Chapter Text
It had been a great day on the Doubles Line, yup! A lot of trainers had made it to Emmet, and many of them had won, too! The ones who lost hadn’t been too upset, either— one Youngster in particular was verrrrry adamant that he would come back and win the right to challenge the Super Doubles Line! (Emmet hoped he had enough badges for those tracks.)
Overall, it had been the sort of day that reminded Emmet of how much he loved his job. He could hardly wait to finish the closing procedures for the Doubles Line (safety was verrrrry important!) so that he could head to the Super Singles Line and tell—
Something (everything) was wrong.
He didn’t know why, though. Nothing was on fire. Everything appeared to be fine. It was just that he could barely breathe through the panic.
Why did he want to go to the Super Singles Line? He had been on the Doubles Line all day, which meant that… that…
The thought refused to take the connecting tracks. Reroute.
He wanted to go to the Super Singles Line. He wanted to tell some… one…
(Flashes of his own face, but he wasn’t looking in a mirror.)
Oh, there was blood on his shirt and tie. That was going to be a pain to get out, the white shirt especially. He needed to use cold water only. Emmet was good about remembering that, though, unlike—
(Cramming for exams over shared textbooks, there was never a need to get two sets.)
There was more blood, now. Where was it coming from? His shirt was feeling sticky and gross. His face was feeling sticky, too. He absently touched under his nose. Oh, now he was going to need to get blood out of his glove, too. He liked these gloves.
He should probably be concerned about the amount of blood he had outside his body right now. He leaned against the side of the cab. That was better. But he was still going to get a thorough lecture about safety the next time he saw—
(Older by less than half an hour, but he still took his role as the older one so verrrrry seriously.)
He was sitting down now. “Stop it,” he said. (It sounded wet, and not just from his bleeding nose— it sounded like he had been crying.) He didn’t know who he was speaking to, or about what. It was like there were a thousand hands reaching into his head and plucking out his thoughts one by one, like so many pieces of rare candy. If they kept it up there would be nothing of him left.
“Stop it,” he said, again. He had never been very good with words. But that was okay, he had—
(A voice like a train’s foghorn, tinnitus-inducing at close range but reliably audible, even far away.)
He was sitting down before, right? Because he was definitely slumped now. And there was blood on his coat now, too. He was going to need to get Elesa’s help with this, probably. That’s what he got for wearing all white, he supposed, or at least that’s what he’d hear from—
(Black clothes didn’t need to worry about staining, not like white clothes did.)
“Stop,” he said. Had he said that already? “Give him back,” he said. He didn’t know who he was talking about, just that he was important. “You can’t have him.” The most important.
There was a relentless Pressure bearing down on his head like a Vise Grip. And he knew, he just knew that it would all go away if he stopped fighting. But he wouldn’t— and not because he liked winning, no, Emmet couldn’t do that to him, couldn’t allow himself to forget—
(Black and White. White and Black. The very mythology of the Unova Region baked into their branding.)
The world seemed to stutter and Distort around him.
“Don’t take my Ideals,” Emmet pleaded. He was looking at the wall sideways. Tears were starting to pool in the inner corner of his higher eye, unable to get past his still bleeding nose. The salt building up was beginning to sting. “Don’t take—” he choked. The thought still refused to follow those tracks.
Something within him snapped.
Emmet was angry. There was something there, he knew it! Someone he knew he loved! He couldn’t just look the other way and pretend there wasn’t! He refused—
Suddenly everything was on fire. Or maybe it was just him? But it was like the thousand hands plucking-pushing at his mind were burned away and he scrambled to grasp at what should have been there, struggled to remember—
“Ingo,” Emmet breathed.
And then everything went black.