drohkido

[drohkido]

[drohkido]

I am in the lab sipping test tube substances and critiquing them like fine wine

[drohkido]

people who don't know anything about academics: man y'all are stuffy and boring what's up with that? actual academics: *too busy fist-fighting each other over the beryllium problem or the existence of a dentistry profession in ancient egypt to reply*

[drohkido]

"Bah- you don't need to have faith in Kanto as a region. You shouldn't. I have never in my life been one of those deep conservative minds that sees region before I see the people in it."

Ookido poured foaming, specialized wound cleaner onto a sterile pad, dabbing the still saturated and agitated area around his absent eye cavity before tackling the much more painful ordeal of padding the rest of it down without agitating the stitches he'd received. Human bodies were incredibly complex, and despite state of the art technology, they did remain a mystery to care for and heal.

So it goes. Yukinari gently cleans the visceral wound Hanako Sakaki gave to him as her last laugh, the residual pain coming out in contained flinches before he applies a clean pad to soak the next drainage up, and tapes it down.

"Ou ow. As I was saying- It's the people, not the region, that you have to have faith in. Understand that a "region" will always be throttled forward by singular people. You can be bitter about that- but you and I don't work for Kanto or for the benefit of a region, as much as the people in it."

He'd always believed in that ideal. Madame Boss was forever his exact opposite. Her last ghost portrait was staring at the both of them from its returned place on the floor.

"Ah, good. Good! Namely, the combat Pokémon. She had caches of them, splinter cells, and longstanding deals with other regions. There are contracts whose bylines I'm sure won't take effect for years, but they will. Making the market for combat monsters become nonexistent has been my job for years through the promotion of battling and The Journey. The Warden proposal is such a boon to that. But... the incident in Unova is deeply concerning to me."

He balls bloody cotton into one of his gloves with a snap, covering it with the other.

"I fear that the rigid upholding of no human interference removes us from the natural ecosystem. It's going to lead to a spike in demand of those Pokémon."

Oak's wounds from Hanako were more physical, and easily viewed to an outside observer. And though Hanako herself had never laid a hand on her children, those wounds were still carried half-a-century later.

No, it wasn't fair that neither of the twins could trust her. It wasn't fair that having no ability to trust made their relationships with older mentors that much more fragile.

He nods along with Oak's observations about the buy-in and the reliance on capital. As much as hindsight was painful to admit, Oak was right.

At the end of the day, no matter what field or what Giovanni had personally justified doing with his business, it was still a business. It was still an Organization that offered a way for those the system rejected to still profit off of a system that continued to harm them all.

A different face of the same coin.

What complicated things further was that the lessons that Hanako did deign to teach the brothers were the very things that kept both of them alive in the dangerous undertakings they chose to do.

"I didn't have faith in Kanto. I still don't," he admits, "But I am trying. It's nice to have this for now, and to be able to think about it."

Oak cleans his hands and sets to dressing his wound on his face. Giovanni presses his knuckles against his own cheek to prop himself up while thinking about problems and solutions.

"... I've opened up talks with Blackthorn, recently," he informs, "Trying to introduce the model of approach Koga and I came up with in the Safari Zones with regards to the poaching in the mountains. Janine's been focused on general public education, I've been lobbying for reform approaches."

That was one thing he was trying to help fix.

"Do you have particular fields you're thinking about? What are your suggestions?"

[drohkido]

"Ha! Indeed. I haven't forgotten battle or the lessons, I just took my combat to a different venue. It's still there, mark my words-" he chatters on while automatically taking the glass jar, giving it a cursory look before scooping it under his arm in anticipation for another one. They had already had many a conversation about their cohesion. Despite everything, they worked well together.

"-- AND I am good at it! Come now- you know that there is no other academic who is more respected. But- throwing my hat in my other ring. Blue's a good choice by your meter- No I didn't wait for you to match my skill and I certainly didn't wait for any of my current rivals to either-"

He took the pearl from her, collecting it too in his palm.

