Busy. Angelo had been busy.

More contract jobs had been greedily scraped onto his plate. Ones through the League, ones through Ritual, he hadn't been picky.

Hoenn's airspace had been occupied more than usual as he ventures and revists new landmarks, under the excuse of forming a more intricate map.

Constantly moving, surrendering to the push of the breeze, even when he technically wasn’t working.

(If he dared look at his fuel receipts, well...)

But it helped, cold air chilled by altitude and muscles aching from physical labour.

Helped him think.

Helped him deal with the shift.  

Today he sits, legs dangling out of his plane that's too high up to reach the waves, after the latest space-time rift with one of many maps in hand. But his gaze is distracted, watching two forms play above the barren ocean together -

one red, one blue.

Angelo chewed the end of an already gnarled pencil, tongue tainted by something bittersweet as his thoughts drift towards Latios and Latias's wish.

BEEP BEEP!  

It's the loud, shrill sound of his phone that rips Angelo's attention from the Eon duo, jolting the pilot enough for him to drop his pencil into the water. “Shit.”

But the name that flashes in his face when he finally finds his phone under a pile of receipts and documents, has Angelo smiling in fond surprise.

And telling a small, white lie.

Locke breathed a sigh of relief at the speedy response, quickly tapping out his next few messages.



He set his phone aside and picked up the pen and pad from the side table. There was going to be a lot to catch up on, enough that he needed to get his thoughts in order before Angelo got here.

Should he start with when he first got the charm, or skip straight to the most recent meet up? No wait, he’d have to cover the first meeting with Martín del Mar and Eris Halla before that. He could probably skip the church stuff, right? Though that had some pretty important context for his relationship to those two as well. He definitely needed to talk about that shit in Granite Cave. Oh but, hang on, he never actually told Angelo about what happened after they’d separated at the Soiree, did he? Maybe he’d ought to bring up what happened at the police station after too. And the fire in Littleroot…

It was maybe twenty minutes later when, halfway through the Torchic stir-fry the nurse had dropped off, Locke suddenly remembered one very important message they’d forgotten to send, and nearly choked on their lunch scrambling to reach their phone for damage control.

[attr="class","wizzcred"]❤ wizz

on my way

What was it with the younger companions he holds fondly, periodically landing themselves in hospitals?

First chryssa glasgow , then John Sullivan ... Now Angelo's feet stalk the hospital halls looking for one delivery boy - Locke Jamison . Their concerning message bringing the pilot to ditch vast blue skies for sterile, oppressive corridors without hesitation.

Sometimes, he thinks, they're going to give him more grey hairs than any of his five siblings in Alto Mare. Combined.

(One had unfortunately already been found after the mission for AQUA had seen them thrown into a different realm. Much to his wife's glee. He'd left it there simply to not give skyler dross the satisfaction.)

As soon as Locke's message had pinged through, he'd slammed the cargo doors shut and climbed into the cockpit, following the familiar route to Slateport docks.

“Weren't you going to wait outside...?” Hissed discreetly through thin lips, Angelo's gaze remains fixed on reading the numbers framing the rooms as he navigates the Slateport facility, boots squeaking on polished tiles.  

An invisible Latias psychically responds from over his head, innocently curious and endearingly stubborn. “You're trouble sometimes, y'know?” And yet he doesn't push her to leave, her secret companionship comforting in the vacuous corridors.

Room #h0-311 lies just up ahead.

The only thing that has Angelo's steps slowing from its determined pace, is the beeping of his phone. Blue eyes flicker to it out of habit more so than genuine intrigue.

But the message flashing at him has the former delivery boy rounding the corner with a raised brow and a curve gracing his lips, amused.

All the while relief quietly swells like a strong current beneath the surface.

“So... Apparently, you're doing just fine. After I ran all the way here.” He waves the phone towards the familiar-faced patient in the bed with a soft chuckle, before pocketing it.

“Didn't know you get given a bed for routine check-ups now.”

Cutting across the room to Locke's side Angelo reaches for the postman's shoulder. Giving them a brief, comforting squeeze. “How're you doing, Locke?”

Really doing.

The door clicked no sooner than he had hit Send, and Locke didn’t need to even look to know who was entering. Instead, he lowered his head to cover it with his phone, as though it could hide him from the other man’s ribbing.

The smell of his remaining stir-fry coaxed him out of hiding, and he soon raised his head to scoop up another bite. ”Wouldja believe I’m only here for the free food?” He tried to joke between mouthfuls of noodles.

Locke, for all his embarrassment, did relax considerably under Angelo’s touch though. They were right to go to him first.

Setting their plate down on the tray again, they leaned back against the pillows with a sigh. For once, they seriously considered the question, taking all of the unprocessed emotions of the past few months and unwrapping them like they were changing the bandages on fresh wounds.

