Chapter Text
He is falling.
That's the first thought in Ingo's mind as awareness slams into him. The second is that he doesn’t know how to stop.
It's as if he is breathing for the first time after holding his breath for years, with the way that Ingo is so suddenly and acutely aware. Like a icy water being dumped over his head, the shock to his system is a wake up call he thinks he's sorely needed; he's never felt more present and in the moment than he was now.
And he is still falling. Headfirst.
Some forgotten instinct in another long unused part of his brain awakens, then, and Ingo quickly brings his hand to his belt where his pokemon are attached, still sealed within their pokeballs. With a quick motion, the belt is quickly pulled out of the loops of his pants, and he lets it go into the rushing air.
The belt and its passengers very quickly rise past him, out of sight and into the unknown, and Ingo can only hope that the instinctual action was the correct one. He hopes they are safe.
Still, he is falling.
Knowing at this point that he could not possibly hope to survive any sort of impact, Ingo takes a moment to look around at what, exactly, he is falling through.
Emptiness. Emptiness all around him, but not one he can see, because Ingo can see. Rather, he can feel the lack of energy, the perversive way that everything is being drawn in and drained here; like a bandaged being used to stuff a gruesome wound.
Within this Empty land, what looks like small islands float around as far as his eyes can see, chunks of land looking as if they were torn from whatever place they were stole from. Waterfalls that have no source or end, pine trees covered in snow that will never melt, and berry bushes full of ripe fruits that glisten in sun beams that does not exist. It's a world beyond the laws of what should be true; a world that is humanly incomprehensible.
And yet, here Ingo is, staring into the Abyss, and nothing seems to be staring back. Each and every quirk of this strange world is visible to him, and his mind stays in one piece.
Rather than continuing on blind, Ingo flips the momentum of his fall so that he is stomach-first rather than head-first, like a particularly unprepared skydiver. Not that he knows what a skydiver is, mind you. After his hat nearly slips from his head, no longer kept in place by the wind-rush pushing it onto him, he is elects to keep a hand on his head for the rest of his fall. Not that it will matter much, once he lands.
Now that he has a clear view of what is coming towards him, he can see that it is more of nothing. Odd, that he is falling, despite all the odder islands around him floating around without the effects of gravity. It's almost as if he is caught in some sort of jet stream, one without beginning or end. He gets a distinct feeling that this 'jet stream' is the only reason his body and mind are still in one piece.
Somehow, he is still falling. Somehow, this feels familiar.
(He may not remember, but Ingo has Fallen, before.)
Ingo is only just beginning to orient himself to the situation when a new sensation makes itself known, and panic surges through him. A single, sharp tug in his brain is all it takes for him to realize what was happening. He may not remember his arrival in Hisui, but his body does, and he knows what the after-effects of his arrival were.
Ingo is about to lose his memories. Again.
That, alone, is more terrifying than whatever it is awaiting him at the end of the fall.
The pull on his mind grows stronger. It's begun to hurt, now, far more than even his worst migraines. The air around him shifts, and Ingo finds it getting harder and harder to breath; whether that's because the air is getting thinner, or because he's started hyperventilating in panic, he couldn't say. He tries to regulate his breathing regardless.
In a fit of desperation, Ingo clutches at the tunic he wears, and begins to pray. He doesn't think he's ever prayed before, and he's certainly never prayed to the Almighty Sinnoh-Palkia that his adoptive clan worships, but it's all he can do to clutch at the Pearl Clan Insignia on his tunic and hope that the God of Space hears his plea.
(If his hat finally flies away in the process, he does not care. He may not survive to care, after all.)
He keeps it to his thoughts at first, simple hopes of surviving his landing. He's meant to stay humble, in prayer, as the elders said. His head starts to hurt more, and he hopes that wherever he lands they will at least have a body to properly bury. But the pressure in his head builds and builds as he keeps falling, falling, and falling and it quickly becomes too much to even think much less properly pray to a deity like the elders had tried so hard to teach him.
Ingo grimaces as the pain reaches a peak, and his whole body begins to ache. Through the last bits of cohesive thought Ingo has, he shouts his final plea into the void, hoping that the God that was never his takes pity.
"Almighty Palkia!" Ingo shouts into the Void, hoping that the nothing has something even as the Void fails to echo back, "I have served the Pearl Clan faithfully as one of their Wardens, acting as if their own! Prove to me that they made the right choice—that I made the right choice!"
Ingo is still falling, and theirs tears in his eyes because his skull feels as if it’s going to explode, and even his whole body feels as if on fire, and he can only take so much and so he yells out and makes his plea, because what he really wants is- what he really wants-
"I want to go HOME!"
Is it bad to give an ultimatum to a pokemon God that you're pretty sure you have no real standing with?
Ingo wouldn't know. The pain consumes everything, now.
Before much else can happen, Ingo mercifully loses consciousness.
A small body zips through the Distortion World. It is not the only thing caught in the slipstream, but it is the most important.
A smaller body, a pokemon, appears next to it. It grabs a small orb hovering next to the small body—memories that once resided within a man, now kept in an inconspicuous marble.
Satisfied, it makes it's leave, letting the Distortion World handle whatever was left of what was once a man. It has a job to do, and it intends to do a very good job.
A small body rushes through the Distortion World. It is not the only thing caught in the riptide, but it is the most important.
A new presence makes itself known. A prayer was sent out into the Void, and what normally would have been swallowed and gone unheard instead got carried through the riptide; and the God of Space listened.
It recognized the call of one of it's Wardens—a rare thing, now. And from the distortion world of all places? That cannot stand. The man's prayer is heard; Palkia has a job to do, and It intends to do a very good job.
Now what was the wish of he man? To go home? Odd, then, that the small body flowing through the Darkness feels so out of place. If Palkia were to follow the path of the riptide back, it would surely take the body to it's rightful place—but no, that wouldn't work. Palkia could feel the spacial displacement radiating off the sleeping body. If the plea was to go home, then wherever it came from must not be home.
An easy enough problem to fix, here in the Distortion World, where the laws of the their land do not apply. Usually It loathes the place, with its disregard for It's complex laws and Dialga's intricate concepts, but at least reaching out into the lawless land has an advantage this time.
With a deft claw, the Flow of Space is changed. The riptide diverts, and it's endless flow is cut. Now, it directs through a new outlet, towards the man's home, where a spiritual connection of great strength is present. It works as the perfect signal for Palkia to direct the small body's destination to. Through this outlet, the small body falls through—
—and on Reversal Mountain, Unova, a young boy lands in the dust.