"Our grandkids were never our rivals. You are saying I should see Blue, Ozzie, the both of them? As rivals for this particular power?"

Actually, it's not a bad idea. The specific wording makes him clutch the pearl in his palm and raise his hand to scratch at his chin. He felt the contents of his skull physically re-orient themselves.

"Ahh! I see. No, that makes perfect sense."

Eureka.

"Well, Daisy isn't collecting her own personal book of pressed flowers, and herbal garden that date back a century and more. I will still be coming to you."

Yukinari follows her about her workspace, a grin on his face.

"Feh. I miss the days when you were a trainer," she says rather bluntly, "It wasn't about the 'passing of power', it was forcing those little twerps that thought they knew better to meet you on your level and earn that power."

She turns to her kitchen area, nudging a step-stool in front of a detached pantry, and climbing up to a cabinet full of odds and ends that certainly weren't suitable for consumption, and rummages through containers, pulling each up to her sharp nose to inspect the contents.

She passes down a jar of cream-colored glass shards, hardly looking behind her, expecting the former husband to fall in step and collect her reagents for his proposed project.

"No better teacher than experience, in battle or witchcraft. You can learn a lot in general from writings and the observations of others, but to really have to hone your skills and not be a dabbler-" she says the word with a deep sneer, "You have to form a rigorous self-discipline, and form a covenant."

She inspects different pearls in her hands, feeling the weight and shape with her fingers, before settling on one and passing it back, "You only got as strong as you did because you kept fighting, and had to keep fighting, and took new rivals, and kept getting better and better at it. I got stronger too, but I never had to face the same things. And you never waited for me to match your skill."

It's said a little indignantly that suddenly he was going soft for the sake of the kiddos.

"But I have my covenant. One day, you'll have to be asking Daisy to fix you up, or any of her children. I'm not retiring from the Elite- if no one in the League has what it takes to snatch the title from an old woman, no one is worthy of being an Elite."

"Make them earn it. Let them have different ideas from you, too."

[drohkido]

"Well come over and take a look. You didn't exactly specify what you needed. I didn't have anything more fitting at the moment either to carry all of this in."

And the instrument case wasn't even his.

Ookido sat the case down, flipping the latches and pulling the lid up. His notes were pinned to the top of it, a record of exactly what he'd divined from a combination of peering into the temporal fingerprint of his blade and exacting the nature of the enchantment. He passed the organized folio over for inspection.

"Firstly, the object you gave me is quite remarkable. It's something from a thousand and five hundred years ago, during a time of great plague across the sea. That historical plague was responsible for two million deaths of all walks of life, and the pathogen that had caused them has never been identified."

And first, he dug through the box to lift out a sheath. It's something he had help with making, as he wasn't an expert on weaponry or fitting blades. But it is new, made of cured and hardened leather. Old traditions of forgery were kept by eccentrics now, and these were people who he called dear friends.

"The blade is old. It's been melted and reforged at least three times, and this is its third iteration of the same metal. It's been reforged by three masters. So this is my first experiment."

The Elder Ookido handed over the new sheath.

"It's tough enough if you lose the blade, you should still be able to use this. I've transferred the capability of the sword."

One of many things he had to offer.

@bluesthebest

[drohkido]

"It's not a shortcut to use assistance of any type in recovery. Using Celebi's help is much like using a wheelchair for mobility assistance. Sometimes it's necessary. It's also not going to fix everything. Shadow Pokemon are particularly vulnerable after purification. It's very confusing to have a door suddenly opened in front of you when you've been locked in a cage for some time."

He has to agree. Late night trains had a special way of reminding one of how long its been since a proper night sleep. Ookido and Pidgey took alternating bites as the sounds of the train lulled the conversation into silence, and minutes stretched to a half an hour, to forty five minutes.

