Chapter Text
The last thing Theo remembered was falling.
Not a normal fall, not the kind where your stomach lurches and you throw your hands out by instinct. This was different. It was like the ground beneath him had simply stopped existing and something else had taken its place. Colors he didn’t have names for pressed in from every side. Sound went wrong, too high and too low all at once. And then the dock came up fast.
He hit the wooden planks hard enough to knock the air from his lungs, skidding across them on his palms and knees before slamming into a rope post. For a moment he just lay there, gasping, staring up at a sky that was a familiar shade of blue. One that made something in his chest loosen slightly, even though he couldn’t say why.
He pushed himself upright. His palms were scraped raw and his knees weren’t much better, but nothing felt broken. He looked behind him.
There was nothing there. No tear in the air, no swirling tunnel of light. Whatever had dropped him here was gone.
When he reached back for something, a home, a face, a name, there was nothing solid to grab onto. Just flickers. A ceiling he vaguely recognized. The sound of something electronic. Words in a language he understood but couldn’t place.
He pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead and forced himself to breathe.
Figure it out later.
The screaming started.
It came from the people at the far end of the dock. They scattered, knocking into each other, abandoning their gear and bags as they ran. Theo spun around and felt every thought in his head go very quiet.
It came through the air above the water. That was the first thing that struck him, that it moved wrong, drifting rather than flying, trailing long transparent tendrils that caught the light like glass. It was enormous. It looked like something from deep underwater that had never been meant to exist in open air.
Nihilego.
The name came to him without effort, like it had always been there waiting. He knew what it was. He knew it shouldn’t be here, that it belonged somewhere else entirely, somewhere far removed from this harbor and these boats and that blinking lighthouse.
He also knew it was looking at him.
The creature’s blank eyeless face turned in his direction. Those tendrils drifted toward him slowly. There was no expression to read, nothing to warn him, but his body decided for him. He was on his feet and running before he had consciously made the choice, back up the dock toward the city, boots hammering against the wood.
He made it about thirty meters.
A tendril caught him around the ankle and yanked. He went down hard, cracking his chin off the dock, and the world spun. He twisted onto his back and kicked at the tendril but it held fast, squeezing with a pressure that wasn’t quite painful but wasn’t right either. Like something was being pulled out of him rather than crushed.
He grabbed the rope post beside him with both hands and held on.
“Hey!”
The voice was like a thunderclap. Theo’s head snapped up.
The man was huge. That was the first impression, just massive, broad across the shoulders, wearing a vest that looked like it had seen actual combat. He stood at the dock entrance with his arms crossed and his jaw set, looking at the Nihilego the way someone might look at a car that had cut them off in traffic. Annoyed. Unbothered.
“Let the kid go.”
The Raichu at his side didn’t wait for a command. It was already moving, orange and brown and fast, lightning crackling between its ears as it slid to a stop between Theo and the Ultra Beast. The thunderbolt hit the Nihilego dead center and the tendril snapped back. Theo scrambled upright, nearly fell, and got himself behind the rope post.
The Nihilego shrieked, a sound like shattering glass filtered through water. It surged forward and the Raichu met it again, a thunder wave spreading across the dock in a ripple that made Theo’s hair stand on end. The Ultra Beast convulsed, those long tendrils going rigid.
The man walked forward like there was nothing urgent happening at all.
“Finish it, Raichu.”
One more thunderbolt. The Nihilego folded in on itself like something collapsing and then it was gone, dissolved back into whatever it had come from, leaving nothing behind but the smell of ozone and a faint shimmer in the air where it had been.
The dock was silent except for the water.
Theo became aware that he was shaking. His palms were still bleeding and his ankle ached where the tendril had grabbed him, and his chin was definitely going to bruise. He looked up at the man now standing a few feet away, studying him with pale eyes that gave very little away.
“You’re not from here,” the man said. It wasn’t a question.
Theo opened his mouth. Closed it. He genuinely didn’t know what to say to that, because the honest answer was that he wasn’t sure where he was from.
“I don’t know,” he said. His voice came out rougher than he expected.
The man’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You don’t know.”
“No.”
A long pause. The Raichu had padded over to sit beside its trainer, watching Theo with round dark eyes. In any other situation he might have found it hard not to stare. He had known what a Raichu looked like, in the same way he had known what Nihilego looked like, but knowing and seeing were entirely different things.
“What’s your name?” the man asked.
Another silence.
The man sighed through his nose. It sounded like a decision being made.
“I’m Lieutenant Surge. You’re in Vermilion City.” He jerked his head back toward the city. “And you’re coming with me until we figure out what to do with you.”
Vermilion City. The words landed somewhere familiar in Theo’s head, like an echo of something he should know better than he did. He turned it over for a moment but nothing more came.
He looked at the empty space where the Nihilego had been. Then back at Surge.
He didn’t have anywhere else to go.
“Okay,” he said.
Surge gave him one last look, measuring, unreadable, and then turned and walked back up the dock without waiting to see if Theo followed.
He followed.