A New World, An Old Haunt

by Professor Frogenshtein

Ch 9: They Float

A cloud of hoppip and skiploom floated lazily on the breeze, led by a single jumpluff. They had heard the announcement from Arceus that morning, but none of them were too concerned; this new world looked nice, and the cloud was usually fine with wherever the wind took them. The jumpluff leading the cloud was just thinking about how clean the air tasted compared to back on Earth when he spotted a flying type headed quickly away from what looked like a town. He squinted, trying to see clearly; it was bulbous and purple, with a cloud on the top and a yellow X over the mouth, and in its four ribbon-like appendages it held an odd baby ponyta-looking thing.

Looks like one of the locals has made friends with a drifblim, he thought, I should say hello.

"Hello there!" Jumpluff shouted, "pleasant weather we're having, isn't it?"

The other pokémon jumped a bit in midair as it heard the sudden greeting. It turned towards the cloud, and Jumpluff floated closer to it.

"Huh, wuzzat?" It spoke in a male voice, looking a little nervous as he seemed to try and hide the not-ponyta behind himself, "I don't know nuthin' about nuthin'!"

He must be shy, jumpluff thought. He adapted a placating tone and spoke again. "I was just asking what you thought of the weather."

The balloon-like pokémon blinked twice rapidly. “Oh, uh, sure, yeh,” he replied, trying not to look at jumpluff, “da weatha. ‘s great.”

“Yes indeed,” jumpluff called exuberantly, “I was just speaking with my fellows here about how fresh the air is! Could your friend there tell us how they keep it so clean?”

this drew another flinch from the drifblim. “Uhhh, yeh,” he stammered, and brought the young equine out from behind him, holding its head up with one of his appendages; the local creature looked almost asleep, with its mouth hanging open and its eyes glazed over.

“We use magic” the pony ‘said’ in a falsetto, though its mouth didn’t move and its eyes stayed unfocused, “yep, pure one-hundred-percent magic!”

Jumpluff paused a bit; something didn’t seem completely right about this… “Are you feeling okay?” he asked the pony, “You don’t really look like you should be going on flights--”

Wide-eyed, the drifblim suddenly pointed off into the distance, speaking hurriedly. “OH-HEY-WUSSAT-OVA-THERE-IZZAT-RAYQUAZA-GOTTA-GO-BYE!”

The drifblim and the pony zoomed off in the opposite direction of where he had pointed. Jumpluff stared after them, confused for a second, before turning around and seeing the hoppip-skiploom cloud floating away in the wind.

“Hey! Wait for me, guys!”
 
Jumpluff rushed towards his family-cloud, all thoughts of the drifblim forgotten.

I sat in my captain’s chair, my head facing the large viewport at the front. In a chair beside me sat Bunny, both her hands gently grasping my arm, and I had my eyes closed as I listened to her.

“And that,” she spoke softly, "is the tale of my life, so many centuries ago." Her grasp on my arm tightened slightly. "I hope that you do not think less of me; I shall understand if you would prefer that I leave."

I opened my eyes and turned towards Bunny, placing my free hand on her arm as I gazed into her eyes.

"Fairest queen," I said, "my dearest of dears, I could never think less of you." Her eyes widened as I moved to caress her face with the back of my hand. "No darkened past could tear me from your side," I continued, "you have a caring heart deep inside you, this much I could tell from when we first met. I am no stranger to the darkness; if you will permit me, I will help you find your caring heart and bring it to the light once more."

Bunny's eyes glistened as she brought her face closer to mine. "My king," she whispered, and our mouths were only inches apart...

"Oh this is just too much; get a room, you two!"

We snapped apart and whirled to face the new voice; Teala was floating in front of us wearing a devious smile. Bunny stuttered out an excuse before rushing from the bridge.

I slammed a ghostly fist on the armrest of my captain's chair. "Arceus DANGIT, Tesla," I shouted, jabbing an accusatory finger at the tech ghost, "you had better have a GOOD REASON for interrupting!"

Tesla snapped a plasma appendage up in a salute. "We've spotted an anomaly hard to starboard, mein kapitän."

My eyebrows (or whatever ghosts had for eyebrows) furrowed. "Very well," I replied, "down periscope."

A periscope descended from the ceiling; I peered into it, though my newly-shaped head made it a little difficult. Off in the distance, I could see some kind of purple bulb carrying a bundle of black. The shape became clearer as I zoomed in, revealing it to be a drifblim. One that I recognized. He was carrying... A small pony?

