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what if #6 for the spotify ask game?

hi em! number 6 is quite fun in my opinion :3

so because of one very specific submas animatic, I could not get Ingo Pokemon Arceus/Pokemon B/W out of my head. so I don't think you go here but I could not stop myself <3 I hope you enjoy anyway! (1063 words)

Ingo stretches his legs as he sits in the grass. Akari is perched on her heels beside him, staring off into the distance, squinting against the sun. Ingo runs his hand through the fescue sticking up beside him—he’s tired, warm from sitting in the sun, fighting sleep with every ounce of his body. He hadn’t been getting a lot of that lately, dealing with the Sneasel kits. From her place beside him, Akari hums, her eyebrows furrowing.

“Anything?” Ingo asks. Akari hums again, sounding frustrated.

“Nothing yet,” she says. “We’ll know it as soon as we see it.”

“And what exactly is it?” Ingo asks, more out of curiosity than anything else.

`“It,” Akari emphasizes, trying a sigh to keep the budding disappointment out of her voice. “Is a time dilation. It looks like someone took a huge dome and smacked it over a big piece of the landscape.”

Ingo hums, mouth twisting to the side as his eyes flick tiredly over the landscape. Like… like…

There’s a shimmer, meters off in the distance. Like a mirage, dancing over a wide patch of grass, disrupting a group of sleeping caterpie. Ingo watches them worm away.

“Like that?” he asks. Akari blinks, confused, her eyes following his gesture out into the field. There’s a brief pause, where the air seems to still around them, not by nature of the wind stopping, but as if time itself had begun to bend. Akari takes in a sharp, short breath.

“Yes,” she gasps. Then she grabs Ingo’s wrist, and tugs.

It takes a moment, far longer than Akari yanking him forward, for Ingo to get his feet properly under him. He stumbles down the hill, towed by the child in front of him. This sudden burst of energy seems to travel through them like a rogue static shock, bouncing up his held arm and through his chest, giving him enough startle forward, matching Akari’s pace before she can latch onto him again.

He balances himself as they reach the bottom of the hill, straightening his hat and coat as they wade through the ankle-deep grass. Ingo’s frown only deepens in concern as they continue toward the mirage of light in front of them, still a distance off despite the gap Akari is trying to rapidly close. He feels the air catch in his lungs as he tries his best to keep up.

“What is a time dilation, Akari?”

She throws her voice back at him, trying to catch her breath.

“It’s like—time changes in this one area, and pokemon like you’ve never seen flock to it. Like they were pulled out of some other place. Just like—”

Just like us.

Ingo stumbles, hand clasping Akari’s shoulder as he rightens.

“Right,” he murmurs.

Up close, the distortion of the ground around the purple-white swirls of air seems to come in and out of focus. He can’t see past the field’s reflective surface, but the air feels heavy, like liquid, like water, when he tries to press his hand through. Next to him, Akari takes his hand.

“I thought, maybe…” she starts, looking at him. Ingo swallows. “But maybe it’s a stupid idea.”

“You think it might jog my memory, right?”

Akari blinks, stammering:

“Or, maybe, like, maybe, at least, maybe fill in some gaps! Not… not necessarily fix anything. Just maybe make something… clearer. Like stilling the water, y’know?”

Ingo sighs, smiling ever so. It’s honestly not a bad idea.

As he presses through the glassy surface, Akari at his hip, it gives to a churning sensation through his stomach and a lightheadedness in his head. He stumbles as they righten on solid, hazy ground.

The air around them feels much thicker than it is. Akari was right—the field ahead of them is full of pokemon from outside of Hisui—shapes Ingo barely recognizes, and some that aren’t familiar at all. The ground is littered in shards of pottery, or glass, all smooth and colorful as they crouch behind a sizeable rock outcrop. Ingo feels… mostly himself, as of current, but there’s something on the edge of his mind that tugs, that he can’t quite place. He frowns against it, and Akari gives his shoulder a nudge.

“Anything?” she asks. He hums quietly.

“I don’t know.”

She hums back.

“Okay—keep chasing that feeling,” she says, straightening. She peers around the side of the rock, eyeing the field ahead of her. Ingo blinks, startled all at once by Akari’s sudden movement.

“Wait—”

Before he can grab onto Akari’s sleeve, she bolts from beside him, and, at the same time, Ingo feels a sudden, violent wave of nausea pass over him. The world swims hazy grey, like the stone behind him, except the stone is gone, and the floor is solid under his back instead, and the floor is floor, not soft field grass. And light is bright, but not sun-bright, and certainly not the purpled fuzz of daylight through the dilation. Fluorescent bright. He tries to stand, but his strength escapes him, pain finding purchase at the base of his skull. There’s a voice calling out to him, far from his reach, far from the lungs that try unsuccessfully to breathe air and call back out. He tries anyway, even as the memory of a place he should know blurs at the edges.

Maybe he’s not lying down on the floor. Maybe he’s moving. Maybe he’s rocking, synced in time with the motion of the floor under him. Maybe he’s upright, sitting, standing, but the world around him looks like it’s through foggy glass. Like a dream he can’t quite hold onto properly, like an event misremembered. He tries to grab at the semblance of anything, of the memory he’s being forced to recollect, and it tastes so familiar. But it’s so far away.

He can’t remember any of the faces he’s trying to see, even this close. Even the one he’s supposed to remember. The one he knows is like his own.

Ingo forces his legs under him, even as the world bends. The edges of memory become the concrete sensations of rock and grass and the sound of Akari’s delight. And the violent spin of Ingo’s head as he stands upright.

The mirage flickers around him and through him as he stumbles backward out of the dome. As his feet hit the solid, familiar earth of the field behind them, Ingo collapses.

(send me a number between 1-100 and I'll try to write you a fic!)

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