In his defense, there was a literal portal to reality smack-dab within Fortree so most of his attention had hyperfocused on there; and he was a little out of touch with the news in Western Hoenn…

“So you’re telling me, that what Guillermo Marceliño’s been picking up about reports of swathes of this forest dying… it’s not a joke?” he blinked, before his mind did a ‘what the fuck’ take and saw that she—

She—

Shalin was riding on the wing of the Beedrill.

He had to blink a few times before the sight—the sight wasn’t going away, it was fucking real.

“How in… how in the Djinni’s name are you riding on the Beedrill’s wing?!”

---

vacation time in the woods

It was the Braviary who caught sight first of what… of what was going on.

Which very nearly caused the Birddad™ to get unseated from his aerial ride!

“What—what the fuck?!” he exclaimed as he very nearly lost his balance had the avian not changed positions to catch him before he rolled off the side. “What the hell’s going on over there?!”

The avian could only move closer to the strange… bizarre sight, drawn like a Volcarona to the flame.

“Shalin?!” he exclaimed once he was close enough.

---

vacation time in the woods

Why was it so hot?

Even in Fortree he was melting.

No wonder he kept the AC on almost every day now, even if he was using renewable energy to power his place… ugh. He’d already considered some kind of a Pokémon ‘car wash’ to help cool down the poor, overheating creatures that shared their home with humans…

“Where is she?”

He’d come in swinging for the landing on his Braviary just outside the forest proper—but where was the ‘guest of the hour’?

Man, he would kill for a cold breeze right about now.

---

vacation time in the woods

[attr="class","oblivReply"]

[attr="class","oblivCredit"]SELKIE

At the mention of ‘doppelgangers’, though, he shivered.

“That… that’s one thing I don’t want to see happening. At—at least, for me.”

There was… a whole lot of context with those words.

“You—you went into cyberspace, last year, right?” he confirmed. Finally, something that happened where they really came from, that they could discuss without having to dwell too much on what was bothering them.

“Did you. Did you encounter… did you encounter anything—any shade, any specter—that looked like you, but had the exact opposite of your personality, as you know yourself to be?”

He hoped the other hadn’t met his own, because… he’d met his, and the encounter in and on itself was terrifying. Too terrifying to dwell on for too long, really.

---

timeline: three years, six months to their arrival in Hammerlocke

(timeskip FC is Yuri Leclerc from FE3H)

“You think we can do the same shit that happens in the gyms, back in our world—to the people out here?” he cracked with a snort as he took one sip of the rancid wine, and winced.

Yikes. This definitely needed further processing and refinement.

As for the kids that were raving about things that were normal to them, he sighed quietly.

“Who knows how much time has passed out there? Where we really belong? What if we’re stuck here for an eternity, and time also moved at the same pace it did here?”

Would there.

Would there even be a Hoenn to return to? Surely…

Time was literally an insidious thing, after all.

That reminded him of something else, though…

“Where… where have you been all this time? After you left Hoenn?”

---

(timeskip FC is Yuri Leclerc from FE3H)

He then remembered something… something he wished the other man didn’t mention during their conversation.

“Have. Have you noticed,” he began quietly once he’d managed to regain his composure as to how to bring this up, “…you’ve noticed how a lot of the normal ‘people’ that call this Hammerlocke home… have like, some disturbing physical resemblances to people we know?”

He shuddered, because how the hell could he forget about the one that looked like Locke Jamison? The one that had Kaida Adachi’s angry features, the other one that had his drag son Billi Marsh’s soft smile…

…not to mention he thought he saw someone he thought to be dead, a certain bluenette @mattis among them as well?

“…maybe you comparing this to a nightmare state… isn’t that too far off. But then, how do you substantiate… how do you explain everything we’ve gone through so far feeling all too real?”

Read: the signs of aging.

---

timeline: three years, six months to their arrival in Hammerlocke

(timeskip FC is Yuri Leclerc from FE3H)

There was a pensive silence that broke between them before he spoke up again.

“Have. Haven’t you noticed anything about… about the people that live here, in this Hammerlocke?”

Because either his mind was playing tricks on him, or he was seeing things. He had to do a double-take with one of the people he passed by a few days ago, because why did they bear a strong resemblance to Locke Jamison? And then, he thought he saw someone that looked like miss Isra Nightingale among the crowds…

But he had to be absolutely, positively sure.

“When. When you pass by them, on your day to day activities. Do you… do you recognize any of their faces? I… I might be too delusional to say it, b-but…”

At this point, he hesitated. He didn’t want to look like he’d lost his mind.

“…some of the people have an eerie resemblance to people I know. From back in Hoenn.”

