This was a lot to process all at once. Tsade, alive, and working for the very people he had once helped save them from. Of course, that was on top of Kit basically being spirit MIA, and Waw taking her place.
Dav let out a half-sigh as he leaned back against the wall, pushing his hair back from his face and tangling his fingers in it. The revelation that they could well be being actively hunted was hanging over him like a suffocating haze, making his heart pound as elaborate scenarios flashed through his mind, all ending very, very badly. The others continued talking, but they may as well have been under water for all that he understood them.
Finally he blurted out “We have to prepare, right? In case he comes back or something?”
“Yeah. Nobody’s taking us back.” Gavin said, quietly, and with as serious an expression as anyone in the room had ever seen him with.
Waw nodded in agreement, followed shortly by Kineta. Serious as the subject was, it wasn’t hard to agree.
“Oh! But we didn’t mention we saw Resh!” Kineta chimed in, seemingly trying to put a positive spin on the sombre atmosphere.
“You said that was her at the Chateau, right?” Waw responded. “Pretty sure you battled her at one point. And then she helped out during the whole thing. Don’t really know if she recognised us, but...”
“I think she did! She’s the one that saved you from the lake!”
“Where’d she go after that?”
“I didn’t--”
Kineta’s expression dropped nervously after a second, as she somewhat realised her choice of subject may not have helped raise the mood after all.
“I didn’t see her come back out after her Pokémon brought you to the surface. I-I’m sure she’s fine though! It went back in after her, and she seems a very confident swimmer!”
Where Gavin answered, Dav just nodded silently. He had a mixed bag of feelings about this conversation, but wasn’t about to air them all openly.
Grover’s thanks made his gut twist with guilt, he didn’t deserve such kind words for the way he acted back then. In reality, his teasing and picking on Kit had probably made her life harder, and intentions aside, that didn’t deserve thanks.
“I’m glad you found each other.” He answered quietly while glancing around, half searching for where Kit’s room might be, half avoiding eye contact.
“Thank you, we are as well.” Grover seemed to notice Dav’s discomfort, and motioned towards the stairs with an apologetic smile. “Her room is just upstairs, I believe I’ve held you two up long enough.”
“Ah, no problem. Thanks again for having us.” Dav took the out, and quickly ducked from the conversation with a bit of a wave before both he and Gavin made their way upstairs. The door he assumed led to Kit’s room was already open a crack, but he decided he should probably knock anyways. “Hey, Kit? Kineta? We’re here.”
“You can come in.” a voice answered. One that neither of the pair recognised. Was there somebody else over that hadn’t been mentioned? Either way, the boys pushed the door open and stepped inside.
Where they were greeted with the sight of Kineta just barely finishing throwing her usual shirt on, before glancing over at the two of them with another look of panic.
“Yo. Is that other girl gone already?” Gavin asked, opting to ignore the obvious once again.
“Yes!” Kineta answered, a little too quickly. “She just left! Just now! Th-through the window! She was in a hurry!”
Gavin wandered over to the window and peeked out of it, before glancing down at the latch.
“Ain’t this locked though?”
“She locked it behind herself on the way out!! It was very impressive!! Sorry you missed it!!”
Turning around to face back into the room, Gavin glanced around the room. He had to admit that it was decorated exactly the way he’d imagine Kit would. It was, first of all, quite large. Or so it seemed to one who spends their live living in a cave. Her bed threatened to be larger than what passed for their entire bedroom, and was decorated in a handful of small plush Pokémon, the standout of which was a Shinx, which almost looked real.
This was all ignoring the elephant in the room, of course. Or rather, the stranger sat on the bed. As in Kit’s expected place, there was somebody else. Almost identical to Kit in every way, but with a very different aura to them.
As if picking up on Gavin’s confusion, Kineta calmed herself down from her panicked state and approached them.
“Um, Gavin, Davin, this is...” she began, somewhat nervously, before the stranger cut her off.
“It’s okay. I’ll explain it.” they said, sighing and standing up, making it obvious that whoever this was, they also shared Kit’s height on top of the physical similarities.
“...fuck, where do I even start...? Okay, I guess first... Kit, she’s fine. So don’t worry, she’s just... she’s resting, I guess.”
“But she’s not here?” Gavin asked, a little confused. “Even though this is her room?”
“I don’t really know how to say this without it sounding crazy, but she’s me. Or, her body is. I don’t know how it happened, but I’m Waw. Me and Qoph -- Kit -- we’re like one body, but two people.”
Hearing the door open, Davin turned back, expecting one of Kit’s family members to be there, but seeing Kineta’s familiar pink hair was a surprise that lit up his face. Her outfit had him a little confused, but before he could say anything, Gav had already done so. He gave Gavin an incredulous look that went unnoticed, but decided to let it go, it would be much funnier to tease him about it later.
He looked to the dark haired man that had taken Kineta’s place and gave his best polite smile, shrugging the fallen side of his hoodie back over his shoulder in a failed attempt to look presentable.
“Yeah, that’s us. Thanks for letting us see them.” Dav stepped inside past the other man. “You must be Kit’s brother, right? We’ve heard a bit about you from her,” His smile shifted into something more genuine. “All good things. I would make a joke, but they were literally all good things.”
“That’s right, I am. You can just call me Grover.” he responded, returning the smile back at the duo, before laughing a little at Davin’s comment.
