Chapter 19
Dead Island / They would rule us again if they could / Nosfearat / In the west, where the sun sets
—Aug. 9th-10th, 128 CR
They took a few days to recover, swimming and relaxing at the beach, and conducting a few high-level battles at the local dojo. Russ went to the hospital for a follow-up treatment, and his mood stabilized after he was recovered and pain-free. Matt seemed to be living up to his promise to be less of a giant ass.
Moriko had been entertaining thoughts of going back to Port Littoral, but the next gym was on Sere Island, just a short morning boat ride away from Port Brac. It would be silly to stop now; they could decide after attempting it, and hang around there or take another boat up the coast back to her hometown.
She couldn't help feeling a creeping dread: even with a normal gym battle behind her with no nasty surprises or rule-bending by the leader, and even with the woman in black chasing demons far away from them, this journey had been a cavalcade of violence and terror. End the trip, break the pattern, make it stop.
And with that thought, continuing on had an appeal: better to go down fighting than running. At least they'd be training and getting most of the league done. Maybe the storm had passed?
And when Linden Jr. showed up with her father and a big grin and a day pack, well, it was hard to say no to that youthful enthusiasm and huge metagross.
"Is the backpack enough?" Prof. Linden asked. "I'm not sure if you want to redistribute items. She's little, but she's strong."
"Dad!"
"It's no problem, we have a storage device," Russ said, holding out the safety-yellow handheld. "It's a real convenience, we can carry extra water and toiletries and such."
Prof. Linden whistled, handling it briefly. "They really shrunk down that new model, I think I'll have to put in a request for one of those at my next grant application. Some of the older devices would ruin the calibration of instruments, so we never bothered and always use pokémon to levitate them. I'd hate to put them out of work, of course."
"I heard you have eight Kanto badges?" Russ asked Linden Jr.
"Heck yes," she said, keying her pokédex to display the league crest. "The best battle was definitely against Blue at tier eight, he knows what he's doing—"
"Do you mind?" Prof. Linden said to Moriko quietly, as Linden Jr. reenacted her metagross's best moves.
Moriko shrugged. "Is she going to"—Moriko thought of her ninth grade summer at a girls' camp and winced—"freak out and dive off the ferry? Get drunk and lock herself in a bathroom while screaming? Start a rumor and then cut herself after it backfires?"
Prof. Linden raised his eyebrows. "Are all those from experience?"
"Observation."
"Sounds like freshman week." He laughed. "I teach at the University of Hoenn at Mossdeep, it's, mm, it has a reputation as a party school that isn't totally unwarranted."
Moriko tried to imagine Prof. Linden at freshman week, spare and pale with a receding hairline, wearing slotted sunglasses and covered in body dye, and failed utterly.
"What do you teach?"
"Pokémon Social Behavior II and a grad course on pre-crossing history—what we know of it, anyway. Are you going to university in the fall?"
She shook her head. "I got rejected… I didn't really apply anywhere, but I got rejected from the one I applied to."
"Only one?"
"Yeah."
Prof. Linden shrugged. "What are you interested in?"
"Pokémon. Helping people, I guess."
"Ever thought about being a pokémon ranger?"
"I guess, they help people or whatever, patrol around and look cool."
Prof. Linden laughed. "They know a fair bit about pokémon, their habitats, and trying to balance the best interests of humans and pokémon with human expansion and ambition, and yes, they do help people and look cool. I think that might be a good fit for you."
Moriko shifted uncomfortably. "My marks are probably too low."
"Mm, talk to your professor, get her to look at your transcript. You want to have all A's for being a pokémon prof—it's a lot of memorization—but being a pokémon ranger is a full-body deal and marks aren't everything. Think about it."
She changed the subject. "You're okay with Linden Jr. going with us for a couple of days?"
He barked another laugh. "Junior... I'll remember that one—yes, I'm nearby, she has a pokédex and an allowance, and Adeline—Prof. Willow—trusts you guys. Astrid has several of my mother's old pokémon; she should be protecting me."
"You're not worried we're kidnappers?"
"There were times I wished someone would steal her, but quite frankly, I don't think you three are on Abram's level." Prof. Linden winked. "I would appreciate if you would look out for her, especially to tell her if she's being a twerp, since she might actually believe it if she hears it from some cool older kids."
Prof. Linden looked over at Russ and Matt and Linden Jr., who were arguing about something and all talking over one another with broader and broader gestures. Abram watched them, its metal and inhuman face quite unreadable, but something about its half-lidded eyes said 'this again'.
Moriko grinned. "Can't help you there, I don't know any cool kids."
x.x.x.x.x
The first ferry to Sere Island left early in the morning, and there was a queue and security checks before boarding. The three—four—of them found themselves awake at a punishing hour.
Moriko yawned, jaw popping. She worked on a paper cup of coffee, five sugars and a little milk, which was pleasant in the fresh breeze off the sea.
"We don't need to take the ferry, we have Betsy!" Linden Jr. said again, a completely incomprehensible statement at this time of day. She waved, trying to draw them off the main road and down to a secondary dock where the water was deep and black under the lightening sky.
"Who is Betsy," Moriko said, deadpan.
"It's better as a surprise!"
Moriko had woken up at five in the morning and was done with the whole thing. "She's a wailord, right? That's wonderful. Let's get to the ferry."
"Come ooooooon," Linden groaned, and finally Russ went down after her, so they followed.
The dock timbers creaked under their feet as they made their way to its end. Linden drew back her arm and threw a dive ball out over the water like a baseball pitcher or the trainers in the movies.
The noise of the pokéball reconvergence effect cracked out over the water, louder than Moriko had ever heard it. Betsy appeared in an enormous field of blue light, displacing water that sent waves rushing up to splash against the pilings, and to reach for the little boats and canoes dragged up past the high-tide line.
Moriko was impressed; wailord were mostly used for comic effect in media, but Betsy was enormous up close, as big as a house with huge ship's-propeller fins.
"Nice to meet you, Betsy," Moriko said, "but Linden, I don't think we can do the surfing pokémon thing—we need to change and our stuff isn't waterproof—"
"It'll be fine, look how sturdy she is!"
Betsy warbled a laugh. "To be fair," she said, her deep voice tolling, "conditions at sea can change quickly, Astrid—"
"Linden! Please!"
"—Linden, and I can't dive if you all aren't ready for it."
"…It would save us a little money," Matt put in.
Moriko bit her lip. Not buying the ferry ticket would be a bonus; at their current rate they were looking at pokémon center cafeteria food for every meal and potions for emergencies only.
"What do you think, Russ?"
"Seems fun," he said, mild.
"Yes!" Linden pumped her fist.
Betsy hummed a confirmation. "Do you have some other water pokémon? It's better to travel in a convoy."
They set out from the cove perched on Betsy's back, her velvety dorsal skin cool to the touch. They were all barefoot, huddled in the center and clutching their bags zipped up in their rain covers, but the wailord surfed expertly, a wave of her own making buoying them up and compensating for the swell.
Vleridin, Maia, and Sauza followed her, Maia gliding placidly while Vleridin exerted herself, competing to make a higher, larger surf swell and smirking over at the group. The geysard threw up a bigger cloud of steam than usual and lagged behind with his head trailing in the water.
"See?" Linden Jr. called from her spot on Betsy's head. "Look how great this is!"
It wasn't bad, Moriko thought, with the fresh breeze, and they were dry thanks to Betsy's skill and size—spray simply didn't reach them. Russ stretched out with his pack for a pillow, and Sylvia let herself out and promptly took flight, soaring high above.
Liona was happy to fly as well, although Thanasanian the oberant was disoriented and needed time to observe the ocean. She confided that she might not be able to fly in the wind for long, her air-type manipulation less practiced than that of the nigriff and borfang who had spent their entire lives above ground in weather.
Sere Island was a dark smudge on the horizon when Linden's pokédex lit up; she answered it, shielding it from the wind.
"Hey dad, we're surfing with Betsy!"
Prof. Linden's voice came through, a little garbled. "Hi Junior, how are you guys doing?"
"It's great!"
"Can you see Sere Island?"
"Yeah, we're getting close."
"Their pokédex service is out," Prof. Linden said, the connection worsening illustratively, "and there were strong ghost-type readings before it went down. They might be experiencing a swarm or—"
The connection failed, the pokédex displaying the dizzy magnemite 'signal lost' icon.
"Shoot," Linden said, and tried to call him back, but the call kept failing.
"Is that a problem?" Moriko asked.
Linden shrugged. "Honestly, I don't know how you guys put up with it, you have terrible service in this region. I'll call him back from a phone in the town."
As they approached Sere Island the hints of a blue-sky day were lost as the sea grew rougher. Betsy started to pitch before she smoothed their passage again with surf. The flying pokemon landed and went into their pokeballs, and the water-types drew closer together.
Moriko clutched her bag again and woke Russ, and Matt started to get something out of his bag as Linden trotted back over. The cross-wave that made them all stagger was simply bad luck, and Linden accidentally slapped their storage device out of Matt's hand.
Moriko watched the handheld fall as if in slow motion, the bright yellow plastic spinning, bouncing off Betsy's side and sliding straight into the water. Food, clothing, supplies, all stored as energy, went with it.
Greenness filled her vision. She leapt into the waves.
She could see so clearly, the saltwater cool and pleasant and not stinging her eyes for once, and swimming was easy—amazingly easy, easier than wearing fins. She shot down into the depths, the storage device bright even as the water grew dim—it wasn't even that far to the bottom, the island an outcrop of an underwater arm of rock stretching out from the mainland.
She sensed other pokémon: corsola and ubiquitous tentacool, seanami gamboling, a surprised carchardax contemplating challenging them but intimidated by Betsy's size.
She pulled the water, reversing the device's fall and catching it in her mouth, and she shot back to the surface, tossing it triumphantly toward the others.
The humans stared at her in horror.
"Where's Moriko?" Russell shouted.
She tried to look down at herself and found that her eyes were not placed quite correctly to do so. She looked back and saw mossy hide and long, long legs ending in hooves on a swirling jet of water.
"Oh," she thought, and the greenness came up, and she fell, her vision tearing into two; she fell and hit the cold water; she fell, losing the jet; she gasped and spat saltwater; she pulled the water again to push up the girl—
She—I—
Moriko felt heat and Sauza was beside her, and she threw an arm over his warm body and let him draw her back to Betsy's side. Another jet helped her scrabble up the wall of the wailord's side, her sodden summer wear not quite so light anymore.
Matt gave her a towel from his bag. "Moriko…"
Russ watched her, shocked. "What the hell was that? You turned into Vleridin?"
Moriko looked over at the mooskeg, floating in the waves; she looked as confused as Moriko felt.
"I… did I?"
"More large waves are coming," Betsy broke in. "I'm going to hurry us on."
x.x.x.x.x
The wailord got them to the docks at Sere Island, and she made pillars of seawater to help them make the leap, the draft not enough for Betsy's bulk.
Maia had rinsed off the seawater, and Moriko had dried off in the wind somewhat, her clothes hopelessly wrinkled. Linden hung back as they made their way up the pier.
"So… the turning into a pokémon thing," Russ ventured.
Moriko and Vleridin glanced at each other and away. Moriko had an acute embarrassment roiling in her stomach, as if someone had interrupted an intimate moment.
"I saw the—thing—fall, and I felt Moriko's horror," Vleridin said. "So I leapt after it, and swam down—I didn't feel—" the mooskeg broke off, pondering. "There was more color, as I see when I ensoul her. And I knew the, thing, was important, though now… I have no idea why."
"You both lunged for it," Matt said, "and you both shone as you went under. Only Vleridin came back up, until she… broke apart into you and herself."
"Ah," Vleridin said. "She ensouled me."
"Is that even possible? Humans are matter, not energy," Russ said.
"Theologically—" Matt began.
"When the woman in black does that thing, when she turns into the black charizard," Moriko said, "that's the same, isn't it?"
"Unless Prof. Linden is right, and she's a bunch of pokémon glommed together," Matt said.
Moriko thought of what she'd seen under energy sight. "She—"
Linden Jr. had approached them carefully, and broke in: "Moriko, I… I'm really sorry about the storage device. It was an accident! I'm really sorry!"
Moriko waved a hand but she went on.
"I shouldn't have made you guys all ride Betsy! I'm sorry, please don't tell my dad!"
Moriko smiled lopsidedly and remembered being fourteen. "You should tell him yourself, that way no one can hold it over your head."
"Take it easy, kiddo. Welcome to Team Port Littoral," Russ said. "Weird shit twenty four seven."
"It's fine," Matt said. "I think that was an important finding anyway." He petted Maia's broad head and she whuffed in contentment. "Let's see about this gym."
x.x.x.x.x
Sere Village was completely deserted.
It was morning on a weekday, with no one around; shops were open but had no one in them. The cafes had food in their coolers, but no one to sell it. The parks were empty, the walking streets empty, the famous haunted lighthouse had no tourists.
"This is part of the act, right? Ghost-type gym, haunted island, gets really spooky before your match?" Linden said into the hollow stillness.
They passed an old-style graveyard, its gates hanging open, covered in traditional paper wards and creaking in the sea wind.
"Totally not spooky," Moriko said.