The train lights dim for the night ride, and despite his motor mouth, the professor let the moment lie for the ride. The scenery passed in a lulling way, and before long, the last stop came, and he was greeted by several polite "Hello Professors" and happy individuals to see him back so soon.

Pallet doesn't change much at all even for as much time as he'd spent in it. It had always been and would always be a sleepy place, and that was a blessing for it. The late train left both Ree and Yukinari behind. The walk to the Ookido house was quiet as well.

And before long, he unlocked the door to the emptier Ookido house, directly across from Yanmei's front porch. The woman was sitting outside with a few friends, and waved to them from across the way.

The old man left his shoes and coat at the door and let them in to the space.

"I think you should get some sleep. Your room is down the hall. We'll have plenty of time to talk about it tomorrow."

“I didn’t ask. I just know he’s from Orre an’ that either Orre or Johto is the best place to purify pokemon. But I’m working with what I’ve got.”

Ree meets a lot of people. They’re a magnet for trouble, but they’re also a magnet for strange, strong people to become drawn to. They scratch AC’s fur a little more, and the eevee purrs.

“I don’t really get the leg — log — logistics of it,” they admit. “It’s kinda hard to wrap my head around the details. But I get the gist of it. Celebi uses time to heal wounds.”

They’re just glad there’s a way. AC will finally stop being so distrustful to people.

“I’ve been walking her and battling with her and giving massages to her,” they add. “I try really, really hard. And I’m mostly there! So… it’s not like I’m takin the easy way out, or … or trying to find a shortcut.”

Ree cuts a yawn off. The toll of travel is starting to settle against their shoulders. The eevee looks up at them and purrs.

“Tomorrow can’t come soon enough. I gotta make … the offering again.”

[drohkido]

"No she never had the luxury of patience that could be tested. And I don't think that any type of excuse for her behavior would solve your discomfort as much as understanding her and not repeating her mistakes."

Hence why, he offered the book, and now he offered the rest of the information. Ookido settled in the chair finally with his cup, slowly setting the cup down and surrendering to the thought that he had been deeply wounded in a way that wouldn't be fixed as quickly as he would have hoped. He survived near disembowelment years before.

"In all my years of her, you were right to not trust her, even if it was unfair to you to be born to someone untrustworthy."

And to his credit and the complexity of the situation, he did try. It most certainly perplexed her most of all why he would be taking two extremely abnormal children into his care- 'he wasn't a foster home'. But he was because he chose to be, all the way down the generational line to his grandson's partner.

"I think relying on her business model- it was still a business focused on the exploitation of something. It was still a buy in to the capital she left you. You couldn't escape her in that position, I'm afraid. And I am happy you are just you for now, and have the luxury of thinking about all of this."

He cleaned his hands with a sanitation cloth on the table beside him, pulling gloves over them and unpinning the dressing job he'd pinned a few hours before.

"It's a complicated issue. The fields she contributed to are among some of the reasons why Kanto fell into such disparity so quickly. There are no easy fixes, but there are fixes."

He pulled off bloody bandaging. His left eye had been scooped out to a hollow and the remaining blade line cross sectioned him vertically at a diagonal. It certainly would be something he'd never be explaining to press. A "lab accident" would suffice.

There's no mistaking the image of his mother, and all the complicated feelings about her that arise to clot his throat. Giovanni sets down the coffee gently, and to the side of the captured likeness in the illustration.

"It does make sense. I remember that she always seemed to feel uniquely victimized," he says standing up from the table.

The man paces over to the medicine cabinet to retrieve more clean cottons, gauze, antiseptics, and other tools necessary for changing the bandaging on the old man's face.

"Every challenge was a proving grounds against authority, and part of some divine game. Every challenge that she failed that I heard of, resulted in more and more lessons and rigid expectations. I think she gave up on me quite early. I think she gave up on my brother a little later."

Setting the equipment down between them, Giovanni leaves everything ready for the Professor's convenience, and resumes his seat, able to refocus on the picture.