It wasn’t pretty.

”Could definitely be better, to put it lightly. A lot’s happened, and I dunno what to do about any of it.”

[attr="class","wizzcred"]❤ wizz

“If you were in it for the free meals, would it be weird to say I was proud of you?” A soft breath of amusement fans from Angelo's nose at Locke's attempt at a joke, lips curling into something mischievous. And just the slightest approving.

But he leaves it at that, their attempts at humour abandoned as the postman slumps back into his standard hospital pillows, like the weight of the world pushes them down with a heavy hand.

Angelo's own lingers light on his friend's shoulder for a beat longer, concern sitting silently in his gut.

“Well, if you wanna talk about it with someone...”

Backing up his offer comes the sound of metal chair legs, scraping softly against the vinyl floor. Angelo having grabbed the vacant visitor chair tucked away in the corner of the room and pointedly dragging it bedside.

“I've got all day.”

He sits down, shelving all of his own problems and worries out of sight, to where he feels needs his attention more. 

“The last time we saw each other was Christmas, right?”

Gods had it really only been two months since Christmas? Time flew when you were missing some of it.

Locke took a deep breath.

”Right, so yesterday-Well, okay, so it actually started back in September but I didn’t know that cause Uxie kept making me forget.” They reached for their notepad, flipping back to what they’d noted down about the encounter earlier. ”I was doing some replanting in one of the community gardens in Oldale when this Pokémon I’d never seen turned up. I went to go look at it, but it just vanished, and all of a sudden I couldn’t remember what I was doing, but there was this thing.”

They held up the Unusual Charm, its yellow face now blank and inert.

”There was an Unown-I on here, but after meeting up with a bunch of other people who also had charms yesterday it disappeared.” He placed the charm down and returned to his notes, flipping much further ahead to the most recent page. ”Or, most of us had charms at least, some of which were like mine, but others were pink and from Mesprit-who didn’t make them forget how they got their charms but did make it so they couldn’t, like, talk about it? I guess? And the people who didn’t have charms like Martín del Mar were visited by Azelf; who gave them a single word instead of a letter and a prophecy for each of them-which were different from the prophecies we got at the meeting-which were also different from the visions we got at Martin’s office-right! The office!”

Why did the end of the world need so much context? They hadn't even brought up the church yet. There was more flipping as Locke tried to catch his breath alongside his thoughts, the last few bites of stir-fry now completely forgotten.

[attr="class","wizzcred"]❤ wizz

And, as it turns out, Locke's story is where his attention is needed most of all. If only because he needed nearly every scrap, so he could wrap his head around what was going on.

For one, what was an Uxie? He assumes it's a legendary given Locke's description of its characteristics but it's not one that Angelo is familiar with.

Neither is the charm that the postman holds out recognisable. Not even with the casual research he had done on mythical objects, following his acquisition of the Soul Dew some year prior. 

Also, what the hell was Locke doing running around with a shady con artist like Martín del Mar ? Meeting in his office?

He has to swallow the somewhat protective lump that rises unconditionally in his throat when hearing that one.

But in the end, they were all questions that did not need answers to fill in the grander picture, so Angelo lets it go.

“Okay. Okay. Pause.” He murmurs, collecting his thoughts as Locke gathers his breath, hand smoothing the rough set of his jaw in thought.

“So, this Uxie thing... You saw one, you forgot you saw it but it left you this charm gift?”

Angelo points to the yellow charm that had been placed to the side, asking for permission to pick it up. 

“Then you and a bunch of others who had similar things happen to them met up, were given a prophecy and, what, that landed you in here?” As Angelo condenses what Locke had told him so far, he bends forward with forearms leaning against his legs, expression neutral.

Save for the hospital mention, his concern betrayed by a slight arch of his brow.   

“Oh. And the Unown are involved.” Because of course they are. “Am I with you so far?”

”I think it was more the aneurysms than the prophecies that put us here, but yeah.”

It did make Locke feel a bit better that Angelo didn’t appear to have any prior knowledge of Uxie either. They’d been hanging around so many more well-read people lately they’d started to feel out of the loop on what everyone else seemed to treat like common knowledge.

”And I don’t actually know how much the Unown have to with it so much as just the letters themselves.” There were ancient alphabets based off of the Pokémon for instance. Or maybe the other way around. He could never remember. ”At least with this charm junk. There’s some other stuff that involve the Unown more…directly?”

[attr="class","wizzcred"]❤ wizz

“My bad. I forgot aneurysms and prophecies were a package deal.” His lips crack into a small curve, making light on a dim situation. It doesn't quite reach the furthest depths of his deep-water eyes however, but to the uninitiated, it would no doubt go as an unnoticed blip.