"There is a lot of ghost-type energy here," Vleridin said.
"What does it feel like?"
Vleridin looked around, her great head swinging and the mist running over her hooves. "Everything is… insubstantial. Fleeting. It shivers in the cracks of the stones and slithers through the grass."
"Is this part of the act?" Russ asked, turning on his pokédex. "No service, still."
"Local mode seems to be okay." Matt had his pokédex open, scanning, but there was nothing on its radar. "Are there any pokémon around?" he asked the mooskeg.
"I can't tell… there's a watchfulness."
"I'm—" Linden said, her voice pitching up high, and she cleared her throat and tried again. "I'm gonna call my dad."
They checked the pokémon center—also empty—for a phone, but couldn't get it to work. Matt tried a few passwords, but it was part of the pokémon transport system and probably needed a key as well.
The pokécenter machines humming in the silence were especially unsettling so they kept moving, and found a regular phone behind the front desk at the hotel. They all sighed audibly when the connection was made and Prof. Linden answered.
"Dad! We're on the island now, the landline still works."
"Astrid—how is everything? Are there ghost pokémon swarming?"
They crowded around the phone's camera.
"Prof. Linden—no one is here. Is this part of the act? A spooky island?" Moriko asked.
Prof. Linden squinted into his phone. "No-one is—where? In the pokémon center?"
"Anywhere. We haven't seen anyone since we got here."
"Uhhh," Prof. Linden turned slightly away from the camera, and a projected screen appeared in front of him. He typed something, his eyes moving. "Yes? 'Sere Island strives to entertain visitors with its haunted island aesthetic'? Maybe?"
"The pokémon are uneasy," Matt said. "We haven't seen any other pokémon either."
"Your pokédexes still aren't syncing?"
"No," Matt said, "we're on a landline right now. No pokédex, phone or internet."
Prof. Linden typed something else and stared at his computer, scrolling. "Listen, I'm looking at the RES website and it's like I said, there's a spike in ghost-type energy above the already high background, and—"
They all stared at the dizzy magnemite. Call lost.
Linden redialed. Call failed.
"Well, this isn't weird as shit," Matt said, resigned.
They sat outside and got out their pokédexes and snacks in subdued silence.
"What should we do?" Linden asked.
"The real ferry is coming in," Matt said. "Maybe we should just wait for them and meet up with the crew."
"Yeah, I think we should leave," Moriko agreed. "I don't think this is normal, despite the haunted island thing."
Russ looked pensive and finally took out Celeste's pokéball.
The celestiule appeared, her sky-pelt an overcast light gray and her mane and tail white. She raised her head appraisingly, looking up the rise.
"I see you," she muttered.
x.x.x.x.x
They followed Celeste up the road, switchbacking up and up to the lookout and the small gym, the dirt road flanked by huge, broad trees girdled by ropes and paper belts. Curse- and charm-seals were tucked into cracks and boles, and there were old carved stones among the trunks, squat and staring or leering grotesqueries.
They reached the shrine at the top of the hill. Stern masters stood watch, their stone features worn away by rain and time, their hands raised in gestures of protection and benediction. The wind sighed, rushing along the tops of the trees, and clouds scudded over the increasingly rough water.
"You know the part of the movie where, like, the cupboards open and groan 'leave this place' but the characters keep exploring?" Linden said. "Are we doing that right now? Is something terrible going to come out?"
"It can try, certainly," Maia rumbled.
They approached the gym's entrance, the doors pleasantly weathered and set into the whitewashed walls. "Last chance to leave this place, ghosts and zombies," Linden muttered.
"We're gonna see something fucked up in three… two… one," Moriko said, and pushed the doors open.
"As the poet said, 'darkness there and nothing more'," said Matt.
Linden took a picture of the empty, dim interior. "No orbs or mysterious shadows or anything," she said, disappointed.
"Next guess: murder basement," Moriko said.
There was no basement, and exhausted from their early morning and repeated scares, they moved on to the lookout. They could see the ferry coming in, and behind it the faint gray shadow of the mainland.
"I think we better go down to meet them," Russ said, resigned. "This was funny at first, but I'm getting tired of the joke."
Celeste clicked her teeth in annoyance, muttering to herself. The light- and dark-type seemed to have some ability to detect and neutralize malevolent pokémon; she was as suspicious as they were about the island, but for the moment just as confused.
They started down the road again, and halfway down, Russell staggered.
"Watch yourself," Moriko tried to say, but her voice sounded slow and garbled to her own ears. She lifted her suddenly-leaden hands to her mouth.
"Hypnosis," someone said from far away. A shadow passed over them as Abram leapt and galloped away, Linden clutching the broad dome of his central body.
Russ was on the ground with Celeste nudging him. Sylvia appeared as well, but she was staggering, her wings flopping around uncoordinated.
Moriko realized dimly that she was on the ground too, a particularly fascinating pebble centimeters away from her face. It would be so good to just sleep for a few moments, she thought, she was so tired, she had gotten up so early…
x.x.x.x.x
Vleridin awoke with a start from a dream of the desert, and water on the horizon taunting her. Around her the other pokémon were stirring: the old-soul celestiule, her sky-skin roiling with dark clouds; the tibyss, her bio-lights winking on and off, uncoordinated and dim; and the borfang, anxiously nosing the gravel for a sign of her trainer.
"Where is he? Where is he?" Sylvia whined.
A snarl from Maia set Vleridin's teeth on edge. "Who did—" she tried to stand and fell, her blue fin-bones all clattering. "I'll kill, I'll kill them— Matt! Matt!" she roared.
"Yelling will do no good," Celeste said. "They hide from my sight!"
Sylvia flew into the air, her broad wings stirring up dust on the road, and she arced back and forth, calling her trainer's name.
"Who did this?" Maia repeated, managing to get to her feet.
Vleridin rolled her head, gesturing at the entire island. "By deduction: whoever disappeared all the other humans here, they put us to sleep and took the trainers too."
"Why not us?" Maia growled.
Vleridin looked out into the forest. There should be plant-type energy here, water and wind from the sea, and rock and ground from the exposed stone and soil, but it was all overlaid with creeping ghostly energy, dizzying and misleading the senses. Something had snatched away the humans and left them—but there were no humans or pokémon in the town.
"…Are they coming back for us?" the mooskeg said.
"Show yourselves, cowards!" Maia bellowed, her tail lashing. She rounded on the forest, a little ice flying out of her jaws involuntarily, and then she followed it up with a real attack that left the nearby trees tinkling and glittering with frost.
Nothing, not even birds, stirred in the wood.
Sylvia returned, calling out "I found Linden!" as she landed.
Running and gravel crunching were soon audible, and the metagross returned with the pale human.
"The sleep attack has ended," Abram said, in leaden tones. "You all are well?"
"Why are you still awake?" Maia demanded.
Linden shrugged. "We ran out of range in time, I guess."
"More to the point, Moriko, Russell, and Matthew are gone," Vleridin said.
"Oh shit," said Linden, "I'm the final girl. And we haven't even seen the monster. How can we—? No, scratch that—I should just leave. We should just leave and get my dad and the grad students and their pokémon."
"No," said Sylvia, Maia, and Vleridin all at once. They looked at each other, and Vleridin felt faintly embarrassed—how had she gotten lumped in with these slavish, devoted children?
"You may go," Maia said imperiously. "I will find Matt."
"We couldn't find the humans of this island," Vleridin returned. "How can we find our—these humans?"
"We have to try," said Sylvia. "Let's go look for clues in the gym!"
Linden drummed her fingers on Abram's carapace. "Sounds great, but what are we even looking for? How are the others even gone? I don't see any… tracks, or whatever?"
"A demon has taken them," Celeste said, her sky-skin flicking from cloud to cloud, dark and light and dark again; her eyes roved, seeing something they couldn't. "You are not safe. We are not safe." She looked at Linden. "Go back to the ferry, Astrid. Warn them."
"It's Linden." She bounced impatiently. "Ugh. Ughhhh! I should go, I know I should, but—this might be awesome!"
"It might be horrible," Sylvia growled. "You weren't there in the desert, when that thing hurt Russ!"
"Exactly! That would have been so cool!"
"It was not cool!"
In the end, they watched Linden and Abram gallop away down the slope toward the town.
They returned to the gym, looking hard under spectral sight for traces of the demon pokémon, but with all the ghost energy it was like trying to look through a thick mist. The energy was as deceptive as the type: it shifted unexpectedly, the strength of the aura fading in and out, letting through tantalizing glimpses of other energies and sources. There were wild pokémon here after all: they were concealing themselves in cracks and crannies, their auras compressed into tight, terrified balls.
They explored further than the humans had, into the wood beyond the gym, and they found a rocky promontory studded with human-made images of gods in dark stone.
Sylvia and Maia studied them, tails waving, and Vleridin was again reminded that they were only a few years old for all their strength.
"…Who are they?" the borfang asked.
"The—" Vleridin began.
"Do not say their names," Celeste snapped. "They ruled us once and they would again. They would take from us as much as the demons would, given the chance. As much or more."
Vleridin sniffed. "I prefer to be spoken to more deferentially by children," she said, but the celestiule was already moving off. "I was going to say, they are the gods-who-left—but before they did, we gave them polite sobriquets to avoid attracting their attention: the Liar, the Judge, the Dreamer, the Enchanter, the Ghost, the Weaver."
Sylvia watched her, puzzled. "I thought legendary pokémon were good—they keep the world in balance. I saw a movie about it with Russ."
"Legendaries aren't gods," Maia said as they walked. "They have long lives and great power, but they are no smarter than us and they can use it for good or for ill. They aren't gods—they can be beaten." She glanced at them sidelong. "I've seen it, on TV with Matt. A rayquaza was in the tournament—and it can be beaten by ice." She exhaled, her breath fogging.
"They are gluttons for energy," Celeste said. "Better when they had to sleep through every other season, every other decade. Terrible that they are at last partnering with humans; they will be putting their snouts into everything."
"You sounded like an elder there, old-soul," Vleridin called up to her. "Your skin is slipping."
Celeste brayed a laugh, but she kept walking.
"The gods were different, they say," Vleridin said to Sylvia. "There was far more energy in those days, but they destroyed it all fighting the demons, and when it was gone, they left." She jerked her head at Celeste. "Superstitious, to still be worried about them. It's like worrying that a fire-type will follow you into the ocean."
"It could, actually," Maia said. "But it would be stupid."
"Exactly," said Celeste.
They pushed into the gym, nosing around the equipment and into the humans' living quarters. Vleridin turned over papers with her vines and half-fancied that the lines on them meant something. A TV had been left on, but it was gibberish without a human listening to it, and in any case it just showed colors now, meaningless.
Sylvia hunched her wings down small and lifted up furniture, her talons carefully grasping tables and sofas, but there was nothing but dust underneath. It was the same as the town; there were things left out, food on the tables half-eaten and left behind.
They jumped at a siren sounding, and followed the noise to another room with a tiled floor. There was a faint trail of smoke coming from some human thing set against the wall, and the alarm in the ceiling peeped deafeningly.
"I know this one!" Sylvia said. "The food is burning. One time, Moriko and Russ were playing games and they didn't hear the noise." She twisted the controls with her vines until all the lights were off.
Maia wrenched the door open, annoyed, releasing a gout of smoke and warm air, and she froze the hot metal interior. Something inside broke, tinkling. The alarm kept sounding and they moved off, frustrated with the human artifacts' refusal to cooperate.
In the center of the gym arena, Vleridin realized her vision was clearer. There was less of the ghost-type energy here; it was more churned up, crisscrossed by humans and pokémon, consumed by battles. Celeste flickered, hiding energy, pretending to be a child, while Maia and Sylvia looked more normal, their soul-stuff glowing in their bodies green and teal and blue and white—
Vleridin sharpened her senses; here there was a little pulse of energy on Maia, a soul heart's beat, a pause, and then another, beating in time to some other—
"You have soul-bonded one of the humans," the celestiule said, but she was looking at Vleridin, not Maia.
"I—"
Celeste jumped, kicking up her hind hooves. "Yes! Yes! The link, we have to find the link—oh, confound this ghost-stuff—"
Vleridin remembered the thread connecting Matthew to the Gray Prince and wanted to find it on herself, wanted to bite it away—was she stealing from Moriko as the demon had? No, that couldn't be right… But they'd seen that gray thread only with the many-souled woman there, ravenously consuming all the energy in the area to support those she carried, and leaving bare that subtle effect of the link.
"Hey!" something called from the doorway.
They all jumped at the intruder and rounded on it, attack energies bristling, and it squeaked and dived back out of the gym. They followed it out, but there was no-one in the courtyard.
"What was it?" Sylvia asked, the thorns on her neck and back standing out in fright.
"Some kind of ghost-type," Vleridin grunted. "Come on out then," she called. "What's going on here? Where are the humans?"
After a moment the ghost reappeared, phasing back into visibility; it was a small, stubby orange pokémon, and it waved its black fringe at them sheepishly.
"What are you doing, pumpkaboo?" Maia breathed out ice crystals—well away from it, but it squeaked and started to disappear again.
"Don't go!" Vleridin said, shooting the tibyss a hard look. "Just—what happened?"
