Daemon AU where the twins’ daemons are Chandelure and Eelektross. In this AU daemon-touching is a lot more casual than it's in the His Dark Materials books; it's still very intimate, but it's not unusual for family members or even close friends to do it.
The twist is that when Ingo gets thrown into Hisui, it's Eelektross that ends up with him, while Chandelure stays in Unova with Emmet. It's kind of like what HDM witches go through, or that thing which is spoilers for Amber Spyglass. So, not severed, but still separated, and it's super painful when it happens. The shock of it derails Ingo's and Eelektross's memories. They retain faint connections to Chandelure and Emmet respectively, but nothing more than extremely vague general emotional states.
Everyone in Hisui assumes Eelektross is Ingo's daemon, and they're like ‘that doesn't sound right but I don't know enough about me to dispute it’. It does feel nice when they cuddle, like getting a mental hug on top of the physical one, and touching another person's daemon is supposed to be uncomfortable (especially for the Pearl Clan which probably has stricter taboos against daemon touching), and like. Ingo obviously has a daemon and Eelektross obviously is a daemon. There's no other explanation that makes sense. They don't have that telepathic bond that people and their daemons are supposed to have, but that must be due to the amnesia.
(And sometimes – frequently – they both feel that ‘mental hug’ sensation out of the blue. They have no idea what's causing it, but it feels nice. It feels like being loved. When they cuddle, they hope that whoever's sending them mental hugs can feel it too.)
Emmet and Chandelure are! Not doing very well at all! But at least they know that Ingo and Eelektross aren't dead, because if they were, they'd be dead too. And they can tell that Ingo and Eelektross are together, wherever they are. Chandelure never leaves Emmet's side, and between that and Eelektross missing, there is a lot of speculation by the public; is this Ingo pretending to be Emmet for whatever reason? Was Chandelure always Emmet's daemon, and they've faked it the other way for all this time? Did Emmet somehow steal Ingo's daemon? Emmet and Chandelure don't care what people think. They're long past caring.
And when they eventually reunite, the instant they see each other again, for Ingo and Eelektross everything just clicks in one instant, everything that has ever felt wrong about themselves being answered. All four of them are getting both the literal and figurative other halves of their souls back at the same time. And when they all collapse in a pile of happy tears, they finally feel whole again.
"Yup! A classification for the trio of Caterpie, Wurmple, and Snom, but colloquially among bug-type enthusiasts, refers to the general body type associated with such Pokémon."
"Ah, I believe I have heard you use the term before. Which Pokémon with the worm body type would you be in this scenario?"
"None of them! I am the Platonic ideal of the concept of worm. The body type pared down to its essentials. Also I am as small as a Joltik. Because I said so."
"I see. And I assume I am unable to turn you back to your normal self?"
"That is part of the premise, yep!"
"Very well. I would of course love you with all my heart, whether you are a Caterpie, Wurmple, Snom, or any unspecified worm-shaped Pokémon."
"Aww. Will you keep me in a Poké Ball? Or let me ride around on your shoulder?"
"I will do better. I will get you the biggest, sturdiest apple I can find."
"So that I can be an Applin!"
"Not quite. The next thing I will do, is turn myself into the same worm that you are. It is important that we match, after all!"
"Oh! And we will be a Dipplin, the two of us!"
"Indeed! A two-worm apple, if you will."
"I will carve it out as I wait for you. Our apple will be the best apple ever!"
"Of course it will! I have absolute faith in you to make the perfect apple interior for us."
I’ve been playing around with thoughts about a ffxiv au, if only because the seventh calamity (og) warrior of light memory wipe thing has too much potential to not make use of, but also if Ingo is one of the og warriors of light and Emmet is not then Loisoix’s time warp would make them different ages and I Don’t Like That. So then if I’m to make use of the memory wipe thing then they both have to have been fighting in that battle at Carteneau and both teleported to the future.
Much rambling under the cut
Disclaimer that I don’t play ffxiv in English so I might be wording things a bit weirdly. And the wiki won’t tell me what the english term for the memory wipe thing is so I’m going to keep calling it that.
So I have vague memories of, during the super early arr portion of the msq, a light party of people who were there at Carteno and lost their memories of each other? And there was a background subplot where it started with one of them in the Waking Sands, looking for the party members they couldn’t remember but knew existed, and then the rest of the party wandered in one by one and they were all confused and hardly remembered each other but still were sure they were the battle-forged friends their heart was missing
So going off that, if Ingo and Emmet were both teleported they wouldn’t remember each other. They would still miss each other, might even know that it’s their twin they’re missing, but wouldn’t be able to remember anything in detail. So they’re both sadly wandering around Eorzea looking for their missing brother
And like what if, since they’re missing their brother so badly, they subconsciously register their own reflection more as the other’s face than themselves. So it falls under the memory wipe thing and they can’t see their own reflection. Even their memory of their own appearance is blurred.