Angelo oft dealt with bad news and grim emotions with a practiced weightlessness, even when stones sit heavy in his gut.

“Feels like those things have been involved with all the weird stuff that's been going on lately. Or is it just me?”

His gaze flutters down to the Locke's charm, turning the legendary's gift within his calloused fingertips with care.

He's unsure what he's looking for in his examination. Something familiar, maybe?

Whatever it is, Angelo doesn't find anything. Although he does find something suddenly pressing down on his shoulder. One nosy, invisible legendary resting her head on him to steal a peek at what was going on. 

“Wait. There's more 'stuff'?” He ignores Latias to look up at Locke with a raised brow.

They'd sure been busy... 

Locke gave a quiet chuckle. ”Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”

Back to business though. ”They’re like Zubat in a cave; can’t walk five feet without runnin’ into one nowadays,” they groaned. ”Gods, there’s so much more. But I’m doin’ it all outta order. Here,” they flipped back to the original meeting with Martín del Mar and Eris Halla. Back on track.

”So a little while after I got my charm and forgot about it, I was taking Eris along on a little route around Slateport. We went to the POG bank there to drop off a package for Del Mar, but as soon he saw me ‘n Eris’ charms we all remembered how we got em. Or-well-I remembered, like I said Eris and Del Mar never actually forgot. We went to an office to talk about what we knew in private, and-”

He hesitated, shuddering at the memory. Maybe forgetting had been better.

”We-We ended up using our Psychic Pokémon to…I guess try and look into the charms’ futures? It…All of our Pokémon ended up dying, and we got these bubbles in our brains that the doctor later told me would pop if we got too stressed. Which-ya know!” Locke gestured at himself emphatically.

”But, it did work. And we saw a lot of stuff.”

He turned the notepad around for Angelo to read himself, the visions recounted on the page with as much detail as he could recall.

[attr="class","wizzcred"]❤ wizz

More stuff, indeed.

Locke regales him with one story after another, one prophecy following another. Each one less comforting than the last.

(“Who's to say it didn't come from Martín del Mar ?” Angelo comments, masking his concern for Locke's condition with a joint jest. “He makes me feel like I've got brain bubbles when I have to listen to him go on and on, sometimes.”)

From the postman and Eris Halla both being entangled in the shitshow of prophercies, to deadly 'brain bubbles' and a list of confusingly vague visions. It wasn't looking cheery.

It's nothing but a decade of practice that sees his expression remain composed, when all the pilot wants to do is tilt his head back up to the fluorescent hospital lights and slide off his chair for good measure.

“So, these visions,” a calloused finger taps against the writing on the notepad Locke holds out to him, his brow pinched in thought as Angelo leans forward. Invested. “Have any of them come true yet?”

Locke shook his head. "None as far as I know, but I dunno where I'd run into most of em..."

He flicked ahead in his notes, picking through the other encounters with the charms he'd had. "Let's see…There were a couple others I saw after that; Sénon Game, Hideo Kino, priam conrad…But the charms didn't trigger for those last two for some reason. Martín del Mar and Eris Halla're better at figuring out that stuff than me, so you could probably ask them if they're still around here."

Finally though, they reached the end of the charm saga. "Yesterday though! Martin I guess managed to get ahold of a buncha us with charms and prophecies, and we all met up in the park here." They waved a hand at the window in the park's vague direction. "And that's when some really weird stuff happened. All of the Lake Guardians showed up, and basically told us there was no hope and we're all gonna die and the whole world's just gonna end."

The words came with a surprising amount of calm as they flipped to the page containing the newest prophecies, letting Angelo read for himself the Lake Trio's words.







"Which, as you can imagine, was pretty stressful. Hence," they finished with a gesture around the hospital room.

[attr="class","wizzcred"]❤ wizz

Angelo didn't think about speaking to the others about the prophecies. Even if they were strange and curious and confusing as all hell, solving their riddles was not at the top of the pilot's priority list.

It was Locke Jamison he was here for.

In hospital, apparently because of what had happened at the park, hosted by one Martín del Mar. And where was Mr POG Bank now? Nowhere to be seen.

“Feels like my heads' about to explode, from second hand information alone.” Angelo's arms fold and a soft sigh expels from his lips. “Y'know, you'd think if they wanted you to help save the world from annihilation, they'd keep it short and sweet.”

Instead, his head is stuffed so tight with all this new information and a dose of worry, that it's not too far of a stretch to imagine what 'brain bubbles' might feel like.

Legendary pokemon worked in mysterious - and sometimes unhelpful - ways, he'd come to learn.

“Anyway...” Blue eyes catch onto Locke then, an eyebrow raised, as if to remind them that he hadn't forgotten why he was here. “You haven't told me how you're doin', by the way.”

And as if to reiterate the question, something soft tickles the postman's cheek and sniffs.