"Up periscope," I commanded; I had seen enough to know what to do. "Engineer Tesla, send out the aerial retrieval unit."

The plasma spark nodded, saying "I'll tell Goliath to deploy," before speeding off through the walls.

I sighed and leaned back in my chair. "He'd better have a good explanation for this..."

This was clearly a serious matter, Frothing Stein could tell; King-Captain-Professor Amaranth had come in wearing what he'd called his "captaining hat" with a firm expression on his face as he held his mask in one arm to stroke his moustache.

That ghost really likes his moustache. He has every right to, of course; its magnificence rivals that of even my own.

Unconsciously, Stein put a hoof to his muzzle to stroke his own moustache, which was admittedly rather magnificent.

Oh by the way, this is a third-person perspective section focused on me, right?

The narrative replied in the affirmative.

Good, good; I don't want a mix-up like that to happen again.

Stein was distracted from his thoughts of the fourth wall as the door to the hangar--

It really looks more like a garage; there's a horseless carriage and everything.

As the mansion was floating in the sky at the moment, the room Stein was in was referred to as the hangar.

Alright alright, sheesh. Narratives nowadays, with their sky-boat-houses...

The hangar door opened and Goliath flew in, dragging a purple balloon-looking thing behind him by what looked like a cloud attached to the top.

"Ow ow ow ow," said the balloon as Goliath released it and the hangar door closed, "yo watch the hair uncle G, I gotta keep up my style!"

Rubbing its 'hair,' the odd creature flinched when it took notice of Dante. "He-hey, pops," it said, and Frothing Stein noticed it held something behind its back, "fancy meetin' you here; ya finally got dat moustache I see--"

The captain-king held up a hand to interrupt. "Avira. What's behind your back, young man?"

The balloon, Avira, cringed and seemed to swell with air to obscure what he was holding. "I don't got nuthin' behind my back..."

Dante's eyes narrowed. "Avira" he growled.

"Okay, jeez," Avira relented, and he shrank back down as he set the object on the ground.

It was a young bat-pony filly, with a dark grey coat and a jet black mane complimenting her small, leathery wings. Frothing stein noted that she was, at least, breathing.

Dante glared at Avira, crossing his arms. "Avira Montgolfier Amaranth, what have I told you about this?"

The balloon deflated further, looking at the floor in shame. "Stealing is bad," he said, as if reciting from memory, "but stealing children is worse."

"That's right," Dante scolded, wagging an ethereal finger at the quickly deflating air creature, "now we're going right back to where you found this one and returning it."

"But pops," Avira protested, "little sis already got da soul--"

"She WHAT?!" The mask spirit looked positively livid. "Where is your sister, Avira?!"

Avira put up a nervous ribbon-like appendage as he gave a meek reply. "Well, eheh," he chuckled timidly, "dat's actually a funny story; see sis and I woke up in da forest down dere," the balloon gestured to the forest through the hangar door, "an' we thought 'hey, we must 'a got lost again, let's try ta find pops,' so we looked around all night an' we couldn't find ya, an' I was like 'we ain't findin' nuthin' like dis' an' den we found a town an' dat message from dat Arceus dude happened an' we're like 'oh man, a new planet, dat's cool' an' dis little horsey thing comes up to us an' sis goes like 'hey, can I have your soul?' And da little horsey thing's like 'yeah, I ain't usin' it' an' when sis got done I figured it wadn't usin' its body no more so it ain't really stealin' is it, an' den dis big angry lookin' horsey thing comes up an' starts yellin' an' grabs sis so I'm like 'ah crehp' an' I take da kid an' bail an' I was totally gonna give it back I swear!"

Stein looked back at Dante, and saw that his face had become calm. Too calm.

"So you mean to tell me," he said, his voice unnaturally level, "that your sister, after consuming this young pony's soul," he indicated the comatose filly on the floor, "was captured by one of the adult locals, and in response you just took the body and ran?"

"...yes?" Avira squeaked, fiddling with the ends of his ribbons.

"Well alright; I just wanted to be clear on that." Dante turned and addressed his shadow. "Lucius, prepare a retrieval squad and a search team; we'll need to find Thanos." His shadow gave him a salute before rushing back inside the mansion.

All at once, Avira seemed to re-inflate to what Frothing Stein assumed was normal size. "You're not mad?"

Dante turned back around, showing a smile that made Stein feel uncomfortable. "Oh I'm plenty mad; I just know that sitting here yelling won't get anything done. Besides, your punishment will have to wait until after we find Alastor."