A slight digression about what their jobs would be: so the obvious one would be BLM/WHM pair, and I do like the idea of that, especially if Ingo is the WHM and Emmet is the BLM but Ingo still dresses black and Emmet dresses white. Analysing a fight to figure out the optimal position to go into turret mode seems very Emmet, and I love the idea of Ingo rescuing him out of an AOE with perfect timing. Also Ingo would make such a good healer. (So would Emmet tbh but for different reasons. Healer-Emmet would be the king of giving everyone just enough heals and shields to survive and not a single bit more. Everyone would be living on the barest sliver of health until his ogcd skills come back up)
But for this particular AU I want to say that they’re both RDM, and what if they get to have access to each other’s mana gauges. It lets them focus on using black/white magic according to their preferences, or let one of them have a super extended melee cycle
So even when they’re separated they’re aware of each other’s gauges. It takes them a while to figure out what it is, why their second gauge randomly goes up and down, but once they do realise that the second gauge is their brother’s, they know it means that their brother is in combat somewhere. There’s at least one situation where one of them feels the other in combat and rushes over to the nearest training dummy to dump as much mana as he can into his brother’s gauge
Also there are two identical-looking Red Mages going around Eorzea saying that he’s looking for his brother, at least some people would assume that they’re the same person who uses two names
I don’t know what the best way for them to reunite would be— maybe they’d randomly run across each other, maybe near the railcart tracks in Thanalan, and immediately recognise each other and rush into each other’s arms;
or one of them is in battle with a FATE boss or something and the other jumps in to help, they’d have jumped in to help any random adventurer but something in them is calling out that this one in particular they have to help, and they fall into sync beside each other perfectly without giving it a second thought;
or, milking the premise for all it’s worth (at the risk of making them seem like massive idiots but let’s say the perception filter from the memory wipe thing is just that strong) what if they do meet but don’t recognise each other right away. They have a brief conversation and start to go their own ways but stop in their tracks because their instincts are screaming that they can’t let this person just walk away, so they decide to team up, do a couple quests together, with all those moments of subconsciously leaning into each other, brushing hands, huddling together during cold nights, wanting to keep each other in sight constantly, and they’re so confused by these emotions and desires until they finally (finally) realise;
And now that they have their brother right by their side, their face in the mirror is no longer a representation of their missing brother’s face but their own, so they look into the mirror together and finally can see themselves, and both their faces are smiling equally widely in their own way
–
The other idea I have involves Lightwarden!Ingo being rescued by Emmet. This one could actually be a Pokeverse-based isekai, where Pokeverse-Ingo gets isekaid into the First and go through some adventuring and mishaps that results in him being turned into a lightwarden in some kind of Heroic Sacrifice(tm), and then Emmet manages to isekai himself in pursuit of Ingo and kinda gets picked up by the Scions of the Seventh Dawn (this is all during the Shadowbringers era obviously), and more vague stuff happens involving Emmet being told that what’s left is just a shell of his brother’s body but Chandelure insists that no, Ingo is still there, and so Emmet will find a way to bring him back no matter what, with some handwavy explanation involving Chandelure’s bond with both twins and how Ingo’s soul wasn’t shattered so he’s more resistant to the lightwardening-ness, and ultimately Emmet expels the light from Ingo and brings him back through the Power Of Love/Dynamis
Okay but this thing looks so much like Emmet. And it's goofy enough so it could be a Pokémon, so say it's an extinct Pokémon that only has incomplete fossils so can't be revived. Ingo sees the needle felt doll and thinks it's the cutest thing ever, buys one and puts it on his office desk. Emmet is lowkey annoyed by it because he does see the resemblance and it looks so silly. He commisions a custom frowny version that looks just as silly and puts it next to the smiley one, maybe to annoy Ingo a little bit (but also because the smiley one looked a little lonely by itself), but Ingo thinks the frowny one is also cute and dotes even more on the pair. One of the depot agents makes small hats for them and by that point Emmet has to admit that, okay, maybe they're sort of cute.