Hell, he thought he even saw someone who had Kaida Adachi’s and Billi Marsh’s features.

---

timeline: three years and four months to their arrival in Hammerlocke

(timeskip FC is Yuri Leclerc from FE3H)

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How crushing was it, to realize that the first decade was just—an incredibly long stretch of time as compared to most?

How was everyone back… back there? Surely missing persons reports only lasted for so long before the person in question was declared… dead, right?

(Because the feeling of dread never left him, no matter how much time passed.)

There was… there was something off about paxton concordas’s partner, however he couldn’t pin it quite down just yet. The reason for it being—the words of Thomas Benoit that he remembered, after one of their talks so long ago, rose back up to the forefront of his memory:

Didn’t the ‘people’ who ran around Hammerlocke have some semblance to people they knew from… from somewhere?

(Probably, this was also why he’d made the decision to enter the ‘marriage of convenience’ with Miss Elise—another reason being it would be much easier to throw everyone else pestering the both of them off their tracks.

And even then, he knew that he would always be loyal to… who was it, again?)

He would have to ask Elise Calcifet to remind him again, as they’d agreed to become their city’s respective ‘lorekeepers’, in a way—but not of the Hammerlocke lore, but of… where?)

Why was his memory failing him?

His brows furrowed when Tom started acting strange, going on and on about the person he cared most about—much as he tried to point out that he was dealing with what was possibly a shade, or maybe a figment of their collective imagination—he couldn’t do it. He had to… he had to go along with it.

The moment he’d heard about the poison receding, he immediately knew—it was his chance to travel.

To find one of the other people he’d been exchanging written communication with. He’d go off quietly to Ballonlea one evening; and arrive looking for Shalin Nariya, spending a few days with his friend and catching up; hell he’d even challenged her to an archery contest—to see who was better between them with a bow: he from Hammerlocke or her of Ballonlea.

(He wasn’t sure if Circlechest—Circhester and Motostoke had their own archers, however he was more than certain he was one of the few ‘strangers from beyond’ who took up the way of the bow in Hammerlocke, as most of everyone he personally knew had either gone for melee or defense over there.)

Over time, he doesn’t realize that he’d already lived past the supposed ‘deadline’ that was slapped down on him, back there (wherever ‘there’ was) and was getting close to fifty… fifty. Fifty years old. (Well, forty-nine to be honest; but you get the gist.)

And it isn’t until he managed to take a closer look at himself, again does he realize…

“Why do I look like… him?” he mused as he ran calloused fingers through the hair, now turning back to white (but with remaining traces of purple at the tips).

“Shit.”

With the ‘dawn of the final day’ looming on the horizon, he throws himself full-tilt into getting ready for whatever awaited them all across the rubicon.

This, of course, included training with ‘Dynamax’—imagine the momentary glee that flashed across his face the moment he’d managed to do it with Kyouya, the cranky Braviary.

“Now if only I could ride on your back when you’re in that size.”

---

• not even he is immune to forgetting about Hoenn
• remembered what he and Tom talked about way back then—about how the ‘people’ of Hammerlocke bore resemblance to those from there (Hoenn)
• it’s been so long, he can’t remember Guillermo Marceliño anymore due to so many years being stuck in Hammerlocke. Like, the feeling is there but he cannot connect it to the name, nor the face anymore
• the moment he hears about the receding poison, he immediately books it toward Ballonlea and meets up with Shalin, one reunion at least!
• has another late life crisis when his appearance is turning back towards what he first looked like, only to realize that he’s sort of starting to look like his fucking dad
• has a late-game training arc with Dynamax usage; acquires a Dynamax band and successfully pulls Dynamaxing off on Kyouya the Braviary
• +20 timeskip FC: Kinjou Shirasu from Donten ni Warau

It didn’t take too long for his dry skin to feel the droplets of water being sprayed all over him.

There were so many comparisons he could think of, but it was best not to mention them at the moment (because they were all weird).

“S-see, miss Elise,” he finally managed to speak up after several quiet minutes of her Gardevoir using their power to heal him, “…there’s a reason why I cannot, under any circumstances, get hurt.”

He took another deep breath to compose himself before speaking once more.

“It’s not easy for me to recover when I get physically injured. It, in fact, takes much longer than normal—even with what advances we have back in Hoenn. Unfortunately, it’s something I’ve had since I was a kid, and I don’t think there’s an available remedy for it out here.”

He then looked up at her Gardevoir, and nodded his thanks their way.

“Thank you for helping, Flayn.”

---

timeline: three years and four months to their arrival in Hammerlocke

(timeskip FC is Yuri Leclerc from FE3H)