The masked ghost floated towards the door, gesturing for Stein to follow, as Avira visibly paled.

"Freaky uncle Al? Y-you're kiddin' me, right? Right? Pops?"

The two professors went back into the mansion without another word.

I sighed as I went back to the bridge, Frothing Stein following behind me.

"You probably have a lot of questions," I said as I sank back into the captain's chair, "please, don't hesitate to ask."

The other professor looked wary as he tried his best to sit in one of the other chairs.

"Well," he began, "before we start, I have to ask; is this still third person or is that section over?"

"What?" I had no idea what he was talking about.

"Actually never mind," he replied quickly, "that's a silly question." Stein switched topics, leaving me no time to think about his words. "This 'Avira' fellow; I assume he's part of your team?"

"Yes," I answered, "he's our second youngest member. He's sort of my adopted son; I took him in when he was just an egg, and raised him from when he was a little drifloon."

"But then..." Stein tilted his head, confused. "How does a ghost hatch from an egg?"

"That's actually a good question," I shrugged, feeling myself relax as I talked about my research, "the process by which pokémon eggs even appear is somewhat of a mystery; nobody's ever actually seen a pokémon lay an egg. Ghost-types in particular are strange in that most of them aren't truly 'alive' at all; they're composed of spiritual energy that sometimes takes on properties of different materials. But then certain species, like yamask or golurk, are not 'born' to begin with; yamask like myself are the souls of dead humans, as I said before, and golurk like Goliath were created centuries ago through a process long since lost to history."

"That sounds complicated," Stein commented.

"There's more; yamask and golett, along with all other ghost-types with recorded origins, can also hatch from eggs. This raises several questions: what happens when an egg comes into existence? Does a human die every time a yamask is born? If ghost-types don't die, how do they stop from overpopulating and turning the planet into a veritable underworld-on-earth? These are the kind of questions I had in mind when I began my research."

"All of them excellent questions, I must say," my fellow scientist interjected.

"Yes, but I never found answers to them. There were practical setbacks, like not having a yamask on my research team, as well as moral hang ups - I would never try to kill a sentient being, even if they weren't alive to begin with."

"And of course you couldn't just spy on a pair of pokémon to see if one of them laid an egg."

"Of course not, that'd be terribly rude. That and other scientists have tried already; an egg would appear out of nowhere in the time it took the observer to blink, and recording equipment would either malfunction or go missing entirely. Not even the pokémon themselves had any idea what happened!"

"Fascinating." Stein considered this a moment. "Oh, but I think we're getting sidetracked; does your 'son' tend to kidnap children often?"

I sighed, briefly reflecting that I didn't actually have lungs to sigh with. "It's an unfortunate inborn instinct for all drifloon that carries over when they evolve. You know about evolution, right?"

"I do, yes; Queen Bambifroth--"

"Banafrit"

"--she explained it briefly to me when we first met."

"Right, well drifloon and drifblim are known for kidnapping the young and taking them to the underworld. I've been trying to get them all to stop for at least a year now, but the best I've done is convince a few groups to bring the kids back when they're done. The children seemed not to mind at least, if they remembered the experience at all."

"Well it's something at least," Stein looked wary, but not quite as frightened as any of the distraught parents I'd explained this to. "And he mentioned a sister? Another draft-balloon?"

"Actually," I replied, "chandler is a chandelure; Avira only calls her 'little sis' because she's the other pokémon I hatched from an egg. She's the youngest on our team, and she's honestly a bit of a handful."

"Because she eats souls."

"Oh no, no, not at all. She burns them for fuel."

Stein made a 'mhmmm' sort of noise. "And tell me again how safe your team is?"

"Well I mean she doesn't burn the whole thing," I amended, "just the part that knows the way to the afterlife. In my experience, this has been a good help; my team just had to find the spirit she took and put it back in the empty body."

"Because of course you can do that." Stein deadpanned.

"Well technically," I corrected, "I personally can't do that. That's what the search party is for; to find a certain member of my team as fast as possible."

"But this teammate of yours," Stein pointed out, "could be anywhere on the whole planet."

I shrugged. "He's close,"  I said, gazing at the ceiling as I tapped my 3 fingers on the armrest of my chair, "I just know he is; no loving god with any kind of forethought or wisdom would put Thanos and Chandler too far apart."

Far away, Arceus blinked; he had the oddest feeling he'd just been unintentionally insulted.