When Ingo goes missing Emmet can't bring himself to touch anything on Ingo's desk, so the pair just sit there gathering dust and Emmet feels like screaming every time he sees them (seeing them side by side is like a stab to his heart but he still thanks the Dragons that his past self got the frowny one made because if he had to see the smiley one on Ingo's desk by itself it would really have shattered him)
Then Ingo comes back, and once he's acclimatised enough to Unova to come look at Gear Station Emmet takes him to their office, and Ingo immediately zeroes in on the fish and shouts about how adorable they are, they look just like you and me, look at their cute little hats— and Emmet bursts out crying, and yes he's done a lot of crying since Ingo came back but this isn't even an emotional moment, he's crying over the stupid fish
And Ingo doesn't quite know why Emmet is crying, but he does know it's not really about the fish, and he holds Emmet as he sobs his eyes out
This is strictly based on r/s/e so the psychic twins are like eleven years old, not seven
Laventon finds them on the beach and takes them to Cyllene when they tell him they're from Hoenn, they figure out pretty quickly that they've been displaced in time, Cyllene agrees to take in the twins (because what else is she going to do, they have nowhere to go and they're too young to be told to earn their keep, they might not be from this time but they're still from Hoenn) but she's busy all the time and doesn't really have the temperament to take care of kids anyway so Laventon ends up as their primary caretaker, though Cyllene still tries to spend time with them
Laventon doesn't give them Pokemon at first because they're eleven and Pokemon are dangerous, but they're Gym Leaders, they're good at what they do, they befriend Cyllene's Abra immediately, and although other types aren't their specialty they still start training Laventon's 3 starters since they're around, and Laventon eventually gives the starters to them
Laventon starts taking them on field expeditions because they're so good with Pokemon and he reckons they're a little more capable of defending themselves than other kids their age due to their psychic abilities (and Cyllene lets them take her Abra with them when they do) and the ride Wyrdeer immediately latches onto them, they also befriend a Mime Jr which they insist on taking home with them, much to Laventon's consternation
A couple of Unown also start following them around as well, nobody has any idea what the Unown are but the psychic twins love them
Zisu absolutely adores them and joke-threatens to steal them away from Cyllene several times, to which Cyllene replies she'll take them over her dead body
People keep calling Tate a tomboy which he hates (and so does Liza), they have to keep convincing each other not to drop rocks on people's heads with their minds because Laventon told them to keep their psychic abilities a secret, when Cyllene realises what's going on she glares at people with one hand on her sword until they start using the right pronouns for him
When the Nobles start getting frenzied, not even Kamado is willing to send eleven-year-olds to fight enraged giant Pokemon, but Wyrdeer himself requests their help and nobody can say anything to that
The psychic twins themselves are super hyped for it because eleven-year-olds think they're invincible (especially those with psychic powers), and they're also Gym Leaders, they've been dying for a proper battle that's not against each other
Every other adult around them is. Not so hyped. Cyllene insists on accompanying them (Lian and Mai tell her that she is not to use her sword on Lord Kleavor under any circumstances) abd Laventon trails behind her wringing his hands in worry
The psychic twins of course pull of the quelling perfectly, they're not scared of Kleavor, their aces back home are Solrock and Lunatone, they're used to rocks being thrown around, they have no idea how close they came to getting seriously injured and all the adults are trying to recover from heart attacks
They eventually meet Ingo and he breaks down in tears seeing them, he doesn't know why he's crying, they don't know why he's crying
Once they figure out Ingo is actually a really good battler, they reckon he's good enough for them to pull out their preferred battle format, that weird double-multi hybrid battle thing that I have no idea if it will be considered fair in-universe, and Ingo sees the identical twins challenging him as a pair and breaks down all over again (and they don't get to battle that day because Ingo is just that much distraught by it)
(And because I need the train twins to be reunited. Emmet eventually finds his way into Hisui and Ingo finally realises why he got so worked up over seeing the psychic twins. They do twins vs. twins multibattle matches which the psychic twins lose most of the time because as talented as they are they still have limited experience. Everyone has so much fun though.)
One crossover I've been thinking about ever since getting on the submas train is one with Kamen Rider Den-O. They have time-travelling trains. There's that theme of memory (specifically other people's memory of you) as something that sustains a person's existence. They have magic time-travelling trains. I just want Emmet to somehow find himself in the sands of time and be picked up by the Denliner crew, go through some shenanigans, then eventually get to Hisui. And when it's time for them to go back, the moment Ingo and Emmet step into the sands of time together a train platform appears out of thin air, tracks laying themselves down, and a black-and-white two-car train rolls up in front of them. The train jingle is the first four notes of the subway trainer battle theme. I don't know I just want them to have a time train of their own.
I will never be able to actually write this because I can't write the Den-O crew in English and I can't write the train twins in anything but English. But I do think about it a lot.