“I've heard a little about you too. Forgive me for bringing it up, but you’re from... the same place she was raised, aren’t you?”
“So you know about that, huh...” Gavin answered, a little quieter than usual. “Yeah. We’re from there. Still got the scars, too.”
“Well, it may not be worth much, but you have my sincerest thanks for taking care of her all that time we couldn’t. And here you are even now, checking in on her. I really couldn’t be more grateful to you.”
Gavin was somewhat taken aback. It wasn’t exactly common for him to be thanked by people like this. Even working as a server in a restaurant, most of the ‘thanks’ he got were half-assed platitudes at best.
“Uh. Yeah. No problem. I mean, she’s like family to us too.”
Davin had been mostly quiet for the entire trip, his eyes glazed over and his thoughts plagued with equal parts anxiety and focus on staying corporeal against his body’s will. He barely even registered that they had arrived in Lumiose and walked all the way to Santalune.
The Noire home would definitely have intimidated him if he were in any other state of mind, but as it was he didn’t even notice Gavin stop to admire the house as he continued to the door and knocked with no thought beyond the goal of seeing Kineta and Kit.
“Hm?” He turned back upon hearing Gavin speak, and gave him a confused smile “That’s oddly specific.” As he looked around to see if he could confirm the vibe, it was obvious that he was only then truly taking in their surroundings. “This is kind of a high class place though, huh. Cave fashion doesn’t really fit in here.” He looked pointedly down at the flannel pajama pants and paint stained hoodie he didn’t feel were worth changing out of when they left in a hurry, but then just shrugged in way that said ‘what can ya do?’.
“Hey, at least you make up for it with a good face. People dig the ‘handsome starving artist’ look.”
It was a low-quality quip at best, but what else could he do? Kit hadn’t exactly been super clear in her message, but what she had communicated had them both worried, and reading the news updates on the way over had only worsened it. From what he had understood, there had been some kind of attempted robbery at the place the girls were hanging out for the day, and afterwards they had gotten into some kind of fight that ended with Kit having to be pulled from the lake by a stranger, and Kineta unconscious.
Before either of them could speak further, the door was answered. To Gavin’s surprise, it was neither one of Kit’s parents, nor her brother that answered the door. Instead, it was a young woman about Kineta’s height, dressed from head to toe in vivid orange.
“Oh! It’s you two! We were waiting for you!” she greeted, with a friendly smile.
“...d’we know you?” Gavin asked, after an awkward pause. She seemed like a nice enough girl, but he was pretty sure he had never met anyone that looked like this before in his life. Yep, sure of it, in fact.
Staring back at the two boys in confusion, her hand slowly raised to touch the goggles covering her eyes. With sudden panic, the girl screamed wordlessly and ran up the stairs behind her with blinding speed, leaving Gavin, at least, very confused.
“You’ll have to forgive that.” a new voice said, as a rather handsome man approached the door. “Things have been a little complicated today. I believe she’s just confused.”
“You two are Kit’s friends, yes? I recognize you from her descriptions. Please, come in. They’re in her room.”
Looking at the building, Gavin felt completely out of place.
Compared to a small cave dug into a rock in the middle of a rarely-travelled Route, the Noire home was positively grandiose -- although in truth the building was little more than a slightly-above-average, well-cared-for, two-storey house.
It blended in perfectly with the others buildings in Santalune City, but something about knowing the owners made the place stick out - at least in Gavin’s mind. If it wasn’t for a string of coincidences that had led their little group of former Infinity Project subjects to reunite, there was no chance that a man like him would show up at a place like this.
“I feel like the kid at the start of a movie who broke his neighbour’s window and is about to get into some real deep shit when he goes in to apologise...”
Wow, Gavin, that is an incredibly specific feeling.
“You’re… kidding, right? This is a joke?
…Who am I kidding, of course you’re serious…
You do remember Poké Balls exist? You know, the round capsules human society literally revolves around and has done for the last fifty years?”
”...”
Oof, that is a loud silence.
“Yeah.
Yeah I could do that.
Definitely a thing I coulda done. Y’know. Instead of spending two days building a leaf couch.”
“And you’re just, like, okay with that? I’m pretty sure living with a wild Pokémon isn’t exactly the safest thing…”
“Bruh what am I meant to do about it? If you think convincing a five-foot-tall monkey to leave is so easy, you can do it, I left my Monkey Net in my other cave.”
“The monkey is a sign… You have been chosen… congratulations.”
“Like... by the monkey? ‘cause I’m pretty sure all he’s chosen is a life of crime. He’s just rummaging through the drawers taking stuff and I’m kinda afraid to stop him.”
“Can you prove that is not how people work? I am a person. I have skin. I think I know what I am talking about.”
“But fine. If you are such a lazy coward, you are undeserving of whatever benefits you would have gained. Maybe the rock will come alive and crawl down your throat and evolve you in the night. Or in the day, since you said Sun Stone. They are only able to live during the day.”
“As a human-shape incarnation of plants you’re not even old enough to hear the names of, I’m calling you out on that.”
“And anyway, not a coward. Just a working dude who doesn’t have time to go off on an adventure looking for Razzledorf the Human Gloom and his order of spaghetti carbonara. I gotta go to work. Give them spaghetti. My shitty cave home don’t pay its own electric bills.”
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