Please Stand Clear of the Yellow Line

Some Pokémon fanfic because why not. I wondered, “So what if Emmet went kind of crazy as a result of losing Ingo?” and then this happened.

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Chapter: 731 words | Story: 5,339 words - WARNING INCOMPLETE CHAPTER

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Please Stand Clear of the Yellow Line
Written by Sudo (Pseudinymous)

~ 3 ~
Unown Destination

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A mountain of books and books and books, buried under Joltik, Joltik, Joltik.

This was the current state of affairs of Emmet’s apartment. It was not a pretty state of affairs. Elesa was stationed at Emmet’s computer in near total darkness, the glow of the screen being the only thing that illuminated her very tired face. To her side, the printer whirred to create an ever-burgeoning stack of messy papers from her research, and a few more Joltik skittered across the desk.

And then to the floor. Emmet was there, buried under said research papers, scanning them frantically despite barely being able to see. They were filtered into yet more barely ordered stacks, ranging from the tangentially useful to the desperately useless.

Even the walls had not been spared. Newspaper pieces and textbook photocopies were pinned directly into the plasterboard, lines drawn between them, because there had to be a link somewhere, didn’t there?

Emmet had not yet bothered to wonder what this might look like to an outsider. After all, one did not go hunting legendary Pokemon without at least a little crazy running through their system. And it was certainly crazy.

But people had done it before. Why couldn’t Emmet do it again?

His eyes tore through an article about Zekrom before he tore the paper in half and discarded it over his shoulder. They had already ditched the idea of utilising the patron deities of Unova, which they had both learned of extensively in school and knew full well they had very little to do with portals or space-time. It was a shame. Like God had decided that making use of the local wildlife would be just a bit too easy. And so, Emmet had looked to other regions, far away.

There were some candidates. He had pinned them to the wall. They misted across his eyes.

First, there was Celebi. the Time Travel Pokemon. Celebi was an ancient guardian whose shrine was nestled in the overgrown depths of the Ilex Forest. Perhaps it could be summoned by an offering brought to its shrine.

But it was simply the forest’s protector, what reason would it have to know where Ingo was?

Then there was Jirachi, the Wish Pokemon. Said to wake only for seven days every thousand years, and then to grant any wishes written on the tags upon its head.

But no one knew where it was, or how to wake it up.

And then… there were the Unown.

Emmet felt a shiver run down his back as he thought of them. Unlike the other two Pokemon of myth, many people throughout history had seen the Unown. They looked like the letters of a strange language and seemed to live in their own dimension, popping in and out of ours and theirs at will.

Some people – mostly ruin maniacs admittedly – had even caught whole alphabets worth them.

But while one Unown was about as powerless as a blade of grass, with many hundreds gathered together, space and time would warp around them. Verified incident after verified incident cropped up of people being whisked away to strange other worlds while researching them. Of large hoards of Unown chanting hauntingly, of space and time bending around like little playthings to them, as they took the thoughts of people and turned them into their wildest wishes and greatest nightmares.

And of course, Ingo had disappeared in the tunnels. Unown were not usually found in Unova, but tunnels and ruins were some of their favourite places.

“Geez,” said Elesa, after a few minutes of total silence. The sun had vanished from the horizon and it had somehow gotten even darker in the apartment. “So, Emmet, about your theory.”

Emmet looked up, tearing his eyes away from an article about Articuno which he had no idea why he was reading.

“Looks like there are Unown in Unova after all.”

There… what?

“I mean, we both know they can realistically appear anywhere, but like it’s not like they’ve ever really been spotted around these parts, right?” she confirmed. “Well, turns out that’s actually really kinda wrong. Apparently some maniac Unown collector died seven years ago and his family released a hoard of three thousand Unown into the southern regions of the Twist Mountain Range. That’s not even that far from Nimbasa. There was a massive environmental lawsuit to do with it and everything.”

To be continued

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