind to the ghosts of the land, it's him you think of as you care for them.

#submas #i think about the fact that like. idk early onset dementia would seem like suuuuuch a good explanation for ingo #it was interesting to write an outsider pov #who fundamentally misunderstands the situation. but like. still cares deeply #i also tried to consider how a medical condition like that would be viewed before more specific development of diagnoses and how it would #interact with like... pokemon #anyway hard to explain to your healer that youre just an amnesiac from the future when you look like a classic case of 'dislodged soul soon #to be consumed by ghost pokemon'#my writing #i dont normally do 2nd person... it was interesting

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