Out of the six Pokémon that were with him, only half of them were familiar—somewhat—with the original members of the family.

While Suijin the Swampert had long since left for a better place, it was the Lucario swimming over and bumping into Lars (who was blowing bubbles out of his nose in the water like a big-ass kid) that drew his attention.

“What?” he asked, surfacing for a bit before the dual-type tilted his head in a particular direction—and then, right then and there—

The shining silver Metagross let out a noise. It wasn’t the friendly kind of white noise either, it was more of the warning kind as the large creature moved closer to where Lars was currently basking, trying to cool down.

‘What’s going on?’ he heard a familiar snarky voice reach out to him in the depths of his mind.

‘Never mind, it’s nothing…nothing much,’ he replied, as a hand surfaced from the blessed cold water to pinch the bridge of his nose as he very reluctantly surfaced and turned in the general direction of—

Shit.

His normally placid expression flashed the briefest hints of a scowl, before he squared his shoulders and stretched his neck.

“Oh. It’s you,” he deadpanned. Normally, Lars would’ve come out guns blazing and ready to pick a scrap, however there was something that was keeping him deadly calm at this time.

The Altaria turned, from her wet, soggy position at the shore to look at the source of the voice—before turning back to waddle over to where Lars was now slowly turning to face the other.

The summation of his internal demons.

The old man.

“I thought you left this place.”

---

death by heat wave

Normally, at this point he’d have gone forward and taken a swing.

Normally.

However, there was the reputation he now carried on his shoulders, blasted Initiative that he sold his soul to, to consider.

That, and the media always had their eyes and ears out ready for a scandal or two. Or several.

“What gifts,” was the first thing he’d say, lips going into a thin line. “I left for somewhere, not that you’d know where I went, and spent some time with—family.”

That last word he would never use so casually, especially around him of all people.

‘You’re losing it. I can tell.’

‘Oh, shush, what do you know?!’ he retorted, taking a deep breath in order to calm himself down.

‘Asides from the fact that you’d lived alone ever since you were twenty-one, and—’

‘Were you reading my mind?!’ he mentally screamed as he pinched the bridge of his nose again.

‘It’s free real estate in here, you know.’

Biting back the urge to groan, he released the deep breath he’d taken in a singular sigh.

“They were asking me about her, you know. How she was doing, and all that. I couldn’t tell them what happened to her.”

A beat of silence for a few moments as he remembered the last question posed, followed by—

“Not at the moment. Why do you ask?”

And then the Swampert chose to surface from the water at the most inopportune time—by suddenly drenching Lars with a sizable tidal wave of water, before turning to face the other person who was talking with her human companion—and just for the hell of it, drenching him as well.

It was damned hot, after all!

---

death by heat wave

The Altaria then attempted to shake herself dry—sprinkling a finer mist all over both men that had converged at that point.

“Nami, not here,” he growled quietly, waving the dual-type off to one side. “At least, not yet.”

The Swampert, having done its business, cackled for a few moments before sinking back into the cold water of the lake and swimming around Lars’s feet just in case something did come up. The Lucario still eyed the older man with some suspicion—it was like there was something… not right.

Even the Metagross had stood up from his position on the rocks, turning its beady red eyes on the man that bore a resemblance to the one he considered his ‘master’ in all things.

‘You’re rattled.’

‘Very funny,’ he sassed back, taking another deep breath to calm himself down. With the ol’ man so close, it was literally a free target for Lars to take a swing at. However—he steadied his hand for the moment.

‘You want to punch him, huh?’

‘Obviously. But not out here!’

‘I can’t help you there, that’s all you, though. I would advise to keep calm, though!’

‘Thanks for the vote of confidence,’ he snarked back, running a hand through his hair.

“A few years,” he drawled out. Shit, he’d left everything else at the—guest house. He’d come down here just with his clothes, and his team. Well, this was going to be tough.