There also no denying that they looked like her.

He props his chin on his knuckles, "We served our purpose. She didn't worry about succession so much after we ran. Just ascension. She didn't care for 'healers' outside necessity. They were just evidence of humanity's weakness. Not just our bodies, but the capacity to mend the wounds of monsters that would have otherwise died- and should have died, in her mind."

"When I was approached to take over the Family, I had some time to look over the writings she had left. There wasn't that much, but I did read them to try to... I guess, understand?"

He shrugs and waves it off. It was a connection that couldn't be severed no matter how much she had tried, and- it was an irony that her least favorite child completed work she didn't have the capacity to.

"There were a lot of unfinished projects, or projects that were shelved I saw potential in. And projects that failed her because she really didn't care for them. She wasn't suited for creating life. She didn't have parental drive."

And that didn't have to be such a bad thing but-

"I'm not sure how I feel about it all now. I would have like to have trusted the person responsible for my existence, but the way she engaged with the world was poisonous, and she exploited the people that relied on her and had nowhere else to go. I did want to make a difference in that."

[drohkido]

He hadn't thought of it as coddling, but that was what it was in a world that would be constantly hit with conflicts and no real way to address those conflicts. It was also the burden of raising children in peacetime. They did not know what it meant to be in the kinds of violent, earth shattering conflicts. As much as he contributed to the world as a whole, it would never be a utopia free of conflict, but that did not nullify his experiences.

"The kind of trouble is different, Aggie. I know- I know. But it doesn't make it any less heartbreaking knowing that the passing of power isn't an honor, it's something I never wanted to do."

And with the world changing as it was...

"But, you are right. And I can't take back what they've seen. That would be more immoral, and... trickier."

Again, he scratched at the back of his neck. Things had suddenly become quite complex.

"I can't make that promise. I can certainly try."

"Maybe you should," Agatha agrees.

Oak had always perplexed her in the contradictions he held. 'Love and Trust' were fundamentals to him in the raising of pokemon- and yet the man held no trust for his fellow man.

Not that it mattered much to her. Pokemon and people were built for conflict and contradiction. It was that much chaos that made the life worth living and the fight worth fighting.

Pokemon were ultimately built for battle.

Those that weren't hardly survived the wild, or hardly survived human interventions.

"You can't keep holding back on them. The kids will get into trouble regardless. You need to give them the tools they need for this reality. You see what coddling does."

And in some degrees, she was guilty of it as well.

"One day, neither of us are going to have a say-so. Hell, there are lots of things we already don't get a say-so in. Glad to see you're finally coming around to that you tauros-head."

She humphs, tapping her cane on the ground as she passes her Golbat to look over reagents.

"If I go making this eye for you, you better not break this one too. I'll know."

[drohkido]

He's cradling six caterpie in his lap and baby talking them. He's covered in silk.

[drohkido]

There are an ABSURD amount of Caterpie in the lab...

[drohkido]

She's right.

"You're... right. I don't really want to. I can't fault anything for picking me, fate or otherwise, I really was the person to do what needed to be done."

It's terrifying thinking about passing the buck on. He couldn't keep it in the family, that was so abundantly clear. He'd never ask Daisy to do something like this, and Blue was much like Agatha, completely occupied with the present and drawing threads of the past for spite. They'd done the impossible and given their grandchildren a time of peace to exist in.

It made them bad soldiers and good people. His was a combat position. It made the decision more weighty.

Ozzie was a possibility but how exactly could he train them for this in the first place?

"Three? Well, I see the merit in that, but dividing temporal fingerprints into three pieces- it's bound to cause arguments... The safeguard is that Celebi is sentient, but... I suppose I just don't trust anyone. Not really."

The old Oak frowned, sighing and scratching the back of his damaged skull with frustration.