Other ghosts phased in to join them, several banette and a shuppet, and they sized each other up for a few moments.
"Something weird," said one of the banette.
"It's always weird here," the pumpkaboo squeaked.
"Well, weirder than usual."
"Start from the beginning," Vleridin said, wanting to bite them all with impatience.
"We're with Tsukuyomi," said the banette, "you know, the gym leader? I was training with them and their students when all of a sudden all the humans fell asleep and slumped to the ground, right? It was really weird."
"And so did Glamdring and Treebeard," the pumpkaboo added. "But Treebeard woke up after a while, natural cure, see?"
"And they went to go look for everyone."
"You skipped part of the story," Maia said, her tail lashing. "What happened to the humans?"
The ghost-type pokémon all looked discomfited.
"…Skulls came," the pumpkaboo said finally. "Skulls came and carried them away."
They all stared at it. "What."
The banette looked at each other uncertainly. "A couple weeks ago, it started to feel… richer here, you know?" a shiny one said. "It was easy to train and we got a lot of levels."
"The ghost-type energy," Vleridin muttered. "But no one disappeared until today?"
"Yeah."
"So what took them away?"
"It looked like skulls," the pumpkaboo said again. "You know. Like duskull, or ossprey. They have bones visible, right? Gray and green skulls, and they piled up under the humans and moved them away."
Sylvia narrowed her eyes. "And why didn't you help?"
"They were strong!" it squeaked. "Way too strong! I just got here from Kalos!"
"Stronger than us?" Maia growled.
The banette tried to decide among themselves.
"Maybe?"
"Nah, it's stronger."
"They're all high levels though."
"Like level matters if you're asleep."
Maia's tail went up at that. "Do you… do any of you know safeguard?"
"I do!" the pumpkaboo peeped. "I learned it from a TM!"
"Safeguard?" Sylvia asked.
"It will stop the sleep attack if it comes again," Maia said.
Celeste returned from stalking around and around the grounds. "There is simply too much energy here," she said. "You all have to eat it," she said to the ghosts.
"No can do."
"What do you think we've been doing?"
"We're stuffed. Get it?" a banette said, and they all started hooting with laughter.
"Eat more! Eat more and use your strongest attacks if you want to see your trainer again!"
The pumpkaboo dutifully planted its roots and started drawing in ghost-type energy from the surroundings, while the shuppet fired off a few clumsy hex attacks and a shadow sneak. The banette conferred briefly and started gathering energy for a huge multi-shadow ball, an ungainly attack that they were probably too low-level to perform properly, and it showed: it was eating up ambient energy rapidly as they struggled to support it.
"Excellent! Mooskeg, stand here—tibyss, here!"
Maia snarled at the celestiule, her fins high and quivering, but she moved as indicated, and Vleridin put that slight away for proper revenge on another occasion. She could see the soul pulse on Maia more easily now, the mist drawn into the crackling purple spheres maintained by the banette, and—yes, she could see where it led, away into the earth underneath the gym.
"They're under the ground somewhere?" Maia growled. "Is there a basement under the gym after all?"
Vleridin felt the trees and their roots grasping down, and she felt where they stopped, where they hit rock and snaked along it, and she felt the sea, fingers reaching into the land and wearing it away, bit by bit, and—
"There are caves," she said suddenly. "There are caves in the headland. We have to find a way down there—"
"Without getting put to sleep again," Maia said. "Are you coming, pumpkaboo?"
"Of course! Let's go get Tsukuyomi!"
The banette were flagging, and seeing that some conclusion had been reached, they let the shadow ball attacks go, whirling high into the air. They watched them burst, shielding their eyes as they looked up against the weak light off the overcast sky.
"Whew! We should do that more often," one said.
"Boom! Haha!"
"Are you all coming?" Vleridin asked them.
The shiny banette waved one of its arms. "Give us a minute! We'll follow you."
Another one groaned. "Do we have to?"
"That kind of talk is gonna get you benched!" the shuppet squeaked.
"Only if you tell them, snitcher."
"We're going," Vleridin said pointedly, and used her vines to lift the pumpkaboo onto Sylvia's back. "What's your name?"
"Jackie!"
"Just keep that safeguard rolling, will you, Jackie?"
x.x.x.x.x
The windward side of the island was suffused with storms' energy, even the thick ghost-type emanation struggling against the wind- and water- and lightning-type power that had gathered there for thousands of years. It was no mystery why humans had built a temple on the island; at a crossroads between sea and land and sky, it was a deep well for power.
Jackie kept safeguard up, the silver runes whirling around them periodically as they found a way down to the beach, rocks and dirt shifting treacherously underneath their paws and hooves. Sylvia flew down, which Vleridin considered a grossly unfair advantage, but the borfang called out paths and dangerous ledges as the pumpkaboo squeaked happily on her back.
The mass hypnosis started up again just as they made it down, and they stayed awake, mostly protected by the middling-level pumpkaboo's power. Without the benefit of unconsciousness it was an awful, crawling feeling that shook in your teeth and bones and made you want to turn to energy to escape it—and wouldn't that be a convenient state for the demon pokémon to find you in.
"It senses us coming," Maia hissed. "We can't let it know that we're avoiding the attack!"
They all laid down in the sand, suppressing their energies and pretending to be asleep, and eventually the hypnosis wave trailed off. They stood again, sick and unsteady, but still awake.
"So it happened again?" Jackie chirped at them.
Maia shook herself, fins rippling, and squinted at the pumpkaboo. "You didn't notice?"
"I'm immune to sleep attacks! It's my ability!"
"Cheater," Vleridin muttered.
The beach was devoid of wild pokémon; there were a few out in the water, giving the place a wide berth, and seabirds wheeling high above, oblivious to elemental dramatics and out of range of the hypnosis, if it even affected them. They passed pillars of black rock standing sternly out in the water, and there were rock overhangs and shallow caves where the sea had pressed on some weakness, countless storms wearing away the island over long aeons.
The right cave was impossible to miss; it was malevolent, crawling with demon energy, stinking of it.
"We need to make a plan—let's renew the safeguard and creep in—" Maia began.
Celeste charged past her into the cave. "At last! I see you, demon!"
"Are you kidding—"
"So much for that. Russ! Russell!" Sylvia shot in after the celestiule, the pumpkaboo whooping.
"You don't have to follow her in, you buttered duck!" Maia roared after her.
x.x.x.x.x
Moriko swam in and out of consciousness. She saw forest, sky, rock walls and flickering light—
She rolled over, the ground seesawing wildly like that time she and Russ had gotten drunk on sake and plum wine at his parents' house. They'd tried to play video games, but their reaction times were shot, and eventually they just sat in the bathroom against the nausea. His mom had been disappointed, but she'd also thought it was hilarious.
Her mind wandering, Moriko looked around and focused on the pale light.
They were in a cave, and ahead was a raised section of stone surrounded by flat black water like a mirror.
Moriko remembered another cave and another pool, and she lurched back. Her head was pounding; pain lanced straight into her eyes, and she clutched at her head, trying not to throw up.
She looked back, slower, at the figure on the stone: a person in a Shinto ceremonial outfit, sitting with their head slumped forward, and above them, suspended…
She fumbled for her pokédex and pointed its eye toward it.
Cryptidex mode activated. Aura analysis: Ghost- and acid-type, 85% certainty. Ghost- and rock-type, 15% certainty. Reduce range to increase certainty. (WARNING: HIGH LEVEL DO NOT APPROACH UNLESS FAINTED) Possible match: Nosfearat, the horde pokémon. This pokémon has many ancillary bodies, but only the central portion takes damage. It can drain the vitality of humans as well as pokémon, which may account for various vampire legends.
Nosfearat. Another demon. It was skeletal, with long front limbs and a pointed skull perched atop a rib cage wreathed with scraps of wispy cloth, and its spinal column extended down, as long as a snake and coiling below it. It seemed to hang in the air, quiescent, and from it grew a mass of spiderweb-thin strands that seemed to glitter in the faint light.
She saw movement and whirled her head to look at it, wincing at another stab of pain.
A skull floated past, and then another, and more and more, vaguely rodent-shaped and whispering faintly in their passage. They were glowing like will-o-wisps, and as they converged on the person and the nosfearat they illuminated dozens of other people, slumped and unmoving, and bound by the strands to the floating demon pokémon.
A familiar figure crawled up the dais; it was Russ, barely on his feet and shielding his eyes, as if looking into the sun. Moriko's vision swam as something shivered, hummed in the dim cavern. Russ dropped to his knees, but he put a hand out, and he touched the dark pool. She thought she saw it grow, well up like a fountain of crude oil, and spill over him.
Moriko thought she might have gone out again because suddenly she was looking at Russ, standing tall, pokéball in hand, the small skulls chittering all around him. He put out his hand and seemed to grasp at something, and seized and tore it violently.
Screeching rang out and the floating skeleton fell, the skulls milling around in confusion and dismay. Russ threw the pokéball to reveal Keigan the springbuck, who staggered drunkenly as he reformed.
Russell's voice sounded garbled, but Keigan managed to produce a whirlwind, trapping the nosfearat in the vortex. The skulls rushed away from Russ, mobbing the nosfearat and assembling into long, auxiliary limbs; it extended one and a strong hypnosis wave pulsed. The springbuck faltered, slumping.
Hooves clacked, drumming on the rock, and there was a high, wild equine scream behind Moriko. White light illuminated the nosfearat; a ray pierced it. It shrieked, a sound that made Moriko's limbs stiffen with fear and her jaw ache.
There was a triumphant roar and Sylvia came streaking in, teal dragonfire spilling between her fangs. She closed in and breathed it in a huge gout that washed over the demon. Angry chittering started up and purple confuse rays shot out, high-level ones that left flashing afterimages on the human eye.
Moriko felt herself levered upward.
"Can you stand?" Vleridin was saying, and Moriko started to say no, but she was already feeling better, and she staggered and clutched at Vleridin's neck to support herself.
Maia was nosing among numerous other sleeping—gods, let them be sleeping—forms and found Matt, who was reluctantly stirring.
"Matt!" Maia growled. "Matt! Did it hurt you? I'll—"
"I'm gonna hurl," Matt muttered.
There were yet more skulls hopping toward the dais to join with the main body of the nosfearat. It grew, looming above Russ and Keigan, and Sylvia battered it with her claws and tail, ripping away talon-fuls of the bones, but they hit the wall and started hopping back immediately.
"Help them, Vleridin. I'm okay," Moriko said, wobbly.
"If you insist," the mooskeg said, and she drew away to join the battle.
She felt at her trainer belt—they all had that slight tingle of an occupied ball, thank goodness—and threw down Rufus's pokéball.
The ball opened but the energy in it was sluggish and took a few tries to re-form, and finally coalesced into the oxhaust, kneeling and clutching at his armored head. He looked around the cave and looked like he regretted it, and he laid on his side on the ground.
"Rufus! Are you okay?"
He groaned. "I feel terrible. This is worse than bleeding. Why is everything wobbling? Did someone use earthquake?"
"A demon pokémon put us all to sleep, looks like it got you too."
Moriko looked over at Keigan, who was protecting Russ, but the springbuck was swaying and his attacks were arcing drunkenly every time he attempted one. She flinched at a huge crackle of ice energy as Maia started fighting the nosfearat as well.
Moriko realized that the pokémon in their pokéballs were too sick to fight properly, and a lance of icy fear ran through her body.
Vleridin was okay, Maia was okay—the pokémon who'd been left behind could fight, which meant they had three pokémon and a baby—a precocious and weird baby—celestiule to fight a demon pokémon that had sleep-effect-ed an entire town.
Holy shit.
The nosfearat fired viscous, green-brown sludge at them; it splattered Sylvia, leaving smoking holes in her coat and wings, and she howled in pain—caustic blast, the attackdex chirped helpfully—and reacted with the rock.
It was high-level to boot. Moriko looked at the dozens of people slumped around the cave and her vision filled with human bodies pulped and gored by attacks, charred by real flame and electricity—
"Get back. Get back!" she yelled, finding her voice. "Vleridin, nature power! Use the rocks to protect the people!"
Vleridin bellowed and the cave's stone floor began to glow gray and crack apart, separating into huge slabs of stone that the mooskeg levitated forward and set on end or piled up haphazardly. The dais split with a noise that seemed unwarrantedly loud, and they all staggered at the sound. Vleridin looked like she'd rather hurl the boulders at the nosfearat, but finished the barrier just in time.
Maia's markings were glowing and water flooded into the cave from an underwater entrance. Seawater sloshed against the makeshift dike, chunks of ice floating in it and shimmering with oily poison.
"Surf, Maia! Water against acid!" Matt was calling.
Russ was in there somewhere; it was suicidal. He had to feel as bad as Moriko did and Matt looked, and the two of them just barely staggered over to the new rock wall, peering over it like it was a match they hadn't bought tickets to instead of a fight for their lives. They ducked as deflected leaves and ice shards hit the rock.
"How does this keep happening?" Moriko yelled to Matt.
Matt grinned weakly, waving his pokédex. "The good news is, this one has a name—I don't think it's in the same league as the Gray Prince or his buddy."