“And what did Claude say when he saw you? Presuming he’d already met you, of course.”

It was true—he really was his mother’s son, after all. There was—something, that even Alpha the Lucario could pick up on; murky at best, but still entailed a lot of danger. Warning them, especially Lars, to be careful.

---

death by heat wave

‘You’re definitely losing it.’

‘Can’t you tell?!’ Lars screamed in the back of his head. Sometimes, the deity wasn’t very helpful…

‘Don’t cause a scene!’ the snarky voice warned him.

‘How can I not? If you’ve gone through everything in my head, I’m pretty sure you know my entire life story now!’ he continued to himself, raising a hand to the bridge of his nose to pinch it once more before hissing slightly.

“Che palle,” he hissed to himself in Alto Marean for a few moments. While he could still hear the deity trying to snark him in the back of his mind, he shut the ‘second voice’ out for a few seconds so he could think.

“Ro. Nami, Ryujin,” he began, and the three Pokémon he mentioned looked his way. A singular burning eye of red, a pair of beady eyes underwater, and a deflated cloud turned to stare at him.

“Thank you,” he said quietly. “For watching out for me. Stand down, please. Just for a while. You too, Alpha.”

Even if the Lucario let out a bark of alarm and made to stand in front of Lars, a singular cold glare from emerald-green eyes made the jackal Pokémon stop and stammer in PokéSpeak for a few moments before retreating a few steps.

The four Pokémon exchanged a look between each other, before backing away—there was no need to call Gareth and Lynette just yet. At least, not until things got to a head.

“Don’t call me that. I go by a different name these days,” he said as he turned to face the old man. While legally he could say ‘oyaji’, it didn’t roll off the tongue as nicely as the other moniker did.

“Answer me this, then. Where is she? Where’s Mom. Where did you hide her? And don’t give me any of the ‘she went home’ shit, I lived in Alto Mare with her family for a while,” he went on, turning to face the ol’ man.

Il vecchio, in his mind.

“It’s hard, you know? It’s hard—not having a place to bring flowers for her. It’s impossible someone just disappeared without warning, no trace, no word, for years. I’d know, I’ve seen so many missing persons cases ever since I started working with the Rangers. But for this—fifteen years missing?”

He was sorely tempted to tell him about Léanne, but he decided against it. For now, at least.

“How hard do you think it is—you treated us from a distance, it was always, always mamma who was there for me, for Léanne, for Claude—you were gone a lot! With no explanation whatsoever. You always held us at a distance! And you never answered me where she really is! I still remember that time, you know.”

The memories he’d hidden for so long—even the deity didn’t have access to the ‘forbidden ones’, the time he was fourteen—began to surface again.

“How could you say we were all mistakes…” he continued, resisting the urge to lash out. His hands were beginning to tremble, him resisting the urge to smack a good one breaking by the second.

“How do you think a kid would feel about that?”

Even in the summer sun, there was a slight vapor of frigid condensation swirling around his fists—the manifestation of one of his Avatar powers breaking through the cracks as he clenched and unclenched.

A thin layer of ice began forming across both his hands, unmelting despite the terrible summer sun above.

“Much as I want to hit you, I’m not going to do that, especially not out here where so many people and eyes can see. So just—humor me with my questions. Where’s Mom. So I can at least let her know that I’m alright…or leave flowers for her.”

---

death by heat wave

“You sure have a funny way of showing it,” he said with a bit of a sigh.

Not until he looked down at his fists did he realize there was a very thin coating of frost on them. Shaking them free, he watched as the ice melted to water, before sliding off the back of his hands and dripping to join the cold crater lake water lapping around his knees.

“So, humor me then—where’d you bury her? Or at the very least, did you even give her like, a shrine or something. Or at least bury a few of her favorite things in her place.”

They did things differently back in Alto Mare for the dead.

“It’s hard not having—a place, a marker, to visit her, you know?!”

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death by heat wave