"I suppose what I do isn't something essential for life to continue, but it is a battle for the spirit, so it still is important. My aide came with me. So did Blue. They performed well under horrific pressure."

And he had been trying to reason with himself and orchestrate his peace with the fact they even went in the first place. Ookidos are stubborn, and his Wingull around the neck was his unachievable perfection. The kids (and they were still kids to him) shouldn't have had to see that. He had to let that go.

Yukinari fell into step beside Agatha.

"Maybe I should ask Blue and my assistant to work together. He's always wanted to see history and touch it. With enough time I think he'd want to try and save his world he lives in. Maybe."

"Age is a frame of mind as much as a physical state. Some of us are more predisposed to age well, and others have blessings to count."

She leans back for her cane and rests her hands atop it, "I'm surprised you got back into the game at all. I thought you were forcibly retired from it."

No one else had the temperament for time travel. Agatha herself was completely present-minded, and if she had gone back and forth through time, there'd be a list of multiple people she'd have spited.

The old witch would be content with the gift of flowers instead.

"You can train a temperament. You can't look for perfect if you really want to retire. Train anyone you think is good enough. Either way, it'll take at least three people to replace what you do, so you'll never be truly out of it."

She closes her eyes, "Just think about how much annoyance you'll actually tolerate in your retirement. And prepare for it."

[drohkido]

He tilted his face towards her for her to get a better view, and sighed with more drama then he actually felt about the situation. The loss of an eye in this day and age was just a setback, and one he could absolutely deal with, but getting Agatha involved in his own way was a bit more like jumping back into the Ponyta's saddle. He was back. In a way.

"Pity?"

What on earth was that supposed to mean?

"Anyways- That would be much appreciated. I'm no shy shot with one eye but I would rather two."

Agatha flipped the patch down and he winced.

"Ow- Well you seem to be pleased about my steps back into the temporal game! Which- I just can't seem to find a successor. No one in our immediate family has the temper I'd trust with time. Not now, anyways. Though I suppose a ten year old shouldn't have been trusted with time travel in the first place..."

And thus, he'd be doing this same thing until he was dead.

"Agh... Maybe I should just pick someone within the decade. I just simply don't feel old."

She sighs, turning her hard gaze to the packaged bundle and shifting to an appraising look. Agatha picks it up, thumbing through the different specimens.

"... Well, consider me bribed."

They really were better off as friends.

Oak had too much a habit of getting into situations that were out of his depth, in her own opinion. A fact, which always earned her caustic worries. The fact that he always came out earned her abrasive forgiveness.

Truthfully, this isn't the worst off he's been.

Setting aside the flowers, she lifts herself up to cross the distance between them and cup her hands around both sides of the Professor's face with a firm, "Let me have a look at you."

Studying him intently with shrewd eyes and furrowed brow, she humphs over the mound of scar tissue forming and appraising the stitches when she flips up his patch with her thumb.

"I can't make you look how you did before, pity. I can help it heal faster, and I can grow you something to match the other. It's not going to be the same, but you won't be toddling about like a grounded Zubat, at the very least."

[drohkido]

Agatha thwapped the soft end of her cane against his sternum and it pulled his attention directly forward to meet her eye to eye. He had difficulty focusing with just one eye, the other resting under a soft cloth eyepatch now that the worst of the tissue healing had come to pass. A bit of the to-be scar, now stitched mounds from the blade attack, stuck out from each side.

"I am... aware that it may be a BIT more than the usual scrapes and tumbles- HOWEVER-"

Ookido set his teacup down. He held two pointer fingers to emphasize it, placating the verbal lashing.

"I came to you because I thought about fixing the situation. And then I thought you would fix it more effectively with a bribe-"

He lifted the lapel of his coat and fished out a small bundle of purple flowered weeds, corded and bagged. Despite everything, he had used to bring her flowers from different timelines, and that hadn't changed even after they split.

They really were better friends.

"I could fix it myself. But..."