"Good, so it won't obliterate us, it'll just wear us down—we only have three pokémon in good shape, Rufus would have been throwing up in his pokéball if he ate food or that was even possible, and I assume the others aren't doing much better."
"Don't discount the celestiule, something real strange is going on there," Matt said, glancing over the barrier and jerking back as drops of acid pattered on the rock and sizzled in the sand at their feet.
"Russ! Get back here! You are going to die!" Moriko yelled over the rocks, ducking quickly. "Did he even notice?"
Matt looked. "He's not listening. I think Keigan is managing a light screen, which is why he still has skin—"
"Matt, we have to wake up these people—"
"The best defense is to knock that thing down—"
"Yeah, which we're clearly helping with, crouching here. Come on!"
Moriko threw down Thanasanian's pokéball and tried to remember her first aid classes while the oberant sluggishly reformed. "Hello? Hello?" she said loudly to the person in the Shinto priest robes, sprawled on the remains of the dais, and hesitantly tried to take their pulse. Their skin was very cool to the touch.
Matt managed to stand and set about similarly, trying to rouse the next nearest person.
Thanasanian buzzed unhappily as she appeared.
"Thana, I know you feel like shit, but please light screen or reflect us or anything—" Moriko grabbed the person's hands, dragging them further away from the battle, where flashes of ice blue and teal fire and screeches from the nosfearat were still raging.
The demon pokémon reared back like a snake, and it threw off its secondary skulls and dove underwater. Outraged snarls from their pokémon followed, and Maia set the seawater churning, searching for it while the skulls clacked on the rocks, confused.
There was a rumble and the nosfearat burst out of the remains of the dais in an explosion of sand and rock slag, melted by acid. It loomed over Moriko and Matt, acid dripping from its jaws, exuded by the bones.
No hypnosis this time, its eyes seemed to say.
Somewhere in her mind she knew she should be terrified, but anger surged up instead, hot and boiling, and she wanted to show her teeth, wanted to snarl, her fingers curled into claws, and all she could think was how dare you as she stared up into that leering skull wreathed with stinking, rotten hide—
Moriko felt thorns, felt rock, felt the churning sea, it all felt so near, like if she pushed just a little it would all burst—
Light, blinding, stabbed through it—genesis lance, said the attackdex—and the nosfearat howled, transfixed, impaled, the spectral light in its eyes dimming and its limbs going slack.
"I see you, demon," Celeste whispered, a whisper that they all heard, as if to a friend's ear.
It was dragged backward; Moriko realized Maia was roaring, a wild expression of pure rage as she sent waves to wash the demon out. Vleridin was pulling with her thornvines on its long bone tail, hauling it out of its hole like vermin.
Suddenly the pressure in the room was gone. Matt blinked and worked his jaw as if his ears had just popped.
Moriko ran to peer over the rock wall. "Russ!"
Russell was standing in the dirty seawater like an absolute madman, retrieving something. He turned and walked back toward them, flanked by Sylvia and Keigan, the former of whom could barely restrain her excitement and relief despite her injuries. He was holding an ultra ball in one hand and clutching his head in the other.
"God, hypnosis always looked like a humorous pratfall in movies," he said as he drew near. "I may vomit."
Moriko stared at the ball. "Did you catch it?"
"Yeah, another demon for Professor Maple," he said. He put it on his trainer belt with an appalling nonchalance and started recalling his pokémon.
Celeste alighted delicately and recalled herself. Sylvia ignored the beam, trying to lick Russ's face and getting dark ichor on his clothes.
"Sylvia, please, you're covered in acid—" Moriko said, as Maia soaked them both with clean water.
Vleridin pushed over one of the slabs of rock and shook herself, using water sport to clear off any traces of the demon's attacks still stuck to her.
"Acid-types!" the mooskeg muttered.
"Thank you," Moriko said to Vleridin, Maia, and Sylvia. "You saved us! Uh… where are we?"
"Of course we did," Vleridin said. "We're in a cave on the western coast of the island."
They went to try to rouse the other people strewn about the cave, and to their great relief they finally stirred. As the first few awoke it seemed the spell was broken, and the networked chambers were filled with the echoes of people groaning and trying to stand.
"Here they are!" they heard shouted. Soon there were sailors from the Port Brac ferry coming into the cave, and someone with a large ship's first aid kit that Moriko hoped was a nurse or an EMT.
Linden waved and came over to them with Abram. "I got help! You guys are okay? What happened?"
"There was another demon pokémon," Russ said, "and I caught it. Nosfearat."
Linden gave a shriek of dismay. "I told you guys! I told you! Ughhhhh, I missed it!"
"Good," said Abram.
x.x.x.x.x
"I owe you some explanation," Tsukuyomi, the gym leader said.
"So, you know why and how your whole town was being drained by a ghost pokémon?" the pokémon ranger said to them sharply.
Tsukuyomi winced; their banette and pumpkaboo paused in fawning over them to frown at the ranger. Tsukuyomi was every inch the mysterious shrine-keeper with genehan white hair and eyes and long, sweeping robes. Out of uniform and sick after being energy-drained, they looked more like a goth kid who'd had a bad night.
"Sere Island has always been rich in ghost-type energy," they said, fingers curled around a large mug of sugary tea, "and other types as well. It surged recently: we expected to see a swarm of ghost-type pokémon migrating to the area, but they didn't arrive. In fact, we stopped seeing any wild pokémon at all. I kept in contact with the Regional Energetics surveyors…"
"I found the cave on the beach and visited it without incident," one of Tsukuyomi's students put in. "It was newly exposed by a small earthquake. There was nothing in it but stone and seawater, and I went back to the gym and told everyone. We were organizing an outing to look for fossils and crystallized energy when it happened."
"Did you summon the nosfearat? Did you do anything to lure it here?"
The pokémon rangers' questioning went on for a while, incisive, almost hostile questions that seemed to betray a prejudice on the rangers' part or a history on the gym leader's. Finally they moved on to Moriko, Russell, and Matt, and they gave their account of finding the town empty and being sent to sleep by the undocumented pokémon. The rangers avoided calling it a demon pokémon.
They were scolded for saying that "everyone" was gone when there were apparently unconscious or groggy people in the town in their houses, and then scolded for going into the empty buildings without permission. They nodded contritely through that speech, but Moriko felt her skin prickling angrily.
A third ranger approached them after that—it was Ranger-Captain Tanager, who had helped them in the aftermath of the forest fire caused by Dzalar, Matt's svarog.
Tanager whistled, looking at his pokédex and stowing it on his hip. "You three have a knack for attracting trouble, am I right?" He grinned. "Me included, this time."
"We're the victims of trouble," Matt said sharply. "Are you here to arrest us?"
"No, you're not—but I hope you'll give me five minutes of your time."
"Beginning now."
"Drop the tough guy act. You three have been in the thick of things this summer. It's been following you around. It would be very easy to conclude that you are the origin of these difficulties rather than the victims, and many of my colleagues would make you head home and put you under surveillance."
Matt puffed up at that. Moriko elbowed him.
Tanager snorted. "But with the benefit of the full picture, I don't think it's you three. There have been other incidents."
Moriko felt cold. "What else?"
The ranger held up a hand; not now. "In fact, I don't want to restrict you to a city. I want you to go far away into the wild, so whatever is following you won't find you among children and the elderly and people without pokémon."
"…Nice reverse psychology," Matt said, after a shocked pause.
"But it's my duty to protect you, wherever you are." Captain Tanager smiled sadly. "I beg you, whatever you end up doing, to stay somewhere with good communication, where our reaction time is shorter than hours. For your own safety."
They nodded, subdued, and Captain Tanager passed them his direct pokédex contact info before leaving.
"So," Moriko said, "do we—"
"Trainers! A moment," Tsukuyomi called to them. "Thank you very much for your help," the gym leader said, bowing. They were merely middle-aged, despite the white hair, but they were unsteady after the hypnosis. They might have been put under the longest and been the worst-drained.
"Not at all—it was our pokémon," Moriko said, and shortly they were pushing Maia, Celeste and Sylvia forward—Vleridin required no prompting—to accept accolades from Tsukuyomi and their students, who were offering them potions and rare candies in thanks.
"I feel that this is not quite enough," Tsukuyomi said eventually, and they were holding out three badges.
It was the Oblivion Badge, two pillars and a lintel on a simplified landscape with night beyond them.
"We can't take this—we haven't fought—" Moriko said, shocked.
"It is well within my purview as a gym leader to give out badges as a reward for a service to the gym, especially one that involved pokémon battling, anyway." They smiled. "You've watched the trainer dramas, haven't you? The heroes get badges for any old reason."
"Yeah, due to writer laziness—ow!"
Russ took his weight off Matt's foot. "Thank you very much," he said politely. "This is a privilege."
Tsukuyomi waved a hand. "My pokémon are still recovering, also," they said, "and those of my seconds, so it will be some time before I do any serious battling. I may have to get a loan of pokémon from another ghost-type gym leader—I'll send Fantina and Dolorosa a message—"
"Are your pokémon okay? I've heard when pokémon are especially energy-drained…" Moriko asked hesitantly.
"No! They're safe! I didn't lose any of them. No, a killer ghost pokémon—or a demon—can drain a pokémon to death, you're right, but this one—well, it had a whole town, it was like a child running through an orchard. Taking single bites from apples, throwing them away, moving on to the next one..." Tsukuyomi shuddered delicately. "Disgusting, but to our benefit."
"Did you do anything to attract the demon?" Matt said, flat.
"Matt please stop being rude—"
Tsukuyomi smiled sadly at Matt and raised their hands, where a couple of will-o-wisps were dancing.
It was easy to forget that ghost pokémon were closest to demons in aspect. They were traditionally feared; none could say whether they merely shared powers with legends about ghosts, or if they truly were undeparted spirits or corrupted ones.
"No. Did you?" Tsukuyomi asked Matt.
He got still, very still at the question.
Tsukuyomi smiled and put a finger to their lips, and went back to their mug of tea.
x.x.x.x.x
Sere Village was loud and bustling that evening: everyone wanted to re-live and re-discuss the same set of facts and hunt for new rumors, or to hide in their homes and try not to think too hard about what had happened to them and their neighbors. The place was crawling with pokémon rangers and police, and media from the mainland had already turned up.
Linden had rejoined her father and Professor Maple, who had flown over with the rangers, and they'd surrendered the nosfearat to Professor Maple with some relief.
Moriko, Russell, and Matt went to the beach. What they all wanted was a nap, but they'd be woken up in no time by rangers' boots tromping past the trainer dorm in the small pokémon center. The sky had opened up, but there were still thick clouds scudding by against the blue, and it was a bit chilly for swimming.
Moriko had spent all that time asleep, but it hadn't been restful. And yet she was possessed—ha—by a nervous energy. She couldn't sit and close her eyes before it would tell her to move again. She walked down the beach with the pokémon, who'd been healed and now needed a little exercise to dispel some of the grogginess. It did them some good to be out in the sea air, even Rufus, who found the closeness of the ocean oppressive, but they were shortly back in their pokéballs.
Thanasanian was frightened but had resolved to travel further, with more demons to report on. Vleridin was in better spirits, happy to be praised and mug for the camera, and Moriko watched as she fought a palaephin out in the breakers that dove back under and disappeared after a few exchanged attacks.
Palaephin, the bier pokémon. A ghost- and water-type, it was said to carry the souls of the dead into the west, where the sun sets. They often swim alongside ships and guard them against attack by other pokémon, but they are capricious and may attack, too.
Matt and Russ weren't far behind; Maia and Sauza were in the water, and Matt was on his pokédex while Russ threw stones and shells into the waves.
Moriko started to feel like she could sit down, but jumped when a girl approached her and sat down as well.
"Are you… from Sere Village?" she asked, awkward and not wanting to talk, but not wanting to snub the stranger.
The girl smiled; she was tall and pale, with gray-blue hair that covered her face in the sea wind.
"What did you find, there, under the earth?" the girl whispered.
Moriko wasn't sure she heard. "Sorry?"
"There is treasure there, underground, with the dead. We die and we go back to the earth, and all our riches, oh, there they are left," she said in a singsong voice. "Under the earth, there is treasure… Under the earth, there is screaming…"
Moriko got up, and the girl shot out her hand to grab her wrist, and it was freezing.
"Crimes leave a trace," the girl said, dreamily. "They leave blood. They leave ghosts."
Moriko stared.
"Look underground for their crimes," said the girl. "Look under the sea."
"…I need to go."
"Goodbye, earth's daughter… Look, will you?"
Moriko fairly raced away along the beach, her boots sinking in the sand.
Matt looked up at her. "Whew! Had a fright?"
Moriko shook her head. "I was talking to that girl—"
"What girl?"
"You didn't notice her? She said, gods, she said—"
Matt looked at her, his pokédex slack in his hands. "Moriko, I was… watching you for a while. You were alone."
Her expression changed as possibilities whisked through her mind, and she went with, "Matt, you're being an asshole again."
He sputtered. "No!—Not this time. You were looking at the ocean. There was no one there."
"You need to step up your game, Matt."
"You. Were. Alone."
"This is particularly assholish after all, after all this—"
"Moriko, look, the beach is empty—"
"It curves, there are trees, she walked away—"
A palaephin leapt, far away in the waves, and it was gone.