@elite-agatha

[drohkido]

"What could be defined as a "plague" to an new immortal that shares the curiosity of humanity?" He tapped his functioning eye gently, completely animated by the instantaneous hit of caffeine in his system, "The answer: It's a matter of perception."

The wince that came from the gesture though is what sends him to slowly sit into a chair, because truly potent painkillers made him ill, and the pain management he was on was minor. His bad eye socket soaked the folded and protected bandaging. It would need changed a few times today.

"Sickness can come in all shapes and sizes. Truthfully, plagues have been beside us throughout human history. The loose position of a "healer" of "plagues" offered plenty of opportunity to stretch the portfolio as human partners are want to do. I did-"

Ookido, at the heart of the Pallet-Viridian stem of Kanto, was... Old. He had good posture, but his shoulders slumped and his eyes were tired. He sipped the coffee for the bitter tannins to keep himself moving, but he didn't want to move.

"- I did investigate many plagues. The investigations bolstered our vaccine technology twenty years later. The gift of being able to walk into history's ghost stories is not a light one. It's sacrificial. During my travels, I met a woman with a very, very closed heart."

He offered the drawing of Hanako Sakaki. She was very young in the image.

"Celebi considered her a pathogen. A patron of pathogens. Even as young as twenty I was meeting this woman in futures I could not even fathom in the past century. When she treaded a line, my partner would move her goalpost by placing me there. Celebi and I had common goals in defending our homes."

The man was very old.

"It does make sense, doesn't it? She was wildly successful but her greater ambitions were always on a pendulum swing, consistently pulled back."

He smiles to himself as he pours a mug of coffee for his own tastes, the acknowledgement that his own style of depiction being good was high praise. Giovanni never had quite the patience for layering color- though, looking back, it was a little more obvious why he started to put more value on value. His sense of color was impaired.

Giovanni swipes away the message alerts when his phone's handed back to him, and sets Rotom to the task of sending copious amounts of scans and photographs to the Professor's email- which in turn becomes copious emails. He nods at the Professor's guess that his manuscript of notes detailed "Paradox Pokémon".

"You're correct. A different time and reality from our own. I figured that someone else would have brought these to your attention first."

He lets the topic be tabled, sipping the warm drink as he quietly listens to Oak's talk about magic, possibility, wishes for guardians. He nods silent confirmation in his belief of magic. Though, it was less 'belief' than 'experience', being subjected to the unexplainable and witnessing the mysteries of the world. Sorcerers were now psychics, forces of nature were capturable, and humans created thinking engines out of rocks and ores.

Oak had been a guardian since he was a child, and continued to be so.

"You've done this for a long time then," he says, "A wish for some kind of Guardian feels apt. Both forests feel like they're missing something. People used to live within, ages ago."

He'd seen remnants of old structures, and foundations not yet returned to the Earth, a mark of presence in a place considered long abandoned.

He sets down the mug, thinking about different aspects of the things he'd observed from the old man. "So, you've gone through time to 'protect' things? I know Celebi is supposed to be a healer, against plagues, specifically- was it for that or are there other things?"

[drohkido]

[drohkido]

Look, dad- look grandpa- look Professor- look you dullard- look what I drew.

Time and space maintained that everyone younger than him wanted him to see their art. Giovanni had never been an exception to the rule. He’d caught the kid on multiple occasions in the lab library tracing his old sketches, sometimes even without his brother. Oak took the Rotomphone in his free hand, moving it to his good eye to take a good look at a collection of careful drawings. There’s drawings upon drawings of Persian, his Nidos, observations of spaces and…

“What in the world? These are incredible- these are Paradox Monsters?”

The chassis are sleek, the investigations on a self healing organic material with the rigidity of metal starting several conversations on his tongue that he didn’t immediately project into the topic at hand. He looked closely at some of the sketches of the Gallade-evoir, zooming in on parts and connection details to look with a vested interest in the subject.

It’s a topic he definitely had to revisit, because the Technical Machine data with its programmed and karyotype data storage was and is a marvel of their time. To use it in memory recall…? The implications were truly incredible. 

But, he held his tongue to table the discussion, flipping through the drawings again.

“You got very good.”

He hadn’t seen Giovanni’s drawings personally since the release of Secret Earth Arts. Yukinari drew like he painted, in layers upon layers to shape his ideas into existence. Giovanni captured outlines exceptionally well, and firmly suggested form and texture through washes and a harsher pressure to the utensil.

“Send these to me, will you? I’d like to take a look at them.”

And he could expand on them while he was under an effective house arrest. He handed Giovanni his phone back after a long moment, a few message pop ups cutting off his thoughts before he started on tangents.

“The Voice of the Forest... The Mori Younger introduced it to me at the Silver Spine. The Viridian and Illex Forests, as legend and historical geography suggests, were once part of the same massive sprawl of trees. I believe at one point, this Voice- an ephemeral shard of possibility and power, was just that. The Forest was rich with, if you believe this- oh what am I saying of course you do- magic. True magic.”

Magical beasts, of course, were in his purview, but very rarely did the scientific community respond favorably to the word magic. His favorite dissuasion of the allergy to the word “Magic" was: it is simply “Unexplained Science”. Not everything needed quantification and explanation, of course, but it is what humans did. Partitioning the unknown was an ancestral practice. A kid dividing candies by shape and color already understood concepts of the never ending pursuit of discovery.

“When I was very, very young, I journeyed into the heart of the wood. I was with my Charmeleon at the time, and we found a time traveling poacher- a brigand at the very center hunting for rare monsters. I did not know what it was, at the time, but I came upon a very injured Celebi who was being hunted down. Celebi threw us forward in time. A long time forward in time.”

Ookido paced among the rows upon rows of sketches, because there were few of them of himself, but they were there. A dated look in a mirror showed a very young man looking back on the one that caught his attention. The paper was yellow, old, and stained with a perfect coffee ring.

"My mother had died two years before, leaving me almost emancipated at eight, and the ward of my school teacher. I had very little oversight. I took to traveling on my own, often. A gross oversimplification. Things were dire then. It was why I did not panic upon my arrival to the future, I suppose. Why I was... good? At it. Celebi has been my partner ever since that point."

He finally crossed the room to get the cup of coffee in his hand, setting his young self portrait and the portrait of a faded woman down on his drawing table.

"The Voice, again, is possibility, in the most direct definition. The Voice of the Forest could be this creature, Celebi, sleeping for the last forty years, or you could look more broadly and say The Voice is the primordial aspect of sapient wishes for a Guardian."

The sketchbooks offer brief glimpses into Ookido's perspective. Impressions of life and motion that Giovanni had always admired, and had tried to emulate a few times before with careful tracing and learning how writing implements felt in his hand. His own drawings now were more solid, in comparison. Thicker lines and more rigid shapes, noticeably absent of color, but emphasis on shade and depth and texture.

But the impression of the stern woman tugs at Giovanni's attention and memory more so than long dead and fantastical creatures.

"I have," he says, pouring a mug for the professor first and foremost, "I've heard six or seven different versions. Some in relation to the mythos of the Pokéathlon. Some in connection to the other Children of the Forest stories."

He retrieves his rotomphone, to allow Oak to browse through pictures that Giovanni had taken of wild monsters, ruins, dry-erase notes of observations that were done in heavy rain, and of drawings that he had made... and of his own Pokemon. Mostly Sweetheart, but a few endearing photos of his Nido pair and Wy.

"Here, you can look through these too, I have something else to show you, as well."

Giovanni reaches into his pack to pull out several typed pages and illustrations of paradox pokemon and strange TMs, semi-organic machines... front and center of all of the illustrations, a creature that looked like a Gardevoir and Gallade combined.

"So, what version of the story do you tell?"