Dead Island / They would rule us again if they could / Nosfearat / In the west, where the sun sets
—Aug. 9th-10th, 128 CR
They took a few days to recover, swimming and relaxing at the beach, and conducting a few high-level battles at the local dojo. Russ went to the hospital for a follow-up treatment, and his mood stabilized after he was recovered and pain-free. Matt seemed to be living up to his promise to be less of a giant ass.
Moriko had been entertaining thoughts of going back to Port Littoral, but the next gym was on Sere Island, just a short morning boat ride away from Port Brac. It would be silly to stop now; they could decide after attempting it, and hang around there or take another boat up the coast back to her hometown.
She couldn't help feeling a creeping dread: even with a normal gym battle behind her with no nasty surprises or rule-bending by the leader, and even with the woman in black chasing demons far away from them, this journey had been a cavalcade of violence and terror. End the trip, break the pattern, make it stop.
And with that thought, continuing on had an appeal: better to go down fighting than running. At least they'd be training and getting most of the league done. Maybe the storm had passed?
And when Linden Jr. showed up with her father and a big grin and a day pack, well, it was hard to say no to that youthful enthusiasm and huge metagross.
"Is the backpack enough?" Prof. Linden asked. "I'm not sure if you want to redistribute items. She's little, but she's strong."
"Dad!"
"It's no problem, we have a storage device," Russ said, holding out the safety-yellow handheld. "It's a real convenience, we can carry extra water and toiletries and such."
Prof. Linden whistled, handling it briefly. "They really shrunk down that new model, I think I'll have to put in a request for one of those at my next grant application. Some of the older devices would ruin the calibration of instruments, so we never bothered and always use pokémon to levitate them. I'd hate to put them out of work, of course."
"I heard you have eight Kanto badges?" Russ asked Linden Jr.
"Heck yes," she said, keying her pokédex to display the league crest. "The best battle was definitely against Blue at tier eight, he knows what he's doing—"
"Do you mind?" Prof. Linden said to Moriko quietly, as Linden Jr. reenacted her metagross's best moves.
Moriko shrugged. "Is she going to"—Moriko thought of her ninth grade summer at a girls' camp and winced—"freak out and dive off the ferry? Get drunk and lock herself in a bathroom while screaming? Start a rumor and then cut herself after it backfires?"
Prof. Linden raised his eyebrows. "Are all those from experience?"
"Observation."
"Sounds like freshman week." He laughed. "I teach at the University of Hoenn at Mossdeep, it's, mm, it has a reputation as a party school that isn't totally unwarranted."
Moriko tried to imagine Prof. Linden at freshman week, spare and pale with a receding hairline, wearing slotted sunglasses and covered in body dye, and failed utterly.
"What do you teach?"
"Pokémon Social Behavior II and a grad course on pre-crossing history—what we know of it, anyway. Are you going to university in the fall?"
She shook her head. "I got rejected… I didn't really apply anywhere, but I got rejected from the one I applied to."
"Only one?"
"Yeah."
Prof. Linden shrugged. "What are you interested in?"
"Pokémon. Helping people, I guess."
"Ever thought about being a pokémon ranger?"
"I guess, they help people or whatever, patrol around and look cool."
Prof. Linden laughed. "They know a fair bit about pokémon, their habitats, and trying to balance the best interests of humans and pokémon with human expansion and ambition, and yes, they do help people and look cool. I think that might be a good fit for you."
Moriko shifted uncomfortably. "My marks are probably too low."
"Mm, talk to your professor, get her to look at your transcript. You want to have all A's for being a pokémon prof—it's a lot of memorization—but being a pokémon ranger is a full-body deal and marks aren't everything. Think about it."
She changed the subject. "You're okay with Linden Jr. going with us for a couple of days?"
He barked another laugh. "Junior... I'll remember that one—yes, I'm nearby, she has a pokédex and an allowance, and Adeline—Prof. Willow—trusts you guys. Astrid has several of my mother's old pokémon; she should be protecting me."
"You're not worried we're kidnappers?"
"There were times I wished someone would steal her, but quite frankly, I don't think you three are on Abram's level." Prof. Linden winked. "I would appreciate if you would look out for her, especially to tell her if she's being a twerp, since she might actually believe it if she hears it from some cool older kids."
Prof. Linden looked over at Russ and Matt and Linden Jr., who were arguing about something and all talking over one another with broader and broader gestures. Abram watched them, its metal and inhuman face quite unreadable, but something about its half-lidded eyes said 'this again'.
Moriko grinned. "Can't help you there, I don't know any cool kids."
x.x.x.x.x
The first ferry to Sere Island left early in the morning, and there was a queue and security checks before boarding. The three—four—of them found themselves awake at a punishing hour.
Moriko yawned, jaw popping. She worked on a paper cup of coffee, five sugars and a little milk, which was pleasant in the fresh breeze off the sea.
"We don't need to take the ferry, we have Betsy!" Linden Jr. said again, a completely incomprehensible statement at this time of day. She waved, trying to draw them off the main road and down to a secondary dock where the water was deep and black under the lightening sky.
"Who is Betsy," Moriko said, deadpan.
"It's better as a surprise!"
Moriko had woken up at five in the morning and was done with the whole thing. "She's a wailord, right? That's wonderful. Let's get to the ferry."
"Come ooooooon," Linden groaned, and finally Russ went down after her, so they followed.
The dock timbers creaked under their feet as they made their way to its end. Linden drew back her arm and threw a dive ball out over the water like a baseball pitcher or the trainers in the movies.
The noise of the pokéball reconvergence effect cracked out over the water, louder than Moriko had ever heard it. Betsy appeared in an enormous field of blue light, displacing water that sent waves rushing up to splash against the pilings, and to reach for the little boats and canoes dragged up past the high-tide line.
Moriko was impressed; wailord were mostly used for comic effect in media, but Betsy was enormous up close, as big as a house with huge ship's-propeller fins.
"Nice to meet you, Betsy," Moriko said, "but Linden, I don't think we can do the surfing pokémon thing—we need to change and our stuff isn't waterproof—"
"It'll be fine, look how sturdy she is!"
Betsy warbled a laugh. "To be fair," she said, her deep voice tolling, "conditions at sea can change quickly, Astrid—"
"Linden! Please!"
"—Linden, and I can't dive if you all aren't ready for it."
"…It would save us a little money," Matt put in.
Moriko bit her lip. Not buying the ferry ticket would be a bonus; at their current rate they were looking at pokémon center cafeteria food for every meal and potions for emergencies only.
"What do you think, Russ?"
"Seems fun," he said, mild.
"Yes!" Linden pumped her fist.
Betsy hummed a confirmation. "Do you have some other water pokémon? It's better to travel in a convoy."
They set out from the cove perched on Betsy's back, her velvety dorsal skin cool to the touch. They were all barefoot, huddled in the center and clutching their bags zipped up in their rain covers, but the wailord surfed expertly, a wave of her own making buoying them up and compensating for the swell.
Vleridin, Maia, and Sauza followed her, Maia gliding placidly while Vleridin exerted herself, competing to make a higher, larger surf swell and smirking over at the group. The geysard threw up a bigger cloud of steam than usual and lagged behind with his head trailing in the water.
"See?" Linden Jr. called from her spot on Betsy's head. "Look how great this is!"
It wasn't bad, Moriko thought, with the fresh breeze, and they were dry thanks to Betsy's skill and size—spray simply didn't reach them. Russ stretched out with his pack for a pillow, and Sylvia let herself out and promptly took flight, soaring high above.
Liona was happy to fly as well, although Thanasanian the oberant was disoriented and needed time to observe the ocean. She confided that she might not be able to fly in the wind for long, her air-type manipulation less practiced than that of the nigriff and borfang who had spent their entire lives above ground in weather.
Sere Island was a dark smudge on the horizon when Linden's pokédex lit up; she answered it, shielding it from the wind.
"Hey dad, we're surfing with Betsy!"
Prof. Linden's voice came through, a little garbled. "Hi Junior, how are you guys doing?"
"It's great!"
"Can you see Sere Island?"
"Yeah, we're getting close."
"Their pokédex service is out," Prof. Linden said, the connection worsening illustratively, "and there were strong ghost-type readings before it went down. They might be experiencing a swarm or—"
The connection failed, the pokédex displaying the dizzy magnemite 'signal lost' icon.
"Shoot," Linden said, and tried to call him back, but the call kept failing.
"Is that a problem?" Moriko asked.
Linden shrugged. "Honestly, I don't know how you guys put up with it, you have terrible service in this region. I'll call him back from a phone in the town."
As they approached Sere Island the hints of a blue-sky day were lost as the sea grew rougher. Betsy started to pitch before she smoothed their passage again with surf. The flying pokemon landed and went into their pokeballs, and the water-types drew closer together.
Moriko clutched her bag again and woke Russ, and Matt started to get something out of his bag as Linden trotted back over. The cross-wave that made them all stagger was simply bad luck, and Linden accidentally slapped their storage device out of Matt's hand.
Moriko watched the handheld fall as if in slow motion, the bright yellow plastic spinning, bouncing off Betsy's side and sliding straight into the water. Food, clothing, supplies, all stored as energy, went with it.
Greenness filled her vision. She leapt into the waves.
She could see so clearly, the saltwater cool and pleasant and not stinging her eyes for once, and swimming was easy—amazingly easy, easier than wearing fins. She shot down into the depths, the storage device bright even as the water grew dim—it wasn't even that far to the bottom, the island an outcrop of an underwater arm of rock stretching out from the mainland.
She sensed other pokémon: corsola and ubiquitous tentacool, seanami gamboling, a surprised carchardax contemplating challenging them but intimidated by Betsy's size.
She pulled the water, reversing the device's fall and catching it in her mouth, and she shot back to the surface, tossing it triumphantly toward the others.
The humans stared at her in horror.
"Where's Moriko?" Russell shouted.
She tried to look down at herself and found that her eyes were not placed quite correctly to do so. She looked back and saw mossy hide and long, long legs ending in hooves on a swirling jet of water.
"Oh," she thought, and the greenness came up, and she fell, her vision tearing into two; she fell and hit the cold water; she fell, losing the jet; she gasped and spat saltwater; she pulled the water again to push up the girl—
She—I—
Moriko felt heat and Sauza was beside her, and she threw an arm over his warm body and let him draw her back to Betsy's side. Another jet helped her scrabble up the wall of the wailord's side, her sodden summer wear not quite so light anymore.
Matt gave her a towel from his bag. "Moriko…"
Russ watched her, shocked. "What the hell was that? You turned into Vleridin?"
Moriko looked over at the mooskeg, floating in the waves; she looked as confused as Moriko felt.
"I… did I?"
"More large waves are coming," Betsy broke in. "I'm going to hurry us on."
x.x.x.x.x
The wailord got them to the docks at Sere Island, and she made pillars of seawater to help them make the leap, the draft not enough for Betsy's bulk.
Maia had rinsed off the seawater, and Moriko had dried off in the wind somewhat, her clothes hopelessly wrinkled. Linden hung back as they made their way up the pier.
"So… the turning into a pokémon thing," Russ ventured.
Moriko and Vleridin glanced at each other and away. Moriko had an acute embarrassment roiling in her stomach, as if someone had interrupted an intimate moment.
"I saw the—thing—fall, and I felt Moriko's horror," Vleridin said. "So I leapt after it, and swam down—I didn't feel—" the mooskeg broke off, pondering. "There was more color, as I see when I ensoul her. And I knew the, thing, was important, though now… I have no idea why."
"You both lunged for it," Matt said, "and you both shone as you went under. Only Vleridin came back up, until she… broke apart into you and herself."
"Ah," Vleridin said. "She ensouled me."
"Is that even possible? Humans are matter, not energy," Russ said.
"Theologically—" Matt began.
"When the woman in black does that thing, when she turns into the black charizard," Moriko said, "that's the same, isn't it?"
"Unless Prof. Linden is right, and she's a bunch of pokémon glommed together," Matt said.
Moriko thought of what she'd seen under energy sight. "She—"
Linden Jr. had approached them carefully, and broke in: "Moriko, I… I'm really sorry about the storage device. It was an accident! I'm really sorry!"
Moriko waved a hand but she went on.
"I shouldn't have made you guys all ride Betsy! I'm sorry, please don't tell my dad!"
Moriko smiled lopsidedly and remembered being fourteen. "You should tell him yourself, that way no one can hold it over your head."
"Take it easy, kiddo. Welcome to Team Port Littoral," Russ said. "Weird shit twenty four seven."
"It's fine," Matt said. "I think that was an important finding anyway." He petted Maia's broad head and she whuffed in contentment. "Let's see about this gym."
x.x.x.x.x
Sere Village was completely deserted.
It was morning on a weekday, with no one around; shops were open but had no one in them. The cafes had food in their coolers, but no one to sell it. The parks were empty, the walking streets empty, the famous haunted lighthouse had no tourists.
"This is part of the act, right? Ghost-type gym, haunted island, gets really spooky before your match?" Linden said into the hollow stillness.
They passed an old-style graveyard, its gates hanging open, covered in traditional paper wards and creaking in the sea wind.
"Totally not spooky," Moriko said.
"There is a lot of ghost-type energy here," Vleridin said.
"What does it feel like?"
Vleridin looked around, her great head swinging and the mist running over her hooves. "Everything is… insubstantial. Fleeting. It shivers in the cracks of the stones and slithers through the grass."
"Is this part of the act?" Russ asked, turning on his pokédex. "No service, still."
"Local mode seems to be okay." Matt had his pokédex open, scanning, but there was nothing on its radar. "Are there any pokémon around?" he asked the mooskeg.
"I can't tell… there's a watchfulness."
"I'm—" Linden said, her voice pitching up high, and she cleared her throat and tried again. "I'm gonna call my dad."
They checked the pokémon center—also empty—for a phone, but couldn't get it to work. Matt tried a few passwords, but it was part of the pokémon transport system and probably needed a key as well.
The pokécenter machines humming in the silence were especially unsettling so they kept moving, and found a regular phone behind the front desk at the hotel. They all sighed audibly when the connection was made and Prof. Linden answered.
"Dad! We're on the island now, the landline still works."
"Astrid—how is everything? Are there ghost pokémon swarming?"
They crowded around the phone's camera.
"Prof. Linden—no one is here. Is this part of the act? A spooky island?" Moriko asked.
Prof. Linden squinted into his phone. "No-one is—where? In the pokémon center?"
"Anywhere. We haven't seen anyone since we got here."
"Uhhh," Prof. Linden turned slightly away from the camera, and a projected screen appeared in front of him. He typed something, his eyes moving. "Yes? 'Sere Island strives to entertain visitors with its haunted island aesthetic'? Maybe?"
"The pokémon are uneasy," Matt said. "We haven't seen any other pokémon either."
"Your pokédexes still aren't syncing?"
"No," Matt said, "we're on a landline right now. No pokédex, phone or internet."
Prof. Linden typed something else and stared at his computer, scrolling. "Listen, I'm looking at the RES website and it's like I said, there's a spike in ghost-type energy above the already high background, and—"
They all stared at the dizzy magnemite. Call lost.
Linden redialed. Call failed.
"Well, this isn't weird as shit," Matt said, resigned.
They sat outside and got out their pokédexes and snacks in subdued silence.
"What should we do?" Linden asked.
"The real ferry is coming in," Matt said. "Maybe we should just wait for them and meet up with the crew."
"Yeah, I think we should leave," Moriko agreed. "I don't think this is normal, despite the haunted island thing."
Russ looked pensive and finally took out Celeste's pokéball.
The celestiule appeared, her sky-pelt an overcast light gray and her mane and tail white. She raised her head appraisingly, looking up the rise.
"I see you," she muttered.
x.x.x.x.x
They followed Celeste up the road, switchbacking up and up to the lookout and the small gym, the dirt road flanked by huge, broad trees girdled by ropes and paper belts. Curse- and charm-seals were tucked into cracks and boles, and there were old carved stones among the trunks, squat and staring or leering grotesqueries.
They reached the shrine at the top of the hill. Stern masters stood watch, their stone features worn away by rain and time, their hands raised in gestures of protection and benediction. The wind sighed, rushing along the tops of the trees, and clouds scudded over the increasingly rough water.
"You know the part of the movie where, like, the cupboards open and groan 'leave this place' but the characters keep exploring?" Linden said. "Are we doing that right now? Is something terrible going to come out?"
"It can try, certainly," Maia rumbled.
They approached the gym's entrance, the doors pleasantly weathered and set into the whitewashed walls. "Last chance to leave this place, ghosts and zombies," Linden muttered.
"We're gonna see something fucked up in three… two… one," Moriko said, and pushed the doors open.
"As the poet said, 'darkness there and nothing more'," said Matt.
Linden took a picture of the empty, dim interior. "No orbs or mysterious shadows or anything," she said, disappointed.
"Next guess: murder basement," Moriko said.
There was no basement, and exhausted from their early morning and repeated scares, they moved on to the lookout. They could see the ferry coming in, and behind it the faint gray shadow of the mainland.
"I think we better go down to meet them," Russ said, resigned. "This was funny at first, but I'm getting tired of the joke."
Celeste clicked her teeth in annoyance, muttering to herself. The light- and dark-type seemed to have some ability to detect and neutralize malevolent pokémon; she was as suspicious as they were about the island, but for the moment just as confused.
They started down the road again, and halfway down, Russell staggered.
"Watch yourself," Moriko tried to say, but her voice sounded slow and garbled to her own ears. She lifted her suddenly-leaden hands to her mouth.
"Hypnosis," someone said from far away. A shadow passed over them as Abram leapt and galloped away, Linden clutching the broad dome of his central body.
Russ was on the ground with Celeste nudging him. Sylvia appeared as well, but she was staggering, her wings flopping around uncoordinated.
Moriko realized dimly that she was on the ground too, a particularly fascinating pebble centimeters away from her face. It would be so good to just sleep for a few moments, she thought, she was so tired, she had gotten up so early…
x.x.x.x.x
Vleridin awoke with a start from a dream of the desert, and water on the horizon taunting her. Around her the other pokémon were stirring: the old-soul celestiule, her sky-skin roiling with dark clouds; the tibyss, her bio-lights winking on and off, uncoordinated and dim; and the borfang, anxiously nosing the gravel for a sign of her trainer.
"Where is he? Where is he?" Sylvia whined.
A snarl from Maia set Vleridin's teeth on edge. "Who did—" she tried to stand and fell, her blue fin-bones all clattering. "I'll kill, I'll kill them— Matt! Matt!" she roared.
"Yelling will do no good," Celeste said. "They hide from my sight!"
Sylvia flew into the air, her broad wings stirring up dust on the road, and she arced back and forth, calling her trainer's name.
"Who did this?" Maia repeated, managing to get to her feet.
Vleridin rolled her head, gesturing at the entire island. "By deduction: whoever disappeared all the other humans here, they put us to sleep and took the trainers too."
"Why not us?" Maia growled.
Vleridin looked out into the forest. There should be plant-type energy here, water and wind from the sea, and rock and ground from the exposed stone and soil, but it was all overlaid with creeping ghostly energy, dizzying and misleading the senses. Something had snatched away the humans and left them—but there were no humans or pokémon in the town.
"…Are they coming back for us?" the mooskeg said.
"Show yourselves, cowards!" Maia bellowed, her tail lashing. She rounded on the forest, a little ice flying out of her jaws involuntarily, and then she followed it up with a real attack that left the nearby trees tinkling and glittering with frost.
Nothing, not even birds, stirred in the wood.
Sylvia returned, calling out "I found Linden!" as she landed.
Running and gravel crunching were soon audible, and the metagross returned with the pale human.
"The sleep attack has ended," Abram said, in leaden tones. "You all are well?"
"Why are you still awake?" Maia demanded.
Linden shrugged. "We ran out of range in time, I guess."
"More to the point, Moriko, Russell, and Matthew are gone," Vleridin said.
"Oh shit," said Linden, "I'm the final girl. And we haven't even seen the monster. How can we—? No, scratch that—I should just leave. We should just leave and get my dad and the grad students and their pokémon."
"No," said Sylvia, Maia, and Vleridin all at once. They looked at each other, and Vleridin felt faintly embarrassed—how had she gotten lumped in with these slavish, devoted children?
"You may go," Maia said imperiously. "I will find Matt."
"We couldn't find the humans of this island," Vleridin returned. "How can we find our—these humans?"
"We have to try," said Sylvia. "Let's go look for clues in the gym!"
Linden drummed her fingers on Abram's carapace. "Sounds great, but what are we even looking for? How are the others even gone? I don't see any… tracks, or whatever?"
"A demon has taken them," Celeste said, her sky-skin flicking from cloud to cloud, dark and light and dark again; her eyes roved, seeing something they couldn't. "You are not safe. We are not safe." She looked at Linden. "Go back to the ferry, Astrid. Warn them."
"It's Linden." She bounced impatiently. "Ugh. Ughhhh! I should go, I know I should, but—this might be awesome!"
"It might be horrible," Sylvia growled. "You weren't there in the desert, when that thing hurt Russ!"
"Exactly! That would have been so cool!"
"It was not cool!"
In the end, they watched Linden and Abram gallop away down the slope toward the town.
They returned to the gym, looking hard under spectral sight for traces of the demon pokémon, but with all the ghost energy it was like trying to look through a thick mist. The energy was as deceptive as the type: it shifted unexpectedly, the strength of the aura fading in and out, letting through tantalizing glimpses of other energies and sources. There were wild pokémon here after all: they were concealing themselves in cracks and crannies, their auras compressed into tight, terrified balls.
They explored further than the humans had, into the wood beyond the gym, and they found a rocky promontory studded with human-made images of gods in dark stone.
Sylvia and Maia studied them, tails waving, and Vleridin was again reminded that they were only a few years old for all their strength.
"…Who are they?" the borfang asked.
"The—" Vleridin began.
"Do not say their names," Celeste snapped. "They ruled us once and they would again. They would take from us as much as the demons would, given the chance. As much or more."
Vleridin sniffed. "I prefer to be spoken to more deferentially by children," she said, but the celestiule was already moving off. "I was going to say, they are the gods-who-left—but before they did, we gave them polite sobriquets to avoid attracting their attention: the Liar, the Judge, the Dreamer, the Enchanter, the Ghost, the Weaver."
Sylvia watched her, puzzled. "I thought legendary pokémon were good—they keep the world in balance. I saw a movie about it with Russ."
"Legendaries aren't gods," Maia said as they walked. "They have long lives and great power, but they are no smarter than us and they can use it for good or for ill. They aren't gods—they can be beaten." She glanced at them sidelong. "I've seen it, on TV with Matt. A rayquaza was in the tournament—and it can be beaten by ice." She exhaled, her breath fogging.
"They are gluttons for energy," Celeste said. "Better when they had to sleep through every other season, every other decade. Terrible that they are at last partnering with humans; they will be putting their snouts into everything."
"You sounded like an elder there, old-soul," Vleridin called up to her. "Your skin is slipping."
Celeste brayed a laugh, but she kept walking.
"The gods were different, they say," Vleridin said to Sylvia. "There was far more energy in those days, but they destroyed it all fighting the demons, and when it was gone, they left." She jerked her head at Celeste. "Superstitious, to still be worried about them. It's like worrying that a fire-type will follow you into the ocean."
"It could, actually," Maia said. "But it would be stupid."
"Exactly," said Celeste.
They pushed into the gym, nosing around the equipment and into the humans' living quarters. Vleridin turned over papers with her vines and half-fancied that the lines on them meant something. A TV had been left on, but it was gibberish without a human listening to it, and in any case it just showed colors now, meaningless.
Sylvia hunched her wings down small and lifted up furniture, her talons carefully grasping tables and sofas, but there was nothing but dust underneath. It was the same as the town; there were things left out, food on the tables half-eaten and left behind.
They jumped at a siren sounding, and followed the noise to another room with a tiled floor. There was a faint trail of smoke coming from some human thing set against the wall, and the alarm in the ceiling peeped deafeningly.
"I know this one!" Sylvia said. "The food is burning. One time, Moriko and Russ were playing games and they didn't hear the noise." She twisted the controls with her vines until all the lights were off.
Maia wrenched the door open, annoyed, releasing a gout of smoke and warm air, and she froze the hot metal interior. Something inside broke, tinkling. The alarm kept sounding and they moved off, frustrated with the human artifacts' refusal to cooperate.
In the center of the gym arena, Vleridin realized her vision was clearer. There was less of the ghost-type energy here; it was more churned up, crisscrossed by humans and pokémon, consumed by battles. Celeste flickered, hiding energy, pretending to be a child, while Maia and Sylvia looked more normal, their soul-stuff glowing in their bodies green and teal and blue and white—
Vleridin sharpened her senses; here there was a little pulse of energy on Maia, a soul heart's beat, a pause, and then another, beating in time to some other—
"You have soul-bonded one of the humans," the celestiule said, but she was looking at Vleridin, not Maia.
"I—"
Celeste jumped, kicking up her hind hooves. "Yes! Yes! The link, we have to find the link—oh, confound this ghost-stuff—"
Vleridin remembered the thread connecting Matthew to the Gray Prince and wanted to find it on herself, wanted to bite it away—was she stealing from Moriko as the demon had? No, that couldn't be right… But they'd seen that gray thread only with the many-souled woman there, ravenously consuming all the energy in the area to support those she carried, and leaving bare that subtle effect of the link.
"Hey!" something called from the doorway.
They all jumped at the intruder and rounded on it, attack energies bristling, and it squeaked and dived back out of the gym. They followed it out, but there was no-one in the courtyard.
"What was it?" Sylvia asked, the thorns on her neck and back standing out in fright.
"Some kind of ghost-type," Vleridin grunted. "Come on out then," she called. "What's going on here? Where are the humans?"
After a moment the ghost reappeared, phasing back into visibility; it was a small, stubby orange pokémon, and it waved its black fringe at them sheepishly.
"What are you doing, pumpkaboo?" Maia breathed out ice crystals—well away from it, but it squeaked and started to disappear again.
"Don't go!" Vleridin said, shooting the tibyss a hard look. "Just—what happened?"
Other ghosts phased in to join them, several banette and a shuppet, and they sized each other up for a few moments.
"Something weird," said one of the banette.
"It's always weird here," the pumpkaboo squeaked.
"Well, weirder than usual."
"Start from the beginning," Vleridin said, wanting to bite them all with impatience.
"We're with Tsukuyomi," said the banette, "you know, the gym leader? I was training with them and their students when all of a sudden all the humans fell asleep and slumped to the ground, right? It was really weird."
"And so did Glamdring and Treebeard," the pumpkaboo added. "But Treebeard woke up after a while, natural cure, see?"
"And they went to go look for everyone."
"You skipped part of the story," Maia said, her tail lashing. "What happened to the humans?"
The ghost-type pokémon all looked discomfited.
"…Skulls came," the pumpkaboo said finally. "Skulls came and carried them away."
They all stared at it. "What."
The banette looked at each other uncertainly. "A couple weeks ago, it started to feel… richer here, you know?" a shiny one said. "It was easy to train and we got a lot of levels."
"The ghost-type energy," Vleridin muttered. "But no one disappeared until today?"
"Yeah."
"So what took them away?"
"It looked like skulls," the pumpkaboo said again. "You know. Like duskull, or ossprey. They have bones visible, right? Gray and green skulls, and they piled up under the humans and moved them away."
Sylvia narrowed her eyes. "And why didn't you help?"
"They were strong!" it squeaked. "Way too strong! I just got here from Kalos!"
"Stronger than us?" Maia growled.
The banette tried to decide among themselves.
"Maybe?"
"Nah, it's stronger."
"They're all high levels though."
"Like level matters if you're asleep."
Maia's tail went up at that. "Do you… do any of you know safeguard?"
"I do!" the pumpkaboo peeped. "I learned it from a TM!"
"Safeguard?" Sylvia asked.
"It will stop the sleep attack if it comes again," Maia said.
Celeste returned from stalking around and around the grounds. "There is simply too much energy here," she said. "You all have to eat it," she said to the ghosts.
"No can do."
"What do you think we've been doing?"
"We're stuffed. Get it?" a banette said, and they all started hooting with laughter.
"Eat more! Eat more and use your strongest attacks if you want to see your trainer again!"
The pumpkaboo dutifully planted its roots and started drawing in ghost-type energy from the surroundings, while the shuppet fired off a few clumsy hex attacks and a shadow sneak. The banette conferred briefly and started gathering energy for a huge multi-shadow ball, an ungainly attack that they were probably too low-level to perform properly, and it showed: it was eating up ambient energy rapidly as they struggled to support it.
"Excellent! Mooskeg, stand here—tibyss, here!"
Maia snarled at the celestiule, her fins high and quivering, but she moved as indicated, and Vleridin put that slight away for proper revenge on another occasion. She could see the soul pulse on Maia more easily now, the mist drawn into the crackling purple spheres maintained by the banette, and—yes, she could see where it led, away into the earth underneath the gym.
"They're under the ground somewhere?" Maia growled. "Is there a basement under the gym after all?"
Vleridin felt the trees and their roots grasping down, and she felt where they stopped, where they hit rock and snaked along it, and she felt the sea, fingers reaching into the land and wearing it away, bit by bit, and—
"There are caves," she said suddenly. "There are caves in the headland. We have to find a way down there—"
"Without getting put to sleep again," Maia said. "Are you coming, pumpkaboo?"
"Of course! Let's go get Tsukuyomi!"
The banette were flagging, and seeing that some conclusion had been reached, they let the shadow ball attacks go, whirling high into the air. They watched them burst, shielding their eyes as they looked up against the weak light off the overcast sky.
"Whew! We should do that more often," one said.
"Boom! Haha!"
"Are you all coming?" Vleridin asked them.
The shiny banette waved one of its arms. "Give us a minute! We'll follow you."
Another one groaned. "Do we have to?"
"That kind of talk is gonna get you benched!" the shuppet squeaked.
"Only if you tell them, snitcher."
"We're going," Vleridin said pointedly, and used her vines to lift the pumpkaboo onto Sylvia's back. "What's your name?"
"Jackie!"
"Just keep that safeguard rolling, will you, Jackie?"
x.x.x.x.x
The windward side of the island was suffused with storms' energy, even the thick ghost-type emanation struggling against the wind- and water- and lightning-type power that had gathered there for thousands of years. It was no mystery why humans had built a temple on the island; at a crossroads between sea and land and sky, it was a deep well for power.
Jackie kept safeguard up, the silver runes whirling around them periodically as they found a way down to the beach, rocks and dirt shifting treacherously underneath their paws and hooves. Sylvia flew down, which Vleridin considered a grossly unfair advantage, but the borfang called out paths and dangerous ledges as the pumpkaboo squeaked happily on her back.
The mass hypnosis started up again just as they made it down, and they stayed awake, mostly protected by the middling-level pumpkaboo's power. Without the benefit of unconsciousness it was an awful, crawling feeling that shook in your teeth and bones and made you want to turn to energy to escape it—and wouldn't that be a convenient state for the demon pokémon to find you in.
"It senses us coming," Maia hissed. "We can't let it know that we're avoiding the attack!"
They all laid down in the sand, suppressing their energies and pretending to be asleep, and eventually the hypnosis wave trailed off. They stood again, sick and unsteady, but still awake.
"So it happened again?" Jackie chirped at them.
Maia shook herself, fins rippling, and squinted at the pumpkaboo. "You didn't notice?"
"I'm immune to sleep attacks! It's my ability!"
"Cheater," Vleridin muttered.
The beach was devoid of wild pokémon; there were a few out in the water, giving the place a wide berth, and seabirds wheeling high above, oblivious to elemental dramatics and out of range of the hypnosis, if it even affected them. They passed pillars of black rock standing sternly out in the water, and there were rock overhangs and shallow caves where the sea had pressed on some weakness, countless storms wearing away the island over long aeons.
The right cave was impossible to miss; it was malevolent, crawling with demon energy, stinking of it.
"We need to make a plan—let's renew the safeguard and creep in—" Maia began.
Celeste charged past her into the cave. "At last! I see you, demon!"
"Are you kidding—"
"So much for that. Russ! Russell!" Sylvia shot in after the celestiule, the pumpkaboo whooping.
"You don't have to follow her in, you buttered duck!" Maia roared after her.
x.x.x.x.x
Moriko swam in and out of consciousness. She saw forest, sky, rock walls and flickering light—
She rolled over, the ground seesawing wildly like that time she and Russ had gotten drunk on sake and plum wine at his parents' house. They'd tried to play video games, but their reaction times were shot, and eventually they just sat in the bathroom against the nausea. His mom had been disappointed, but she'd also thought it was hilarious.
Her mind wandering, Moriko looked around and focused on the pale light.
They were in a cave, and ahead was a raised section of stone surrounded by flat black water like a mirror.
Moriko remembered another cave and another pool, and she lurched back. Her head was pounding; pain lanced straight into her eyes, and she clutched at her head, trying not to throw up.
She looked back, slower, at the figure on the stone: a person in a Shinto ceremonial outfit, sitting with their head slumped forward, and above them, suspended…
She fumbled for her pokédex and pointed its eye toward it.
Cryptidex mode activated. Aura analysis: Ghost- and acid-type, 85% certainty. Ghost- and rock-type, 15% certainty. Reduce range to increase certainty. (WARNING: HIGH LEVEL DO NOT APPROACH UNLESS FAINTED) Possible match: Nosfearat, the horde pokémon. This pokémon has many ancillary bodies, but only the central portion takes damage. It can drain the vitality of humans as well as pokémon, which may account for various vampire legends.
Nosfearat. Another demon. It was skeletal, with long front limbs and a pointed skull perched atop a rib cage wreathed with scraps of wispy cloth, and its spinal column extended down, as long as a snake and coiling below it. It seemed to hang in the air, quiescent, and from it grew a mass of spiderweb-thin strands that seemed to glitter in the faint light.
She saw movement and whirled her head to look at it, wincing at another stab of pain.
A skull floated past, and then another, and more and more, vaguely rodent-shaped and whispering faintly in their passage. They were glowing like will-o-wisps, and as they converged on the person and the nosfearat they illuminated dozens of other people, slumped and unmoving, and bound by the strands to the floating demon pokémon.
A familiar figure crawled up the dais; it was Russ, barely on his feet and shielding his eyes, as if looking into the sun. Moriko's vision swam as something shivered, hummed in the dim cavern. Russ dropped to his knees, but he put a hand out, and he touched the dark pool. She thought she saw it grow, well up like a fountain of crude oil, and spill over him.
Moriko thought she might have gone out again because suddenly she was looking at Russ, standing tall, pokéball in hand, the small skulls chittering all around him. He put out his hand and seemed to grasp at something, and seized and tore it violently.
Screeching rang out and the floating skeleton fell, the skulls milling around in confusion and dismay. Russ threw the pokéball to reveal Keigan the springbuck, who staggered drunkenly as he reformed.
Russell's voice sounded garbled, but Keigan managed to produce a whirlwind, trapping the nosfearat in the vortex. The skulls rushed away from Russ, mobbing the nosfearat and assembling into long, auxiliary limbs; it extended one and a strong hypnosis wave pulsed. The springbuck faltered, slumping.
Hooves clacked, drumming on the rock, and there was a high, wild equine scream behind Moriko. White light illuminated the nosfearat; a ray pierced it. It shrieked, a sound that made Moriko's limbs stiffen with fear and her jaw ache.
There was a triumphant roar and Sylvia came streaking in, teal dragonfire spilling between her fangs. She closed in and breathed it in a huge gout that washed over the demon. Angry chittering started up and purple confuse rays shot out, high-level ones that left flashing afterimages on the human eye.
Moriko felt herself levered upward.
"Can you stand?" Vleridin was saying, and Moriko started to say no, but she was already feeling better, and she staggered and clutched at Vleridin's neck to support herself.
Maia was nosing among numerous other sleeping—gods, let them be sleeping—forms and found Matt, who was reluctantly stirring.
"Matt!" Maia growled. "Matt! Did it hurt you? I'll—"
"I'm gonna hurl," Matt muttered.
There were yet more skulls hopping toward the dais to join with the main body of the nosfearat. It grew, looming above Russ and Keigan, and Sylvia battered it with her claws and tail, ripping away talon-fuls of the bones, but they hit the wall and started hopping back immediately.
"Help them, Vleridin. I'm okay," Moriko said, wobbly.
"If you insist," the mooskeg said, and she drew away to join the battle.
She felt at her trainer belt—they all had that slight tingle of an occupied ball, thank goodness—and threw down Rufus's pokéball.
The ball opened but the energy in it was sluggish and took a few tries to re-form, and finally coalesced into the oxhaust, kneeling and clutching at his armored head. He looked around the cave and looked like he regretted it, and he laid on his side on the ground.
"Rufus! Are you okay?"
He groaned. "I feel terrible. This is worse than bleeding. Why is everything wobbling? Did someone use earthquake?"
"A demon pokémon put us all to sleep, looks like it got you too."
Moriko looked over at Keigan, who was protecting Russ, but the springbuck was swaying and his attacks were arcing drunkenly every time he attempted one. She flinched at a huge crackle of ice energy as Maia started fighting the nosfearat as well.
Moriko realized that the pokémon in their pokéballs were too sick to fight properly, and a lance of icy fear ran through her body.
Vleridin was okay, Maia was okay—the pokémon who'd been left behind could fight, which meant they had three pokémon and a baby—a precocious and weird baby—celestiule to fight a demon pokémon that had sleep-effect-ed an entire town.
Holy shit.
The nosfearat fired viscous, green-brown sludge at them; it splattered Sylvia, leaving smoking holes in her coat and wings, and she howled in pain—caustic blast, the attackdex chirped helpfully—and reacted with the rock.
It was high-level to boot. Moriko looked at the dozens of people slumped around the cave and her vision filled with human bodies pulped and gored by attacks, charred by real flame and electricity—
"Get back. Get back!" she yelled, finding her voice. "Vleridin, nature power! Use the rocks to protect the people!"
Vleridin bellowed and the cave's stone floor began to glow gray and crack apart, separating into huge slabs of stone that the mooskeg levitated forward and set on end or piled up haphazardly. The dais split with a noise that seemed unwarrantedly loud, and they all staggered at the sound. Vleridin looked like she'd rather hurl the boulders at the nosfearat, but finished the barrier just in time.
Maia's markings were glowing and water flooded into the cave from an underwater entrance. Seawater sloshed against the makeshift dike, chunks of ice floating in it and shimmering with oily poison.
"Surf, Maia! Water against acid!" Matt was calling.
Russ was in there somewhere; it was suicidal. He had to feel as bad as Moriko did and Matt looked, and the two of them just barely staggered over to the new rock wall, peering over it like it was a match they hadn't bought tickets to instead of a fight for their lives. They ducked as deflected leaves and ice shards hit the rock.
"How does this keep happening?" Moriko yelled to Matt.
Matt grinned weakly, waving his pokédex. "The good news is, this one has a name—I don't think it's in the same league as the Gray Prince or his buddy."
"Good, so it won't obliterate us, it'll just wear us down—we only have three pokémon in good shape, Rufus would have been throwing up in his pokéball if he ate food or that was even possible, and I assume the others aren't doing much better."
"Don't discount the celestiule, something real strange is going on there," Matt said, glancing over the barrier and jerking back as drops of acid pattered on the rock and sizzled in the sand at their feet.
"Russ! Get back here! You are going to die!" Moriko yelled over the rocks, ducking quickly. "Did he even notice?"
Matt looked. "He's not listening. I think Keigan is managing a light screen, which is why he still has skin—"
"Matt, we have to wake up these people—"
"The best defense is to knock that thing down—"
"Yeah, which we're clearly helping with, crouching here. Come on!"
Moriko threw down Thanasanian's pokéball and tried to remember her first aid classes while the oberant sluggishly reformed. "Hello? Hello?" she said loudly to the person in the Shinto priest robes, sprawled on the remains of the dais, and hesitantly tried to take their pulse. Their skin was very cool to the touch.
Matt managed to stand and set about similarly, trying to rouse the next nearest person.
Thanasanian buzzed unhappily as she appeared.
"Thana, I know you feel like shit, but please light screen or reflect us or anything—" Moriko grabbed the person's hands, dragging them further away from the battle, where flashes of ice blue and teal fire and screeches from the nosfearat were still raging.
The demon pokémon reared back like a snake, and it threw off its secondary skulls and dove underwater. Outraged snarls from their pokémon followed, and Maia set the seawater churning, searching for it while the skulls clacked on the rocks, confused.
There was a rumble and the nosfearat burst out of the remains of the dais in an explosion of sand and rock slag, melted by acid. It loomed over Moriko and Matt, acid dripping from its jaws, exuded by the bones.
No hypnosis this time, its eyes seemed to say.
Somewhere in her mind she knew she should be terrified, but anger surged up instead, hot and boiling, and she wanted to show her teeth, wanted to snarl, her fingers curled into claws, and all she could think was how dare you as she stared up into that leering skull wreathed with stinking, rotten hide—
Moriko felt thorns, felt rock, felt the churning sea, it all felt so near, like if she pushed just a little it would all burst—
Light, blinding, stabbed through it—genesis lance, said the attackdex—and the nosfearat howled, transfixed, impaled, the spectral light in its eyes dimming and its limbs going slack.
"I see you, demon," Celeste whispered, a whisper that they all heard, as if to a friend's ear.
It was dragged backward; Moriko realized Maia was roaring, a wild expression of pure rage as she sent waves to wash the demon out. Vleridin was pulling with her thornvines on its long bone tail, hauling it out of its hole like vermin.
Suddenly the pressure in the room was gone. Matt blinked and worked his jaw as if his ears had just popped.
Moriko ran to peer over the rock wall. "Russ!"
Russell was standing in the dirty seawater like an absolute madman, retrieving something. He turned and walked back toward them, flanked by Sylvia and Keigan, the former of whom could barely restrain her excitement and relief despite her injuries. He was holding an ultra ball in one hand and clutching his head in the other.
"God, hypnosis always looked like a humorous pratfall in movies," he said as he drew near. "I may vomit."
Moriko stared at the ball. "Did you catch it?"
"Yeah, another demon for Professor Maple," he said. He put it on his trainer belt with an appalling nonchalance and started recalling his pokémon.
Celeste alighted delicately and recalled herself. Sylvia ignored the beam, trying to lick Russ's face and getting dark ichor on his clothes.
"Sylvia, please, you're covered in acid—" Moriko said, as Maia soaked them both with clean water.
Vleridin pushed over one of the slabs of rock and shook herself, using water sport to clear off any traces of the demon's attacks still stuck to her.
"Acid-types!" the mooskeg muttered.
"Thank you," Moriko said to Vleridin, Maia, and Sylvia. "You saved us! Uh… where are we?"
"Of course we did," Vleridin said. "We're in a cave on the western coast of the island."
They went to try to rouse the other people strewn about the cave, and to their great relief they finally stirred. As the first few awoke it seemed the spell was broken, and the networked chambers were filled with the echoes of people groaning and trying to stand.
"Here they are!" they heard shouted. Soon there were sailors from the Port Brac ferry coming into the cave, and someone with a large ship's first aid kit that Moriko hoped was a nurse or an EMT.
Linden waved and came over to them with Abram. "I got help! You guys are okay? What happened?"
"There was another demon pokémon," Russ said, "and I caught it. Nosfearat."
Linden gave a shriek of dismay. "I told you guys! I told you! Ughhhhh, I missed it!"
"Good," said Abram.
x.x.x.x.x
"I owe you some explanation," Tsukuyomi, the gym leader said.
"So, you know why and how your whole town was being drained by a ghost pokémon?" the pokémon ranger said to them sharply.
Tsukuyomi winced; their banette and pumpkaboo paused in fawning over them to frown at the ranger. Tsukuyomi was every inch the mysterious shrine-keeper with genehan white hair and eyes and long, sweeping robes. Out of uniform and sick after being energy-drained, they looked more like a goth kid who'd had a bad night.
"Sere Island has always been rich in ghost-type energy," they said, fingers curled around a large mug of sugary tea, "and other types as well. It surged recently: we expected to see a swarm of ghost-type pokémon migrating to the area, but they didn't arrive. In fact, we stopped seeing any wild pokémon at all. I kept in contact with the Regional Energetics surveyors…"
"I found the cave on the beach and visited it without incident," one of Tsukuyomi's students put in. "It was newly exposed by a small earthquake. There was nothing in it but stone and seawater, and I went back to the gym and told everyone. We were organizing an outing to look for fossils and crystallized energy when it happened."
"Did you summon the nosfearat? Did you do anything to lure it here?"
The pokémon rangers' questioning went on for a while, incisive, almost hostile questions that seemed to betray a prejudice on the rangers' part or a history on the gym leader's. Finally they moved on to Moriko, Russell, and Matt, and they gave their account of finding the town empty and being sent to sleep by the undocumented pokémon. The rangers avoided calling it a demon pokémon.
They were scolded for saying that "everyone" was gone when there were apparently unconscious or groggy people in the town in their houses, and then scolded for going into the empty buildings without permission. They nodded contritely through that speech, but Moriko felt her skin prickling angrily.
A third ranger approached them after that—it was Ranger-Captain Tanager, who had helped them in the aftermath of the forest fire caused by Dzalar, Matt's svarog.
Tanager whistled, looking at his pokédex and stowing it on his hip. "You three have a knack for attracting trouble, am I right?" He grinned. "Me included, this time."
"We're the victims of trouble," Matt said sharply. "Are you here to arrest us?"
"No, you're not—but I hope you'll give me five minutes of your time."
"Beginning now."
"Drop the tough guy act. You three have been in the thick of things this summer. It's been following you around. It would be very easy to conclude that you are the origin of these difficulties rather than the victims, and many of my colleagues would make you head home and put you under surveillance."
Matt puffed up at that. Moriko elbowed him.
Tanager snorted. "But with the benefit of the full picture, I don't think it's you three. There have been other incidents."
Moriko felt cold. "What else?"
The ranger held up a hand; not now. "In fact, I don't want to restrict you to a city. I want you to go far away into the wild, so whatever is following you won't find you among children and the elderly and people without pokémon."
"…Nice reverse psychology," Matt said, after a shocked pause.
"But it's my duty to protect you, wherever you are." Captain Tanager smiled sadly. "I beg you, whatever you end up doing, to stay somewhere with good communication, where our reaction time is shorter than hours. For your own safety."
They nodded, subdued, and Captain Tanager passed them his direct pokédex contact info before leaving.
"So," Moriko said, "do we—"
"Trainers! A moment," Tsukuyomi called to them. "Thank you very much for your help," the gym leader said, bowing. They were merely middle-aged, despite the white hair, but they were unsteady after the hypnosis. They might have been put under the longest and been the worst-drained.
"Not at all—it was our pokémon," Moriko said, and shortly they were pushing Maia, Celeste and Sylvia forward—Vleridin required no prompting—to accept accolades from Tsukuyomi and their students, who were offering them potions and rare candies in thanks.
"I feel that this is not quite enough," Tsukuyomi said eventually, and they were holding out three badges.
It was the Oblivion Badge, two pillars and a lintel on a simplified landscape with night beyond them.
"We can't take this—we haven't fought—" Moriko said, shocked.
"It is well within my purview as a gym leader to give out badges as a reward for a service to the gym, especially one that involved pokémon battling, anyway." They smiled. "You've watched the trainer dramas, haven't you? The heroes get badges for any old reason."
"Yeah, due to writer laziness—ow!"
Russ took his weight off Matt's foot. "Thank you very much," he said politely. "This is a privilege."
Tsukuyomi waved a hand. "My pokémon are still recovering, also," they said, "and those of my seconds, so it will be some time before I do any serious battling. I may have to get a loan of pokémon from another ghost-type gym leader—I'll send Fantina and Dolorosa a message—"
"Are your pokémon okay? I've heard when pokémon are especially energy-drained…" Moriko asked hesitantly.
"No! They're safe! I didn't lose any of them. No, a killer ghost pokémon—or a demon—can drain a pokémon to death, you're right, but this one—well, it had a whole town, it was like a child running through an orchard. Taking single bites from apples, throwing them away, moving on to the next one..." Tsukuyomi shuddered delicately. "Disgusting, but to our benefit."
"Did you do anything to attract the demon?" Matt said, flat.
"Matt please stop being rude—"
Tsukuyomi smiled sadly at Matt and raised their hands, where a couple of will-o-wisps were dancing.
It was easy to forget that ghost pokémon were closest to demons in aspect. They were traditionally feared; none could say whether they merely shared powers with legends about ghosts, or if they truly were undeparted spirits or corrupted ones.
"No. Did you?" Tsukuyomi asked Matt.
He got still, very still at the question.
Tsukuyomi smiled and put a finger to their lips, and went back to their mug of tea.
x.x.x.x.x
Sere Village was loud and bustling that evening: everyone wanted to re-live and re-discuss the same set of facts and hunt for new rumors, or to hide in their homes and try not to think too hard about what had happened to them and their neighbors. The place was crawling with pokémon rangers and police, and media from the mainland had already turned up.
Linden had rejoined her father and Professor Maple, who had flown over with the rangers, and they'd surrendered the nosfearat to Professor Maple with some relief.
Moriko, Russell, and Matt went to the beach. What they all wanted was a nap, but they'd be woken up in no time by rangers' boots tromping past the trainer dorm in the small pokémon center. The sky had opened up, but there were still thick clouds scudding by against the blue, and it was a bit chilly for swimming.
Moriko had spent all that time asleep, but it hadn't been restful. And yet she was possessed—ha—by a nervous energy. She couldn't sit and close her eyes before it would tell her to move again. She walked down the beach with the pokémon, who'd been healed and now needed a little exercise to dispel some of the grogginess. It did them some good to be out in the sea air, even Rufus, who found the closeness of the ocean oppressive, but they were shortly back in their pokéballs.
Thanasanian was frightened but had resolved to travel further, with more demons to report on. Vleridin was in better spirits, happy to be praised and mug for the camera, and Moriko watched as she fought a palaephin out in the breakers that dove back under and disappeared after a few exchanged attacks.
Palaephin, the bier pokémon. A ghost- and water-type, it was said to carry the souls of the dead into the west, where the sun sets. They often swim alongside ships and guard them against attack by other pokémon, but they are capricious and may attack, too.
Matt and Russ weren't far behind; Maia and Sauza were in the water, and Matt was on his pokédex while Russ threw stones and shells into the waves.
Moriko started to feel like she could sit down, but jumped when a girl approached her and sat down as well.
"Are you… from Sere Village?" she asked, awkward and not wanting to talk, but not wanting to snub the stranger.
The girl smiled; she was tall and pale, with gray-blue hair that covered her face in the sea wind.
"What did you find, there, under the earth?" the girl whispered.
Moriko wasn't sure she heard. "Sorry?"
"There is treasure there, underground, with the dead. We die and we go back to the earth, and all our riches, oh, there they are left," she said in a singsong voice. "Under the earth, there is treasure… Under the earth, there is screaming…"
Moriko got up, and the girl shot out her hand to grab her wrist, and it was freezing.
"Crimes leave a trace," the girl said, dreamily. "They leave blood. They leave ghosts."
Moriko stared.
"Look underground for their crimes," said the girl. "Look under the sea."
"…I need to go."
"Goodbye, earth's daughter… Look, will you?"
Moriko fairly raced away along the beach, her boots sinking in the sand.
Matt looked up at her. "Whew! Had a fright?"
Moriko shook her head. "I was talking to that girl—"
"What girl?"
"You didn't notice her? She said, gods, she said—"
Matt looked at her, his pokédex slack in his hands. "Moriko, I was… watching you for a while. You were alone."
Her expression changed as possibilities whisked through her mind, and she went with, "Matt, you're being an asshole again."
He sputtered. "No!—Not this time. You were looking at the ocean. There was no one there."
"You need to step up your game, Matt."
"You. Were. Alone."
"This is particularly assholish after all, after all this—"
"Moriko, look, the beach is empty—"
"It curves, there are trees, she walked away—"
A palaephin leapt, far away in the waves, and it was gone.